He had felt rather more welcome in the caves.
There, the sense that the past was alive and watching him had only been superstitious terror. Here, he knew it to be fact.
Vivian Scout tread the path with care, galoshes further pulverizing the rough gravel but spared the extra crunch of frost or leaves, though both would soon litter the forest. Not that it was much of a forest; Ipperwash Provincial Park covered something like fifty hectares, but in long-denuded Ontario that wasn't enough to boast more than a few large copses of trees. He was moving through one of them now, and although he couldn't see it, he had an entire company's worth of company.
Somewhere to his right, Martin Strauss had his rifle raised. To Strauss's right, there would be another. And another, and another, all of them ringing around to meet again at Scout's left. And the ring was closing.
He heard his quarry before he saw it. A low, pained groan, and then a wet snuffling. Someone was very badly injured. Possibly dying. But he didn't quicken his pace, because he knew something of what he approached.
He passed an old, gnarled maple, and there it was. The spitting image of the old man presently stabilized beneath a kilometre of soil and rock, back at Outpost-43. This one had visible gashes across his workman's shirt, and blood all over his loose beige pants. He was leaning against a tree, and he was cursing, crying, and perhaps even laughing, all at the same time.
"Hello," said Scout.
And the old man, with a speed Scout would never have predicted given his state, leapt to his feet and raised a finger. Not in warning, or in accusation. This was an attack.
But Scout had been prepared, and forewarned, and he struck first. "I am the catalyst of master-strokes and follies," he said, and the old man staggered away in shock, clutching at his head and scraping his back on the bark of the tree behind him. "I am the jolliest of all possible jollies."
The old man slid to the forest floor again, leaving a trail of new blood and tattered fabric on the bark to mark his passing. "He told you?" It was a rasp of disbelief and rage, mixed in equal proportion. "He told you?!"
When Scout was certain his quarry was paralyzed, panting in the dirt, he motioned for the medic to emerge from the bushes and tend to the wounds. "I have always preferred a family of choice," he told the prone half-god. "Since Abel and Cain, a covenant has always proven stronger than an accident of birth."
1942
3 April
Scout and Rydderech stood at the edge of the pit, looking down into the future. It struck Ilse Reynders as an oddly mixed portent.
And that's why most scientists don't start out with degrees in literature.
She approached the Co-Directors, and resisted the urge to come between them and join the embrace. They were close, all three, but there were appearances to consider. The workmen down below would already be plenty confused to see her surveying the dig as though she were the equal of either man.
Scout heard her first, because Rydderech was always at least half out of mental focus. He glanced back, smiled, and ushered her closer. "Come see the marvellous mess they're making on our behalf."
Rydderech glanced at her with the equivalent of a smile in his eyes as she moved to stand beside Scout, and then the three of them took in the limestone quarry that had not existed until two days ago. "Strange birthday gift to give yourself," she said.
Scout chuckled. "I intend to make it the finest gift of all. Because we'll be sharing it with each other."
"Construction's going well on the shoreline," she reported with a tone of dull obligation. She didn't care for the logistics of putting the place together. She was already thinking about the work they would do when their facilities were finished. She'd finally have all the time in the world to pursue her own interests, on the Foundation's dime. "AAF-A should be operational before you even get started down there."
"I was just telling Wynn," Scout said, "that we won't be digging much farther after all. They've just discovered the tip of another cave."
She raised her eyebrows. "Like the ones by the shore?"
"Very much like them, yes."
Rydderech rumbled to life. "Those troublesome cats, no doubt."
"Now," Scout chided. "They were here first. We're only visitors."
"Long-term visitors, though," Reynders reminded him. "You know that as soon as we get these abatement plants up and running, they're never going to be able to stop."
"Never is a long time," Scout mused.
"That makes no grammatical sense," said Rydderech. Scout squeezed his shoulder, then dropped his hand down to find his jacket pocket. They'd been embracing a little too long for appearances' sake as it was.
They watched the diggers dig for a while. Reynders used the time to collect her thoughts. She wasn't sure what the other two were doing; anticipating, she supposed. They'd all been working up to this for years.
Finally, she put it plainly. "Is this a mistake?"
Both men looked down at her. "What do you mean?" Scout asked.
"You know what I mean, Vivian."
Rydderech sighed. "The brothers?"
"There are two things we three must do," Scout reminded them, "and this is the only course of action that can satisfy both. Wynn's predictions tell us that without these refineries, which cannot be built so deep and vast and effective anywhere else on Earth, we will all be drowned in occult sewage by the turn of the next century."
