Authority: A Novel

Under stress and feeling mentally off, Control starts to experience mental volatility. He drinks often, smokes, spends time in seedy bars in town, and has sex with a random woman. He does not shower for days. On Saturday morning, he calls The Voice with notes in front of him and an air horn set on a timer on his phone. Every time he starts to lose mental control while talking to The Voice, the bullhorn sound brings him back to reality. He reads from his notes:

CONTROL, YOU ARE BEING SUBJECTED TO HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION BY THE VOICE ___ Check this line and scream obscenities. Move down one line. [...] Rinse, repeat, brought out of it by the bullhorn, pulled back into it. Until, finally, he reached the end: ‘Check this line and repeat these phrases’—all of the phrases he’d found in the director’s desk (231).

Control rightfully suspects he has been put under hypnotic command the entire time he has been at the Southern Reach. He has felt off-balance and like the mysteries keep growing particularly due to The Voice’s hypnotic commands over his mind and actions, such as how to interrogate the biologist with specific questions.

Control yells obscenities at The Voice, ruining his relationship with him/her. The Voice fights back, but Control has had enough of being used. After more self-destructive behavior, he calls his mother. She confirms that The Voice was hypnotizing him, but she unemotionally tells him they needed him to be focused. At Central, he was brainwashed, maybe even given new memories, and sent to the Southern Reach as their weapon. When Control needs the truth, she reveals The Voice was Lowry the entire time, the only survivor of the first expedition. Lowry works in Central as a main commander. Control thinks Lowry is an asshole for how cruelly he has treated him.

His mom promises they hypnotized him for his own good and that they need him to concentrate on their mission of defining Area X, getting answers from the biologist, and figuring out the prior director’s motives. His mother says he needs to stabilize the Southern Reach and figure out what they do not know.

After he hangs up, Control throws the prior director’s phone into the backyard. He has been pushed to his limits, feeling paranoid but refusing to be compromised.

On Monday morning, Control impulsively travels to the prior director’s house. It seems like it has not been touched since she left on the 12th expedition about a year ago. Still, he is on edge, heart hammering, as he searches through the rooms for clues. He does not find anything of significant interest until he sees the words from Saul’s sermon on her master bedroom’s wall: “Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead” (253), the same words that were in her office. There is also another hand-drawn map of Area X. Control is confused as to why the Southern Reach’s people would not have painted over the words and the map of Area X when they cleaned out the house. Since the drawing and words look fresh, he is suddenly scared someone has been in the house lately to create the mural.

He calls his mother from his car. She agrees that he should not tell Grace or jump to conclusions about what the new words and map mean. His mom also informs him that they have found inconsistent readings in the areas where the anthropologist and surveyor were found, but not at the biologist’s empty lot. This info seems to confirm that the biologist is different.

At the Southern Reach, Control speaks with Grace alone. He turns off all recording devices. He then lies to her that the biologist told him this morning that Grace was involved with the director’s solo exploration into Area X. With prompting, some pleading, and his reassurance that they are off the record, Grace finally speaks to him frankly.

She tells him Cynthia, the prior director, did travel alone into Area X and return unharmed. There is very little known about her expedition, since she did not confide in Grace in case they went to court about it. Cynthia believed they needed to force Area X to react. With past tries, Cynthia thought no one pushed Area X enough into reactions, so the phenomenon was winning easily. On the next 11th expedition, people returned but all with cancer. On the 12th expedition, everyone but Cynthia returned healthy. Grace believes Cynthia would have said these results were progress. Control does not understand why Cynthia wasn’t fired for her unorthodox actions, and Grace says his mother, Jackie, was behind the decisions.

They go to the roof to smoke and talk openly. Grace admits to Control that the biologist was taken to Central late on Friday evening. She tells him he was getting far too attached to her, especially going outside by the pond with her. Control feels untethered without the biologist. Since Grace has caught him in his lie (he never talked to the biologist that morning), she has the upper hand. Grace will be the true leader going forward, and Control will be the figurehead of the organization. He knows he has lost the war with Grace, but he thinks about the janitor he saw earlier and his closet with a ladder.

