SIMULATION: ANOTHER BORDER

[returnjourney]

SIMULATION: ANOTHER BORDER

"I felt in that moment as if it were all a dream—the training, my former life, the world I had left behind. None of that mattered anymore. Only this place mattered, only this moment, and not because the psychologist had hypnotized me. In the grip of that powerful emotion, I stared out toward the coast, through the jagged narrow spaces between the trees. There, a greater darkness gathered, the confluence of the night, the clouds, and the sea. Somewhere beyond, another border."

― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

Introduction

April 1st – April 7th, 2022
Welcome to the event log for the "Another Border" simulation.

Twenty years ago, a strange phenomena overtook an undisclosed area of Florida coastline. It manifested as a metaphysical border, visible only as a shimmering halo. Animals, humans, vehicles, radio signals, internet, waves — anything that crosses the border is lost. As far as anyone knows, nothing has ever returned, but year by year, the border creeps forward, engulfing more and more of the land. It could be decades before it reaches the nearest city, but considering it has eluded all understanding thus far, it feels like time is running tight.

Every few years, the government sends new recon parties into "Area X", hoping this team will find the source of the phenomena, return, or simply establish communication from within. And it's time to send in another crew.

If you have any questions about the event, please ask here. You can familiarize yourself with simulation basics on our events page.

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1. Entering Area X

Security is tight. There are military checkpoints, final psychological and physical exams, gear to be inventoried and mounted. The plastic sheeting and polished steel, and the air smells of gasoline from the generators and the faintest whiff of rubbing alcohol. Sterile. A world away from the untamed wilds ahead of them.

There's a cold finality to it all: it is very likely that none of these explorers will come back. Is there a glimmer of hope that they will this time, or is it all just rote, we go because we must, because we've been ordered to, because the idea that something more will make the difference? It's hard to say. Someone passes around beers. Some prattle. Some just sit with their thoughts. We all prepare in different ways. Does any of it change the first steps through the shimmering halo of Area X?

Or perhaps you've evaded security entirely — the borders of Area X are ever-growing, and ever harder to police. There is very little beyond common sense preventing people from wading through swamps, boating out just past the coastline, or simply creeping through the vast miles of forest under cover of darkness.

2. Strange Discoveries

The world is full of strange and wonderful things, especially so in a place where the basic building blocks of life intermingle freely and without judgement.

In this way, the strange can become familiar. Millennia ago, before civilization and industry and the written word, a human could wander the forest in the purest state of nature, no different from other animals. That can be true here, too. People have come here in flak jackets and rip-stop and nylon, and the world around them asks them to consider a life without, a world where saplings sprout from deer skulls and you can come home. The roofs of the buildings in an ancient town have collapsed, as nothing here needs a roof over its head. One can press their palms into the earth and feel sustenance without a single morsel passing their lips. You can belong here.

And in another way, the wonderful can become terrifying. Maybe it's the way plants grow into facsimiles of human forms with boughed arms, and if you dare to touch them, they reach to touch you. Maybe it's finding the corpses of past explorers subsumed in fungal growth, human arms wrapped around mushroom and mushroom sprouting from skin. Maybe it's some animal, an alligator possessing human eyes and fingers, birds capable of speech, a manatee that splits open to reveal human organs.

What cannot come along is your damage. It doesn't — shouldn't — matter here, but humans are often too sentimental to let it go. That may be the strangest and most wonderful challenge at all.

3. Annihilation

"That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains."

― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

There are countless ways to die in Area X. Even if you evade the refracted wildlife, avoid merging with the flora, or survive encounters with other explorers, you fragment with every step. What's left of you when you're broken down into the base parts of yourself? What can you let go?

It's a truth you'll have to confront, or lose your sense of self to the world around you, yet another explorer swallowed by the wilds beyond the shimmering barrier.

4. Escape

There is no peaceful waking up. Post-death or post-change, awakening is a weightlessness shattered by a hard and sudden connection with the ground.

You wake in your bed or your bunk and, in that first instant, everything is as real as if you're still there. And then, at your own pace, there's a coming down to earth: this is you, these are your memories, and they're different from the ones that have flooded your mind for the past few days. It was real, if only in a dream.

The ship is quiet. The light are dimmed, swelling to life only when someone passes through the area and settling back into darkness on their heels. Many are still asleep in their beds. Their eyes twitch beneath their eyelids, and they move occasionally, shivering, mumbling. They will wake for nothing, not until they've completed their task, as you have.

Comments

[spanning]

I just don't understand why.

[His hand shakes as he puts the cigarette in his mouth, expression flickering when he realizes he doesn't have a lighter. Himeno had one, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to take anything off her corpse.]

[goty]

[She tries not to let her hurt rise to the surface, but it's probably obvious. She'd hoped for some familiarity, something to reach for, to bring her back, and-]

[No, the world has proven itself too changed.]

Fuck you. [She turns to walk away.]

[spanning]

Ellie.

[He reaches to grab her arm, well aware if she walks away this time he'll never see her again.]

[goty]

[It's instinct, to grab back as soon as his fingers touch her skin. Her grip is tight; for all that she lacks natural strength, she has more than enough intensity to make up the difference. She pulls him along with a sudden jerk, and her other hand is at his throat, and-]

[She lets go, moving away from him.] Don't grab me! Don't sneak up on me. Don't try it.

[spanning]

[Aki didn't come into Area X without training, with no idea of how to defend himself. He still doesn't bother, too paralyzed between the desire to live and resignation.

But she lets him go. He follows her.]

Don't leave. [Please.]

[goty]

[Everyone leaves, is the thing. Even here, even now. The thought that he wants her around is too much to bear. He must have some other motive.]

What do you want? You're done judging me, now what?

[spanning]

I don't know.

[There's something plaintive to it.]

But you left before and you never came back. And I didn't even know where to look for you.

[goty]

[To that, she can only tell the truth. He wants something from her, and she has to give it, to be useful, to be part of a human connection.]

I tried to come back. I couldn't find my way back.

[spanning]

[Somehow, it never occurred to him that she'd try. He'd never waited; no matter what anyone promised, it had always been on him to follow after the people who went missing from his life. Whatever the consequences.]

I thought... [He tries to picture the difference, before and after she was adopted, but the memory is too blurry.] I thought you must've been happy.

[goty]

[She doesn't know what to say to that. How can you tell?]

Were you happy?

[spanning]

[He stares at her. Has he ever been happy? He thinks he must have been, once.]

What did I have to be happy about?

[goty]

[Out here in the wilderness, in the midst of a dramatic and unprecedented meltdown, Ellie is shaken out of her misery by a strange and incongruous thought. She tries to stop herself, but a muffled huff of laughter escapes her.] You're so dramatic.

[spanning]

[The irritation, tiny spark that it is, is so much simpler than all of his other feelings. It's hard not to make a face at her.]

You don't have any room to talk.

[goty]

Yeah, well. [A shrug, tired and languid.] Maybe that's why we're here.

[spanning]

I know why I'm here.

[Said with his usual surety, though it's muted.]