Site-43 may have a place for everyone, but first days are still first days.
He'd never been in a working helicopter before. It was interesting. He'd sat in a turned-off one a long time ago when he was a kid, but never one that was flying. He'd been in airplanes a few times by now, so he knew that flying was chill because the people piloting the plane knew what they were doing. Planes were just air buses, and helicopters were just air taxis.
The pilot didn't talk to him, which was great because he was terrible at making small talk. Five star ride. He spent some time looking at the console trying to figure out what all the buttons did, then some more staring out the window: the forests of eastern North America glided slowly past them below, dotted intermittently with webs of small towns and cities. The further they went north, the rarer the cities became. He'd never been to Canada before, or in fact left the U.S. It would almost certainly be fine. The Great Lakes were weird, but fun weird with a lot of interesting stories attached to them. He'd forgotten to check what time it had been when they left. He wondered how long it'd be till they arrived.
Nervous, huh? asked a voice in their brain.
Well, duh. It's a new job in a whole-ass different country. Also, the facility is apparently fucking huge. We're probably gonna get lost in there at least twice. Maybe more.
Sure, but we can always just ask somebody who works there for directions.
Everybody works there.
Everybody?
Everybody who's- you know what, you know what I meant. Shut up.
The other voice chuckled, and then it was quiet again except for the constant whir of the helicopter blades and the pilot occasionally talking into his radio.
He thought about what would happen if they got the job. They were already kind of sworn to secrecy for the rest of their life anyways because the Foundation was the equivalent of federal top secret, except everything about them including their existence was top secret, and apparently they were involved in literally everything. Which would be a huge win for the conspiracy theorists if they knew, but not really, because it didn't involve a New World Order nor nearly as many Jews as they thought.
Damn, we're really nervous, another voice commentated.
Yeah, our brain can't shut up when that happens, said the first. He sighed. Probably gonna have to get Four into front when we land, they're the best at dealing with the stuff that makes us anxious.
Did we remember our headphones, just in case? asked Three.
Yeah, replied Two. I'm pretty sure we brought them for the ride. One?
Yeah, I checked, he replied. They're at eighty percent. We'll be good for the next few days.
Good, said Three. Hey, One.
Yeah?
Try to relax. We'll be okay.
Sure, he replied, but he closed their eyes anyways.
"Thank you," Four told the pilot when they got off the helicopter. He nodded in response. There was a black car waiting for them in the nearby parking lot.
"Turner?" asked the driver when they walked up to the window. "Olivia?" Four nodded in response. "ID." They presented the Foundation identification card that had only just recently been assigned to them. She scanned it. "Let me see." They handed it over, suddenly worried that something was wrong and they would be now stranded in Canada, but she just scanned it again at a different angle and handed it back to them without comment.
Four got into the backseat, looking out the window and taking note of the scenery around them. The driver presented her ID at a security gate that was indistinguishable from a U.S Army checkpoint, then pulled onto a two-way road that was completely empty of traffic except for them. They were completely surrounded by an evergreen forest, with no mountains nearby. Four wondered if their landing location also got traffic from the Canadian government, or if it was Foundation-only.
The driver spoke up, interrupting their thoughts. "So, Site-43, huh?"
"Yes."
She grunted. "They don't get a lot of transfers these days. 19 sending you here for something, or?"
Four adjusted their sitting position minutely. "I was told that it would be the best Site to conduct my research."
"Does your research have anything to do with annual security breaches?"
This detail had come up several times previously. Four assumed it was an inside joke. Yeah, it is, said Two, who was far better than them at picking up on those sorts of things. I don't think 43 has a reputation for normality in the Foundation. "Not that I'm aware of, no."
"Beats me, then."
The ride was silent after that. There was no music in the car. Four watched the streets pass, checking their phone every so often to see where they were.
