woebegone-wandering

[woebegone-wandering]

grimoirerat​:

“Now that we’re all here we can begin our orientation,” the Director said, turning the group’s attention to herself.

“First off, I’d like to dispel some misconceptions about the nature of Area Z. It is not a cordon around a natural disaster or oil spill, nor is it a secret research facility harbouring alien lifeforms. It is also not a government-sanctioned killing ground for ‘mutant lifeforms’, as some of the more ill-reputed tabloids like to print.”

“The truth is, we do not know what exactly Area Z is or how it came to be. But we can say for certain that it is not a ‘disaster’. It is a marvel, an opportunity for scientific advancement, and with that comes a certain amount of precaution. So, you can understand our need for secrecy. What we discover here could propel humanity into a new age.”

There were murmurs among the scientists. Marcey shifts uncertainly.

“For the last 3 years we here at the Northern Reach have been sending expeditions into Area Z to learn all we can about this phenomenon. We will go over entrance and safety protocols when in Area Z in more detail later on, but for now you should know that there is only one known safe entrance into the Area and that we take its security very seriously. You will be receiving security cards and briefings regarding this.” “Each expedition has made great strides in advancing our knowledge of Area Z. Of course…Each expedition into Area Z brings with it a certain degree of risk, I will not lie to you. Unfortunately, not all who have ventured into Area Z have returned alive. However, there can be no progress without sacrifice.”

What happened to them? Marcey wonders.

“To minimize the risk for each expedition we require all members to go through extensive training in first aid, wilderness survival, and firearms safety. And the more knowledge we accrue, the better we understand how Area Z works, the better we can protect our expedition members and staff. Hence, each expedition we send experiences less and less risk,” the Director continued, assuming a more optimistic tone, “That all said, I do expect this expedition to be a successful and safe one. Now, staff members will escort you to the dormitories where you will be staying throughout orientation and training. I look forward to talking with you all later.”

The expedition members are all led to the dormitories on the other side of the compound. The dormitory is less gray than the main building, and has wooden siding that looks like it used to be some shade of green. What looks like a common area with a pair of couches and a coffee table greets them when they enter. There is a television, one of the old clunky ones, with a VCR player. Marcey thinks to herself that the compound must be an old repurposed summer camp, and wonders if the only thing new here is the main building they had just seen. They are each given a key and are instructed to find the door with the matching number, and to familiarize themselves with the safety protocols and dossiers they will find in their rooms. Training begins, the orderly tells them, tomorrow morning at 6AM sharp.

Jason hasn’t expected the director to be honest with them, by fact or implication. Still, it’s interesting to listen to her choice of words about it. Is the promise of a ‘new age’ for humanity supposed to make people more willing to risk, even throw away their lives? The message is surely tailored to a scientist’s sensibilities, not his. Is this the kind of glory that makes someone want to be a scientist? Jason doesn’t suppose most people feel so great about death when they actually have to contend with it. He glances briefly at the others. He doesn’t think of them as gullible, just... inexperienced, probably.

He doesn’t expect to be liked, and doesn’t expect to like them, but he decides privately that the highest goal of his personal mission should be to keep himself and these butterfly collectors alive. Somebody should care about that. He thinks if anyone out there is laying groundwork for truly and honestly improving the situation of humanity, they’re probably not in this room. He thinks if the mission should happen to slip away for want of sacrificing an expedition member, nothing of value will be lost, and he will be paid anyway.

He doesn’t watch the director as she speaks. He doesn’t want to meet her eye. His contempt for the job she hired him to do is none of her business.

Jason doesn’t like getting up early, so he disappears into his room at the earliest opportunity. He also doesn’t like small talk, and he also doesn’t like being treated like he’s strange (an expected outcome for any conversation, he thinks). So he starts training with a similar loner approach. As he studies and politely haunts the group, he continues to see Marcey as the unspoken leader somehow. She just seems a little more likely than the others to think about the group as a whole in a time of crisis and not need anything in return.

One evening, he’s about to prioritize sleep as per usual and head straight to bed. But Marcey is sitting by herself in the common area, and that gives him pause. He tends to have the most success connecting with people one on one. This could be an opportunity to do more than haunt. He cautiously sits down on a chair that’s seen better days. He looks all around the room thoughtfully, then settles on looking at his hands.

