Black Garden (2020)

Plotzle Sci-Fi · Puzzle #4 · April 13, 2026 · Sci-Fi

Six plot descriptions for Black Garden (2020). One is the real plot. Five are convincing fakes. Read them and guess which is real.

1. A survivor discovers a radio signal on a holiday evening after a war and travels to find its source, encountering other survivors and the aftermath of nuclear destruction along the way.
2. An engineer designs self-sustaining ecosystems for Mars colonization and her prototype garden becomes a meditation on isolation when her team abandons the project and leaves her alone at the research facility.
3. Two siblings inherit their father's greenhouse after his death and discover that the experimental crops he developed can absorb and neutralize radiation from the contaminated soil surrounding their town.
4. A man addicted to synthetic hallucinogens enters a rehabilitation program where patients tend genetically modified gardens as therapy but he sabotages the crops when withdrawal intensifies his paranoia about the staff.
5. A woman joins an underground network that uses bioluminescent plants to communicate in a surveillance state and the garden she maintains in her apartment becomes her only connection to resistance movements.
6. A botanist cultivates alien flora in an orbital station and begins documenting how the plants respond to human memories transmitted through neural interfaces while her crew sleeps in stasis.