A mountain range in the resource-extraction zones south of the Great Lakes Maritime Zone has been systematically disappearing from human knowledge for approximately six years. Satellite imaging of the range — designated RM-7 in geological surveys — returns corrupted files. Not blurred, not redacted, not blocked by cloud cover. The image data is rewritten during transmission. Raw captures from orbital platforms show standard terrain. By the time the data reaches ground stations, the mountains have been replaced by something else — flatland, forest, water features that do not exist. Each corrupted image is different. The replacement terrain is always plausible, always geographically consistent with the surrounding landscape, and always wrong. Whatever is altering the data understands cartography well enough to lie convincingly.

Four mining corporations sent expeditions into the RM-7 range between 2216 and 2219, drawn by geological surveys that predated the corruption and indicated significant rare-earth deposits. None of the expeditions returned intact, though the word "intact" requires qualification that the GLMZ Anomaly Documentation Project is not confident it can provide. The first team, sponsored by Nakamura-Holt, came back with different memories. Not amnesia — replacement. They remembered an expedition that had gone smoothly, to a different mountain range, yielding unremarkable results. GPS logs from their equipment told a different story. They had spent eleven days inside RM-7. They had no recollection of those eleven days. They had memories of eleven days somewhere else that never happened.

The second expedition, a Palladian geological survey team, returned with the same memories they left with. Their identities were intact, their recollections consistent, their equipment logs matching their testimony. But their faces were different. Not dramatically — the bone structure was the same, the proportions were right, but features had shifted. Noses slightly altered. Jawlines adjusted. Eyes a different distance apart. Biometric systems flagged them as themselves, because the underlying architecture was correct. But photographs taken before and after the expedition show two different groups of people who happen to share the same skeletal structure. The team members were not alarmed. They did not notice the changes until shown the photographs. Even then, several insisted the before photos were the wrong ones.

The third and fourth expeditions are classified, their corporate sponsors refusing to acknowledge they occurred. Unofficial accounts from logistics personnel describe teams that returned "less" — not injured, not diminished in number, but reduced in some quality that no one can articulate. One driver who transported the fourth team's equipment back to GLMZ said the returning personnel were "like photocopies of people. Everything's there but the resolution is lower." He was not speaking metaphorically. He was describing something he observed in human beings, and he was terrified.

After the fourth expedition, the four mining corporations quietly agreed to abandon all claims to the RM-7 range. The agreement was unsigned, unrecorded, and unanimously honored — an extraordinary event in an industry where rival corporations will litigate over a gram of lithium. Maps published after the agreement do not include RM-7. The mountains are still there. They can be seen from highways that pass within fifty kilometers. Hikers who approach the range from public land report reaching the foothills and then finding themselves walking away from them, unable to recall the decision to turn around. The mountains are not hidden. They are not forbidden. They are simply refusing to be known. And the world, apparently, is cooperating.