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
When she relaxes, it seems to take genuine physical effort. Her expression is still distant, mistrustful. "Is that a hint?"
no subject
"Wait- what? No, why, did that sound ominous?" In hindsight, it totally did. For what it's worth, that flurry of words just makes him sound a little bit stupid. Ever so slightly. Gently gracing the dumb side.
Which... doesn't mean he's not dangerous, because he is. Doesn't mean he hasn't hurt people, because he has. Just that, generally speaking, it's not an enjoyable pastime for him. He vastly prefers not doing all that.
Instead, he gestures down at his outstretched leg. Whether she can make it out well or not, it's bandaged up pretty good — with a faint tinge of red just barely blooming along the gauze.
"What I mean is, I got bit by a bloody crocodile yesterday, and then I saw someone turn into a tree. Whoever wrote that's a fucking moron."
no subject
She scrapes some ash off the wall, remnants of a cookfire that obscured the rest of the words.
"...I fear no evil, because I'm... blind to it." That sounds familiar. Why does it sound familiar? She hurriedly scrapes more ash off the wall, trying to understand this new mystery.
no subject
His boots scraping on the rock do an unfortunately effective job camouflaging the gentle rustling and scraping coming from around the cave's bend.
"Not exactly religious, but I'm... fairly sure that's not how the line goes." Last he heard, it was something along the lines of thou art with me. Speaking in terms of ominous, this version's winning.
It feels a little bit like a storm coming on — that ionized charge in the air, chemical-electric-fresh. Pre-lightning. Makes the hair at the back of his neck stand up.
no subject
She looks up at the man beside her, in the cave with her. Whatever fear and rage she felt before has simmered down, replaced with a feeling of confused awe. "Something fucked up happened in this cave."
lmk if u have anything specific in mind for the cave otherwise i'll get weird
He nods uncomfortably at her assessment, slow, distracted, eyes transfixed on the words. Given her confusion, given the dated look, it's safe to assume she didn't write it. But somebody did.
Somebody with no qualms ending lives.
His hand gravitates toward his sidearm slowly, and he flicks open the clasp. Holds the weight of it in his hands, considering, and then slowly offers it out to her.
"I think you should take this, and I think... maybe we should go now."
Except it's a bit too late for that.
i <3 weird.
"There are things..." she looks him over, searching, "they look like people, but they're not."
no subject
"I've seen this place make things that are wrong," he murmurs, "but not like that."
Turns out, he hasn't gotta wait long. The sound of a gentle scuff behind him has him whipping around in an instant. Immediately filling the cave is the pop pop! of gunfire as he discharges two rounds into something... something. Bipedal, humanoid, not human. They're ashen, grey, the same slate color as the cave walls around them. Lichen clings to their skin, moss grows in patches straight out of their bodies. Their eyes seem...
White-grey. Blank, no iris, no pupil. Blind as a bloody bat, he registers instantly, as two of them seize him about the arms.
"Don't say anything! Don't shoot, don't move." He snaps, midway through taking a boot to one of their knees. He hauls himself backwards, they cling on — something he was counting on, so both feet come up to shove into the nearest chest.
In the back of his mind, deep in the recesses, is the sense that he's bereft of something he should have right now. A weapon he should be using, an instinct he should be able to fall back on that isn't there.
no subject
She can be annoyed later. Now, she needs to be useful.
The creatures, more rock than bone, sway around her temporary ally. They sense his movement, or perhaps his distress, and it attracts whatever hungry instincts wait inside them. Some detached part of Ellie wants to stay still, to watch what they want with him. She could learn a lot from his death.
But she's never been good at standing idle. Once the creatures have their backs turned to her, she moves, slow and fluid. Earthen skin parts at the joints, revealing lichen sinew. Her knife finds the place where head and neck meet, sinks in slowly as a kiss.