Stop the Clock
1995
21 December
Site-01: Undisclosed Location
As Scout's Chair of Administration and Oversight, McInnis had been present for and helped to conduct perhaps half a dozen preparatory briefings for personnel the Director intended to bring before the Overseer Council. Invariably, the old man gave them instructions on the order of "Let me do the talking," "Just sit there and look serious," "Don't say a word unless they address you personally," or "Stick to the script, and do not improvise." These instructions were greeted with relief and ready acceptance in every case, and McInnis had no intention of being the exception to the rule when his time came.
Except that when it did, there was no briefing. The Red Right Hand chopper arrived unannounced, and Scout ushered him in, and within minutes of takeoff the Director had his fedora down over his eyes and was fast asleep.
McInnis had never been more flattered by anything in all his life.
It wasn't a proper Council meeting, but the security measures were still in place. The Council Chamber was pitch black save for a single white light, desk mounted, which only served to make it clear that there was a masculine silhouette at the table they were facing.
"Vivian," O5-8 said in a casual tone. McInnis had expected a voice changer, or perhaps a booming amplifier. "And Dr. McInnis. This is your first time at Site-01. Welcome."
McInnis nodded with a depth suggestive of bowing. "Sir. Thank you."
The silhouette gestured. "Have a stand."
Scout chuckled.
"So, the petition." The Overseer appeared to bow his head; McInnis wondered how he could possibly be reading anything in a manner that cast no light on his features. "I'm a little confused. Don't you already have no D-class? Sorry, that's not the right way to say that, is it. Double negative." He looked back up. "Doesn't Site-43 already prohibit the use of D-class personnel?"
Scout nodded. McInnis could sense the movement, though he couldn't see his mentor in the dark. "Of course. This proposal isn't about 43. It's about the entire Foundation."
A grunt, and the man's head bowed down again. There was a sound of rustling paper. McInnis was amazed to think that the Overseers printed things out before reading them. Then again, it did diminish the threat of electronic cognitohazards. "Table of logistical concerns is pretty thin."
"I believe the moral imperatives more than make up for that deficiency," Scout replied.
A snort. "You know better than to come to me with morality alone, Vivian. Why are you proposing we hamstring the Department of Containment in this manner? I see you haven't consulted with HARMA at all."
Scout sighed. "HARMA and the D-class program are atrocities, sir. War crimes looking for a war. We've suggested dozens of initiatives that could replace—"
"Bah." The Overseer looked up once more, and from the sound of it, closed the report. "A solution looking for a problem. D-class are efficient. The system works. It's proven and tested, and it's helping us prove and test everything else. Give me one good reason, and I do mean good, and I do mean one, why we should do absolutely anything to change this status quo?"
"Because the status quo, sir, if I may," McInnis found himself saying, "is seriously injurious to the sustainability of our academic efforts." He could feel Scout's eyes on him now. "Only the most psychopathic of scientists will have their enthusiasm undampened by implication with forced labour and illicit human experimentation, and such scientists are rarely in the top percentile of intelligence, creativity or dedication. We are limiting our own capacity to do right by doing this wrong."
There was silence in the chamber for what felt like an age. O5-8 broke it, because the other two knew this was his prerogative. "Are you suggesting, Dr. McInnis, that this single, entirely justifiable act of ethical greyscaling might be enough to turn our best people against the cause of protecting mankind? That they would sacrifice the good of their fellow human beings writ large, on behalf of the worst of us, in limited quantity?"
McInnis allowed a moment for Scout to intervene. It didn't happen, so he answered for himself. "I am not suggesting that this will lead to open revolt, no, sir. We all know the importance of the Veil. But that it materially injures our souls is a foregone conclusion, and it has been my experience that soulless experimentation can only very rarely be bent towards the good."
"Hmm." McInnis wished he could see the other man's face. Communication wasn't only about words and tone of voice. "Hmm hmm hmm. Well. I'll pass this along to the others. They'll vote it down later this evening. I'll let you know when that's happened, Vivian."
"Sir," the old man acknowledged. There was no sadness or anger in his voice, only the weariness of having an unpleasant forethought confirmed. He placed a hand on McInnis' shoulder, and turned them both towards where the door was hidden in shadow.
"One more thing, Vivian," the Overseer said to their backs.
McInnis moved to turn, but Scout's firm grip told him not to. The impudence sent a thrill down his spine as the Director responded: "Sir?"
"You were absolutely right about him."
"Yes, sir."
"I look forward to seeing you again, Dr. McInnis," O5-8 said.
We didn't see each other at all, he thought as the door opened, and the Red Right Hand reached in to reclaim them.
He couldn't tell if they were growing closer, or if the old man was simply getting more lenient in his old age. But this was the second time in one week that Scout had invited McInnis to the Director's Complex for dinner, and the second time they'd rounded out the night with a spirited philosophical debate.
By their standards.
"Might it not be more efficient to simply recruit the like-minded?" McInnis swished his glass of red wine.
"If by 'efficient' you mean 'easy', sure." The old man was still picking at the remnants of the pork chop on his plate. "Find people who already agree with you, and make them work with you. But what's the flaw in that logic?"
McInnis took a freshly-oxygenated sip, and shook his head as he dabbed at his lips with one of Scout's black handkerchiefs. "I don't know that I can see any such flaw."
"You could if you'd let yourself look." The old man sat back, and McInnis saw that his belly was bulging as the rest of him receding. "Don't be so sure of yourself. Don't come at every discussion like it's an argument, and don't argue like the only possible positive outcome is winning. Maybe you're wrong. You are wrong, in this case. Why are you wrong?"
It sometimes seemed like everything the Director did was to force him to consider a new perspective. Confident that there was a good reason for the exercise, he always obliged. "You believe that converting others to our way of thinking is better than preaching to the choir. You believe we should be nurturing our sensibilities where no such seed has yet been planted."
"I do," Scout nodded. "It's good to know you've been paying attention, even if sometimes you're not willing to interrogate what you're seeing."
He didn't take it personally. Anything that could make him stronger couldn't harm him. "I am trying. Perhaps a hint?"
"I'm getting too old for hints." Scout covered his mouth; if he burped, he did so very discreetly. "I'll just say it outright. A thing which is learned is far more dear than a thing which is believed. You can't teach a person who believes something to know it. They're two different things."
"Overwatch would appear to disagree."
Scout pointed at him in affirmation. "More than they're letting on. They don't want us teaching people a better way. They want to make the entire world see things the way they do."
"They do have an elevated perspective," McInnis reminded him. Advocacy for the devil was his role at this table, he'd swiftly learned. Scout always harkened to his better angels.
"I'll thank you not to craft any more positive euphemisms for standing atop an ivory tower." Scout cleaned his hands, and draped his handkerchief over the bone on his plate like a shroud of funereal modesty. "That sort of thing is beneath such a gifted communicator as yourself. The Council wants you to think we should only hire acclaimed experts because it's a better use of our resources. Let the world beyond the Veil create our people for us. But they're wrong. The kinds of people we need, the world doesn't generate those in quantity. The world teaches people to hate, to mistrust, to judge. Prejudice is the death of science. It's the death of humanism. It will be the death of humanity."
"There is no mind free of prejudice," McInnis smiled.
"No," Scout allowed, "but it only truly takes root and grows in the right conditions. Catch people before they become so much loamy soil. While they're still people. While they can still change their minds, and not see it as a weakness, or something to be feared." He was speaking with his hands now, something he never did. He was obviously excited, and it wasn't just the wine.
Though it was very, very good wine.
"I understand the philosophical point, but I wonder if, given the gravity of our responsibilities, we ought to be populating our force of world-saving geniuses exclusively with graduate students and young quarterbacks."
Scout chuckled with a warmth that probably did have something to do with the wine. "Not exclusively, but substantially. Don't misjudge the wisdom that comes with youth. A sharp intellect is a sharp intellect, no matter the vintage of its frame."
"I might counter that ignorance often masquerades as open-mindedness."
"I would rather have the ignorant," the old man said, "a thousand times over I would rather have the ignorant than the learned intolerant, and if you'll allow me today, Allan, I will tell you why."
It was a long, though not unproductive, evening.
1996
1 April
This time, the entire Council had been in chambers.