"Wynn's predictions," she agreed, "and my calculations."
Scout nodded. "I expect you to calculate us all out of this conundrum, Ilse. But you will need to do it here, because we need an excuse to put down roots in this park, and there is no other to hand at present."
"I know that," she frowned. "Obviously I know that. They have to stay secret. We need to keep them locked up, and it's not safe to move them far. Given what they can do."
"I'm more worried about the one," said Rydderech, "than the other. The other might have his uses."
"Don't be too quick to assume common cause," Scout reminded him.
The barrel-chested chemist scoffed. "Right. The last time I did something as foolish as that, I acquired you. I'd be a fool to trust those instincts ever again."
Scout reached down and squeezed Rydderech's hand. They were going to have to learn to be more circumspect, Ilse knew, in the coming days. But for now, in the light, on the threshold, the possibilities were more fluid.
"But you understand my concern," Ilse pressed. "We're going to be sitting on a bomb. No, two bombs. Two bombs that keep each other in check. What happens if something upsets that balance?"
"I suppose," Scout said, "we shall all be killed."
They stared at him, Ilse and Rydderech both.
He laughed. "But I suspect a more permanent arrangement will be found, before too long."
"We're getting pretty long in the tooth," Rydderech sighed.
Scout replaced his arm around his partner's shoulders, then put his other arm around Ilse's. They weren't looking at the hole in the ground anymore. They weren't looking at the horizon, either. They were looking at each other.
"I didn't say we would be the ones to find it."
What do you do when the war is over?
Opinions vary, and the variances are invariably determined by the extent of one's optimism. "Prepare for the next war," the most pragmatic or most bloodthirsty will say. "Pick up the pieces," the realists and the weary will plead. "Make it the last one," the optimists and the foolhardy will agree.
The Forgotten War is over, and its sequel looms already on the horizon. What are we to be, in the interim? Warriors, builders, or dreamers? Monsters, healers, or fools?
There is an answer, easy to speak, but difficult to live by. It is that we need not be any single one of those things, each or all of us, at any one time. Even as our opponents mass for a renewed assault, there is room to dream. To reinvent. To arm ourselves. There is a place for every permutation of human experience in every conflict, because now more than ever we understand that every drop of blood spilled, every word spoken in anger, injures us all. There can be no reconciliation not driven from seven billion different points of view at once. The next war will be fought in the hearts and minds of every sapient being on this planet, and it will only be forgotten if all of us lose.
We at the SCP Foundation have the potential to become a guiding light of civilization, understanding, and mercy. In the meantime we will fight, because needs must. We will learn, because we will be called upon to teach. And we will defend the principles which have informed science, magic, and the arts for as long as our race has been capable of complex thought.
If we do not do these things, someone else will need to take up that torch. And it will be my sincerest hope that they are able to defeat us, and that we will be magnanimous in defeat. I believe that we can lead. I will dedicate what remains of my life to preparing us for that role. But if I am wrong, I am confident that the peoples of the Earth will grow beyond the confines of our rigid, self-serving morality, and find a better way together.
Because barring another apocalypse, the next war will only be the last if everyone wins.
— Dir. Allan J. McInnis, A Loyal Heresy, and the Path Ahead
One of the first principles of thaumaturgy is that calling a thing by its proper name gives you power over it.
Which is a funny thing to hear, when you're already using a euphemism for magic. Maybe that's the reason why the Foundation — and the Global Occult Coalition, with its Type Blues — have fallen so far behind every other set of occult practitioners behind the Veil. We're not willing to admit what we are. We're afraid of sounding silly, suspicious of majesty, repelled by whimsy. Those we oppose are not held back by such hang-ups. They're honest with themselves, and with us. We could learn a lot from that.
I'm not proposing we rename acroamatic abatement to 'magic gunk treatment'. I'm not suggesting we all start wearing pointed hats. But it does seem to me like this identity crisis is just a symptom of a wider malaise of self-denial within the Foundation. We keep a straight face in the face of the world's nonsense, as though we're afraid that if we acknowledge the absurdity, we'll be dragged down to its level. We pave over the paradisiacal beauty of creation with our clinical coldness, because we believe…
Ah. Well, that's a problem.
We hide behind euphemism and complication because we believe that gives us power over the things we describe. The more sterile our terminology, the stronger we feel. And that's not right, is it? We're only lying to each other. Our authority is only a blind. We're cowering behind it. And if the things we're observing suddenly turn on us, we won't be prepared to fight back, or even to run, because we'll be too caught up in the web of tangled frameworks we've built around ourselves to even move.
