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

[goty]

Ellie watches the woman struggle. Distantly, she's aware she should feel bad about this. Some part of her would have, once, she's sure of it. But now... she only feels curiosity, distant as the stars.

"You can do it," Ellie whispers, wanting to be pulled from this stoic undercurrent. "Try harder."

[oinks]

"Help me." Voice thick with tears, "Please."

But surely she didn't think this would be easy, or that the Area would open its arms to her; there is a test. She has to prove her strength and loyalty, and she has to do it alone.

The teeth are deep in her muscle of her leg. Amanda stares at her heel resting on the plate of the trap, breathing high-pitched, shallow with pain, and wipes her bloody palms off on her trousers. Gets them as tacky as she can, before she fits them to the jaws.

She goes for the springs this time, arms straining.

[goty]

This dislodges something. No one's ever begged her for help. The feeling of power is... intoxicating.

(She thinks of a creature she saw through foliage-- an alligator with flowers blooming blood red between its scales. It was sunning itself on a rock, its mouth open, and a bird landed between its teeth. The gator let it settle there, let it fly away. Mercy on its own suffrage. Power.)

(Stability.)

Ellie swears, and the spell is broken. She feels the adrenaline rush through her, seizing her body like a flame. She pushes herself to work past it, to ignore it like every other one of life's disappointments. "Fuck. Shit. Okay."

Maybe, maybe if she doesn't tell the woman it's her trap, maybe they can be friends.

She puts her hands around the woman's leg, higher up, trying to staunch the flow of blood. "Take it slow," she says, "you can do it."

[oinks]

Pain makes Amanda the most honest version of herself.

Her arms threaten to buckle when hands tourniquet her leg; if she'd worn her other pair of boots, half the jaw would have snarled into leather instead of denim and skin. She can't get the thought out of her head, blood-wet and intrusive. Taunting.

But the other woman believes in her, which brings Amanda a trembling moment of peace, an eye in the roaring storm of her mind as she struggles with the tension in the springs. You can do it. She is trying harder than she ever has.

Slowly, the jaw unhinges. Amanda pants as she presses each side flat.

Snatching back her ruined leg is part victory, part wrenching sob.

[goty]

"You did it," Ellie murmurs, almost a whisper. Awe makes her voice hush. "I knew you could do it."

Compared to that pain and struggle, it's relatively quick, easy work to tourniquet the woman's leg. A bit of scrap fabric from her pack, and Ellie frowns.

"I can stitch it, but it might get infected," she says, "or I can cauterize it."

[oinks]

She's breathing wildly, coasting on adrenaline, but hushes the moment the woman speaks to her again, drinking in the praise. Amanda is afraid but she always has been, a coward who needs somebody to lean on. She coats her fear in violent appreciation for the Area and hopes nobody notices it, and now she's been scraped back, right down to her core.

It's a savage relief.

"Cauterise," she repeats. Her leg throbs. Burn every little hole in her shut? Is that what she's going to do?

"Okay," she whispers, and shudders, violently. "Do whatever you have to do."

[goty]

Ellie nods, and puts her hand on the other woman's leg with all the gentleness a bear trap lacks. She raises it up, above Amanda's heart, which is mercifully easy with Amanda laying on the ground.

The lighter comes out next. She holds it over a switchblade, balanced carefully in her lap.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I thought you were... one of the fake ones."

[oinks]

It's easier to let herself be push-pulled into place like she's a body and nothing else, like she's dead. Ellie's words soothe her, make her sink into the moss and dirt with a phlegmy sigh and start to wipe away the tears.

"It's okay." It was a test; I thought you were one of the fake ones. She isn't. She isn't like anybody else, she is different.

"I'm real," she whispers. Her blood is thundering in her veins. She feels so fucking alive.

[goty]

Ellie nods, silent agreement. She's killed the fake ones, mirrors of herself and others. Their screams were the wrong pitch, their gazes didn't connect; they seemed listless, sick, detached. But this is real; this woman's pain is so heart-breakingly real.

