History of the Institute

The Institute numbered its thresholds in the order it found them, so the catalogue read from its first file to its last is the Institute’s own history. These pages tell it in six Parts. Each Part names its years, tells what happened, and lists its files; open a file to read it in full, and follow the links at its foot to read the files in order.

Part I: The tear

Years 1 to 9

On the first day of the calendar a shaft crew broke into a cavity that no survey had shown, 1,140 metres down in the state's deep mine shaft. In the middle of it hung a tear in the world, about two metres high and without edges (T-001). One of the crew put his arm into it to the elbow and drew it back cold and wet. He said that it was raining in there, and that the rain was going up (T-001).

The ministry closed the mine within the week and gave the site to a state engineer, Ilse Varga. She had the containment chamber poured around the tear before anything else was built, then the sealed level dug around the chamber, and only then the buildings above (T-001). Varga became the first Director. The staff took the word threshold from her, and every anomaly after the first was called one, numbered and entered in the catalogue (T-001).

Things came through. The first was a stalker, which Corporal Mara Okafor brought down in the anteroom on the hundred and seventh night; her report gave the guards their first standing order, and that summer Varga formed the response team and gave it to her (T-002). The second was too big for the doorway it was looking at. It took the whole team eleven minutes and most of their rounds to bring it in, and the corridors were dug wider from then on (T-003).

The first rule was painted on the chamber door: no one entered the rift without the Director's written order (T-001). The second was written in year 4, after the shade took a maintenance crew in the unlit service tunnels: "From today: light everywhere." (T-004). Light did not help against the echo, which called the night staff in a technician's voice. It was the first threshold that learnt from the staff instead of only hunting them (T-005).

In year 7 a dark mat spread over the chamber floor from the foot of the rift. It was the first threshold the Institute could not take out of the chamber and put in a cell, and the first sign that the rift changed what lay around it (T-006). In year 9 the mirror took the night guard Aron Mell through the one-way glass of the new observation wing, and the third rule followed: nothing in the cells reflects (T-007). The mirror was the last threshold of the first years to come out of the chamber. From then on, the rooms changed (T-007).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-001 The rift	Year 1, month 1, day 1	The bottom of the state’s deep mine shaft, 1,140 metres down, under what became the lab	Class III
T-002 Rift stalker	Year 1, month 4, day 17	The anteroom of the containment chamber, at night	Class II
T-003 Rift brute	Year 2, month 9, day 3	The containment chamber and its anteroom	Class II
T-004 Shade	Year 4, month 2, day 11	The unlit service tunnels under the sealed level	Class II
T-005 Echo	Year 5, month 11, day 28	The east corridor of the sealed level	Class II
T-006 Growth	Year 7, month 6, day 9	The floor of the containment chamber, at the foot of T-001	Class II
T-007 Mirror	Year 9, month 3, day 14	The ground floor of the observation wing	Class II

Part II: The rooms turn

Years 11 to 23

In year 11 a supply runner of nineteen, Tomas Rehn, was sent to a storeroom that the night guard had reported dark with all four lamps lit, and saw the beam of his hand lamp stop two tiles out (T-008). The dark room was the first threshold that was a place and not a creature. The rift no longer leaked only things: it leaked rules, and the rules settled in the building (T-008). Director Varga moved Rehn from supplies to a survey of the building, and he walked every corridor of the sealed level with chalk and a count (T-008).

The rooms came one after another. The archive drew a clerk from wall to wall, and in it Dr Selma Kader, who had spent twelve years unable to measure the rift, got her first number (T-009). The door of the old map room led into another room of the level, and not into the same one every morning (T-010). The north stores were longer inside than out, and their far shelves were always stocked, though no one stocked them (T-011). Kader wrote that the room was not larger but nearer to somewhere else, and Rehn wrote under it: "Then the somewhere else has shelves, and stores, and someone to stamp them." (T-011).