Our failure to acknowledge our true selves might feel like a warm blanket, but it's actually a cocoon. We'll need to break out of it, if we're going to evolve.
If we're not going to evolve, we're simply going to die. And if the magic were to die with us?
I can conceive of no greater crime.
— Dr. Udo Okorie, The Talented You
[clever introduction goes here]
And that's just the beginning! Your exciting career in Replication Studies will take you from one end of science to the other. You didn't know that science has ends? Well, it does! It ends right where the last unproven studies are sitting. Until they're proven, the frontier can't be pushed further. That's what we do. We show that the guesses our colleagues have made — they call them 'hypotheses', because nobody likes telling their family they guess for a living — are potentially right, or definitely wrong. Until we've done that, nothing in all the fancy journals in the world can be fairly called knowledge. It's just theorizing and hearsay.
You will be mocked for treading in the footsteps of others. You will be mocked for retracing your own steps. You will not be respected, because they will say that all you do is cover the same ground, over and over, and never deviate from the course by a single inch.
And you will explain to them, as only you can — because only you can be said to have ever really proven a single thing! —that that is how paths are made.
We are the layers of the roads that lead to the future. That's a pretty good consolation for having to constantly reiterate the past, don't you think?
— Dr. William Wettle, Replication Studies: Replication Studies
I'm an atheist.
That means something different at the Foundation. We know fully well that gods exist. I once kicked one in her face, and watched her choke to death on her own fucking nose. Searching the word 'religious' on SCiPnet gives almost five hundred results, and that number is only so low because most of the world's god-litter hasn't yet been researched well enough to justify opening a full file. Theology and Teleology tell me that there's enough material on objects and persons emitting or consuming Akiva radiation, the body odour of the gods, to fill an entire parallel database. Gods exist, and I am painfully aware of this fact, just as some of them are even more painfully aware that I do.
But that doesn't mean I have to believe in them.
I have colleagues — HR has asked me to remove all references to their names — who I can see with my own eyes, but don't believe in. I don't believe in much, actually. You won't catch me looking up at the stars and dreaming about powers beyond my ken. If they want my attention, they can come down here and explain themselves to me. If they're not going to make the effort, then why should I?
But this creates a complication, in my field. Because I have it on good authority, though this is also not something I would ever waste my own time confirming, that the word 'sacrifice' means 'to make something sacred'. And I am in the business of sacrifice.
My family is dead. My village is dead. A great many of my friends have died since then. I wouldn't say that any of them were sacrificed; I would say that they were murdered, butchered, and sometimes defiled. But I have sacrificed on their behalf. I have sacrificed the memory of what was done to them, and my all-consuming desire to avenge. I have sacrificed the part of me that wants to break down and cry at each memory of injustice, wasteful hatred and pointless destruction. I have sacrificed my own suffering. I hold all of these things as sacred, and I have burnt them all to cinders, as an offering to one ideal.
That we are ourselves in the image of gods, and burdened with all the responsibility that brings.
We could scour the Earth of life. We could change the way every living human being thinks. We could put them all in cages, or turn them against each other. They are objectively subject to our whims. We've learned more than enough in the past hundred years to treat this planet, and all its multiversal permutations, like a sandbox at our feet. I could burn my footprint into every bad actor who ever lived, and make them know that it was mine, and make them know what they did to deserve it.
But I won't. Not precisely.
Because the capacity to do a thing, if it's a bad thing, comes with the responsibility not to. Because you can't solve a systemic problem by killing everyone who makes it worse. Because if something is sacred to you, you're supposed to take it seriously. Don't use it as an excuse to fulfill your most sadomasochistic impulses. Don't use it to punish yourself. Don't use it as justification for going on a tear.
There are always people in this world who need to die. I've killed a lot of them. I'm going to kill a whole lot more.
But I'm going to be able to explain, when it's done, why I did it.
Name me a single god who can do the same.
— Chief Delfina Ibanez, reflective journal
I remember everything.
Nobody's supposed to remember everything. The human brain is the best discriminating machine in the world. It can select and discard the information in its reach at speeds faster than lightning, using all manner of nested and interacting criteria. The only limit on our capacity for understanding is the inevitable wear and tear of age. For a time, we are all capable of turning the things we remember into the things our children, and their children, will remember even more strongly.
But it's no blessing to have your entire past be an open book. Every brilliant insight, every moment of magic, every tender memory is made the equal of every slight, every mundane event, every tragedy. If I quit my job today and moved to Hollywood, I would instantly become the world's most famous actress, because I can make myself feel any emotion just by running through the right suite of memories. (Plus, I'm just that gorgeous.) I can feel the way I felt every time I wanted to smack someone, or kiss someone, or that most rare of all things for me, be more like someone. It's all there. And I can state with certainty that the reason the rest of you don't have this power, the reason it doesn't come standard, is that most of the things that happen to you over the course of your life, suck.