“So what did you think about what the director said about advancing humanity?” he asks, looking up at Marcey. “Think we’ll see any... you know, flying cars out there?” He isn’t serious. He’s testing the waters to see how much of a true believer Marcey is.

[woebegone-wandering]

grimoirerat​:

@woebegone-wandering​

Just beyond the Director a group was already gathered. I must be late, Marcey thought, that’s embarrassing. 

“Yeah, that’s me,” she shook the Director’s offered hand, “Not late to the party am I?”

The Director smiled and shook her head, “No, no, your timing is perfect. We were just about to start our orientation.” Her smile struck Marcey as vaguely…condescending? Arrogant? It was as if she knew something that she did not, and that this gave her a sense of superiority. As if a victim had walked into a perfectly planned trap. For a moment Marcey feels herself a fly caught in a spider’s web. The feeling soon dissipated however, as the Director began to introduce her to the rest of the expedition. 

Marcey shakes the hand of the Geologist. The Director introduces her as Dr. Pan, and she smiles at Marcey with bright white teeth. A specialist in Precambrian rock formations, she says.

The Botanist, Dr. Jalinski, has flaming orange hair, the same colour as the stitched wood lilies adorning their shirt. A factoid rises unbidden to Marcey’s mind: lilies are one of the most common flowers at funerals.

Strangely, next is the Linguist–Dr. Reinhardt, with clammy hands. What do they expect to find that they would require a linguist? Marcey wonders. At this point she notices that the Director has not, and does not, introduce herself, remaining only “the Director”.

The Director introduces the last member only by first name: Jason. The Director says something about him being ‘security’, spoken as a passing comment. Marcey looks at him, he seems uncomfortable, and is outfitted in brand new hiking gear. He’s tall and scarred, and definitely fits the mental image of secuirty detail. Marcey extends her hand, and tries an off-hand joke “Good to meet you! Hopefully we won’t be needing you too much.” She’s immediately feels she put her foot in her mouth.

Jason turns to Marcey with a surprised frown, an almost blank deer-in-the-headlights expression. There’s too much on his mind, too much reactive defensiveness, to properly process the interaction.

But the sense of betrayal showing on his face is a betrayal of having his overwhelm be exposed, not some kind of betrayal of boundaries in talking to him at all. No, he’d welcome conversation, in theory. Marcey’s effort is friendly; more than the others have talked to him. That invisible distance between himself and these directors and academics is a big part of what’s so overwhelming in the first place. This, directly after the Director’s snub, is reassuring.

After a second or so of delay, he finally takes Marcey’s hand and shakes it firmly. “Knock on wood,” he cautions, but not in disagreement. When his smile gets to his face, it’s kind. He doesn’t see any wooden objects in the room to knock on, unfortunately; these secretive types love their metal and concrete.

He’d stay and talk with Marcey, but he still feels he doesn’t have the lay of the land yet. He’s too proud to lightly risk being someone’s Reddit story about a clingy and creepy coworker. He’ll go ahead and assume that the academics are their own clique until further notice. He finds a good spot to stand in the room and waits for the Director to give whatever little speech she surely has about their team. Will she go for a ‘best and brightest’ angle? Will her hook be that time is running out? Would she threaten their competence, even?

He covertly takes inventory of the other three. He thinks Dr. Pan smiles too brightly, and with too little sincerity. Her warm brown eyes can light up a room, but like a miner’s headlamp, all in service of personal discoveries. Dr. Jalinski looks pretty self-contained, but their commitment to their own style is refreshing. Their shirt looks hand-decorated. Perhaps they're the type to bring an embroidery kit, or knitting, or some kind of fabric hobby to pass the time. Dr. Reinhardt, meanwhile, looks self-contained in the manner of a prey animal hanging out behind a bush. Or like a linguist a couple thousand miles from his usual academic habitat. It’s not a noble line of thought, but Jason thinks he could take Reinhardt in a fight to not be the bottom of the social pecking order, if this particular order gets to pecking.