The Directorship of Site-43 was, for reasons McInnis had not fully understood until now, one of the most important posts at the SCP Foundation. All thirteen Overseers had impressed upon him the vitality of the work he would be doing, and shared a mind-boggling array of secrets, often in a bored monotone. (O5-2, the Archivist, at least had a reason for that.) But the meeting eventually ended, and when it did, all but two of the nameplates blinked out.
The lights remained off. Scout had been so trusted, after his eighty years of service, that he could sit and chat with Eight without any of the chamber's security features active. Twenty-odd years was insufficient to earn that privilege, apparently.
Eight was one of the two who lingered. The other was Thirteen, who spoke first. "A lot to wrap your head around, isn't it?"
McInnis didn't nod. Perhaps they could have seen it somehow if he had, but as always he strove for the clearest possible communication within the bounds of his circumstances. "Yes, sir.''
"He'll manage." Eight was the Foundation's special projects supervisor, and had been Scout's Overseer sponsor for a good long chunk of his career. He was used to dealing with technology rather than people, and his manner was often brusque. "Let's get to the final item, shall we?"
Thirteen's silhouette nodded. "Allan," the Mediator said. "We were unable to convince your predecessor to meet us halfway on a few key issues. I'm afraid we're going to have to be quite insistent with you."
McInnis tried not to stiffen. "Sirs."
Eight took over, as though this routine had been rehearsed. Probably it had. "Vivian ran 43 like a freshman college class. I could count on one hand the number of times he hired someone over the age of thirty. Your demographics skew younger than anywhere else in the Foundation. That ends today."
"Well," Thirteen chided, "not today. But a gradual trend is beginning, to be sure. Director McInnis, we feel very strongly that your facility requires more age and experience than it presently boasts. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
He found he'd been grinding his teeth. He doubted they could hear it… but then, he had the vague sense that the cylindrical bulk of the Archivist was still in the room, and perhaps it could. Perhaps his protest was already on record. Nevertheless… "I believe I do, sir. You're saying you expect me to shift our hiring trends away from recent graduates, and toward proven experts. Is that right?"
"That's right," Thirteen nodded.
"I see." He considered. "And you've expressed, unless I mistook your tone, a disinterest in debating this point. Yes?"
"Yes," said Eight. Very firmly.
McInnis shrugged. "Very well, sirs. Your preference will become official policy."
Thirteen sat back, apparently satisfied, but Eight sat forward. "You wouldn't be planning to pay lip service here, and continue Vivian's course behind our backs, would you?"
This time he allowed himself a little body language. He raised his eyebrows slightly. "You've invested a great deal of trust in me, sir. I shouldn't suppose your judgement in that matter was faulty."
It was something of a surprise when they let it go at that, considering how tactically he'd avoided actually answering the question.
2016
20 May
McInnis was on the way out of his office when he stopped, for no particular reason, and looked down at his assistant.
Zulfikar was greying around the temples, but he hadn't slowed down a bit. He met McInnis' eyes, and asked: "Sir?"
McInnis pulled a waiting chair up from the wall, and sat down. "You remember the expansion plans?"
Zulfikar nodded. Veil maintenance in the communities surrounding Lambton County was becoming more difficult to manage from Site-43. There was talk of opening satellite facilities in the coming years.
"Have you considered entering the administration track?"
His assistant blinked. "I… No, sir, not really?"
McInnis nodded. "And why is that?"
He hadn't seen Zulfikar so flustered since the first deadline. "I just… There's always so much to do here. So much work." He smiled almost bashfully. "The Good Work. Sir."
"Of course. But have you not considered that said Work cannot be progressed from Site-43 alone?"
Zulfikar was trying to keep an upbeat mood, but the conversation was clearly distressing him. "Are you asking me to transfer? Are you unhappy with my…?"
McInnis laughed. He didn't laugh often. It was an unsubtle tool, and difficult to tune. He hit what sounded to his ear like the right balance: warm, sympathetic, not mocking, but incredulous. "You? Your work has never been anything less than extraordinary. But you've been here almost twenty years, Zulfikar, and you're the Director's Assistant. You could be an Assistant Director. Even a Director, possibly."
It was difficult to tell on the other man's tanned and bearded face, but it seemed like he might be blushing. "Thanks, sir. I appreciate it. Really, I do. But I feel like this is where I'm meant to be. I…" He looked away, embarrassed. "I just really believe in what we're doing here. I have for a very long time. And that means the world to me."
I don't have to ask, McInnis thought. I could simply not ask.
"Around when," he asked, "did you first acquire this faith? If you recall."
His assistant considered. "Funny thing," he said after a moment. "Earliest I remember is right after the Breach, in 2002. You gave that incredible speech about duty and sacrifice." He smiled shyly. "I guess there's something to that whole thing about people coming together in a crisis, huh?"
23 May
Falconer University: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Harry couldn't help it. He picked up the stack of paper, and dropped it on his desk again. It made an audible thud. "You wrote all of this… yesterday?"
Reggie nodded. "Ayup."
"How on Earth?"
She shrugged. "When I go, I go."
"You certainly do." He turned over the first page of the first chapter, and his eyes automatically travelled to the footnotes. As he'd feared, they were immaculate. "I have trouble getting a few thousand words done a day. This is… is this the entire first section?"
She was beaming. "Ayupyup."
"And to what do you credit this outrageous success?"
She took on the affect of a robot. "The extensive and incisive commentary of my supervisor on the earlier drafts, of course."
"Of course." He continued paging through, expecting to find that most of the middle pages were blank, and this was an elaborate gag. They were not. It was not. "Jeez. Wow."
"Kinda serious though." She glanced to the side. "Those comments were really helpful."
Altan reached into his school bag, smirking. "Have to agree."
Harry watched in dismay as a second gigantic pile of paper was slapped onto his desk. "Not you, too."
Heng produced a smaller stack, which was probably at least a full chapter. "I didn't consider the material culture angle at all until you mentioned it today," he said sheepishly. "That's a whole other thing now. I'm gonna redo my second chapter from scratch."
"I'm sure it doesn't need that much amendment," Harry said. He was feeling a little faint.
"No," Heng sighed, "it does. I hadn't read Nora before. I've got like fifty pages of notes. It's going to be so much better now."
He looked at Reggie. He looked at Altan. He looked at Heng. He said: "You guys are creeping me out."
"You'll just have to live with being an excellent supervisor," Reggie smiled.
"We're part of a lineage now," Heng grinned.
"Yeah," Altan nodded, "apparently. Who was yours, again?"
Ah. That was it. They were buttering him up. "Again nothing. I never told you."
"I checked," said Heng. "It's not on record. Buddy's dissertation has blank — ha ha — spaces where the committee goes, and his acknowledgements page is missing."
Reggie whistled. "Wow. We really do have a super spy in our midst."
"They probably just misplaced the page," said Harry. It sounded thin even to him.
"I meant Heng," said Reggie. She winked at her jacked colleague. "He got out the physical copy of your dissertation. Who does that? The case is locked."
Heng shrugged. "Knowledge should be free."
"If that's enough idle chatter," Harry said, staring at the mass of unfinished chapters and dreading the amount of reading and writing he was going to have to do over the next few days, "we've got some actual work to get on with. Don't we?"
Reggie shook her head. "I don't know if it's more important than solving the Case of the Disappearing Committee."
"Literally 'The Disappearing Committee', Reggie," Harry warned her. "As in, the committee that will disappear you if you look too closely. Stick to your dissertation, please."
She turned to the others, and pointed at him. "Not natural. He's got some sort of weird government super powers."
Something about that set alarm bells ringing in his head, but they didn't give him the time or headspace to figure out why.
"What were those Canadian superheroes called?" Altan asked. "The Fab Four?"
"Five," Heng corrected. "The Fab Four were the Beatles. I don't think Harry was a Beatle."
"I can picture him with a bowl cut," Altan mused.
"Friends," said Harry, and he couldn't help but hear it in Allan McInnis' voice. "Please stop living in the moment. It's unbecoming of historians."
Nascimbeni kept a spreadsheet.
He had access, even editorial access, to dozens of them. But he only kept one for himself, on his private partition. He was suspicious of spreadsheets by nature; they were the sort of tool a manager used to control his workers, and Nascimbeni still considered himself far more the latter than the former. But this spreadsheet was different.
It only had power over him.
