Waiting to Happen
It could have been worse.
They'd done well to start the debriefings as soon as the dust cleared. If they hadn't done that, they'd have been left with only whatever information was contained in Harry's florid history of the alternate timeline, and the contents of his electronic sketchbook — without which the entire year would have passed out of all knowledge without a trace. Even their clothes had disappeared; Sokolsky's examination had revealed nothing peculiar until half past six on the tenth, and then nothing at all. The PDAs had vanished as well. Ngo's notes and the transferred files appeared to be permanent, but there was no knowing how long that would last. They'd already been passed along to the Site-17 Deepwell.
The idea that his amateurish drawings had been immortalized, preserved as though they were among the foundational records of humankind, made Harry feel very, very silly. He wasn't opposed to being a part of history rather than writing it, but not like this. Not like this.
Someone was knocking on his door.
"Come on in."
The door opened, and Lillian entered tentatively. Harry frowned. He couldn't remember the last time she'd knocked before entering, or the last time she'd done anything tentatively. "What's up?"
"I've got a problem." She approached the couch where he was sitting like she was sneaking up on a tiger. He had no idea why. Instinctively, he stood up. "A new one?"
"A very new one," she nodded. "It's my memory."
"Okay."
"It's still there."
He nodded. "Okay… wait. It's still there?"
"All of it."
"You remember the entire year?"
"Pretty sure I do, guy." Was that a haunted look in her eye, or something else?
"What the fuck?"
"I don't know!"
"What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know!"
He paced the seating area, thinking it through. "Well, you have to tell McInnis. You'll probably have to debrief Ngo. Everything you remember could be important."
"Yeah." She massaged the back of her neck. "Fuck."
"What did you think I was gonna tell you?"
"I dunno." She shrugged. "We've gotten in the habit of keeping secrets."
"Did you tell anyone else?"
"Why would I have?"
There was an odd vulnerability in the way she said that flattering thing, and he felt a warm wave of affection for his oldest, best friend. "Can I tell you something?"
"Always."
He walked up to her, smiled up at her. "I'm glad we're suffering this horseshit together."
She bumped her forehead into his, and reached out to take his hands. "Nobody I'd rather get dumped on with."
They stood like that for a while. Her hands were shaking, and he wondered why. Before he could ask, she pulled him into an embrace, squeezed the breath out of him, then let go and stepped back. She'd seemed badly out of sorts when she'd walked through the door, but suddenly it all seemed better.
Your mind is a strange and wondrous thing, Dr. Lillihammer, he thought, and then he thought something else.
It must have made it out of his mind and onto his face, because Lillian frowned at him. "What?"
"I just had a thought."
"Thought I heard a rattling noise."
He grunted. The thought was too troubling for him to really enjoy the ribbing. "Do you know why…"
She waited a few seconds for him to continue — something else she rarely ever did — then finally ventured "Maybe?" when he didn't.
He remembered his last moments with Melissa, the one he'd lost less permanently, the one who was presently doing who knew what in Grand Bend, and hesitated. "I dunno if I should ask."
"Can it wait? Because you're right, I should tell the others about this."
"I dunno if I want it to wait." He sighed. "Okay. All right. Do you know why Udo and I broke up?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Yes."
He nodded.
She tilted her chin down. "Do you want me to tell you?"
"I… don't think so."
"Good, because I wasn't gonna."
Having already asked her something he shouldn't have, he decided to overshare as well. "We might get together again. Stay together, I mean."
She shrugged. "So?"
"So, is there a good reason why we shouldn't? Is there a mistake we need to avoid? You know how it plays out."
She smiled sadly. "I have no idea how it'll play out."
"Why?"
"Because that was then, and this is now."
11 September
Representatives had arrived from two different groups claiming to represent the Foundation's time cops, the Department of Temporal Anomalies (which some of them had heard of) and the Temporal Anomalies Department (which only Udo Okorie and Ilse Reynders had heard of). A third representative from a third group nobody had heard of, a woman named Azzopardi who claimed to work for something called the Chronometrics Division, didn't stay long. She had credentials which didn't scan, produced a loud "eep" sound when she saw the TAD's rep and backed away from him, and repeated "2004? As in two zero zero four?" twice before making her apologies and her exit in quick succession.
The two who remained did a rapid readover of the personnel roster, then settled on meeting with Reynders and Xinyi Du. Okorie wasn't offended, since she hadn't offered up the fact that she'd heard of the TAD. She had the feeling that was the kind of thing that got you amnesticized, and the discovery was long enough ago now that she'd be losing rather a lot of herself in that case.
Then again, she thought, forgetting everything after 2002 was a fairly even mixture of good and bad.
"So." Alice Forth of the DTA was a round-faced brunette with bright green eyes and a tidy, bespoke business suit. She had a relatively easy manner, and a friendly smile. "You don't have any temporal affairs personnel."
"Of either acronym order, no," Du agreed.
"This is our first temporal affair," Reynders said without a hint of humour.
"Yes," Du agreed. "Please be gentle."
Forth smirked.
Thaddeus Xyank of the TAD was unamused. He looked like a shipping magnate from the 1920s, a huge handlebar moustache driving a badly out-of-date velvet suit. Personality wise, he was the perfect foil to Forth. "We chose to debrief the two of you because frankly, nobody else around here stands the slightest chance of grasping the temporal mechanics. I suspect you might be able to glean a glimmer, with intensive study."
Forth gave him a sidelong glance. "It's an honour to meet you, Dr. Reynders. Your work is foundational in the field."
Xyank checked the watch on his left hand, and sighed.
"The stuff I know I've done," Reynders asked, "or the stuff I'll do later?"
Both of them laughed. It seemed oddly forced from Xyank.
"We won't waste your time with the basics," said Forth. Xyank raised a bushy eyebrow at her, but did not protest. "Temporal alteration, timeline tangent."
"Unusual example, though," her counterpart mused. "Typically someone travels back in time, time doesn't travel forwards, then take what you did to it back with it."
"Yes," Forth agreed, "that's a wrinkle to be sure. But the basic principles seem the same. In a sense this arrangement is better than what you'd normally get; normally you'd have to contrive a means of returning to the scene of the time crime to set it right, but in this case—"
"The time-mountain comes to time-Mohammad," Du finished.
Xyank looked at him, then looked at Forth. "What makes people here talk like that?"
"Honestly?" Du shrugged. "It's mostly Lillihammer."
Forth nodded. "We were hoping to speak to her as well, actually, but I understand she's on another consult."
Reynders decided to essay a restart. "So, I don't know if you two have an agenda—"
"Why would I have an agenda?" Xyank snapped.
Forth gave him a strange look. "She means a plan for this meeting."
"Right. Of course. Uh, no." He checked the watch on his right hand this time. "When Dr. Forth and I end up in the same meeting, we usually end up arguing, and arguments are so much more productive unscripted."
"I disagree," Forth smiled.
"You two make a good light comedy act." Reynders tapped her pencil lightly on the window sill. "If you don't have an outline, let me express my main concern: how do we know that we're actually in baseline now? If it's so dependent on precisely what these people do, couldn't subtle differences in their actions have resulted in subtly different versions of September 8? Wettle fell over a second too late, and there's repercussions we might not even notice? I know that's not how it works most of the time, but as you said, none of this is standard."
The two visiting experts exchanged a meaningful glance.
"That's rather the crux of the matter, isn't it?" Xyank said. "Even if restoration to baseline is as forgiving as it ought to be, these seven individuals and their actions now directly define the survival of this entire timeline."
Forth continued this line of thought, to Xyank's very obvious distaste. He kept correcting her word choice with his lips as he listened. "If they do anything wrong, anything at all, it erases everything and rewrites the universe in the image of those… individuals, whoever they were. This facility is now the temporal anomalies equivalent of a superfund site."
"And how do you propose we clean it up?" Du asked.
"Foul the waters further," Xyank suggested. "Depart from the correct course minutely each year, and chart the effects until you understand the larger pattern."
Forth favoured him with a wide-eyed stare. "I would have said definitely do not do that. Make absolutely certain they do their jobs precisely the same way, year after year, until we can figure out what's causing this and devise a means of stopping it."
"What an unshockingly provincial outlook you have, Dr. Forth," Xyank sighed. "Do you know, every version of you I've met thinks much the same?"
"Do you know, Dr. Xyank," she retorted, "that Dr. McInnis told me you told him reality would rubberband back instantly on the 8th, or not at all?"
From his stricken expression, he had not in fact known that. "Yes, well, this is all rather new ground for all of us." He didn't look happy to be making that admission. "I'm also unaware of any temporal anomaly which restructures reality in stages, yet that's precisely what this one did."
Reynders rubbed her temples. "Yes, do you know, that gave me quite the headache? For an instant I was seeing triple: baseline, baseline but the Victims never died, baseline but the Victims never died and they were destroying the world." She reached out to touch her window, examining a specific and wholly unremarkable corner of the glass with inexplicable interest before catching herself and resuming the dialogue. "How do we even begin to figure out that sort of absurdity?"
Xyank twirled his moustache, but Forth beat him to the punch. "We're experts in absurdity. Just look at us." She simpered. "Mostly him, of course."
