0
Ami knew what it was before it was there. Down the hallway, that was where the words were coming from. Not a sound, but a thought. Many thoughts, heavy enough to change their state of matter, from qualia to quanta, idea to reality. Ami watched as they carved themselves into the concrete, like a madman’s scrawling on a cell wall. And when the words reached Ami, they carved into his skin like little needles, writing in his blood. Ti volevo bene up his exposed calf. Sono un cattivo padre inside his elbow. Mi dispiace, mi dispiace, mi dispiace on his face.
1
“I have found a cure for death.”
With these seven words, Dr. Zoe Mortimer had the whole room’s attention.
Until that moment, the 1995 Anomalous Sciences Conference had gone off without a hitch. Hosted this year at MIT’s Huntington Hall, Room 10-250, the annual summit showcased the very cutting edge of the SCP Foundation’s research, with lectures and presentations by its most prestigious scientific minds. For researchers of various disciplines, it was a window into fields of science they rarely touched upon in their own practices, or perhaps had never heard of at all. Naturally, the conference was highly exclusive: Level 3 clearance was required just for attendance, and the facilities had been thoroughly cleaned, swept, and secured in the preceding hours.
Sitting in the third row of purple upholstered seating, Dr. Amit Shankar could feel the shift in the lecture hall. For the most part, the morning so far had been standard fare. He had listened to presentations by his colleagues from across the Foundation, each of them uniquely insightful and engaging. His longtime friend, Dr. Patrick Duckworth, had given a lecture on ectoentropic physics that boldly critiqued the mainstream bivalent paradigm. The star of the morning had been Dr. Julian Song, the world’s foremost expert on extradimensional physics, a trending subject at the time. His presentation on the geophysics of SCP-3785 had captured the imaginations and morbid fascinations of his audience. Other subjects included reconciliatory thaumaturgy, antimemetics, spectral degradation, and the new portable model of SRIs—although the esteemed Dr. Scranton, to the disappointment of many, had not been in attendance that day.
By the time Dr. Mortimer descended to the podium, the morning’s momentum had begun to die down, and attentions were waning. Many audience members held side conversations, discussing previous presentations or planning lunch at the nearest cafeteria. Dr. Shankar had given a cursory glance to Dr. Mortimer’s bio in the conference pamphlet, but there was little of note. She was one of only three female scientists to present that day, the youngest and the last. She specialized in applied metaphysics, had been involved in some important projects and published exemplary research, but nothing that made her stand out. Her diminutive stature and nervous blue eyes, searching the room like a deer staring out at a sea of hungry wolves, only accentuated her inferior status among her elder, more experienced peers.
But all that changed with those seven words.
The room went silent. A couple of coughs broke the hush; a few questioning glances were exchanged. Dr. Mortimer stood her ground, not breaking. She kept those eyes firmly on her audience, no longer conveying anxiety but rather the utmost seriousness. Once she’d given her words a chance to settle, she continued:
“My cure is neither medicinal nor technological. I am not proposing a miracle drug that staves off biological death, nor a time machine that reverts the body whilst the mind continues. My solution is metaphysical: closing the door to death by anchoring consciousness to itself.”
Already, the young scientist was breaking convention: straight to the point, direct, borderline audacious. Most presentations began with introductions and foreplay, and typically a list of credentials for those who were not yet household names in the Foundation. Dr. Mortimer had not even given her name before jumping to perhaps the boldest claim ever made in any Foundation scientific conference. Maybe the boldest claim a human being could possibly make.
Dr. Mortimer raised a clicker, and the old projector on the ceiling hummed to life. A scientific diagram appeared on the roll-down screen behind her: the typical soup of diagrams, arrows, and esoteric mathematics. Front and center was a representation of a Sierpiński carpet, a square fractal shape comprised of recursive, smaller squares. It was labeled Abstraction of Egoic Consciousness.
"The metaphysical baseline for my theory is an analytic model of monistic idealism. It is self-evident that the existence of anomalies debunks the physicalist dogma of mainstream science. Anomalies cannot occur in a world of matter and particles. The alternative, therefore, is idealism: consciousness, rather than matter, is the fundamental substrate of reality. Anomalies, therefore, are external patterns of mentation intruding upon a regulated enclave of egoic consciousness."
So far, Dr. Mortimer’s line of thinking was reasonable, and not really anything new. It drew clear lines to the works of Edelman and Damasio in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and Ramachandran in the '80s. Going even farther back, her words echoed Schrödinger, Berkeley, Descartes, Zhuangzi, and the Advaita Vedanta of Dr. Shankar’s own Hindu heritage. The model had its opponents, of course. But it was not Dr. Mortimer’s worldview that was controversial. It was where she went with it.
Dr. Mortimer gestured to the Sierpiński carpet. "Our bodies are the extrinsic image of a process of mentation. Our egos are like whirlpools in an ocean of consciousness, a recursive process that achieves separation via self-reflection. Death is the disullusion of this 'spiral' back into the 'sea,' along with everything one associates with myself. The solution, therefore, is to prevent the spiral from dissolving, by sustaining the self-reflective process indefinitely."
Dr. Mortimer clicked again, and the projection changed to a schematic of a device no one in the room had ever seen before. It bore an obvious resemblance to Scranton’s famous anchors, but the formulae and functions involved were completely different. Upon closer inspection, Dr. Shankar realized it was not a single device, but a system—a sort of array, dishes and amplifiers set up around a single focal point. The focal point on the screen was represented by the outline of a human being.
“I refer to my discovery as an Egoic Recursion Algorithm, or EGOREAL,” said Dr. Mortimer. “It is an ideation algorithm that matches and then duplicates the recursion pattern of the subject ego, and sustains that pattern via a self-perpetuating feedback loop. As long as the pattern continues, then death—of any kind, physical, biological, anomalous—is theoretically impossible. EGOREAL would even be capable of restoring a person from death, if the death occurred recently enough.”
When Dr. Mortimer’s eyes returned from the screen to the audience, Dr. Shankar could see a new flame within them, something totally unlike the timid and uncertain researcher who, mere moments ago, had come down to the podium to make this unprecedented presentation.
"EGOREAL is the solution to all human suffering. For it is capable of neutralizing the one thing that even the Foundation has never been able to contain: death itself."
And that was it. In less than four minutes, Dr. Mortimer had given the most brazen presentation that many of the attendees had ever witnessed. No doubt many of them recalled Dr. Scranton’s similarly audacious introduction of the model-one SRI. But even that had been a clear expansion upon well-understood fields of anomalous science. Dr. Mortimer, on the other hand, had taken a controversial premise and extended it to an outrageous conclusion.
In the front row, Dr. David Bennett straightened up and cleared his throat, breaking the long silence. He was one of the big names of this year’s conference, a theoretical physicist with decades of experience and a heap of accolades under his ample belt. Having just turned seventy-one, he boasted a bushy white beard, but spoke with a young man’s voice, cutting and demeaning.
“Doctor, for a proposal to be taken seriously, it needs to have a basis in established science, not speculation. There are certainly some proponents of the kind of metaphysics you’re playing with here, but it has plenty of critics, myself included. The existence of mind does not infer a world made of mind, let alone this pseudo-spiritual babble that you’re passing off as self-evident.”
Seated nearby, Dr. Helena Bascomb (the Foundation's first female Research Director) shot Dr. Bennett a frown for his chauvinistic tone. But she did not speak up against him. No one did. For any researcher, this would have been the height of humiliation. No other speaker that morning had been corrected by an audience member, let alone someone of Dr. Bennett’s credentials. Dr. Bennett continued mercilessly, like a teacher correcting an overeager student for an elementary mistake.
“But even if we assume your theory had solid metaphysical grounds, this ‘recursion algorithm’ you’ve proposed would be completely unfeasible, requiring an understanding of consciousness that we just don’t have. If you want to seem at all professional, I suggest you—”
“I’ve already created EGOREAL, Dr. Bennett.”
That remark stopped everyone, including Dr. Bennett. The bearded physicist broke mid-sentence and gave Dr. Mortimer an incredulous look over his half-moon glasses.
“You’ve—”
“I said I’ve already created the recursion algorithm. Created it, and tested it.”
Then, as if she had waiting for this the whole time, Dr. Mortimer clicked a new projection onto the screen. This one was not a diagram of abstract mathematics or fractal shapes. It was a simple data table, simple enough that even the guards at the back of the room could understand it.
Summary of testing on biological subjects after EGOREAL treatment
Species tested: Mycoplasma genitalium; Nuclearia thermophila; Liagora viscida; Milnesium tardigradum; Rosa rubiginosa; Sequoia sempervirens; Rattus norvegicus domestica
EGOREAL exposure pattern: v. 1.01
Testing conditions: toxin exposure (neurotoxin, cytotoxin, general corrosives); starvation; dehydration; extreme temperature (-100°C to 200°C); radiation exposure (max 10 kGy); asphyxiation; dismemberment; burning; high-energy nuclear reaction (63 TJ)
Survival rate of control: 0.33%
Survival rate of EGOREAL subjects: 100%
“EGOREAL has been tested on bacteria, algae, plants, and small animals,” said Dr. Mortimer. “In every instance, living organisms treated with EGOREAL were rendered effectively immortal. Radiation failed to permanently damage cellular tissue. Toxic substances caused physical symptoms, but were naturally expunged from the host body. Exposure to extreme heat and cold lowered bodily functions, but did not cause them to cease. Dismemberment and removal of organs did result in cessation of certain bodily functions, but cellular and neurological activity continued. Reconnecting severed body parts resulted in gradual healing of even the most severe injuries inflicted on the organism.”
Dr. Mortimer clicked again, beginning a slideshow of photographs depicting these experiments. Unicellular organisms were placed under radioactive lamps, dissolved into molecules, and then, over the next few hours, miraculously reconstituted and carried on as normal. Roses were doused in toxic chemicals, but did not so much as blacken. The body of a decapitated rat found its way back to its head, caressed the severed neck to its broken flesh, and eventually became one again.
“My god…” said someone in the audience. Dr. Shankar watched as their expressions changed from impatient confusion to the realization that this was not a joke, this was not some ambitious upstart making a fool of herself, but the real deal. It was not as if she couldn’t have faked her results; there were anomalies known to produce such effects, albeit with horrific caveats, and anyway they were all well outside of Dr. Mortimer’s pay grade. But she wouldn’t even be here, presenting in front of a panel of the Foundation’s brightest minds, if her research was mere quackery. There was no snake oil. There were no strings attached.
Dr. Mortimer addressed the speechless Dr. Bennett. “A total understanding of consciousness was not necessary to replicate its recursive effects. I used my own mind as the basis for EGOREAL, but egoic consciousness is sufficiently homogeneous that it can be applied to any sentient organism. What I’m sharing with you today is not a proposal, Dr. Bennett. It’s already been made.”
And then the kicker:
“I have received approval from the O5 Council to begin expanded testing of EGOREAL. Work on the project will begin within the next month. Thank you for your time.”
Dr. Mortimer clicked off the projector, withdrew from the podium, and just like that, she was back to the timid and fidgety young woman she had been when she first stood before them. With a shy tuck of her hair, she retreated from the ogling crowd and found her seat at the far left end of the front row. A storm of conversation rose over the lecture hall. Dr. Bennett placed his heavy head in one hand, weighing the shock of two decades of research and theory gone out the window. Dr. Shankar stared at the back of Dr. Mortimer’s head, which was tilted downward as if to hide from view.
That last remark, brief though it may have been, had destroyed what was left of the audience’s doubt. If the O5 Council, those mythic overseers of the Foundation who dictated every decision and resolved every crisis, had endorsed Dr. Mortimer’s work… that endorsement weighed more than credentials and experience ever could. This unknown researcher, this thirty-something from Site-somewhere whom most of them had never even heard of, had instantly dethroned Dr. Scranton as the most talked-about Foundation scientist of her day. All for making a claim that seemed impossible, even in an organization made to deal with the impossible.
The conference went into recess. The scientists withdrew to the cafeteria, and returned for the afternoon agenda. More presentations were given, some cutting-edge, some even groundbreaking. But not a single one that could erase her from their minds. No one would forget Dr. Zoe Mortimer.
2
For two months, information about Dr. Mortimer and her mysterious algorithm was nonexistent. Dr. Shankar kept tabs on the latest published research, but apart from a desperate reprint of Dr. Bennett’s anomalous physicalism paper (and even that didn’t address her by name), there was no mention of EGOREAL anywhere. None of this particularly surprised Dr. Shankar. He’d been in the Foundation for almost twenty years, and he knew that secrecy trumped all other concerns when it came to information protocol. There was a reason most cutting-edge research was only shared in controlled environments, like the Anomalous Sciences Conference. RAISA screened everything, and researchers typically only had access to the body of information deemed necessary for them to fulfill their functions within the organization. Everything was on a need-to-know basis. In fact, Dr. Shankar found it somewhat surprising that the O5s had allowed Dr. Mortimer to reveal EGOREAL at all, which implied that it had been in secret development for much longer than she let on.
The secrecy did not prevent Dr. Mortimer from becoming the talk of the Foundation’s scientific community. Private meetings, conferences, and internal networks discussions buzzed with speculation as to how EGOREAL functioned, and whether it truly represented a metaphysical “cure for death.” Several researchers attempted to recreate EGOREAL based on the limited information from Dr. Mortimer’s presentation, but none were successful in developing anything more than a self-sustaining thought. It quickly became clear that Dr. Mortimer must have been a prodigy, leaps and bounds ahead of her contemporaries despite being younger than most of them. The kind of person the Foundation only saw once in a generation. A “miracle worker.”
For Dr. Shankar, the secrecy finally broke on August 24, 1995, two months after the conference at MIT. On that day he received, via the usual clandestine channels, an order from on high to visit Area-69 the following day for a facility tour and details on a new assignment. The letter was curt and vague, as Dr. Shankar had come to expect, but a single line of text caught his attention: the name of the researcher who would be supervising his tour. The same name he’d seen on the conference pamphlet two months ago, when that shy woman ten years his junior had pulled the rug out from under the feet of two hundred of the Foundation’s greatest minds.
He knew right away: he was about to see her “cure” firsthand.
Area-69 was not a far drive from Dr. Shankar’s workplace at Site-174. It would be his first time visiting the facility, despite being aware of its construction and having some vague idea of its purpose. For most of his career, Dr. Shankar had performed his research at Foundation sites disguised at universities and private research institutions. For example, Site-174 was the Barfield Institute of Natural Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he held the title of Science Director. Their research was conducted on-campus, and no anomalies were contained there.
Area-69, in contrast, was a top-secret facility hidden from the public view, where dangerous anomalies were contained and dangerous research was conducted. The route to get there was a winding, poorly-paved access road in a restricted area of Muir Woods National Monument. The cover story was the usual conservationist spiel: civilians were forbidden from entering in order to protect the fragile habitat of ancient coastal redwoods. But as Dr. Shankar’s company-issued Honda rolled through the security checkpoint, it became apparent that the Foundation cared very little about conservation. A large patch of forest had been razed to the ground, replaced with a massive concrete facility that stood like an ugly gray stain against the backdrop of towering redwoods. Barbed wire fences surrounded the premises, fifteen feet high, patrolled constantly by soldiers armed with weapons that could kill a moose, or something far worse than a moose.
At the direction of the guards, Dr. Shankar descended a ramp and parked in an underground lot. In an antechamber, he was patted down by agents and put through a second round of tedious screenings. Once finally through, he emerged into a featureless concrete corridor, decorated only with the drab, monochrome directional signage he had grown accustomed to seeing in such facilities. Before Dr. Shankar could begin to wonder where to go, an agent approached from down the hallway and became the first person at Area-69 to greet him by name.
“Dr. Amit Shankar, am I right? Pleasure to meet you, sir. Mario Pascutti, sector security chief.”
He extended a gloved hand, and Dr. Shankar shook it. For a security chief, the man struck him as remarkably hospitable. He had a firm grip and muscles that talked, but a winning smile that reminded Dr. Shankar of his late father. A fatherly smile, he guessed he’d call it. He’d worn that smile himself, seen it on his face in blurry Polaroids from the day Sofia was born.
“The pleasure’s mine, Agent Pascutti.”
“Ah, just call me Mario.”
He liked him even more. "Okay, Mario."
“Well, let’s not keep them waiting.” Agent Pascutti gestured down the tunnel, and they began to walk.
Dr. Shankar didn’t question why he was here, not yet, knowing that Agent Pascutti probably hadn’t been told anyway. Seniority and clearance mattered in the Foundation, but they mattered even more in places like this. It was why he had stopped short of inviting Agent Pascutti—Mario—to call him by his first name, too. This seemed like the kind of guy he’d love to invite over for drinks and curry. But sadly, protocol carried a lot more sway than Mario’s fatherly smile.
“I assume you’re here about Dr. Mortimer’s project,” said Agent Pascutti as they entered an elevator, the heavy metal doors sliding shut behind them. “It’s really amazing, what she does up there. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been here a long time. The Foundation, I mean."
“How long?” Dr. Shankar asked amiably.
Agent Pascutti pondered this. “Eleven years? Twelve? Something like that.” Only then did Dr. Shankar detect his well-concealed Italian accent. “Enough to have seen some shit anyhow. But not always the kind of shit that makes you… well, I don’t know. Makes you wonder.”
“Wonder?”
“Yeah.” Agent Pascutti nodded dramatically. “Like, wonder.”
That word hung in the air. Wonder.
“How much do you know about Dr. Mortimer’s project?” asked Dr. Shankar, curious as to how much a mid-level security chief was permitted to know about EGOREAL.
“Only what I’ve seen. Ah, better I don’t say,” Pascutti amended, perhaps realizing that protocol might not permit it. “You’ll see it yourself, I think. Right this way.”