It was pretty complex. He might have enjoyed bragging about it to someone who would understand, like Veiksaar or even Lillian. It tracked J&M's accidents, upgrades, efficiencies, inefficiencies, merits and demerits and another half dozen metrics, and measured them monthly by a single criterion.
How much of that month he'd spent on or off the job.
He would have given anything for there to have been no correlation.
27 May
Pannonian Steppe: Pannonian Basin, Hungary
Ibanez crossed the tall grass on her belly, crushing a path for the towable ELIDAR array and dragging it in her wake. There was a gentle ping in her headset every time she came close to the edge of the field, and she turned around before reaching it every time, preserving its silhouette and remaining shielded from view. If a plane had passed overhead, it would have seen one of the strangest acts of crop marking ever to be non-anomalous.
"That's it," Rozálie whispered over the secure comms. "Crawl back here."
"On the double." She almost made a joke about being doubled over, and recognized the influence immediately. Spend less time around Blank. She made the mental note.
Rozálie was waiting under a tree at the edge of the field, shielded from view by a crude dugout Ibanez had erected around her. The geophysical information from the array had been beaming in for the past hour, and there was now apparently a result.
When she saw what was on the screen, Ibanez almost broke stealth to whistle.
The other woman pointed at a specific node on the display. "Looks like an air vent shaft," she whispered, her mic and Ibanez's earpiece enhancing and raising the volume. "Readings suggest natural stability in the area."
"Can you pinpoint me?"
Rozálie grinned. "Damn right. You thinking of dropping in?"
Ibanez hefted the Bremmelgun, and tuned it down to its low-heat boring mode. "Yeah, I think they need a lesson on what 'insurgency' really means."
"That," Rozálie breathed, "is extremely hot."
Del winked, but she also checked the gun's gauge a second time in case she'd misunderstood.
Crocker wasn't in the firebase.
More specifically, she wasn't in:
- the upper maintenance tunnels, where Ibanez snapped a man's neck and made a second man accidentally shoot himself in the throat by throwing one of the first man's combat boots at him;
- the main access corridor, where she hung from an air vent and recorded each target's vital stats before dropping down and widening the entire thing's diameter by an inch, vaporizing everyone and everything;
- the security station, which was nothing but a red and grey indentation in the corridor after she was done demonstrating her automatic rifle to its denizens;
- the security lounge, where a variety of entertainments quickly gave way to her own, until nobody was enjoying themselves except for her;
- the laboratories, where frantic scientists started spiking their experiments but quickly found her indiscriminate bullet spray a much more efficient means of closing the book:
- the dormitories, where a hard-bitten commander who reminded her of Gedeon Van Rompay tried to negotiate a ceasefire whilst still firing back at her, insisting that she could take everyone inside as her sole surviving hostages; or
- the secret laboratories, which she hadn't been meant to know existed — that geophys was really very good, capable of seeing through a hundred meters of solid rock — which she entered via a hole in the wall left by the high explosive grenade she'd flung in response to the commander's offer.
A few short minutes later and she — with the help of a very small backup team, most of whom only served to divide the enemy's fire — whittled the firebase's complement down to a legitimate last stand, which legitimately surrendered. She called topside to tell Rozálie to await extraction, then trotted to the base's front door, opened it, and exited through the entrance.
She hadn't killed any of the terrified noncombatants, or even the Insurgents who had thrown down their weapons.
Because none of them were Crocker.
McInnis wasn't often the one to bring up concerns at the Survivors' meetings. He was typically content to direct the conversation after one of the others provided the topic. Today, though, he almost took centre stage. Wettle wondered what had gotten into him.
They were discussing the capabilities of each Victim during each Deadline, specifically how they mapped to pre-existing talents in an exaggerated way. Harry said something about Mukami's exceptional powers of persuasion, and McInnis, apparently lost in thought, had responded with something vague about the depth of responsibility that kind of thing engendered. Lillihammer had been about to pave over the pothole with a new tangent, when Wettle shook himself out of half-sleep and grunted: "What?"
He grunted it loud enough that Lillihammer couldn't talk over him, and so McInnis heard. Because he had heard, he had to respond, because he was McInnis. He responded: "Nothing. Well… ah. Not precisely nothing." The Director sighed. "I've simply been musing on our own trajectories since the Breach."
"Meaning what?" Lillihammer snapped, obviously irritated at having been pre-empted. Re-empted?
"Meaning that in 2002, I was not wholly sanguine about my own leadership abilities. In the interim, they would seem to have increased in efficacy."
"You can't even brag in plain language," Nascimbeni grumbled.
McInnis nodded at him. "I can state it more directly. I seem to have learned more about how to inspire confidence in the past fourteen years than in all the years prior."
"Good for you, eh?" Lillihammer patted the air in front of her recliner, as though it were McInnis' shoulder. "Now, as I was—"
"Isn't that a good thing?" Wettle interrupted. "Because you sound kinda bummed."
McInnis frowned. Behind Wettle, Lillihammer probably began to turn red. He was glad he couldn't see it. She could be very scary when he didn't want her to be. "I've noticed that certain of my staff are choosing to remain here, under my leadership, as opposed to progressing their own careers."
"Captain Kirk effect," said Harry. "Guess you're just that awesome. Super relatable."
"As I was about to say," Lillihammer began.
"What?" said Wettle. He waved at Harry until the archivist turned to look at him. "What's relatable about it?"
Harry frowned. That was three of them frowning now; well, Lillihammer was probably scowling at this point. "Nothing."
"Oh." Wettle nodded. "Nothing like nothing, or nothing like the Director's nothing, which was actually something?"
Harry sighed. "It's just that I never thought I was that great of a teacher before, and these days it seems like all my students are kicking ass. I don't feel like I've been putting in the kind of effort normally required to accomplish that."
McInnis nodded. "This is my feeling as well. I spent decades honing my leadership skills, to less effect than I've seen simply by following my own instincts."
"Instincts work," Ibanez said. "Can confirm."
"Can we get back to—" Lillihammer tried once more.
"What?" said Wettle. "What was that about? Instincts?"
Lillihammer made a sound like a hot teakettle as Ibanez followed up. "Feels like I can do no wrong when I go with my gut, these days. Haven't lost a single soldier. Most bad shit that happens, happens because somebody else is in charge. Present company excepted." She nodded at McInnis, who smiled in return.
"Yeah, everybody in this room is super fuckin' great at their jobs now, and it's backpats all around." Lillihammer put her foot on the back of Wettle's neck, and pushed him over. "But that's not what I wanted to talk about, and it is my fucking turn."
"Huh?" Wettle rolled over to stare at her. "Everybody? Is everybody here better at their jobs than they were before?"
Everyone else in the room exchanged glances, one by one.
Wettle closed his eyes.
"Sounds like we need to do another fucking replication study," Harry sighed. "Willie?"
He pretended to be asleep.
When the others had gone, Lillian remained. She didn't make a move to dismount the recliner, so Udo got a glass of water from the kitchenette, and returned to rejoin her. "So."
"Mngh," Lillian grunted.
Udo waited.
Eventually, the other woman's expression solidified into something like presence. "Okay. So. We're marked by the Breach, and it's doing something to us. That's…"
"Bad?" Udo suggested.
"More complicated than bad." Lillian took several deep breaths, as though forcing extra oxygen into her brain. "Mostly it seems to be making us better, or at least more intense, versions of ourselves. Helping with my memory. Making Nascimbeni a better engineer. But what's it doing to you?"
Udo frowned. "I dunno. I never thought it was doing anything to me."
"But it makes sense," Lillian insisted, leaning forward and then flopping back as the angle of the recliner defeated her. "Obviously we've been singled out. We're the only ones who get to keep our heads when the timeline shifts. We're the only ones who can do our conproc duties."
"That part isn't proven," Udo reminded her.
Lillian waved the correction away. "I'm sure it's true. We're special. All of us. But what's special about you?"
Udo raised both eyebrows.
"That's not what I meant. Obviously you're a genius and all that bullshit. But how has that changed since 2002?"
Udo leaned back into the cushions, and sipped at her water. "I dunno," she said after a moment's thought. "I'm much better with my micamancy, but that's nothing new. That was the progression I was on before the Breach."
"Still, you've been pushing yourself. Learning new things. Trying…" Lillian snapped her fingers. "Learning. You're learning more than ever."
Udo shook her head. "I've been trying to learn more than ever. Putting in the effort. No magic breach power is doing that to me."
