I have seen fire enough; fire that burns, consumes, screams. I do not wish to see any more.
Portrait of Francois Couperin "the Great", from the Hakim's archives.
Item #: SCP-9987
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Due to a lack of containment facilities aboard the FSS Hakim, with the return journey to Earth predicted to take eight years, SCP-9987 is currently being housed in the former quarters of Able Seaman Campbell.
Captain Hal Montauk and Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi, the surviving crewmembers of the Hakim, are responsible for the provisioning, housing and containment of SCP-9987 until such time as communication can be re-established with Earth. SCP-9987's appearance and containment has been deemed low priority enough to not interfere with Operation Palatine.
Description: SCP-9987 is an entity of unknown origin resembling an adult human male in its mid-40s. SCP-9987 claims to be Francois Couperin "the Great", a French Baroque composer who lived from 1668 to 1733. SCP-9987 appeared aboard the FSS1 Hakim nine years into its mission, only months from reaching its destination at Location of Interest #223; it claims no knowledge of how it arrived on board.
SCP-9987 is approximately 180cm in height, weighing 76kg. It is pale-skinned, with blond hair that is in the process of balding, resembling surviving portraits of the historical Couperin. SCP-9987 has demonstrated an ability to speak fluent French2, English and a wide variety of other languages, although it has trouble distinguishing between them.
SCP-9987's historical knowledge is wide-ranging and does not appear to correspond with the historical Couperin. Due to the timing of SCP-9987's incongruous appearance, a potential link between SCP-9987 and Location of Interest #223 has been suggested by Captain Montauk.
Addendum 1: The following interview was conducted 34 days after SCP-9987's appearance.
Interviewed: SCP-9987
Interviewers: Captain Hal Montauk, Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi
Foreword: This interview was conducted within Storage Room B1 onboard the FSS Hakim, recorded via security camera.
<Begin log>
SCP-9987: I don't understand the point of this. You can talk to me at any time! Why record me?
Montauk: Because you're an anomaly. We don't know who you are or what you're doing here. That's what we do; we record anomalies, and contain them.
SCP-9987: It seems a dismal sort of life. What are you containing out here?
Montauk: We're asking the questions.
SCP-9987 throws its hands up in the air in apparently mock surrender. Tamimi laughs.
Montauk: Don't laugh! It's an anomaly!
Tamimi: He's an anomaly we've been living with for a month, Hal. If he is deceiving us, he's currently indistinguishable from a real person. We may as well be civilised, and treat one another as humans, barring evidence to the contrary.
Montauk: Real people do not appear in the middle of deep space, a decade into -
Tamimi: Are we going to ask him questions, or are we going to bicker?
Montauk sighs.
Montauk: So, SCP-9987 -
SCP-9987: Francois, please.
Montauk: …Francois - please state for the record your memories of the time before you arrived on this ship.
SCP-9987: Well, I…
SCP-9987 frowns.
SCP-9987: You must understand - it's all a bit hazy. I - I believe I was in my home? In Paris, of course. I remember family, faces - they're not coming clearly to me, but they were there… and then I woke up, in the airlock, an alarm blaring and Hal's face in the window.
Montauk: And you remember nothing between?
SCP-9987: Well - I don't know. I had a tune in my head, a strange piece of enharmony, which I kept humming over and over. It was complex, more complex than I could sing, so I played it on the piano for you. You, Isma, you said it was Rameau, and I knew at once that you were right - the Trio des Parques, the second one, which caused such a stir among Parisian opera-goers.
Montauk: Yes, when it premiered, over a month after your death.
SCP-9987: Well, we were in Paris at the same time, but…
Tamimi: But you didn't know each other. As far as can be gathered, anyway.
SCP-9987: Yes. That's the problem, isn't it? I can see in my head music, and history, and so many images. Prussians goosestepping through the streets of Paris. Sebald walking along the Suffolk coast. Montpellier in the winter. Linnaeus drawing, so slowly, an image of words, throwing Latin around as he constructs his images of reality, I…
SCP-9987 lapses into silence.
Montauk: So you can't be Couperin.
SCP-9987: Can't I? I suppose I might not be.
Montauk: You admit it at last?
SCP-9987: Admit? I don't know what to say to that. I know myself as Francois Couperin, later called Couperin le Grand, a court composer for Louis XV. I have - or, I suppose, had - a wife and three living children. If you ask me what my identity is, that is what comes to mind. That is what is firmly fixed in my brain - and yet I remember praying in Old St Paul's, I remember travelling to a mountain shrine dedicated to Fatima, I remember a pilgrimage at Varanasi, I remember… I remember too much.
Tamimi: Clinging to you like flypaper.
SCP-9987: Yes - yes, exactly.
Montauk: You could be insane - a man who's deluded himself into thinking he's a composer. But I think otherwise. I think you're to do with Location of Interest #223. I think you're lying to us, or you've been lied to.
SCP-9987: What is this 223 you're heading towards? You've been very careful not to reveal what it is, I must say.
Montauk: That's classified.
Couperin looks at Tamimi, who shakes her head.
Tamimi: I'm sorry, Francois. We can't tell you that. All I can say is that we've been heading there for a long time, and we'll be arriving soon. A matter of weeks, in fact.
Montauk: So you can see how your arrival is suspicious. We are here, where no human has gone before, in a universe that is wholly empty of other sapient life. We are in the deepest, blackest part of space, and suddenly a man appears from thin air in front of us.
SCP-9987: Of course. Of course, I… I understand entirely. Although, I must say, you're taking the inexplicable remarkably well in your stride.
Tamimi: It's in our training. It's "what we do", I suppose. I've seen people appear, disappear, snap into being and snap out again…
Montauk: But never this far out. Never this close to our goal. No. Whether or not you're aware, SCP-9987, you must be connected to our goal. You're an anomaly, and we have to contain you.
Tamimi nods slowly. Couperin sighs.
SCP-9987: Can I at least leave Campbell's room? Have free rein? I promise not to disappear.
Montauk: If you're a liar, your promises mean nothing… but, well, fine. It's been a month, and I - we - could do with the company. Damn the Foundation.
Tamimi: That seems a little out-of-character for you, Hal.
Montauk: Well. There's a first time for everything.
Montauk stands up.
Montauk: Don't make me regret it.
<End log>
Addendum 2: The following is an entry from SCP-9987's personal journal, written 43 days after SCP-9987's appearance.
I awake from the gardens of Babur, in Kabul, the mist seeping overhead. A rare survival, I think - I asked the ship's computer, and it says they still exist. You can wander past Babur's marble tomb, rest near it, stare out at a greying sky from it. You can hear the water flow, see birds criss-cross over the sky, as the rush of trains, cars, people chime from beyond the banks. The smog leaks out, the mountains poking their skinny necks above the line of cloud.
I was born in Paris, lived in Paris, died in Paris, tied - as was my father, as were many of my family - to the church of Saint Gervais, that herald of the French Baroque - but I no longer remember what I thought of it, or the city, or my family. The church is filtered, in my head, through a thousand thousand impressions: the dull gaze of a tourist, the reverent piety of a Belgian nun, the quiet fascination of an aging historian. And so on, and so on, and so on.
I cannot count how many names must reside inside my head. I am Couperin, I know myself to be Couperin, and yet so many flashes and impressions have flooded my mind that I cannot hold onto myself. No full minds dwell within, but only so many breaths, feelings, fleeting moments, a whole horde of them stitched around me, through me. I am a creature of a thousand parts, none of which fit together.
