Have Yourselves
12
"Come on in."
Allan McInnis swung open the door to the dormitory complex belonging to his Chair of Archives and Revision. He found the Chair on a couch, under a blanket, facing a television. The Chair of Research and Experimentation was under the blanket with him. She was blowing on his ear and saying "make it stop," or perhaps she was mouthing it; either way, McInnis couldn't hear her, because there were bizarre grunts and groans coming from the television. He wondered if they were watching a documentary about vomiting bears.
"Hey," Harold Blank waved. He raised the remote, and thumbed the pause button.
"Merry Christmas," McInnis smiled. He hefted a pair of boxes. "Where should I put these?"
Melissa Bradbury pointed. "Merry Christmas. In front of the speakers, please. Cover them up as best you can."
"On the side table is fine," Harry grinned. "Yours is under the tree, as usual. What's up with the special delivery?"
McInnis set the presents down and strolled over to get a better look at the television. It was displaying some footage that looked like it came from the seventies, very badly preserved, a cheap sitcom set populated entirely by walking heaps of seaweed. "Going for the personal touch this year," he said. "Change of pace."
Bradbury scooched aside, squashing Harry against his arm rest. She patted the newly vacated cushion. "Watch this garbage with us. It's really bad."
"Tempting," he smiled. "But I have a lot of stops to make today."
"Thank you, Santa," Harry yawned. "Merry Christmas."
"Harry Christmas," Melissa sang. Harry put his palm over her mouth.
McInnis smiled at them both, and bowed out.
11
He had expected to find Nhung Ngo in the third sublevel main cafeteria, at the daylong wander-in-wander-out party, but she wasn't there. A quick check with her administrative assistant revealed that she was out for the day with a man who was, so far as McInnis knew, her ex-husband. Perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps it wasn't. In any case, of all his personnel, he trusted her the most to make the right decisions for herself.
He left her gift under the tree. No matter when she got back in, she'd stop by the cafeteria just to take the temperature. He couldn't imagine running an underground base full of eccentric experts without a psychologist who would do that sort of thing without being ordered.
She could make Director some day…
Well, probably not. Site-43 probably wouldn't be producing many more Directors.
10
The scene in Udo Okorie's dorm reminded him of failure.
Unlike the ratty old couch in Blank's complex, Okorie's was fancy and fluffy and new. There were three women sitting on it, legs draped over each other so that they formed a sort of chittering duodecipus with three distinct heads. They were all wearing the same ugly Christmas sweater. It hung loosely off Rozálie Astrauskas; it was under such strain on Delfina Ibanez that McInnis could see the colour of the undershirt she was wearing through the separated threads.
Ibanez raised a pair of lemon yellow video game controllers in his direction. "Mario Kart?"
Their faces were flushed with excitement and, no doubt, the contents of the bottles neatly stacked beside the couch. Howard Yancy was managing both internal and external security today; he'd divorced his wife that year, and didn't feel much like making merry. Applied Occultism was taking the day off, because pagan holidays almost always interfered with their experimental results. These three spent most of their free time together, even slept in the same room most days, but they rarely got long stretches where all were off duty simultaneously. They were making the most of this one.
It reminded him of failure, nevertheless, because the fact that they were sitting here getting drunk and playing video games was related to the fact that they were the youngest members of his senior staff.
And they were in their mid-forties.
I'll do better, Vivian, he thought. I am doing better.
"I'd only slow you down," he smiled, setting down the three neatly-wrapped presents on the dining nook table.
"That's not how racing games work." Ibanez stretched. "It's competitive."
"Ah." He ambled back to the door. "I'm not very competitive."
"Neither are these two," Ibanez crowed. Okorie stuck a finger in her ear.
"Merry Christmas," Rozálie offered, and the other two repeated the greeting in sync.
"Merry Christmas," he agreed. "I hope you all win."
"That's not how racing games work either," Ibanez said to his back as he closed the door.
9
It was best to make this particular connection early in the day. It would only get worse after sundown, deep beneath the earth though they both were.
Merry Christmas, Dr. Rydderech.