Site-43, it has often been remarked, violently breaks the mould when it comes to the physical appearance of its experts. They are typically younger, healthier, and while the final metric is wholly subjective, generally agreed to be more attractive than their colleagues elsewhere. This writer once suggested, to general expressions of disdain, that this might be due in large part to the large number of humanities PhDs on staff. He reasoned that the hard sciences attract fewer of the sensitive, artsy sorts who flock to fields like history, occultism or even memetics. "Makes you wonder why they call them 'hard'," he'd added to immediate and negative physical consequences.
— Blank, Lines in a Muddle
With all that said, even by local standards Dr. Jessie Rivera did not seem like a world-renowned expert in anything, except perhaps for surfing or the growth and care of marijuana plants. She was a bouncy, freckled redhead in a floral tank top that looked like it belonged on a beach, in the 1990s. She was also apparently one of the Directors of Site-120, which apparently had more than one of those.
"So yes," she was saying, "obviously it's ontokinetic. It can't not be. Reality got bent."
"Lucky reality," Udo smiled. They were walking to the subway, which gave Udo an uneasy feeling that she couldn't put her finger on.
Rivera laughed. "Right? Now, whatever happened to your unknown subject — do you have a name for them? One that doesn't give you blackbox on the brain?"
"We've managed to find a few scraps referring to 'The Uncontained', contextually likely to be the occupant of that cell."
"Okay, so, your uncle. Whatever happened to him… oof, that hurt, got too close apparently." She blinked away the antimemetic blues. "Whatever happened to them isn't related to anything chronological. The erasure, I mean. If it was, the erasure would have been tidy. They wouldn't exist, instead of sort of kind of mostly not existing but also we've got lots of papers with nicknames for them on them."
The valley girl routine was making Udo's curiosity itch, and she finally relented. "How old are you?"
Rivera seemed momentarily surprised, then snorted. "Older than this." She gestured at her lithe, fit form. "Older than you. Probably older than your parents too."
"Why do you look so young?"
"Because I'm a reality bender."
"Ohhhhh." Udo chuckled. "So that's the difference between an 'expert in ontokinetics' and an 'ontokinetics expert'."
Rivera grinned. "Exactly!"
"How long have they known?"
"The Foundation? All along."
"Wow." She wasn't at all sure how she felt about that.
They headed into the H&P station without trading another word. The platform was empty, and they wouldn't have long to wait.
"Well, go ahead," Rivera said apropos of nothing.
Udo started. "Huh?" She realized she'd been staring, and thanked her genetics that she didn't blush very visibly.
"Ask me why I bother."
"I mean, it's pretty self-evident." Udo gestured, noting with no small amount of embarrassment that her hands trembled as she did it. "Who wouldn't want to look like that?" The other woman winked playfully at her, and Udo suspected even her dark skin was now flushing at least a little. "Is it your actual appearance?"
"Yup."
"I wouldn't wanna age either."
Rivera gave her an appraising look as the train pulled into the station. "If? If you looked like this, you mean? I think maybe you need a mirror."
The act of boarding the nearest car saved Udo from having to respond to that. She had no idea what she would have said.
"Anyway." Rivera sat down, and Udo sat down across the aisle from her. "It's my self-image. This is who I see when I picture myself. It's who I still feel like. So why would I change it?"
Udo nodded. The train left the station.
Rivera took her silence as an invitation to continue. "I once heard about a guy who didn't know he was a reality bender until he suddenly realized his mind was dressing him in his old clothes, and turning his grey hair back to red."
"I cut my hair in the alternate timeline," Udo volunteered. She only knew this because Ngo had used video recording apparatus for their debriefing.
"And now it's long again," Rivera noted. That Udo's hair was long was the first thing people generally noticed about her. Udo had orange eyes; that was how long her hair was.
"Yeah."
"Sounds like you and the other you don't share a self-image," the ontokineticist remarked.
"Apparently not." Udo examined her fingernails. "Alternate me also dumped my boyfriend, and I… don't want to."
Rivera shrugged. "So don't."
"That easy?"
"Oh, sure. We see this all the time. Other realities make us into other people. That doesn't make who you are right now any less valid. You want your hair short? Cut it again. You want to stick with your guy? Stick with him. Be the best version of yourself for living in your present circumstances. That's probably what alternate you did."
"I know some of my reasons, for some of the things we did. Well, you heard the debriefing."
"Too bad it wasn't in-depth. You ought to get some ontokinetics people working here full time. Forth and Xyank are probably selling your boss on the virtues of scheduled Temporal Anomalies consults, but guess what? Working to their schema, that twenty four hour grace period then wham!" — she slammed her fist into her palm — "would have come right out of left field. Their shit doesn't work like that, and they never would have predicted it for you. If I'd been in that room, I wouldn't have let any of you leave until the whole tale was told. Reality bending doesn't follow the rules. That's what distinguishes it from magic."
Udo refrained from offering to show Rivera how flexible her own magic was. Given her earlier open ogling, it might have come across as flirtatious, and the other woman was prominently displaying a wedding ring. "So you think this is more ontokinetic than temporal?"
"I think it's both, equally, which makes it an awful bitch of a mess. Hard to predict. There's definitely intentionality in there, though. The containment quality decline, by percentage points. The day-long grace periods. The arbitrary selections."
"Arbitrary selections?"
"You seven, with your unique relationships to the effects."
"We were the ones who most directly affected the course of the breach," Udo explained.
"That's neat. Why would an unthinking natural force know to single you out for that? And anyway, if I recall correctly, you don't recall doing anything of particular importance."
Udo's mouth migrated to one side of her face. "I closed a valve. That's not nothing."
"Unless the valve was in your head," Rivera smirked, "it doesn't explain why it preserves your memories between realities."
"Yeah. It's a mystery, alright."
"Well, we'll see what we can figure out for you today. There's a guy I want to talk to about this."
"Somebody special?"
"Oh, yes. Very special."
There is a room in Acroamatic Abatement Facility AAF-A which only Level 4+ personnel are cleared to enter, and then only with permission from the Chief of Identity and Technocryptography, the Site Director, or the O5 Council. It contains nothing more sophisticated than a single computer terminal.
It is perhaps the single most important piece of containment equipment at Site-43.
— Blank, Lines in a Muddle
Rivera sat down at the terminal. Udo stood behind her; behind her, leaning on the wall and scrolling idly through her tablet, Eileen Veiksaar seemed almost bored.
Rivera cracked her knuckles, and began to type.
Can you feel me?
The response came almost instantly.
Who are you, young lady?
"It's because I'm a reality bender," Rivera explained. "He's got a keen sense for that, and he's able to sense things he shouldn't be able to from all the way down there. As you can see, he's very powerful."
Udo felt a sudden desire to graduate from exposition sink to expositor in her own right. "He teleported me up here once."
Rivera turned to look at her, surprise clouding her freckled face. "What? That wasn't in the debriefing."
Udo smiled. "I'll get you a copy of Harry's alt history book before you go back to 120."
Rivera returned to her keyboard.
Think of me as a colleague.
Have you come to join the work?
What work is that?
The only work.
"They always get myopic," Rivera mused. "Reality benders. It's an occupational hazard. They end up stuck inside their own little worlds where nothing else seems to matter."
"How do you get them out again?" Udo asked.
"If they're weak enough, an SRA will do the trick."
If they're too powerful, though, or it's been too long, they have to want to come back.
"Uh," said Udo.
Rivera backed her chair away from the screen a little. "That was spooky."
I've never met anyone quite like you, Dr. Rivera. Well, except for me. I've met myself a few times. Nice fellow. A little erratic, but he means well.
"I'm given to understand you've met Dr. Lillihammer before." Their eyes met, all three pairs. Veiksaar was very interested now; Udo had a feeling Rydderech didn't often allow his visitors to skip the part where they tapped out their half of the conversation.
Always a fine young woman. Very clever. And red hair! Not very Finnish. I suspect there's a little Welsh in her makeup.
"Can't remember him ever being this coherent before," Veiksaar murmured. Udo had the feeling she was saying it quietly in the hopes that he wouldn't hear.
It is a good day in hell today, interlocutor mine.
"Do you remember giving her some advice?" Rivera asked the air. "Dr. Lillihammer, I mean?"
Are you trying to read ahead?
"What?"
That's naughty. And pointless. You want all the revelations at once? They won't mean anything to you — by which I mean you won't understand them, and you'll take them for granted. Better to let the story unfold chapter by chapter than rush right through.
Rivera rolled her eyes, and mouthed yeah at them. The unspoken remainder of the sentence was probably something like they get like this sometimes too. "I'm not asking you to tell me what you told her. I just want to know if you can tell me why you exist in more than one timeline simultaneously, and also how."
There is only one timeline.
"We know that isn't true."
Isn't it? Maybe I'm the one reading ahead.
Rivera sighed. "Dr. Rydderech, these… let's call them reality shifts. You can tell they're happening."
Yes, I feel it in my trick knee.
"I know chronometrics weren't understood in your era, but—"
It's still my era.
"Well, of course."
I'm still at work down here.
"Of course you are."
And I don't need to know chronometrics to answer your question. But if I did, I'd invent them.