"It's still a change. We've all been changed. Maybe more than we know." Lillian sighed. "I just wish…"
"What?"
The other woman made eye contact. "I wish you weren't such an enigma. We don't know what you do during the Breach. We don't know what's been happening lately, that's got them wiping your brain every year."
"Surprised you haven't forced that information out of them yet. Seems like your kind of deal."
"Yeah." Lillian opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to think of something better to say instead. "Yeah, that does seem like my kind of deal. You know what I did the last time they tried to stop me from learning something I wanted to learn, Udo? You'll enjoy this story."
Udo did not enjoy the story.
She was going to have to think about it a lot over the next few months, and then decide whether she wanted to use the information to cross a new, exciting threshold in her career at the SCP Foundation.
The line between doing what she was told, and the potential for consequences.
3 June
"It's not that I don't understand his reservations," Polly sighed, and then yelped as she heard her own word choice. "Concerns, I mean. I—"
"I know what you mean," McInnis smiled gently.
"Okay. I'm sorry. It's just that…" She left the sentence hanging in the office's conditioned air, expecting him to finish it for her.
He didn't.
So she considered what she was going to say, and then said it. Not so hard, eh? "It's just that we are where we are, sir, and the best test subjects for this equipment are pretty well all going to be indigenous." She blinked. "Okay. I hear what I'm saying, and I don't like it."
He nodded. "You've already had permission to explore the pioneer cemetery, yes?"
"We've already explored it to death, sir. No pun intended. There isn't anything there to find. It might be the only unhaunted cemetery in Canada. But Nexus-94 is awash with ghosts. It's not like I'm planning to go all Ghostbusters on his ancestors."
"I understand that, and so does the All-Sections Chief. I believe he explained this to you already."
"He did, sir. Yes." She waited for him to explain how he understood her interest, sympathized, but could do nothing more to help her.
He didn't.
So she pushed ahead once more. "I don't mean to go over his head."
"But you are doing so, nevertheless."
"It's just that I don't get how we take one approach to all other anomalies, and a different one to the First Nations stuff in our own backyard."
"One element of your misunderstanding is that characterization. It is not our own backyard. We do not own any of the space we occupy."
"But we do cordon it off. We control it, and restrict access. And we have mutual cooperation pacts with the people who live and lived around here."
"That does not extend to harassing the spirits of their forebears," he reminded her.
"Why wouldn't they want to help us broaden our knowledge base, though? Sir?"
"Because knowledge collected on their traditions, possessions and culture has almost always either been used against them, or used to profit at their expense. Because while we and they are allied, they do not share our goals and do not necessarily trust our intentions. Most importantly, though, Dr. Mataxas, they deny our requests as a way of learning something about us."
She shook her head. "I don't understand."
"If the people of Kettle Point deny us access to their land, we can access it nevertheless. If they deny us access to their ancestors, we can attempt to contact them regardless. Historically such interventions have not ended well, but we could certainly attempt them. With near-impunity. There is no organized force in the vicinity capable of preventing us, and the federal government would turn a blind eye. Probably even OSAT would decline to become involved. If we were to do these things, then our allies would acquire invaluable information. They would learn that we are monsters."
"And if we don't…"
"Then they will know that our word is our bond."
The frustration was almost overwhelming. "Don't they already know that? Haven't we proven it to them before?"
"We have. And we will do so again, for as long as we occupy this stolen ground. Because for the people who once lived here, the people who have been shunted aside so that we might operate our oubliette beneath their feet, trust is not a thing once bought and forever owned. Trust, for those people, is like leadership."
"I don't…" She hated to say it twice, but she was a scientist. It came with the territory. "I don't understand."
"Leadership," he smiled, "is not a tree that once planted, continues to grow. Leadership is an annual flower. You renew it, over and over, indefinitely, or you admit that it is dead and gone."
She suddenly understood why he had forced her to formulate the problems herself.
"We do not lead the residents of Nexus-94, but we do renew their trust with every neglected opportunity to abuse it. Your work is worth a great deal to the Foundation, Dr. Mataxas, but you will need to find a way to perform these tests elsewhere. There will come a time when we need these allies, and I expect to be fully in their good graces when that hour arrives. I deny your request, therefore, as an instrument both of my leadership here and the trust justifiably placed in me elsewhere. Do you understand?"
He was not the most emotional of men, but it always gave him a little thrill to see, against all odds, that the answer was "Yes."
5 June
At first, Ibanez thought there had been a security breach.
She thought she was looking at Thilo Zwist with a shaved beard. The man was thin-faced and tired-looking, and he was leaning on a cane. It wasn't until she got a better look at the craggy features, particularly that incredible cleft chin, that she realized she was looking at Gedeon Van Rompay.
He was standing awkwardly in the middle of the lobby of Lake Huron Supply, Control and Purification. Not examining the potted plants or looking out the wide glass windows, as anyone else might have done, but staring resolutely at the stairwell from which she had emerged. When she approached, in her civilian clothes — her MTF uniform was a bit exotic for a bog standard refinery — the man behind the reception desk visibly relaxed.
"Ged," she said as the big man looked her up and down. "What's up?"
He finished his appraisal of her with a grunt that might have signified satisfaction, or at least acceptance. "How's the fort?"
"Still held down." She tried again. "What're you doing here?"
She wasn't used to seeing complex emotions on Van Rompay's face. He shifted his feet back and forth, leaning heavily on the cane. "Fucking bored," he said. "Got any work?"
He came into sharper focus as her eyes widened. New wrinkles on the forehead and around his mouth. Thinner cheeks. Bags under his eyes. Tendons standing out more prominently on his neck. The strain of keeping himself upright, visible in a slight tremble of his arms. He was wearing a flat black t-shirt and blue jeans, and where she was used to seeing a beret, there was the remains of a receding brush cut. He looked old. Very old.
"Uh," she said.
He bit his lip, then stopped biting his lip. A look of anger washed over him. "Look," he said. "I'm not asking for my job back. I'm asking for something to do. Florida…" He gritted his teeth. "I can't do Florida, Delfina. I can't."
He'd never called her by her first name before. Probably he'd never called any of them by their first names before. Except for Forsythe. She frowned. "I mean, we can usually find desk work for retired folk. McTeer—"
He waved this suggestion off with his free hand. "I'm not a paper jockey, woman. I'm a soldier. Give me someone to shoot at. Preferably someone who shoots back…" He blinked, and ended the sentence there.
She stared at him.
Unexpectedly, he turned on his heel and headed for the exit. The limp was pretty bad.
"I'll see if we have anything," she said to his broad back.
His shoulders rounded further as he reached the double doors.
8 June
This time the desert rose up at the horizon, into spires and domes which glittered in the sun. Udo was looking upon her home, she knew, though she'd never looked upon it before.
A cloud was rising behind it — no, the cloud was settling. Settling onto the sands. As she watched, one of the towers crumbled to dust.
She raised her hand, and set it right again.
"I should have known better," a voice behind her sighed, and she woke up surrounded by red sand in the dark.
10 June
Du examined the object through the glass. "Hmm."
"What do you think it is?" the agent, Yancy, asked.
"I think… yes." Du turned to him. "I think it's too small and too far away. Why did we put it in a chamber? Is it supposed to be dangerous? I can't make heads or tails at this distance."
Yancy frowned. "Did they not inform you, sir? Someone should have…" The big man sighed. "We didn't put it in there. It appeared in there."
Du blinked. "On its own?"
"Yes, sir. That's why—"
"—why you called Quantum Supermechanics. Right. Of course."
Du looked through the glass again. The object was a small statuette, red with black markings. It looked like a carving of a cat, or maybe a bear. It was hard to tell at this distance, and anyway it seemed very stylized. Like a tchotchke one might find at a world marketplace in a state fair.
"Hexmat suit it is, then."
There was a note attached to the statuette, made from chopped-up newspaper and magazine clippings.
YOU take IT.
Too dangerOUS. GOT into a fight and SENT my boyfriend to the CHALLENGER DEEP.
Didn't like WHAT I got back.
Good luck.
So that was concerning.
"Object is carved stone, or heavy wood." Du turned it over in his hexmat glove. "No maker's mark or other obvious signs of manufacture or origin. Attached note features a stylized image of what might be a rose, with a cross or plus sign at the centre. Note suggests…" What did the note suggest? "Note suggests object is dangerous — states it outright, in point of fact — and appears to suggest one of two things, depending on interpretation. Interpretation one: object's former owner translocated their boyfriend to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and object appeared in his place. Interpretation two…"
Interpretation two was much more fun.