Their cell service in the area was decent, which made sense considering that they were near a city (London, Canada, which One found amusing) and there were no mountains in the way to block the signals coming in. The driver did not have the GPS pulled up. Site-43 was located at Military Camp Ipperwash, which according to its Wikipedia page was a former Canadian Forces training center on land that had only been returned to the local First Nations peoples it belonged to within the past decade.
Four wanted to ask the driver more about what she knew about 43, but they decided to save the questions for when they actually arrived there. One was thinking nervously to himself in the background, trying to push into front to handle the situation himself. Three was calmly stopping him from doing that and reassuring him that they were not, in fact, going to fuck this up horribly forever. Two was somewhere near front, observing the situation calmly but warily. They could not sense Five anywhere, which was normal. It usually stayed far away from front unless it was needed in an emergency.
Their focus wavered, and they felt One and his panic leeching into front. I have the situation under control, Four told him. We are not in any danger. Please let me handle this.
Sorry, said One. His presence receded a bit, enough for Four to ground themself in their surroundings again.
It's alright.
They arrived at yet another security checkpoint. This one required Four to hand over their credentials, which were quickly returned to them without ceremony. The building in front of them was moderately sized and nondescript, with a medium-sized parking lot surrounding it. Their driver parked in a space designated for staff only and escorted them to the building.
"I assume the screening process will be similar as the ones for other Sites?" Four asked her. They had only been to two Sites so far, but the procedure had been roughly the same.
She laughed. "No."
That was not reassuring whatsoever.
There was a standard security checkpoint with a metal detector, which they passed without incident. The security guard gestured towards the noise-cancelling headphones around their neck, to which they replied, "Medical purposes." He nodded and typed something on his tablet.
The lobby was extremely boring, stereotypically so. Their escort walked directly to the front desk and Four followed her. "Transfer from Site-19," she told the desk clerk. "She's here for an interview."
"They're," Four corrected. She did not respond.
The clerk tapped a few times on his keyboard. "Birth name Olivia Turner, preferred name Oliver, country of birth and current country of residence the United States of America, completed basic Foundation training at Site-19 on June 21st, 2022?"
"Correct," replied Four. The clerk nodded and gestured towards their ID. They slid it towards him.
Their escort raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Four didn't ask. The clerk passed them the card back. "First door on your right, please, Mx. Turner."
"Thank you," said Four. He'd even pronounced it right.
Huh, said Three, mildly impressed. One was silent.
The room contained two chairs, a desk, a desktop computer, and a single technician wearing a labcoat that hurt their eyes to look at. They produced a piece of paper from underneath their desk and slid it towards them. "Do you recognize this script?"
Four examined the glyphs on the page. They did not resemble any written language they had ever seen in their life. "No."
The technician typed something, then flipped the paper over. "What color is this?"
The paper was white. "White."
"Can you see any patterns on it?"
They leaned forwards and inspected it closely. "I can faintly see what appears to be… some kind of fractal?"
"How faint is it?"
Four considered it. "I have to focus quite hard to see it."
"What happens if you stop focusing?"
Four let their mind wander for a split second, which was easy to do. The page appeared completely blank once again. "I no longer see anything."
"Good. What does the phrase-" the technician pronounced a string of pure gibberish- "mean to you?"
"It sounds like absolute nonsense."
The technician nodded and typed something else, then squinted at them. "By the way, are you British?"
Four smiled at them. "No, just autistic."
The technician made a little huh noise in their throat. "Okay, you're good to go. Make sure to tell the front desk you're cleared and they'll tell you where to go next."
"Alright. Thank you."
The desk clerk instructed them to go to the elevator and hit the button to the 3rd sublevel, then walk to the front desk and tell them about the interview. They would handle everything from there. Four's confusion must have been visible on their face, because he added, "This is only a Foundation front. Everything actually important is down there. Feel free to sit down in the elevator, by the way."
"Long ride?"
"It's about a 10 minute ride down to sublevel 1, 15 to level 3."
Four blinked.
