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
The bubble pops — ruptured by the edgeless joke — leaving two distinct, if not equal, Blues carelessly overlaid across each other. One, smudged, with blurring edges and the other sharp and edged with perfectly neat pen strokes.
One is tired of being scared and lost. She aches to tuck herself close to Conner for the remembered safety of his arms. If anyone can get them both out of here, it’s Conner, with his fluency in violence and his dogged stubbornness. Relief clashes with guilt. How can she be happy to see him when the forest is littered with graves? He could die here and it would be her fault.
The other is annoyed at the interruption and fuming with old grievances. Old scars freshly bleeding at the sight of him. She was so close.
I belong here, her own voice echoes fiercely in her head.
With us, the whisper of the trees confirm, and maybe Conner notices the split second when her attention slips from him to listen for the words woven through the rustle of the leaves above. The wind is picking up. They’re getting louder.
Blue’s shoulders drop. When she looks back, all the softness has gone from her face as it twists with a familiar exasperation at the joke. The tone doesn’t matter, doesn’t lend it the weight it ought under different circumstances.
Oh, don’t, says the look in her eyes. An old argument picked up too easily.
Why can’t you take this seriously? Meaning: Why can’t you take me seriously?
Except she never said those words out loud.
“Why?” Blue asks and through the anger there’s something genuine in the question. It’s not a blade aimed at his throat. (The better they knew each other, the better they got at fighting. All hidden weaknesses laid bare by intimacy.) It doesn’t last. Can’t. Because she connects the dots. Tugs on the thread that leads him here and finds where it starts.
Beneath the stars in a fucking swamp. With the sharp memory of gasoline stuck in her nose and an old longing stuck in her chest.
They say no good decisions are ever made after midnight and maybe they’re right.
“Because I called you?” An edge of disbelief now. A sharpness in the indignation creeping into her tone. “I should’ve know— I didn’t call so you could ride in on your white horse, Conner.”
He’s going to die because of me. I killed him. The words throb through the smudged and fading Blue like a heartbeat.
“I don’t need you to rescue me! I never did! I’m not some damn damsel in distress.”
Spoken when just moments ago, her feet tried to take root in the dirt. When everyone who walked into this place with her is either missing or dead. But her anger is gaining momentum now. A rock tumbling down a hill. Faster and faster.
“You always do this! You’re always trying to cut my research short. The things I’m learning here, Conner. You have no idea— The things the trees have already told me— It’s world-changing. But you wouldn’t know. You’re too obsessed with safety.”
no subject
Something flips like a switch in her, and he can feel an echoing impulse to switch in himself as well. A gentle tug, a coaxing, rising desire to escalate.
Yell at her. Make her understand. Cut her down. Win the argument.
No, don't. Stop it. It won't help them get out of here. Why's he even thinking like that?
"I know- I know you're not a damsel, I know-" he insists, but she bowls over it easy. Finishes up with research and safety, and he can't help but look at her like she's got about seven fire-breathing heads and two of them are juggling. How the hell can she-
Surely she must know, she must have her priorities straight here?
"Blue, what good's your research gonna do if you die before anyone can see it?" He appeals, a note of desperation in his tone. "Since I've been here, I've been... bitten by an alligator covered in spines. I watched someone dissolve into water. I've been attacked by things that- they weren't even human anymore. Tell me you haven't seen anything like that, honestly. Doesn't it scare you? At least a little?"
no subject
It’s easier that way.
The sharp note of desperation in his voice is drowned out by the disbelieving look on his face and Blue’s hands settle on her hips. Her battle stance. There’s no backing down now. Even as the smudged and fading part of her yearns to just let go and close the distance between them. She’s missed him. So much.
Doesn't it scare you?
Yes
”No.” she says, and there’s a certain finality in her voice. Even as something soft and quiet inside of her tries to remind her of the sharp blade of fear that has sat against her heart for so long now it almost feels like a part of her. The tight grip inside of her throat that makes each swallow a fight.
”Maybe you got hurt because you don’t belong here. Not like I do.” There is true venom in her voice now. Like nothing she has ever aimed at him before. Even when her anger has burned hot and bright she’s never tried to tear the two of them to shreds before. Not even when all that was left was a tattered mess.
you belong with us, the trees whisper above, the wind cutting through their leaves like a knife. It makes a sound like a scream. to us.
”You don’t understand. You’ve never understood. Knowledge doesn’t stop being important if it can’t be shared. Even if I am the only one to learn something. At least I’ll know.”
Tree trunks creak and groan ominously around them, branches trashing in the sudden and sharp wind.
you are ours
The wind howls through the branches.
It’s the only way. There’s no road out of here. Only in.
It feels true.
To both sets of Blues.
”You could come with me,” she offers, sudden and urgent. ”You’d understand then.”
no subject
He doesn't belong here. Not like she does. He doesn't deserve to be here. To mingle his roots with hers, to let them tangle under the soil together. To mix their branches, to share their leaves.
They don't want him. She doesn't want him.
Christ, this place is getting into his head.
Maybe she doesn't, but that doesn't mean he should leave her here. He shakes it off, and takes a tentative step forward.
"Is this really where you wanna stay? One place? Never moving, never seeing... Ecuador, or Argentina, or- I dunno, Ghana?" Another step, his hands out, palms up, gently placating. "D'you really wanna settle forever in Florida?"
Of all the places in the world, that's where she wants to end?
no subject
Conner steps closer. Slow. Careful. Like she is a wild animal likely to strike or bolt deeper into the undergrowth. The sharper, in-focus, part of her wants to take a step back. Keep the distance between them.
The blurred part of her wants to take a step closer. Wants to reach out for his hand to see if the memory matches the actual feeling of it.
In the internal tug of war, neither side wins, and Blue remains standing rooted to the spot, her shoulders wary and calves tense.
He never understood me.
The voice is hers, but the words don't feel true. They sit jagged and uneven in her chest. His questions sink like pebbles in a lake to sit alongside it. Is this really where she wants to stay? Here? Will this finally fulfill the yearning that has always seemed encoded in her DNA?
His next step goes unnoticed. Her mind too busy trying to think through the increasingly loud rustle of the trees above. There's a storm coming; a gale whipping at the branches above.
Does she really want her journey to end in Florida of all places? Ecologically, it's a fascinating place. But it's still Florida.
Blue's nose crinkles. It's subtle, the difference in stance, the softening of the tension around her eyes. But something changes. The two Blues blurring together into one.
"What if I can learn things here that I can't learn anywhere else?" she asks him, but there's a pleading note cutting through her voice. None of the certainty of just moments before.
Above them, the trees roar like a wounded animal.