T-047 The pollution

Threshold Institute · Case file T-047

Number

T-047 in the catalogue

Kind

Place

Class

Class III: no cell holds it for long

Found

Year 43, month 9, day 4

Where found

The launch site, spreading from the hangar where the relief flight's cargo was set down

Status

Uncontained; it spreads through the open world, and its source lies on the planet

Now

In the open world and on the planet

Part

Part IV: The planet and the pollution

Containment procedures

None that hold. No cell, seal or quarantine the Institute built has held it. The pollution field is measured weekly from fixed posts and the map is updated; staff working in it wear gas masks and carry antitox pills, which put the poison off but do not stop it. Ground where it lies thickest is not to be entered without a mask and a second person.

Directive (entered Year 47, see T-054): widen T-001 and turn what lies beyond it against the source.

Description

Not a creature and not an object: a poison in the air, the soil and the water, that kills what grows and sickens all that breathes it. It spreads as a field, thickest where it began and thinner further out, and it grows. Where it lies thickest the ground dies, the infected gather (T-048) and the animals come back changed (T-049). Its source lies on the planet.

Discovery

The relief flight reached the silent colony (T-046) in month 7. Holm found the domes' airlocks standing open and the colony's people gone, or turned into things that came at the flight's crew with their hands. The colony's last logs said nothing about why. By the Institute's order she took from the lab dome a sealed sample case, listed in no manifest, and it came home with her on Year 43, month 9, day 4. It was set down in the launch site's hangar under quarantine.

By the next morning the grass around the hangar had died. Within a month a ring of dead ground ran from the hangar to the fence, and the well water tasted of metal. The case was burnt on the pad by the Institute's order. The spread did not stop.

Addenda

Addendum T-047-1

Holm's report on the relief flight (extract)

The lab dome's sealed room was the only one closed. Inside it the benches had been cleared and the case left on the middle one, labelled in Varro's hand: do not open, do not send. I took it under the Institute's order. I did not open it. Something came back from the planet, and this spread from it.

Addendum T-047-2

Test log, Year 43, months 10 to 12

Supervised by Tomas Rehn.

Test 1. A sealed cell of the containment type, built on the pad around the hangar's floor. The field passed it within four days.

Test 2. The ground under the hangar dug out to four metres and taken away in sealed drums. The field around the pit was unchanged; the drums' storage yard died in a week.

Test 3. Burning the hangar's floor. No change.

Result: what came back has already gone into the ground. It cannot be held.

What followed

Note by Rehn, added under Holm's line: what came back is a part. Its source still lies on the planet, where the colony's people turned first. The first people on earth that turned the same way were found that winter (T-048).

Previous fileT-046 DrifterPart IV: The planet and the pollution Next fileT-048 InfectedPart IV: The planet and the pollution

In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Kerstin Holm and Ines Varro.
• Places: The cells, The launch site and The colony.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 43, month 9, day 4. Found at the launch site, spreading from the hangar where the relief flight's cargo was set down. The flight had found the silent colony's airlocks standing open and its people gone or turned, and by our order Kerstin Holm brought home from its lab dome a sealed sample case listed in no manifest; it was set down in the hangar under quarantine.

Something came back from the planet, and this spread from it. Not a creature and not an object: a poison in the air, the soil and the water that kills what grows and sickens all that breathes it.

No cell or seal holds it. Where it lies thickest the ground dies, the infected gather and the animals come back changed.

Directive: widen T-001 and turn what lies beyond it against the source. Containment broke instead. Status: uncontained; it spreads through the open world, and its source lies on the planet.

Today it is found in the open world and on the planet.