Annihilation

The next morning the anthropologist is gone, and the psychologist seems “shaken, as if she hadn’t slept. […] She was squinting oddly, her hair more windblown than usual. I noticed dirt caked on the sides of her boots. She was favoring her right side, as if she had been injured” (37). The psychologist tells the surveyor and the narrator that the anthropologist headed back to the border the night before because she was unnerved by what she saw in the tower. Both the surveyor and the narrator are suspicious, asking the psychologist various questions about the disappearance, but both ultimately accept the psychologist’s explanation.

They return to the tower. The surveyor and narrator prepare to descend into the tower, while the psychologist announces that she will remain at the entrance to stand guard. This makes the surveyor and narrator uneasy and slightly confused about the psychologist’s motives. The surveyor tells the psychologist that she needs to come down as well, but the psychologist hypnotizes the surveyor, and the surveyor relents. The narrator imitates the surveyor to seem as though she is still under the control of hypnosis.