The elevator doors had reopened, and Agent Pascutti gestured Dr. Shankar through. This floor was no less monotonous and drab than the one beneath it. Everything in the Foundation was efficient, purpose-built, and pragmatic. There was no added decoration where it wasn’t called for. As a result, containment facilities like this had a tendency to come out like Brutalist mazes, which Dr. Shankar found perpetually distasteful. Maybe it was a product of his upbringing, growing up in a house filled with beautiful mandala carpeting, ivory sculptures, and ornate paintings from his father’s homeland. He could not imagine spending every working hour in a place so devoid of color and vibrancy. Thank god for Site-174’s lighter rules. He quite liked his office décor.
There were four other people gathered in the atrium opposite of the elevator. With some quick introductions, Dr. Shankar learned their names. Two of them were scientists from out of town: Ralph Rutkowski, a microbiologist, and Teresa Marsh, a quantum physicist. The third one was Michael Butler, who over-eagerly introduced himself as The Chief Engineer of Site-15. Last was Joan Kirkpatrick, a liaison of the O5 Council, and the only one who had visited Area-69 before. Given their diverse credentials, Dr. Shankar was quick to realize that he was the only person in the room with proficiency in applied metaphysics—the field that Dr. Mortimer specialized in.
Once everyone was gathered, Kirkpatrick quickly took charge. She dismissed Agent Pascutti, who saluted and departed for his usual patrols. The room seemed a little colder without him. With the robotic bluntness that Dr. Shankar had come to expect from Foundation administrators, Kirkpatrick curtly addressed the four scientists:
“You have all been assigned as third-party reviewers of Project Cicada, an ongoing experiment in applied metaphysics under the direction of Dr. Zoe Mortimer. Today’s tour will serve as an overview of the project and its facilities. Dr. Mortimer will join us shortly.”
Right on cue, from a corridor to the left, Dr. Shankar saw the approaching form of the young scientist he’d seen two months earlier in Massachusetts. It might as well have been the same day: she wore the same clothes, the same prim hairstyle, the same alert unease in her blue eyes. Those eyes darted immediately to his, perhaps with a flash of recognition, then nervously searched the faces of the other four.
“Th… thank you, Ms. Kirkpatrick,” said Dr. Mortimer. She adjusted the paperwork in her hands and, conveying none of the certitude and courage she had wielded at MIT, awkwardly continued. “Well… thank you all for coming. I understand the, um, necessity of peer review in any scientific endeavor, and especially new projects. So… uh, thank you. I hope you will come to see the importance and necessity of our research here. With that said… come along.”
She gestured sheepishly with her right hand, about-faced, and rigidly withdrew into the hallway she had come from. Butler followed first, with a shit-eating smile and his hands deep in his pockets, seeming more interested in Dr. Mortimer’s backside than her research. Marsh, Rutkowski, and Dr. Shankar followed after them, flanked by the stone-faced Kirkpatrick.
Once you got past the juvenile innuendos about its name, Area-69 was an impressive facility, spanning seven floors above-and-below ground and comparable in square footage to an airport. Laboratories across the facility carried out innumerable functions, advancing research in fields in which even Dr. Shankar had only the slightest knowledge. This place was on the bleeding end of the cutting edge, a place where world-changing discoveries were made every week. Far below the parking lot and a layer of reinforced titanium was an equally impressive containment complex, where (it was rumored) upwards of 200 anomalies of all classes and danger grades were held.
The portion of Area-69 which they had entered was one of the “project sectors,” specifically Sector 11-B. As Dr. Shankar would later learn, these sectors were special enclaves of the facility solely devoted to a particular experiment; all strictly classified. The supervising researchers of each experiment had total control over the layout, budget allocation, and even the architecture of their sectors, enabling them to make the very most of the Foundation’s resources as they saw fit. Only the O5 Council could designate a special project for each sector, and name the individual who would be its supervising researcher. The fact that Dr. Mortimer had been selected spoke volumes about the magnitude of her work.
There was a redwood tree in the middle of the main room of the sector. This immediately struck Dr. Shankar as odd, and a glance at Marsh and Rutkowski confirmed they felt the same. The tree was housed in a concrete cube in the ground, its maroon-colored trunk reaching up into a cylindrical opening that extended hundreds of feet beyond the main ceiling. There were no openings exposing the tree to natural light, and its highest branches were shrouded in shadows. Furthermore, there was no dirt or soil in its bed. Peering into the cubical housing, Dr. Shankar could see that its roots extended straight into hollowed-out concrete, like brown toes poking into stone socks.
Butler whistled, oblivious to the incongruity of the tree’s presence. “They sure do grow ‘em big around here, don’t they?”
He looked at Dr. Shankar, as if expecting him to smile at the joke, if there even was a joke. Ignoring Butler, Dr. Mortimer stood beneath the redwood and turned to address the group.
“Our first experiments with EGOREAL involved microscopic organisms. We verified early in the project stage that even microbial life possesses sapience, or the presence of consciousness. Therefore, the algorithm sustained them. But in order for EGOREAL to have practical applicability, we had to test it on larger organisms. Area-69’s location offered a very accessible test subject.”
She looked up at the tree, and for the very first time, Dr. Shankar saw her smile. It was a very personal smile, the kind of smile that he felt, instinctively, was meant only for Dr. Mortimer herself, and anyone else who saw it was as much a voyeur as if they had watched her bathing.
“This specimen of Sequoia sempervirens is over 1,600 years old. It grew in this very forest, just a few hundred meters from Area-69. Once it was treated with EGOREAL, we relocated it here to test whether it would survive removal from its natural environment. It continued to grow and function even without sunlight and water. We introduced parasitic species, toxins, and radiation to its environment, but none had any lasting effect. Lastly, we severed the tree at its center, right here—”
Dr. Mortimer produced a laser pointer from her lab coat pocket and directed it upward, indicating a faint horizontal line about forty feet up the tree trunk, like a pale scar on its crimson skin.
“—and then, a few days later, we reattached both portions of the tree to each other. The cells in both parts of the tree healed at their natural rate, and the tree reconstituted. The tree is as strong and healthy as it’s ever been. It cannot be killed.”
“Did you try burning it down?” asked Rutkowski, almost rhetorically.
“Yes,” answered Dr. Mortimer with complete seriousness. “Skin and pine needles were damaged, but the tree made a full recovery.”
Marsh opened her mouth. “But surely, when you say it cannot be killed, that’s an exaggeration. There’s other methods of destroying something. Say, a nuclear reaction—”
“That was our final test,” said Dr. Mortimer, growing bolder with every response. “Not this tree, but we did experiment with controlled explosions using thermonuclear bombs. The trees were completely destroyed, atomized even. But since then, growths have appeared in those test chambers with molecular patterns consistent to the organisms that were destroyed. We expect that within a few decades, those growths will return to being full-sized trees.”
Dr. Mortimer glanced at Dr. Shankar, as if expecting the next question to come from him.
“The only conceivable way for EGOREAL to fail would be reversed ectoentropy, or the absolute destruction of matter,” she said. “But even anomalous thermodynamics doesn’t allow for that. Translocation and transmutation of any kind are eventually reversed by the algorithm. As long as there exists any portion of the EGOREAL-treated organism, it will always reconstitute.”
“But the molecular recovery rate is the same?” asked Rutkowski. His words implied skepticism, but he couldn’t hide the fascination in his eyes as he stared up at the redwood.
“Yes, but through artificial means, it can be accelerated,” said Dr. Mortimer. “In any event, the process requires no external energy source. The molecular realignment is a spontaneous and continuous pattern, perpetuated by the algorithm of EGOREAL. It’s not a biological or physical process. It’s the restoration of a metaphysical state of being that is kept constant by EGOREAL.”
Rutkowski paused. “Fascinating,” he finally breathed, casting a smile at Dr. Mortimer. “Just fascinating.”
Dr. Mortimer smiled back, gripping her paperwork with a glint in her eye.
Dr. Shankar, meanwhile, kept staring at the tree. He had found himself counting its branches, up one side and down the other, like an obsessive ritual. It took him a while to realize what was bothering him about it. The symmetry was too perfect. The branches on one side each had a perfect match on the other. Observing more closely, it seemed like even the smaller branches matched, and smaller and smaller, until they turned into needles as perfectly same as snowflakes. A fractal of detail and repetition not random enough to be natural. Even Rutkowski, the biologist, hadn’t seemed to notice. But before Dr. Shankar could dwell on this fact, the tour was already moving into the next room.
“How is EGOREAL administered?” asked Marsh as they reached a corridor of sealed laboratories. She, like Rutkowski, was unable to hide the growing fascination in her voice.
“We use Hume coefficient spectrographs to identify an organism’s ontological cohesion center,” answered Dr. Mortimer. “Then, a separate device analyzes the recursion rate, and EGOREAL naturally integrates. Think of it like resonating frequencies—when the frequencies match, they amplify one another."
“Who the hell designed a machine that could do that?” asked Butler, unbelieving.
“I did,” said Dr. Mortimer with perfect modesty.
Dr. Shankar and Butler looked at each other. Butler laughed and shook his head. He didn’t have anything to say. The thing spoke for itself.
Dr. Mortimer led them to the window of one of the laboratories. Behind the glass, scientists in hazmat suits buzzed like bees between their workstations. The laboratory contained about a dozen glass habitats on tabletops, containing a variety of test species: rabbits, gophers, snakes, mice, lizards. The nearest visible habitat contained five small white lab rats, all sitting perfectly still in their chamber. One or two of them, Dr. Shankar noted, had faintly visible scars along the width of their throats.
“If EGOREAL was not effective on animal subjects, it would have failed in its fundamental purpose,” said Dr. Mortimer. “Rats were the first mammalian subjects to undergo EGOREAL treatment. These rats have invariably survived experiments that were lethal to control groups. Radiation, heat, poisoning, blood loss—the survival rate was one hundred percent. To be blunt: we cut off their heads, and even that didn’t kill them.”
“What if you kept the head and body apart?” asked Rutkowski. “What then?”
“Both continue to function, even in the absence of blood flow,” said Dr. Mortimer. “And if they’re reconnected, the injury heals.”
For Marsh, Rutkowski, and Butler—none of whom had been present during Dr. Mortimer’s infamous speech at MIT—seeing the effects of EGOREAL with their own eyes was nothing short of awe-inspiring. It was no less so for Dr. Mortimer, who had already seen the slideshows and the data and knew that Dr. Mortimer’s procedure was legit. What they were witnessing was immortality: not biological immortality, not even the supernatural immortality of certain anomalies, but a kind of metaphysical immortality that transcended logic and reason. It wasn’t that Dr. Mortimer’s lab rats couldn’t be harmed, or even killed in the physical sense. They simply refused to stop functioning, despite all biological science saying they should have.
Dr. Shankar peered at the rats. “They’re not moving.”
Marsh and Rutkowski leaned in closer, noticing the same. The rats sat completely motionless in a rough semicircle around each other. Not moving, not blinking, not even breathing. Dr. Shankar tapped on the glass, but they did not react. For immortal rats, it was hard to tell they were even alive.
“We have noticed some behavioral changes in EGOREAL-treated animals,” said Dr. Mortimer dismissively. “But this was within our expectations. They no longer need to eat, breathe, excrete, or sleep in order to survive. These organisms are merely adjusting to a new paradigm of living.”
Dr. Shankar continued to stare analytically at the motionless rats. The other three turned back to Dr. Mortimer with rapt fascination.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Doctor,” said Rutkowski. “I’ve been studying biology my whole life, anomalous biology for half that time… and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“When do you plan to begin human testing?” asked Marsh.
These words pulled Dr. Shankar’s eyes away from the rats. Dr. Mortimer sighed, red-cheeked, clearly flustered by the praise.
“Well… that remains to be seen. If it were up to me, of course, we’d begin as soon as possible. EGOREAL is more than just an experiment to me. It changes the way we view our lives, our potential… our destinies. But ultimately, that decision lies with the O5 Council.”
Butler, up to this point, had been abnormally quiet. Finally, he spoke up.
“My, uh… my dad’s starting to get up there in the years. Been grappling with that a lot lately. I figure he’s still got a decade or so left in him… but it gets me thinking. Knowing he won’t be… here, anymore… I figured that’s just something I have to accept. This makes me think… well, maybe it’s not.”
Dr. Mortimer smiled at him, and it was that secret smile again, a smile that made even the shameless Butler blush.
“There’s always hope, Mr. Butler. Science gives us hope.”
“So who would the first test subject be?” Rutkowski grinned at Dr. Mortimer. “You?”
“No, certainly not,” said Dr. Mortimer resolutely. “My mind may have been the basis for EGOREAL, but… I think it would be unethical for me to grant myself this gift before I’ve shared it with as many people as possible. It would invalidate the goals of EGOREAL if I did otherwise.”
“I respect that, Dr. Mortimer,” said Marsh admiringly. “Really, I do. There’s not enough people in the world like you.”
“How much have you studied the side effects of EGOREAL?” asked Dr. Shankar.
It was the first thing he had asked Dr. Mortimer since the tour began, the first words he had ever spoken to her. And it was a buzzkill. The smile fell from Dr. Mortimer’s face, defaulting to a professional slit. Marsh, Butler, and Rutkowski cast glances at Dr. Shankar.
“We’ve observed no side effects that cause significant impairment to an organism’s functioning,” replied Dr. Mortimer.
Dr. Shankar gestured to the unmoving rats. “You don’t call that a significant impairment?”
“I call it an adaptation. We’ve never studied biology in the absence of death. We don’t know the kind of… we don’t know the kind of adaptations that organisms will undergo in that state.”
“What about the subjective experience?” asked Dr. Shankar.
“The subjective…?”
“How does EGOREAL feel? Is it painful?”
“No.”
“How do you know that?”
Dr. Mortimer’s posture tightened. “We’ve observed no adverse behavioral reactions from any animals subjected to EGOREAL. Not during the procedure, nor in the aftermath.”
“And how long ago were they subjected to EGOREAL?”
“Four… four months ago, yes.”
“So, you’ve subjected these animals to an experimental procedure, you’ve watched them for four months, and from that you’re concluding that there are no long-term side effects?”
“Of course not,” said Dr. Mortimer defensively.
“So why are you eager to begin human testing? Wouldn’t you say it’s too early for that?”
“Too early to stop innocent people from dying?"
Dr. Mortimer’s reply came with sudden intensity, and this time, Dr. Shankar did not have an immediate reply. He rubbed his neck and stared at the rats, waiting for a twitch of their snouts, an oscillation of their whiskers. Something to show they were not just alive, but living. Nothing came. Butler, Marsh, and Rutkowski stared silently at the two doctors. Standing in the background, Kirkpatrick remained impassive.
“We have a moral obligation to help others if we have the means to do so,” said Dr. Mortimer to Dr. Shankar. “EGOREAL is the solution to all human suffering. It eliminates the one thing that human beings have never been able to defeat, the thing that takes away our lives and our loved ones. If we have the power to save people from dying, isn’t it our duty to do so?”
“The Foundation’s duty is to contain anomalies” said Dr. Shankar calmly, feeling like he was tugging on the string of a balloon to keep it from flying away. “Nothing in our vocation suggests anything like… this. This isn’t containment. It’s an unnatural attempt to control life itself."
Dr. Mortimer was silent for a few moments. Seeing her tiny, closed-in posture, Dr. Shankar had a hard time not feeling guilty for his words. But he stood his ground, despite the imposing form of Butler beside him, eager to white-knight to her rescue if Dr. Shankar said another word.
Finally, Dr. Mortimer straightened her back and responded plainly:
“Control is our job, Dr. Shankar. If the salvation of humanity isn’t enough for you, then I assure you, there are strong containment implications for EGOREAL as well. We’ll touch upon those in future meetings. But for the time being… let’s continue the tour. There’s still much to see.”
She added, quietly, to Dr. Shankar: “I hope you will see.”
3
For the next five months, bi-weekly research reports from Area-69 were sent to Dr. Shankar for third-party review. Through these reports, he watched as Project Cicada continued its miraculous evolution under the supervision of Zoe Mortimer. Despite his nominal status as a supervisor, he received only limited information about EGOREAL, including small fragments of the algorithm that Dr. Mortimer used to turn trees and rodents into unkillable immortals. Dr. Shankar was not immodest, but he knew his field inside and out, yet even he could barely make heads or tails of EGOREAL’s metaphysical functions. The snippets of the algorithm that he received were complex beyond his station, a testament to the groundbreaking genius of its young creator.
From algae and redwoods and rats, the testing of EGOREAL escalated to animals closer and closer to human: crows, cats, dogs, pigs, and chimpanzees. The effects were the same: the animals became immortal, immune to lethal injury, and capable of regenerating damaged tissue from even the smallest parts. The EGOREAL effect seemed to correlate to the nervous system, but this was not a hard and fast rule; after all, plants had no nervous systems, and the neural correlates of consciousness were poorly understood to begin with. What constituted EGOREAL’s area of effect was as subjective as the ego itself. There were countless variables at play, most outside of conventional logic. All the more reason, Dr. Shankar believed, that human testing would be downright foolish.
The O5 Council, for now at least, seemed to share his reservations. They still had not approved testing on human beings, despite the unilateral success rate of EGOREAL and Dr. Mortimer’s insistence that it was the next logical step of the project. Their rationale was theirs alone to know, but Dr. Shankar could hazard a guess. EGOREAL came with enormous implications, especially in the realm of tactics and defense. It was every bit as dangerous in the wrong hands as it was miraculous in the right ones. Furthermore, it was one of the few anomalous forces in the Foundation that, by principle, could not be tested on D-class personnel. D-class were expendable, but no one was keen on the idea of death row inmates who couldn’t be killed. For these reasons, and no doubt others, the O5s had not approved Dr. Mortimer’s request. Perhaps they never would.