There are plenty of memories I would be happy to part with. I would love to forget the spiders, for example. I could make do with an edited version of my whole life up until around the turn of the millennium, and then a less comprehensively but even more selectively edited version of what came after. But if you gave me that opportunity, I think I would have to hate you for it, because I'd have to let it pass.
Because my memories, good and bad, are what make me who I am. And I like who I am. The bad things that have happened have made me better. The good things… have made me better, too. There must be some sort of experiential converter nestled deep in the human psyche, to achieve that remarkable effect. If you let it, it will turn even your worst moments into energy, or armour, or fascinating personality quirks. I'll never know whether I would want what I want, love what I love, or hate what I hate, if I didn't have six different versions of me competing for space in this single, admittedly very large and impressive, framework.
My best friend tells me he put this idea in my head when he made me watch Star Trek V fifty years ago. I refuse to believe that I learned anything from Star Trek V.
The seven of us who endured the variegated horrors of the five SCP-5243 deadlines went through hell, and came back, and were baked into something more solid and firm by the flames. I've always had the impression that the others felt that time was wasted. That they gained nothing. That because they forgot what had happened, it essentially hadn't.
But I remember every single thing I ever saw any of them do, across six very different worlds, in the most trying and transformational times of their entire lives.
And I have no explanation for how this might work, at least not one I could prove, and then kick down the ladder to Wettle for replication.
But I can state with absolute certainty — and given my unique mental chemistry, my absolute certainty is worlds more absolute than any other — that there was nothing at all wasteful about our years in the pressure cooker. That in some way, the incredible things my friends did in there have informed the incredible people they are today. That some intangible element of their persistent personhoods, having once crossed a boundary none may cross, found a way to cross back over again.
They are the memories of all their past selves. Their character is what every possible version of themselves did in the dark.
And I am privileged to have known them, in all their multiversal multitude.
— Dr. Lillian Lillihammer, Words, and How to Break Them
Machines aren't substitutes for people.
It isn't a question of making better machines. If a thing can do a job better than a person, you should be finding better people instead, or better yet, making them yourself. I'm not talking about clones. I'm talking about training, and keeping the people you train supplied with the best tools money can buy. The best, not the most expensive. A lot of managers don't know there's a difference between those two things, because their bosses should have found better people, too.
A workplace is only as good as its workers. They're not only as good as their training and tools, but there's definitely a multiplier involved. The thing is, a cash investment can get you good manuals and equipment, but only investing your time and energy can get you good people. That's why so many managers would rather replace the human element with something they can plug and play, and then forget.
But machines get worse with use. The most amazing thing about human beings is that they only get better. They're self-upgrading. They produce their own replacements. They iterate on themselves. They make each other better. By the time you've got machines that can do all that, you haven't got machines at all, but humans made out of nuts and bolts. And humans, flesh and blood, will have invented them. A machine wouldn't know where to start, because machines don't dream. People do.
Sometimes, like me, they dream about machines. But it's not so that some day they won't have to work anymore, at least, not usually. We dream about machines because they can help us do more, faster, better and on a larger scale. Be the best possible versions of ourselves. Spend more time on the things that elevate us as a species.
I don't want a machine to do everything for me. I want to putter around tightening rivets, or shifting bags of concrete powder, or sometimes even sweeping a floor. Because that's how we know that the world is real. That's how we know our environments, the spaces we make in our images, and when we commune with them through productive work, we come to know ourselves.
Never give up on your people. They will surprise you. They will love you. They may even some day save you. But most important of all, they are you. All of us are rowing a single boat across a long lake, even if we can't always agree which direction the shore is in. The experience would not be improved if you replaced the rowers with a diesel engine. It's not about getting there at all costs. It's not about being done. There is nothing in the world that is sadder than an ending! Nothing happens after.
The destination doesn't matter. Most of us won't see it. But we'll take the ride together, even though almost everyone has to get off eventually, because it's the journey that makes the difference. It's the journey that changes you. If you haven't changed, it's because you haven't gone anywhere, and vice versa. If you're never going to go and see it for yourself, there might as well not be a shore at all. Anything worth knowing is worth discovering in person.
In the simplest terms, people are machines for learning about themselves. And in a pinch, they're the only machines you'll ever really need.
