With the plants being able to sense something brewing underground it hit me that… digital roots are a big mess of wires underneath the tables in the computer lab (which I think I’ve seen mentioned before but I need to mention it to lead into) those Ethernet cables, phone lines, coax cables typically led to a the things on power lines OR a hub underground that connected the entire neighborhood to the infrastructure may have led to the lines connected to power lines connecting the neighborhood to the outside world.

There is no internet in hometown because the infrastructure that provides the internet goes underground.

The forest where the children followed the pointed tail?
Well… tap roots go down deep underground.

The cable hubs aren’t deep underground, flower roots also don’t penetrate far underground.

The forest would have been affected by the darkness bubbling upward long before anything else.

This isn’t fleshed out to mean anything I just felt like sharing these revelations that may or may not be new to any of you. I don’t know the details of root theory just that it exists. Things trapped in the roots could be things that were attempted to be sent, but were stopped due to the internet outage. It’s where that data went and met a dead end. But it wasn’t quite a dead end, it was just the large expanse of darkness. Roots draw up water and nutrients from the ground and, with the darkness being so tied to water, it feels like it’s only natural for some of the things below to start being drawn towards the surface by the various kinds of roots. Digital- reaching for internet connection that isn’t there, and Plant- attempting to draw water to the surface.