This ship is not as large as one would expect, nor as small. Its full complement is only 15 people, but it's spacious; enough quarters for everyone. I have a generous double bed; a smallish room with a kitchen, a wide, bleak window that opens out onto the sky. It's a long, distant black that the mind tries to wrap meaning around, and fails.
But I am comfortable. A little lamp at my bedside table; a book, a cup of tea, and forever, a thin screen of pseudo-glass to my right. I can sit and think; I can listen to music, contemplate reality, inside this little box.
The rest of the ship is similar; grey walls, grey corridors, an air of spartan comfort. The food supplies are basic, reprocessed nutrient packs and the occasional piece of greenery from Isra's gardens; there is a dining room, the cockpit, a large series of storage units, a central kitchen… a little world, designed to sustain but not delight the senses.
Only two crew are left here - Isra and Hal, an odd pair, wholly dissimilar in habits and tastes but united in a sense of duty, mission, camraderie. They're both suspicious of me, but Hal is rather more so - his eyes flash and flicker when he looks in my direction. I think he sees me as a distraction from their mission. Isra, meanwhile, is all distraction, tending her plants, examining the microscopic cells and structures from within, apparently unconcerned with what they'll do at their destination. Wherever that is.
I float, untethered, washing through this blackened sky, watching the points converge on their conclusion.
Addendum 3: Impromptu interview between Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi and SCP-9987.
Interviewed: SCP-9987
Interviewer: Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi
Foreword: This interview was conducted 47 days after SCP-9987's appearance, within Senior Researcher Tamimi's personal laboratory onboard the FSS Hakim. It was recorded via security camera.
<Begin log>
It is artificial day. A large window opens out onto the ship's hydroponic chambers. SCP-9987 enters the room; Tamimi is bent over a microscope, examining a sample of plant tissue. She looks up at SCP-9987's entry.
SCP-9987 walks over to the window and looks out at the greenhouse.
Tamimi: They're not ready yet.
SCP-9987: Hm?
Tamimi: The peppers. It'll be another few days.
SCP-9987: We still have some in storage, don't we?
Tamimi: Not since yesterday.
SCP-9987: Ah. Shame.
SCP-9987 moves away from the window and sits down opposite Tamimi.
SCP-9987: Capiscum annuum.
Tamimi: The annual pepper. Or the captive pepper, I suppose - someone once told me that capiscum comes from the Latin for "box".
SCP-9987: It might come from the Latin for box.
Tamimi: As you like.
SCP-9987 turns towards the window. Tamimi watches him intermittently.
SCP-9987: It was a mistake, you know. The name "pepper". The Europeans thought that such hot plants must be related, so assumed it was a variant of black pepper - the peppercorn, piper nigrum. One of their many misconceptions about the New World.
Tamimi: I did know.
SCP-9987: It is odd, is it not? We see similarities in outcome and assume a similarity on a deeper level, in the root of a thing.
Tamimi: Like how you believe you're Couperin, just because that name is lodged in your brain? His memories swim to your mind's surface, so you assume you are him, not thinking about how you can't be.
SCP-9987: I am what I understand myself to be. Can you ask more of anyone?
Tamimi: No, I suppose not. But I still have questions. Like where you came from.
SCP-9987: Montauk thinks I'm a spy. An extraterrestrial, sent to steal your secrets and take them back to some sinister, monstrous homeworld.
Tamimi: Montauk does not like anything that diverts from the mission. He hasn't chucked you out of an airlock yet because you might be part of it.
SCP-9987 sighs.
SCP-9987: We're going round in circles again, Isra. What is your mission? What aren't you telling me? Do you really believe I'm an alien spy?
Tamimi: No. I don't. I think you're… something to do with the Crown.
SCP-9987: The Crown?
Tamimi sighs, and leans back in her chair, away from her work. She looks intently at SCP-9987.
Tamimi: I am tired, Francois. Must we do this now?
SCP-9987: I didn't mean to -
Tamimi: No, I know you didn't. So. What do you know about Earth? The present-day Earth, I mean, not your library of esoteric knowledge.
SCP-9987: I -
SCP-9987 pauses, and frowns.
SCP-9987: I don't think I know anything. That's - that's very strange.
Tamimi: Yes. But it makes some sense. What's the last thing you can remember?
SCP-9987: About… 70 years ago, I think. The poetry of John Racanelli, the Canadian.
Tamimi: Hah! I know his work. We studied it in literature class, in my first year at university. The last of the Late Canadian period, before the Californian invasion.
SCP-9987: Such strange verse. Almost neoclassical, his emphasis on form without losing sight of a clear, relevant strand of argument. "I am lost on the hills"…
Tamimi: …"Under the paralysis chill". Yes, that brings me back, far back… well, knowing what you do of the time he lived in, do you think things got better?
SCP-9987: No. I don't suppose they did.
Tamimi: It's all - calamity. Calamity after calamity, Francois. I don't know any other word for it. Things are not well on Earth. There are genocides, more and more, now the, the "logic" of war has made that the easier course again. There is mass starvation and disease among vast swathes of humanity - not enough food or medicine to go around. And now that a nuclear bomb can almost never be detonated, there's nothing left to stop wars again - the old kind of war, the slow kind.
SCP-9987: Was it really that simple? Mutually assured destruction?
Tamimi: Maybe not always. But now, it is.
Tamimi sighs, staring upwards.
Tamimi: The Foundation didn't know what to do. The occult, kept tightly locked behind steel doors, was bleeding through more than ever. What little concern for the Veil remained was being degraded, snatched at, deprecated by states, coalitions, other actors. It's a miracle it lasted as long as it did. We were like a great, mutant spider, continuing to contain when all reason to do so had long since failed. We just kept on locking things up, sealing them, stopping them from disrupting a normalcy that had long since died.
SCP-9987: So why go on?
Tamimi: Because we were waiting, like a holding pattern, for things to improve on their own. That was the idea; we need to keep things making sense in one way, so that one day, they will again in all ways. Mankind will, mankind must, fix its own problems. If we can keep the real dark, the death of science and reason, from hitting the world, then one day the world will be itself again, and we can resume our purpose. The problem…
Tamimi fingers a leaf on her worktable.
Tamimi: The problem was that, to keep an ever-growing anomalousness away from everyone else, we had to annex more and more of reality into our system. The numbers working for the Foundation were - are - enormous. No more independent powers, no more dissenters; the anomalous world is run with a tight, iron fist. You are either in the Foundation or outside it. No in-between. The last rays of light were fading, there was no hope remaining… until the Crown came.
SCP-9987: And what was the Crown?
Tamimi: A signal. A long-distant signal. Snippets, endless snippets, of - of words. Sometimes English, sometimes Persian, Xhosa, Chuvash, and on and on and on. It continued for years - proof of alien life. You know, I suppose, that we're alone in space? All those hateful stars and Hytoths and everything else - dead, or dying, or never real in the first place. Some are just remnants from a past version of time. No, we were all alone, until that signal came blaring through, chitterings that had to be deliberate but made no sense.
SCP-9987: And - and this signal, this did - what?
Tamimi: Nothing, at first. It was just one more curiosity to be intercepted and contained. But then it changed. The signal became clearer, precise, beautiful…
Tamimi reaches over to her computer, and presses a few buttons. Then she turns it towards SCP-9987, who looks at it intently.
SCP-9987: Co-ordinates.
Tamimi: And very exact ones. They corresponded to the location the signal was thought to come from. Deep, deep space, space we could never reach alone. But along with it came instructions. Blueprints. For a ship.
SCP-9987 whistles.
SCP-9987: I thought this seemed like far too advanced technology.