He looks back to Marcey. The one who talked to him. He couldn’t tell you, Sherlock Holmes style, that Marcey is a mom. But he can intuit a kind of resolute, collaborative leadership energy, and it makes him want to trust her. Dr. Pan might expect to be the leader, but Marcey is more qualified, he’d guess. Jalinski will live in Jalinski World no matter what? Reinhardt will just want everybody to get along? Unless they all surprise him; and people can and do. Okay. It’s an impression. It’s a start. He looks back to the Director, waiting politely for whatever she’s going to say. He more or less already has what he needed from this first assembly. Jason’s own role in all of this, of course, is to adapt. And survive.

[woebegone-wandering]

[woebegone-wandering]

Max from Where the Wild Things Are didn’t have a heart full of wonder and curiosity. Max from Where the Wild Things Are had a wolf suit and a desire to fuck shit up.

[woebegone-wandering]

grimoirerat​:

@woebegone-wandering 

The drive up through the mountains was uneventful, and the driver just as untalkative. As the car had wound up the highway roads and turned into smaller back roads so too did the large full oaks and maples turn into sparser firs and pines, clinging to the rocky soil. The temperate rainforests of the Blue Ridge mountains supposedly teemed with life, but an unusually dry and hot summer had shriveled plant life and driven animals off in search of greener pastures. Wildfires had eaten their way through the underbrush, dry as kindling. Lakes shrunk meters away from boat launches and rivers resembled creeks more than their former selves. All in all, it was not the place for a marine biologist. Particularly not one who spent most of her time amongst coastal reefs and white sand California beaches. However, the allure of total debt erasure and a ‘top-secret’ research assignment had been irresistible. If there was, perhaps, a secret inland shark lair in these mountains then her presence would make sense. 

When the agency  (they had called themselves the Northern Reach. Scouring the internet had revealed no results, nothing by that name in any directory) contacted Marcey they had said they had scouted her for her exceptional skill set; an accomplished free-diver, and SCUBA-certified for technical dives up to 330 feet, with cave training. They had also quoted her daughter’s medical bills to the exact cent. It smelled just a bit of coercion. Her wife had protested vehemently against the offer–”If you die out there they probably wouldn’t even tell us! You know nothing about these people!”–All very true. Nothing indeed had been said about location or reason for the expedition, simply that its nature was scientific. Nothing was publicly known about Area Z. Flurries of rumours pervaded internet spaces, but that’s all they were: rumours. They ranged from the mundane ( an ecological disaster, a massive oil spill), to the paranormal and extraterrestrial (the new Area 51, eldritch abominations, distortions of time and space). Only time would tell if any came close to the truth, and Marcey would be one of the first to know. Joining this expedition would take her into the heart of the mysterious Area Z, and she relished the thrill of discovery

So here she was. Somewhere deep within the mountains, to research something. From the airport she’d been shuttled through the countryside and up into the mountains, to the facility standing in front of her. Looking at it from the front parking lot, it appeared completely unremarkable. A flat, one-story grey building, in the suggestion of  a ‘U’. A tall chain link fence, with signs warning of electrification, surrounded a compound which included the main building and a small, derelict looking garage. There was no signage. She had to admit though, that the place had an unsettling presence. There were no bird calls to be heard, despite being in the middle of a forest, nor were there even any insects humming.  Just a vibration in the air, which Marcey attributed to the electricity running through the metal fencing, and the car’s engine frying in the sweltering heat. 

Thankfully, the facility was air-conditioned. The inside of the building contrasted its drab, worn exterior. Waxed white linoleum floors and clean white walls, stainless steel. It almost looked like a medical facility, pristine and disinfected. Or maybe a quarantine facility. The Director was there to greet her.

“You must be The Biologist. Welcome to Area Z, Mrs. Velaquez.”

“We had a deal! We had a goddamn deal!”

Jason sees the man get out of the booth to stand over the woman across from him, to shout at her. This was looking like a relaxed, quiet shift, and it’s turning into one of the worst conflicts in weeks. He takes in the scene with a frown as he heads over. He’ll deal with it, he’ll take it seriously, but his worst favorite part of any job is doing the job.

He recognizes the shouting man as Nathan, a regular. The woman has an energy like Jan from The Office, with a distinct Men in Black energy that’s too government to be corporate. Jason has never seen her before. Her eyes are wide, and she’s shrinking back instinctively. However, there’s still a cool thread of control in her aspect, like this is a situation she’s prepared for through training or experience. Nathan seems to pick up on that as well because he seems very dissatisfied, like he hasn’t been given something he’s just earned fairly. He seems ready to redouble his efforts to spook that calm out of her. Not that Jason will give him the chance.

