The journal

This page tells the whole story

Everything the journal can hold is written out below, the ending included. Read on only if you want to know it before you find it.

Your journal keeps the story of the pollution. Open it with the Journal key (see the controls). It lists the main thread, the finds, and the case files you have picked up.

The main thread has 6 steps. Until a step is done the journal only says where to look. A step is done when you read any one of its finds, a note, a terminal or a recording that lies at the place the hint names, and then its text is written in. The last two steps are done by what you do. The finds are what the Institute did not file: they lie at the launch site, in the lab, in the colony and in the lost expedition’s camp.

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.

Where to look. Search mission control at a launch site.

In the history. Part IV: The planet and the pollution

Any one of these 3 finds writes the step into the journal:

Terminal · The launch site

Flight log, last return

Relief flight, return leg, Year 43. Return burn nominal. Cargo: one sealed sample case from the silent colony's lab dome, carried aboard by K. Holm for the Institute and listed in no manifest, stowed in the aft hold under seal.

Day 3 of the return. Two of the crew report headaches and a metallic taste. Cabin air reads clean.

Day 5. The seal on the sample case reads intact, but the frost on it is grey and keeps coming back after we wipe it.

Landing confirmed, Year 43, month 9, day 4. Crew to quarantine, sample to the hangar under quarantine. Flight closed.

Note · The launch site

Note on the duty desk

To whoever has the next shift: do not go into the hangar without a mask, whatever the board says.

The crew from the last flight are all in the infirmary now. The doctor says it is not a fever. It is in their lungs and it is spreading.

The grass outside the hangar doors went grey overnight. This morning it was the fence line. I am going home to my family.

Recording · The launch site

Control room recording

[Static. A man's voice, tired.] This is mission control. We are closing the site.

Whatever came home on that flight is not staying in the hangar. The readings rise from there outward, a little further every hour.

The Institute's people had the sample case burnt on the pad. It made no difference. Nothing they have stops it, and nothing we have does.

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.

Where to look. Search the offices of the Institute's lab.

In the history. Part V: The widening

Any one of these 3 finds writes the step into the journal:

Note · The Institute's site

Director's memo

To all staff. Year 47, month 7, day 2. The contamination from the launch site has reached the coast. The usual measures have failed.

The mask brought out of T-001 last month keeps the poison out of whoever wears it. It is the first proof that the rift holds an answer.

Dr Rehn has read the lost expedition's log again. What Anneli Sund's team found deep in the rift in year 32, and would not leave, is the one thing that can kill the source.

The board has approved the widening of T-001, to reach it and to turn what lies beyond against the source. Prepare the chamber. No one leaves the site until it is done.

Terminal · The Institute's site

Chamber log, widening

Widening of T-001 by the directive of Year 47, month 7, day 2, after the mask (T-054). Aim: reach what the lost expedition found, the one thing that can kill the source.

Year 48, month 1, day 30. Widening stage one: aperture doubled. Readings stable. Field team reports a cold wind through the opening.

Stage two: aperture well past projection and still growing on its own. Containment field at full power.

Stage three: field failure on the sealed level. Cell doors opening across the site. Lockdown called.

Log continues automatically. No operator input since the lockdown.

Recording · The Institute's site

Research dictation

[A man's voice, close to the microphone.] Rehn, research. Notes on the samples from the launch site, continued. Year 47, month 7.

Nothing of ours touches it. Fire, cold and every agent we tried leave it as it was. The mask from the rift keeps it out of the lungs, but it does not kill it.

I have read the lost expedition's log again: Lask's last page, and Anneli's own page from the camp where the mask was found. In year 32 she found something deep in the rift that was made to be carried out, and she would not leave it. She did not know what it was for. I think I do now.

It is the one thing that can kill the source. It still lies where her team was lost. The Directorate will widen the rift to reach it; I asked for one more team instead.

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.

Where to look. Search the lab dome of a colony on the planet.

In the history. Part IV: The planet and the pollution

Any one of these 3 finds writes the step into the journal:

Terminal · The colony

Survey log, east ridge

Survey team two back from the east ridge. They found a crater with a dark mass at its centre, half buried and warm to the touch.

The ground around it is grey for a hundred metres in every direction. Nothing grows there, not even the lichen.

Sample taken and sealed for the return flight. Team two to the infirmary for checks as a precaution.

Note · The colony

Medic's note

Team two have the cough now, and so do the two who carried the sample case. The filters in the lab dome are grey.

The thing on the ridge is not dead. The grey ring around it is wider every morning, and it has reached the outer fence.

We told them not to send the sample home. Varro has shut the case in the lab dome's sealed room and written on it: do not open, do not send.

Recording · The colony

Last colony recording

[Coughing. A hiss of air through a seal.] This is the colony. If anyone hears this, do not land.

Some of us went out to the ridge at night and did not come back as themselves. They stand at the fence now and watch the domes.

We are sealing ourselves in the last dome. It came from the ridge. Whatever it is, it is still out there.

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.

Where to look. Search a lost expedition's camp in the rift.

In the history. Part III: Going through (the places and creatures)

Any one of these 3 finds writes the step into the journal:

Note · The lost expedition's camp

Expedition orders

Year 32, month 1, day 12. Team leader's copy, A. Sund. Six surveyors through the threshold today, with stores for ninety days.

Go deeper into the land beyond the threshold than any survey before you. Chart how far the land turns, and where it stops, if it ever does. Bring back what you find there.

Do not split up. Do not follow lights. Do not answer voices. Mark the way back at every turn.

Radio the anchor every evening, and turn for home before half the stores are gone, whatever you have found.

Terminal · The lost expedition's camp

Field log, camp

Year 32, month 2, day 23. Day 42 past the threshold. The radio died in the gorge. We go on by Lask's bearings.

Day 51. Camp round an old building past the gorge, built like our own Institute and broken. The land here does not turn: what we leave stays where we left it. There is a level below.

Day 53. Aho and Mo went down first and came up quiet. In the deepest room below lay a sliver of dark no longer than a finger, cold, humming when it is carried. It would not stay in a sample case, so Sund set it in a containment key from the stores. We do not know what it is. She will not leave it.

Day 60. Something followed us up from below. Lask is gone. The way home is gone. We hold the last stand until someone comes.

Recording · The lost expedition's camp

Last expedition recording

[Wind, and something scraping at a door.] This is Anneli Sund, year 32. If the Institute sends anyone after us: what we found is here, in the last stand.

We found it below the old building, deeper than any survey has gone, and it sits in one of our containment keys now; nothing else would hold it. It is cold, it hums, and it was made to be carried out of here. I think it opens something at the bottom of this place. I do not know what.

Take it home to Tomas Rehn. Do not wait for us. We are not coming home.

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.

Where to look. Take the key from the last stand, the deepest room of a lost expedition's camp.

In the history. Part VI: After the fall

No note tells this step: it is written in when you take the Rift Key. What the key is, where it lies and what you cannot do with it is under the Rift Key.

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.

Where to look. Take the Rift Key to the heart of the source on the planet.

In the history. Part VI: After the fall

No note tells this step either: it is written in when the source dies. How the key kills it is under the Rift Key.

The source is dead

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.