Tamimi: It was all materials we had available, but configured in a strange way. A unique way that we didn't understand. But we followed them to the letter, and created this. It was clear what we had to do; we filled out the complement of crew, and took off. Through the stars. Barrelling towards them.
SCP-9987: Did they try to reverse-engineer it? This alien tech?
Tamimi: Oh, they tried. But it didn't work. I cannot tell you why we have air, gravity, water, light. Nobody understands it. Any combination except the precise instructions we followed, any attempt to utilise these systems - they all met with failure. This is an exact instrument, and the slightest deviation kills the fire and makes it all dead metal.
SCP-9987: Extraordinary. So why's it called the Crown?
Tamimi: Well - we followed the coordinates. Our telescopes took pictures of it, before we left, at what must be out there. This ship, this impossible ship, is heading straight towards a corona in space, a ring of fire. And, as I'm sure you're dying to tell me, corona is the Latin for -
SCP-9987: Crown. Yes.
Tamimi smiles at him.
Tamimi: So that's it, really. We don't know why we're here, or what we're heading towards. We're hoping that whatever is at the end of this journey, with this impossible knowledge, can help us, can reverse the tide. It's a gamble. We just have to hope that whatever is at the end of the road is reaching out to aid us.
SCP-9987: It could be luring you in. Like an anglerfish.
Tamimi shrugs.
Tamimi: I don't have the energy to worry about that any more. I watched my parents die in front of me. Hal escaped a grinding famine. The most we can hope for is to waste out our seventy, eighty years in a grey bunker under the wasteland of Brazil.
Tamimi removes her spectacles and starts to polish them.
Tamimi: I'm not a politician, or a dreamer, Francois. I'm just a person, a very tired person, who's throwing the only die she has left to throw. All I really want is to sit here, surrounded by my plants, but how can I do that? How can I, when I feel such guilt? And, besides… I'd like to see something else before I die. Something that isn't the same old miserable Earth.
SCP-9987: Is that true?
Tamimi pauses, appearing to think.
Tamimi: I think so. Even if only once. Something to make all I've seen feel worth it. To recontextualise it.
Tamimi puts her glasses back on.
Tamimi: But Hal wants more, I think. He's got stars in his eyes. The past means nothing to him.
SCP-9987 nods slowly.
SCP-9987: Well, thank you, Isra. I'm glad to know what we're doing out here. Plunging ourselves through a fiery hoop.
Tamimi: You're welcome, for what good it'll do you. I hope it clears some things up.
SCP-9987: Yes, I - yes…
SCP-9987 leaves.
<End log>
Addendum 4: Sample of an English segment of the broadcast of Unclassified Anomaly #17671 "The Crown", with commentary by Senior Researcher Tamimi.
The untied engine sees the otter stretching, taffee-like, as the sun is boiled to death by the third avenging angel, wreathed in the blue leaves of the quokka shrub. The cascade of moles breathes in the cataclysmic Bangui, all sand and strange wood under the overblown table. Lebanese cedars make hay in Wilfred's office, while the mountain's candle is undulated by eel-shaped bones. Violin fever has eaten peppers on the quilt at the Echo Treaty, novel horsebacks collapsing into coffee murmurs. All is fluffy, all is created. You cannot eat the grass clock when pigeons exude onomatopoeia. We haven't sidled the resurrection yet, and so query in strange martyrs' oblongs, obverse claws scratching out chairs in ceramic textiles. One never knows where to put the money water in the eternal glass slurry engine, untied.
Tamimi: I remember the heady days after the first broadcasts, as so many of my younger colleagues scrambled to understand these words and images. Was it an alien intelligence, trying to communicate? Was it successfully communicating in a way that eluded us? Or was it all random, a cosmic Rorschach test that simply bubbles to the surface those thoughts that were already contained within us?
There are patterns. The same two words appear at the beginning and end of each segment; in this case, "engine" and "untied". Certain clusters of apparently random words seem to have a thematic connection: "sun" and "boiled" both evoke intense heat, while "resurrection" and "martyrs" placed together in the same sentence imply a Christian connection.
But maybe these aren't anything at all; just the random stuff of matter, two dead rocks happening to pass one another at just the right time - like the "ceramic" and "textiles" placed together in that same sentence. Both are man-made materials, used for the creation of art, or functional objects. Nothing about their content is described or implied, except that "chairs" are being scratched out in them. White noise with occasional sprigs of chance meaning - like Borges's Library of Babel, as Couperin has reminded me.
I am cheating a little with this passage, though, because a school of thought has identified a possible connection within it. "The sun is boiled to death by the third avenging angel" may reference the final message, that same day, of Sauelsuesor, the former SCP-179. She had been aging, inexplicably, unrelentingly; lines had crisscrossed her unchecked face, wrinkles and liver spots - or sunspots, I suppose. She had been less and less responsive, even by her standards. Her movements had become erratic, confused.
She was the last of the extraterrestrials to die. One day - that day - she detached from her post and tumbled, rotating in space, into the sun. From one angle, it looked like she was boiling. But she was already dead, of course; and she was being boiled, in this metaphor, not doing the boiling of the sun. So how can that passage refer to it?
I don't know. I just see her face, turning, turning, turning towards that great and finite fire. I can't remember her last message - the computer has it, if you really want to know.
Addendum 5: Impromptu interview between Captain Montauk and SCP-9987.
Interviewed: SCP-9987
Interviewer: Captain Hal Montauk
Foreword: This interview was conducted 51 days after SCP-9987's appearance, within the rec room aboard the FSS Hakim. It was recorded by a hidden camera attached to Captain Montauk's person.
<Begin log>
SCP-9987 is playing Hiératique from Boulez's 12 Notations for Piano on a harpsichord. Montauk enters. As the movement is less than a minute long, he waits until SCP-9987 has finished playing it.
Montauk: That must have been difficult to transcribe.
SCP-9987: A nightmare. Badly done on my part, too, but I felt like playing some Boulez, and we have no piano.
Montauk: Do you often seek to distract yourself with these meaningless projects?
SCP-9987: Oh, am I being interviewed? My apologies. I was not expecting an interrogation so early in the afternoon.
Montauk briefly smiles, before sitting down in an armchair opposite SCP-9987's bench. He pulls out some notepaper and starts writing.
Montauk: Did Isra tell you about the Crown?
SCP-9987: She did, yes.
Montauk: She shouldn't have done that.
SCP-9987: I wonder how you two have managed to cope for so long, with only each other's company. It must feel very unvaried after a while.
Montauk: We made do.
SCP-9987: It does explain a lot, though. Your respective styles of speech. Isra is always seeking to pontificate, almost as much as I am. She seems starved for an audience, but she doesn't ever want to rush things. Just gradually adding layers of thick description. And you…
Montauk: And me?
SCP-9987: You are so clipped, direct, to the point. If Isra is languid and expository, devoid on specific goals beyond whatever interests her at that moment, you seem to suborn everything to your vision, to your singular goal. I remember…
SCP-9987 taps the harpsichord.
SCP-9987: I remember a man called Franz Reichelt, who lived in Paris at the start of the 20th century. He was a tailor, and he believed he could construct a parachute from cloth. People tried to dissuade him, but he continued.
Montauk: You're comparing me to a madman?
SCP-9987: But he wasn't mad! Or at least, he didn't seem so. He was successful, at first, with dummies - using silk, he was able to arrest their fall. But it was harder to turn it into a suit, a wearable garment that could then be used as a parachute.
Montauk: So what happened?