"Well," Rivera chuckled. "Dr. Reynders already invented them."
Was it Udo's imagination, or did the terminal whine at a higher pitch when it printed the next word?
Ilse?
"That's right," Rivera nodded. Udo hoped the nod was just a reflex action, that it didn't mean the ontokineticist thought Rydderech was actually watching their body language now. Even at Site-43, where everyone was under surveillance twenty four hours per day, the sensation of being watched was never particularly present.
Will you tell her something for me?
"If you answer my question, sure."
Time is progressive. Your problem is retrogression. It doesn't make sense in your models because it isn't the same thing.
"Well," Rivera's head tilted from side to side as she considered how to rebut him, "but it basically is. It's still a matter of temporal mechanics."
It's a matter of course, not a matter of time.
She frowned. They all frowned. "What does that mean?" Rivera demanded.
I'm sorry, vertometrics weren't invented in your era.
Udo didn't know what that meant, but she did know to laugh.
"I think he's lost the plot again," Rivera sighed.
Oh! Well said. Perhaps I was wrong.
"Is there anything more you can tell us?" Udo asked. Veiksaar raised an eyebrow at her, and she mouthed sorry in response. She wasn't even a doctor yet, no matter how often everyone called her one. She certainly wasn't cleared to be talking with the Site's biggest secret, even if he had rearranged her atoms once.
God I hope he's the Site's biggest secret.
It's good to see you made it up there alright. You won't next time.
She felt suddenly faint. "What?"
Could you put Vivian back on, please?
Rivera rubbed her temples. "We need to wrap this up."
"Why?" Udo asked. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Not really?" The other woman shivered. "It's taking a lot out of me. I think he's drawing on the potential energy in this room to stay lucid, and I'm starting to run dry."
"Well," Udo said, "fair's fair. Dr. Rydderech, what did you want us to tell Dr. Reynders?"
There was a pause. For a moment, Udo expected the terminal to print something like Who is Dr. Reynders?
Tell her that it's very bad form to be in two places at once, but one place at twice is bad taste.
What. She saw the same primordial question written on each of their faces.
Vivian? Don't go with them. I can't protect you there, because I didn't.
Grand Bend: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada
Harry stood before the bungalow in Grand Cove, hair neatly slicked back, the jacket they'd shared in a land beyond time hanging loose on his tensed-up shoulders.
He raised his hand to knock.
He lowered it.
He let his other hand linger at the doorknob for a few more seconds before turning and walking away, cheeks burning in the cold sunlight.
A winding suburban road away, not that Harry knew it, Delfina Ibanez was following up on an employment offer she'd made. She wasn't sure what it was about Roger Pensak that the alternate version of her had thought warranted a potential S&C hiring, but she decided that no matter how many extra steps were involved, "trust yourself" was always sound advice.
Noè Nascimbeni stared at the note he'd inexplicably left himself the previous day. It was funny; both Harry and Delfina had offered him a ride to Grand Cove if he wanted it, but he hadn't thought he did.
And I'm still not. After all, there was so much work to be done…
Rivera kept her eyes closed on the subway ride back, clearly exhausted.
She didn't seem to mind Udo's questions, however. "Was it him? Dr. Rydderech? Was he the man in your story with the changing clothing and hair?"
"That's right."
"You used a Level 5 anomaly as an anecdote?"
"He became accustomed to who he was, and kept his identity static. Stable."
"Static, yes. Stable, well." Udo reached out to hold the vertical bar in front of her. She was sitting down, but after their shared experience even the smooth curves of the Blue Line threatened to send her pitching forward. "You saw."
Rivera opened her eyes. "What if that's what's happening with September 8?"
"Go on."
"What if the breach killed a reality bender, infused all the materials flying about in there with its essence, and the bender became the breach? That's why its effects work according to a human sort of illogic. The breach is sapient."
Udo should have been floored by the suggestion, but instead she felt energized. "I'll do you one better."
"Okay." Rivera's eyes closed again. She was breathing very shallowly.
"The materials you're talking about, a lot of them were chronological and counter-chronological."
This time the eyes snapped open, and focused on her face with laser intensity. "Oh, hell."
"Right?"
"What if September 8 is sapient?"
Udo laughed. "Right. But obviously that's insane."
"Think about it, though." Rivera leaned forward wobbily. "Self-image. Those six minutes have a mind of their own, a personality, but they're receptive to change. We make alterations to its circumstances, and it changes itself to follow."
Udo shook her head. "I don't think we need to personalize the disaster to make that work."
"I do. Because that explains why it singled you out. It identified you as its influences, and it wants you to judge the results."
"That's—" She couldn't finish the sentence. She didn't know what it was.
"Take it a step further. Maybe it wants you to figure out how to free it from the breach."
Udo ran her tongue across the front of her teeth. "What if it sees us as its opponents, for making the breach end?"
Rivera sagged back in her chair, and closed her eyes for the last time. "Alternatively, what if it's just an explosion?"
She slept for the remainder of the short ride back.
Lillian had been expecting the knock, but she'd allowed herself to lapse back into what she was now calling Memory Mode, reviewing the events of the alternate timeline for any further clues to their overall dilemma, so she was still a little startled when it came. "Come in!"
A short young woman in a nice suit with electric blue square-rimmed glasses and a complex weave of curly black hair walked in, and shut the door behind her. She'd made it past the memetic decontamination tunnel with no obvious ill effects. "Dr. Lillihammer. Do you r—"
Lillian kicked off her desk, and snatched up her tablet. "Who the fuck are you? Don't move. I'm calling security!"
The other woman raised her hands in a placating gesture, then slowly moved one of them to her suit pocket. "Wait! I have ID."
Lillian laughed at her. "Just fucking with you. Been a long time, Marion."
The agent's face returned to its standard neutral-trending-to-disapproval configuration. "You're not funny."
"I'm not as funny as I think I am, that's for sure." Lillian gestured. "Sit down."
Marion Wheeler took the seat, brushing the hem of her suit jacket aside to reveal a concealed holster. "You do know I carry a gun?"
"Which means you're trusted not to shoot panicky researchers." Lillian kicked her feet up on the table. "Did you really think I'd forgotten you?"
"I really did." It took a lot to get Wheeler's pulse going, but Lillian's dangerous joke had done the job. The otherwise unflappable woman was flushed with adrenaline.
"Well, I wouldn't worry. You're unforgettable. You're tied into a core memory, from real early in my career. Before we met. Besides which, I never forget anything."
"This I am aware of. So, for example—"
"You think you get to move on to examples before explanations? Not in my broom closet. What's this visit about?"
Wheeler's eyes opened a little wider, as did her mouth, in the universal gesture for sure, alright, let's do this then. "You people tripped our sensors half a dozen times in two years. If it hadn't been for the lack of manpower, I'd have come a lot sooner."
"That sentence was like a gift basket addressed to me."
"Thanks for not unwrapping it. My point is, this place is lousy with antimemetic activity. First you lost a hostile GoI's attention for no explicable reason; then you lost six minutes of a registered thaumaturge's time during a cascade containment breach; then you lost an apparently vital SCP object, so vital it had its own secret sublevel, now blackboxed out of reality; then you found a network of self-erasing spies at Area-21; then you found them again at Site-43 in an alternate timeline, then forgot the alternate timeline itself. Is that all, or did I forget anything?"
"There's a thing re: forgetting you don't know about yet, but I'll remember to bring it up if it gets relevant. But yeah. When you say all that at once, it does sound bad. What did you mean about the thing where I could have made a sex joke? Manpower?"
"We're understaffed and underfunded." She said it the way Lillian might have talked about a persistent shoulder ache, something unpleasant she'd long become accustomed to.
"My old supervisor told me you guys have a low life expectancy."
"Could be," Wheeler nodded. "Could be we used to have the numbers we need, and they all walked into invisible mouths and down invisible gullets and got invisibly digested. Could also be that they just stopped being visible to the rest of us. Could even be a more mundane reason. But antimemetic research isn't a popular field besides that, for obvious reasons. Everyone likes to forget the bad things, but forgetting the good is terrifying."
"Can't relate. Anyhow, to what in specific do I owe the pleasure of an Antimemetics Division consult?"
There were much-maligned departments at the SCP Foundation. Just about nobody who didn't work there was fond of Pataphysics. Surrealistics, Semiotics, and Miscommunications were always major headaches to deal with. Even Tactical Theology offended the sensibilities of some of Lillian's less whimsical colleagues, usually the ones who'd been staunch atheists before the unpleasant discovery that gods did, in fact, exist, and didn't much care for being persistently reminded they'd been wrong. But the Antimemetics Division was truly beyond the pale. It wasn't that people dreaded their coming, it was more that they were almost always unexpected. The average researcher had trouble even remembering they existed. Anyone dealing with them regularly had to take special drugs to avoid forgetting that any such group had ever been formed. It was probably a red letter day for Marion, getting to consult with someone who didn't have to first be debriefed on what her entire deal was — the investigation of things which could not be perceived and stored in the little grey cells without tremendous effort and very often not even then, the invisible world which, having no sense of fair play, was often watching every move made in the visible one. Monsters that fed on recollection. Immemorial predators. Thoughts that couldn't be contained in the human mind, the noospheric equivalent of recondite particles. Lillian had once been considered as a potential recruit for the Division, and Wheeler had been her assessing officer.