Control goes into the janitor’s storage room, where he found Whitby one day, and finds a secret trap door in the ceiling. He uses a ladder to go up, finding an entire attic room of monstrous artwork. Someone painted blood-red maps of Area X and numerous monsters with the Southern Reach’s staff members’ printed photographs as their heads, such as Grace as a ferret. All the artwork is strange, such as a pig-slug creature. Control finds his image: a wild, white hare with waves underneath him. He stares at his rabbit self, then notices a sleeping bag, stove, and other items. He wonders if someone lives in this attic, then feels breathing on his neck.

Control turns around to find Whitby on his side as if sleeping with his eyes open on a shelf. They are both disturbed by the sight of the other. Control does not speak on instinct, and neither does Whitby. He turns around, ignoring the deranged man, and feels Whitby pet his head multiple times. Control suppresses shudders and hurries away. He thinks Whitby should be let go since he is too deep in Area X to think straight.

Later, he asks Cheney about Lowry returning and if he has noticed anything strange lately. Cheney thinks Lowry stays far away for good reason after the horrors he likely saw in Area X. Cheney also believes the world plays tricks on you, saying that a bird can look like a bat. Still, Control tries to find reason in his words; a bird cannot be a bat, he thinks.

The next day, Control contemplates how to let Whitby go. He wonders if Whitby is aware he needs mental help or not, but he plans to suspend him from work with forced psychological intervention. He stalls, pushing the uncomfortable situation with Whitby to later. As usual, he works through layers of notes, files, and papers from Cynthia’s investigation. Cynthia had the most information about the lighthouse, down to where the beacon bulb was made. Control does not understand why the lighthouse history is relevant.

By the end of the day, he walks toward the science division to suspend Whitby. He thinks Cheney will be there as his witness. When Control reaches for the door handle in his path, the familiar door and its handle are gone. Only a wall exists—and the wall is breathing. Control panics.

Control rushes through the Southern Reach to tell someone about the living wall, which he believes is Area X expanding. He finds Grace, trying to pull her with him, but Cynthia appears, dripping in emerald. Cynthia is not herself, but a newer, almost alien version, and she is bringing Area X with her. Grace smiles, giving herself over to Cynthia and Area X, so Control lets go of Grace’s hand and flees.

He drives to his home, where his mother, Jackie, is waiting for him. Control is so panicked, that she gives him a pill for the shock. Under little insistence, Jackie gives him all the information she knows. Area X is expanding. It has taken over the Southern Reach, trapping those inside, and may keep spreading. They cannot contain this danger, though they thought they could, and Area X has no leader to negotiate with and no goals. It is a losing battle. The sites where they found the surveyor and anthropologist are also now smaller Area X-type environments. Jackie says they cannot stop it; they could try to contaminate the environment with heavy metals to make it toxic, but nothing will make a difference. She also says the biologist was Cynthia’s weapon against Area X while Control is Jackie’s means of attack.

Jackie tells him that Ghost Bird escaped Central’s confines, and they have not been able to find her. The Southern Reach will keep sending expeditions, but Control chooses to go after Ghost Bird, and his mother approves of this decision. He packs little, leaves Chorry his cat with his mom, and hurries north, to the site of a cottage the biologist stayed at when she studied marine life along the coast. He guesses Ghost Bird will be there, escaping to a remote area the biologist loved.

After a long journey by car and boat, he makes it to the most remote area of the coastline. He decides to go by John again, not Control. Finally, John finds Ghost Bird among the tide pools, but she trains her gun on him. She swears she is never going back and that he does not need her because she is not the biologist. John agrees: “You have her memories, to some extent, and somewhere back in Area X, the biologist may still be alive. You’re a replica, but you’re your own person” (336). Ghost Bird is surprised, lowering her gun.

Trusting John more, Ghost Bird explains she was sick a few days ago, and the brightness left her. A lagoon behind her has a glowing, shimmery edge in the water below, which Ghost Bird tells him is a door to Area X now. She has to find out who she is, so she must go back to Area X. Ghost Bird throws her gun away and jumps into the pool to enter Area X. John takes one last look at his world, then jumps into the water after her.