The great illusion

A psi-sensitive ethnologist stationed on a closed world struggles to explain why the planet's people and their vast, geometrically spaced forest feel like an elaborate performance rather than an authentic culture. Frustrated when his survey superiors deem the world adequately classified and order withdrawal, he refuses to abandon the puzzle and uses his percipience to probe hidden layers of reality. Moving among villagers who tend the trees and befriend him, he confronts time pressure, procedural limits, and the unsettling possibility that appearances have been manufactured, forcing him to test the boundaries between perception and truth.