"You can also take the stairwell if you want." He sounded completely serious. They didn't have a phobia of elevators, but Four was pretty sure that even if they did, they'd rather brave it than go the entire trip on foot.
"I'll take the elevator, thank you. Have a nice day." They stepped in, pressed the button labeled 3, and waited.
This is fucking weird as shit, said One.
Weirder than any of the other shit we went through during training? asked Two.
Yeah, 'cause 19 wasn't 1 and a half fucking kilometers beneath the ground. How many miles is that again?
Doesn't matter, said Two. It's a long way down.
Weird-ass Site.
There were several maps of the facility on the wall. Four inspected them as they waited. All of them represented specific sublevels of the facility, and all of them were incredibly complex and intimidating at first glance. Jesus Christ, we are so getting lost down there, groaned One.
They're not going to just let a newcomer walk around alone, One, said Three. They're going to give us a guide, or least someone to escort us to and from the interview.
What if they don't, though?
Then Four will ask for help.
There was a pause. This is scary.
It is, Three agreed. But we'll make it.
When they reached the bottom (FINALLY, said One), the elevator doors opened up into a gigantic open room (likely a foyer) with what Four presumed was the Site logo in the floor, a raised section with a desk at one end, and several large hallways extending into other areas of the Site. There were plenty of people in it, but the place was so large that it somehow didn't feel crowded.
It was huge. It was bright. It was simple yet impossibly grand in its design, and their chest tightened in awe and fear.
Actually, maybe we should go back up, said One in a small voice.
Maybe we should've asked for an escort, said Two.
They took several seconds to take it all in, frozen in place, until Four forced their body to walk forwards and out of the elevator, focusing on one detail at a time in order to not get too overwhelmed. The room was brightly lit from overhead with cold florescent lights. The sound of overlapping chatter echoed throughout the foyer, but it wasn't so loud that they needed their headphones right now. The people walking around were either wearing jumpsuits or labcoats of varying colors that probably corresponded to their job. Four noted that a few of the lab coats were covered in similar eye-straining designs to the technician that had screened them upstairs.
They stopped a few steps past the elevator, trying hard to stay calm. It was a lot. Four felt Three quietly join them in front, her reassuring presence steadying their hands. They took a deep breath and reordered their thoughts. The desk at the other end of the room was likely the front desk that the man at the other front desk upstairs had been referring to, so they were meant to go there. They walked forward, focusing on their destination while also being very careful to not run into anyone else.
They had almost reached their destination when it somehow happened anyway. Someone crashed into them and then they were on the floor, glasses knocked halfway off their face, next to a balding man lying facedown on the ground in a labcoat which had fluttered forward to very clearly show his ass surrounded by scattered papers and manila file folders. SHIT, One thought, and their consciousnesses blurred together. FUCK FUCK FUCK. OH MY GOD. SHIT FUCK. OKAY. Okay. Okay. They scrambled off the ground and hastily started to arrange the papers. Okay. Oh my fucking god. Oh no, he hasn't moved. Is he dead? Is he dead??? Did we just fucking kill someone 5 seconds after getting here?????
The man groaned and started to push himself off of the ground, muttering curses under his breath.
Thank God. "Oh, my God, I am so sorry, sir," Oliver said out loud, trying to collect the papers. They knew most of the people here were probably doctors, but they had been raised to refer to people as sir or ma'am as a sign of respect, and habit took precedence during moments like this. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"
The man groaned again and rubbed his eyes. They noticed his glasses were on the ground nearby, heavily taped and currently fractured. His shoelaces were untied. "Fuck," he said. He rubbed his eyes. "Fucking piece of shit goddamn FUCK." He got up to a sitting position and began angrily collecting the documents around him. "I told them to stop giving me paperwork because of shit like this and LOOK WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED." He looked over at them. "Was it you?"