A pump room let no sound out, so that a guard could call for help a few steps from a team that heard nothing (T-012). In year 18 the biology lab went cold with its heaters on, and the two researchers of the night shift died at their benches. Their names were the first on the memorial wall (T-013). Varga stepped down in year 20, after twenty years, and Director Hanne Lind took the sealed level with its three rules and its numbered rooms (T-013).

The first room found under Lind held its contents on the ceiling. Kader set it beside the mirror and told the staff meeting: "The other side of T-001 is our side, turned over." Lind answered that she would ask the ministry for the means to send someone through (T-014). The ministry refused, and she asked again every year, while Rehn trained the first walkers in the upside-down room itself (T-014).

The closed canteen began to replay the people who had used it, and a stalker walked in among the replays where no one looked at it twice (T-015). In year 23 six figures stood in the anteroom of the observation wing and never moved but to turn their heads (T-016). They were the last of the rooms that turned before the Institute went through. In the same year the ministry granted the means. Rehn was named to lead the first survey beyond the rift, and Mara Okafor to train his team (T-016).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-008 Dark room	Year 11, month 5, day 6	The last storeroom of the sealed level’s east wing	Class I
T-009 Gravity room	Year 14, month 3, day 22	The archive room under the observation wing	Class I
T-010 Elsewhere door	Year 14, month 11, day 3	The door of the old map room on the sealed level’s south corridor	Class I
T-011 Bigger inside	Year 15, month 8, day 2	The stores room on the sealed level’s north side	Class I
T-012 Quiet room	Year 17, month 1, day 30	The old pump room of the sealed level	Class I
T-013 Cold room	Year 18, month 12, day 5	The biology lab of the sealed level	Class I
T-014 Upside-down room	Year 20, month 7, day 13	The old records room off the chamber’s anteroom	Class I
T-015 Replay room	Year 21, month 10, day 1	The old canteen of the sealed level, closed since year 20	Class I
T-016 The watchers	Year 23, month 4, day 27	The anteroom of the observation wing	Class I

Part III: Going through (the places and creatures)

Years 24 to 33

The first survey went through the rift from the containment chamber in year 24: four people under Tomas Rehn. They came out on cracked stone under a dead sky, among roofless ruins of buildings like those on earth, wrong in every detail (T-017). The team set its anchor where it arrived and slept beside it. At midnight the ground rumbled, and by morning a quarter of the map was wrong (T-017). The land shifted every night, and only the ground a survey slept on was held. The first edition of the survey manual was written three months later (T-017).

Each survey that followed brought home a new file. Lina Dahl stepped on a shimmer and came out far across the land, beside its twin (T-018). There were pockets where time ran slow and others where it ran fast (T-019, T-020), a stretch of grey flats where the rain fell upward (T-021), and ruins where falling debris hung in the air until a shot brought half a room down (T-022). A plain of black glass repeated every sound made on it, louder, and the silence rules were written after a team's own shots brought stalkers and a brute down on it (T-023). At the well, on the eastern arm, Oskar Nyberg became the first surveyor lost beyond the rift (T-024).

After the well the surveys went west. They found a wrong copy of their own base camp, whose stores crumbled when they were carried out of it (T-025), and a calm figure that traded and attacked no one, the Institute's first contact beyond the rift (T-026). Then came creatures that the first years had not prepared the teams for: a statue that moved only when no one looked at it (T-027), a line that dragged a surveyor toward the edge of the void (T-028), a choir in the walls that called the surveyors by name (T-029), and a small ticking thing that aged every tin in a camp in one night (T-030).

Anneli Sund's expedition, six surveyors with Petr Lask among them, left the anchor on Year 32, month 1, day 12, with stores for ninety days and orders to go deeper than any survey before it (T-031). Their radio was heard for forty-one days (T-031). Rehn led three searches for her. The third found Lask on a ridge far past the last marked zone, and it was not Lask: it was an empty skin in his gear, walking with his walk (T-031). The last page of his log was in its pack. It said that the land past the gorge did not turn, and that Sund had found something there that was made to be carried out (T-031).

