INTERVIEWER: Agent Winter McCormick
INTERVIEWEE: Donald Edison
FOREWORD: According to museum records, SCP-5063 was donated to the exhibit by Donald Edison, a nonagenarian housed at a retirement house in Illinois. Mr. Edison was sought out for an interview in hopes of acquiring additional information about the anomaly.
[BEGIN LOG]
Agent McCormick: Hello, Mr. Edison. Sorry for bothering you, but I was wondering if you could spare me a minute of your time. I'm with National Geographic and I have some questions I'd like to ask you. I am making an article on the history of soups and the museum where your can of mock turtle soup is displayed at plays an important role.
Mr. Edison: (chuckles) You're a bad liar, son.
Agent McCormick: What makes you think I'm lying?
Mr. Edison: You're here because you found out that the can is magic. I figured that in a world with things like the can and people like the person who made it, there must be someone responsible for keeping it out of the public eye. Am I correct?
Agent McCormick: Sir, I assure you, I am just a journalist.
Mr. Edison: Whatever you say, son. Ask what you want.
Agent McCormick: Okay, thank you. How about we start with how you originally came to possess the item.
Mr. Edison: Fine by me. You might want to sit down though, this is a long story.
(Agent McCormick sits)
Mr. Edison: Good. To start this off, how much do you know about the prominence of turtle soup in the late 1800's and the early 1900's?
Agent McCormick: Nothing.
Mr. Edison: Well, it was all the rage back then, specifically when made with the meat of an alligator snapping turtle. Despite the relatively high price, it sold really well. Restaurants were literally better off serving mock turtle soup made from a calf's head, than no turtle soup at all. I have personal experience with that, because I was working as a cook in a small restaurant called Bogside House in Texas in the 1940's. We were struggling, to say the least. There was another restaurant within walking distance, that served genuine turtle soup, while we could only afford the canned fake stuff.
I realized that if we couldn't start serving the real stuff we would have gone under within weeks. I went to tell this to our owner, a fella named Redder, but he didn't seem at all worried. Instead, he just tells me that he knows someone who can help us.
Agent McCormick: And this someone created the can?
Mr. Edison: Yes. Let me preface this by saying that Redder was an odd fellow. He was… more versed in things like this, and he moved in even weirder company. Occultists, mystics, and individuals who I'm not sure were entirely human. The person who made the can was one of those. They arrived just as we were closing in for the night. They were dressed in a dark, ragged leather coat and a hood that I never saw under. I don't know if I would have wanted to. They also smelt like damp earth. I thought it was all very pretentious, but it was still very unnerving.
Agent McCormick: Did you ever learn what this character was called?
Mr. Edison: It did come up at some point, but this was a long time ago, and my memory isn't what it used to. I think it was Du… something. Anyway, they were carrying with them a big, cloth covered cage with a turtle inside. They took it to the kitchen and set it on a counter. Then they took a used Campbell's can, and set it next to the cage, before doing… something.
Agent McCormick: Uhh… could you elaborate?
Mr. Edison: Yeah, it's just… I'm trying to think how to put it into words. It was… kind of like looking at a corrupted film. Everything got all scrambled up and weird. The room expanded and twisted seemingly infinitely, and then in the next second everything was all tight and compressed. There were odd sounds and colors coming from… somewhere, and gravity felt like it was throwing a hissy fit. All the while the poor turtle was being turned inside-out and back again, aged to a skeleton and then reversed into a fetus. All of this took maybe ten to fifteen seconds, and the only thing that wasn't affected was the hooded fellow. Despite everything going on around them, they stayed completely unchanged and unmoving, like the eye of a storm. To me that was the scariest part.
When it was over, everything snapped back into place, like nothing had ever happened. I threw up immediately. I think Redder did too.
(pause)
Afterwards the unholy fellow explained to us how the can works, before going to leave. I tried to ask them if they wanted payment, but they told me that they already claimed it, before walking out the door. Just thinking about it sends shivers down my old spine.
Agent McCormick: And did the can help revive your business?
Mr. Edison: Oh, it most certainly did. Back then, that area of Texas used to be chock full of snapping turtles, so everyone that walked through our doors had been near one. So, due to that, we used to do this thing where I would take a huge pot, and I would just place the can on the bottom. Then, when orders of turtle soup started coming in, I would just walk through the restaurant and let the pot fill up on its own. Then I would just begin pouring fresh, hot turtle soup straight out of the pot. The customers loved it.