Interpretation two turned out to be correct.
20 July
Ibanez had kept an eye open to implication and unlikely connection over the course of her investigation, and it bore unexpected fruit one evening as she pored over a pile of seemingly unrelated documents.
"Fuck," she said.
She was sitting at Nascimbeni's desk, in his quarters. She liked the claustrophobia of that unlivable space, a storeroom for ancient machinery with absolutely zero room to pace, because it forced her to concentrate on her work rather than flexing her muscles.
It did come with its complications, though.
"What fuck?" Nascimbeni was soldering something on his coffee table. The overhead fan was whirring double time to remove the carcinogens from the air — he was using lead flux, because he was repairing the control circuitry for an alchemical detoxifier, and had convinced himself that these insufficient safety measures were probably good enough, it'd be fine, and how many brain cells did he need at his age really — and she barely heard him over the white noise. It had been another thing recommending this workspace to her tonight.
She glanced over her shoulder, sighed, then stood up and turned her chair to face him. "Remember Moonlight Maria?"
He nodded glumly, and put his soldering iron down. Moonlight Maria had been an Acroamatic Abatement Group project at Area-21 involving a B-52 Stratofortress and some manner of complex toxicological system. It had blown up in 2002, a few months before the Breach, killing everyone on the project except technician-on-temporary-loan Philip Deering.
"Well, I know what it was for now."
Nascimbeni grimaced. "I already know everything I want to know about that. It was the AAG, and it was a bomber. They were building some sort of chemical weapon."
"Yeah." She looked back at the sheets, covered in a series of red lines and circles. "You don't want to know what they were bombing?"
He shrugged. "It's got to be the Chaos Insurgency, right? That's why it showed up in your files. That's what you're already looking at."
She bobbed her head from left to right in the universal gesture for well, kind of. "Depends on your perspective. The official pitch was definitely that it'd be used against the Insurgency. But the thing about them is… well, I've told you my new war stories." She grinned at the memory, then instantly fell sober again. "They go underground. They don't generally congregate where bombs will reach. You know?"
He sighed, and picked up the soldering iron again. "Just tell me, then. Who were they planning to gas?"
"If I'm right? Well. You ever hear how the Insurgency throws their weight around with local governments in unstable regions? Basically doing what we do with legitimate governments, only the shifty bad guy version?"
"Sure…" He stooped over his work again, then froze. He looked up under the rim of his hat at her. "Oh." He wrinkled his nose, and it had nothing to do with the fumes. "They were going to bomb…"
"Civilian support networks, governments and militaries associated with the Chaos Insurgency. Yeah."
He ran his gloved finger along the edge of his flux spool, pulling out a new length to tin his solder head. "Amnestics?"
"Best case scenario."
He shook his head. "Almost glad it blew up, then." He winced at his own words. He'd known quite a few of the technicians who'd died.
"Think we ought to tell Phil?" she asked.
He didn't even look up this time. "Why? You think he needs something new to feel guilty about?"
"Change can be refreshing," she half-smiled. "It's not like he can go on a real vacation."
10 August
Du didn't like D-class personnel.
Nobody he knew at Site-43 did. Elsewhere at the Foundation, it was common for kidnapped cons and death row inmates to be pressed into service as scientific guinea pigs, with the tenuous rationale that this inhumane treatment was still, statistically, better than death or life in prison. Supposedly, those who survived long enough or whose worth was worn through were amnesticized, given new identities, and returned to society rehabilitated, after a fashion. Most people chose not to examine that premise too closely.
But by standing order of Vivian Scout, which McInnis had annually argued back into force with the O5 Council, Site-43 hosted no permanent D-class population. It was argued, quite effectively, that having flunkies on which to test every odd thing made researchers act with complacency, if not outright cruelty. It was better to find a more creative way to figure things out. Site-43 had been founded on that principle.
Sometimes, however, exceptions had to be made. The obscenely-acronymed Human and Animal Resources Management Authority (HARMA) would be contacted, and they would ship over a single member of D-class personnel where no other logical means of experimenting on an object could be found. McInnis only ever allowed it, to Trevor Bremmel's frequent dissatisfaction, when there was no immediately apparent and obvious danger to the tests. The prisoners could not be fed into an active paper shredder. If they, for example, picked up a small statuette and it shredded them like paper, well, that was something else entirely.
Du still didn't like it. And by the way his peers looked at him as he began his battery of tests, they were on the same page with him.
D-45613 was a hard-faced woman with a quick smile and a history of violent racketeering. She was giddy, as she probably should have been; getting sent to 43 was like winning the lottery for a D-class. She waved at him as he entered the observation room. The one-way screen on the glass had been lowered. He waved back, and picked up the microphone. "You've been administered the mnestics and fortificants, D…" He glanced down at the sheet for her number, saw her name first, and decided he really did not feel like playing ball today. Saying a four-digit number to a humanoid SCP was already stupid. Five digits for a D-class was beyond the pale. "Miss Hartman?"
Hartman blinked rapidly, obviously surprised to hear her real name spoken aloud. She could easily have forgotten it; her transfer papers said her last home had been Site-17. She nodded. "Yes, sir."
Du had chosen the cocktail in consultation with Forsythe. The woman's mind was now very clear. Catastrophically clear. If she wasn't given something to think about, she'd probably hyperfocus on her own situation, and that was no good. So, Du said: "Listen very carefully. I want you to do the following, in order, and nothing else. Don't do any of it until the instructions have been fully spoken. Understood?"
She nodded.
"I want you to pick up that statuette on the table, and then think about the table. Whatever happens next, put down whatever you're holding. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but can you repeat it back to me?"
The mnestics did their thing. "Pick up the statuette, think about the table. Whatever happens next, put down whatever I'm holding. You're right that it doesn't make sense." She smirked. "But can I do it now?"
"Please do."
She picked up the statuette, and in the blink of an eye, it appeared back on the table. She yelped.
"You may skip the final step," Du breathed. "Obviously."
12 August
Udo had to rely on a friend to manage the ambush, but that was no great hardship. All seven of them had become reliant on each other to a certain extent over the past few — was it still few? it didn't feel that way — years. Del was the only person other than the Director who knew when his guests were arriving and leaving, and Udo knew that these particular guests prided themselves on their timeliness, so she set her watch, and when it beeped, she walked to meet her destiny.
In the sense that she was about to bump into a time traveller.
Thaddeus Xyank could be rude at times, but he drew the line at disappearing in front of people, so he and Alice Forth walked out of the Director's office together. No doubt he was headed for the men's room, from which he would never emerge. Udo slipped through the double doors to A&O while he was still saying goodbye to Forth, and she bounced up and waved effusively. "Hi! Got a minute?"
Forth looked pained. Xyank, who responded, looked simply annoyed. "Always and never," he answered cryptically. "What can I help you with, Dr. Okorie?"
"You can tell me why I get amnesticized every year."
The two temporal Directors glanced at each other. This time Forth spoke first. "What makes you think we know?"
"Because it's related to my conprocs," she said, "and because the first time I ever heard of the Temporal Anomalies Department, it was in relation to Dougall Deering, who is also related to my conprocs." She'd taken a deep breath before beginning, so that she wouldn't be interrupted until she was finished. By the look on Xyank's face, this had been a good call. "I know I'm a pretty stable individual, so I don't buy the trauma explanation. Whatever it is, I can take it. So you've decided not to let me. And it has to be you guys, because nobody else has an interest in 5243."
"Thad." Forth looked up at the moustachio'd anachronism. "This one's all on you. I've got nothing." She nodded at Udo. "Good to see you again, doctor."
Udo nodded as the other woman left.
Xyank sighed. "If I know something, and you don't know it, that is obviously the intended state of affairs. I'm not in the habit of explaining temporal mechanics to cogs."
She laughed. It was easy to laugh at him. One needed only to look. "You think I'll give this up because you're being insulting? Sir, I've travelled through time and space with some of the most insulting people in the world. A few of them are my best friends."
