Let the Land Speak

The Go Cybernaut office didn’t feel quite the same when they walked back in.

Maybe it was the way the morning light fell differently through the windows.
Or how the air carried the faint scent of cedar and moss—like the forest had followed them home.

Or maybe it was because they were no longer just a team.

They were a circle now.

Kai placed his hand on the wall just inside the door.

“It still remembers us,” he said, half to himself.

Cairo dropped his pack near the back desk and powered up the relay board. The hum was familiar, but the tone had changed.
Subtler. Slower. Like the signal itself had paused to breathe.

“We’ll need to re-map everything,” he said, already opening the schematic files.
“We can’t build forward on old logic.”

Hazel tucked Cero’s notebook into a drawer labeled FIELD FINDS, then turned to find her name newly etched above an empty desk.

HAZEL SULLIVAN – HISTORY WRITER

Sienna smiled from across the room.

“You already wrote your way back. Now we just catch up.”

Cero stood beside her, scanning the room, eyes wide and calm.
Someone had written GEN ALPHA – FIELD REP on a small nameplate beside the open window.

Cero ran a finger over the letters.

“Do I get to tell what I see?”

Kai grinned.
“That’s the whole point.”

At the whiteboard, Sienna reframed the earlier plan—boxing it in as Attempt 1 and writing beneath:

“Let the Land Speak First.”

Just then, a new voice joined the signal call.
Warm, curious, grounded.

“Hope I’m not crashing the channel. Ruby here.”

Orion smiled and leaned toward the mic.
“You’re right on time.”

Ruby Taylor, Go Cybernaut’s Australia Expert, sounded thoughtful.

“I heard what happened. Sounds familiar.”

Kai straightened.
“You’ve seen something like this?”

“Not seen. Heard. In Yolŋu and Ngarinyin stories, and again out west near Uluru.
Machinery failing. Paths shifting. Plans halting—quietly.
The land deciding.”

A quiet pause.

“It’s not protest. It’s protocol,” Ruby continued.
“Some places hold memory so deep, they move slower than our calendars but stronger than our maps.”

Jada’s voice rang in from comms.
“The rhythm’s not local anymore.
It’s global.
And it’s waking.”

Orion looked around the room.

“Then it’s time we remember forward.
And listen across.”

Cero opened the window beside the signal bench.
The wind moved through.

The land didn’t speak aloud.

But they all felt what it was saying:

Now you know how to listen.