Merry Christmas, Allan.
McInnis started. He was alone in the little lab in AAF-A where the direct link to SCP-5520 was kept under lock and key, a secret to everyone but his most trusted staff and the Overseers who allowed the old reality bender to remain alone and dissociated in his vast refinery beneath their feet. Most of Vroom's technicians weren't working today, since most of the Site's computers were either switched off or performing the kind of work that didn't need much, if any, human intervention. McInnis therefore had this entire wing of the facility to himself, and that made the visceral strangeness of finding Rydderech so uncharacteristically lucid hit even harder.
How do you know my name, sir?
I know all your names. I made them up.
So much for that, then. McInnis was already remembering why he let I&T handle Rydderech whenever he needed handling.
That's not actually correct.
I hope.
Is it not? It feels correct.
At any rate, feel free to go about your day as usual. I won't make you do anything. We'll say you have free will.
McInnis actually laughed. Perhaps it was unkind of him to do this, but he had to react in some way to these new horrifying implications, and laughter was closest at hand.
Thank you. I will.
Is there anything I can do for you, doctor?
A long pause.
You can get me out of here.
Like he asked you to.
A quarter-century ago.
Allan?
Did I say something wrong?
A happy new year to you, Dr. Rydderech.
To you as well.
All things considered.
It was a quiet stroll to where the bottom of AAF-A met the top of Rydderech's chasm. Allan left the gift there, content with the knowledge that it would be gone by Boxing Day.
8
Back in the cafeteria, Ilse Reynders had an arm around Max Vroom's waist, a thoroughly rouged-up nose and a jaunty pair of felt antlers, and was singing a Christmas song in Dutch: "Hoor Wie Stapt Daar Kinderen." Though her epic incinerator escape was long since past, Reynders had gotten no less touchy-feely with her friends and… loved ones? Did Reynders have loved ones? She'd certainly been close with the chief technician, and she was presently squeezing him under his Christmas sweater, and the man's own nose and cheeks were rosy without the apparent application of any makeup. McInnis had always been—
Reynders had seen him at the door, swung Vroom around, detached from him, and catapulted herself into the Director's waiting arms. She threw hers around his neck — they were neither of them very tall — and gave him a squeeze so tight he could feel his windpipe constricting.
"Merry Christmas, Allan," she said directly into his ear. She had the presence of mind to lower her voice.
"Merry Christmas." He felt he would not easily become tired of seeing her happy, surrounded by other people in close proximity. She had earned it a thousandfold, and needed it even more. She was unlikely to leave the party until it broke up early the next morning.
Vroom smiled apologetically at him over her shoulder. He smiled back, as warmly as he was able, and returned the immortal polymath's embrace.
In the end he was only able to extricate himself by telling her to retrieve her present from his jumper pocket. When she pulled back to examine the fancy imported wrapping paper, he withdrew as well and made his excuses.
7
Karen Elstrom was at her desk.
He had known she would be, and yet, he had hoped… well, it didn't matter. He wouldn't be the only one to make the connection, and she would have had a steady stream of visitors from amongst the senior staff as the afternoon wore on. He told himself there was nothing sad about the fact that she was spending her Christmas alone in the Administration and Oversight offices. Obviously someone had to do it. Someone needed to be responsible, be on call in case anything happened. She was essentially Site Director for the day.
Under different circumstances, he might have thought about retiring and giving her a go at the job for real.
But duty was duty, and all he could give her instead, today, was the benefit of his presence and presents. Considering the year she'd had, he figured she could use one extra. Karmic compensation.
She came down from the daïs to talk to him. She wouldn't have been able to see him comfortably over the top of her desk. "Doing the rounds?"
He handed her the gifts. "Yes. Everything in order?"
She shrugged, accepting the packages and standing on the tips of her fancy shoes to slide them onto her elevated desktop. "Dead as a doornail. Nothing internal, nothing external. Nothing so much as a peep out of law enforcement or national defence. The whole world's taking the day off, apparently."
"That's good." She was meeting his gaze, so he noticed when hers flickered. "Isn't it?"