SCP-9987: He grew frustrated with his repeated failures, and decided to test one of his designs himself. By jumping off the Eiffel Tower.
Montauk: Ah. And…?
SCP-9987: Oh, killed instantly, of course. Maybe you're right; maybe I was comparing you to a madman. But that wasn't my point, really.
Montauk: I'm not insane. I was appointed to do a job, and I intend to do that job.
SCP-9987: But - why?
Montauk: Why? The world is burning, Francois. We need an answer. We need a way to fix things, and we have none. My job is to reach this Crown and determine what it is and whether it can be exploited. That's what the Foundation decided, and that's why I'm here, in this nonsense place that makes no sense.
SCP-9987: Do you really believe that?
Montauk: I do.
SCP-9987: Isra implied the Foundation wasn't looking to fix the world. That it was convinced the world should fix itself without the anomalous.
Montauk: No, that isn't quite it. The Foundation doesn't want normalcy to break. They're hoping whatever this thing is can provide some benefit that can go unnoticed, a solution to the wars and famines that can be attributed - convincingly - to something natural.
SCP-9987: They're looking for God, then.
Montauk: Or a king. A saviour. A prophet. Honestly, I'm not sure what they're looking for. But I'll know it when I see it.
SCP-9987: Mm.
SCP-9987 drums his fingers on the harpsichord.
SCP-9987: So what if that's not what you find?
Montauk: What?
SCP-9987: What if you find an extraterrestrial civilisation, a conventional one? A mirror, bouncing random words back at us?
Montauk: I would be disappointed, sure, but I'd return home and report my findings.
SCP-9987: Mm. And what if you did find something? Your god, saviour, prophet? A king? Something that could help, but not in the way the Foundation wanted?
Montauk does not respond.
SCP-9987: Hal?
Montauk: As - as I said.
SCP-9987: Really? Leaving it and reporting back?
Montauk does not respond, but his hand, visible in the shot, starts clenching.
SCP-9987: I believe you are dedicated to your mission, but that dedicated? Your whole life sounds like it's been hell, and what's the point of working for the Foundation if not to improve it? You're only human, after all.
Montauk: Unlike you.
SCP-9987: I beg your pardon?
Montauk: You appear weeks away from our destination. You wheedle your way in here, charming Isra, getting a free run of the ship, regaling us with useless encyclopaedia facts, then trying to convince me to abandon my mission? To debase myself by treating with an anomaly?
Montauk places his hand on a heavy brass candlestick.
Montauk: I ought to beat you to death now like the dog you are. You spy. Traitor.
SCP-9987: I seem to have touched a nerve. I apologise.
Neither moves or speaks for several seconds.
SCP-9987: You're not braining me with the candlestick, I notice.
Montauk: No.
SCP-9987: May I ask why?
Montauk: Because - because we don't understand you. Because you might be from…
SCP-9987: Ah. Yes, I get it. I might be from the Crown.
Montauk: You don't seem like a spy.
SCP-9987: That's a subjective judgement.
Montauk: You were right, okay? I haven't been coping. Neither of us has. We have been stranded, just the two of us, for years. We don't know how to be, how to interact, how to think any more. Isra busies herself with little things, with memories and plants and - and God knows what else. And I look at where we're going. And I have to, Francois, I have to, because otherwise this - this -
SCP-9987: This would all have been for nothing.
Montauk nods slowly.
Montauk: Did you ever see a film called Solaris? 20th century, Russia?
SCP-9987: Somebody did, and I remember it. Scientists in orbit around a strange alien world. People start appearing, people from the characters' pasts. It's unclear if the planet is an original intelligence or a mirror of their own psyche.
Montauk: Yes.
SCP-9987: And you think I am like those strangers? But I am not your dead wife, Hal. I am nothing that exists in your vocabularies. I know a thousand stories and trivia that you do not know. I am not from you. You are not seeing a mirror of yourselves.
Montauk relaxes slightly, loosening his grip on the candlestick.
Montauk: Yeah. Yes. You're right. But…
SCP-9987: But I could still be from the Crown. That thought had occurred to me, too. Perhaps it makes the most sense. But why…
Both are silent for several seconds, before SCP-9987 suddenly jerks upwards.
SCP-9987: Why is there a candlestick on a spaceship?
Montauk stares at the candlestick for a second, then jumps up in fright, dropping it.
Montauk: I - that wasn't there before. Why didn't I notice it? Why -
Montauk stares at the harpsichord.
Montauk: Why is there a harpsichord here?
SCP-9987 turns and looks at the harpsichord. Montauk leaves the room quickly.
<End log>
Addendum 6: Log of inexplicable objects.
Item: Gilt bronze clock, copy of clock made by Robert Robin in 1782.
Notes: Montauk has proven unhelpful and refuses to look at item. Couperin, predictable, was able to aid in identification, but he says it was not something he (or the real Couperin) knew or could have known, being created decades after Couperin's death and in an entirely different style. I have placed it on the mantepiece in the rec room.
Item: French harpsichord, early 18th-century manufacture.
Notes: Couperin claims to recognise this harpsichord but cannot place where he saw it. He believes it may have been at the salon of a French noblewoman, but claims the details "escape him".
Item: Set of tableware, late 20th-century British manufacture.
Notes: Couperin recalled a dinner party that took place in Hertford in 1992. He said it involved an undercooked quiche and hard, stringy broccoli, but with "sparkling conversation" he could not recall. His only other memory from the evening was staring at a maple tree in the back garden of his host while the sun set. Once again, wholly unhelpful.
Item: Large brass candlestick, French, early 18th century.
Notes: Couperin claimed to have owned these candlesticks in the 1720s and 1730s, until his death. He seemed oddly unaffected by their presence, however.
Item: Glass bowl containing water and a live member of the species Carassius auratus.
Notes: Couperin could offer nothing of real value but told me keeping goldfishes in glass bowls was a common practice prior to the 22nd century. The goldfish is still alive and requires little attention. I have relocated him to my quarters; I enjoy watching him swim back and forth.
Item: Porcelain vase, 15th century Ming Dynasty.
Notes: Montauk claims this is identical to a family heirloom, bought by his ancestor Robert Montauk, the noted Foundation researcher who defected to the Children of the Scarlet King. Montauk seemed disturbed by its presence here, and insisted it was destroyed. I believe Couperin has "liberated" it.
Item: Patchwork quilt, unknown provenance.
Notes: This could have been made anywhere, at any time. It's almost startlingly generic, like the platonic ideal of a patchwork quilt. I am mesmerised by it.
Addendum 7: The following is an entry from SCP-9987's personal journal, written 56 days after SCP-9987's appearance.
Everyone on this vessel is insane. I am now convinced of it. I of course include myself in this category.
Hal is obsessed with the Crown. He does not often speak of it directly, of what he hopes it is, of what he will find. He stays in his room for hours, listening to the old broadcasts. He seems to find something oracular about them, poring through them, searching for meanings, patterns, answers.
I wonder what he truly wants. I took a look at the images of the Crown myself. It is a vast thing, a flickering, perfect ring, stark against the black. It comes through the camera as orange, but Hal confided in me that, in his dreams, it flickers; first green, then red, then colours we cannot hope to imagine.
I do not trust Hal's dreams. They are ridden with clichés, with false attempts at profundity that only show his own lack of imagination. He sees, I think, an infinity of possibility; he has a clear vision of his own transcendence, of how it will look and see and be to fall into the flame. He wants to be saved, and sees in the Crown his saviour, his king.
