Annihilation Read Free

protected wildlife refuge, and we were hikers who happened to be scientists.
     This made sense on another level: We did not know what had happened here, what was
     still happening here, and any preformed theories would affect my analysis of the evidence
     as we encountered it. Besides, for my part it hardly mattered what lies I told myself
     because my existence back in the world had become at least as empty as Area X. With
     nothing left to anchor me, I needed to be here. As for the others, I don’t know what they told themselves, and I didn’t
     want to know, but I believe they all at least pretended to some level of curiosity.
     Curiosity could be a powerful distraction.
    That night we talked about the tower, although the other three insisted on calling
     it a tunnel. The responsibility for the thrust of our investigations resided with
     each individual, the psychologist’s authority describing a wider circle around these
     decisions. Part of the current rationale for sending the expeditions lay in giving
     each member some autonomy to decide, which helped to increase “the possibility of
     significant variation.”
    This vague protocol existed in the context of our separate skill sets. For example,
     although we had all received basic weapons and survival training, the surveyor had
     far more medical and firearms experience than the rest of us. The anthropologist had
     once been an architect; indeed, she had years ago survived a fire in a building she
     had designed, the only really personal thing I had found out about her. As for the
     psychologist, we knew the least about her, but I think we all believed she came from
     some kind of management background.
    The discussion of the tower was, in a way, our first opportunity to test the limits
     of disagreement and of compromise.
    “I don’t think we should focus on the tunnel,” the anthropologist said. “We should
     explore farther first, and we should come back to it with whatever data we gather
     from our other investigations—including of the lighthouse.”
    How predictable, and yet perhaps prescient, for the anthropologist to try to substitute
     a safer, more comfortable option. Although the idea of mapping seemed perfunctory
     or repetitive to me, I could not deny the existence of the tower, of which there was
     no suggestion on any map.
    Then the surveyor spoke. “In this case I feel that we should rule out the tunnel as
     something invasive or threatening. Before we explore farther. It’s like an enemy at
     our backs otherwise, if we press forward.” She had come to us from the military, and
     I could see already the value of that experience. I had thought a surveyor would always
     side with the idea of further exploration, so this opinion carried weight.
    “I’m impatient to explore the habitats here,” I said. “But in a sense, given that
     it is not noted on any map, the ‘tunnel’ … or tower … seems important. It is either
     a deliberate exclusion from our maps and thus known … and that is a message of sorts …
     or it is something new that wasn’t here when the last expedition arrived.”
    The surveyor gave me a look of thanks for the support, but my position had nothing
     to do with helping her. Something about the idea of a tower that headed straight down
     played with a twinned sensation of vertigo and a fascination with structure. I could
     not tell which part I craved and which I feared, and I kept seeing the inside of nautilus
     shells and other naturally occurring patterns balanced against a sudden leap off a
     cliff into the unknown.
    The psychologist nodded, appeared to consider these opinions, and asked, “Does anyone
     yet have even an inkling of a sensation of wanting to leave?” It was a legitimate
     question, but jarring nonetheless.
    All three of us shook our heads.
    “What about you?” the surveyor asked the psychologist. “What is your opinion?”
    The psychologist grinned, which seemed odd. But she must have