They froze before responding, deciding that honesty was the best course of action here. "Uh, yes sir, I'm the person you ran into. I'm very sorry, I don't know how it happened. Are you alright? Do you want help getting these papers-"
He cut them off. "It happened because I'm a bad luck magnet." He said it completely seriously. "You should know that already. Are you new or something?"
"Yes, sir."
He looked at them again. "Oh, shit, you are new. I've never seen you in my life." He snorted and continued picking up papers. Four, having somewhat reestablished their position in front, carefully handed the ones they'd picked up back to him. "How new?"
"I'm on my way to an interview that's scheduled for…" they checked their watch- "oh, dear."
"Late?" the man asked.
"Almost," replied Four. "It's fine. I'll just explain-"
"Kid, go do your fucking interview." He waved at them to move. Four opened his mouth to respond. "Go. I got it. Shit like this happens to me at least four times a day. God damn."
They hesitantly got up and brushed themself off. "By the way, I'm William Wettle," the man said.
"Oliver-"
"Just go!"
Damn, okay, said One. Fucking. Sure. Whatever. Four walked up to the desk, where a woman was sitting and typing behind a keyboard. They could not see her face from where they were standing. Nervousness kicked in, and One pushed his way into front again. He cleared his throat uncertainly. "Uh, excuse me, ma'am, but-"
"What?" she asked.
He blinked. "Uh, I'm here for an interview scheduled for 3:15?"
"Archives and Revision?"
He nodded, then realized she couldn't see them. "Yes." It took serious effort to not add a "ma'am". She seemed too busy for extra syllables.
She leaned over to look at them. "Oliver?"
They nodded.
She thumbed behind her. "Down the hallway, take a left, then second door to the right into Dr. Blank's office."
They would remember none of that, but she seemed really busy and One didn't want to waste any of her time, so instead he just nodded. "Okay. Thank you."
He looked around a little, trying and failing not to panic. He could try and walk up to a random person to ask them for directions, but the idea of that was currently even more mortifying than getting lost. There had to be a map somewhere around here-
The woman was looking at them again. "Do you need someone to go with you?"
He swallowed his anxiety. "Yes, ma'am."
The woman sighed deeply. "Wettle."
The man on the floor didn't respond. She barked his name again. "Wettle."
"What?"
"Where are you going?"
"Archives and Revision. Why-"
She pointed to them. "This person is going to an interview with Dr. Blank and they need an escort."
Wettle gestured angrily towards the papers scattered around him. "I can't! I already told you, I'm going to-"
"Dr. Blank is in Archives and Revision."
"Oh."
"The interview is in eight minutes. Go."
"But-"
"Go." Her glare could melt steel. One was extremely glad he wasn't on the receiving end of it.
"Fine," Wettle grumbled, getting to his feet. He fell over again. One rushed over to offer him a hand, but he waved it away and got up again, successfully this time. "They're gonna be 20 minutes late if they go with me, but fine." He turned to them, papers stuck under both arms, and gestured with his head instead. "Congratulations, kid, you're getting the worst tour of the Site. Come on."
One followed him through the halls, keeping a careful distance behind him until he tripped on his own shoelaces, at which point One made the executive decision to walk beside him instead. The two of them passed several other people in the halls, some of which looked at Oliver in confusion for a moment before nodding and understanding and giving them a friendly wave, and all of which gave them- or maybe just Dr. Wettle- a wide berth as they passed.
"I've gotten locked in that closet 73 times," said Dr. Wettle, pointing towards a nearby door. "And I got locked in that one five times. They just built it yesterday."
One nodded, barely listening, scanning each of the doors for a single name and constantly checking their watch nervously. It was already 3:12, and he didn't even know where Dr. Blank's office was. From the looks of it, Dr. Wettle didn't really seem to either.
The doctor must have picked up on his nerves, because he chose that moment to speak up. "You're not gonna be late, kid," he said, trying to give them a friendly pat on the shoulder but leaning too far forwards and stumbling headfirst into the wall next to them instead. "Ow. Fuck."