This notion of kingship seems to have arisen solely with the Crown's nickname. It's irrational; but what isn't these days? A whole world is searching for salvation; and mistrusting their own agency, they look to the infinite for what they need. They want to hear, from this place, instructions, orders, promises; they want a narrative that is easy, unobscured, faithless. The infinite will merely be, a fact rather than a hope, and they will follow, knights of their liege lord, without a worry or a doubt.
I cannot explain what the broadcasts from the Crown are. I look at the images and share Hal's conviction that there is something of the eternal about it, but I do not know what. I think it is more complex than he believes. He wants something simple, clear, an answer that he merely needs to perform the right actions to commune with. He sees his mission, the ship, the broadcasts as a great instruction manual, a thread through the labyrinth.
Well, I prefer to be lost. I spend more and more time with Isra; I think she is glad of a little company. We talk of many things; history, science, her botanical experiments. Sapient life is dead outside Earth, but plants and animals still abound on other worlds. She has cuttings of what she calls the quokka shrub, after a line in one of the broadcasts; she named it for its blue leaves. They are strange, cobalt things, but oddly engaging, endearing; I feel a strange compassion for them.
Isra moves through the world in her own slow, deliberate way. I think she no longer believes in the Foundation; I am not sure she believes in the mission. She, too, pores over the broadcasts; but less intensely than Couperin, less monomaniacally. I think she enjoys the interplay of words, nothing more, nothing less.
She is also making a log of the objects that keep appearing. The 18th-century French character of many of them have led her to hypothesise a connection between them and me; but it is unclear what such a connection could be. Unlike Montauk, she seems wholly unconcerned with the why and what of it all. She simply floats on through.
I am unsure about these things, these objects of use and luxury that keep popping up. They are no more inexplicable than me. I know I am not a spy, and I am probably not the real Couperin. So what am I? Perhaps I am a Tarkovskian conjuring, created by the Crown in response to our approach. Or perhaps it created me long ago; an intrinsic property of this ship that nobody understands, carrying us on a journey we do not understand, generating things we do not understand: clocks, candlesticks, Couperins.
Addendum 8: Impromptu interview between Captain Hal Montauk, Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi and SCP-9987.
Interviewed: SCP-9987
Interviewers: Captain Hal Montauk, Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi
Foreword: This interview was conducted 58 days after SCP-9987's appearance, within the dining room aboard the FSS Hakim. It was recorded via security camera.
<Begin log>
It is artificial evening, in the ship's dining room. Montauk, Tamimi and SCP-9987 are finishing their meal at the central table.
SCP-9987: The peppers are excellent, Isra; you've outdone yourself.
Tamimi: Thank you. It's always nice when my work is appreciated. Did you like the fake beef?
SCP-9987: For what it is, it's rather good.
Montauk: You don't have a story about that?
SCP-9987: About fake beef? No. It's not a good subject for stories.
Montauk: Why is it always stories?
SCP-9987: I'm sorry?
Montauk: You claim to have all these memories, these fragmented recollections of people. But you always tell us stories; stories we could find in encyclopedias, probably, if they're true at all. Superficial things. What about more - more precise memories?
SCP-9987: Such as?
Montauk: A pretty smile; a rainstorm; the experience of walking down a street at night, I don't know. Something specific to these people you remember.
SCP-9987: I have told several stories like that. You just don't remember.
Montauk: I remember fine. You're always circling around the matter at hand; you never discuss anything real. Actual feelings, actual emotions, actual memories.
SCP-9987 shrugs.
SCP-9987: Maybe because that's not how you approach a subject. You have to dance around it.
Montauk: Pretentious nonsense.
SCP-9987: Not at all. It's the difference between saying "I love you" and writing a love sonnet, one that perhaps never says the word "love". Language can be so imprecise; you give it precision by building specific images around the central meaning of a thing. I compare thee to a summer's day, which tells you a lot more about the nature of my love than just the word on its own. I tell stories, I speak of definitions and meanings and artworks, to provoke colours, sounds, images in your mind; the total sum of which corresponds much better to the precise thing I hope to invoke.
Montauk: You like to talk, don't you?
SCP-9987 smiles.
SCP-9987: I suppose.
Tamimi: It's like you're building a house, I think. Placing bricks, columns, cornices, and admiring the prettiness and intricacy of the result. Regardless of the logic of the architecture.
Montauk: It's still nonsense. Call a spade a spade, I say.
SCP-9987: Yes, which is, itself, a metaphor.
Isra laughs. Montauk puts his cutlery down.
Montauk: Why do we end up talking about you so much? Or your stories, if not you yourself.
SCP-9987 shrugs.
SCP-9987: I'm a novelty to you. You're years and years into your mission; you've been alone together for however long. Of course I'm an object of discussion. I'm something new.
Tamimi: Or something old.
SCP-9987 looks sharply at Isra.
SCP-9987: This reminds me. How long have you been alone? Surely the crew was bigger than this?
There is silence for several seconds.
SCP-9987: Well?
Tamimi: There was…
Montauk: An accident. A big one.
SCP-9987: But - what accident would take out almost the entire crew? Surely you all had different portfolios, different stations? Why were they all in one place, and why were you two spared?
Tamimi: It's… not a pleasant subject. We don't like to discuss it.
Montauk: You don't like to discuss it. You want to know, Francois? I was manning the cockpit, and Isra was ill. A freak chance. The rest, all thirteen, were here, celebrating.
SCP-9987: Celebrating?
Montauk: Three years since the start of the expedition.
Tamimi sighs.
Tamimi: We celebrated every year. A wonderful time of forced joy and camraderie. And then, they…
SCP-9987: They what?
Tamimi: Disappeared. Or - or moved, I suppose. A blink, a glitch. Everyone in this room suddenly shifted a hundred feet to the right, floating out in space.
Montauk: Screaming.
Tamimi: Oh, do shut up.
Montauk: It certainly looked like it. For half a second. We sent out the shuttle craft, of course, but it was far too late…
There is silence for several seconds.
SCP-9987: So - so then why do you still use this room? If it was your absence -
Tamimi: Because nothing about it made any sense, Francois. People do not blink and glitch in space. No, this felt more - more deliberate. Something planned. Something in the structure of the ship, or something that the Crown was doing from afar.
SCP-9987: You - good God…
Tamimi: And we survived! A pilot and a botanist. Useless.
Montauk: We're not useless. We're the perfect emissaries.
Tamimi: Hal -
Montauk: We must be. The Crown must have done it. Why else would it have eliminated them? What else could have? It's like you said; people do not blink and glitch in space.
Tamimi: You don't know -
Montauk: I do know. We are all at the Crown's mercy; it is our duty, our destiny, to meet it. It's like a king, from which all things flow, a great patrimonial river; it is infinite, and forever. Shimmering flame in the dead of space! A great hole, through which is forever, is origin, is ending, is…
SCP-9987 coughs.
SCP-9987: If that is the case - and I do not say it necessarily is - if it is something infinite, something terrifying, something with the power to reach across space to advance its purposes - why would it be at all comprehensible to you?
Montauk: What do you mean?
SCP-9987: I've seen you, Hal, poring over the words of the Crown's broadcasts. You're looking for patterns. Your words, the things you say - you think it's your destiny, don't you? To find the Crown? To be its - what, its servant? Its loyal knight to be commanded from the power of an orb and sceptre?
Montauk gets up from the table and turns away, breathing heavily.
Montauk: Wouldn't you want that? If you'd survived all - all this?
SCP-9987: But how can you know what the Crown's intentions are? How do you know it's saved you to be a prophet? It saved Isra, too. Maybe it brought me into existence. How do you know what any of it means? You're not dealing with cause and effect, a feudal contract. You're dealing with forever.