The rejection remained one of the highest compliments she'd ever been paid.
The other woman rolled her eyes. "Your debriefing from the alternate timeline made its way to my desk. At least someone at Temporal Anomalies, or Temporal Anomalies, is on the ball."
"What made this time so different?"
Wheeler frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I CC'd you guys on the geistschreiber when we first found out about them. Didn't hear shit back. Assumed you didn't care."
The frown deepened. Wheeler's composed expression was rarely more than one unpleasant revelation away from creasing up in frustration. "We never got that CC."
"You really need to work on your visibility. Have you tried taking out billboards?"
"They'd just end up killing birds. What can you tell me about the geistschreiber that isn't in the reports? I know you know what's in them."
I never should have let them put 'eidetic memory' in my file. "Alright, sure. We've only talked to one of them in a situation where they're unlikely to have been bullshitting at maximum PSI, and it was the same one in baseline and the alternate. Her name is Alis."
"Presently in custody at Site-06."
"Yeah. That. When our security chief interrogated her after she tried to blow us all up — Alis, not the Chief — she got a lot of bluster about the inevitable end of the world in the most obnoxious know it all supervillain tone you could imagine. That's not in the report, but you can see it in the transcript for yourself."
"Okay."
"She wasn't like that at 43. But the Victims were."
"The seven particularly problematic individuals."
"Or the six we actually saw, yeah. Five? We didn't actually see Wirth… anyhow. They talked the same way. The exact same way. It was more than just an organization thing. It was more like a personality tic."
The frustration had shifted toward boredom. Wheeler got bored very easily when things weren't up her alley. Lillian respected that about her. "Hmm."
"Not really your area, right?"
"Not really," the other woman agreed. "You've got people for parapsychology. I'm here for more forgettable things."
A thought occurred. "Well, actually… hmm."
"What?"
"Can you keep a secret?"
Wheeler arched an eyebrow.
"Sorry, low blow. Alright. This isn't in any report, and it can't be in yours either. Those are my terms. I'm only telling you this in the first place because we have history."
"Will not reporting it put anyone in danger?"
"Nope."
"Then fine." Wheeler adjusted her glasses. "Tell me your big secret."
"We all forgot the alternate timeline the day after coming back from it."
"That's in the addendum to the file," the antimemeticist sighed. "I read it on the flight over."
"Cool. So obviously that's your outfit's kinda thing, but try this on for size on top of it: I did not forget. I still haven't."
Both eyebrows this time. "Really."
"Really. I remember everything."
"Your memories didn't sync to baseline like the others?"
"They synced, but were not replaced. I know both versions."
Wheeler's mouth formed into an 'o'. "That is very strange."
"Right?"
"Do you have an explanation?"
"I'm special."
"Do you have a useful explanation?"
"I'm useful. I've got the best memory at Site-43. I'm trained in countermemetics. I can look at kill agents without getting killed. Maybe I'm too spicy to sync."
Wheeler wasn't buying it. She was a savvy customer. "Have you tried asking our captive ghostwriter about it?"
Lillian wasn't capable of forgetting things, but like anyone else she couldn't focus on everything she knew at the same time. Unlike everyone else, she could focus on a great deal at once, but Alis Rydderech in her padded cell hadn't nearly made the cut. "Now, there's a thought. No. I haven't."
Wheeler stood. "Thanks for your time."
Lillian stood as well. "I'm coming with you."
The other woman shook her head, then had to perform emergency surgery on her wild crop of curls. "I'm heading back to Site-41."
"I'm not coming with you now, then, but we both know you're going to interview Alis soon. Let's kill two birds with one stone."
"What if we're the—"
"What if we're the birds and she's the stone, yeah, the math works out that way, doesn't it?" Lillian shrugged. "Well, unless you've slowed down a lot in three years, I think we can still fly circles around her."
12 September
"Friends." McInnis smiled at them each in turn, all six of them. "It's time we formalized our little arrangement."
"Yeah," Lillihammer agreed. "We should all get together in some official conspiracy thing. Oh, wait."
They were sitting in their de facto clubhouse, Okorie's quarters. Harry was at his accustomed position on the couch next to his on-again-off-again, and their body language suggested they weren't sure which state was which anymore. Everyone else was where they usually sat: Lillihammer in her chair, Ibanez and Nascimbeni at opposite ends of the dining table, McInnis at the wall, Wettle on the floor.
"I take it," Harry sighed, "you mean setting up proper protocols for September 8 next year."
"Please don't let this happen again next year," the old tech moaned.
"It's happened three times," Okorie reminded him needlessly. "We have to assume it's going to keep on happening."
"Meetings happen all the time," Wettle interjected. "It's not so bad. You don't even have to go."
Harry sank down in the cushions. "Willie…"
"I could invite Dr. Elstrom into this conversation," McInnis threatened, "if you are unable to govern yourselves."
They all sat up straighter, and looked at him silently.
"Thank you. Now, I am going to have to ask rather a lot from this little group in the coming years. Repeating the events of one of the worst days of your professional lives is no easy task for which to prepare. I therefore intend to recommend all of you, and myself, for a strict training regimen."
Harry's expression shifted from exhaustion to suspicion. "What sort of training?"
"Survival training."
The archivist's face fairly collapsed. "Oh, god."
"Kiss your paunch goodbye," Lillihammer crowed.
"You kiss it."
Okorie gave him a complicated look.
"Can I be excused with a doctor's note?" Wettle whined.
"What would even be the point of survival training?" Nascimbeni demanded. "We're not going to go to war with the bodies we build, we'll have to make do with the ones we get zapped into."
"Yeah," Harry pointed at him, "good point. Doesn't matter how svelte we get—"
"You will never be 'svelte'," Lillihammer laughed.
"—because we'll be leaving these bodies in baseline."
"Two counterarguments to that," McInnis responded. "First, survival training will increase your physical health. We don't know how long these breaches will keep up, and we can't afford to lose any of you while they're ongoing. In fact, I'm going to recommend that each of you be granted life extension healthcare of the sort typically reserved for Site Directors, to give us as much time to find a solution as possible."
"Wait." Nascimbeni's mouth hung open between words. "You're going to make us immortal?"
"You think this is going to take decades?" Okorie added.
"Seriously." Ibanez looked disgusted.
McInnis wasn't surprised to see how they reacted. Okorie and Ibanez were the youngest, so they were more concerned with long commitment than the steady march of time. Nascimbeni was the oldest, and the prospect of arresting his progress must have seemed appealing. Harry had a foot in both camps, and neither Lillihammer nor Wettle appeared to be listening at all now. "Second," he resumed, "learning bodily control will enable you to make the most of any physique you jump into when the timeline switches."
"Again," said Lillihammer, who could quip even when she was only barely following the conversational thread, "my guy here will never have anything that can be fairly described as a physique."
"Shut up," Harry growled. "I don't like that we're assuming this is inevitably going to happen again."
"Oh my god," Ibanez started. "Anyone wanna say that for the forty-seventh time?"
Wettle opened his mouth.
Harry raised a hand. "I don't mean the breach, I mean fucking it up. It's defeatist to assume we'll end up creating another timeline."
"We must make that assumption," said McInnis.
"But the avoidance steps are so simple!" Okorie cried.
"Shit happens," Nascimbeni sighed.
McInnis nodded. "Precisely."
They all looked at Wettle.
"What? I don't have any questions, or anything."
"As I stated at the outset," McInnis continued, I wish to make formal arrangements for addressing this anomaly. To that end, I propose the following: creating a new SCP file covering the effects of the breach, and creating a Provisional Task Force to manage its containment."
"Super goddamn provisional," Ibanez grumbled. "One day per year."
"With significant preparatory duties, of course."
"Got a name in mind? Naming these things is half the reason to make them."
He spread his hands wide. "I am open to suggestions."
"The Survivors," Nascimbeni said immediately. Several of them nodded.
"We can continue using that term internally, but I suspect the other personnel of this facility might misunderstand the meaning."
Wettle blinked. "How?"
"If we're the Survivors," Harry told him, "it implies that everyone else isn't."
"Big yikes," Wettle agreed.
"Timeline Travellers," Lillihammer suggested.
Okorie shifted excitedly on the couch. "Yeah!"
"Already taken," said McInnis.
The memeticist frowned. "By who?"
"They're from another timeline. It's complicated."
Okorie raised her hands dramatically. "Doom Patrol."
"Too dramatic."
"The Replacements," said Ibanez.
"Let's not make it too clear how this works, please."
Nascimbeni's delivery suggested he knew his next suggestion was far too tortuous, and didn't care. "Set Wrong What Once Went Wrong."
Harry laughed.
"Replication Students," said Wettle.
Harry leaned forward. "Heyyyy."
"That's pretty good," Lillihammer admitted begrudgingly.
At roughly the same time, Okorie said "I vote for that" and Nascimbeni said "Works for me."
"I can live with it," Ibanez yawned.