But everything changed the day Mario Pascutti was killed.
Dr. Shankar only heard bits and pieces about the incident. A breach in the underground containment sector of Area-69. A few word snippets from the heavily redacted report included “intravenous,” “macroscopic,” and “pseudo-humanoid.” The anomaly had eventually been neutralized, but with heavy casualties and a single fatality: Agent Mario Pascutti, sector security chief. The man with the fatherly smile who had greeted Dr. Shankar the first time he visited Area-69.
And he was a father, he learned. Two girls. Just like him.
All of this was tragic, and equally so, it was routine. In his long career, Dr. Shankar had heard of countless containment breaches, and even had the misfortune of witnessing one or two himself. He counted himself lucky to work at Site-174, where no anomalies were contained, and thus the risk was substantially lower. But work at the SCP Foundation was inherently unsafe, and Agent Pascutti knew the dangers of the job. Which is what made the memo so unusual. Under no ordinary circumstance would Dr. Shankar be informed of the death of an agent at a different Foundation facility, not even one he was on good terms with. The best he could expect would be secondhand word-of-mouth, if he happened to be close to Pascutti or his family.
Instead, it was a direct message from Site Director Devane, tacked onto the report of Agent Pascutti’s death, and the orders were as clear as they were brief:
Come to Area-69 immediately. Details will follow.
Dr. Shankar followed his orders. He dismissed himself from an afternoon seminar with the junior researchers, got in his car, and made the drive up the North Bay and around to Muir Woods. He passed through the forest and the tedious security screenings, followed a different guard to the elevator, and ascended to the research floor. By the time he reached Sector 11-B, he was sprinting.
He reached the laboratory section and stopped. A small crowd of agents and officers was gathered around the window of a sealed chamber, ogling and muttering among themselves. Dr. Shankar flashed his ID and pulled rank, telling them to step aside. With sluggish motions, they made a path for the doctor, and he pushed his way to the front, where he could see clearly into the room beyond.
And there was Mario Pascutti. Seated in a plastic chair, hands folded on a metal table, shoulders hunched and breathing almost unnoticeable. His pristine security chief’s uniform was soaked with blood. There was a hole in his chest where his heart should have been.
But he was alive.
4
Date: 1996-01-15; 07:54:23 UTC
Summary: Initial psychiatric evaluation and interview of Agent Mario Pascutti post-EGOREAL resuscitation; three days after containment breach. Subject had previously been incapable of vocalization due to lung and tissue damage. Interview conducted by Dr. Amit Shankar, third-party reviewer of Project Cicada, due to allegations against Cicada staff.
[BEGIN LOG]
Dr. Shankar: Agent Pascutti? Mario?
Agent Pascutti: Mario… oh. Yes. I can hear… you.
Dr. Shankar: How are you feeling? Are you in pain?
Agent Pascutti: Pain… no. No pain. Not anymore.
Dr. Shankar: Have there been any complications since your surgery? Any issues breathing, numbness in your fingers or limbs, fatigue, nausea… anything like that?
Agent Pascutti: I’m… tired a lot. Yeah, tired. And… well, my chest still hurts. Feels like pins and needles. But I’m getting… getting… better…
Dr. Shankar: Agent Pascutti? Mario?
Agent Pascutti: Si, mamma, ti ascolto…
Dr. Shankar: Mario?
Agent Pascutti: Sorry… [unintelligible]… I’m tired. Dr. Shankar, it’s good to see… good to see you again. It is.
Dr. Shankar: I’m glad to hear that, Mario. It’s good to see you too. Are you okay with me asking a few more questions?
Agent Pascutti: That’s okay. Yes.
Dr. Shankar: I understand you were responding to a containment breach when you sustained your injury. How much do you remember about what happened?
Agent Pascutti: I was… yes. It was the thing… 766? 767? The succhiasangue. I remember… pushing Agent Kellogg out of the way, and then… something in my chest, like a pinching… [unintelligible]… ah, it was after that… she was there…
Dr. Shankar: Mario?
Agent Pascutti: Sorry. May I have a drink of water?
Dr. Shankar: Of course.
Dr. Shankar gestures to an attendant, who retrieves a glass of water. Agent Pascutti drinks.
Agent Pascutti: Did you put something in this?
Dr. Shankar: No. Why?
Agent Pascutti: It tastes… it has no…
Dr. Shankar: What?
Agent Pascutti: Never mind.
Dr. Shankar: Agent Pascutti, what do you remember about what happened after your injury?
Agent Pascutti: After… after she was gone… no, not… [unintelligible]… I came back. Came to, and I saw her… not her, but… Dr. Mortimer, that is. She brought me back.
Dr. Shankar: She used EGOREAL on you.
Agent Pascutti: Yes.
Dr. Shankar: Without authorization?
Agent Pascutti: I don’t know.
Dr. Shankar: Okay. And how have you been since then?
Agent Pascutti: What can I say? I’m… I’m alive. I should’ve been dead. But I’m alive.
Dr. Shankar: And you said you’re not in any pain.
Agent Pascutti: No. Not really. A little… well, twitchy. Stiffness. It doesn’t hurt. Sometimes it hurts. It’s not… I’m fine.
Dr. Shankar: Any changes in mood or emotion?
Agent Pascutti: No.
Dr. Shankar: Any changes in—
Agent Pascutti: Well… yes.
Dr. Shankar: Yes…?
Agent Pascutti: I don’t really know how to say it. Come si dice in inglese… I should be happy, shouldn’t I? I mean, I am. I get to see my daughters again. And sua moglie… uh, my wife. But there’s a sort of… vuoto, a… an absence? Sorry, I am failing to… it’s hard to speak. Like I forgot…
Dr. Shankar: It’s alright. Are you experiencing symptoms of depression?
Agent Pascutti: I… no. Not like that. No.
Dr. Shankar: Okay. But an absence, you said.
Agent Pascutti: Yes. Like… like I have been… mi dispaice, I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t understand it. I had something. I feel as though I had something and now it’s gone. Like it was taken from me. Robbed. And I’ve forgotten and it hurts to forget. Hurts in my chest, like…
Dr. Shankar: Agent Pascutti?
Agent Pascutti: Ho sentito… una voce gentile. L'hai sentita anche tu? La ragazza con l'abito viola? Non riesco a ricordare… fa male…
Dr. Shankar: Mario?
Agent Pascutti: I’m sorry. I’m… [unintelligible]… I’m not making sense, are I?
Dr. Shankar: There’s nothing to apologize for, Mario. That’s all the questions that I had for today. Let’s get you back to your family, eh?
Agent Pascutti: I would like that. Thank you.
[END LOG]
5
It was one month after Mario Pascutti’s resuscitation that Dr. Shankar was summoned to Washington D.C. for the hearing.
Protected Site-04 was the Foundation’s administrative headquarters in the United States, a facility few had ever heard of, let alone visited in person. There were very few reasons for even a Level 3 researcher to ever go there, apart from those rare circumstances—like this one—when the ones on top skipped the chain of command to directly address a problem down below. But this was not a disciplinary hearing. If it were, Dr. Shankar reasoned, someone lower on the totem pole could’ve given the ruling, and it certainly would not take place here. No, the top brass had something else in mind, a fact that weighed heavily on Dr. Shankar’s thoughts as he approached the door.
The room beyond had no windows and minimal lighting. The walls were that same functional Foundation gray, spaced out far wider than the room’s furnishings seemed to require. There were three tables in the room—one on the left, one on the right, and a wider table at the back opposite the door. For a moment, Dr. Shankar entertained that part of him that had always wondered what the “top of the Foundation” looked like, only to realize the underwhelming fact that the Foundation was basically the same at every level. This room, just like the rooms in Area-69, was built for function, not flare. You could have mistaken it for a storage room, were it not for the occupants.
Dr. Mortimer was already seated at the left-hand table, dressed formally, with paperwork laid out neatly before her. She glanced at Dr. Shankar as he arrived, betraying no emotion on her face. Dr. Shankar closed the door and cautiously sat at the table on the right. He set down his own folders and shuffled them into tidiness, only then allowing himself to look up and face the panel of seven Foundation officials seated at the table across from him.
He knew none of their faces, but their names were familiar, displayed on plastic name plates along with their titles. Farthest to the left was Emily Connelly, Vice President of the Ethics Committee. Beside her was John G. Azaria, Regional Director of RAISA. On the right side were Nicholas Lopez, Global MTF Strategic Supervisor, and Jacob Dunbar, Director of Global Operations. But the ones who carried the most weight in the room sat in the middle of the table. They had no names or titles on their plates, only a single letter followed by a dash and a number. The woman in the middle was labeled “O5-2.” The man on the left, “O5-6,” and the last one, “O5-7.”
Dr. Shankar swallowed. He had never seen an O5 in person before, let alone three in one place. Their secrecy was legendary, their identities the subject of constant rumor and speculation among the lower-ranked agents. Dr. Shankar had always avoided the inane gossip, the fantastical delusions that the O5s were secretly big-name politicians, celebrities, Illuminati, extraterrestrials, the shadow rulers of the world, or even anomalies themselves. Seeing them now, Dr. Shankar felt proven in his longtime suspicion that these rumors were way off-base. The O5s were human, no different from himself. People who carried enormous burden and responsibility, but people all the same.
“The hearing is now in session,” said Connelly. “We will begin with testimony from Dr. Zoe Mortimer.”
That was it—no procedure, no swearing of oaths, nothing. Straight to the point, fat-free and efficient, all that Dr. Shankar had come to expect from the Foundation. He glanced at the O5s again. All of their gazes were fixed on Dr. Mortimer, showing not an iota of emotion.
“Present, ma’am,” said Dr. Mortimer in her very best voice.
“Dr. Mortimer,” said Connelly. “In summation of the transgressions of which you are accused: without authorization, you subjected an operative of the SCP Foundation, one Agent Mario Pascutti, to an experimental anomalous procedure, resulting in the resuscitation of said operative from an injury sustained during an unrelated containment breach at Area-69. How do you plead?”
“Guilty as charged,” said Dr. Mortimer.
Dr. Shankar looked at her. She did not return his glance. She was looking at the O5s, unflinching courage in her eyes, not to be deterred even—or perhaps especially—in the face of her highest commanders.
“My project would never have made real progress without demonstrating EGOREAL’s efficacy on human subjects. This incident was not premeditated, and I have no intention of beginning human testing without explicit approval from the O5 Council and the Ethics Committee. I accept full responsibility for my violation of protocol. However, I will not apologize. I had the means to save a man’s life, to return Agent Pascutti to his family. To not do so, I believe, would have been tantamount to manslaughter. I did what I believed was right.”
“I see,” said Connelly. Then, with swiftness that Dr. Shankar found alarming, she moved on from the topic. “This hearing has not convened to pass disciplinary action against Dr. Mortimer. If necessary, appropriate consequences will be discussed with Dr. Mortimer’s immediate superiors. Rather, the purpose of this hearing is to determine the future of Project Cicada.”
In other words: there would be no consequences. If the O5s did not deem disciplinary action necessary, then Dr. Mortimer’s immediate superiors would not go against that ruling. She had indeed violated Foundation protocol, but clearly, the higher-ups were far more interested in the results she’d produced than any breach of the rules she may have committed in the process.
It was at this point that O5-2, the one front and center, leaned forward and began to speak. When her smooth voice crossed the room, Dr. Shankar felt a chill run down his spine, not out of fear, but simply the acknowledgment of hearing their Word for the first time in person. The O5s carried absolute power in the Foundation. They were the faceless puppet masters, the ones behind the curtain. This made O5-2’s soft and stimulating voice all the more unsettling.
“There has been considerable debate in the Council regarding your invention, Dr. Mortimer. The legitimacy of EGOREAL is no longer in question. It is apparent from the reports that EGOREAL is not only capable of neutralizing mortality, but does so without significant alteration to the mind and body of the subject. This is interesting.”
When an O5 said something was interesting, it carried more significance than if Dr. Scranton himself had said something was world-changing.
O5-2 adjusted her glasses. “The purpose of our Foundation is, if not always explicitly, the preservation of consensus reality. To that end, it has often been the purview of the Foundation to utilize anomalous forces against the anomalous. Thaumiels; this is nothing new. If EGOREAL can render Foundation operatives effectively unkillable, it could represent a paradigm shift in containment and operations. However…” She paused for gravity. “If it were to fall into the wrong hands, it could render our adversaries invincible. Thus, the highest caution is warranted.”
The man beside her, O5-6, was next to speak.
“Dr. Mortimer, you’ve made no secret of your desire to see your ‘cure’ implemented not only within the Foundation’s ranks, but outside of the Foundation. That is to say, you believe EGOREAL should be shared with all the world. Is that a correct statement?”
“It is,” said Dr. Mortimer shamelessly.
O5-6 glanced at his two counterparts. “I’m sure you’re aware that this violates the basic purpose of the Foundation. Our vocation is to secure, contain, and protect, not to let loose the anomalous. Setting aside its ethical ramifications, would you agree that using EGOREAL outside of the Foundation constitutes a violation of our principles?”
“I would not agree, sir.”
O5-6 folded his hands together and nodded. “Explain.”
Dr. Mortimer inhaled through her nose.
“It is not a violation of our principles, because I do not believe the Foundation exists to preserve consensus reality.”
This remark caused a stir among some of the panel members. A grimace passed between Lopez and Azaria. The three O5s, however, remained unfazed. They listened patiently as Dr. Mortimer spoke.
“Consensus reality is a construct of the human psyche. By definition, it is consensus. It’s psychology. The model of consensus reality has changed according to time, culture, the effects of reality-bending anomalies, and the aims of our own organization. Even the concept of ‘anomalies’ did not exist until Western science invented the idea of a fixed reality with fixed rules.”
She added to O5-2, “And as you stated, ma’am, the Foundation uses anomalies to contain anomalies. What else does that make us, then, than an anomaly ourselves? What other term could describe an agency that both exists and does not, that hides behind a cloud of memes and antimemes, that is both fictional and real? The Foundation is an anomaly, and always has been.”
This was dangerously close to heretical talk. The panel members, particularly those involved with anomalous defense and operations, were muttering among themselves and wearing expressions of grave misgiving toward Dr. Mortimer. But the O5s remained undisturbed. They knew what real heresy looked like. This was not that. They let her keep talking.
“Therefore, the Foundation’s existence is incongruent with the notion that we exist to preserve an arbitrary consensus reality,” said Dr. Mortimer. “Rather, I believe the moral imperative for our existence is something far simpler. We exist to save lives. We keep the lights on so the monsters don’t come out of the closet. We protect this reality because it’s our home, because it’s humanity’s cradle. Our duty is to protect innocent people. Anything else is secondary.”
Dr. Mortimer cast a long look across the panel, from left to right, eyeing all seven faces. Even outside of her direct gaze, Dr. Shankar could feel the power in her eyes, a power completely different than that of the O5s. Hers was not a power borne of authority. She carried the strength of inner resolve, the compassion and raw emotion innate in all human beings. Looking at her was like looking at the face of a child, filled with innocence and optimism, not yet jaded from the cold realities of life. At the same time, it was like staring at an approaching avalanche that would stop for nothing and no one.
“EGOREAL is more than just another experiment,” said Dr. Mortimer. “Since the dawn of time, humanity had fought a losing battle against death. We’ve grappled with nature, waged wars, succumbed to age and illness. We’ve lived with the bleak acceptance that someday, all our loved ones will die, all our achievements will be forgotten, and our very existence is doomed to disappear. We’re taught from the day we’re born that our ultimate destiny is nothing but oblivion.”
Dr. Mortimer pointed behind her, like she was gesturing to the whole wide world outside that door.
“With EGOREAL, we could put an end to all of that. We could eradicate loss and suffering. We could end all wars, achieve global peace, create a world where men and women are not limited by their mortality. We have the power to do this right now. It’s in our hands. But we’re choosing not to, wrestling with bureaucracy and indecision while thousands of people die every day.”
“Are you suggesting that we do so?” asked O5-6, with an edge of warning in his voice.
“No,” replied Dr. Mortimer. “But if it were my choice, I would.”
The O5s exchanged glances. Lopez was staring a hole through Dr. Mortimer’s forehead. Dr. Shankar felt like an outside observer of these events, sensing the unspoken emotions that stormed in the silence. He suddenly wished he was back in California with the girls. He wondered what Ellie was making for dinner that night. He hoped they’d all be at the airport to welcome him home.
“Furthermore,” added Dr. Mortimer. “I have one last point to make. As I previously stated, the consensus reality that the Foundation protects is a product of the human psyche. In other words, it’s a product of the ego—of many egos, in fact, operating in tandem to create the illusion of an objective reality. If every living human were to undergo EGOREAL treatment, then that consensus reality would become immutable, and therefore impenetrable by external forces.”
Several of the panel members sat up. “Meaning what, exactly?” inquired Lopez.
“Meaning there would no longer be anomalies to defend against,” said Dr. Mortimer. “If reality cannot be altered, if the ‘consensus’ becomes set in stone, then it’s not possible for that reality to deviate under any circumstances. Just as EGOREAL is a metaphysical solution to death, it is also a metaphysical solution to phenomena which defy the laws of reality. They no longer have any intrusion points, no proverbial ground to stand on. Anomalies will simply cease to exist.”
That was the big one. The trump card she had no doubt been saving for this very occasion. The expressions on the panel members’ faces, save the O5s, shifted to astonishment. Even Dr. Shankar, despite having long suspected it, could feel the magnitude of Dr. Mortimer’s play. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. This was her game all along, and she’d just won.
“EGOREAL fulfills the Foundation’s purpose better than any locked box or quarantine,” the brave young doctor concluded. “It’s not just the cure for death. It’s the cure for the very pandemic that the Foundation was created to fight. It is the end of our war. It’s the solution to everything.”