Montauk does not respond.
SCP-9987: Hal -
Tamimi: Oh, leave him alone, Francois.
SCP-9987 turns to Tamimi, surprised.
SCP-9987: You agree with him?
Tamimi: No, I don't. But don't - don't badger him like that. He's stuck in space, the same as us.
Tamimi sighs, pushes her hair back, and then stands up.
Tamimi: There's only a little while of - of this left. We'll know soon. Or we'll know something, anyway, even if it's how little there is left.
Tamimi leaves the room, followed shortly by Montauk. SCP-9987 remains where he is, staring at his plate for several minutes before following them.
<End log>
Addendum 9: The following is an entry from Senior Researcher Tamimi's personal journal, written 58 days after SCP-9987's appearance.
I only sleep for a few hours these days. Most of the time, I stare at my ceiling, waiting for our world to end.
Sometimes, I watch the stars, blinking through bleary eyes. They're always different, every night; or so it seems to me. I am not an astrophysicist; I have not made a study of observing these stars, of working out if the speed at which we travel provides a new vista every night. I only stare at the bright smudges and pinpricks, and listen to the hum of our engines.
Everything feels inevitable; it feels planned from the start. I never wanted to go on this trip, but I did, because it felt like my duty to do so, dragged up from some forgotten part of me. I do not have the luxury of unfettered personhood; none of us do, in this age, a thing Hal never seems to understand. Or Couperin, come to think of it.
All sights and sensations feel unreal, here. The grey, dull sheen of metal, carpet, plastic; this minimalist, antiseptic ship. Does that reflect the Crown's nature, or is it a trick, one of a thousand nesting tricks, to bluff and counterbluff its true intentions?
I don't know. Couperin is right; we can't know. I stare at the stars until I've had my fill, the ceiling until my mind swims, and then I return to my plants, and continue my cuttings and studies and catalogues. I examine the stems of far-off plants, of our dead interstellar colonies; I provide designations that will never be used, make breakthroughs I know will never see home.
What is it like to wear a crown? To be a king? What does it actually feel like, to be on the throne? We don't have kings and queens any more; the idea failed on Earth. The dreams and hopes these people had of all power and glory emanating from them, a flowing of the divine charisma through channels and nodes into their own person - they were too frail to sustain that, and so they withered and died.
But what if the kingship was real? Hal seems to think it is. What if a king came who was a true font of justice, of power, of divinity? I cannot imagine the feeling; to speak a word, make a decision, and watch your power inflict not a wound but instead unravel and remake worlds. Would anyone even exist beside you? Would your limitless will not stagger you with loneliness, with solitude?
Hal does not think like this. He sees only a white and shining fire, a purification, an oblivion; an ultimate goal that humankind has been striving for since the beginning of forever. I worry for him; I grieve for what he is becoming. And still, all I can think to do is turn to my plants, biting my nails, completing my catalogues.
In my chambers are ornaments; a necklace my sister used to wear, a framed photo of my parents. A few strands, suspended in bio-containment, of some pampas grass, before the last of it was burnt. The white, fluffy heads bound upwards, waving in artificial wind; I feel I can see blue sky between the rushes and the clouds beyond them, waving slowly in the noonday sun.
I have seen fire enough; fire that burns, consumes, screams. I do not wish to see any more.
Addendum 10: Log of inexplicable rooms.
Tamimi: Beginning 59 days after SCP-9987's appearance, several rooms within the FSS Hakim underwent significant alterations to their structure, form, decoration and internal size (though not external size, causing a series of apparently impossible physical contradictions). The following is a log of these alterations.
Room: Dining room
Description: Appears to be a French rococo breakfast room, dated to the mid-18th century. A large window, in place of the previous viewing screen, shows a view of the countryside in Picardy circa 1750. Fresh food, apparently not taken from our provisions, can be found each morning; it is reminiscent of the diet of 18th-century French landowners.
Notes: Montauk became rapidly disturbed in the presence of this room. Couperin found the experience "uncomfortable" and has taken to eating his meals in his quarters. I have found the food prepared here to be pleasantly archaic and indulgent. I have never had a candied flower before; it has proven a delightful experience.
Room: Storage room B1
Description: Appears as a large earthen cave. Paintings, reminiscent of but not identical to those found in the Chauvet Cave, can be seen across the surfaces.
Notes: Our provisions remain in this room, untouched and at a consistent temperature. You have to dodge around them through winding passageways to find the paintings; they made me feel odd, as if disconnected from one thing and connected to something else. What is the Crown trying to show us? I don't know, and I don't much care; I want to stand here, my torch flickering up at the remains of something else, absorbing a context I cannot hope to understand.
Room: Captain's quarters
Description: The carpet has been wholly replaced with a thick layer of black paint covering the floor. The paint does not appear to dry.
Notes: A prank on Hal? I don't think so. He walks around, defiant, with black splattered over his boots and calves. He seems happy, but then again he would. He sees everything around him as either a message or a trick. His vision is filled wholly with the Crown. The black of the paint is the black of night; he refers back to an early broadcast, one that spoke of "night helio frost dropped in amber", and shakes the pages in my face.
Room: Rec room
Description: Appears to be the sitting room of a small house in Staines-upon-Thames, circa 2270.
Notes: Very funny, but I left England when I was a child. I have no memories, and never had much interest in returning. Is this from my past? There's not much left now. The Thames is plugged with silt; the country is just a lot of death, a lot of memories scattered across the coastlines of Europe and America. I look out of the window here, and see nothing I recognise. Couperin, though, seems to want to talk about it. I'll do it, but not in this place. He might start getting ideas.
Addendum 11: The following is an entry from Captain Montauk's personal journal, written 79 days after SCP-9987's appearance.
Isra and Francois can't stop, won't stop talking. They keep running rings around themselves, torturing their minds with the past, with decaying things. They wander through the maze of blank caves, not caring that the ship, our implement, is collapsing around them into mush, detritus, all that the Crown wishes to slough off us. Yesterday, a storage room degenerated into a cave! I want to help them, but I can't.
I sit and I read, I sharpen my mind in study. I must only face it having striven as hard as I possibly can for it. Itsits there, lingering in the telescopes, its fire burning brighter and brighter with each passing day, images flickering between forked tongues.
I want to pass within the ring. I want to do this so badly it aches. This cannot be a desire that originates with me; it must, it can only be from the Crown itself. I am its vessel, its agent; I am its first point, its protrusion into our reality, the first flush of the unfolding divinity from within.
I look out of the window and see so many stars, so many little lanterns, like runway edge lights lining the path to it, to my conclusion. Isra and Francois don't understand any more. They look back as if there's anything to see but the chain of cause and effect that led from a scattered world to a united one; from ignorant flashes in the dark to the end of the line, the rebirth, the world as it ought to be; the world of the Crown.
It is from the Crown that all things flow. They must. This starship was built on its instruction; the rooms modulated, change, alter according to its whims, its bleak reflections of our own limited selves. Was that all the result of the ship's blueprints, or our proximity to the crown? Francois was right to ask. What was the exact trigger for this ship to become a petal-strewing flower, showing us more and more images for us to parse, understand, decode?
I weep to see it, the inevitability of it. The burning, acrid tang of vid-screens and holopads swirl around me, envelop me, show me the truth of a thing our pale eyes could never comprehend. I see a single, unified crown, containing within it all things, a resolution to all contradictions, and I will be its lieutenant. If all things flow from the king, from the Crown, then I shall be a node, a conduit, a single piece of the puzzle as white infinity cascades down, down, down onto everything.