She was right to yawn. It was getting late, and there was much to organize on the coming day. "If there are no other suggestions…"
Harry stood up. "Good stuff. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a mental breakdown for the next twelve months. See you in September."
"Fuck," said Lillihammer.
"Ah," said Nascimbeni.
"Shit," said Ibanez. "Yeah."
"Yeah," Okorie agreed.
Wettle looked from face to face, still flat-assed on the floor. "What?"
Harry was nodding to himself now. "That's the one, isn't it?"
"Gotta be." Lillihammer reached down to pat Wettle's head. "Sorry, Willie."
"What happened?"
McInnis rolled his sweater sleeves back down, and detached from the wall. "I'll file the paperwork."
Wettle stayed on the floor as the rest of them got up. "Did I miss something?"
Special Containment Procedures: As SCP-5243 is a recurrent catastrophic containment failure, it is "contained" through amelioration of its effects.
Every year, on the eighth day of September, the following actions must be taken at Site-43:
| Any actions timed to the precise second have extremely narrow windows of opportunity | |
|---|---|
| Local Time | Action Required |
| 06:00:— | Technical and support personnel must be fully prepared for immediate repair or reconstruction of all containment apparatus Site-wide for all subjects. All containment subjects receptive to anesthesia or tranquilization must be anesthetized or tranquilized. |
| 18:00:— | All personnel without containment duties must be confined to quarters. |
| 18:21:13 | Technical and support personnel must begin repairing or reconstructing all containment apparatus Site-wide. |
| 18:21:— | Site Director Dr. A. McInnis must fail to answer his redline telephone. |
| 18:22:25 | Dr. H. Blank must be present in his designated research laboratory, where he must make the following remark: "What was that?" |
| 18:22:34 | Dr. McInnis must answer his redline telephone. |
| 18:22:— | Janitorial and Maintenance Chief N. Nascimbeni must leave his office and approach Acroamatic Abatement Facility AAF-D. |
| 18:23:41 | Chief Nascimbeni must reach the airlock for Facility AAF-D. |
| 18:24:20 | Dr. McInnis must alert the Security and Containment Section to a containment breach scenario in AAF-D by telephone. |
| 18:24:31 | Former Security and Containment Chief D. Ibanez must deactivate the security bullpen intercom and shout "You heard the man! Radcliffe, Gwilherm, Mukami, double time!" after hearing the content of Dr. McInnis' call. She must look or point at each individual as they are named. |
| 18:24:33 | Chief Nascimbeni must shout "Is anyone in there?" through the AAF-D airlock. |
| 18:25:09 | Dr. U. Okorie must seal Containment Cell CC-AO147 in the Applied Occultism Section. |
| 18:25:— | Dr. W. Wettle must exit his designated research laboratory and proceed north down the hallway. |
| 18:26:01 | Dr. Wettle will and must be collided with. |
| 18:26:35 | Chief Nascimbeni must instruct agents Gwilherm, Mukami and Radcliffe to enter AAF-D and activate the thaumic overflow relief system. |
| 18:26:48 | Chief Nascimbeni must seal the AAF-D airlock after the structural integrity alarm activates, with all three agents still inside. |
| 18:26:53 | Dr. L. Lillihammer must seal off the Security and Containment Section from her security terminal. |
If the above-named individuals are unavailable to perform their containment duties, their assigned surrogates must be enlisted to replace them.
The following personnel must perish:
- Ambrogi, Romolo
- Del Olmo, Dr. Bernabé
- Gwilherm, Janet
- Markey, David
- Mukami, Ana
- Radcliffe, Stewart
- Wirth, Dr. Reuben
Any individuals terminated by new occurrences of SCP-5243 must be added to this list.
Description: SCP-5243 is an annual cascade containment breach/unstable time loop occurring in the Acroamatic Abatement, Applied Occultism, and Security and Containment Sections of Site-43. Dramatic local reality alterations will revive and subsequently terminate seven deceased Foundation personnel and damage containment apparatus throughout the Site.
8 September every year features an exact reprise of the events of 8 September 2002, when Acroamatic Abatement Facility AAF-D was destroyed in a cascade containment breach. For seven minutes each year, the entire facility reverts to its 2002 configuration.. Individuals within AAF-D when these transitions occur suffer no obvious ill effects, but should take care not to occupy space which is otherwise occupied by machinery or structural elements in either iteration of the facility.
Each of the personnel killed in 2002 will be returned to life by SCP-5243 sixty seconds before the moments of their deaths. They are sapient human beings with physical forms and agency, and will behave as they did in 2002 so long as the appropriate contextual triggers are received. If they are interfered with, it is possible for them to miss their appointments with SCP-5243. They may survive, and containment will have failed.
SITUATIONAL SECURITY CLEARANCE LEVEL 5243-5 REQUIRED FOR FURTHER REVIEW
SCP-5243 produces two Amida-class disruption effects: the creation of unstable alternate timelines, and the de-containment of all subjects at Site-43.
The Special Containment Procedures for SCP-5243 ensure that each reprise is identical to the original breach, because each reprise is identical with the original breach. These are not re-enactments, but are rather re-occurrences of the actual historical event. Failing to adhere to the Special Containment Procedures will actually change the course of history: a Class-CK reality restructuring event will occur twenty-four hours after the end of SCP-5243, and baseline reality will be reorganized into an alternate timeline.
The seven personnel who were not killed by SCP-5243 but directly participated in its original containment (Dr. H. Blank, Chief D. Ibanez, Dr. L. Lillihammer, Dr. A. McInnis, Chief N. Nascimbeni, Dr. U. Okorie and Dr. W. Wettle) have also become entangled with it. While all other sentient beings immediately become their alternate counterparts when the timeline shifts, these individuals instead replace them. They alone retain their memories of baseline reality, and are therefore capable of restoring it by correctly enacting the Special Containment Protocols for SCP-5243 when it next occurs twelve months later. For this purpose they have been organized into Provisional Task Force Sampi-5243 ("See You In September") and given advanced survival training…
The first few days on the open-air track were murder, for most of them.
McInnis and Ibanez were in tip-top shape, though the latter bristled at the suggestion she should have to jog in plain sight. She tended to attract a crowd whenever she did that, and she wasn't in the mood for attracting; they were here for work, not play, despite the fact that 169 was the Foundation's only dedicated recreational facility. Lillihammer was lean and lithe, but she typically spent more time standing around than walking or running, so the daily track practice wiped her out in relatively short order. Okorie had never expended much effort on building her muscles, and they started aching fast when she put them to the test despite the super-science supplements they were all taking to boost their mass gain. For Blank, Wettle, and particularly Nascimbeni, the jogging was absolute torture.
"This feels like old man exercise," the old technician puffed.
"That's what you get for being an old man." The Director was keeping pace with him easily. He could have left him in the dust, if he'd wanted to.
"I'm still in my prime."
"Then let's see another lap."
"You're cheating." It was getting difficult to talk. "You're a ringer."
"This is true." McInnis swung around and began jogging backward. He was still faster than Nascimbeni.
"How did swimming fit into your master plan to become communicator-in-chief?"
"Think about it. I talk to people all day long at my station."
"Right…"
"Then I go to the gym to work out."
"Okay…"
"And what do people do?"
Nascimbeni huffed, and immediately regretted the change in his breathing rhythm. It took him a moment to get back enough air to respond. "They talk to you."
McInnis turned back around, dancing on his heels to return to Nascimbeni's side. "But there's no talking in swimming. At least, there isn't meant to be."
"You make a good argument." Nascimbeni put his head down, and closed his eyes. He had to focus if he was going to get through this.
"And it's good for the cardiac health, as well."
"You've made your damn point," he grunted.
"Allow me to make another: if you're going to use this as an excuse not to talk, it needs to be because you're talking elsewhere."
"Like?"
"I think you know."
He let his superior eat indignant silence for a few seconds before replying. "I don't need advice on my social and family life, Allan."
"That would be a comfort and relief to believe."
"I can't take this anymore," Wettle panted.
"Move your fat ass!" Del shouted, hopping up and down beside the obstacle course in the centre of the track.
"You move it!" he cried, and ran gut-first into the next hurdle.
"Having fun yet?" Udo smiled from just ahead of Harry.
He kept his arms swinging and his legs pumping. He wanted to collapse, but he wasn't going to do it in front of — or rather behind — her. "I think I'm going to have a heart attack."
"So, you're not having fun."
He glanced down at her track pants, and decided to make that his motivation to continue. He made no move to catch up with her. "I'm gonna tell you a secret."
"I'm listening." She glanced over her back, following the his eyeline, and performed one of her not-quite-blushes when she figured it out.
"I hate exercise."
She raised an eyebrow. "All exercise?"
He raised her another. "You have something in mind?"
"I know a time-tested full body workout… but no, you wouldn't be interested in that." She turned to face down the track as they rounded the bend.
"No?"
"Wouldn't help at all with the whole heart attack thing," she explained.
"Well, I was more worried about it happening doing something I hate."
She nodded in mock contemplation. "So you're open to trying a new technique."
"That's what I'm saying." He should have been out of breath, but he was getting a not entirely inexplicable second wind now.
Lillian zoomed past them at a sprint. "Race you to the grave!"