Dr. Mortimer seated herself, knowing she had played her hand. The decision now rested with the administrators—or rather, solely with the O5s. The other four might have nominal authority, but from the way they looked inward from either side of the table, it was clear they too were waiting on the O5s’ decision. Dr. Shankar watched as Dr. Mortimer produced a handkerchief and dabbed her forehead, the only display of weakness she had given before the hearing committee. He had to marvel at her resolve, even if he disagreed with her. There were older and more experienced agents who quivered at the thought of facing even a single O5. She had not budged an inch.
Dunbar spoke up for the first time, directing a question at Dr. Mortimer. “You said EGOREAL would be implemented on a global scale. What about overpopulation? There’s already 5.7 billion people living on Earth. If people aren’t dying, that almost doubles the annual growth rate. By my calculation, that puts us in the ballpark of 11 billion people by 2025. What happens when we don’t have enough land and resources to sustain them all? To say nothing of climate change.”
“With respect, Mr. Dunbar, you’re still thinking in terms of a world where human mortality is a decisive factor. People will no longer need food to live, nor comfortable conditions to sustain them. If they wanted to, humans could begin living at the bottom of the ocean. As for the issue of living space, humanity has already taken its first tentative steps into space colonization, and human immortality would no doubt vastly increase interest and funding for these endeavors—especially as the economy evolves in a post-death world. With the hazards and time frames of space travel also being a non-concern, I believe that the human race will rapidly settle across the Solar System and eventually the galaxy.”
Dunbar cracked a smile. “Bold thinking. I like it.”
Then Lopez spoke. “Dr. Mortimer, based on what I’ve read, your EGOREAL doesn’t directly heal lethal injuries. To quote your report, it ‘merely prevents their capacity for ego-death.’ Now, from what I understand, Agent Pascutti required extensive surgical procedures to restore his body to function after his injury. Furthermore, EGOREAL doesn’t prevent pain or the aging of the body.”
Lopez set down the report and eyed Dr. Mortimer. “I don’t know about you, ma’am, but I sure wouldn’t want to be trapped in an old man’s body and suffer his pains for all eternity. And dead or not, this procedure won't help my MTFs if they're all torn to pieces on the scene."
“I understand your concern, Mr. Lopez. My engineers have already begun to explore solutions to this very issue. We believe that the key is to divorce the ego from its biological substrate. The body is merely a vessel for the ego, and EGOREAL renders most of its components effectively obsolete. Pain is just the ego-body’s way of sensing danger and distress. Thus, body parts could be replaced with synthetic components that preserve or even amplify previous bodily functions.”
Dr. Shankar stared at Dr. Mortimer with horror, unable to believe she could be so nonchalant about such an outrageous suggestion. But what disturbed him even more was that not a single member of the hearing committee seemed to share in his revulsion. The O5s remained as unreadable as before, but he could already see the change in the eyes of the other four. They had been hooked by Dr. Mortimer’s sales pitch, just like the MIT crowd and the third-party reviewers at Area-69. They’d bought into her fantasy, and now their minds ran wild with fantasies of their own.
Connelly shuffled her papers, and for the first time, Dr. Shankar’s presence in the room was acknowledged.
“Dr. Amit Shankar, Research Director of Site-174, is the chief external reviewer of Project Cicada. Dr. Shankar, would you please share your findings?”
Dr. Mortimer looked at Dr. Shankar, waiting. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes. Dr. Shankar gathered his paperwork, pulling his eyes away from her to face the panel. Seeing the three councilmen staring at him, his gaze quickly readjusted to just beneath their chins.
“Er… yes, well…” Dr. Shankar cleared his throat and banished his nerves, deciding to simply read off the paper like a script. “The… the findings presented here are derived from my own peer-review of Dr. Mortimer’s research, along with that of six additional researchers who, at the authorization of Site Director Devane, carried out their own independent…”
Seeing the O5s waiting, Dr. Shankar swallowed and cut to the chase.
“Erm… our findings raise significant concerns about the ethical ramifications of Dr. Mortimer’s project. Non-human organisms subjected to EGOREAL treatment have exhibited pronounced physiological side effects. Both plants and animals lose their ability to adapt to their environment. We’ve noted an inverse correlation between heightened brain activity and reduced bodily activity, a state comparable to hibernation, as well as lack of sleep and ingestion…”
He looked over his glasses and hazarded a glance at O5-2. He wasn’t sure if what he read there was impatience, but he once again hurried to the point.
“In layman’s terms… it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to live. They don’t breathe, they don’t eat, they barely interact with other members of their kind, even among highly social species.”
Dr. Shankar flipped the page of his report, zipping down to the relevant segments.
“Agent Pascutti, meanwhile, reports frequent shivers, insomnia, and phantom pain in the areas of his body that were affected by the injury that originally claimed his life. He has further disclosed symptoms of depression, lack of motivation, and an inexplicable sense of loss since his EGOREAL treatment. Coworkers report that he has become uncharacteristically quiet and antisocial.”
For a flicker of a moment, Dr. Shankar caught Dr. Mortimer’s blue eyes staring at him, but not long enough to make out her expression.
“We have speculated that these adverse side effects will grow even more pronounced with time. The very nature of immortality suggests long-term consequences that can’t possibly be understood within such a narrow time frame. Potentially catastrophic ones. It is the opinion of…”
Dr. Shankar paused, not for the pressure of so many eyes on him, but realizing that the full magnitude of his misgivings could not be conveyed from the wording on the report. He set it down and raised his head, looking not at the O5 Council, but at the young woman across from him.
“What you’ve created is not a cure, Dr. Mortimer. EGOREAL is a dangerous procedure, and we haven’t begun to understand its full implications. You haven’t defeated death. You’ve cheated it.”
Dr. Mortimer’s eyebrows twitched. He couldn’t tell if what he was reading in her eyes was resentment, hurt, or pity. He figured it could have been all of those things, or none of them.
Dr. Mortimer lifted her chin and replied with an even cadence.
“Side effects are to be expected in any experimental procedure, Dr. Shankar. These symptoms you’ve noted in my patients are simply the byproduct of adjusting to a new form of living, one in which the avoidance of mortality is no longer their driving biological imperative.”
So they’re your ‘patients’ now?
“As for Agent Pascutti,” she continued. “Mario was killed in combat against a dangerous anomaly less than a month ago. EGOREAL brought him back to us. It’s only natural that he would suffer from post-traumatic symptoms after such an experience. I’m certain that counseling and physical therapy will resolve his lingering issues, and he’ll be back to living his fullest life, now and for the rest of time. He’ll be the first of us to live forever.”
How can you not see? Dr. Shankar could hardly contain these words, unable to comprehend how this otherwise brilliant young scientist could so callously overlook the warning signs in her own flawed research. Could she really be so cavalier about Agent Pascutti’s life? Was she blinded by her success in reviving him? Or was she genuinely driven by compassion, truly believing, beyond all doubt, that any suffering he endured in the future was better off than being dead?
The panel members held a discussion in hushed voices. The O5s seemed to communicate entirely non-verbally, with knowing glances that conveyed information far beyond the capacity of words. Eventually, all seven were silent, and O5-2 looked at Dr. Mortimer.
“If Project Cicada were to continue, what would you request of the Foundation?”
And just like that, Dr. Shankar knew their decision had been made.
“I am not asking for drastic action," said Dr. Mortimer. "I merely request a renewed research grant, and authorization for human testing of EGOREAL.”
The O5s shared those knowing glances again. The silence was long and uneasy. Dr. Shankar felt as if the very dust in the air had gone still in wait. O5-2 was again the first to speak.
“Dr. Mortimer, you have put forth a compelling argument. EGOREAL holds much potential. However, as Dr. Shankar’s findings reveal, EGOREAL also carries potential flaws and dangers. Until those flaws are addressed, it would be categorically foolish to implement EGOREAL across the Foundation, to say nothing of your more radical proposal. The O5 Council will continue deliberations on the future of Project Cicada. In the meantime, because the side effects of EGOREAL treatment on Agent Pascutti are not severe, we hereby authorize limited human testing at Area-69. Your grant request will also be fulfilled.”
Dr. Mortimer stood up, glowing with appreciation. “Thank you very much, ma’am.”
O5-2 did not smile or even nod. The business was done, and it was time to return to whatever crises demanded the attention of the Foundation’s shadowy administrators. Still, for all their trained impassivity, for all their posturing and mystique, even they could not hide their real reasons for allowing Project Cicada to continue. They too had tasted of the forbidden fruit, that poisonous temptation as old as myth and man. For all the Foundation’s alchemists and biological magicians, it was Zoe Mortimer who had discovered the true elixir of life. And the O5s, like everyone else, were blinded by the promise it offered. The end of endings. The beginning of forever.
6
He found her in the indoor courtyard of Protected Site-04. It was a surreal sort of space, made to resemble an outdoor pavilion, complete with bustling flower beds and a single lonely sakura. But the springtime atmosphere was an illusion. Outside the window, D.C. was a hellscape of winter snow, battered by black clouds and harsh Atlantic winds. Dr. Mortimer was sitting under the tree, at a little table peppered with cherry pedals, quietly munching on a sandwich. Like she hadn’t invented the cure for death, as if she wasn’t the woman who had solved mankind’s most ancient struggle.
“Mind if I join you?”
She looked up. The surprise in her expression was obvious. The apprehension that followed, less so. She was good at hiding it. She’d probably gotten used to it, having spent so many years earning favors and flattering the right people to make it to the position her intellect and ingenuity rightly deserved. Even the Foundation had its old guard, its glass ceilings. A woman like her had to learn how to hide resentment behind a professional veil.
Dr. Mortimer shook her head. Dr. Shankar took the chair across from her and sat at a respectful distance. Respectful, but not unfamiliar. He sat at an angle so he could see the flowers, but not so angled that his head didn’t naturally settle in her direction. He, too, was skilled in the social arts.
“May I call you Zoe?”
This clearly surprised her. He watched a flash of unease and confusion rush across her face, but after detecting no ill intent, she reluctantly nodded.
Dr. Shankar grinned. “Call me Ami, then. Short for Amit. My wife called me that first. Started out as a verbal typo, but… I’ve come to like it. Like the French for friend. So my friends call me Ami.”
“Are we friends?” asked Zoe Mortimer cautiously.
Ami shrugged. “We could be. I don’t believe professional disagreements have to preclude personal friendships. If my career has taught me anything, they’re often the start of it.”
With one hand cupping the handle of a coffee mug, Ami made a pointless gesture with the other hand. “You’re familiar with Dr. Duckworth—he spoke at the conference at MIT?”
She nodded.
“Well, before he and I met, we had a bit of an academic rivalry, ten or so years in the running. Looking back, it was rather silly. We each had different opinions of Syler’s model of applied essophysics. I though it was brilliant. He thought it was bunk. Back and forth we went, publication and rebuttal, rebuttal and publication. Then one day, purely by chance, we happened upon one another in a coffee shop in London, and we hit it off. Now, we’re the best of friends.”
Zoe had no response to this. Ami didn’t try to force it. He allowed his eyes to wander to the flower beds, bursting with yellow and gold, kept alive and blooming by artificial sunlight.
“Daffodils. My wife keeps them. They’ve always been my favorites.”
“I’ve never been much for gardening,” Zoe confessed.
“Not a green thumb?”
Zoe folded her fingers on her sandwich, but didn’t take a bite.
“I just never saw the point. My mother used to spend hours outside digging around in the garden, planting and weeding. I remember how happy she’d be when the flower buds started to come up in the spring. Which just made me sad when I saw them wilt away in the fall. Like… all her hard work, gone just like that. Like it was all for nothing. I thought it was depressing."
Zoe’s hands slipped from the sandwich. Her index finger glided unconsciously around the table, drawing paths on the polished glass. A nervous tic, maybe, or maybe she just liked the sound of it. It made a whoom-whoom as she drew her finger around the rounded edge, a pleasing hum in the ears.
“I had a dog when I was a kid. An Aussie Shepherd named Bruce. He was my favorite thing in the world.”
Zoe smiled, and once again, it was that deeply personal smile that felt intrusive just to see.
“I remember coming home from school and how he’d jump up and lick me… God, I must’ve been so small then. I’ve seen those dogs now. How was I ever that small?”
She shook her head, and her smile faded.
“Anyway… when I was five, my mom came into my room and told me Bruce had gone to Heaven. Never told me how. I didn’t ask. It didn’t even occur to me. It wasn’t until my teens that I learned my dad had backed over him in the truck. When I got upset, he thought I was being ridiculous. ‘What the hell're you cryin' about? It’s been nine years, and that damn mutt was a pain in the ass, anyhow…’”
Zoe withdrew her finger and stared at her lap. Ami contemplated how to respond. Were it someone else, he might’ve cocked a smirk and said, "Fatherly love, eh?" It was on the edge of his lips, but seeing the childlike quiver in Zoe’s eyes, he reconsidered. Instead, he replied with a sober frown:
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Zoe looked at him uneasily, searching for ulterior motives. He didn’t blame her. Twenty minutes ago, he had stood before the highest authority in the SCP Foundation and criticized her life’s work to her face. It must have seemed suspicious that he’d suddenly act all friendly, after being the sole thorn in her side for all these months, the only person in the Foundation who didn’t seem to support Project Cicada.
If he had believed she’d treat him as her enemy, Ami never would have approached her at all. He wouldn’t have wasted his time. But after listening to her impassioned speeches, after months of studying her research and gleaning small details of the mind behind the magic, he had come to know—or at least suspect—certain things about Zoe Mortimer. He suspected that she was, at her very essence, a person who coveted trust and sincerity. A person who wanted to see the best in everyone, and, in the event of disagreement, wanted to reason with others and bring them over to her way of thinking. She wasn’t afraid of confrontation. But most of all, she was kind.
All that was to say, when she smiled, he wasn’t surprised.
“Thank you.”
Ami allowed a polite silence to elapse before raising his next question.
“You were raised religiously, then?”
Zoe smirked. “We were rural West Pennsylvania evangelicals. Every morning started with sermons on the radio, and the Devil was as real as bacon and eggs. I was the only child, so I had to bear the brunt of it. I wasn’t allowed to listen to popular music, or visit the toy store, or wear trendy clothes… all of it was ‘sinful,’ according to my folks. A whole lot of stuff was sinful.”
Zoe returned the question. “What about you? Were you religious?”
“Me? Nah.” Ami repeated that pointless hand gesture. “My father was brought up Hindu, but Periyar was his personal idol… which is to say, he’d become a born-again atheist by the time he was an adult. I do remember the stories my grandmother used to tell me when we’d visit her in Kerala. Stories about gods of death and war and famine, man-eating monsters and the like…” Ami chuckled. “Spooky stuff.”
Zoe stared into her lap again. Her hands cupped the ends of her knees.
“When I was little, my mother used to tell me that after we died, all the saved would go to Heaven, and all the sinners would go to Hell. And I was a sinner—we’re all born sinners, my father said. Anything I did in this life was just the proof about which way I would go after. Couldn’t do anything about it, that’s just how it was. If I sinned, then it proved I was going to Hell, that my afterlife would be eternal torture like nothin’ a could imajun, forever.”
Zoe didn’t seem to notice the slip, that tiny rural twang that had come through. Ami found it cute. Ellie would gush over this person, he thought. He imagined them driving home after an imaginary dinner with the young doctor, Ellie chanting with adoring imitations of Zoe’s vocal quirks.
“Heaven didn’t sound much better, honestly,” Zoe amended. “At least, not to me. The way I imagined it, it was just one long day at church, sitting on a cloud in white robes and singing hymns for the rest of time. For a kid, eternal boredom might be worse than eternal torture.”
Ami laughed. “I can vouch for that.”
Zoe twiddled her thumbs under the table. She was quiet for a moment.
“Have you ever lost someone, Dr. Shankar?”
Ami did not answer, and he suspected she wasn’t waiting for an answer. With a few more seconds of hesitation, Zoe said:
“I had a friend when I was little. A girl named Della. She… well, she and her folks died in an accident. A drunk driver. They weren’t like us. They weren’t Christian. My father…”
Zoe shook her head slowly, with a sort of cold disbelief in her eyes, still unable to comprehend the cruelty of something that had happened so long ago.
“He said, ‘good rid’uns for it.’ He said, ‘they were sinners anyway and they’re where they belong now, good rid’uns for it.’”
Zoe raised one fist and wiped her right eye, like she’d gotten some dust there.
“I just couldn’t bear the thought of it. Della didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t choose the way she was raised. She was just a kid. The thought that she was in Hell, that she had to suffer for the rest of time because of things she didn’t choose… I never got over that.”
The rest went unsaid. Zoe sighed, a rattling sigh that carried decades of unresolved sorrow. Ami had seen it before. Not in his own experience, and thank goodness for that. He was one of the lucky ones. He came from a big family, and his loved ones were all alive, or had lived ripe and old to their dying days. But his line of work brought him face-to-face with that kind of trauma more often than he’d like. Anomalies had a sickly way of being drawn to the demons of human nature.
Zoe eventually continued. “Once I went off to college, I grew out of all that. I left that town and never looked back. But… I never got over death. I became a scientist, but the answers I found there weren’t much better. Everything that I call me… my memories, my feelings, my whole sense of self… it’s all just a freak accident. A fleeting ember at the edge of the Big Bang. One insignificant cog in the machine. And Della’s just a pile of broken little bones in a coffin. Dust to dust.”
Zoe’s eyes went out of focus, and her skin went a little gray.
“We’re all just spirals in an ocean of consciousness. Eventually, we’re all going to dissolve, along with everything that matters to us. Everything we cherish, everyone we love… all washed away in the entropy of a wave. And after that… nothing. No Heaven or Hell. Just oblivion. Nothingness.”