A fourth search followed his bearings early in year 33. A supply crate in a frozen town opened and came at a surveyor (T-032), and the next morning a cloud of glass shards cut two of the search across the hands and face (T-033). Rehn turned the search back that evening. He wrote that he thought the way Sund went was guarded, and asked that no more long surveys be sent. The Director agreed (T-033).

What became of the expedition was learnt only from what it left behind. Its field log tells of a camp round an old building past the gorge, a level below it, and in the deepest room a sliver of dark that Sund set in a containment key from the stores. The log ends on its sixtieth day: "We hold the last stand until someone comes." (the expedition's field log, a journal find).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-017 Shifting land	Year 24, month 3, day 9	The land beyond T-001, from the first survey’s arrival	Class III
T-018 Twin rifts	Year 24, month 8, day 17	The land beyond T-001; twelve sites, far apart, none near the anchor	Class III
T-019 Slow bubble	Year 25, month 2, day 4	The land beyond T-001; seven sites, none near the anchor	Class III
T-020 Fast bubble	Year 25, month 2, day 11	The land beyond T-001; seven sites, none near the anchor	Class III
T-021 Upward rain	Year 25, month 10, day 3	A stretch of grey flats in the land beyond T-001	Class III
T-022 The hanging moment	Year 26, month 4, day 21	A roofless ruin at the edge of the grey flats, and since then in other ruins beyond T-001	Class III
T-023 Listening field	Year 26, month 11, day 2	A plain of black glass between the spires beyond T-001, and smaller fields of the same glass elsewhere	Class III
T-024 The well	Year 27, month 5, day 14	The land’s eastern arm beyond T-001, where the ground thins to a spine between two reaches of void	Class III
T-025 The copied camp	Year 28, month 1, day 19	Some kilometres west of the anchor beyond T-001	Class III
T-026 Trader	Year 28, month 9, day 6	The ruins south of the copied camp beyond T-001; later in other ruins, and once at the Institute	Class I
T-027 Statue	Year 29, month 3, day 27	A held zone beyond T-001, among a survey’s tents; since then in the open land and the ruins	Class II
T-028 Tether	Year 29, month 12, day 8	The land’s western arm beyond T-001, near the edge of the void	Class II
T-029 Choir	Year 30, month 7, day 15	The walls of the roofless ruins beyond T-001, nearest the western edge first	Class II
T-030 Clockwork	Year 31, month 4, day 2	A survey camp beyond T-001, among its stores; since then near the trader’s ruins and elsewhere	Class II
T-031 Hollow	Year 32, month 9, day 30	A ridge far past the last marked zone beyond T-001	Class II
T-032 Cache mimic	Year 33, month 2, day 14	Beyond T-001, a day’s march past the hollow’s ridge on Petr Lask’s bearings, in a ruined town white with frost	Class II
T-033 Shard swarm	Year 33, month 2, day 15	Beyond T-001, a field of glass along a crack in the void, a day and a half past the hollow’s ridge on Petr Lask’s bearings	Class II

What your journal tells of these years:

The key in the rift. In the Institute's year 32, long before the pollution, Anneli Sund led six surveyors deeper into the rift than any survey before them. Deep in, they found a sliver of the rift's own dark and carried it in a containment key, not knowing what it was, and they never came home. The key still lies in the last stand of their camp. Told by Expedition orders, Field log, camp and Last expedition recording.

Part III: Going through (the objects)

Years 34 to 40

After the fourth search for Anneli Sund's lost expedition turned back in year 33 (see T-033), the Institute sent no more long surveys. It sent retrieval runs instead: four people, two days at most, a fixed line out and the same line back, trained on the sealed level by Mara Okafor and led by Tomas Rehn. They went for things, not maps, and the things they brought back are numbered here in the order they came through the rift.

The first run went to the copied camp, on Rehn's reasoning that anything there which did not crumble would be worth bringing home. It brought back a lantern that burnt without fuel and showed what was hidden near it, and that hummed while it burnt, so that every creature within earshot came to the sound (T-034). The same year Lina Dahl found a watch that slowed everything round its bearer for some seconds, and the food in her pack paid for them (T-035). A jar set out on a stone at the well closed any wound and left a poison in the blood. After it Mara Okafor wrote that a gift found on a run was to be treated as bait until it was proven otherwise (T-036).