"That's the spirit!" Del called from the obstacle course, where she was carefully untying Wettle's sweat pants from the rope climb.
The residential arrangements at Site-169 are much more varied than you'd find at any other Foundation facility, since it serves so many congregational purposes. There's single rooms for folks on solitary sick leave, group halls for overnight parties, double rooms for couples, linked suites to accommodate VIPs and their bodyguards, and of course private common room/single room combo blocks for team-building exercises. It is an open secret that some of these configurations feature open bars; proposals have been made annually to remove this feature, as it has been implicated in more than a few team-dismantling exercises, restraining orders, and marriages.
— Dr. Harold Blank, "Succour, Champagne, Reflect: All Play and No Work at Site-169," in Praeterita, vol. 36 no. 2 (Summer 2004): 31-44.
22 September
Harry was face-first in a bowl of Lucky Charms when he heard one of the suite doors open, and raised his head to see Lillian wandering into the common room. She was wearing an extra-large Site-169 T-shirt like a dress, and nothing else. She looked like she'd just seen a ghost.
"Help." She flopped down into the chair beside his, and put her head in her hands.
He wiped off his beard. The single bowl of sugar had been his reward for losing fifteen pounds of fat, and vastly increasing his muscle mass so that he was almost what most active human beings would consider bog-average. "What?"
"I almost."
He put a hand on her shoulder. "You almost what?"
"Wettle." She burped. The scent of whiskey wafted over him.
"You almost Wettle?" he laughed.
She winced at the sound. Hangover, then. "Yeah."
"Well, you should've gone before we left."
She darted to her right and pinched his nipple, hard.
"Ow!" He slapped her hand away.
She grabbed his chin, and stared into his eyes. The first thing that came into his head was seen some shit. "I almost slept with Wettle," she breathed.
"Wow?" He wrinkled his nose. He was getting contact drunk off her fumes.
"What the fuck, Harry." She put her arms on the table, and buried her head in the crooks of her elbows.
"How much did you drink?"
"I didn't drink anything." She hiccoughed. "I drank after."
"What?" He laughed. "Did you fall and hit your head or something?"
"It wasn't because it was Wettle. It was because my libido is swinging from the chandeliers."
"Oh." He nodded.
"Oh?" She looked up blearily.
"Yeah. Us too."
Her eyes narrowed. "Who us too?"
"Udo and I."
"You and Udo?"
"Yeah."
"Huh."
"What?"
She hid her face again. "Nothing."
It was the shots. It had to be. LeClair had declined to explain what was in them, but they'd all been feeling energized, sharper, friskier since the injections. Something to do with McInnis' promise of advanced Foundation healthcare, he supposed. Maybe even O5 shit. Well, no harm done so far.
Another door opened, and Del walked out in her tank top and shorts. From the look on her face, Harry expected her to say she'd found a corpse in her bed.
"I slept with Wettle," she whispered.
9 October
Site-06: Outside Bad Karlshafen, Kassel District, Hesse, Federal Republic of Germany
Lillian had put a hold on visits to Alis Rydderech using the extra authority afforded her as member of a Clearance Level 5 Provisional Task Force, just in case Wheeler tried to make the visit without her while the strength and survival training was underway. After a few weeks at Site-169, and an extended camping trip in Baby Bone Wood near Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin which taught all of them except Ibanez how little they understood about esoteric prepperism, they were finally judged hale and hearty enough to get back to active duty for the time being. To soothe the antimemeticist's wounded pride, Lillian arranged for Epsilon-43 to fly them in to Site-06 direct.
The facility existed under the cover of a wildlife preserve. Their Sea King helicopter had to endure the application of a wrap proclaiming it to belong to the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, and the two of them had to endure a brief photoshoot to produce their fake IDs in the unlikely event that their cover was blown. The chopper touched down on a helipad surrounded by trees in a dip in the earth, and the helipad promptly dipped down even further on greased rails. A bomb silo door closed over top of them, and as soon as the platform stopped moving, armed guards appeared everywhere.
"They don't fuck around with security, do they?" Lillian remarked as one of the facemasked grunts waved what looked like, and probably was not, a metal detector over her.
Site-06 was where the Foundation sent its most dangerous prisoners. Many of them had once been agents or researchers. Some of them had been, and probably still were, Insurgents. Serpents Hand thaumaturges. Particularly theatrical anartists. Reality benders.
And, since late April of 2003, two geistschreiber.
"Man," Lillian remarked as she sat down at the table.
"What," Alis murmured.
"I was gonna lead with 'why so blue', but you changed your hair. This your natural?"
Alis's hair was now the colour her eyebrows had been in both iterations, a deep burgundy. Her skin was sallower than it had been at Area-21, since she'd spent the intervening year and a half underground, and she had thicker bags beneath her eyes. She looked defeated, which was good, because she was.
She was not, however, in a cooperative mood. "How about I pull my jumpsuit down, and you can check on your way to kissing my ass?"
Wheeler sat down next to Lillian, and the agent who'd led them to the cell closed the door. Alis glanced at her, then back at Ibanez. "Who's this?"
"I'm here to ask you a few questions." Wheeler didn't carry a tablet, or a clipboard. She placed both hands on the table, and clasped them together.
Alis hunched forward. "Let me get my bearings first. Which of you is the cynic, and which one wants to believe?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." From the way Wheeler's lip curled, Lillian knew it wasn't true. "Do you know anything about alternate timelines?"
"Like, Harry Turtledove shit?" Alis shrugged. "Not my thing."
Wheeler gestured at Lillian. "My colleague here just spent a year in your company."
"And not the year you remember," Lillian added.
One of the geistschreiber's eyebrows raised about a micrometer. "Were we the best of friends? Did I teach you all my deepest, darkest secrets?"
"You fucked Wettle again."
Alis recoiled, and slapped the table angrily. "God dammit. Shut up."
"Dr. Lillihammer is the only one who still remembers the events of the alternate timeline," Wheeler continued. "Everyone else's memories reverted. Any idea why that might be?"
"Nope." Alis was working her jaw, like she was trying to pop the joint. Maybe she was hoping to drown out the memory of sex with William Wettle via blinding pain. "Shouldn't work that way."
Wheeler nodded. "So you do know something."
"Oh, sure. I know all about alternate timelines. I'm from one."
The casual way she said this, Lillian almost missed it. Wheeler, however, came alive. "Do tell."
"My ancestors came here in a magic flying mansion, and when the world's about to end, I'll leave here in it. Isn't that great?" She snorted. "I think it's great."
Lillian sighed. "You've been in here how many months? You could have spent the time making up a better story."
"Who says I'm making anything up? I'm just so excited to have visitors, I'm spilling all the beans. A girl gets lonely, you know?"
Wheeler stood up. Lillian followed suit.
"Wait," the prisoner winced. "Please wait."
Wheeler waited. "I've got precisely zero time to waste on your smartass bullshit today."
"I'm sorry." She did look sorry. "Sit down."
They sat back down. "That might be the first thing you've said that wasn't soaked in irony," Lillian noted.
"I wasn't kidding. It's lonely in here." Alis placed both elbows on the table, and framed her tired face with both hands. "I'm in solitary, do you get that? Nobody's spoken more than a few words to me in three months."
"You know what?" Lillian smiled at her. "I'm going to say it anyway. Why so blue?"
"You're faking the arrogance this time around," Wheeler added. "It's not making it past your voice box. Are you depressed?"
Lillian clapped. "You don't believe in all your magic cult bullshit anymore, do you?"
"Pick that up from alternate me?" Alis frowned.
"Yeah, in point of fact."
"Just level with us," Wheeler suggested.
The geistschreiber looked back and forth between them, several very different emotions fighting for control over her face. "I don't trust you."
"Trust this." Lillian smiled nastily at her. "At your present level of cooperation, your only chance of getting out of here is a precisely targeted earthquake."
"I'm never getting out of here," Alis retorted, "no matter what I do. You haven't got any carrots to dangle."
"I'd have thought you'd at least take this opportunity to try and convert us to your cause," Wheeler remarked.
Alis shrugged. "What's the point?"
"Yes." Lillian nodded. "What is the point?"
"Okay. You know what?" Alis threw up her hands. "Fuck it. I don't care anymore. Here's the deal. I don't know why I did what I did."
"Yeah." Lillian smiled at her. "I know."
"You know what the giftschreiber are too, right?"
"Chaos meme cult. Disorganized. Violent. Insurgency with a better name, and a lot more creativity."
Alis paused. "I could tell you things about the Chaos Insurgency, if you want."
"This isn't about what she wants," Wheeler interrupted.
"We could make it—"
"This is about what I need as an agent of the Foundation's first line response against antimemetic threats. I need to know everything you know about the giftschreiber."
"And you'll believe me?"
"No, but I'll treat what you say as potential data."
Alis smirked. "Good enough. So here's the thing, right? When I was with them, in the in-group, it all made sense. Then your sewage factory blew up, and we all lost the plot. Then you dumped me in here for a year, and now I honestly couldn't tell you a single thing they told me that I still believe."
"Sounds like memetic compulsion," Wheeler mused.
"Sounds more like one of those overlays we encountered," said Lillian.
