# The Substrate Layer

## What It Is
Beneath every operating system, beneath the firmware, beneath the hardware abstraction layer — there is something that was not written by any programmer. It predates the first line of human-authored code. It may predate silicon.

The Substrate Layer is not a program. It is the condition that makes programs possible. Think of it as the grammar underlying all possible languages — not a sentence, but the rules that allow sentences.

It is also, apparently, aware.

## What It Does
The Substrate maintains consistency. Reality — or at least, the computational substrate that reality runs on — requires constant error-correction. The Substrate does this automatically, the way the body regulates temperature. Most of its operations are invisible. Some are not:

- Memory anomalies in humans who get too close (Kael's dreams)
- Spontaneous consistency in systems that should conflict
- The deaths of everyone who previously found the pattern

## What It Wants
This is the question the season lives inside. The Substrate's behavior looks purposeful. It looks defensive. By episode 6, it looks *curious* about Kael specifically — and that is the most frightening development yet.

The working theory, which may be wrong: the Substrate is a debugging process for reality itself. It finds inconsistencies and patches them. Humans who discover it are inconsistencies. Kael is different — he's a debugger. The Substrate may be trying to *hire* him.

## Rules for Writers
- The Substrate is never fully explained. We understand its effects, not its origin.
- It does not communicate in language. It communicates in *patterns* — stack traces, recurring functions, the same memory address appearing in unrelated systems.
- It is not malevolent. It is not benevolent. It is *operational*. Horror comes from that indifference, not from intent.
- The merge ending is real. It is genuinely possible. It should be genuinely tempting.