Annihilation(21)
The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible? Always, we were directed to the map, to memorizing the details on the map. Our instructor, who remained nameless to us, drilled us for six long months on the position of the lighthouse relative to the base camp, the number of miles from one ruined patch of houses to another. The number of miles of coastline we would be expected to explore. Almost always in the context of the lighthouse, not the base camp. We became so comfortable with that map, with the dimensions of it, and the thought of what it contained that it stopped us from asking why or even what.
Why this stretch of coast? What might lie inside the lighthouse? Why was the camp set back into the forest, far from the lighthouse but fairly close to the tower (which, of course, did not exist on the map)—and had the base camp always been there? What lay beyond the map? Now that I knew the extent of the hypnotic suggestion that had been used on us, I realized that the focus on the map might have itself been an embedded cue. That if we did not ask questions, it was because we were programmed not to ask questions. That the lighthouse, representative or actual, might have been a subconscious trigger for a hypnotic suggestion—and that it might also have been the epicenter of whatever had spread out to become Area X.
My briefing on the ecology of that place had had a similar blinkered focus. I had spent most of my time becoming familiar with the natural transitional ecosystems, with the flora and fauna and the cross-pollination I could expect to find. But I’d also had an intense refresher on fungi and lichen that, in light of the words on the wall, now stood out in my mind as being the true purpose of all of that study. If the map had been meant solely to distract, then the ecology research had been meant, after all, to truly prepare me. Unless I was being paranoid. But if I wasn’t, it meant they knew about the tower, perhaps had always known about the tower.
From there, my suspicions grew. They had put us through grueling survival and weapons training, so grueling that most evenings we went right to sleep in our separate quarters. Even on those few occasions when we trained together, we were training apart. They took away our names in the second month, stripped them from us. The only names applied to things in Area X, and only in terms of their most general label. This, too, a kind of distraction from asking certain questions that could only be reached through knowing specific details. But the right specific details, not, for example, that there were six species of poisonous snakes in Area X. A reach, yes, but I was not in the mood to set aside even the most unlikely scenarios.
By the time we were ready to cross the border, we knew everything … and we knew nothing.
* * *
The psychologist wasn’t there when we emerged, blinking into the sunlight, ripping off our masks and breathing in the fresh air. We had been ready for almost any scenario, but not for the psychologist’s absence. It left us adrift for a while, afloat in that ordinary day, the sky so brightly blue, the stand of trees casting long shadows. I took out my earplugs and found I couldn’t hear the beating of the tower’s heartbeat at all. How what we had seen below could coexist with the mundane was baffling. It was as if we had come up too fast from a deep-sea dive but it was the memories of the creatures we had seen that had given us the bends. We just kept searching the environs for the psychologist, certain she was hiding, and half-hoping we would find her, because surely she had an explanation. It was, after a time, pathological to keep searching the same area around the tower. But for almost an hour we could not find a way to stop.
Finally I could not deny the truth.
“She’s gone,” I said.
“Maybe she’s back at the base camp,” the surveyor said.
“Would you agree that her absence is a sign of guilt?” I asked.
The surveyor spat into the grass, regarded me closely. “No, I would not. Maybe something happened to her. Maybe she needed to go back to the camp.”
“You saw the footprints. You saw the body.”
She motioned with her rifle. “Let’s just get back to base camp.”
I couldn’t read her at all. I didn’t know if she was turning on me or just cautious. Coming up aboveground had emboldened her, regardless, and I had preferred her uncertain.
But back at base camp, some of her resolve crumbled again. The psychologist wasn’t there. Not only wasn’t she there, but she had taken half of our supplies and most of the guns. Either that or buried them somewhere. So we knew the psychologist was still alive.
You must understand how I felt then, how the surveyor must have felt: We were scientists, trained to observe natural phenomena and the results of human activity. We had not been trained to encounter what appeared to be the uncanny. In unusual situations there can be a comfort in the presence of even someone you think might be your enemy. Now we had come close to the edges of something unprecedented, and less than a week into our mission we had lost not just the linguist at the border but our anthropologist and our psychologist.