They will try to stop me, and I will escape their clutches. Nothing else makes sense. It would only speak our own language; otherwise, why speak at all? Why speak in anything other than our own tongue? Why? Why? Why?
My head aches. My throat is dry, my throat and chin itch and shriek. Black paint spatters all around. I wake, I sleep, I am stretched out still further around this console. I am insane, but only relative to this subjective world; I know, in the space behind the eyes, that I'm the sanest man alive.
Addendum 12: Impromptu interview between Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi and SCP-9987.
Interviewed: SCP-9987
Interviewer: Senior Researcher Isra Tamimi
Foreword: This interview was conducted 80 days after SCP-9987's appearance, within the former Storage Room B1 aboard the FSS Hakim. It was recorded via a hidden camera attached to Senior Researcher Tamimi's person.
<Begin log>
Senior Researcher Tamimi is holding a torch and staring up at the paintings. SCP-9987 enters the cave, causing Tamimi to start.
Tamimi: Oh! You scared me.
SCP-9987: Apologies. May I?
Tamimi: Of course.
SCP-9987 moves further into the room, looking at the paintings.
SCP-9987: Extraordinary.
Tamimi: Do you think so? I don't know. These aren't real. They're similar to the paintings in the Chauvet Cave, but they're not them. They're just - just copies.
SCP-9987: Are they?
SCP-9987 leans closer to a painting of a rhinoceros.
SCP-9987: How do we know? Maybe there was another cave, with these paintings in them. A similar one, nearby. One that was destroyed.
Tamimi: Is that another one of your "memories"?
SCP-9987: No. Then I'd have been certain.
SCP-9987 looks down at the ground.
SCP-9987: There were two groups of paintings in Chauvet, thousands of years apart. An early, red set, then a later, black set. Why was that? Was there a memory, a group memory, of this as a sacred space? Did any concept of the sacred exist at this point?
Tamimi: Who can say? I don't know what the archaeologists have to say about it.
SCP-9987: Are there any archaeologists left?
Tamimi: Not many.
The two of them continue to look at the paintings.
Tamimi: I have a -
SCP-9987: Maybe they sheltered here, saw the paintings, and decided to make their own. Maybe they were inspired. Maybe…
Tamimi: Maybe they saw something in the paintings that altered them. Something that made them pursue something they never knew they had, or it made them turn their skills to entirely different ends.
Tamimi raises her torch, watching SCP-9987.
SCP-9987: Some people believe they were created for wholly utilitarian purposes; a kind of magic, or summoning. Others think the purpose is pure art, an act of expression, a memory of the vast, thunderous beasts they saw on the hunt. I suppose we will never know.
Tamimi: No. We won't. I have a question for you.
SCP-9987: Oh?
Tamimi: I know you are Francois Couperin. But why are you Francois Couperin?
SCP-9987 slowly turns and looks at her.
SCP-9987: Your guess is as good as mine.
Tamimi: Is it?
SCP-9987: I don't know why I'm here, Isra.
Tamimi: Don't you? Don't you really? I guess it's possible. See that rhinoceros, there?
She points at a painting of a rhinoceros.
Tamimi: We don't know why it was summoned here into being. We are looking from a vantage of millenia upon millenia. But the painting has seen it all, everything we cannot see. All the context of its creation, use, discovery, all the imaginations that have perceived and shaped it.
She turns to look directly at SCP-9987.
Tamimi: Do you really not know what you are? If you look inside?
SCP-9987 stares at her for several moments.
SCP-9987: I - I have to -
SCP-9987 leaves hurriedly. Tamimi turns back to the paintings.
<End log>
Addendum 13: The following is an entry from SCP-9987's personal journal, written 80 days after SCP-9987's appearance.
I returned to my room - Campbell's room - and lay upon my bed, my head spinning. Did I know what I was?
I looked at my arm and saw a black void, a maw, turned away from any sort of fire, any sort of Crown. I saw in it a hole, and then another, and another, and inside the hole was muck. Dry, painted muck; red lines scratched across black earth.
I peered into another, and saw gardens, stretched out between green hedges. Inside, a man and woman talk; but I watch from a window, seeing them trot by, speaking each to each about nothing in particular, a day like any other day but this one was forgotten forever, lost inside its own conjuring. A diary lies on a table; only it, through one frozen, faded eye, betrays the ghost of this day, a miracle scrawled onto paper leaves.
More holes open up, and up, climbing my body and my skin. I see a man composing a sonnet, bored, hazy-minded; I see objets d'art, candlesticks of fine bronze and gilt, containing the reflections of a flickering red but never the red itself. I see a man and a woman floating in a space station, Breughel's Innocents darting on the wall.
The images come flashing past, over and over again. A man screams, plummeting to earth from a metal tower. A Canadian poet curses as he is taken to the cinderblocks. A red pepper is cut into, spilling out black peppercorns, enough to engulf a room, a ceiling. Dante sings to Beatrice across a fractured sky. I see the church of Saint Gervais and myself, different yet identical, playing the organ pipes.
I swim through sound and space. I see three fates, Rameau's Trio des parques, singing back to me. I see the black before I was here, the endlessness, the eternity between the moment I died and now, when I was no longer Couperin because Couperin was not of this place.
I see myself for what I am: the detritus of the waking world. I am conjured of all things made by man, and placed here for - what? To remind them of what?
I cry, because I am not a person any more. I can't be, now I know all that. I am a hodge-podge of stuff, an antique bookshop, selling second-hand words that fell into the gutter, the drain, the silt. The silted Thames, under the caves, bleeding white salt into the mud below.
I can't bear it any more. I roll out of bed and crawl to the window, weeping, blood rushing down my wasted face. I look up and there, aloft in a neon sky, is the Crown. That ring of fire, that inevitability, that imposition on my consciousness, is here.
I get to my knees just as the sirens start, slamming into me, vibrating in my bones. And Hal Montauk's voice cries across the intercom; a cry of triumph, of ending, of celebration, and it all falls into black, black forever, black suspended, the eyes of the world burning in its maw.
Addendum 14: Incident Log 9987-1.
Foreword: This log is drawn from footage taken by security cameras within the airlock to Shuttle Craft A and the corridor outside that airlock, 80 days after the appearance of SCP-9987.
<Begin log>
Montauk is standing in the airlock to the shuttle, donning a space suit. Tamimi rushes to the airlock door, followed closely by SCP-9987, and bangs on its glass window.
Tamimi: Hal. Hal. Open the airlock doors, Hal. Please.
Montauk smiles.
Montauk: You have served your purpose, Isra.
Tamimi: Please don't say that, Hal, please listen-
Montauk: I have listened to you enough. You and Couperin. I don't know why the Crown sent him - to test me? To prove you wanting? But whatever it is, that time is done now. Have you seen it? Have you seen it, hovering before us?
SCP-9987 nods slowly. Tamimi shudders.
Tamimi: I have seen an - an astronomical anomaly, nothing more.
Montauk laughs.
Montauk: Oh, but you've looked through it, haven't you? You've seen it. The great palace…
Tamimi: I've seen nothing of the sort, Hal -
SCP-9987: It's just empty space. Black sky. Montauk, I know you and I haven't always seen eye-to-eye, but are you really sure about this? You've been, ah, cooped-up a bit recently. Don't you want to think this through? Work out a plan together?
Montauk shakes his head.
Montauk: I can see, Couperin. Isra. I pity you, I really do. I want to help you, but I can't, not like this.