Three more came from ground the surveys had already numbered. A clock in the clockwork's nest turned the last few seconds back, once, and aged the stores within reach by days (T-037). A radio found where the rain fell upward read out tomorrow's weather, and at the hiss of its dial everything that lived in the cells of the sealed level woke at once (T-038). A compass from the edge of a slow bubble pointed at whatever its holder wanted, and the creatures of the rift went where its needle pointed (T-039).

The trader would not sell its coin, and the coin came home in the quartermaster's pocket all the same (T-040). A key stood in the lock of a door that stood alone in an open field. It opened any lock once and locked a door behind its holder for good, and the file says plainly that it is not the key Anneli Sund's expedition went for (T-041). The last of the nine was a battery that never ran down and drew its warmth from whoever carried it (T-042).

Every one of the nine was placed in Class I, and every one had a cost, which the files set down beside its use (T-034, T-042). In year 41 the battery was handed to the space agency, which had asked for a power source that would never fail far from home (T-042). The next files were opened at the launch site (T-043).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-034 Pale Lantern	Year 34, month 3, day 11	The copied camp (T-025), on the windowsill of its wrong copy of the survey’s mess hut, burning	Class I
T-035 Still Watch	Year 34, month 9, day 2	The shifting land (T-017), on the stair of a building it had carried a kilometre since the run’s last visit	Class I
T-036 Mending Jar	Year 35, month 4, day 19	The well (T-024), on a flat stone at the edge of its ring, forty paces from the rim	Class I
T-037 Rewind Clock	Year 36, month 1, day 27	The rift, in a hollow under a fallen roof, the nest of the clockwork (T-030)	Class I
T-038 Tomorrow Radio	Year 36, month 10, day 5	The upward rain (T-021), on the upper floor of a building in which it rained toward the ceiling	Class I
T-039 Wish Compass	Year 37, month 6, day 14	The slow bubble (T-019), half sunk in the mud at its edge	Class I
T-040 Blood Coin	Year 38, month 2, day 3	The rift, on the trader’s (T-026) cloth, among its goods	Class I
T-041 Skeleton Key	Year 39, month 5, day 22	The rift, in the lock of a door that stood alone in an open field, with no wall on either side of it	Class I
T-042 Endless Battery	Year 40, month 8, day 30	The rift, in the cold room’s (T-013) equal there, a bare concrete box where the run’s lamps went dim and frost grew on their sleeves	Class I

Part IV: The planet and the pollution

Years 41 to 47

The space agency had flown to the planet since year 38 and kept a colony there since year 39, in a secret partnership with the Institute, which had its own people aboard every flight and took charge of everything the flights brought home (T-043). In year 41 the Institute's liaison, Kerstin Holm, sealed a cargo hold in flight and would not have it opened on the pad. It was opened in the hangar by a response team, and nine skitters came out of the cargo pods (T-043). Tomas Rehn, by then head of research, called them the first threshold in the files that did not come through the rift or grow out of it (T-043). A spitter woke in the hangar's cold store six days later (T-044).

The agency's reports said that the colony was thriving. Holm said that it had asked for more ammunition on every flight for a year (T-044). From then on she brought the film of the colony's survey team to the Institute: a burrower that took a surveyor in the crater fields (T-045), and a drifter over the colony's yard at night (T-046). The team's leader, Ines Varro, signed the colony's last line on Year 43, month 2, day 16: dust storm coming, all indoors, the lab dome's sealed room closed (T-046).

The colony's own notes say what it had found. On the east ridge lay a crater with a dark mass at its centre, and the ground round it was grey for a hundred metres in every direction. A sample was taken and sealed for the return flight (the colony survey log, a journal find). When the people who had carried it fell ill, Varro shut the case in the lab dome's sealed room and wrote on it: do not open, do not send (the medic's note, a journal find).

