returnjourneylogs | 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

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.

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.

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(A short laugh, breathy,) You think it's up to you? This is out of our fucking hands. You should be proud to know one of them.

(Amanda wishes she could be proud. It would be a nice break from the crawling filth of envy.

The kid across the field is practically shivering. She crushes her anger underneath the heel of her boot as she comes closer, gaze flickering toward the figures on occasion. She's suddenly solemn.) Who is he?

Proud? How can I be proud of this?!

[The figure that had started to rustle reaches its breaking point, startled by the sudden voices, and the vines finally let loose. Out from the chest emerges something resembling a dragonfly, the size of a man's arm and the same colors as the grass and vines around. It takes to the air, wings thrumming loudly and trailing vine tendrils as it does, looking like kite taken flight. The insect seems unconcerned with the people nearby who watch on.

Theo answers Amanda quietly as he does.]

My brother disappeared in here about two years ago. I don't know if he knew what he was getting in to, but he didn't tell me about it. He left me with his money and vanished.

[Unsure of what else to do, where else to go, Theo simply drops to his knees. He's so exhausted.]

He fucking left me.

(She looses a wild breath as the dragonfly breaks free, one of wonder, and jealousy–) How couldn't you be?

(Why wouldn't he want that? To change, to die and come back as something new and better and more beautiful? Her attention snaps back to him, away from the shimmering, iridescent trail the dragonfly has inexplicably left behind, hanging in the air. The smile on her face curls, and withers.)

I'm sorry. (She truly is. Imagine, being left behind, with no way to follow. The Area isn't interested in mercy, but thankfully for Theo, Amanda is.

Softly,) I can reunite you.

[Her last sentence is enough to finally pull his gaze away from the insect that was now a dot in the sky. He doesn't like the implication, and tenses up.]

I-- I have to get out of here. If he's already gone--

[It takes effort for him to get to his feet, and he almost doesn't make it at first.]

(Amanda in turn, reaches out to grab his arm. It isn't harsh, she isn't being cruel. She's telling him what he refuses to accept, in the hopes that he will understand it from somebody else.)

He is gone. There's nothing you can do about that. You need to let go.

[He pulls away from her sharply, and this time, he does go down. Theo sits there, staring at the strange grass. He pulls up his knees to his chest, looking smaller than ever, as if the grass might swallow him up. He hopes if he sits here long enough, it will.]

I can't-- I just wanted to know why. He knew he wasn't going to come back, but... Why did he think this was necessary?

(She drops too, and has a seat beside him in the field. The grass is a little damp from the weather but she doesn't mind. It's calming, being surrounded by the Area like this. Amanda thinks that if she closes her eyes tight enough she might sink into the ground and die like that, curled up. It sounds peaceful.)

It wasn't up to him. (Obviously.) The moment he came here, he surrendered his life.

[Nearby, the remaining three figures rattle as well now, eventually splitting open to release whatever was cocooned inside. Creatures that were once a butterfly, a bat, and a sparrow emerge and take to the air in different directions. Theo watches this with a pained look, feeling betrayed. Forgotten.]

And now we've done the same.

[He tears his gaze from the creatures receding into the horizon, and rests his chin on his knees. He needs to figure out what to do next.]

He came here because of me. And now I ruined what he did by coming here myself. I have to get out of here. I-I can't let that go to waste.

SIMULATION: ANOTHER BORDER

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