So you looked for a way to save the spiral.
Ami thought these words, but didn’t feel the need to say them. The end of the story had been implied from the beginning. Maybe even before the beginning. He might have guessed Zoe’s motivations for creating EGOREAL without ever even meeting her. What could be more human? The desire to fight death was not a product of hubris, but the most basic instinct of all living things. In this sense, Dr. Mortimer could have been anyone, anyone whose life had been tainted by loss, anyone who feared what came after death. No wonder, then, that her words had touched so many.
Ami permitted some silence to elapse. Finally, when he felt the timing was prudent, he said:
“May I ask you something, Zoe?”
Zoe looked up and shrugged, sure.
“When you speak of death as oblivion… what do you mean by that? What is oblivion? What is nothingness?”
The mind behind EGOREAL pondered Ami’s question with a scientist’s sincerity.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s the part that gets to me, I suppose. I don’t know.”
“Let me phrase it differently.” Ami adjusted in his seat and folded his arms on the table, a gesture he’d performed hundreds of times in his luncheons with Dr. Duckworth. “What is it like to experience ‘nothing’? What does it feel like for a person to experience ‘oblivion’?”
Zoe thought about this too. Thought for a long time until, Ami assumed, she found the analogy most suitable to the idea she wanted to convey.
“Did you have to undergo sensory deprivation training when you joined the Foundation, Ami?”
Ami nodded.
“When I first got into that tank… well, it scared me out of my fucking mind,” Zoe confessed. “Being stuck in there for hours with no light, no sound, all by myself… I just couldn’t bear it. I had to retake the course two times before I finally passed, and even then I was a pathetic mess after I left the chamber. Being trapped in there… it was like all my worst fears come true.”
Zoe’s eyebrows knotted. “That’s what I imagine death is like. There’s no other side. There’s no pearly gates. No more sensations, no more color and noise and warmth. No one to talk to, nobody to keep you company. But it’s not for a few hours, or a few days. It’s forever. You can’t go back. You can’t ever escape. When I imagine oblivion… that’s what I’ve always pictured.”
Ami allowed another respectful silence to pass before he responded.
“I have to be honest, Zoe. I don’t buy into that view of things.”
Zoe tensed. “I take it you have a different one?”
“Not exactly,” Ami admitted calmly. “I just don’t think your logic adds up. You talk about this darkness after death as if it were an experience, as if ‘nothing’ were a something that you could experience and suffer.”
“That…” Zoe began, but stopped before she could reply on instinct, catching her mistake as any good scientist would. She gathered herself and tried again.
“You’re right. I was making an analogy. I don’t actually believe there’s any experience after death. That’s the frightening thing about it. Experience is all that we know. Can you imagine anything which lies outside of experience? Or what it’s like to not experience? I can’t.”
“I can’t either,” agreed Ami. “But isn’t that the basis of your theory? Reality is experience. Reality is consciousness.”
“But not my consciousness,” she replied. “Not the me that I know, my memories and values, my sense of self. Once I die… that’s all gone. All of it. Even if this abstract presence of awareness carries on. Is that any different from the darkness? Maybe it’s worse. Maybe…”
Zoe paused. She was looking at the flowers again. There was no breeze to make them move. The artificial Foundation air was all that sustained them, whirring from an overhead vent. Fake.
“I did go back there, after I left. When my mother was on her deathbed. All those years talking about the salvation of Heaven… but when death finally came to her door, she was terrified of it. She sank her life’s savings into delaying it. She didn’t sleep for fear that she’d never wake up. And the screaming in the night…”
Zoe’s eyes peeled away from the daffodils, but did not find Ami's face.
“It took weeks. When it finally did happen, it was ugly. She went blind in both eyes a few days before she passed. I'll never forget the way she clutched my hand, like a… like a child hanging from a ledge. So scared. Saying the same thing over and over. ‘Zoe, help me. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s dark…'"
Her lips kept moving as if she were talking, but Zoe’s voice was gone. She swallowed and rubbed the crest of her nose, self-consciously glancing at Ami, who tilted his head down in a show of decency. A janitor came into the room, sprayed water over the plants, and withdrew a few minutes later. The snowstorm outside howled. The air vent whirred.
“When I was an undergrad,” Ami began, as if to change the subject, “I took a class in pre-Socratic philosophy. I remember getting really stumped when we went over Zeno’s paradoxes. Have you heard of them?”
Zoe shook her head. She did know, of course. She was being polite.
Ami held up both hands. “A runner travels from Point A to Point B. However, to reach Point B, first he must travel halfway to Point B. But in order to get there, he must travel halfway to the halfway point. And he must first travel halfway to that, and halfway to that, ad infinitum.”
Ami lowered his hands. “The same dilemma goes for time. At any given instant, an object in motion is not in motion, because motion is a measure of changing positions over time. From this, motion should not be possible, because in any instant of time, objects do not have motion at all.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“Within a week of that lesson, I was hoping there existed a Hell for Zeno of Elea to burn in. At first, I thought the paradoxes were pure twaddle. But the more I thought about them, the less sense it made in my mind, and it drove me crazy. I was used to a world that made perfect sense, a world where everything had an explanation. This was before the Foundation, mind you. But do you know what my professor told me?”
Zoe shook her head.
“He told me, problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way. It sounds profound, which is why I doubt they were his words. He probably heard it in a book somewhere. But it holds true.”
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble…” Zoe echoed.
“In other words, the reason Zeno’s paradoxes were unsolvable was because the question was being asked wrong. Indeed, motion should be impossible—if you follow the same assumptions as Zeno. That is, if you assume the world is neatly divided into dimensions and instants. But Point A and Point B aren’t physically real. They’re invented metrics used to divide a single process, the process of motion. The same applies to time. We invented seconds and minutes and days to make sense of change in the world, but there are no seconds or minutes or days in the physical world. They’re tools of human understanding."
Ami permitted Zoe a moment to think about this, before he spoke again.
“Many ‘hard problems’ in science and philosophy come from arbitrarily dividing one process into two, and then debating for centuries over how to get the two back together. But everything is relative. Space and time. Particles and waves. Motion and position. We created objects to make sense of the world, but the world isn’t made of objects, the world is much more… much more wiggly.”
Zoe gave him a look that seemed both perplexed and amused. “Wiggly?”
Ami chuckled shyly. “Ah, that’s the word my daughter used when I tried to explain quantum physics to her. I can’t tell if she didn't understand at all, or if she understood completely."
“I think she got it.”
Ami smiled. Flattery for his daughters, he had to admit, always worked on him. More importantly, Zoe Mortimer seemed comfortable with him. She was hearing him. Maybe she’d listen.
"Ever since I was young, I've always felt like there was a similar paradox about death. I mean… growing up, we're taught that death is something dreadful and sad. We're all told that death is the end of experience. But how does anyone know? How can anyone know?"
Ami slipped his fingers together. “So, I figure… maybe the reason death doesn’t make sense is because we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe we’ve had it wrong from the start. Maybe life and death aren’t two separate things, but a continuity, a spectrum… something much more wiggly. And if that is the case, then trying to separate the two of them simply makes no sense.”
Now they’d come full circle. There was a change in Zoe’s expression, a change he’d seen coming ever since he said the word death. It was time to broach that subject. He only hoped that what little friendship they had fostered over the past few minutes would invite her to listen to reason.
“Zoe…” Ami began. “I don’t question your intentions. I have great respect for what you believe you are trying to do. But I am deeply troubled by… well, what I regard as your attempt to…”
“Cheat death?” Zoe cut in.
Ami dipped his head, but did not deny his phrasing.
“Creating a world of life without death… I think that’s absurd by definition. Every bit as absurd as a world of light without dark, waves without troughs, or music without silence.”
He added diplomatically, "Look at it this way. You believe that reality is like an ocean of consciousess, and the ego is like a spiral in that sea. But in that case, what are we? If we're just the shape of the spiral, then we're already an illusion, and we shouldn't feel anything by existing. But if the self is the water within, the ocean that's spiraling… then preventing the dissolution of that spiral makes no sense. You're fighting tooth and nail against the wrong enemy. You're pushing away the self you're trying to save."
He had said his part. Ami settled his posture and waited, waited for his words to finish processing in Zoe’s unparalleled mind. He could tell she was giving them sincere thought. But there was resistance. Something youthful on her face that was naturally rebellious—or, less derisively, the spirit of a woman who would not be told what to believe. She would come to her own conclusions with her own logic. Ami could only hope that her conclusions would lead her down the right path.
“You said you have a wife. Right?”
Ami nodded. “Ellie.”
“And a daughter?”
“Two daughters. Sofia and Zoya. Seven and five.”
“I see.” Zoe paused. “Do you want them to die?”
It was not a threat. It was a rhetorical question, and a powerful one at that. Ami could not respond. His mind automatically went to the darkest places, the places every good parent feared the most. He did not need to answer the question.
“We can debate philosophy all day long," said Zoe. "But while we’re lounging here in our cushy chairs, millions of people are suffering every day. They’re suffering from a sickness as old as time, and we’re here sitting on the cure. If you knew that your loved ones were going to die tomorrow, how would you feel if there was a way to save them, but others were keeping it from you?”
Ami said nothing, again answering in silence. Zoe sat up conclusively.
“If we have the power to end death, then it’s our moral duty to do so. I don’t care if you can’t see the big picture, Dr. Shankar. You can be complacent with an unethical status quo if you want. But I’m going to change things. I already have. They’ve all seen the light. I hope you will too.”
She picked up the remains of her lunch, gave a curt “Goodbye,” and she was on her way. Ami listened as her footsteps clicked away down the corridor behind him, until all that was left was the hum of the air vent and the muted howl of the wind. His coffee had gone cold.
7
Throughout 1996, Dr. Mortimer’s EGOREAL was the darling project of the SCP Foundation. Now that it had proven effective on human subjects—and with the blessing of the O5 Council—huge amounts of funding had been poured into Area-69 to support the advancement of EGOREAL studies; or, as it was now being called, the emerging science of “athanatology.” The last enclaves of skepticism had been snuffed out, leaving Dr. Shankar among only a handful of scientists who still held out resistance to EGOREAL, who still did not buy into the racket, who still regarded the whole thing as a dangerous mistake. For everyone else, Zoe’s discovery was the greatest in Foundation history, the ultimate solution to not only secure, contain, and protect, but to live.
The number of volunteers for human testing of EGOREAL was immediately large. Everyone wanted a taste of eternal life, and they chased it with urgent fervor, as if they hadn’t been living with the expectation of death for all their lives up to that point. The O5 Council limited initial testing to a very small pool of candidates: agents of mid-level stature, well-trained enough to be valuable, but also insignificant enough to be expendable if the procedure went awry. But after a few months without any significant side effects (Ami found it ludicrous that “a few months” was considered enough), the candidate pool expanded to agents of ranks and clearance levels from up and down the totem pole. They would all come to Area-69 for Zoe’s blessing, and leave with her miracle elixir flowing through their veins. Unkillable, fearless, ready to begin their eternal lives.
It wasn’t long before a cult of personality had formed around Zoe Mortimer. Not a single agent of the requisite clearance level had not heard her name. Academic interest in her publications skyrocketed; the monthly reviews from Area-69 were received like the latest issue of a popular comic book. Area-69 was treated as holy ground, and Zoe like a savior, a bringer of miracles, a messiah. It was natural, Ami supposed, for human beings to resort to idolatry and worship in the face of such a miracle, even Foundation agents who ought to have known better. And why not? Zoe, who had once been nothing but an unknown researcher in the footnotes of the Foundation, had defeated humanity’s most ancient enemy. The bleak and hopeless ending of life, the inevitability of death, had been plucked away by that same girl who grew up in that house in rural Pennsylvania.
No wonder people were beginning to think of her as a god.
There was ample talk about what would happen next with EGOREAL. It was no longer a question of if, but rather how long it would be until the O5 Council approved of civilian testing. No one wanted to go to eternity without their loved ones by their sides. People like Michael Butler and his father, Mario Pascutti and his daughters… what was the point of endless life without someone to share it with? Like all decisions, this one rested with the O5 Council, and even Zoe’s popularity paled in comparison to their authority. But the tides of change were in motion. December of that year would bring the budget allocations and project reviews. That would be the big moment for Project CICADA, the moment when it would put its money where it mouth was.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of the bright star of Zoe Mortimer, Ami Shankar watched the progress of Project Cicada with wary eyes. With each passing month, he became more and more concerned that seemingly the whole Foundation, even the O5s themselves, couldn’t see the dangers lurking beneath the surface of this supposed miracle cure. All of the people subjected to EGOREAL exhibited the same symptoms as Agent Pascutti: depression, social withdrawal, insomnia, and an inexplicable feeling of loss. Like something precious had been taken away from them, plucked from their lives and wiped from their memories, leaving them bereft. But since it wasn’t anything medication couldn’t alleviate, everyone in the chain of decision-making had written it off as a “minor side effect.” A later, more sober Foundation might have taken these signs more seriously, but these were still the pioneer days, when exploration had an edge on caution. If Ami couldn’t produce evidence that EGOREAL was tangibly harmful, he wouldn’t be heard. He felt in his gut that things were only going to get worse, that EGOREAL would sooner or later show itself for what it really was.
In October 1996, two months before the anticipated budget reviews, a party was held at the residence of Area-69 Director David Devane in Belvedere. All scientists and senior staff who were involved in Project Cicada were invited to attend, including (ironically) Ami himself. It was a celebration of the project’s recent milestone of having successfully treated 100 people with EGOREAL. The first hundred people who will live forever, boasted the gold-lined invitation. Ami felt sick just from reading it. He would have refused to go on principle, were it not for a small note written in the corner of the invitation, in tight handwriting he’d seen so many times by then:
Won’t you come and see the daffodils, Ami?
—Zoe
And so, against his better judgment, he found himself that evening in the back garden of Devane’s sprawling Bay Area island estate. The ostentatious décor was better suited to a Parisian debutante ball than a Foundation soiree. Life-sized glass angels guarded every entrance to the garden. A fountain of wine spilled into a silver bowl on a table. The party-goers dressed in their best impressions of high society. The usual armored guards patrolled the premises, but once past security, EGOREAL’s secret status meant all but nothing. People talked freely about its miraculous properties, discussing classified research in the open like it was a breath of fresh air to do so. Yet another permission that the Foundation of years to come would find unthinkable.
The “honored guests” were denoted by golden cicada pins worn on their dresses and suits. These were the ones who had undergone EGOREAL treatment. The coveted hundred, the immortals in their midst. Naturally, they were the heart of the party, always easy to spot by the crowds that followed them everywhere like celebrity guests. They bombarded them with questions about their treatments, their future dreams in a life without death, and the good doctor who had “saved” them. The honored guests, for their part, seemed disinterested in most of these conversations. Ami had met many of them. Their eyes wandered and went out of focus mid-conversation, and their responses were rigid and indifferent, like air blown through a hollow cage.
At the far side of the yard, Ami came upon a small plaque that had recently been installed, surrounded by a bed of identical yellow daffodils. The flowers were so symmetrical in their growth and posture that they seemed to have been copy-pasted across the lawn. The inscription was overly long, but Ami caught the gist from a passing glance: …flowers brought in from Area-69, treated with Dr. Mortimer’s groundbreaking Egoic Recursion Algorithm… in celebration of Project Cicada, and the athanatalogical liberation of mankind by the brilliance of Dr. Zoe Mortimer.
Ami knew Zoe would not have been behind the plaque. That had been Devane, no doubt, who had become quite the sycophant to Zoe. Still, the whole thing staggered him. Zoe may have been a modest soul at heart, but her followers were anything but, and this Robespierrean decadence had no place in the unostentatious SCP Foundation. Ami knew enough of Zoe to know that she wasn’t in it for the fame, that she had made EGOREAL for the good of others. All the same, Ami worried she’d become drunk on her own ego. Not caught up in delusions of godhood, but simply so blinded by her apparent success that she would further ignore the danger.
Ami’s thoughts trailed off at the sight of someone standing at the edge of the garden, near one of the refreshment tables, staring into the grass with a glassy look in his dark eyes. Ami pushed through the irritating, sluggish crowd and made his way to where the man stood.
“Agent Pascutti?”
Mario Pascutti looked up from the grass. A lump formed in Ami’s throat when their eyes met, when he witnessed yet again the “success” of Zoe’s first human experiment. Despite the suit and golden pin, Mario looked dazed and distant. He was blue around the eyes. All evening long, Pascutti had been pelted with questions and congratulations, the curiosity and incessant nagging of the people who admired and perhaps envied him. Ami had caught him during a rare break, or maybe it was Mario himself who fled from the attention. He looked like he wanted to take his pin off.
“Oh,” he said tonelessly. “Dr. Shankar. Hello.”
“Hello,” said Ami, unconsciously copying Mario’s stiff voice. He corrected himself to a friendlier tone. “How have you been?”
Mario looked at the ground. Looked at the people around him. Looked at the ground again.
“I’m… fine.”
Dr. Shankar’s brows furrowed. He didn’t know a “fine” that looked like this.
“The attention doesn’t agree with you, I take it,” Ami offered, maybe just out of desperation to make conversation. Something in Pascutti’s eyes made him deeply uneasy. He wanted the man to keep talking. But it took him a long time again to speak.
“I guess not.”
Before Ami could broach that all-important question—are you okay?—a much louder voice interrupted his train of thought.
“Dr. Shankar! You sly bastard, you really showed your face.”
It was David Devane, site director of Area-69, and owner of the posh venue of this gathering. In retrospect, Ami had never met a man he so rapidly disliked. Tall, white-haired, and with a politician’s face, Devane carried all the false modesty of someone who made six figures a year but liked to pretend he was still one of the “normal folks.” He patted Ami heavily on the back, hard enough to be uncomfortable, but not hard enough that Ami could reasonably complain about it.
