But at the same time, there was confidence and confidence in the biologists’ explanations as a treatment to allay doubts. Sergeant Locker also went out to sea and disappeared, so biologists used tracking equipment to see if they could follow the alligator in its new life.
The tyrant remained alone and the others stayed nearby for some time. No one was willing to leave the area for at least one night, and on the fourth day Team Leader 1 tasked the most junior member of the group with monitoring the moment, which could involve enjoying the same muddy water all day. .
On the sixth day, they discovered Firestorm’s front legs and barber wire wrapped around them. The whole thing was prominently displayed on a mudbank with deep boot prints suggesting poachers. One biologist wrote: “Intoxicated by the evidence of our experiments, the pale legs far from her home had a bathing or pathetic quality. “I cried for an hour and I don’t know if this was an appropriate response.”
(No, Old Jim, for his own reasons, didn’t believe that was an appropriate response, despite crying at odd hours in Central’s archives.)
Battlebee was dead, bloated and white-faced, and chunks were torn from his body postmortem by some creature, possibly Sergeant Rocker, the speculation being that the stress and anesthetic were too hard on him. An autopsy revealed that stomach contents included fish, turtles, mud, and an unexplained broken teacup.
She was also pregnant. “A fact that surprised us considering her credentials show she is male,” Team Leader 2 wrote. In the general confusion, I wrote: Well, when we first encountered this topic. “The heat is really bad here.”
Sergeant Rocker halted the project by taking off his harness and placing it in the water near Team Leader 1’s tent. She said this in outrageous terms: “A politeness that was in keeping with Sergeant Rocker’s personality when I knew him best. “This loss was felt much more deeply than I expected.”
This appreciation of alligators, which only a few days ago had been considered a duty, weighed on Old Jim, but he could not put his finger on the reason. He didn’t understand why the crocodile experiment was so successful in the biologists’ reports that they even referred to it with a kind of beautiful, all-consuming nostalgia when the mission began to decline. Perhaps it is a myth of ability. The myth of persistence. The myth of objectivity.
Perhaps it would have been wiser for both him and the biologist to focus on how Sergeant Rocker turned into an escape artist. Because the harness was intact, still latched, and there were no tears anywhere. So how did the alligator get free? Old Jim faked a false video and fled the public site, continuing to meet the biologists, but regrouping at a drinking party.
He played the video so often that it became a disconcerting mess of light and shadow, pixelated heads and legs, and bulging and sharpened shapes, absorbed into the past.
“We did everything possible, but nothing could be done.”
Or did the results come out as intended?
Excerpt from Absolution: A Southern Reach novel. By Jeff VanderMeer. Published by MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2024 VanderMeer Creative, Inc. All rights reserved.