Ellie doesn't warn her. When her knife is good and red, she plunges it in with only a second's notice. "Hold still."

[oinks]

Her entire body seizes up with the effort to be still. If this woman- who can't be a woman at all but an avatar for the Area, sent to guide her, to cup her pathetic life in its hands- asked her to drive the knife into her own leg, she would. Piety keeps her mouth clamped shut, jaw clenched, and her breath heaves through her nose. Fresh tears roll down her cheeks.

It hurts. Sharp, even clarity burns up her leg.

[goty]

It's over quickly. The blood boils, then sets into a dark, thick crust. The wound still looks very raw, but bright blood no longer bubbles to the surface.

Ellie reaches over, clears stray hairs away from the woman's sweat-soaked forehead. "It's okay now. You're safe."

[oinks]

Amanda breathes through it, wet and trembling, and wipes her eyes slowly. She nods, and struggles to sit, so she can see. The sight makes her exhale roughly. Okay. It's- beautiful, actually. A violent mark on her body that will leave a scar if she's given enough time to let it heal. She hushes, suddenly reverent.

"Thank you." For the help, and the hurt.

[goty]

Ellie sheaths her knife. She looks over the woman sprawled before her, and is reminded of rabbits before the kill, snarled in their traps. No, no, remember her. She is a person, even here.

Ellie begins to stand, and offers a hand in aid. "Can you move?"

[oinks]

She nods, and grips her hand tightly. Really, she has no idea if she actually can or not but she figures she has to or be left behind. Putting weight on the leg is terrible, and makes her grimace and grit her teeth, but she'll bear it.

"I'm Amanda."

[goty]

Ellie adds her weight to Amanda's, offering a shoulder. It's a slow trudge for them now, but it's possible. The horror feels lessened for having gotten through it, meaningful. Her pain rendered into some new currency, so she can buy a place to hide from more.

"Ellie," she says. "Why are you out here?"

[oinks]

"This is where I'm supposed to be."

Amanda laughs, brief and uncomfortable as a little too much weight comes down on her leg. She's dizzy, but there's something delicious about it. She paid the price, and here is her reward: the constant, aching reminder of being alive. "The Area was calling me home."

[goty]

She should be skeptical about this. Some part of her mind is, deep and distant and critical. That part of her, the part that analyzes and applies doubt, has not atrophied, but every hour spent in Area X further mutes it. She barely hears it now, a whisper between her thoughts.

"It called to you?" She says, "I didn't know... I had to fight to get in."

Ellie can't decide if she's jealous. She has yet to think of this place as good. It reeks of a steady, familiar madness.

[oinks]

It's news to her that Ellie didn't spring from the Area fully formed. Amanda pauses, resting on her uninjured leg, and looks at her. Wondering.

She thought...

"What were you testing me for?" Soft, but not accusatory. Not yet, anyway.

[goty]

"If you were real," she says, voice even, tentative. "Some of the people here... they're fake. I saw them. I saw a copy of me."

She's never felt as much joy as when she strangled the thing with her face.

[oinks]

"That isn't your job."

The injustice of it strikes like a blow. To be put through all of that and not even judged for it or determined worthy, merely crippled- "What gives you the right?"

[goty]

Another thing people don't understand. Out in the wild, there is no right.

"I did it," she says, tensing up. Some part of her still expects an attack. "I gave myself the right."

[oinks]

This could be part of it. Part of her test, Ellie only a conduit, nothing special. She's still the true acolyte. Amanda's jaw is tight, but her hand doesn't go for the hunting knife at her thigh, and after a moment she starts to walk again.

"You shouldn't do that."

[goty]

Ellie shrugs, thoroughly ensconced in her own confidence. "Too fucking late."

[oinks]

Fair enough. She huffs, despite herself, and grits her teeth when she almost stumbles over the uneven ground.

"I won't mention you when they come for me."

[goty]

She catches Amanda, tries to keep her steady.

"Who's 'they'?"