“So even the stick-in-the-mud came out to join us in the end, eh? No shame in admitting when you’re wrong, Amit. My wife tells me that all the time.” He laughed at his own joke, giving a wink that Ami supposed was meant to imply friendliness. Another hallmark of those types.
“I’ll admit I’m wrong when I’m proven wrong,” Ami replied with an empty smile.
Devane shook his head. “A scientist through and through, huh? Guess that explains your wardrobe choice, eh? You dressed for work, or for fun?” Devane laughed obnoxiously again. “Well, that’s what we pay you for, isn’t it? ‘Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence,’ and all that. But at what point does it become just plain stubbornness, huh?”
Ami began to reply, but someone else spoke for him instead.
“Skepticism drives scientific progress, Director Devane. Project Cicada could never have succeeded if it could not satisfy the doubts of even its most ardent critics.”
And there was Zoe Mortimer, dressed in a flowing silver dress, parting the sea of heads around her with each nimble, soundless step. Their faces shifted in admiration and awe, like the very ground she walked on was sacred. The timid scientist from MIT wore her hair in a delicate bun, but her blue eyes remained the same: bold, fearless, and kind. Her secret smile was aimed at Ami alone.
“EGOREAL owes its success to Dr. Shankar. He has my respect.”
Director Devane was, technically, Zoe’s superior. The man was in charge of Area-69, second only to the O5 Council in making executive decisions for Project Cicada. But with the way he looked at her, you’d be understandably mistaken in thinking he was just another disciple of the great messiah Zoe, awed in her divine presence, humbled by her aura. Just like that, the audacious Foundation commander went meek and polite, smiling apologetically at his goddess.
“Of course, Dr. Mortimer.”
Zoe swept in, took Ami by the arm, and gently led him away from the crowd. Ami could feel the eyes on their backs as they retreated to a quiet spot at the back of the garden, adjacent to the square of copycat daffodils and Devane’s obsequious plaque. Once they were away from the noise, Zoe turned and smiled at Ami, a smile of perfect hospitality and kindness.
“I really don’t want there to be hard feelings between us, Ami. Like you said, professional disagreements don’t have to preclude personal friendships. And I do think of you as a friend.”
Ami said nothing. Zoe looked out over the party, eyeing the golden shimmer of the cicadas, and the golden bed of deathless EGOREAL flowers planted for all to see, boasting in absolute stillness.
“I mean what I said back there. I don’t believe Project Cicada would be where it is now without you. Any good scientific theory should be able to stand against the rigors of skepticism.”
She looked at him again. “But don’t you think it’s time you set aside your doubts? Just look around you. These people… EGOREAL saved their lives. It cured them of death.”
“People used to think radon gas could cure cancer,” Ami replied flatly.
Zoe sighed and shook her head with a pitying smile. “I just don’t understand. When EGOREAL was first starting out, I didn’t blame you for having doubts. Everyone did. But why can’t you accept the truth when it’s right in front of your eyes? The proof is all around you. EGOREAL works.”
“I never doubted that it worked,” Ami responded. “The fact that it works is exactly what worries me.”
Zoe pondered him. “Are you afraid of living forever?”
Ami didn’t have an answer for that. But he still had plenty to say.
“Those people…” He gestured to the vacant-eyed ones with the cicada pins. “What you've done to them, it isn't natural. You think you’ve saved them now, but where do you think they’ll be in twenty years? Fifty? A hundred?”
“They’ll be where they are right now,” Zoe replied. “Alive and happy, with their families.”
Ami frowned. “You’re right. They’ll be exactly where they are right now. That’s the problem. Life has no meaning without change. You can already tell, can’t you? Look at them, Zoe. They’re like your lab rats. They’re forgetting how to live.”
“Then they’ll learn to adapt.”
Ami’s nose knotted with disgust. “Adapt.” Right. Divorce the ego from its biological substrate, right? Get rid of the needless baggage. Replace their bodies with plastic limbs and plastic hearts, until they’re just plastic dolls. Just plastic fucking dolls.”
Zoe frowned at the ground. She wasn’t upset by his words. She seemed genuinely disappointed.
“I wish you could see,” she said quietly. “I really do, Ami.”
Zoe's eyes returned to him, and for the first time he saw something there that made him feel cold, something that frightened him.
“But sooner or later, you'll come around. When the years start to catch up with you. When the reality of death comes knocking at your door. Or maybe it’ll be something else. You’ll think about Ellie, and your little girls. And eventually, that thought will bring you back to me.”
Zoe took one of Ami’s hands and squeezed it gently.
“When that day comes, I won’t judge you for it, Ami. I’ll just say, welcome home.”
She let go of his hand and drifted over to the flower garden, where she knelt and picked one of the undying daffodils from its bed. She cupped the still-living organism in her delicate hands, then delivered it to Ami, folding his fingers gently over the stem.
“I’d rather have a plastic flower than see Mama’s garden wilt away again."
Twenty minutes later, after the requisite number of drinks had flown and all pleasantries had been exchanged, the crowd of party-goers went silent at the sound of a ringing wine glass. Their attentions drew to the patio of Devane’s house, where he stood alongside his rose-lipped, foreign wife. Dr. Mortimer stood in the background, like a shadow, but the brightest shadow Ami had ever seen. All heads were turned to her, reverence and admiration in every expression.
"On behalf of the SCP Foundation, I'd like to thank you all for coming," said Devane with trained charisma. "This is normally the part where I'd praise your contributions to global security and anomalous research… but that's not why we're here tonight. No, we're here to celebrate something far greater. This isn't just about the Foundation anymore. Maybe it never was. Maybe the Foundation was just a stepping stone toward this momentous day. The last dark tunnel to reach the light, the dream that humanity was destined to achieve. The miracle you have all made possible."
The first wave of applause washed over the crowd. People turned their heads to smile at the golden-pinned immortals, like parents hyping their kids on their birthdays. The immortals did not smile.
“For all of history, humanity has fought against the specter of death,” preached Devane. “But not until today, at the very end of this millennium, has it been at last defeated. For thousands of years, we groped through the darkness in search of a light. And through science, ingenuity, and courage, we’ve found it—and we have Dr. Mortimer to thank.”
The applause this time was much louder. Zoe tipped her head downward, smiling. Ami did not smile. The immortals did not smile.
Devane raised his glass. “Tonight, we celebrate not just the success of Project Cicada, but the beginning of our eternal lives together. No longer are we doomed to amount to ashes in a jar, or bones beneath the earth. Our Foundation, and our lives, will carry on—”
And then came the scream. It came just after the sound of shattering glass, a sound that brought Ami’s mind to his kitchen, Ellie on her knees, cursing and sweeping china debris into a dustpan. The scream, on the other hand, evoked someplace else, a blood-curdling place at the back of every Foundation worker’s minds, the horror that lurked beneath all that they did.
It had come from the back of the garden, by the refreshment table. The scream belonged to a younger woman, who screamed twice more, one for each time Mario Pascutti thrust a fist-sized shard of glass into his arm. The thrusts came with the full strength of the muscles that Mario was actively tearing open. Each came with a spring of blood that seemed to boil, before spilling with a wet hiss over David Devane’s lawn. Mario was no longer lethargic, dazed, and distant. Ami had never seen a man move so desperately. It was the kind of urgency of a father rushing to save his child from a burning building. But instead, he was cutting, cutting both arms, ripping his clothes and the flesh with it. Flecks of hairy, bloodstained meat slapped to the ground. Someone vomited.
The security guards moved in, entering the widening circle around the frantic Mario. A brief struggle ensued. One guard grabbed at Mario’s wrist, trying to disarm him, but the unkillable security chief held on for longer than any mortal man could. The other guard came to assist, and both were able to wrench the shard of glass from Mario’s hand. It fell soundlessly into the pool of blood at his feet. Mario was no longer human. He was a walking blood-heap, oozing and alien-looking. At some point he had managed to slit his own throat, and now his head hung at an odd angle, with his neck open like ripped canvas. His voice wailed from the half-severed windpipe in the hole in his neck, choked with blood, like the baying of a drowning dog.
“LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!”
A fountain of blood clogged his remaining air passages. Mario’s cry became a gurgle, and then a revolting sob. A wretched smell had joined the horrible sounds and sights. The smell of death, but not from a dead thing.
Ami didn’t remember the rest, or not much of it at any rate. All he recalled was the horrified silence of the party-goers, and the trail of blood as the guards hauled Mario away, and Dr. Mortimer chasing after them, her face a tight knot, pale as a midnight moon.
8
None of the doctors at Area-69 were trained to operate on a deathless man. But they did their best. There was little they needed to do. EGOREAL did the heavy lifting. When the parts were back in their place, little by little, they healed. The immortal cells of Agent Pascutti’s body would restore the connections on their own. No stitches or drugs required, apart from the ones for pain. And there was pain—as soon as he had his throat back, Mario was screaming again, screaming loud enough to be heard through the almost-soundproof walls. And when he’d run out of screams, he went silent, dead silent. But not dead. Couldn’t be. He stared at the light on the operating room ceiling, not breathing, not twitching. Vegetative. His heart beat once an hour. There was nothing for it to do. If he wasn’t moving, the energy wasn’t needed. It went to sleep.
Zoe and Ami were both present when the lead surgeon emerged. This was a man who had seen everything, a veteran of the Foundation who had seen bodies contorted and mutilated in ways beyond even the darkest imagination. But even he looked sick to his stomach coming out of that operating room. After all, he’d never worked with a corpse that could scream in pain.
Zoe opened her mouth. “How is…” she began, but the uncontrollably trembling shut her jaw before she could get the rest out. Her whole body was a shaking mess. Ami did not tremble, but his gut felt like it had been turned inside-out. He could have bent over and thrown up, then and there.
The doctor lowered his gaze and replied belatedly.
“We were able to accelerate the healing of his external injuries. But the damage was… extensive. There’s only so much we can do. He’s still bleeding internally.”
Ami hazarded a glance through the window into the operating chamber. Parts of Agent Pascutti’s bare skin were tinted bluish-red, bloated, like the flesh of a dead whale.
I don’t know what a dead whale looks like, Ami thought. I guess it’s just how I imagine it.
That’s Mario on the table there. Mario with the fatherly smile. Mario with the two girls.
He wanted to throw up again.
“We tried to administer general anesthesia…” began the doctor. “But… well, we couldn’t put him under. He felt it the whole way through.”
Zoe’s eyes widened beneath knotted brows. “What do you mean, you couldn’t put him under?”
“I mean we couldn’t render him unconscious. The drugs didn’t work. I don’t even know if it’s possible. His neural activity is… well, unprecedented. I'd estimate that he hasn’t slept in weeks. Maybe more. We think this caused his suicidal—”
Without warning, Mario’s whole body spasmed. The gesture was inaudible behind the glass, but it made Zoe jump. Ami cupped a hand over his mouth. The doctor looked away.
“No,” whispered Zoe, shaking her head. “EGOREAL wouldn’t do this. It couldn’t. I would’ve…”
Ami looked at her. Zoe’s trembling fists clenched and unclenched.
“I’ll… I’ll fix this… I will find a solution… I…”
And then she left, turning and hurrying out of the darkened room with a harsh click of her heels. Ami watched as the silver fabric of her dress whipped around a corner and vanished into the concrete maze of Area-69. It wasn’t until then that he realized he still had the daffodil in his left hand, the one she had given him from Devane’s immortal flower bed. He’d clenched it so hard that it was bent in the middle, but not a golden petal had fallen away.
9
Agent Pascutti remained under lock and key in the facility he had once guarded. All semblance of the friendly man Ami had met the previous year was gone. Imprisoned in a repurposed D-class containment cell, Mario was under constant suicide watch, though he couldn’t have killed himself even if he tried. And he did try. He tried with every object he could get his hands on. When he ran out of objects, he tried smashing his head in against the walls of his cell. He was moved to a padded cell and straight-jacketed after that. No coherent words came out of him, only desperate pleas for freedom and release. He did not seem to be aware of what he wished to be free of, only that it certainly was not just his padded cell. Ami would visit regularly to check on Mario’s condition. It wasn’t long before the incessant screams took a toll on him. Those three words became embedded in his mind like a bad song he couldn’t stop hearing. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.
It was in times like these that he took solace in his home, in his family, in the parts of his life that the horror had not yet touched. But it was hollow comfort, selfish comfort. While Ami ate dinner and played Hungry Hungry Hippo with his daughters, Mario’s daughters had an empty chair at their table, not aware of where their father had gone, or why he never came back from the party that evening. Or maybe, Ami thought, they had been asking themselves that question for much longer—where did Daddy go? Who is this puppet wearing his skin? Who stole our father’s heart?
Ami sat in his home office with the door slightly ajar. The sound of the girls’ cartoons coming from the living room helped to ease his thoughts, but only just. The smell of spice and chicken wafted from the kitchen. No doubt, Ellie was preparing another masterpiece. He heard her voice telling the girls to turn it off, it was time to set the table. Their little voices replied in protest. The cartoon switched to a commercial, something something ultra-white and sparkling. Toothpaste.
Zoe’s flower was in a cup on his desk. Ami had not bothered giving it a bed. It didn’t need dirt or water or sun. The bend in its neck had healed within a day, and now two months later it was still alive and thriving. Daddy’s magic flower, Sofia called it. He’d given her some fake story to appease her science-hungry mind: that the flower had special stem cells in it to keep it from dying. She had bought it. Zoya didn’t question it at all, of course. She always believed her Daddy.
Anna and Juniper. Those were their names.
They were older than his girls. But not that much older. Maybe he could invite them over. Start a friendship. But what good would it do? It would only remind them of the happy life they’d had with their own father. And where was their father now? In a padded cell, trying to bite his own tongue off, screaming for release from the undying torment that Zoe Mortimer had subjected him to.
November was the first month that Project Cicada had not published any research results. Human testing had been temporarily suspended. But the general confusion among other scientists in the Foundation proved that word of the incident at the Devane residence had not gotten around the organization. That smelled of RAISA’s hand, and a cover-up could only mean that Project Cicada had not been canceled. Ami was morbidly unsurprised. The O5s had probably foreseen this. They didn’t care if there were side effects. They were in it for the end results, no matter how bloody they were. For a brief moment, Ami hated the fact that he had ever joined the SCP Foundation.
The scientists at Cicada were trying to find a solution to Mario’s suffering. But Ami already knew what he needed. He needed to die. He wasn’t supposed to be alive in the first place. His heart had been gouged out by a monster on the loose—a tragic end, but part of the job. But Zoe’s algorithm had preserved him in that moment of death, turned him into a thing that was neither alive nor dead, but hanging on an unnatural precipice in between. All he wanted was release. But he couldn’t have it. EGOREAL kept him fixed in place, reverting every change, cutting off every path of escape. A spiral that looped and looped and looped forever.
Ami sighed and put his head in his hands. The stress, the guilt, the unease… it had all conglomerated into a mighty fatigue. Something throbbed behind his forehead. His arms and legs felt weak. The smell of Ellie’s cooking became intoxicating. He wanted to put aside his thoughts and worries and chase that tempting aroma, join his wife and daughters at the dinner table. He could hear the clink of dishes and silverware being laid out. He was about to get up to help—
But then he noticed the daffodil.
The stem was bent again. But not bent the way it had been before. It was curling in on itself. Even as he watched, the neck was twisting, looping downward and inward, becoming a spiral. The petals folded back. They throbbed like veins. The yellow became so yellow it looked orange.
Ami realized he was having trouble looking away. The flower magnetized his gaze. Its presence in the room seemed to amplify, drowning out everything else. The lamp. The paperwork. The smell of dinner. Everything around him faded into a Troxler blur. Everything but the orange petals and the twisted stem. It looked so solid, more solid than anything Ami had ever seen. Solid enough to make other solids seem like wisps of smoke in a dream. Solid enough to break his mind.
It took a moment for the realization to come. But when it hit him, the sense of warning and alarm was strong enough to wrench Ami out of his chair. He took the hyperreal flower in both hands and half-stumbled, half-sprinted out the door. Dinner would have to wait. He had to make it to Area-69.
He prayed he wasn’t already too late.
10
The drive around the bay used to feel short. Now, dread and unease dragged it to a crawl. It gave Ami plenty of time to second-guess his decision. Maybe he ought to have gone to Site-174 first, had his scientists analyze the flower that now lay in the passenger seat. Or the thing that had been a flower. Even sitting in the passenger seat, it magnetized his attention from the corner of his eye, threatening to tear his gaze from the dark highway. Like an anchor in his stream of consciousness. He felt that if he looked at it for too long, if he allowed his attention to wander into its event horizon, he’d be unable to focus on anything else. It would just be flower, flower, flower.
If it was happening here, happening now… then it was happening there. He didn’t know what it was. But he’d known it was coming. In the back of his mind, he’d always known, ever since that day at MIT. The drive gave him plenty of time for regret. He should have pushed harder against Project Cicada. He should have convinced the O5s when he had the chance. He should have been more convincing with Zoe. Too late for all that. Regret morphed into urgency. The flower was no longer a flower. It was a black spot of absolute focus. When he hit the edge of Muir Woods, the passenger side of his car was starting to buckle. A tire popped. Something metallic snapped.
The ground dropped and—
11
His hair hung in his face. Blood dripped from the curled black filaments. The dashboard was an inverted haze of crystalline light. Focus returned to his eyes. The haze became a million blue fragments of glass. They’d come inward like a bursting wave, shredded his clothes and skin. It should’ve been enough to kill him, he reasoned. One particular gash had gone right into his lungs. But with a gag or two, he found he could inexplicably breathe again. He felt something rushing behind his temple, like a headache, but different. Foggier. Heavier. Very heavy.
