The prologue serves an important function, so I'd leave it in. Fittingly, you've got the same problem as the tutorial level in a video game: you establish a lot of important information, but it's dull and low-stakes. It would help a lot if you rewrite the scene with a conflict. It could be in the game (you can surely have a more exciting tutorial than walking around looking at plants; maybe make the playtester settle an argument between NPCs or solve a puzzle), or better yet, in the real world (maybe the playtester is a corporate spy, or she's there with a friend who she's having a fight with, or something).