She nodded. "Yes, of course it's good. We don't need any disturbances today."
He could almost have believed her, if he'd wanted to.
He checked his watch. "You know, I've seen a lot of our people already. I could use a break. What say I mind the store for an hour? You could check in at the party."
She arched a brow. "And do what?"
"And do what…?" He chuckled. "Whatever people do at parties, I suppose."
She nodded. "Go on."
He blinked.
She didn't. "Go on, Allan," she repeated. "What do people do at parties?"
He suddenly wished, in the space of an instant, that he'd been singing and dancing and swinging a partner through the lobby. It would have given him an excuse to stumble into an embrace with her — simply that, an embrace, nothing more. He had never wanted more, would never want more, but for an instant he wanted precisely that very much indeed. But he was not dancing. He did not dance. And neither did she. And neither of them ever would, because that was not who either of them were.
She reached out with both hands, took his shoulders, and squeezed them once each. "Merry Christmas, Allan."
"Merry Christmas, Karen," he said to her back as she returned to her desk. By the time he reached the foyer doors, she was engrossed in paperwork again.
6
Eileen Veiksaar had only been back at Site-43 for a few short months. For some of the staff, this was something of a shock; the last thing they'd heard was that she'd been sent away for some sort of act of treason, the kind of thing many senior staff members ran afoul of after too many years of doings in the dark. People didn't usually come back from that. But the people who did tended to come back bigger and better, as Veiksaar did, so that somewhat softened the blow of seeing her again. She had been graduated from the Site's chief technical officer to the Ethics Committee Liaison, and that meant she could wear something other than an antistatic jumper and keep hours defined by the shift schedule and not the network downtime schema. The change suited her.
But Veiksaar's break with protocol had given the Council cause to doubt her commitment to the cause, and it seemed like her old co-workers could sense the cloud of suspicion that encircled her now. She was one of the first cracks in Site-43's façade of compliance with the Foundation's more pragmatic methodology. In short, Allan was worried that after nine months in her new post, she was still isolated. She had never been the most social of creatures to begin with, and after all, the last thing that had happened in the previous stage of her career was one of her oldest friends tidily entrapping and neutralizing her. The adjustment could not have been easy, and might still be ongoing.
He found her dormitory door ajar, but knocked anyway. There was no response, but the door did slide open just a little further. There were sounds of struggle from within.
There were not, on reflection, sounds of struggle, precisely, from within.
He looked down, instinctively, and saw a note on the welcome mat next to a hideous bright green neck tie.
It read:
Leave it on the floor. Leave mine, too, if you brought it.
Yours is in your office.
Merry Christmas!
D.S.
McInnis had locked his office. He nevertheless did not doubt the note at all.
"Merry Christmas," he smiled, and he closed the door.
He supposed she was settling in fine after all.
5
Hachiro Kuroki and Xinyi Du had scheduled this hour to check in, and the video call came to his office on the dot. They made an unusual pair; Kuroki looked haggard and worn on his best days, while Du had never visibly aged past somewhere around thirty. The security chief was taciturn, soft-spoken and slow-burning, while the Chair of Quantum Supermechanics was a caricature of excitability. Right now they were both subdued, however, because there was apparently a formal dinner happening in the next room.
"So that's an entire branch of my family that will never speak to me again," Du was telling him happily. "Nanjing was namedropped at the dinner table. My uncle says I've shamed every man in my family tree. Do people really think that's leverage? Extended relations are basically just walking obligations. I didn't want to have to RSVP their stupid weddings anyway."
Kuroki was obviously stifling laughter. It looked strange on him, but not bad. When Du stopped talking for an moment, probably to take a breath, he cut in. "Nine of those twelve people," and he jerked a thumb at the closed door in the sumptuously appointed bedroom, "are his family. I've got my mother and two sisters. We left them alone in there."
McInnis smiled sympathetically. "Give my regards, should they survive." Du guffawed. "Did your presents arrive?"
Kuroki nodded. "The Dus were furious. They're traditional. They think Christmas is just western commercialism."