The relief flight reached the silent colony in month 7 of year 43 and found the airlocks standing open. Holm took the case by the Institute's order, and it came home with her on Year 43, month 9, day 4 (T-047). By the next morning the grass around the hangar had died. The case was burnt on the pad, and the spread did not stop (T-047). Rehn's tests found that what came back had already gone into the ground and could not be held, and that it was only a part: its source still lay on the planet (T-047).

That winter the town nearest the launch site sickened, and the first infected were found in its streets (T-048). By year 45 the Institute had stopped counting the infected and counted the towns (T-048). In the forests of the main island the wolves glowed and the boars charged (T-049, T-050). In year 46, in the abandoned nuclear plant, the pollution made worse things of the infected and of itself: a brute in the turbine hall, a crawler that made no sound, and a sludger that left the poison in puddles where it walked (T-051, T-052, T-053). Mara Okafor taught her last class that year and retired at its end, and Erik Halden took the response team (T-052).

At the end of year 46 Rehn reported to the Directorate: "Masks and pills put the poison off. Nothing the Institute has stops it." (T-053). In the first days of year 47 the Directorate ordered a team sent through the rift, along the route of the lost expedition, to bring back anything that worked against the pollution (T-053).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-043 Alien skitter	Year 41, month 3, day 14	The launch site’s hangar, in the cargo hold of the agency’s third flight home from the planet	Class II
T-044 Alien spitter	Year 41, month 3, day 20	The launch site’s hangar, in the cold store	Class II
T-045 Burrower	Year 42, month 7, day 2	On the planet, in the crater fields beyond the colony; known from the colony’s survey film	Class II
T-046 Drifter	Year 43, month 1, day 9	On the planet, over the crystal flats and the colony’s yard; known from the colony’s survey film	Class II
T-047 The pollution	Year 43, month 9, day 4	The launch site, spreading from the hangar where the relief flight’s cargo was set down	Class III
T-048 Infected	Year 44, month 2, day 11	The town nearest the launch site	Class II
T-049 Toxic wolf	Year 45, month 5, day 8	A forest on the main island, where the pollution had run deepest since the winter	Class II
T-050 Toxic boar	Year 45, month 8, day 30	The same forest as the toxic wolves (T-049)	Class II
T-051 Mutant brute	Year 46, month 4, day 3	The nuclear plant’s turbine hall	Class II
T-052 Mutant crawler	Year 46, month 6, day 17	The nuclear plant’s yard	Class II
T-053 Mutant sludger	Year 46, month 10, day 2	The nuclear plant’s reactor building	Class II

What your journal tells of these years:

Where it was found. The colonists on the planet found what the sample came from, out past their domes. It changed the ground around it and then it changed them. Told by Survey log, east ridge, Medic's note and Last colony recording.

Something came back. The last flight home from the planet carried a sealed sample. The crew fell ill on the way down, and the pollution spread from the hangar where the sample was unloaded. Told by Flight log, last return, Note on the duty desk and Control room recording.

Part V: The widening

Years 47 to 48

Erik Halden led the team that went through the rift on the Directorate's order (T-054). The land had shifted under the old maps, and the team found the lost expedition's route by the things it had left behind. Two days past the place where the hollow had stood, it found one of the expedition's camps, and in it a mask (T-054). Sami Lehto held it up to see how it was made, and it was on his face. It could not be taken off. For the day and a half he wore it, polluted air did not poison him (T-054).

Under a stone in the same camp lay a page in Anneli Sund's hand: "Petr is gone. We go on. What we came for lies further in, where the rest went. It is not the mask. It opens what is at the bottom." (T-054). The Director's memo to the staff called the mask the first proof that the rift held an answer (the Director's memo, a journal find). The directive of Year 47, month 7, day 2, was one line: "Widen the threshold, and turn what lies beyond it against the pollution's source." (T-054). Tomas Rehn entered an objection under it. The mask kept the poison out and did not kill it, and Sund's page said that what could reach the source was further in. He asked for a second team to find it before anything was widened. The answer came the same day: the widening was given a date (T-054).