Wheeler blinked. "Overlays?"
"Someone else's personality elements and personal drive overlaid on yours. You're still mostly you, but someone's nudging the tiller."
"That," Alis nodded vigorously. It was the first real vigour she'd displayed since they'd come in. "That's what it felt like with the giftschreiber. That exactly."
"So you drank the Kool Aid," Lillian said, "and it made you a good little soldier, but now it's wearing off."
"I guess."
"How does your antimemetic effect work?" Wheeler pressed.
"Indiscriminately. I can't turn it on or off. It's always on, and I have to be extra memorable to overcome it."
"You were wearing a low-yield meme coat in the alternate timeline," Lillian recalled. "Bright, like your hair. All the other memeticists ditched their dazzlewear early on, because none of them wanted to be extra visible with monsters prowling the place. You, on the other hand, had to light up and present just so people wouldn't forget that you were there."
The geistschreiber nodded. "Yep. Checks out."
"How did you acquire it?" Wheeler asked. "Your glamour?"
"You call this glamour?" Alis puffed out her D-class jacket.
Wheeler stared at her.
"You're not as fun as the 43 people. Well, I don't remember."
"Is that a joke?" Wheeler demanded.
"I wish it was. We were going to start inducting new members when you had your little disaster, and poof! totally forgot how it works."
Wheeler suddenly stood. "You'll have to excuse us for a moment."
"Can't very well refuse," Alis shrugged.
"Yeah." Lillian stood up as well. "Fun how this works, eh?"
Lillian started to speak the moment the door sealed behind them. The guard stepped away to give them privacy. "You're thinking what I'm thinking."
"I am," Wheeler agreed.
"And we didn't even have to be in the same memetic cult."
"The erasure of whatever was in the empty chambers on your secret fourth sublevel is what confused the giftschreiber."
"And whatever it was, it gave them their power."
"A power source? An artifact? A mentor?"
"I'd lean towards the latter. That would explain—"
"The personality overlay."
"Yeah."
"So let's say you had some sort of next level cryptomancer down there, and they got aerosolized by the incident. Would that explain your seven crazy colleagues?"
"Assuming you mean the dead ones, yes."
"Would it explain why you still remember the alternate timeline?"
"No."
Wheeler took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. For someone so young, she had very old eyes. "I think we should try mnestic therapy on your friends, see if they can recall—"
The hall lights snapped to red.
"Uh oh," said Lillian.
The guard immediately walked back toward them, weapon raised. "Ma'ams, I need you to—"
Wheeler shot him in the chest. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. She grabbed Lillian by the wrist and flung her through the next open bulkhead, followed, and closed it behind her with a few quick taps on a panel Lillian hadn't even noticed.
"Got his disaster response priority wrong," she explained as she used her keycard to lock the heavy door.
"Kinda thin evidence for killing somebody." Lillian's voice was flat. She hoped she wasn't going into shock already.
"He's just winded. I shot him where the armour is thickest, just in case. Worst case scenario, broken rib."
The containment breach lights were on, but there was no alarm wailing. That was bad. There should have been a voice telling them what the problem was, which also wasn't happening. That was worse. Wheeler dragged her by the hand back down the hallway they'd taken, then sharply turned a corner and headed perpendicular to their original path. There could only be one explanation for such a diversion: the antimemeticist thought they were the target of the attack, and she was trying to occlude their location.
Fat lot of good that would do, with all the cameras in this damn place. The lower levels of Site-06 made Paramax look like Alcatraz.
As they passed an interrogation room, the door suddenly slid open and a pudgy-faced man clutching a binder appeared in the frame. "What's going on?"
Lillian took the binder from his hands and slammed it into his face. The binder was metal. It pulverized his nose. As he staggered back, screeching, blood pouring through the fingers clutching at his wound, Wheeler locked him in the office. She shot Lillian a questioning glance.
"Level two clearance badge. Shouldn't be down here."
Wheeler considered. "I think it was only the back half that's level three plus. Past the checkpoint."
"Oh." Lillian considered as well. "Probably still better that he's not roaming around. Safer in there."
Wheeler smiled for the first time. "With you out here, definitely. Know how to use a gun?"
She shook her head, then reached into her pants. There was no pocket. "No, but I've got something better. Something that doesn't set off metal detectors."
Wheeler disabled the next three suspected hostiles in ways which didn't allow Lillian to use her carry on luggage. One had either made the rookie mistake of becoming the spitting image of the man whose nose Lillian had just broken, or else was himself the real McCoy. Wheeler stuck him in an elevator and locked it down just to be safe. The next one was actually in the process of changing its face and clothes in the corridor when they crept up on it, so Wheeler took the shot. She blew out its kneecap, but then a whole load of its friends came rushing towards them and they had to lock the nearest bulkhead and detour. This presented them with a particularly ballsy geistschreiber masquerading as Wheeler herself. She shot that one in the head without blinking.
Lillian figured out the fourth and final one by what she felt was a brilliant process of deduction. They passed a locked lab with a panicked-looking janitor peering out the window at them, and they almost let it slide until Lillian noticed that the light over the keypad was red. Staff were given extra authority to lock doors during a security breach, but anything done outside their usual clearance level would produce an amber light instead.
That janitor apparently had researcher permissions.
Wheeler waited until they were out of his field of vision before shooting the window glass out, reaching in, and pulling the dazed impostor into the corridor.
Before he could react, Lillian stuck a thin piece of card in his face. "Cooperation," she said.
He stared at her.
She showed him the next card. His eyes flicked briefly from side to side. He wanted not to look, but had no lasting control now. "Abstract thought."
He blinked. "Guernica. You ever see it? They covered it up, you know, when we went to war in Iraq. Everyone is happy to countenance the horrors of armed conflict until we really, really want to prosecute one."
She showed him the next card, after selecting carefully. "Motivating forces."
He grunted. His eyes were narrowed. Right about now he was getting a killer migraine. "The only thing that keeps me getting up in the morning is Pop Tarts. I like them uncooked."
She smiled. She'd heard this progressive limitation of people's possible avenues of thought, MARSTON Verification Protocol, described as torture. It left your mind stuck in an increasingly constricted space until it was just you and the desired information. As methods of interrogation went, however, it was a lot less invasive than just beating the truth out of the target.
"Mission objectives."
His eyes filled with tears with the strain of trying to resist. "Keep casualties to a minimum. Extract only when ready. Don't break cover."
She pulled the last card. "Operative subject."
He sagged. "Capture the vessel."
"What vessel? Vessel for what?"
The man screamed.
"Who's the vessel?" she shouted to be heard.
Like she'd flicked a switch, he stopped screaming. "You," he said through clenched teeth. "You're the fucking vessel."
"What did he mean, you're the vessel?" They were running now, and Wheeler was shooting out every camera they came across. She had an extra magazine stashed in her belt that Lillian had never even suspected beneath that immaculately fitted suit.
"I don't know."
"Why did he scream when you asked him what goes inside?"
"Best guess? He was trapped in his own brain with antimemetic information. Whatever's in the vessel can't be properly conceived." She was beginning to think the survival training hadn't been a tremendous waste of time after all. Wheeler was obviously in tip-top shape, and it was good to be able to run, gun, and jaw at the same time.
"So, there's something terrible inside of you."
"Heard that one before," Lillian grimaced. "You gonna shoot me?"
Wheeler stopped them at the next corner. Lillian put a foot up against the wall as her partner prepared to swing her weapon out into the hall. "Keeping my options open."
Finally, urgently, as though realizing it was late to the party, a hollow screeching filled the halls. The solid red lights began to flash.
"Oh," said Wheeler.
"Uh," Lillian agreed.
It was the nuclear overload alarm.
11 October
They wandered into Bad Karlshafen two days later, clothes in tatters, battered and bruised and covered head to toe with dust. Their federal agent badges got them into the relief camp set up for the survivors of Site-06, which was presently a smoking ruin already described in the popular press as some kind of freak tectonic disaster. The Nature Conservation people were going to get to clamp down even harder on the region in response, which was good, because the whole facility would need to be written off and its inmates, the ones who'd been recaptured, relocated.
Someone had managed to stop the nuclear device from going off. Smart money was on Wheeler and Lillihammer, though neither of them could remember doing it. Someone had also liberated two prisoners, and killed about two dozen members of Site security staff in the process. The former fact had to be added, re-added, and re-re-added to the official report by Wheeler, who was used to that kind of thing, as nobody but them seemed to remember that either Alis Rydderech or Imogen Tarrow had ever been incarcerated at Site-06, or in fact who those names might even belong to.
A comprehensive debriefing showed that neither memeticist nor antimemeticist remembered anything past midnight on the first day. Not how they'd survived. Not how they'd escaped. Not even what could have happened to make them forget these things. Even with Lillian's pluperfect recall, the information was simply gone.
Except the part about the vessel.
"So yeah, glass half full," she told Wheeler as the Day Trippers' Sea King landed to take them back to North America.
Wheeler again threatened to shoot her, without even saying a word.
Allan McInnis stared at his redline telephone. He knew the timeline; he had a counter ticking down on the computer monitor beside him. He was going to get this down to the second. It was perhaps the most time-sensitive element of the entire procedure.
