T-039 Wish Compass

Threshold Institute · Case file T-039

Number

T-039 in the catalogue

Kind

Object

Class

Class I: harmless while it is left alone

Found

Year 37, month 6, day 14

Where found

The slow bubble (T-019), half sunk in the mud at its edge

Status

Contained

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part III: Going through (the objects)

Containment procedures

The compass is held in a lead box with a hinged lid, in an object cell. It is used only to find things no larger than a tin of food, named aloud before the lid is opened, and the lid is closed the moment the thing is found. It is never asked for a person, a place in the rift or anything the asker cannot name in one word. No stalker, echo or other creature is to be held in a cell beside the one in which it is opened.

Description

A brass pocket compass with a glass cover. Its card bears no markings, only a needle. The needle does not point north. It points at what its holder wants to find, so long as they want it plainly: water, a door, a tin of food in a ruin. Okafor's teams learnt to say the thing out loud before they looked. A run with the compass came home in half the time and with twice the load.

The cost is that the rift's creatures follow it. Not the holder and not the noise: the needle. What the needle points at, the creatures go toward, and they are there waiting when the holder arrives.

Discovery

The run had gone to fetch a cache left at the bubble's edge three days before and found it six weeks old. The compass lay beside the rotten cache. Surveyor Mats Ekholm picked it up and said he wished he had a dry match; the needle swung to a match in the bottom of his own pack. On the line home the run asked it for the forward post, and for clean water, and both times found stalkers there before them. Okafor wrote the first rule of the compass on the run's report before the run was signed in: ask for little, and ask for it where you are ready to fight.

Addenda

Addendum T-039-A

Test log

Year 37, month 8, day 21. Technician Ruth Abel asks the compass for the nearest exit, in the corridor outside the stalkers' cells. The stalker in the cell beside her turns to face the same door, and stays facing it until the lid is closed.

Addendum T-039-B

Interview

Tomas Rehn, interviewed by the Director's office, Year 37, month 9, day 4.

Interviewer: You asked it for Anneli Sund.

Rehn: Once.

Interviewer: What did it do?

Rehn: It swung down. Toward the floor. It held there wherever I stood. In my office, at the mouth of the rift, on the far side, at the bottom of the well (T-024).

Interviewer: Was it wrong?

Rehn: It's never been wrong. I don't know which way down means.

What followed

The compass was put in its lead box the same day. In year 39 the key (T-041) was found by a run that had not used it; Rehn noted that no one had asked the compass for a key, and no one would.

Previous fileT-038 Tomorrow RadioPart III: Going through (the objects) Next fileT-040 Blood CoinPart III: Going through (the objects)

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Mara Okafor, Anneli Sund, Ruth Abel and Mats Ekholm.
• Places: The cells and The land beyond the rift.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 37, month 6, day 14. Found half sunk in the mud at the edge of the slow bubble, beside a cache a run had left there three days before and found six weeks old. The surveyor Mats Ekholm picked it up and said he wished he had dry matches, and the needle swung to the run's own supply crate; on the line home the run asked it for medicine and for food, and both times found rift stalkers at the crates before them.

A brass pocket compass with a hinged lid whose needle points at no north. Opened inside a site, it turns for 30 seconds to the nearest container that holds the kind of thing its bearer wants: weapons, ammo, medicine, food, armour, tools or materials. Opened again while it points, it turns to the next kind. Outside a site the needle only spins. Every 2 seconds while it points, the dead, the creatures, people and animals within 10 tiles hear it as the bearer's own footsteps and come for them. After pointing it rests for 60 seconds.

Held in a sealed cell, its lid shut. Status: contained.

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

It is an item you can carry: Wish Compass.