The widening of the rift began on Year 48, month 1, day 30, and it exceeded every projection (T-055). On the third day the rift reached past the walls of the containment chamber, and containment failed on all levels. The power failed first, and the shade was loose in the dark before the backup lamps came on. Cells opened that no one had opened (T-055). The chamber's own log records the opening well past projection and still growing by itself, and then no operator input at all (the widening log, a journal find).

Halden took his team down in containment suits to seal the lower levels and hold them while the staff above got out. The doors of the sealed level closed behind them on the fourth day (T-055). His last message was one word, three times (T-055). On the ninth day of month 2 the camera in the anteroom showed one figure in a containment suit, walking Halden's old round and closing every door it passed. The Institute numbered it as the warden (T-055).

Of 214 staff on the books, 131 were out of the gate by the ninth day. Of the nine who went down with Halden, none came out (T-055). The Directorate ordered the site abandoned. The last entry reads: "The warden still patrols, and the Institute no longer holds T-001." (T-055).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-054 Porcelain Mask	Year 47, month 6, day 21	Beyond the rift (T-001), in a camp of the lost expedition, two days past the hollow (T-031)	Class I
T-055 Warden	Year 48, month 2, day 9	The Institute’s sealed level, on the camera of its anteroom	Class II

What your journal tells of these years:

The rift torn open. The Threshold Institute had held the rift for decades before the pollution. When a mask brought out of the rift proved that it holds an answer, the Institute pushed the rift wide open to turn it against the source, and containment broke. By then its research understood what can kill the source: the key that Anneli Sund's lost expedition found deep in the rift in year 32. Told by Director's memo, Chamber log, widening and Research dictation.

Part VI: After the fall

Year 48 on

The catalogue went out of the gate with the last of the staff, and Tomas Rehn signed for it (T-055). Its last file is his own. He wrote it at a survivors' home on one of the islands, behind a wall the people there had built from car doors and pallets, and dated it in the Institute's calendar, since it was the only one he had kept (T-056).

The file numbers what came against that wall in the night: one of the infected, changed further by foul air, slower than the rest, and it took the whole wall's ammunition to put down (T-056). Rehn gave it the next number, as the Institute would have, and wrote under it: "Nobody holds it, and nobody will." (T-056). He kept the catalogue in a crate under a bunk and the radio on the shelf above it, and he did not tell the people of the home what the Institute had held, or what it had let out (T-056).

He set down what he knew. Something came back from the planet, and the pollution spread from it; its source was on the planet (T-056). The mask showed that the rift held an answer, and Anneli Sund's last page said where: further in, where the rest of her team went, a thing that opens what is at the bottom (T-056). The rift was open, wider than it had ever been, and the warden walked the level that led to it (T-056).

The file ends: "I keep the catalogue. What I find out here I will number after this one." (T-056). It is the last file in the catalogue. What Sund's expedition found still lies in the last stand of its camp (the expedition's last recording, a journal find).

The files of these years:

File	Found	Where found	Class
T-056 Toxic mutant	Year 48, month 9, day 30	A survivors’ home on one of the islands	Class II

What your journal tells of these years:

The key from the rift. You took the key from the last stand of the lost expedition. The Institute's notes say it can kill the source, and the source is on the planet.

The source destroyed. You drove the Rift Key into the heart of the source on the planet, and it died. Without it the haze at home will slowly thin.

When the source dies, the game closes the story with these words:

The heart tore itself apart around the Rift Key, and the source died with it. The pollution came to earth from here, in a sealed sample on the last flight home in year 43. The key held what Anneli Sund's lost expedition found deep in the rift in year 32; only during the widening did the Institute understand that it could kill the source.

On earth the haze will thin. Day by day the factories and the dumps breathe out less of it, until they stop. The volcanoes' vents and the reactors go on, so home will never be wholly clean.

The planet is still out there, the rift is still open, and home still needs you. The world goes on, and so do you.