A misunderstanding of galactic proportions has seen the Yggdrasil return.

Straight out of fashionable Viking mythology to prime time viewing on Celebrity Council Elimination.

An event more viral than a COVID-19-Ebola team up. Set in an eco-lodge near Cairns (with day trips to Tasmania), the world watches …. confused and enthralled. In the voice of an “assimilated” phone app, the vegetal creature issues the “Cairns Declaration.” It’s an odd sort of invasion.

The Yggdrasil don’t eat humans, enslave us, or appropriate our consumer durables. Instead, as the aliens put it: “Declaration of right: Underutilised solar energy.” Floppy-haired Matt Davis, up and coming comic, is trapped and must confront the new ‘trees-have-feelings too’ paradigm. In this he is aided by Kalinda, CCE’s fanciable pop star and a rebellious alien ambassador… But to quote Matt, “Huh? I’m gonna need more help.”

Episodes later his wish is granted; a surprise intruder joins the show. Niels Larsson, man of secrets, Swedish forester, and tree communication expert … public sacrifice, or saviour? Niels survives. He devises a strategy of showing humanity in a good light – taking the Yggdrasil cast to see Shark Bay, the forests of Tasmania, the Great Barrier Reef – all the time trying to buy time so that humanity can make changes to our plant abusing and consumptive ways.

Later the reality TV show is abandoned, and war breaks out, but after the happy discovery that the music of Bach, “mimics the weft of tree song” reconciliation is attempted. The Yggdrasil appoint a human liaison committee, including Matt, Niels, an American DJ and unemployed platypus researcher, Jess Kelly. They solve several scientific mysteries along the way – including the connection between the demise of platypus populations and the alien arrival.

In addition to Australia, the story visits New York, Oregon, and locations in the Amazon swinging by the Fountain of Youth and an Incan time gate. Crisis hits when the human-friendly ambassadors are withdrawn. Niels must decide between exploiting a secret alien weakness or risking bunker and nuclear weapon owning enthusiasts blotting out the sun and cleansing the Earth of aliens.

His friend the last Ambassador sacrifices itself; the alien plague is unleashed, and the survivors leave, unaware of the cause, but warning they will return. Niels secretly protects the cocoons his ally has left behind, and the story ends with the young hatching. And with hope for a future reconciliation when the Yggdrasil Return.