He looked from side to side, as though searching for a niche into which he might vanish. "Don't talk to me about travelling through time and space, please. It's so embarrassing when people do that. I don't even do that anymore." When he saw that she was in no sense mollified, he rolled his eyes. "Listen. I don't answer to anyone at this facility, and that's a good thing. I have to be objective. There's a lot more at stake than just your peace of mind. There's more at stake than the existence of this subset of reality. Do you understand? I'm not going to become an open book just because you're feelings are hurt. If I was that kind of person, the universe would unravel. I do what I have to do. That's all I have to say."
She jerked her head to one side, quickly, in acknowledgement. If it looked like she was telling him he could get lost, well, that was fine. "Okay. I had to try."
"Sure." Xyank nodded. "I suppose." He walked past her. "Whatever that means."
She watched him exit the foyer, heading for the cul-de-sac to what was colloquially known as Falkirk's Washroom.
It means I had to give you a chance, before I do what I have to do.
14 August
It had been months since Anoki had called Ngo into his office. Other than their regular appointments, they hardly saw each other at all, and they weren't due for a debriefing until September.
Like most people at Site-43, though for her own reasons, September was becoming her least favourite month.
Anoki was typing something into his terminal, but he glanced up and nodded when he heard her come in. She sat down, and waited. He didn't keep her waiting long, and didn't take long to cut to the chase, either.
"The O5s want a renewed psych assessment," he said.
"For?"
He gave her a cockeyed look. "Who else? The Sampis. All seven of them."
She nodded. "So, you're asking me to interview them all again, and determine whether they're more of a threat to the Foundation than they were last time, when I told you they weren't at all."
"That's right."
He turned back to his monitor and resumed his typing as she considered what response to give.
She gave the response she'd been saving up, without realizing it, for September. "No."
He didn't look at her, just kept on typing. She let the word hang in the air until he was done, and when he turned to face her again, there was a smile teasing at his lips. "No?"
"No." She sat up straight in her chair. "This kind of thing encourages an atmosphere of mistrust and backbiting. It's unbecoming of us. Our job is to maintain the morale of this facility, and we have responsibilities to our patients. I complied with your instructions at first, because you're my boss, and you have your bosses, and maybe I thought it might be useful to see where their heads are at. But I'm not going to push this thing any farther, sir." She smoothly transitioned into a speech she'd rehearsed in bed from night to night, imagined delivering in almost precisely this manner, to this man, in this room. "These dedicated professionals have faced a series of extremely difficult situations with uncommon tenacity, creativity and ingenuity. They are irreverent, crass, sometimes self-important, very frequently unorthodox, but they are the best of the best we have, and we need to trust them. If they weren't worthy of that trust, the world would already have ended three times. They've been solely responsible for keeping baseline temporality intact, for all the bluster we get from DTA and TAD. There does not exist a single mote of responsibility in existence we could add to the burden they're carrying day by day." She crossed her knees, and folded her hands on top. "I think they comport themselves quite well, all things considered."
Anoki held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. "Alright. Duly noted."
"And I'm not going to schedule any more dates for Philip Deering," she added, suddenly flushing. "That's done. That's over."
He smiled. He actually smiled. "Sounds fine. You can explain that to Dr. Elstrom at the next Chairs and Chiefs. I'm sure she'll be thrilled."
"You've never brought me in on one before. I understand they don't allow observers very often." Ngo smiled back at him, wanly. "And I hear they make guests stand."
"You won't be an observer, or a guest." Anoki turned the monitor so she could see what he'd been typing. It looked like a letter. She leaned in closer.
He could undoubtedly see his words of resignation reflected in her glasses, perhaps even her wide-open eyes as he told her: "You'll have a chair."
28 August
Michelle Hartman was having the time of her life.
D-45613 had been the only test subject used in the SCP-5416 experiments which had taken place over the preceding two months. She'd helped Quantum Supermechanics to figure out precisely how the strange little statuette worked; even though the process was now extremely clear, the parameters known in full, nobody else had yet utilized the device — which they were colloquially calling 'the Lever', for its ability to move any object — except her. Today was her final physical with Dr. Forsythe, and at the end of that, if she still showed no signs of ill effect from repeatedly translocating matter with her mind, she would be discharged back to HARMA with a glowing recommendation for release to the MTF training program.
Du watched her leave the chamber with a sense of awkward satisfaction. Satisfaction because, as relationships between warden and prisoner went, it had been a productive and respectful one. Awkward because he hadn't signed up to be a warden, and she was a prisoner of no recognized governmental authority. It still felt wrong, no matter how right he'd tried to do by her.
But he couldn't focus on that anymore. His focus was, in fact, in need of crystal clarity.
SCP-5416 was, as the note had suggested, an extraordinarily dangerous object. If you picked it up, the first thing you thought about became the object to be moved, and the next thing you thought about became its destination. Hartman had been thinking about the statue when she picked it up, so it was immediately teleported to the table. They put it in a box from that point onward, so it wouldn't be on her mind until she picked it up again. In the second test she focused on the table, and moved it across the room. In the fifth test she transported a dime from the table into her pocket. The fourteenth test had solved a longstanding mystery in the field of confectionery. After eighteen tests, they knew enough to write up a comprehensive manual for the object's use.
They were coming up on Test 28.
And they still had zero clue where it had come from.
That bothered Du more than Hartman's fate.
A fact which bothered him most of all.
30 August
Imrich did most of the talking.
He let Wettle present the boring parts, the repetitious tests that had confirmed or falsified each result, and made sure he was the one to present the actual findings. The big man liked it better that way. As far as he was concerned, this was his project, so the things he'd contributed had to be the most important ones.
When they were done, Wettle was beaming. Imrich had to admit it was a little, just a little, endearing.
Considering the import of what they'd just described.
McInnis leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers over his chest, and turned one quarter-rotation to glance up at the framed painting on his back wall. "That is… very interesting," he said.
"I thought so, too," Imrich agreed.
Wettle continued to smile, blandly.
"I take it you haven't shared this with anyone else."
It barely merited a response; McInnis was merely stating fact. He knew Imrich's confidentiality was beyond reproach, and the only people Wettle talked to would be the ones McInnis would share this information with anyway. Eventually. Probably not right away; Director types liked to mull things like this over before deciding who else needed to know.
When it became apparent that an answer was expected anyway, Imrich said "No, sir. Of course not."
In a bad spy film, McInnis would have pressed a button and the floor would have dropped out under their feet. Instead, he nodded without looking in their direction. "Very good. If you were to write out an abstract for this paper, gentlemen — not that you'll ever be publishing it, you understand—"
"You're not going to kill us, are you?" Wettle's smile was suddenly gone.
McInnis looked at him out of the corner of his eye, and came the closest Imrich had ever seen him come to smirking. "No, William, of course not. But please don't interrupt. If you had to write an abstract for this paper, how would you formulate it?"
Imrich's mind started wheeling away. Wettle looked up at the ceiling, and bit his tongue.
Imrich went first. "A series of replication studies conducted over a period of many months confirms that the scientific laws governing baseline reality and baseline temporality no longer function as expected in one hundred percent of all cases, with increasing deviance over time likely pointing to a large-scale cessation of functionality as early as ten years hence."
Wettle glared at him. "Too wordy. You need something more eye catching. I would have just said: 'physics is broken, the world's about to end'."
31 August
Du couldn't shake the feeling that this was a bad idea.
But the decision had been made, and above his pay grade, so as he always did when confronted with a thing that should not be done, but had to be, he did it as best he could.
That meant giving the honours to Dr. Bell, a whip-smart young woman who through no fault of her own had been saddled with the lowest Cognitive Resistance Value in the entire Quantum Supermechanics Section. That meant her mind could be easily molded by the mental fortificants, particularly the mnestics and focus drugs, required for any use of SCP-5416, which meant that when she performed her little trick, it would be with the utmost precision. Du had a fairly high CRV, and it took a higher dosage to overcome his mental defences, which left him feeling a little lightheaded. That wouldn't do today.
Because today, they were going to teleport a tall ship from a distant cove into the single largest containment chamber ever erected at Site-43.
Well, erected. It had actually been poured.
SCP-5162, an enormous Jacobean vessel named The Weight by its unknown builders, is one of the few serious cognitohazardous anomalies both known to the Foundation and remaining in the wild. It sits in an inlet off Lake Huron's Georgian Bay called Forrestall's Lagoon, for unclear reasons — meaning why it's there, and who named the lagoon, and how anyone knows what the lagoon's name is, are all things we don't presently know. What is known is that individuals encountering The Weight will subsequently regard their memories of doing so as false, then suffer from anxious dreams regarding the vessel or tangential topics for what may well be the remainder of their lives.
