Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

Could there be, even within all of these transitional ecosystems, one still more transitional—at the limits of the Tower’s influence but not yet under the border’s influence?

Each with a job title written on the front. Each, as it turned out, filled with writing. Many, many more than could possibly have been filed by only twelve expeditions.

small rectangle of black metal with a glass-covered hole in the middle. If the hole glowed red, we had thirty minutes to remove ourselves to “a safe place.” We were not told what the device measured or why we should be afraid should it glow red.

But there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental. You still see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost in your thoughts in part from the panic of realizing the size of that imagined leviathan.

“I felt as if I were both freer than ever before and more constrained,” one member of the expedition said. “I felt as if I could do anything as long as I did not mind being watched.”

Then, after a time, the boar faded into the backdrop like all else that we had passed on our way from the border, and I was staring into the future again.

With every atypical act or word, he was driving me further from the memory of the person I had known, and despite everything that had happened, preserving that idea of him was important. That is why I called the special number he had left me for emergencies: I didn’t know what to do with him, couldn’t coexist with him any longer in this altered sta

How long would have been enough? There was nothing I could do for him, and I had no room left in me for anything but my own survival.

I felt as if I should recognize these features—that it was very important—but with them disembodied in this way, I could not.