T-025 The copied camp

Threshold Institute · Case file T-025

Number

T-025 in the catalogue

Kind

Place

Class

Class III: no cell holds it for long

Found

Year 28, month 1, day 19

Where found

Some kilometres west of the anchor beyond T-001

Status

Uncontained

Now

In the rift

Part

Part III: Going through (the places and creatures)

Containment procedures

The copied camp cannot be contained. Nothing found in it is carried out: its stores do not last past its edge. Surveys may shelter in it and use what it holds while inside, but no food from it is eaten; since the trader (T-026), no food found beyond T-001 is eaten at all. Its roster and papers are photographed, not taken. Any home made by people near the rift is expected to find a copy of itself beyond T-001; staff quarters' layouts are kept secret from the surveys for that reason.

Description

A wrong copy of a home base in the land beyond T-001: its tents or buildings, its crates and stores, its signs and papers, laid out as in the original but wrong in many small ways. Stencils read in mirror; tents face the wrong way; lists hold the right names in the wrong order. The stores are full. What is carried out past the copy's edge crumbles: food to dust, rounds to grit and brass flakes, cloth to threads.

Discovery

The eleventh survey, under Lina Dahl, was sent west after the well (T-024), away from the void's eastern arm. It came over a rise and saw its own base camp below: the survey's tents round an anchor, its crates, its radio mast, its bedrolls. The real anchor stood behind them where they had left it.

Addenda

Addendum T-025-1

from L. Dahl's survey report, Year 28, month 1, day 20

The copy was wrong in ways it took us an hour to list. The tents were pitched with their doors to the north; ours face south. The crate stencils read in mirror. The duty roster on the mast named the right people in the wrong order, and Rask twice. The radio on the mast was ours, down to the scratch on the case, and gave only a hum. No one was there. The stoves were warm. Surveyor J. Rask packed a crate of rations and two boxes of rounds and carried them toward the rise. By the time he reached it the rations had gone to dust in their sealed tins, and the rounds were grit and brass flakes. The crate itself held until the rise and then fell in on itself. We used nothing else and left it as we found it.

Addendum T-025-2

note by T. Rehn on the file, Year 28, month 2

I set this beside the storeroom on the sealed level that was bigger inside than its walls (T-011). That room measured itself and got it wrong. Here the land beyond T-001 has measured our camp and got it almost right. I do not know how. Our camp has never stood where the copy stands. I recommend that we treat any home made near the rift as something the rift will copy, and that we assume the copy is not empty for long. Someone lit those stoves.

Addendum T-025-3

survey log, Year 28, month 11

The copied camp revisited. It has not shifted with the land. Its roster now holds the names of the twelfth survey, which met the trader (T-026), and none of the eleventh's.

What followed

The question no one could answer was who had lit the stoves. Eight months after the copy was found, the surveys met the first thing beyond T-001 that might have (see T-026).

Previous fileT-024 The wellPart III: Going through (the places and creatures) Next fileT-026 TraderPart III: Going through (the places and creatures)

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Lina Dahl and J. Rask.
• Places: The sealed level and The land beyond the rift.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 28, month 1, day 19. Found some kilometres west of the anchor by the eleventh survey under Lina Dahl, sent west after the well, away from the void's eastern arm. It came over a rise and saw its own base camp below, the survey's tents round an anchor, its crates, its radio mast and its bedrolls, while the real anchor stood behind it where it had been left.

Squares of bare ground 40 tiles across on the open land beyond the rift, two to each world, far from where a traveller arrives and far from each other. On each stands the traveller's own home, as it stands now: when the home changes, the copy has changed by the next visit.

The copy is wrong in small things. About one piece in ten is missing, every door stands open, the fires are cold, the lamps dark, the benches and crates empty. Its stash holds copies of the home's goods; they can be carried and moved, but none can be eaten, drunk, used on a wound, worn, held, loaded or fitted. A copy carried past the faint seam at the camp's edge crumbles at once to rift dust, in a pack, on the ground or in a body, and nothing of it is kept. A bedroll will not be laid out anywhere on the copied ground.

Status: uncontained. It cannot be held, and nothing taken from it stays.

Today it is found in the rift.

Watch T-025 The copied camp on YouTube