In late August of 2016, it was decided that this risk to the Veil of Normalcy could no longer be borne. The Department of Containment ordered the use of SCP-5416, "The Lever," to teleport it from the lagoon into a truly vast concrete cube poured into a framework erected in a cave bubble just off the west end of the first sublevel Security and Containment block. Once the poured concrete hardened, water was poured in next via the Lake Huron floodgates and internal water management systems, until a reasonable approximation of the ship's no-longer-to-be-final resting place had been achieved.
All that remained was to perform the simple act of translocation.
— Blank, Lines in a Muddle
"Are you ready, Dr. Bell?"
The young woman smiled nervously, but responded right away. "Sir, I think so. The drugs are definitely working."
Du nodded. The deliberate phrasing and lack of hesitation were indicative that the cocktail had taken hold. "And you're fully aware of the process?"
She nodded back at him. "Sir, yes sir." And she tapped her temple, smiling with considerably more courage.
"Good." He tapped his code into the containment chamber where the Lever was being stored, in its little wooden box. "Let's make history."
She laughed. "Don't let Dr. Blank hear you calling this that. He'd have a fit."
Harry was in the topside elevator when it happened.
There was a sudden screech, so loud that his ears popped, and the elevator car jerked suddenly to one side, then snapped back again. There was a strange whining from the cable overhead, and as he realized he'd fallen to his knees, and that they now ached very badly, he lunged forward and mashed the emergency stop button. The elevator clawed at its shaft, and settled to a very permanent stop.
He pressed the button to open the doors. They wouldn't open if there was fire on the other side; since 2012, they also wouldn't open on void, not without a high-clearance override. Luckily, there was neither.
What there was, was chaos.
Tiles falling off the walls. Walls falling down. Ceilings, tiles and all, falling down. There was a crack in the floor in front of him. One of the containment cell doors was off its hinges, and he wondered if it had been one of the occupied ones. People were shouting everywhere. Belatedly, the breach lighting and klaxon snapped on; as it did, half of the fluorescents in the hall exploded.
"What the fuck?!" Harry shouted. This immediately produced a pair of armed guards, who rushed to the elevator car and ushered him around the nearest corner.
One of them, a woman, slapped a device on the wall as they turned into a seating niche. She cocked her head, apparently listening for something, and then nodded. "Structural members are sound over here. Stress didn't get them."
"What stress?" Harry snapped.
"We had a quake," the other agent, a man, responded. Harry was having trouble making out details in the ruddy gloom, what with all the dust catching what little light there was. "Localized up here, looks like."
"It wasn't a fucking quake."
Harry recognized Xinyi Du's voice a second before Xinyi Du himself staggered out of the latest burst of particulates, flanked by another pair of guards. He was coughing, and swearing under each cough.
"What was it, then?" Harry asked, as the female agent turned the corner again and said something into her radio. "Did someone attack us?"
"Something like that." Du slumped against the wall.
Harry put a hand on his shoulder. "What, then? What's happening to S&C?"
"It's settling."
Harry realized the disaster protocols hadn't instilled much terror in him. He might have stopped to muse on what that meant, but because he only noticed when Du's words filled his chest cavity with dread and butterflies, he had other things to focus on. "Settling? Settling from what?"
"By my calculations?" Du pulled his tablet out of his labcoat pocket. Its screen was filmed with dust. "From the entire sublevel moving about one metre to the south-southwest."
Du had been at a loss to explain how his researcher could have made a mistake with the Lever under the influence of so many drugs tailor-made to prevent it from happening. She'd told him, in tears, that she must have lost concentration for a second, and accidentally focused on the first sublevel and its new containment chamber — which was now broken in half, and leaking water into the second sublevel — and then focused on it again in panic, resulting in a mild translocation of the entire floor which it had never been built to sustain.
It didn't take long for the Survivors to take stock, and realize the full extent of what had occurred, and what it would mean.
Nascimbeni found that the entire southern and western elevations had been partially fused with the bedrock, which was going to take an age to fix. In addition to the cardinal shift, S&C had also been dropped down about seven centimetres, playing serious havoc with the systems beneath the floors and above the walls. The damage was extreme; not as difficult to understand as the Breach in AAF-D had been, but no less catastrophic and no less problematic to repair.
Ibanez flew Blank out to the lagoon, which had the nasty tendency to force you to leave and stop thinking about it when you got too close — hence the need to remove the Weight by nonstandard means. They were able to confirm that it was still there, with some effort. It took them an hour to figure out where they were, and fly back.
By that time, Lillian had attempted, and failed, to interview the errant Dr. Bell. She had apparently disappeared in the chaos; none of the guards could remember retrieving her from S&C.
None of the guards could remember her at all.
Nobody could.
She wasn't in the database. There was no Dr. Bell employed at Site-43. Nobody even knew what her first name was.
"But I can fucking guess," Lillian snarled as she flopped down into the recliner she'd claimed. "It's either Alis or Imogen. Ring a bell?"
1 September
McInnis placed an immediate hold on SCP-5416. No personnel were to be permitted to access the Lever until further notice.
Lillian worked with Forsythe to develop a mnestic/fortificant cocktail that could overcome even her superlative defences, because nothing but her steel trap mind could be trusted with restoring the first sublevel to its proper position.
There was no question that it had to be.
The fact that only AAF-D reverts itself each September does not change the fact that the two other Sections involved host events key to the proper progression of SCP-5243. Serious change to either the first or second sublevels in the vicinity of the Breach's effects has therefore been prohibited by Directorial fiat, as it is not known what might happen should either be out of position by even a micron when what's meant to happen, happens.
And nobody wants to find out.
— Blank, Lines in a Muddle
Which made it something of a problem when Du came to Lillian, ashen-faced, and told her that the Lever was no more.
"No more what?" she'd snapped, head still full of peptide formulas.
"No more anything." He looked like was about to scream, or maybe like he already had been screaming. "It's in the sun."
Lillian mouthed his words back at her, then shook her head. "No comprende. In the sun? What does that mean?"
"It means," Du stopped to steady himself on a doorframe, and she realized he was trembling with rage, "that the Lever, is in, the sun."
| Incident Report SC-I-3557 |
|---|
| Date: 09/01/2016 Officer of Record: R. Pensak (Chief of Security and Containment) Consulting: Dr. X. Du (Chair of Quantum Supermechanics) |
|
Summary: At 14:32 hours, an individual claiming to be Agent Paskal Pandev of MTF Gamma-5 ("Red Herrings") was discovered in the containment chamber to which SCP-5416 was assigned. Under interrogation by Dr. Du, this individual claimed to have overriden the security lock placed on that object following Incident Report SC-I-3512 (ongoing), in order to perform activities relating to a classified Overwatch Command-sanctioned operation. Under extreme pressure from Dr. Du, Agent Pandev explained that he had attempted to utilize SCP-5416 to remove a distant asteroid expected to impact the Earth in approximately one year. Familiarized with the target, and already familiar with the Earth's sun in his capacity as a Foundation-employed astrophysicist, Agent Pandev attempted to remove the asteroid from its current course and place it within the heliosphere. Due to what he is now calling "serious deficiencies in the object's documentation by Site-43 personnel," its properties were not properly understood, and the object itself was sent into the sun in place of the asteroid. Recovery seems unlikely at this time. Agent Pandev was detained for one day at Site-43 under the authority of Chief of Security and Containment Roger Pensak, who along with Dr. Xinyi Du of Quantum Supermechanics, has been named in a complaint to Overwatch by that agent. |
Du escaped serious consequences via a combination of seniority, very good explanations, and — as his staff would have it in years to come — an untouchable frothing fury that made even the Overwatch auditors hesitant to come down on him too hard.
Pensak got a black mark on his record, having failed to so much as notice the interloper, official business or not.
The auditors somehow never got around to removing the note on his file after Agent Pandev disappeared without a trace a day later, having apparently never been attested in any Foundation database. Foundation Mission Control at Area-06 denied any knowledge of an astrophysicist by that name, and furthermore denied the existence of the putative asteroid.
"So basically," Ibanez concluded, "We're fucked."
