T-001 The rift

Threshold Institute · Case file T-001

Number

T-001 in the catalogue

Kind

Place

Class

Class III: no cell holds it for long

Found

Year 1, month 1, day 1

Where found

The bottom of the state's deep mine shaft, 1,140 metres down, under what became the lab

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part I: The tear

Containment procedures

T-001 cannot be held, only kept. It hangs in the containment chamber at the centre of the sealed level, a room of poured concrete three metres thick with one door, which opens only from the anteroom. No one enters T-001, touches it or puts any object into it without the written order of the Director; this is the Institute's first rule, painted on the chamber door. Two guards stand watch in the anteroom at all hours, under constant light (see T-004). The chamber is inspected once a week, and its floor and walls each month (see T-006). Anything that comes through T-001 is brought down, numbered and entered in this catalogue.

Description

A tear in the world: an opening about two metres high, without edges, hanging a hand's width above the chamber floor. Its rim moves like heat over a road. Light bends toward it. It does not grow, does not move and cannot be measured: an instrument held in its plane gives readings from somewhere else, and a weighted line lowered into it comes back shorter than it went in, and wet. It is older than the rock around it. Things have always come through it; every one the Institute caught is in these files.

Discovery

On the first day of the calendar the shaft crew of foreman Viktor Brandt broke into a cavity that no survey had shown. Brandt took three men to the face with lamps and found T-001 in the middle of the cavity. One of them, Ove Lindqvist, put his arm into it to the elbow and drew it back cold and wet with water from no source. The ministry closed the mine within the week. The mining company's records were burnt, the crew were sworn to silence and paid for it, and the site was given to a state engineer, Ilse Varga, with a budget that stood in no ledger. 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. The day of the breakthrough became day 1 of the Institute's calendar, and Varga its first Director. The staff took the word threshold from her, and every anomaly after T-001 was called one.

Addenda

Addendum T-001-A

from the statement of foreman Viktor Brandt, Year 1, month 1, day 6

We thought it was gas at first, the way the lamps went. Then Ove put his hand in it. He said it was raining in there. He said he could feel rain on his fingers, going up. There were tracks on the cavity floor, in the dust. Not ours. Long ones, with marks like claws, and they all went to the thing and came back from it. Nobody in my crew made those. Nobody in my crew would go back down, either, not for any money, so you can stop asking.

Addendum T-001-B

note

Ove Lindqvist's arm stayed cold to the touch for the rest of his life. He was kept on the Institute's payroll as a watchman above ground until his death in year 26. The tracks Brandt described were photographed before the chamber was poured. The first thing that made them was caught four months later (see T-002).

Next fileT-002 Rift stalkerPart I: The tear

In the file

• People: Director Ilse Varga, Viktor Brandt and Ove Lindqvist.
• Places: The Institute’s site, The shaft, The containment chamber and The sealed level.
• In the journal: Director’s memo and Chamber log, widening.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 1, month 1, day 1. Found at the bottom of the state's deep mine shaft, 1,140 metres down, when foreman Viktor Brandt's crew broke into a cavity no survey had shown and one of his men put his arm into it and drew it back cold and wet. The mine was closed within the week, and the state engineer Ilse Varga, our first Director, had this chamber poured around it before anything else was built.

The oldest threshold in this catalogue: a tear in the world, older than the Institute, which was built around it to hold it. The day it was found is day 1 of our calendar.

Held in the containment chamber on the sealed level. Things have always come through it; every one we caught is in these files.

Directive: widen the threshold and turn what lies beyond it against the pollution. The widening exceeded every projection. Containment failed on all levels.

Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.

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