His trembling fingers found the seat belt button. With a click, he dropped head-first into a pile of knife-sharp shards. The pain was immense, but not crippling. Ami reached for the broken window beside him, summoning uncanny strength to pull himself through. The dry dirt road was pillowy compared to the broken car. He fell against it and soaked the cold into his burning face. Blood spilled restlessly from his clothes. The pressure behind his temples deepened. Something was… pulling? No. There was nothing touching him. But his chin was moving up anyway. He was looking. He saw.
He saw what had once been Area-69.
There ahead of him was the trapezoidal opening that led down into the underground parking garage. But there was another trapezoidal opening beside it, and another trapezoid beside that, and the trapezoids repeated on and on until they curved into the very sky… and there was no sky. There was concrete and there was barbed fencing. There were foundations and facades. And they just kept repeating and repeating, over and over, sameness that stretched to the end of the universe. Recursion. A fractal. A Sierpiński carpet. From beneath—from within—the spiral was like a great clockwork engine of concrete. Endless copies of Area-69 looping upon themselves in a nauseating kaleidoscope. The scale of it all was unbelievable, dreadful, awe-inspiring. Area-69 was everything, everywhere, and it was within itself and outside of itself.
Ami had crossed the threshold now. This was the moment he had been trained for, the strap-it-on, now’s the time moment that had been drilled into his mind from day one at the Foundation. How naïve he had been, to think it would never happen to him. He’d made it twenty years in the organization without experiencing that moment. Did he think that he was in the clear? He’d seen crises before. He’d witnessed a few containment breaches. But this was different. This was the moment when everything he’d ever done, all the work he had devoted his life to, would be tested. This was the moment that said “you chose this life; now put your money where your mouth is.”
There was only one way he could go. There was no longer a road behind him. The spiral went in both directions. It was everywhere. He didn’t know yet what kind of everywhere that meant. If this was a closed space, or if the anomaly had already spread beyond these woods, to the city, to the ocean. It didn’t matter. That trapezoidal opening before him was the one way forward.
He thought about Ellie and Sofia and Zoya.
And he went.
He went down the ramp and into the parking garage. It was not a parking garage anymore. It was a cavernous space, impossibly large, a forest of gray pillars reaching high to a ceiling that wasn’t there. Ami went deeper, looking for the door to the security antechamber, navigating by memory from the many times he had come here in the past. Not that memory did him much good in this broken maze. But intuition seemed to fill the gaps. Ami found the door. Found many doors, but this one seemed to be the right one, whatever that meant. He pushed it open and went through.
The twin metal detectors had multiplied into a spiderweb of perpendicular plastic. The conveyor belts writhed and coiled upon themselves like a den of serpents. Ami kept going. There was always a path. The empty spaces had multiplied as much as the objects. Every hallway had spawned a hundred more hallways. Their connections still held onto a dreamlike logic, a mimicry of their old reality. He reached a stairwell that went on forever in five directions, and took the one that went up.
As he walked, Ami intuited that he should not have been able to walk. The injuries he had sustained crossing into this space should have killed him, crippled him, or at least slowed him down. When he palmed his scalp, he could not find the source of the blood that caked his hair. That should have come as a relief. Instead, it filled him with dread. That weight, that pressure, behind his temple grew stronger. There was something in his thoughts, feeding on them, making them loop back on themselves. There was something in his thoughts, feeding on them, making them loop back on themselves.
He found a room that looked like the heart of a great cavern. There was a ritualistic mural on the wall, something arcane and pagan. Only he realized it was none of those things, but the mixed-up and multiplied directional signage that had been ubiquitous in Area-69. The arrows and sans-serif fonts mixed together to make a sort of Nazca line of unbelievable complexity. Ami had to physically force himself to look away. Like the daffodil, those words seemed to have a psychological magnetism, something that could hypnotize him if he allowed his thoughts to wander into them. Words were powerful, it seemed. Thoughts made physical. He couldn’t let them into his mind. Already, the effects were being felt. He couldn’t let them into his mind.
There ahead was the entrance to 11-B. He’d seen it dozens of times before. There ahead was the entrance to 11-B. He went through. Down the stairs. The tree was still there. Those unnaturally symmetrical branches had turned in on themselves. Those unnaturally symmetrical branches. What had once been a graceful “I” reaching from floor to ceiling was now a diamond, four trunks, those unnaturally symmetrical branches, and other trunks within, other branches, and repeating into itself, and other trunks within, those unnaturally symmetrical branches—
Fuck, Ami, look away!
Ami covered his eyes and tripped. He palmed for the floor and rose to his feet, keeping his head turned in the other direction as he stumbled into the laboratory corridor. The quilted, fractal abomination that had once been a proud redwood (those unnaturally symmetrical branches) was behind him. But new things lurked ahead. The laboratory windows were broken, and the glass splintered and spilled on both the ground and the ceiling. They were both floors, he realized, a mirrored image of itself. He dared not look up to see if another Ami walked overhead. So many paradoxes spilled out of this place, and any one of them felt like they could consume him.
Something was exiting one of the broken lab windows. It was flesh, not concrete or glass, but at first Ami couldn’t make out what kind of thing it was. It had many fingers and it was huge. The fingers probed the hallway and then groped outward, pushing aside glass with musical cracks and hums, and that was when Ami realized that the fingers were snouts. Rats. It was the rats.
A mass of them were all tangled together. Hundreds, maybe thousands. They rolled and scrunched as a single tube of flesh and fur, like a pale white sea cucumber. Their tails were all entangled in such intricate knots that nothing could have ever undone them. A rat king, Ami thought. Until he realized that he could not find out where any of the tails ended. Those were not knots. There was no place where one tail ceased its affinity with another, because it was all the same tail, and the thing-that-was-many-rats was actually one thing. One rat, multiplied. Those little heads did not squeak. Motor functions came through the synchronized twitching of thousands of tiny muscles. Those little heads. Those were not knots. Those little heads. Flesh and fur.
Don’t look!
He rushed the other way just in time. He could hear the rest of it spilling into the hallway, a mass so great it probably rivaled an elephant. Was it chasing him? Maybe that was the horror talking. It probably couldn’t see him at all. Those beady eyes did not perceive. Those little heads. Don’t look. Ami ran through the spinning maze that had once been Sector 11-B, as the works of Zoe Mortimer furled and coiled all around him, feeding on their own mass, growing heavier and heavier until they threatened to rip the fabric of reality with their weight. Those little heads—
Sono un cattivo padre. Mi dispiace. Tesoro. Sono un cattivo padre. Avrei dovuto esserci. Mi dispiace. Mi dispiace.
Ami tripped and slammed into the corner he’d been sloppily turning. His head jammed into the L-shaped concrete, squeezed like a nut in a cracker. He groaned and pulled away, feeling the fresh stream of blood roll down his face. It met his lips and he tasted it. Sour. A word game to him then, and he spoke it despite not knowing what it meant. "Succhiasangue—"
Mi dispiace tantissimo. Ti volevo bene. Non avrei dovuto accettare quel lavoro. Avrei potuto passare più tempo a casa. Ho fallito. Sono un cattivo padre. Mi dispiace…
Ami knew what it was before it was there. Down the hallway, that was where the words were coming from. Not a sound, but a thought. Many thoughts, heavy enough to change their state of matter, from qualia to quanta, idea to reality. Ami watched as they carved themselves into the concrete, like a madman’s scrawling on a cell wall. And when the words reached Ami, they carved into his skin like little needles, writing in his blood. Ti volevo bene up his exposed calf. Sono un cattivo padre inside his elbow. Mi dispiace, mi dispiace, mi dispiace on his face.
Tears joined the blood on Ami’s cheeks.
“Mario…”
The thing that was once Mario Pascutti was there before him. On the one hand, it was just Mario, every bit the Mario he’d been when he first welcomed Ami to Area-69. Muscles that talked. That winning smile. Fatherly smile. But then, somehow, it was too much like him. Too Mario. Ami remembered teaching Zoya how to paint, reminding her that if you used the same color too many times in one spot, it over-saturated, it stopped being what you wanted it to be. The over-saturated Mario Pascutti was a washed-out facsimile, an image copy-pasted on itself so many times that its original meaning was lost. Mario Pascutti was a storm: thoughts, memories, emotions, all of the aspects of his ego spilling out around him. And there was a gap, a sort of spherical barrier around him, a nothing-space that ripped up the ground around him and cast gray flames at his bare feet.
Ami shook his head. “My god… Mario…”
It was a mistake to feel pity. He’d opened his thoughts to it, and it responded with a roar.
Ho fallito. Those little heads. Non avrei dovuto accettare quel lavoro and other trunks within. Mi dispiace. Ami lost strength in his knees. No, fight it. Fatherly smile. Ti volevo bene. Those unnaturally symmetrical branches. And Mario was branching. His arms, his fingers, his faces. Those little heads. Those were not knots. Mi dispiace. Look away. Fuck, Ami, look away. Mario. Too Mario. My god. Those were not knots. Those unnaturally symmetrical branches. Run, for the love of god, run. Remember Sofia and Zoya and run for your life. Mi dispiace. Don’t apologize. RUN!
Ami broke away and he ran. He ran through hallway after hallway, door after door, through the same hallways and through the same doors. It came back on itself again and again, but he didn’t stop running. And as he ran, he saw more of them. Singularities. Spherical ego-storms, trapped in cyclic thoughts, more people who were too real, too heavy, too much themselves. The ones who weren’t transformed were corpses, blood and gore mixed into the multiplying landscape, dripping from those unnaturally symmetrical branches. Ami ran, even knowing that there was no longer anywhere to run to, that he was trapped, that those little heads would be everywhere he turned. Those were not rooms, those were not knots. There was no way out.
12
Egoic rampancy.
That was the name he gave it, after finding the janitor’s office in the basement in the thirty-seventh loop of what had once been Area-69. He made it his refuge from the monsters upstairs. They weren’t down here, and he couldn’t know why, but he suspected it was because they hadn’t come down here all that much in the first place. There was nothing familiar down here for their egos to attach to. But he could still see them, even through the walls. Like distant ink blots in his eyes, like staring at the sun. He could hear their mourning cries, resonating through the concrete like an earthquake.
Ami had found the empty janitor’s office like a drowning man finds an oasis. He’d shut the door and propped it with whatever materials he had available, even knowing there was nothing out there chasing him, and anyways he couldn’t stop it if it was. Then he’d found the desk and the blank filing papers and the pen and he’d hunched over at that desk and written like his life depended on it. That was what he resorted to, at the end of his rope. His last coping mechanism against the insane: science. The need to categorize and explain. The sound of ink on page. Familiar words.
Egoic rampancy: observations by Dr. Amit Shankar.
EGOREAL had not failed in its purpose. It did exactly what Dr. Mortimer intended for it to do: it created a feedback loop, feeding the ego on itself, preventing the spiral from dissolving. The mathematics, such as they were, were remarkably simple. It was right in the name: a recursion algorithm. One little formula, punched into the equation of the human soul, to encourage self-similarity and cohesion. Like an amplifier. A repeater. Over and over and over again.
But Zoe’s invention did not free the egos from the inevitability of death. It trapped them within self-sustaining prisons, prisons that amplified the noise of consciousness—every thought, every fear, every anxiety—until nothing else could be heard. And in doing so, it drowned out the natural connection between egoic consciousness and the living, changing world around it. The behavior of the rats, and Mario before the gala… those weren’t mere adaptations to a different “paradigm of living.” They had lost their innate connection to their surroundings, to their kin and their loved ones, to everything. The loop slowly eroded those tethers; first the emotional and spiritual, and eventually the physical, until at last the EGOREAL subject was left in a state of absolute aloneness.
That explained the symptoms. Depression, social withdrawal, loneliness, loss of meaning. Suicidal ideation, self-mutilation. Then came the physical effects, the looping, the over-saturation… and the end state? Hyper-ego. That was what Ami named the thing Mario had become. A tragic entity that could literally not perceive anything outside of its own looping stream of experience. A tree growing into itself. A mouse that was a mouse that was a mouse. Mario’s thoughts carving into the walls and floors around him, filled with regret and sadness and anguish. Whirlpools of thought and mind that just got deeper and deeper. And worst of all (Ami theorized), in their final form, the hyper-egos were not capable of external perception at all. They perceived their own frantic thoughts and pains, but nothing outside of themselves, only that empty void within their lost and severed hearts.
Like Hell. Like oblivion.
Zoe Mortimer had sought to cure death. But in doing so, she had created the very thing she had dreaded and feared: experiential oblivion. By removing the soul’s capacity for change, she had created a changeless state of perception, an unending psychological darkness. No more sensations, no more color and noise and warmth. No one to talk to, nobody to keep you company. Nothing.
EGOREAL was the death that Zoe had sought to destroy.
But even that was not the worst of it. No, Ami feared, that was only the beginning. He had warned Zoe himself: there was no real separation between life and death, between ego and reality. All of creation was continuity. All things were relative. To offset balance on one end would imbalance the other. Stopping death was like damming a river, and now, the clog of hyper-egos was putting such pressure on reality that it might collapse altogether. This wasn’t just abstract philosophy at play. Physical systems were all connected, in chains of causality that spanned all space and time. Breaking that connection violated the most fundamental laws of the universe. Even a single hyper-ego, Ami theorized, had the potential to render the whole thing K-class.
If he didn’t stop this, EGOREAL would keep spreading. He could already feel it inside of him. He should’ve died twice already that night, but he was alive, which meant EGOREAL had gotten to him too. It would not end with him alone. It would reach the city, reach Ellie and Sofia and Zoya. And it would spread forever and it would loop on itself and it would never stop. Death would be eradicated forever, and it would be the most terrible fate humanity could ever face.
Ami thought about all of this. He thought in mad scribbles on the backs of the pages, and then he crumpled those pages and threw them away when the words on the page became, those unnaturally symmetrical branches, those unnaturally symmetrical branches. EGOREAL would get to him soon enough. He’d become like them. There wasn’t enough time. But time had prepared him, not much, but just enough. He had been watching the disaster of Project Cicada unfold long enough to have, in the back of his mind, a long-held contingency plan. A hunch at best, but maybe just enough.
If the problem was immortality… then the solution was simple.
He had to kill it.
And he knew how.
13
It took him half an hour to find the right equipment in the basement, and another two hours to properly assemble the components. The pieces of Zoe Mortimer’s miracle machine. Being directly beneath Sector 11-B (or above, he no longer knew or cared), all of the equipment was in ample supply, especially after the human testing phase of Project Cicada had begun ten months ago. When all was said and done, he’d formed a ring of antennae, dishes, reality anchors, and focusing emitters in the center of a disused storage room. Strips of red tape ran between the equipment, indicating a focal point at the center of an eight-pointed star. All of the pieces necessary for the ritual.
Even as a project reviewer, Ami had never been given access to the full, uncensored code of the EGOREAL algorithm. For obvious reasons, it was classified at a level higher than Ami knew existed. Ami was not the brilliant genius that Zoe was. But he was sharp, and he had decades of experience, and furthermore, he knew Zoe’s mind better than anyone. The few pieces he still required were pre-programmed into the machinery. It wasn’t the complete algorithm, but it was enough. He didn’t need EGOREAL for the final step, anyway. He needed the opposite.
With all of the equipment assembled, Ami hesitated. He was reasonably confident that what he was about to try would work. The science was all there. He had secretly been contemplating countermeasures to EGOREAL since the day he first came to Area-69. But until now, he’d never put that theory into practical reality. It was a project that would ideally take years, decades even. Ami had only minutes. He could do nothing but trust his work. The best anyone could do.
The concept was straightforward. If EGOREAL was a feedback loop, then the solution was to simply break the loop. End the cycle, remove the repeater. If the ego was a spiral in the sea of consciousness, then Ami’s algorithm induced dissipation, restoring a state of non-egoic consciousness. Ami had wondered whether to assign a scientific term to this dissolution, to the collapse of the ego and all things associated with it. Egoic decentralization. Induced conscious entropy. But then he realized there already was a word for it. There always had been.
He was reinventing death.
Ami gazed at the eight-pointed star of red paint on the floor. The shape evoked, in his mind, something evil and occult. A witch’s sigil, a summoning circle, a Satanic ritual. A portal for something evil to enter our reality. Ami recalled the stories his grandmother used to tell him of Kali, that many-armed, monstrous goddess of death and destruction, carrying a severed head and bloodied swords in her hands. Other images of myth came to mind at the center of Ami’s star. Yama. Hades. The Pale Horseman. The Grim Reaper. Nightmares that had spanned countless generations, to the very beginning of human history, each representing that fundamental fear of the greatest unknown. The great ending. The thing that Ami was about to reincarnate.
It was in that moment that Ami comprehended the full weight of what he was about to do. By restoring death to the world, was he not, indirectly, enabling every death that would happen in the future? Every sickness, every mass-murder, every war? There were tragedies to come that Ami could not have known about then. Five years from now, someone was going to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center. Wars would follow that would claim the lives of thousands. Twenty-three years from now, a global pandemic would kill millions. Ami could prevent all of that, and all he had to do was step away. Let EGOREAL spread, let it do its work, let it cure the world of death.
Ami thought of his daughters. He imagined, though he normally tried so hard to avoid imagining, that inevitable future day when both of them would be dead. The fact that he would likely precede them in death had always been Ami’s only consolation. But it could happen sooner. An accident. An illness. Something could come home with him from work. And what then? What would be the point of living without them? And it was in his darkest nights, in his darkest thoughts, that Ami had sometimes wondered what the point was of bringing life and joy into the world, if it was all doomed to end in pain and loss. He wondered if it would be better if he’d never met Ellie, never had the girls, never been born at all. He wanted them all to live forever. Of course he did. He wanted them to live, and he wanted to live with them. He wanted a story that didn’t end.