8 September
According to Wettle, who was very pleased and took immediate credit, they'd never conducted their containment duties with such scrupulous precision and accuracy before.
Which would have been great, if it had mattered.
Everyone was in such a poor mood that it took them a while to realize there were only five of them in Udo's dorm. That McInnis was absent was no great surprise; he was the Director, so it was his job to clue in Temporal Anomalies un and deux that they'd fucked the timelines again.
That Udo wasn't present in her own room, well, that was something else.
"Probably remembered something she had to do," Lillian yawned. "Wake me up when it's hellworld, okay?"
Ibanez had laughed when her pager went off. "Confidential duty," she'd read. "How the fuck is there confidential duty now? The whole fucking world is about to change. What a joke."
Then she'd reported to S&C, and they'd directed her the secure chamber set up in Applied Occultism for what was probably the most secret act of containment performed at Site-43, and it didn't seem so funny anymore.
Du met her at the door. He looked tired. He'd looked tired all month. He waved, weakly.
She pointed at the door. "He still alive in there?"
The little man nodded, and looked slightly down at her. "I think we're going to get an explanation, finally."
Ibanez raised her eyebrows. "Of what?"
"Of everything."
"Wow, everything. I never knew Deering was that smart." She turned and put her boot up on the tile walls, and waited.
Du wasn't done. "McInnis says we might as well interrogate him, since there's nothing we can do to hurt the timeline right now."
"Uh huh."
"Apparently Xyank and Forth disagree."
She glanced at him. "Allan's going against advice? Why?"
"Why what?" a woman's voice asked, and Ibanez looked to the right to see Udo Okorie approaching, her mouth a thin line.
Ibanez kicked back off the wall, and stood there with her hands at her sides. She had the strangest instinct to draw her weapon. Maybe it was the look on Udo's face. "Uh…"
"I said, why what?" Udo stopped in front of her, arms crossed.
"Why, uh, is Allan going against Forth and Xyank's advice…?" Ibanez glanced at the secured chamber, knowing what was inside of it, wondering whose job it was to panic right now.
"Because he trusts mine more than theirs," Udo responded. "That probably would have sounded a lot cooler if I'd heard what you said the first time, instead of having to ask you to repeat it."
Udo had been brief and to the point, when she'd walked into McInnis' office without being announced. Her amnesticization hadn't taken, and she knew Dougall Deering was alive, and she didn't care — except so far as their investigation into the giftschreiber, geistschreiber, and the Breach in general was concerned. "What's there left to be precious about?" she'd demanded. "All of this is going to get fucked in less than a day. Why not see what he knows before you off him?"
McInnis had been startled by the ferocity, but saw no fault with the logic. Neither Forth nor Xyank would make the trip to Site-43 after the Breach had been unsuccessfully contained, due to the need to avoid temporal cross-contamination, so they had a free hand until the clock struck 6:26 the next day.
He'd still intended to deny the request until she told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he did so, she'd walk into Applied Occultism, sandblast the doors off, and interrogate Dougall herself.
He'd picked up the phone. "That simplifies matters considerably. Chief Pensak? Please page Chief Ibanez."
Udo had, obviously, elected to go with the consequences.
"A man spoke in my head," Dougall Deering's voice said on the recording, "in the voice of my internal monologue, and told me he was me from the future. From a soon-to-be-dead timeline, just like the one we're in right now."
"Who told him that?" Lillian groused. Ibanez shushed her.
The recording continued. "He said that in 2002 something horrible was going to happen to my brother, and that in 2022 it was going to flat-out kill him — and that last part was going to be my fault, for trying to make things better." Ibanez fast-forwarded. "He told me I could prevent it all. He told me there was going to be a massive containment breach, that it was going to kill seven people, that it was going to create all sorts of persistent and problematic anomalies. That my brother was going to get saddled with one of them for the rest of his life—"
Ibanez's voice interrupted him. "Phil Deering? All he got was a mirror monster that calls him names."
Dougall sounded confused. "That's… okay, well, the voice said it was much worse than that. And he said that eventually I'd try to fix it, and that would get him killed. But if I stopped the triggering event, none of it would happen. Nobody would… Philip wouldn't die. What was I supposed to do?"
Ibanez mouthed the response she'd given as the speaker played it out loud. "Report it to me." You fucking idiot.
"He told me not to! He said the only way to keep the timeline damage to a minimum was for me to dump the effluence out of AAF-D, stop it from blowing, stop the whole disaster from occurring. And that's what I was trying to do…"
"Except you died."
"Well, I don't remember that part."
Harry started laughing hysterically, and Ibanez had to pause until he'd finished. Nascimbeni had a hang-dog look on his face, though it didn't hang nearly as low as when he'd been responsible for the failed deadline aversion; Lillian could have been asleep; McInnis was unreadable as always; Udo simply looked sad.
"Gets weird here," said Ibanez when she finally had control of the room.
"Sorry," said Harry. He looked stricken. As the recording continued, his mouth kept twisting into a manic grin that he had to force back down.
Du's voice was next. "What if there's an alternate timeline that isn't unstable? A persistent one? With another Dr. Deering, who's free to call his earlier self every year, over and over, and… kill him. Look at or listen to a cognitohazard, and kill them both using the link between them?"
"Why would he do that?" Del's voice asked him.
"To stop our Dr. Deering from stopping the breach, I would imagine. Maybe it caused more problems than it solved."
"And why would that have ceased to happen in 2013?"
Deering piped back up. Ibanez saw Udo's eyes narrow, and wondered if she was holding back tears or contempt. Maybe there was room for both. "Well, assuming he called me every year… maybe something happened to him, or the device that let him make the call?"
There was a natural pause on the recording as Ibanez, Du and Deering considered the ramifications, so when Lillian's hand suddenly shot up like she was the star pupil in class, Ibanez could pause again without missing anything important. "Yes, Dr. Lillihammer?"
Lillian didn't open her eyes when she started to talk. "What is this bullshit about a device? A device that lets you call yourself? In the past? In the future? What is that."
McInnis had stayed silent for most of the meeting. It was clear to all of them that he had gone more than a little out of the bounds of his authority today. "That," he said, "is likely why the Temporal Anomalies Department interfered with your attempt to discover Dr. Deering's cause of death."
"Meaning they knew," she said. Her eyes flashed.
He nodded. "I suspect this is a case under review. A device of the sort Lillian just described…"
"…is basically the biggest threat to temporal stability ever conceived, besides William Wallace Wettle," said Lillian.
Wettle did not respond. He was napping in the next room.
"Just a little bit more that matters," said Ibanez, and she pressed the play button again.
Her voice was the first to break the silence. "But if this alternate-you killed you-you — we need better terminology for this —" Harry smirked, and so did Lillian, "then 5243 didn't kill you-you. So why is it bringing you back every year?"
An exchange of glances in the room. The question on everyone's mind for over a decade, Udo and Ibanez most of all.
"Maybe it isn't," said Du. "Maybe Dr. Deering isn't entangled with 5243, but with whatever is going on in the alternate timeline."
Ibanez turned off the recorder.
"This is way outside my experience," said Nascimbeni. "But did I just hear him suggest that there's… another Breach, in another timeline, that's… interacting with ours?"
"That's what I got," said Harry.
"That's what he said," Lillian sighed. "I thought he was pretty plain with it."
They settled into a contemplative hush to match the one on the tape.
This time, nobody broke it.
Udo stepped out to get some food from the cafeteria, and to her surprise, Harry offered to come with. There was obviously something on his mind, and he waited until they were on their way back with a pair of trays heaped full of hot food to spring it on her.
"Tell me to fuck off if this is inappropriate," he said, "but…"
She waited.
She got tired of waiting. "Fuck off," she said. "It is inappropriate to leave me in suspense."
He held a hand over the food, to shield it from his exhalations, and laughed nervously. His OCD was obviously getting worse. And given what they had to deal with every year, why not? "Okay. I just… I thought someone ought to ask you, because you might…" He shook his head. "Did you talk to him, after? Dougall? Did you talk to him?"
She smiled. If she'd had a free hand, she might have patted him on the back. A friendly gesture only, but still plenty friendly. "Del says he asks for me every year. Says he begs, and he pleads."
"And? Did you listen to what he had to say?"
"No." She chewed the words out through her lower lip. "I didn't go in at all. If it was so goddamn important, he should have said it before he died the first time."
