T-018 Twin rifts

Threshold Institute · Case file T-018

Number

T-018 in the catalogue

Kind

Place

Class

Class III: no cell holds it for long

Found

Year 24, month 8, day 17

Where found

The land beyond T-001; twelve sites, far apart, none near the anchor

Status

Uncontained

Now

In the rift

Part

Part III: Going through (the places and creatures)

Containment procedures

The twin rifts cannot be contained or closed. Every known rift is logged with the survey number of its zone and the location of its twin, and the pairs are taught to every surveyor from memory, since no map shows them. No surveyor walks toward an unexplained hum alone (Dahl's rule). No grenade is thrown within twenty paces of a known rift. A creature that follows a surveyor across a rift is to be expected on the far side, and the far side's team is to be warned by radio before the crossing where that is possible.

Description

Small tears in the land beyond T-001 that stay open: twelve of them, in twin pairs, each at least a hundred and twenty tiles from its twin. Each shows as a shimmer on the ground no wider than a doorway, with a low hum close by. Whatever steps on one is thrown at once out beside its twin, with a jolt and nothing worse. They throw people, creatures and thrown objects alike; a grenade rolled onto one goes off at the twin. They stay where they are when the land shifts (T-017), and no map shows them: a map is drawn from what the eye can see, and a twin rift looks like a trick of the light.

Discovery

On the fourth survey a surveyor, Lina Dahl, walked toward a low hum on open ground to log it, ahead of the team. There was a shimmer on the stone under her boots. She stepped on it and was gone. Rehn's team searched the zone until dark. Dahl's radio answered the next morning, weak and broken, from far across the land, where she stood beside a second shimmer exactly like the first. She walked back for two days, through zones that turned under her in the night between, and came in at the anchor with no food left. The surveys found the other ten over the following year.

Addenda

Addendum T-018-1

interview with surveyor L. Dahl, Year 24, month 8, day 21. Interviewer: T. Rehn

Rehn: You walked toward the hum alone.

Dahl: I walked toward it first. You were forty paces back.

Rehn: What did you feel when you stepped on it?

Dahl: A jolt, like missing a stair. Then the light was different. The ground was different. I thought I had fainted and been carried, but my boots had no mud from the ground in between, and there was a shimmer behind me with the same hum.

Rehn: Did you step back on it?

Dahl: No. I did not know where it would take me. I knew where the anchor was, more or less.

Rehn: And on the way back?

Dahl: I slept on a bedroll on the second night in a ruin. When I woke, the ground I had walked through the day before was gone. The ruin was not. I walked out of it by the sun, or what passes for it.

Addendum T-018-2

test log, Year 25, month 1

A weighted crate pushed onto the eastern rift of pair 3 arrived at the western twin at once, upright. A live rift stalker (T-002), driven across pair 1 by a surveyor, arrived at the twin within a heartbeat of him and was put down there by the far team. A grenade rolled onto pair 2 went off at its twin. No test sent anything back the way it came except by stepping on the twin.

What followed

The rule mattered within the year. Not every hum in the land beyond T-001 was a twin rift (see T-019).

Previous fileT-017 Shifting landPart III: Going through (the places and creatures) Next fileT-019 Slow bubblePart III: Going through (the places and creatures)

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn and Lina Dahl.
• Places: The land beyond the rift.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 24, month 8, day 17. Found on the fourth survey, when the surveyor Lina Dahl walked ahead of the team toward a low hum on open ground, stepped on a shimmer under her boots and was gone. Her radio answered the next morning from far across the land, beside a second shimmer like the first, and she walked back to the anchor for two days; after her, no surveyor walked ahead alone.

Small tears that stay open in the land beyond T-001: twelve of them, in twin pairs, far apart and none near where a traveller arrives.

Each shows as a shimmer on the ground, with a low hum close by. Step on one and it throws you at once out beside its twin; it throws creatures and grenades the same way.

Status: uncontained. They stay put when the land shifts, and no map shows them.

Today it is found in the rift.

Watch T-018 Twin rifts on YouTube