"Which it is," Du added. "One of my cousins works in a Walmart export warehouse in Guangdong. I said the word 'Christmas' in her presence, once, and she almost slapped me."
"So that's the situation," Kuroki said. He didn't smile — ever, really — but the corners of his eyes did crinkle up a bit. "We're still waiting to find out which one's homophobic. Right now they're all tripped up on being racist or anti-capitalist, but the afternoon's still young."
"They might all be homophobic," Du mused. "Do you want to bet?"
"Why not?" Kuroki rummaged below the camera view, and came up with a bulging sack. "Let's wager apples. Every god damn person I've talked to today has given me an apple. I have no use for all these apples."
"I'll leave you to your crass commercialism, then." McInnis smiled at them each in turn. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," they responded in unison. They both looked dreadfully embarrassed to have done so.
4
"Stop that," Thilo Zwist sighed, and snatched the Santa Claus hat off his head. He placed it firmly on the cafeteria table in front of him, and left his hand on top. Lillian Lillihammer immediately began tugging at it again.
"Santa," she whispered. "Santa."
"Enjoying the festivities?" McInnis asked mildly as he sat down across from them. Wordlessly, they exchanged gifts.
"Santa," Lillian whispered, more frantically. "Santa if you don't leave soon—"
"Some of us more than others," the old man sighed. "Lillian—"
"If you don't leave soon, Santa, you won't have time to leave presents for all the good—" She burst into something between laughter and tears, bawling her eyes out with a big toothy grin on her face.
Zwist handed her a napkin. "I'm given to understand," he said to McInnis, "that this is a standard state of affairs on Christmas Day."
McInnis inclined his head. "Dr. Lillihammer is an expressive individual, and the open bar is perhaps better stocked than it ought to be."
"Santa," Lillian was still whispering, through her tears. "Santa."
Zwist turned to face her. "Yes, Lillian. What it is?"
Her face was flushed, and she was giggling like a small child. "Did you make out with Michael Jackson's mom?"
"I believe you have fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of that song, Lillian." He turned back to McInnis. "I begin to get a sense of how Oppenheimer felt when he delivered Truman the bomb."
Lillian made a creditable explosion sound effect which rattled her cheeks and teeth, and then she passed out.
3
He had expected to find the All-Sections Chief at Intake Point-94, but was surprised instead to find Philip Deering and Amelia Torosyan, leaning on each other and staring out at the murky depths. Something was trumpeting in the distance, and they were each trying to match the pitch. Whispering softly to each other. Swaying back and forth, hands around each other's waists, still wearing their technician jumpsuits.
Doug glared down at them from the glass ceiling, his alien skeletal structure and emaciated slough of grey skin fully visible from head to toe for what McInnis realized might have been the very first time.
He could have, probably should have called Bradbury and Blank to rush over and document the occurrence.
He left the gifts on the bench, and stole away quietly back to the Site proper instead.
2
The All-Sections Chief had been called away to Kettle Point. One of the elders had died in the night, and he had been the closest thing the old woman had to family, so it was his duty to set a fire burning in his hearth until she was safely beneath the frozen earth. He had left a message to this effect for McInnis, and an invitation to the customary feast on the fifth day.
He thought he would probably go.
But that was then, and this was now.
Now, he had nowhere to go.
So he went back to the Director's Complex, and after a moment lingering at the door, listening to the steady bassline thrum of music from the cafeteria, he called it a night.
He'd check in for just a moment, of course.
Just to see how things were going.
Just a moment, no more.
1
"Merry Christmas, Allan." Vivian Scout was holding an awkwardly-wrapped package in garish blue paper, with one of those sticky bows in green hanging on at an even more awkward angle.
"Oh." He looked up from his desk, startled both by the gesture and the very presence of the Director. He'd been working late in the Procurement and Liquidation offices, as he often did; the day held no special meaning for him, which didn't make him totally unique at Site-43, but the fact that he was perfectly happy with this fact actually did. Everyone else who was sitting alone in the facility would be doing so under protest, whether because of duty or tragedy or social incompatibility or simple anxiety and the failure to relate. For McInnis, it was a chance to use his workspace without distraction.