— Noè Nascimbeni, memorandum to the new Chief of Janitorial and Maintenance
How do we get out of this hole we've dug ourselves into?
It isn't ours. The home we've built here certainly is, and it's sunk so far out of sight that it's unlikely to trouble any lingering spirits or creatures of myth that might still be hanging about, in the absence of the peoples they were once tethered to. But things out of sight and out of mind still have the capacity to harm, as the parable of the geistschreiber amply demonstrates. The land above Site-43 was stolen from human beings, and their descendants may only rarely descend to witness its hallowed halls. That the Site which defiles the subterrane of Ipperwash Park has been sanctified by blood further complicates the picture. It is a symbol of imposition — and why not? The SCP Foundation is no stranger to acts of callous will — and a symbol of sacrifice, too. It is a nation and an organization in microcosm. It is a parcel of unresolved contradictions.
It is also a living, working environment, and as such it is constantly changing. It is old enough to have shuttered wings (two of them, only one of which has ever exploded), and new enough to have recently opened ones. It replaces its skin cells (the protective membranes and sheathing) and its capillaries (the personnel pool) no more or less rapidly than does a human body. It has wrinkles and battle scars and stretch marks and analogues to all the other eccentricities of age. It did not choose the manner of its birth, and it has been shaped by considerations often alien to those who signed its birth certificate. These anthropomorphic musings lead us back to the question which opened this final discursion: whither Site-43?
It has stood, or rather crouched in the shadows, for eighty years. A generation. Three generations have lived, worked, and sometimes died in its borne. It belongs to all of them, but they cannot be all consulted on its fate. Neither can the evictees who made unwilling way for its construction, and it's an open question whether they would prefer it to make way for them in turn; given a choice between the SCP Foundation and the Canadian federal government, the Chippewas of Kettle Point would find themselves, like us, between a rock and a hard place. There exists no pat, easy answer to this conundrum.
— Dr. Harold Blank, Lines in a Muddle: A Cultural History of Site-43
He tabbed over to the other file. It was no different from any other keystroke, but she must have sensed it anyway, because there she was again. At his shoulder, and leaning over. Her breath on his neck, her pulse in his ears. Both of them reading the words they had written together.
The world has been saved from this location, many times. It has also been threatened. In other worlds, Site-43 has been both epicentre of apocalypse and last redoubt of humanity's ragged remainder. It has known a drama unlike any other on this Earth, or others like it. It has been an active player in that drama, whilst simultaneously the stage.
But it is more than even that. It is an ethos, and a telos too: a promise to do better each tomorrow than was done today, an ideal to which others might aspire. Were all the Foundation like Site-43, the world might be a kinder, gentler place. Or perhaps it would already have ended entirely. There is no easy means to test either theory.
The passing of the years will test them both, a strenuous trial for all involved. Will the humanistic concerns first expressed by Vivian Scout, Wynn Rydderech and Ilse Reynders thrive in the light above, or die down here in the dark? Will the worst fears of Izaak Okorie, Arik Euler and Ilse Reynders again be proven prescient, or will their selfless examples set the tone for an era of service to humanity? Or will the reality fall somewhere in between, fall short of the potential inhabiting this historical moment, trading dreams and nightmares for an endless night far less fanciful, less pregnant with meaning, less ripe with possibility?
That will not be defined by the shape of Site-43. Not the length of its halls, the depth of its foundations or the breadth of its superstructure. It will be defined by people, the people who have already defined the shape of the place which has done so much to shape them, their experiences and their options for further growth. It might be that these people are able to craft a compromise that satisfies all of the above considerations: the demands of history, practicality, humanity, and justice. It might be that they can resolve the contradictions inherent in our duty to secure, contain, and protect. It might even be that they can find an answer to the question which ended the previous volume, and will frame all the content of the next: where do we go from here?
It may transpire that we go no further.
It may even transpire that we turn back.
From where we now stand, we can see no clear road ahead.
— Drs. Harold Blank and Melissa Bradbury, "Forward,"
in Crossing the Lines: Subverting Common Practice at Site-43
She began murmuring in his ear. He transcribed without missing a beat, or a single syllable. When she paused, he murmured back. She nodded, and the touch was nearly as electric as the words.
"But it is our opinion that together, we will nevertheless find a way to move forward, as always so far we have. Despite danger and darkness, in euphoric and triumphant spite of the threat of despair. And that when we have taken that path, others will follow behind, or better, walk alongside. And that there will be no destination, only the endless drive into the unknown, which will make of us what we make of it, to the peril and profit of all."
It was a truth, at long last, far stranger than fiction.
