Free Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer Page A

lighthouse relative to the base
     camp, the number of miles from one ruined patch of houses to another. The number of
     miles of coastline we would be expected to explore. Almost always in the context of
     the lighthouse , not the base camp. We became so comfortable with that map, with the dimensions of
     it, and the thought of what it contained that it stopped us from asking why or even what .
    Why this stretch of coast? What might lie inside the lighthouse? Why was the camp set back into the forest, far from the lighthouse but fairly close to
     the tower (which, of course, did not exist on the map)—and had the base camp always
     been there? What lay beyond the map? Now that I knew the extent of the hypnotic suggestion that had
     been used on us, I realized that the focus on the map might have itself been an embedded
     cue. That if we did not ask questions, it was because we were programmed not to ask
     questions. That the lighthouse, representative or actual, might have been a subconscious
     trigger for a hypnotic suggestion—and that it might also have been the epicenter of
     whatever had spread out to become Area X.
    My briefing on the ecology of that place had had a similar blinkered focus. I had
     spent most of my time becoming familiar with the natural transitional ecosystems,
     with the flora and fauna and the cross-pollination I could expect to find. But I’d
     also had an intense refresher on fungi and lichen that, in light of the words on the
     wall, now stood out in my mind as being the true purpose of all of that study. If
     the map had been meant solely to distract, then the ecology research had been meant,
     after all, to truly prepare me. Unless I was being paranoid. But if I wasn’t, it meant
     they knew about the tower, perhaps had always known about the tower.
    From there, my suspicions grew. They had put us through grueling survival and weapons
     training, so grueling that most evenings we went right to sleep in our separate quarters.
     Even on those few occasions when we trained together, we were training apart. They
     took away our names in the second month, stripped them from us. The only names applied
     to things in Area X, and only in terms of their most general label. This, too, a kind
     of distraction from asking certain questions that could only be reached through knowing
     specific details. But the right specific details, not, for example, that there were six species of poisonous snakes
     in Area X. A reach, yes, but I was not in the mood to set aside even the most unlikely
     scenarios.
    By the time we were ready to cross the border, we knew everything … and we knew nothing.
    *   *   *
    The psychologist wasn’t there when we emerged, blinking into the sunlight, ripping
     off our masks and breathing in the fresh air. We had been ready for almost any scenario,
     but not for the psychologist’s absence. It left us adrift for a while, afloat in that
     ordinary day, the sky so brightly blue, the stand of trees casting long shadows. I
     took out my earplugs and found I couldn’t hear the beating of the tower’s heartbeat
     at all. How what we had seen below could coexist with the mundane was baffling. It
     was as if we had come up too fast from a deep-sea dive but it was the memories of
     the creatures we had seen that had given us the bends. We just kept searching the
     environs for the psychologist, certain she was hiding, and half-hoping we would find
     her, because surely she had an explanation. It was, after a time, pathological to
     keep searching the same area around the tower. But for almost an hour we could not
     find a way to stop.
    Finally I could not deny the truth.
    “She’s gone,” I said.
    “Maybe she’s back at the base camp,” the surveyor said.
    “Would you agree that her absence is a sign of guilt?” I asked.
    The surveyor spat into the grass, regarded me closely. “No, I would not. Maybe something
     happened to her. Maybe she needed to go back to the