"Oh," Scout echoed.
"I'm sorry." McInnis smiled placidly at him. "Thank you very much, sir. Merry Christmas. I'm sorry that I don't have anything for you. If I had known…"
Scout waved it off. "I'm not collecting more dust-collectors at my age anyway, no offence. Hardly have anywhere to put them." This was, of course, untrue. McInnis had seen the first layer of the Director's Complex, and the rest promised by its nature and location to be voluminous. "I just thought you might appreciate the gesture. I'll get out of your hair."
"I do appreciate it," he said as the old man headed for the door. "Sir. I do appreciate it."
Scout hesitated at the threshold. "Do you?"
McInnis blinked. "Certainly. It was thoughtful of you."
Scout turned back to face him, and leaned on the wall with his hands in his suit pockets. "And why does that matter?"
McInnis looked down at the untidy offering. He hadn't expected it to turn into a test. "It shows that you're considerate of my feelings, I suppose."
"That what a Director does, you think? Take care of everyone's feelings?"
Scout was wearing his spectacles, so McInnis couldn't see what was lurking in his eyes. The thin lips and heavy jowls were immobile when the old man wasn't talking. After a lifetime at the Foundation, Scout had no tells left.
"I suppose," he tried again, "you have a responsibility to improve morale."
"And do I? Improve morale?" Scout pointed at the gift. "Does that improve your morale? You haven't even opened it."
2
The All-Sections Chief rubbed his eyes until they watered, then went back to tending the fire. He ought to call Allan. He was going to call Allan.
The doorbell rang.
By the time he opened the front door, there was nobody there. A nondescript sedan was pulling languidly away, down the dirt road. Delivery service.
There was a wrapped present on the stoop.
He picked it up. He recognized the handwriting on the label. He smiled.
He opened it.
3
Something about the vibration of their faces so close together meant that the whispering inevitably translated to kissing before long. Not that they ever needed an excuse. Doug allowed it to happen for several minutes before archly commenting on Philip's abysmal holiday hospitality, which startled him, which startled Amelia, which caused them both to notice the thin wrapped package on the bench.
"Little creepy," Amelia said.
"That's her nickname for you," Doug said.
"…is my nickname for Doug," Amelia said.
Phil kissed her again, then went to pick up the gift.
4
In the time it took him to turn back around — he had been watching Technician Nascimbeni fix the flickering lights on the Christmas tree — Lillian was pulling the paper off the present Allan had left for him. He could have taken and expressed umbrage, but would it really have made a difference? Not likely. So instead he snatched up the present intended for her, and opened it with a dexterity her alcohol-numbed fingers lacked.
It didn't end up mattering who got what package.
5
"That was horrible," Du whispered.
"Completely," Kuroki agreed.
They were lying together on one of the two single beds in the room they'd been offered. They had made their sleeping arrangements abundantly clear before even buying the plane tickets. But it was what it was.
Du sat up, crawled over Kuroki, and grabbed the still-wrapped gifts off the desk. "Might as well?" he suggested.
"Might as well."
They opened the boxes in silence.
Kuroki didn't know what to say.
Du, of course, always did. "This," he said, "is an excellent excuse to take the first flight back home."
"Amen," his boyfriend murmured.
6
Eileen sat bolt upright as the thin box landed on her naked stomach. Sokolsky had flung it at her from the bedroom door. "What's this?"
"Dunno." He sat down on the edge of the bed, a box of his own in his hands. "Came from Allan?"
"How do you know?" She paused, then added, "How did it get in here? You didn't leave the door open, did you?"
He smiled at her.
Her stomach sank. "You did."
He tore off the wrapping paper, and opened the box. She waited to see what he'd gotten before opening hers.
He snorted. "Guess I have to put some pants on."
"Aww."
7
Karen rolled the card between each finger expertly, like a magician, considering it from every angle. She could pretend not to have opened it until the morning, when it would be far too late. She could do that.