And soon enough, people heard that we were selling fresh turtle soup at a low price, and they began flooding in. We were ecstatic, of course. We were practically swimming in cash. Not long after, the other restaurant went under because our soup was better. One of the cooks from that establishment actually approached me and asked if he could come work for us instead. I had to turn the young chap down of course… I couldn't let anyone know the secret behind our success.
Word of our culinary delights spread like wildfire, and people from all across the country started turning up. Big names, even! I'm talking movie stars, singers, politicians. Hell, Humphrey Bogart himself visited us once!
Agent McCormick: Did you not think about how many turtles the can must have been killing for something like that?
Mr. Edison: Not at this point, no. Why would I have? I could finally afford to buy a fancier car, jewelry for my beloved, suits and better knives. None of that really matters to me anymore, but at the time there was no room in my mind for a bunch of reptiles, and I never stopped to think how many turtles we were killing every night, because I didn't really know. Because of the little spectacle we were doing, there was no real way to measure exactly how many times the can was activated. It must have been dozens. Per day.
It wasn't until nearly a decade in, that I finally realized what we were doing. I was hiking in a swampland with my wife at the time, may she rest in peace, collecting huckleberries, when it hit me. There was no hissing.
Agent McCormick: Hissing?
Mr. Edison: Yes, hissing! That's the sound that alligators snapping turtles make when they feel threatened. Up until that point, every time I had gone there, there had been turtles basking on the edges of a pond, hissing anytime we got close. Now, they were gone. I realized then what I had done, and how big of a mistake it had been.
Agent McCormick: What did you do about it?
Mr. Edison: Nothing at first! We had a good thing going, and there was no way we could have continued it without the can. However, I couldn't just forget about it. It kept bothering me, and eventually I felt like I had to go to Redder.
I told him how what we were doing was hurting the ecosystem. How it wasn't sustainable. I told him we would end up completely decimating the local turtle population, but he wouldn't listen. He said I was getting paranoid. Said he didn't care about no turtles. "What do you mean you don't care about no turtles?" I asked him. They were the source of our income! You are supposed to care about that! He just hand waved it aside, insisting that the population will hold.
Of course, it didn't. Soon after, I started noticing that the can didn't produce as much soup as it used to. The diminishing was small at first, but increased quickly. And then one day, it was just empty. I stood there, with a pot in my hands, in the middle of customers, staring at the can, but nothing came out. I was forced to make a fool of myself by telling them that there's no soup to serve. I swear to God, some people got up and left right there and then.
That was the beginning of the end. On each following night, there were less and less people, until eventually, nobody came. We had to close.
Agent McCormick: What did you do then?
Mr. Edison: My wife and I had to move to a cheaper city. I went on to work in several different restaurants until my retirement, but none of them ever saw the amount of success that Bogside House once did.
Agent McCormick: (nods) What about Redder?
Mr. Edison: Oh, I never saw him again. I think I overheard him say that he would return to some library… but other than that I have no idea what he did afterwards.
Agent McCormick: But why did he let you keep the can, when he was the one who got it made?
Mr. Edison: Redder didn't show a lot of interest in it, so I simply asked him if I could keep it and he said yes.
Agent McCormick: But why did you want it?
Mr. Edison: Well, I figured that Redder wouldn't care if it kept killing turtles, so I figured I would take it and move somewhere where there are none. And besides, who doesn't want to own a piece of magic?
Then I became old, and unable to care for myself, so I wanted to spend the last of my years here in Illinois, where I was born and raised. I couldn't take the can with me, because this place still has a few turtles left, so I donated it to the museum in hopes it would never activate again. But since you're here, I'm guessing it did.
Agent McCormick: I can neither deny or confirm that. But, thank you Mr. Edison, for telling me your story. I'm sure our readers will find it interesting.
Mr. Edison: I'm sure they will.
(Agent McCormick gets up to leave)
Mr. Edison: Son. Before you go, could you please tell me that the can is somewhere safe, where it can't activate it anymore?
(pause)
Agent McCormick: Don't worry, the can is secure.
Mr. Edison: Good, good.
[END LOG]
