The Return Journey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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returnjourneylogs2022-04-01 10:01 pm
returnjourney) wrote in returnjourneylogs2022-04-01 10:01 pm
Entry tags:
- !simulation,
- aki hayakawa (chainsaw man),
- alex mercer (prototype),
- amanda young (saw),
- blue sargent (the raven cycle),
- claire fraser (outlander),
- conner j (original),
- ellie williams (the last of us),
- grace gibson (original),
- jack (mass effect),
- jason todd (titans),
- loki odinson (mcu),
- rhys strongfork (borderlands),
- theo crawford (original),
- theon greyjoy (a song of ice and fire),
- travis touchdown (no more heroes),
- viktor (arcane),
- william (westworld)
SIMULATION: ANOTHER BORDER
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
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.
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."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?― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
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.
no subject
He doesn't even look aside at the guy speaking to him; he's dragging in that air and imagining it imbuing every molecule of his body with energy. He is going into the unknown. He is going to live in it and thrive.
"Why the fuck are you coming if you're not?"
no subject
What can I say? The payout is great.
[ And god, could he use that payout. He literally cannot afford not to go. ]
Worst case scenario is that we die which is uh- unideal. But I've got a good feeling about our odds, and until then am gonna look forward to the "after" part of all this.
no subject
"After? The fuck you mean, after? No one comes back from this place. That's the whole point."
He'd sold everything he owned and blew the money on some bullshit last hurrah. Why wouldn't he? He wouldn't need any of it in here, in the real world.
no subject
[ Rhys knows the odds and knows they're slim, but he can't go into this without believing in the chance he'll make it out. Otherwise what would be the point. ]
And I've got a good feeling about ours.
no subject
no subject
[ It's been a while since he's had to sell a bad bet into a good idea, he used to do it all the time with Vaughn....and while that hadn't ended well, this crew at least already volunteered for the task. He's just got to talk up some optimism, rather than full on talking them into it. ]
I've got a good hunch when it comes to this kinda stuff, and have some sources who confirmed me on it.
[ Never mind that source is a self proposed psychic who's steered him wrong in the past. ]
no subject
"That's real fucking vague," he replies. "But sure. Good luck out there."
no subject
[ Science-bros, man... they wouldn't get it. Rhys wouldn't have either, if he weren't so desperate to go to a psychic in the first place. He doesn't entirely believe in Loki's whole schtick, but he believes the man is well connected enough to know how to (usually....sometimes...) steer a person in the right direction. ]
How can you be so gung-ho to get in there if you really don't think we're coming back out?
no subject
[He can feel himself getting into a spiel, but he doesn't care. He barrels on:]
You could walk into an airport and book a flight at random, but you'd still have a idea of where you were going. Maybe you saw it on Google, or a friend went there, or some shit. But there's nowhere else like Area X in the world.
We're going to be living like explorers.
no subject
[ Fantasies Rhys had once had about being someone special, important, back when he wasn't so focused on just surviving his next encounter with his loaners. ]
Just dying in there is as bad as dying in a back-ally... which I'm trying to avoid currently. I want to at least leave some sort of mark.
no subject
[Travis scoffs.]
So the only thing that matters is knowing I did it, for me.
[There's no one left in his life to impress with it anyway.]
no subject
[ He can't comprehend this kind of attitude, doing something just to know you did it and that's it??? Never being able to leverage that later in life? Even with the private confidence that knowledge will give you (though who the hell would want to keep it private??) ]
What about your legacy, man? If you don't let others know all you accomplished in there then what's the point? It's just...gone with you. Like you weren't even there.