Jason has enjoyed four successful months of his current gig as a bouncer, but it doesn’t come naturally to see real skill and value in things he does, even things he does well. He doesn’t notice the woman’s mounting interest in how competently he diffuses the situation, first showing guarded curiosity and even empathy towards Nathan’s side of the story, then marching him outside without remorse or hesitation when he makes a sudden lunge. Nathan is closer to his prime and could probably overpower Jason in a proper fight. But fighting Jason isn’t his deepest motivation in this scenario, and he must know on a deeper level that the way he’s acting is shameful and out of line in a public space. It’s what Jason is counting on, and he proceeds with an unflinching authority that Nathan’s uncoordinated emotional response isn’t prepared to reject.

When Jason comes back to the stranger’s booth to ask her if she’s alright, she stands up, shakes his hand, and asks him to sit in Nathan’s place. Now it’s Jason’s turn to be caught in an authoritative gesture he wasn’t prepared to resist. He glances at the room, doesn’t see any group that seems likely to cause trouble, and warily sits across from the stranger.

The stranger offers Jason a job. Still wary, he gestures to the room and tells her he already has a job. Nathan said something about a job offer before Jason had to throw him out, and, well, dealing with this stranger hardly made Nathan happy. Jason doesn’t have to take sides for that to count for something. Then the stranger tells Jason how much she was going to pay Nathan and offers a 10% increase for ‘professionalism.’

Jason takes the job.

Things move quickly after that. In less than a month, Jason is shaking hands with the stranger again in her secret mountain base, or whatever. His clothes and luggage are all new, and he’s wearing well-made hiking boots he truly knows the value of. The stranger smiles when she sees him, like they share a secret, but also like that’s not the most important secret she knows. She greets him only by his first name, in front of these distinguished fellow expedition members who will be his peers, and he feels slighted and out of place. He recognizes that it’s unprofessional and that he hasn’t done anything wrong; it’s a red flag, even. But what can he do about it, when he needs this job and the chain link fence crowned with looping barbed wire has already closed behind him?

The secret that the Director shares with Jason is that no one would have missed Nathan if he disappeared, and that no one will miss Jason either.

[woebegone-wandering]

@grimoirerat asked || 🍜 — a pack of ramen

Jason can’t complain about the pay, but he knew what he was signing up for when he took this kind of job. The poor management, the red tape and bureaucracy, the complicated projects that are somehow all about the team and fail to see the team at all.

He’s been keeping up appearances of compliance and constant readiness fairly well, but he’s still plenty loyal to himself. He was given a list that fits on a single typed sheet of printer paper that says what he’s allowed to have in the pre-expedition dorm, and he’s interpreted it as a list of what he doesn’t have to hide (the list, itself, is not on the list; he doesn’t know who to share that nugget of amusement with at the moment, but he's been enjoying it as a private joke).

He’s grateful for the flexibility he’s shown the rules when the cafeteria closes early one evening for a minor construction project. The expedition team doesn’t actually have permission to leave their designated little area in this complex, and the red tape beat this place marches to fails to produce much of anything that’s edible in time for dinner. Where did he get the packs of ramen? You know what they say, about magicians and their secrets. They hired him because he’s good at protecting himself, and then they told him to sign a contract listing numerous ways he isn’t allowed to protect himself, he thinks wryly, crushing the dry noodles and dumping in the seasoning pouch like salt. The party that’s fundamentally misunderstanding how this works is not him. He’s careful, and by the time he finishes off the packet he’s satisfied that he wasn’t seen by the rest of the cohort or any of the cameras.

Later that evening, he joins the marine biologist, Marcey, in a very satisfying conversation about how thoroughly they’ve been wronged, how little they mean to the upper brass. Jason doesn’t habitually offer up his thoughts just out of nowhere, but Marcey is much more vocal, and the conversation quickly fell into a grumbling rhythm that underlings of all stripes know well.

When Jason signals ‘shh’ and hands Marcey a ramen pack, their reaction is extremely gratifying.

[woebegone-wandering]

fav protagonist type is "guy who is just having a really weird day"

[woebegone-wandering]

by dreher.mj