In another time, she might have done that.
8
Ilse stood under the mistletoe while Max went to get more punch. It wasn't for her; she'd had so much already that she was pink from head to toe. It was for him. He needed it to build up the courage to approach her where she was standing.
She was patient. She could wait. She was already exactly where she needed to be.
She balled up the wrapping paper, and very nearly forgot whether she was supposed to throw it out, or put it in her mouth.
9
In the farthest, most inconsolable reaches of himself, Wynn Rydderech smiled. "Not yet," he said. "But soon."
10
Rozálie blinked. "I think he made a mistake?"
Delfina sighed, and with a great deal of effort, slid off the couch and up. "He never makes mistakes."
"You going to the kitchen?" Udo asked. "Get me some eggnog. I think I might be able to keep it down now." She'd had six shots of sherry.
Instead, Delfina reached down and hauled her to her feet. The room swam. "What gives?"
"Get your shoes on," Delfina prodded her. "You can open yours on the way."
11
They said their chaste goodnights, and Nhung rode the subway home. It was progress. It was a start.
She checked her messages as soon as the car was in wifi range. Assorted well-wishers, and one notification: a package left for her under the cafeteria tree.
She smiled. It was sweet, but he needn't have bothered with the reminder.
Of course she was headed there anyway.
12
Harry wasn't at all surprised to find, when he and his wife waltzed into the cafeteria just after midnight, that very nearly the entirety of Site-43's senior staff was already assembled. A dozen warm, embarrassed smiles passed between friends as they mixed and mingled, trading gifts.
Allan's gifts, which in redelivery, kept on giving.
Melissa slipped away to approach Sokolsky, so he headed to the table where Lillian and Zwist had been sitting for most of the evening. She was now lying on top of it, softly snoring. He fastened his fingers over her face, and shook it roughly until she started spluttering into his palm.
"Whguh," she spat. "Hrhunh. What."
"Merry Christmas," he said, and he bent down and gave her the most awkward hug of all time. When it was done, he presented her with the gift Allan had dropped off earlier in the day, which Harry had just finished unwrapping: a true atomic watch in stainless steel, Temporal Anomalies special issue, with a tag attached. Lillian blearily squinted at it, then wordlessly passed it back for him to read.
He read, "For Lillian, who is precise to the picosecond: a mirror."
Her eyes watered as she snatched it from him, and laboriously affixed it to her wrist. It wasn't the right wrist, but try telling her anything. She reached behind her head and pulled out another unwrapped box. "Who's mine for?" she burbled. "Can't read."
It was a tiny little portable video game machine from a company called Togenkyo, Game and Watch style, with a name in Japanese and 90s-looking art depicting ants on a motor car track. The tag dedicated it to "Hashiro, with whom I ran my only race."
Kuroki was in China still, with Du, so that would have to wait. He resolved to lie instead, in the spirit of the gift's intention. He cast his eyes over the crowd, and noticed just by chance the little grey-haired man standing alone on the hallway side of the main entrance, arms crossed over his jumper, watching the little engagements with obvious pleasure. Melissa was laughing at something Sokolsky had said, or perhaps at how silly he looked in the high-tech glasses she'd been given to give to him. Yancy was holding a book, obviously holding back tears, and Noor Zaman was clapping him on the back, wearing mittens that looked at least two sizes too big. The All-Sections Chief (who had passed them on the way, saying he could only stop by for a moment) was admiring a tie clip that caught the light just so, made from the stuff of dreams and worth perhaps a medium fortune. Karen was admiring it too, as she cinched a vest around her chest that Harry recognized from the days when McInnis had managed Procurement and Liquidation. He wasn't sure what he wanted to see first: her reaction when she found out what it did, or the Director's excuse for giving it to her.
But the latter would be easier, because he turned back to Lillian and said "Yours is for Allan. I'll go grab him."
It was a near thing, but he got to the door before spooking his target. Unable to withdraw gracefully, the faintest hint of gratefulness in his eyes, Allan McInnis allowed himself to be drawn into the heart of the party he had started.