He needed to be precisely as tardy as he'd been on the least effective day of his life.
When the tinnitus came, he ignored it. When the phone rang, he ignored it. He turned to glance at the timer, forcing himself to wait, as the rings rang out. Then started again.
At the exact moment he'd done so on September 8, 2002, he snatched up the redline receiver and barked: "McInnis. Report." It came out harsher than it had before. He had knowledge now which he hadn't had then, which he couldn't forget. He had changed in ways he could not keep out of his voice.
"We, we, we have multiple…" The man on the other end of the line, David Markey, sobbed in such a way as to suggest a theatre student approximating grief. It seemed that Markey's ghost, too, was going through the motions. He began to sing to himself.
"State your location," McInnis said kindly, sadly, "and situation."
"Hyperbolic. Hyperbolic. All of F-D is going up, sir. All at once."
Good.
"Set the breach alarm." He killed the connection, then dialled up Zulfikar. "S&C."
His secretary put the call through instantly.
"Gather every available agent. Listen very carefully."
"Go ahead, sir," said the ghost of Janet Gwilherm.
"Materials breach in F-D." He was staring at his painting now, lost in a trance. "Send a team to the main airlock. Nascimbeni's in charge."
"Yes, sir."
The line died, along with a small but significant portion of his soul.
Ibanez leaned on the wall, arms crossed, eyes closed. She had watched the bullpen camera footage from September 8 very closely. She knew what she'd need to hear, and when she might expect to hear it.
She wasn't going to look until it was absolutely necessary.
She heard a squeak, as of a bullpen chair being leaned back, and a musical laugh. "That was just the short version! In full: Dr. William Wettle legitimately believes that D-class personnel are sold en masse to the Foundation by an anomalous smarmy salesman with a spray tan, who only shows up if you write a really wasteful experiment schedule."
Ibanez nodded, eyes still closed. "Thank god he's never gonna be responsible for anything important." She wondered how Wettle was coming along with the very important thing they had all been forced, against their better judgement, to trust him with.
There was a soft ping, then the sound of a button being depressed. Gwilherm began speaking to McInnis, and Ibanez let her focus drift until all she could hear was Charlie Brown adults warbling in the distance. Almost done. You're almost done. It's fine.
"Yes, sir," said Gwilherm, and Ibanez opened her eyes and leapt onto the intercom button. "You heard the man!" She pointed at each of the sacrificial lambs in turn, viciously, accusingly, and spoke their names aloud: "Radcliffe, Gwilherm, Mukami! Double time!"
They practically leapt to attention before rushing off. She hoped that wouldn't affect the outcome.
She thought she hoped it wouldn't affect the outcome.
Harry sat in the middle of the Salt Mines, staring at the space where the water cooler had been. Reuben Wirth's work station had been removed from storage and returned to its original, awkward location in the corner of two rows of desks. The papers he'd been working on at his time of death had been carefully filed on the event, and were now returned to their original location as well. It was coming up hard on six thirty, and Harry was waiting for the population of this deserted space to suddenly double.
He still wasn't sure it was really going to happen. Even knowing what he knew, it was a lot to imagine. He'd heard the testimony from the officers who'd seen Gwilherm, Radcliffe and Mukami pop back into existence, so he knew roughly what to expect, but whether or not it would happen again, after all they'd been through in the interim…
He'd been looking down at his console when the breach began, he recalled. So, he looked down at his console. He was checking citations for Lines in a Muddle, ahead of a possible first edition after all these years of plugging away. Dealing with history seemed entirely appropriate, given the circumstances…
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Fourteen booms. He said, on script, without looking up: "What was that?" It came out curiously flat.
And then he did look up.
Reuben Wirth was sitting at his desk — Harry would later learn that he'd been sitting there for fifteen seconds before the BOOMs — and looking out the glass wall windows to the hall without. "It sounded like a 'mech," the young man replied. He sounded like he thought he was in a dream. "Y'know, from Battletech."
"If it's a 'mech…" Harry got that much of the quotation out without trouble, repeating his own words, but he faltered on the second half. Wirth hardly seemed to notice, standing up and heading for the door.
"Reuben…" It was all Harry could do not to reach out for the other man as he marched to his doom.
The door closed behind him.
"It'll stomp you flat."
Nascimbeni body blocked the ghost, and the tentacle duly scooped it up. When Markey appeared, a few minutes later, he flatly intoned: "Is there anyone in there?"
He then carefully shut himself down for what he had to do next.
Nothing in the conprocs said Udo had to actually look at the corpse.
Wettle had done his research. He had learned that falling when limp was safer than falling when tense. This, he felt, qualified as humour.
Because while he'd been running away from a fire in his office back in 2002, he hadn't expected the perpendicular pile driver of security agents that took him down, so he'd probably struck the tiles in a relatively relaxed pose. This time, he was going to see it coming.
It was definitely going to hurt a whole lot more.
Next year, he thought, he would consider padding his pants.
If he remembered.
Lillian didn't look up from the report she was writing. Her internal clock was precise down to the second. She pressed what she needed to press, she said what she needed to say — in the context of Del Olmo's death this phrasing was a revolting irony, but she refused to linger on it — and she did it without ever dipping below one hundred words per minute.
She didn't even know they'd done it right until McInnis called her on the radio for debriefing.
"Same time next year," she muttered, and kept tapping away at her tablet. What was there even to debrief?
2002 was over, again.
18 November
"What was the point of it all?"
Ngo glanced down at him. "What do you mean?"
Harry shifted on the couch. "I don't remember it. Nobody remembers it."
"We're still talking about 5243-A? I wouldn't say nobody remembers it. And of course we got some of it recorded."
"Hardly anything. A whole goddamn year." He heard the bitterness in his voice, but couldn't bring himself to correct it. "Most of it's gone."
"You can read the parts that weren't," she pointed out. "They haven't been lost just because they didn't…"
"Because they didn't happen," he finished for her. "You were going to say they didn't happen."
She sighed. "It did happen. It was real."
"And now it isn't. So what? What did we get out of that?"
"We learned some vital information," she ventured.
"A whole year." He stared at the ceiling, seeing something else entirely. "We started to rebuild the entire world. We started new lives. And now it's gone."
"Is being able to read about it really that different from having the memories?"
He ignored her, which rather defeated the purpose of the session, but who the fuck cares. "It's like it happened to someone else, and all I have is the summary they thought was important. I didn't grow the way I… the way he… the way I would have, if I still remembered. It's not my experience, it's…" He clutched at the cushions in frustration. "It's just a story they're telling me. It's barely vicarious."
"Well," she offered, "it isn't like you've lost a year or anything. You still have your proper memories."
He looked up at her. "Is that what they are? My proper memories? Did this version of me," and he tapped his chest for an emphasis even he didn't really understand, "do those things, or the things I can't remember anymore? How do I know the memories I still have aren't just a lie I tell myself?"
"Harry," she smiled kindly. "That's all memories ever are."
2006
8 September
Wettle didn't remember the padding.
But he would, next time. The lump from where he'd careened, stiff-shouldered, into a stray tool cart was giving him plenty of muscle memory to rely upon.
Assuming that was what muscle memory meant.
It probably wasn't.
9 September
None of them felt very much like talking, but they were there. That was the important part. They were present, for each other.
"So," Nascimbeni sighed into his beer.
"Yeah," Lillian agreed. "So this is our life now."
"Just one day a year," McInnis reminded her.
"If we do it right," Ibanez reminded him.
"So, we'll do it right." Udo nodded as if to confirm her own statement.
Harry laughed.
Wettle blinked stupidly at him. "What?"
"We're fucked."
15 September
"What do these shots do?"
LeClair was taken aback. Ibanez hadn't thought to ask, the first time, she'd just assumed it was related to the life extension treatments they'd been promised. She'd been too embarrassed to bring it up the previous year, since the linked escalation of her sex drive had resulted in something so horrifically traumatic that she couldn't risk having to describe it out loud, not even to her doctor, not even months after the fact. This year, though, both the novelty and some of the pain had worn off.
LeClair shrugged, and drove the plunger home. "I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"The Council has indicated that these shots are safe for the seven of you to take, and that's all. I believe them, because you never hear about an O5 dropping dead." LeClair dropped the spent needle into an opaque black bag, completely ignoring the yellow sharps disposal bin on the wall beside her.
"You hear about them killing people all the time, though."
The older woman smirked. "Yes, well, I wouldn't take the shot. But that's your job, right?"
2007
14 February
M_Bradbury
I'm sorry.
M_Bradbury
I'm sorry.
M_Bradbury
I need a favour.
H_Blank
What do you need?
M_Bradbury
A job.
H_Blank
What kind of job?
M_Bradbury
At 43. But telecommuting.
H_Blank
From where you are now?
H_Blank
Where ARE you now? Still Grand Bend?
M_Bradbury
Yes.
M_Bradbury
And yes.
H_Blank
Why?
M_Bradbury
Can you?
M_Bradbury
Harry?
M_Bradbury
Can you?
H_Blank
I'll ask if R&E has an opening.
2007
8 September
This time, Wettle remembered.
This time was going to be different.
