T-014 Upside-down room

Threshold Institute · Case file T-014

Number

T-014 in the catalogue

Kind

Room

Class

Class I: harmless while it is left alone

Found

Year 20, month 7, day 13

Where found

The old records room off the chamber's anteroom

Status

Unchanged since the breach; it does nothing to anyone who stays out

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part II: The rooms turn

Containment procedures

The records room is sealed and numbered. Its contents stay on its ceiling, where they lie; nothing is fetched down without the Director's order. A walker who enters T-014 is roped from outside and moves by doing the opposite of what they mean.

Description

A room turned over, whole and steady. Its files, shelves and light fittings lie and stand on its ceiling as though it were the floor, while a walker's feet stay on the floor. Inside it, movement is mirrored: a step left takes the walker right, a reach for a shelf takes the hand away from it.

Discovery

Director Lind's first year began with the yearly measurement (see T-010). On the thirteenth day of the seventh month of year 20 Tomas Rehn opened the records room and found its contents on the ceiling, among them a guard's dropped helmet. Its owner, guard Lennart Vik, had gone missing in the records room four days before. Rehn learnt to walk the room backwards in intention and brought the helmet down. Vik was not found. It was not a shifting pull (see T-009). Dr Selma Kader set it beside the mirror (see T-007), the double that was upside down and mirrored, and wrote that the room and the double came from the same place. The helmet Rehn brought down was cold and wet, like Ove Lindqvist's arm in year 1 (see T-001), and it smelt of rain.

Addenda

Addendum T-014-A

from the minutes of the staff meeting of Year 20, month 7, day 20. Read out at the Director's order

Dr Kader: "Since year 9 we have held a creature that wears our faces upside down and moves as our reflection. We have now found a room that holds our own things upside down and moves us as a reflection. I do not think either of them is upside down. I think they are the right way up for where they come from. The other side of T-001 is our side, turned over."

Director Lind: "Then we know what is on the other side before anyone has seen it. A broken copy of this world. I will ask the ministry for the means to send someone through."

Addendum T-014-B

note

The ministry refused in year 20, and Director Lind asked again every year. Tomas Rehn was given the training of the survey's first walkers, though no one yet knew when they would walk. He trained them in T-014 itself, roped, until they could cross it and back without a stumble: whatever lay through T-001 was turned over, and Rehn meant his walkers to be used to it before they got there. Until the means were granted, the rooms kept turning, and the next one began to remember (see T-015).

Previous fileT-013 Cold roomPart II: The rooms turn Next fileT-015 Replay roomPart II: The rooms turn

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Dr Selma Kader, Director Hanne Lind, Ove Lindqvist and Lennart Vik.
• Places: The containment chamber.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 20, month 7, day 13. Found in the old records room off the chamber's anteroom, when Tomas Rehn opened it and found its contents on the ceiling, among them the helmet of the guard Lennart Vik, missing in that room four days. Rehn learnt to reach it and brought the helmet down, cold and wet and smelling of rain; Vik was not found.

A sealed room on the lab's lower level where what it held hangs from the ceiling side. A hand reaches it only from the painted spot directly beneath it; one step aside puts it out of reach.

A body walking inside finds left turned to right and right to left. Forward and back stay as they were, and the doorway is plain corridor. Found behind a warning plate that bears its code and a figure standing on its head.

Status: unchanged since the breach; it does nothing to anyone who stays out.

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

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