T-021 Upward rain

Threshold Institute · Case file T-021

Number

T-021 in the catalogue

Kind

Place

Class

Class III: no cell holds it for long

Found

Year 25, month 10, day 3

Where found

A stretch of grey flats in the land beyond T-001

Status

Uncontained

Now

In the rift

Part

Part III: Going through (the places and creatures)

Containment procedures

Upward rain cannot be contained, and no edge of it has been mapped. Surveys crossing the grey flats tie down every loose item or carry it in a closed pack; nothing is set on the ground in rain, and maps are read only under a cover. Spent casings are not left behind on the flats. A survey that loses an item to the rain logs it and does not look for it.

Description

A patch of the land beyond T-001, some hundreds of paces across, where rain, ash and loose things fall upward. There is no shimmer, no hum and no edge the eye can find. Outside it the rain falls as rain. Inside it anything loose that the weather can lift goes up into the sky instead of down: rain, ash, dust, pages, a spent casing kicked from the ground. Things held in the hand, strapped down or heavy stay where they are, though surveyors report a pull at their packs' straps. Nothing that has gone up has been seen to come down.

Discovery

The sixth survey, under Viktor Saar, was crossing the grey flats in a light rain when the rain began to fall the wrong way. It rose from the ground in fine threads, climbed past their knees and faces and went up into the dead sky. Ash rose with it, and grit, and Saar's loose map case, which none of them saw again. The team walked on to the flats' far side and the rain fell as rain again.

Addenda

Addendum T-021-1

interview with survey lead V. Saar, Year 25, month 10, day 6. Interviewer: T. Rehn

Rehn: When did you see it start?

Saar: I did not see it start. I felt my sleeves get wet from below. Then I looked down and the rain was coming up off the grit like steam, only it was drops.

Rehn: And the map case?

Saar: I had it open, to check our line. It lifted out of my hand. Not fast. It went up as if someone had a string on it. The pages went first, then the case.

Rehn: Was there a sound?

Saar: No. That is what I did not like. The bubbles hum, the rifts hum. This made no sound at all.

Rehn: Did anyone try to hold the case?

Saar: Ek did. She caught a page. It kept pulling at her fingers until we were out of the patch. Then it was only paper.

Addendum T-021-2

note by T. Rehn on the file, Year 25, month 10, day 9

I set this beside the upside-down room on the sealed level (T-014), where the loot lay on the ceiling side and the staff walked mirrored. The same broken rule, I think, out in the open, and without the walls to tell us where it begins. Upward rain is the first threshold beyond T-001 that answers to no hum and no shimmer. The surveys can no longer take silence as a sign of safe ground. I have asked that the manual say so.

What followed

The next spring a team found what happens when the falling stops halfway (see T-022).

Previous fileT-020 Fast bubblePart III: Going through (the places and creatures) Next fileT-022 The hanging momentPart III: Going through (the places and creatures)

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Viktor Saar and Dr Hanna Ek.
• Places: The sealed level and The land beyond the rift.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 25, month 10, day 3. Found by the sixth survey under Viktor Saar, crossing a stretch of grey flats in a light rain when the rain began to fall the wrong way: it rose from the ground in fine threads past their knees and faces, and took with it ash, grit and Saar's loose map case, which none of them saw again. On the flats' far side the rain fell as rain again.

Round patches on the open land beyond the rift, 10 to 16 tiles across, where things fall up. Six were charted there, none near where a traveller arrives. Ash and grit rise from the ground at all times, and about half of the time a shower of its own rains straight up out of it; no weather from outside reaches it. Whatever is dropped there lifts off at once and is gone overhead within 8 seconds unless it is picked up first; bodies, caches, carcasses, people, creatures and animals stay on the ground.

A thrown grenade climbs instead of coming down and lands only past the edge, but its fuse runs on, so it can burst in the air overhead. No bedroll can be laid out inside one.

Status: uncontained. They stay where they are, and no map shows them.

Today it is found in the rift.

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