FADE IN: INT. AGRICULTURAL DECK, ROW SECTION 14, MERIDIAN, 0500 SHIP TIME Manufactured light falls in even bands across rows of soybean cultivars. The light is white, steady, engineered to approximate a sun these plants have never seen. Water moves through hydroponic trays beneath the soil beds with a low mechanical pulse, constant as circulation. The deck stretches in both directions. Rows numbered in faded stencil on the tray edges. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. The ceiling is high enough to forget it is there, low enough to remember. The air smells of wet earth and chlorophyll and the particular mineral tang of nutrient solution that has been recycled for two centuries. LENA VASIK (34) crouches beside row 14. She is lean, dark haired, her fingers stained at the cuticles from years of soil contact. She wears a canvas work jacket with the sleeves rolled to her elbows and carries a clipboard wedged under one arm. Her face has the focused stillness of a person who is always counting something. She touches a soybean pod that opened overnight. The husk is curled back, the seeds visible, pale green. She records the time on her clipboard with a pencil. 0503. She moves to the next plant. Her fingers brush the underside of a leaf in row 16, testing turgor pressure the way a tailor tests fabric. She pauses at a monitoring panel mounted between rows 14 and 18. Light spectrum data scrolls across a small screen. Wavelength distribution. Photon flux density.