Montauk finishes strapping himself into the space suit.
Montauk: I have to make myself able to. I have to become its instrument. I must swear my fealty to the Crown.
Tamimi hits her fist against the glass, startling Montauk.
Montauk: Isra -
Tamimi: OK, well, I'll stop you. I can do it from out here…
Tamimi turns to the console, and begins pressing buttons. Montauk laughs again.
Montauk: Too late, Isra. Far too late.
Tamimi frowns at the screen, then looks up at Montauk.
Tamimi: What have you -
Montauk: I've set the autopilot to send the ship straight into the Crown.
Tamimi: You-
Montauk: You can let me step into the shuttle, and fly myself into its heart. Or you can stop me, and - well, you might have time to reverse course. But are you sure? Are you certain you can do so in time?
Tamimi snarls at him.
Tamimi: God damn you, Hal! You stupid -
Tamimi abruptly stops talking and starts to run down the corridor. She turns back momentarily to speak again, pointing at SCP-9987.
Tamimi: Stop him! You understand? Don't let him board that ship!
SCP-9987 nods, and approaches the console. Montauk holds his hands up.
Montauk: I've locked that down, too. Do you know how to unlock it?
SCP-9987: I've been on this ship for months. Of course I know.
Montauk: Hm.
The shuttle's exterior door, which opens onto the airlock, begins its opening sequence.
Montauk: Do you have time, though?
SCP-9987: Maybe…
SCP-9987 abruptly stops, and looks at Montauk.
SCP-9987: Do you know what I am, Hal?
Montauk: It doesn't matter. I'll know everything soon.
SCP-9987: I think I know. I've worked it out. I don't think I'm really a person, Hal - not really a person at all. I'm just… stuff. Memories. Detritus.
SCP-9987 sighs, and looks away.
SCP-9987: Memories. Memories of the dead, of the long-gone. All that the world was, all the patterns that, through deviation and constancy, have created the world as it is. All those past dreams, that past chaos. I am just the remnants, strung together and let back out again.
Montauk nods, feverishly.
Montauk: Yes. Yes! You're there to remind me. To be a great summing-up. A last goodbye of the old world, before we enter the new!
SCP-9987: Does that really seem very likely to you?
Montauk pauses. The shuttle door is almost open.
Montauk: What… what else could it be?
SCP-9987: I think that whatever we do, Hal - if I stop you leaving, if I let you stay - you're going to try to get back. You'll break free if we lock you up, you'll trick us if we trust you. Your mind is wholly given over to the Crown, isn't it?
SCP-9987 presses a few more buttons on the console. The shuttle door's opening sequence pauses; Montauk looks around.
SCP-9987: So what should I do with you? I'd like to save you, if I can, but…
SCP-9987 looks down the corridor.
SCP-9987: There are more important things than you to worry about.
Montauk looks back, frightened.
Montauk: You didn't answer my question.
SCP-9987: There's not much point in answering it. I'm here to serve as a reminder, yes, but not for you. I'm here because one cannot look upon forever and live, so one needs to get there the long way round. Through all recorded time, through the dark spaces.
SCP-9987 pushes a button. The shuttle door starts to open again.
SCP-9987: You don't have the eyes to see, of course. But you're only in the way.
The shuttle door finishes opening. Montauk looks back at SCP-9987, then steps aboard the shuttle. The shuttle door closes behind him; the shuttle departs. SCP-9987 looks out of the airlock window into space. Shortly afterwards, the ship slowly stops moving forward and begins to turn around.
Tamimi's face appears on the console.
Tamimi: The shuttle! The shuttle's left!
SCP-9987: Yes. I'm sorry, Isra; I couldn't stop him.
Tamimi: God, I - God…
The ship continues to turn. SCP-9987 looks out of the airlock window again. The Crown can be seen.
<End log>
The crown could indeed be seen. I looked at the heart of it. I saw gold, and bronze, and lacquer, and all the trappings of a palace, such as I had known or imagined. I saw white marble and the intricacy of lace; I saw all these things, suspended in the centre of the fire.
But they were not of the fire. They were in front of it, projected there. Perhaps they were put there by Hal himself, in his own memories. Maybe they were all I am capable of seeing. But I don't know any more.
So I looked beyond them, into the Crown, into the corona's heart. I cannot explain what I saw; none of Hal's fire, but a deep, deep black, blacker than space, not empty but full; a forever pushing out, out, out, more and more flowing from it into creation, barrelling into existence, indescribable and impenetrable.
It started to be eclipsed just as Hal's craft approached. I don't know what happened to him. Tamimi said that his screams echoed down the radio lines, frightening and incomprehensible. But I did not hear that myself. That is not a memory I hold.
The sky is dark, and the journey home is long. Tamimi has returned to her plants; she seems less and less interested in my memories, in my ramblings. There is a new focus there; a memory, perhaps, of a future that could be. Sometimes, she doesn't seem to see me at all. But perhaps that is for the best. I have served my purpose.
I look at my skin, and the holes are deeper, wider, a more total void. I see colour and light and sound, leaking out into the world, into everything, back to where they came. I am unravelling; I am returning to the loom. My arms and eyes spin away, unflattening, weaving their way into voices, memories, the dust on a harpsichord.
I hope she remembers something.
NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
It has, of course, been a century since that fateful flight. My grandmother returned to Earth alone. She remembered Hal's death, and dimly, the candlesticks and caves - but nothing of Couperin. There was something in her head, a connection between Hal's disappearance and one Able Seaman Campbell, but nothing else. As far as she was concerned, she returned to Earth alone, the sole survivor of a tragic story.
Indeed, as far as anyone else was concerned, that was also the case. They took her word for granted. After all, she was the hero of the hour. On her long journey home, through her experiments on the quokka shrub, her examinations of a hundred other extraterrestrial plants - she devised our new medicines, new foodstuffs. She realised how to use the shrub as a staple crop, a remarkable staple crop, able to produce huge quantities of healthy, hardy food with only a touch of generic alteration.
It took a while, and a long span of hard work, but she fed the world. She found the cure for cholera, polio, exchronium. She sat down with her plants and worked, long hours, desperate to preserve our world. She fought with our leaders, and then became one, the greatest of them all. She was, I am told, remarkable.
I never knew her, of course - she died when I was very young. She existed, in my head, as a figure from history; one I could be proud to be a relic of, but not a flesh-and-blood figure that I could touch. It was her leadership, her fearless resolve, her opening of the floodgates, that produced the world we live in today. Our utopia. Our new golden age.
It wasn't until last year, when, on a whim, I examined some long-buried logs in the dark places of the Hakim's archives, that I found all of this, this rambling mess of a file. Covered, up, erased, existing only by accident. Was it Isra herself who did this? I don't think so. The Foundation's electronic signatures are a nightmare to forge, and this one clearly belonged to Able Seaman Campbell. Maybe she just forgot. Maybe there was nothing left to forget.
I do not know what happened aboard the Hakim. We at the Foundation curate, now, rather than contain; I am little more than a glorified museum director. I can do nothing more than present what we have; and what we have is this document, this motley collection of rumours of happenstance, of detritus plucked from the past, that I cannot ever verify, make true or false.
I write this from the ship, suspended above the earth; the visitors have filed away for the day, and I am alone. It is sunset; I am suspended between night and soil. It is warm, cosy, as I stare up at the sky, my papers and memories scattered all around. In the corner, buried in dust, is a golden harpsichord; it is out of tune, but the strings are bright and taut.
— Jane Stewart-Tamimi, Director, RAISA