But then he thought of Mario Pascutti. He thought of the monsters upstairs. And the temptation dissolved like clear light breaking through clouds. That was what immortality looked like. And it was a fate he would not allow his wife and daughters to suffer.
Ami stood behind a computer console. Everything was ready. The machines powered on with restful hums. Lights flicked to life. The eight-pointed star seemed to purr with energy. The altered algorithm was plugged in. A subject would not be required. Just being here, at the center of this storm, was enough. A flick of the space bar, that’s all it would take.
Ami hesitated again. His finger hovered above the space bar. Fears tingled through him, old fears, childhood fears, dreadful big things that he wanted to cover his eyes so he didn’t have to face. He reached to press the button, then withdrew. He did it two more times. Then he cursed.
“Fuck, Ami, just do it.”
He hit the button—
14
Release.
That was the first thing he felt. Like a pressure he hadn’t even known was there had suddenly gone. His head felt light, like a pillow. He could smell things again. He could taste the dust.
Ami went weak at the knees. He fell with a gasp, like he’d been holding his breath for two years and finally let it out. Something knotted within him had come loose.
There was something in the room with him. He couldn’t see it. But it was there. It was far away, abstract. But it was also closer than anything he had ever known. More immediate than his own thoughts. It tickled his stomach. It beat with his heartbeat. It lived inside of him.
It joined him at that invisible spot behind his eyes, the spot where, he had always subconsciously believed, his true “self” resided, the eye behind his eyes. The real me.
The sensation was neither painful nor frightening.
No, it was good. Like a warm embrace. Like Ellie’s cooking. Comforting, safe, intimate. Familiar.
So familiar.
He had felt this way before. Hadn’t he? When had he felt it? It must have been so meaningful. How could he have possibly forgotten?
There was a voice speaking to him. Not a real voice. Like hearing music in random noise. They weren’t words, but the idea of words, his mind creating words from intuitive meanings. And yet… there was a voice. A female voice. A voice like his mother. A voice like Ellie. Gentle, soft, reassuring. A whisper within his mind, closer than his ear.
And he’d heard the voice before.
“You found me!”
Ami could see someone there before him. They weren’t really there. There was no one. He knew that, with all the adult commonsense that told him Zoya’s imaginary friends were just pretend. He was seeing an abstraction, his mind making form from the senseless and indescribable.
But it was also a girl in a purple dress, with pale skin and dark hair and dark eyes.
And she was definitely there.
“Who are you?” Ami dared to ask.
“I am the other You. I am the secret treasure. I am the Easter egg.”
None of this answered his question. But then, Ami knew.
She’s Death. I’m talking to Death.
The scientist inside of him called out for explanation. None of this followed from the theory. In applied metaphysics, life and death were mathematical patterns, states and forms of consciousness. Nothing in the theory implied sapience or intelligence of any kind. Was this delusion? Was he hallucinating? Was this what his mind saw at the door of his demise?
“How are you speaking to me?”
“The same way You are,” the voice of Death replied.
“Do… do you have a name?”
“Amit Ramana Shankar.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. It’s okay.”
She said it’s okay more sincerely than he had ever heard those words before. She said it’s okay with the concentrated kindness of his mother, hushing him back to sleep after a nightmare. But somehow even closer than that. Even more familiar. Before his mother. Before anything.
He felt an intimate presence enveloping him. It felt like those scenes in Sofia’s movies, when fairies and butterflies swirled around a wizard or a princess. It felt like Blanky—he remembered Blanky! That was what he called his blanket in preschool, the one with the rip on one end. How could he have ever forgotten? Blanky was his best friend in the world.
And it felt like those warm baths in the old bathtub at grandma's house, with that horrible crack in the bottom that he was always frightened he would fall into, but his mother said…
Shhh, it’s okay, it will be alright.
Ami had many questions. So many questions, questions as old as time. But he forced himself to focus. He thought of the storm upstairs, and his daughters. He still had a duty.
“How do I stop this?”
“Find the center of the You that fears You,” answered Death. “Wake Yourself up. Set Yourself free.”
Ami did not understand. But somehow, intuition was already setting him in motion. His coveted reason took a backseat to the knowing that now coursed through his body, clarity that made all the knowledge he had ever acquired seem like the silly, useless logic of a dream. He knew what the source of this calamity was. He knew where he needed to go. He knew how to stop this.
There was a gun on the table beside him. Ami took it, and started for the stairs.
15
Ami walked through the broken halls of Area-69. And as he walked, the looping and the shifting and the spiraling settled down around him, like vicious animals lulled into sleep. Rooms stopped bending. The great redwood, those unnaturally symmetrical branches, withered as he passed. He didn’t see the rats. But he went through that corridor, and when he looked up, the ceiling was just a ceiling, and there were no shards of glass up there. A part of him fancied that nothing was really changing at all, that he was just seeing things as they actually were, though he had no idea what brought on that fancy. Everything felt just a little bit wiggly, in a way he couldn’t describe.
The calm that followed him through the building was nothing less than marvelous. Where he should have felt afraid, he did not. Where he should have been grieving, he felt almost giddy. It was not what he had ever associated with the feeling of Death. For all his atypical thinking on the subject, Ami had always regarded Death with the same background paranoia and anxiety that nearly all people felt toward it. But this was not that. He was blissful, he was happy, he was at peace. The state of mind felt almost spiritual, and to a scientist, that surely meant he was going insane. But it felt too right to be insanity. The feeling was so familiar, as if he’d awoken from a long nightmare that he hadn’t even realized he’d been dreaming, awoken back into the real real world.
“You’re not what I expected,” Ami admitted to the presence of Death.
“The best surprises are unexpected,” said Death. “Birthday party, serendipity, peekaboo!”
Ami giggled like a baby, then wondered with a blush what had come over him.
“People… people are afraid of you. They see you as something terrible. They will do anything to hide from you.”
“Are You afraid of Me?” asked Death to Amit Shankar.
Ami hesitated to answer. “A little,” he confessed.
“Why? You’ve been dead before, haven’t You? And You turned out alright.”
Ami chuckled and nodded defeat. He marveled at the idea that Death could have a sense of humor.
“Fair enough.”
Then he felt something reaching around him, or maybe not reaching, but causing his skin to tingle pleasingly as if he were being embraced by someone that wasn’t there. It was the feeling of kisses from his daughters, of cocoa on a winter eve, of sex with his wife. It was bliss and safety.
“But it’s okay to be afraid,” whispered Death. “Fear is part of the dream of living. There’s nothing to seek if no one hides. That’s the game.”
“What game?”
“The game of black and white. The ghosts of Me and You. Lila and Maya, cat and mouse. Ludus amoris.”
She was saying words he had heard before. But where had he heard them? A book, perhaps, or many books. Kindergarten and post-grad. Where am I, again? Does it even matter?
Something screamed from the hallway ahead of him. Ami halted, not afraid. Pity filled his heart again. The words came first, shredding the rocky skin of concrete, carving themselves up and down every surface. And then Mario Pascutti was there, the mosaic that had once been a man, that sickening kaleidoscope of features and thoughts. Ami counted a hundred screaming mouths and a hundred tearful eyes. An inverse black hole existed around Mario, causing the walls to bend outward, breaking open pipes and sending debris flying. The words snaked across the floor toward where Ami stood, but they did not reach him. They stopped at his feet and dissolved into sighs.
Ami steeled himself. He raised the gun and he fired.
One bullet was all it took. It cut right through the storm and settled in Mario Pascutti’s heart, or rather, the hole where his heart had been. With a snap of cohesion, the loop of Mario’s soul came apart, like a spool of wire springing out. There was no longer a kaleidoscope of faces, only Mario, restful, one last afterimage hovering in the air. A fatherly smile crossed the room and reached Ami, and reached through him, reaching—from somewhere afar—two girls in a house somewhere.
Thank you.
And Mario Pascutti was gone. What remained of him dissolved into wisps of half-real light, before winking out of existence altogether, returning to the sea. Ami should have been sad. He would be later, before he forgot. But he wasn’t sad then. He breathed a sigh of relief and cried with gratitude and happiness for Mario. His nightmare was over. The fracture in him was healed.
“Is he… okay now?” Ami ventured to ask Death.
Death did not answer in words. But Ami felt something like… like the feeling of a kitten on his lap. A kitten he’d known, he realized. When had that been? Six years old, maybe, at his aunt’s house in Ann Arbor. That had been her kitten. She called it Muffin. And everything was alright again.
“There are others,” Ami said. “How do I save them all?”
Death replied, “You are suffering because You have pushed away Your true Self. You are hurting because You grabbed the tail of the cat to try and free the head. But You are the cat.”
Even with intuition on his side, Ami was struggling to understand.
“It’s not me,” he insisted. “It’s them.”
“It’s all You. It’s always been You. The You behind Your eyes is the You that is all of it. You’re an allegory, B. You play the game of forget and remember. You wiggle and pretend You are wiggle. You wave and pretend You are wave. Peekaboo!”
Ami giggled again, then he was incredulous. Her words were nonsense, perfect playful nonsense, like Lewis Carroll. So why did they feel more true than anything he’d ever heard? It was as if everything he’d been told in life up to this point was made-up gobbledygook, and this—this—was the only truth there really was.
Ami felt the presence of Death embrace him again. It was not cold, as they often said in the books. There was no dread, no fear. She whispered into his heart, and her words filled his soul.
“You are not fragile. You are ancient and eternal and nothing can hurt You. You are the dreamer and the dream. You are the stars and the sky, the Earth and the Moon. You are the particle and the wave. You are Ami Shankar and you are Zoe Mortimer. You are SCP-001. You are everything that was and is and ever will be. And You can never lose anything, because there is nothing You don’t already have. You can never die, because You were never born. Behind the curtain, take a bow. At the end of the game, You find the secret—and it’s You!”
Ami did not understand. A part of him had resigned to the fact that he never would. But he had something more than understanding. Something like peace. The fear he had once felt toward Death seemed like a distant memory, like the fear of dark closets and the things that lived in them. There was truth in her words, and he felt as though he had known that truth all along, and merely lost sight of it. Nothing could hurt him. Nothing ever had. He was all of it.
“How do I end their suffering?” he asked Death.
“Find My other half,” said the voice. “The song needs a melody. The fearful You is near. You can buy the candy now, Zoe. You can see where Della went when the sidewalk ends.”
Zoe. The answer came plain as day. Ami realized what he needed to do. Zoe had been the model for EGOREAL. It was her thoughts that formed the basis for the algorithm. Even if it applied to everyone, because everyone was the same, the ego called Zoe had been the catalyst. She kept the other selves anchored. She made the gates. Now, Ami had to help her let them go.
And it didn’t take him long to find her.
There was a center to the spiral. He could not have found it without Death at his side. With every step, cohesion returned to the ruins of Area-69, and with cohesion came direction and perception. Ami could see the epicenter, like a cold spot in heat vision, like a void in the cosmic microwave background. Through the concrete tunnels and iron stairwells, he slowly made his way closer, dissolving the hyper-egos as he went with gunshots that he couldn’t hear. He tried to call himself a murderer, but couldn’t bring himself to believe the label. Gratitude rippled from every soul he freed. He was making things right. They all knew the same. Thank you, they all said.
And then, Ami made it to the black room.
It was a space of total darkness. Not even the absence of light—something much darker. The absence of the concept of light. And it was a timeless place without boundaries or dimensions, a place which swallowed him as soon as he stepped over the line. He breathed and could not hear his breath. There was no sound here, no vibration. The air, if there was air, felt ice cold on his skin.
He recognized Zoe Mortimer’s nightmare.
“It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s cold…”
A whispered voice cut through the silence. Ami followed it through the void, walking on a floor which wasn’t there. He walked and he walked. The voice never got louder, but he felt he was getting closer. He walked and he walked some more.
And there she was. Curled on the nonexistent ground in a fetal position, like a baby thrown out into a frigid and terrifying world she had no capacity to face. He couldn’t tell if her skin was pale from the cold or the fear. She was shivering and clutching her knees. Those courageous blue eyes were all gray from terror, and red around the edges from dried-out tears.
“Mama, help me. It’s so cold. It’s dark. Help me. It’s dark…”
Ami knelt beside Zoe Mortimer. He knelt beside his rival, the woman who had unleashed all this destruction. He knelt beside his friend. The presence of Death tickled the back of his head, brought one hand beneath her neck and the other supporting her back, holding her up and cradling her. The way he cradled Ellie the day her father passed. The way he cradled Sofia when he put her to bed, before Zoya was born, when she used to scream because of the owl in her nightmares.
Zoe looked right through him. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t perceive anything. She was blind, deaf, mute. No sound escaped her moving lips. The sound was her thoughts, echoing inside of Ami’s head, which hovered above her like an open receiver.
“Mama… I’m scared… I don’ wanna go to Hell, Mama… I don’ wanna die…”
Still supporting Zoe’s neck with one hand, Ami reached down with the other and felt for the gun. Sorrow filled his chest when it came into his fingers. A scene from a book came to mind. Steinbeck, the one from high school lit class. Lennie and George. Something about rabbits.
One of Zoe’s hands grabbed blindly at Ami’s bloody shirt. She did not feel him there, but her fingers gripped and tugged the fabric until it began to fray. Ami put the gun against her chest.
He thought of a girl in a little house in rural Pennsylvania. He thought of a girl who couldn’t listen to popular music or go to the toy store. He thought of the Devil and bacon and eggs and sermons on the radio. He thought of Heaven and Hell, science and metaphysics, spirals and seas. He thought of a young woman who bravely stood before the entire Foundation with the light of passion in her eyes. He thought of that table in Washington, under the cherry tree, with the daffodils.
And he fired the gun.
And the void receded, just like that. Light and dark, true dark, restored themselves to the empty room. And then the room was gone, just a crumbled ruin in the middle of a redwood forest. The spiral of concrete faded from above, like watercolors running away, revealing an uncannily clear California night sky. The full moon glowed in all her majesty. And in the ruins to all sides of him, Ami watched as the hyper-egos that had once been people came apart like gentle balls of yarn, transforming into embers of consciousness that glowed like fireflies on a summer night, drifting away on a cool wind.
Up above them, Ami could see the presence that had followed him all this way. That gentle safety, that girl with the purple dress. And she was dancing with someone. A twin made of light, with milky hair and a dress as green as springtime. They danced weightlessly among the embers, like two moths over a midnight lake. A dance of pure bliss. Watching it filled Ami with wonder and happiness like none he had ever felt. And then, like he’d finally seen the optical illusion for what it was, Ami realized it was not two things dancing above him. It was one. Not Life and Death, but Life/Death, indistinguishable without each other. A wave and its trough. Light and its dark. And something about that seemed so obvious, so elementary. How could we have ever forgotten?
Ami felt Zoe’s hand on his shoulder. No longer groping blindly at the darkness. She could see him again. The color had returned to her weary eyes. She was looking at the dancer above.
“Can you feel it…?” she asked quietly.
Ami smiled. He held her hand. “Yes. I can.”
Little gemstone tears filled Zoe’s eyes.
“It’s so beautiful.”
“It is.”
“Is this… dying?” she asked, with a child’s timidness. “Am I dying?”
“You are.”
Zoe closed her eyes. The tears rolled down her face. Not tears of sorrow. Tears of relief. She was happy, even as the blood pooled in her chest. Ami could feel the presence above them reaching down, gently pulling her into its embrace. Zoe Mortimer died with a smile on her face.
“Oh… what was I… ever… afraid of…?”
16
The Foundation did what it did best. History was rewritten. There never had been an Area-69. Or maybe it was decommissioned; it depended on who you asked, what files you read. There were enough contradictions to keep the curious guessing. Only the O5s would know the truth, and the truth would be buried, like so many other truths, in the annals of the Foundation’s dark history.
EGOREAL was reclassified as a Keter-class anomaly. Those with knowledge of its existence were swiftly amnestized, and the algorithm itself was locked away under the highest levels of security. Once a solution to death, now a dangerous weapon, perhaps for a different time. The top brass never did throw away potentially useful assets. Maybe there would come a day when they could partially recreate EGOREAL’s effects, either as protection for their allies or a tool against their enemies.
The one hundred people who had been subjected to EGOREAL had passed away peacefully in the end. RAISA could have wiped them from the record books, but out of respect, they were granted dignified deaths in the official reports—heroic deaths won in the line of duty, closure for their families. Mario Pascutti’s daughters would mourn their loss. But they would, in time, carry on. The eldest would one day join the Foundation in his footsteps, and even work her way to the very highest command. She would learn of her father’s true fate, and she would be proud of him.
Dr. Amit Shankar told the Foundation about the being he had encountered when he reversed Zoe’s algorithm. Eyewitness testimonials were always unreliable, especially during a reality-altering event. There was no hard evidence. The story was intriguing, but for the moment, irrelevant. The Foundation gathered all the details from Dr. Shankar’s testimony, and then swiftly and unceremoniously wiped his memory of everything and everyone involved in EGOREAL, sending two years of his life into oblivion. His claims went into the archives, with a note that a potential Archon-class SCP (this so-caled "Life/Death") ought to be investigated and, perhaps, contact could be attempted.
Dr. Amit Shankar continued to work for the SCP Foundation for another twenty years. His research in applied metaphysics was well-regarded, and upon his retirement, he was honored with a plaque at Site-174 celebrating his achievements and contributions to anomalous science. In 2020, he published a book on the subject of recursive egoic consciousness, dedicated to the memory of a friend he could not remember. He retired to the countryside in Oregon. His daughters grew up healthy and happy. Sofia became a scientist. Zoya became a dancer. He was proud of them both.
And in the summer of 2026, Ami finally reunited with Death, and not a minute too late.
~
More from this author: Holly Nightmare's Everything Room