The Institute

The Threshold Institute was the state's secret body for one thing: a tear in the world that a shaft crew found at the bottom of a deep mine, 1,140 metres down (T-001). The ministry closed the mine, had the mining company's records burnt and gave the site to an engineer, Ilse Varga, who had a containment chamber poured around the tear before anything else was built (T-001). The day of the find became day 1 of the Institute's calendar. The staff called the tear a threshold, and every anomaly after it was called one, numbered and entered in a catalogue (T-001).

For forty-eight years the Institute held what the rift let through, and wrote down what it learnt. In the first years creatures came out of the chamber. The Institute lost people to them and wrote its rules after each loss (T-004, T-007). From year 11 the rooms of its own building began to turn (T-008). In year 24 it sent its first survey through the rift, into a land that shifted under every map (T-017). In year 32 an expedition under Anneli Sund went deeper than any survey before it and did not come home (T-031). After that the Institute sent only short runs, for objects (T-034).

The end came from elsewhere. The space agency flew to a planet and kept a colony there, with the Institute's people aboard every flight (T-043). In year 43 a sealed sample case came home from the silent colony, and the pollution spread from the hangar where it was set down (T-047). No cell or seal held it (T-053). When a mask brought out of the rift kept the poison out of the man who wore it, the Directorate ordered the rift widened, to turn what lay beyond it against the pollution's source (T-054). The widening failed on its third day. Of 214 staff, 131 got out (T-055).

Tomas Rehn, who had walked the first room that turned and led the first survey, carried the catalogue out and wrote its last file at a survivors' home on one of the islands (T-056). The files end with him.

These pages are the Institute's own record. The history follows the catalogue through its six Parts, from the first file to the last. The people and the places each have a page that gathers the files that name them. The rules page holds the calendar, the rules and the three classes. The journal holds what the Institute did not file: the notes and recordings left at the launch site, in the lab, in the colony and in the lost expedition's camp.