"Thank you, sir," said One, who was trying really hard to not have an anxiety attack in the middle of the hallway, "but-"
"You keep calling me sir," said Dr. Wettle. "I'm not a sir. I'm just a regular fuckin' guy with shit fuckin' luck. I'm barely even a doctor. Just call me Wettle." He snorted. "You sound like you're from Arizona or one of the other Southern states or something."
One stopped walking to take a measured breath. "Arizona isn't in the South," he said as neutrally as possible. "It's a Western state."
Dr. Wettle waved him off. "No, it's in the southern half of the country, so it's in the South. Like Delaware."
Please don't correct him, Two pleaded. We don't have time for that. Just move on.
With every ounce of strength in their body, One replied, "Okay."
"Anyways, you're not gonna be late," said Wettle confidently.
"How do you know that?"
"Because we're here already." Wettle pointed at a door marked Dr. Harry R. Blank, Chair of Archives and Revision. "See? I told you you'd be f-"
He faceplanted, dropping all his files again. One rushed over to help, but he waved him off again. "I'm a bad luck heatsink, kid! It'll go fine! Run!"
Two minutes left, said Two.
Oliver Turner took a deep breath and walked towards the door.
Dr. Blank was a man who was old enough to be their father, wearing glasses that their dad would definitely wear, with long salt-and-pepper hair and a big-ass beard. He squinted at his computer monitor. "Okay. So you've got a master's in Library and Information Science and you volunteered at the Library of Chattanooga for 7 years before working there as an assistant librarian for 2 more. Does that sound right?"
One nodded. "Yes, sir." They had discussed who was going to be in front for the interview itself while they were walking to the door, and he volunteered. His nerves were practically gone now. Somehow he trusted Dr. Wettle when he said it was going to be fine. Weird-ass Site, he told his headmates, and they had all agreed. Two and Three were watching just in case their anxiety spiked again.
Dr. Blank nodded. "And this is your first Foundation job, yeah?"
"Yes." He tried to not get too excited about the use of is there. Everything was still very up in the air right now.
"Huh. Okay." Dr. Blank scratched his beard, then looked over at them. "Done with training?"
"Yes. It wasn't a very long time ago, actually." This was why he still wasn't confident. They knew nothing.
"Yeah. You don't see that a lot." He looked thoughtful. "See, the thing is, you're very young. You're twenty… six, right?"
There goes our chance. "Yes, sir."
"And you don't have a lot of experience. Normally, that's the sort of thing that would put you out of the running for a position like this, especially on Foundation sites."
One nodded. He was already mentally preparing to weather the journey back, get back to Site-19, figure out what to do next. It wasn't that bad, actually. They might just get amnesticized and allowed to return to life beyond the Veil with no problems. It'd be a weird gap in their memory, but they already had those. Life would return to normal.
"However," Dr. Blank continued, and One realized with a sudden thrill of hope that he was grinning, "Site-43 is a weird-ass Site. We don't do things normally around here, and we don't do them for normal reasons either." He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. "People don't just get transferred to 43 for no reason. I want to know why 19 sent you to us immediately after you got clearance. So, tell me." He raised his eyebrows, eyes glinting. "Why did you join the Foundation?"
One took a deep breath. "Well," he started, "it was less that I joined the Foundation, and more like the Foundation just kind of… scooped me up."
Dr Blank nodded. "Go on."
"So I work at a library, right?" They had been waiting to tell somebody about this for a while now. "Well, there's an archives section in the back that has a lot of old books and newspapers in it, a lot of them coming from more rural portions of the state where there's not much funding for local libraries to go around. They have to put those books somewhere, so usually they either donate them to us or the big one in Nashville."
"Uh-huh."
"Now, one day, we got a new collection from a library in a small town in eastern Tennessee that had just shut down. Most of the stuff they donated was older copies of books that we already had in circulation, so we went ahead and set those aside, however, there were also some handwritten journals written by a man who lived in the town in the 1920s that were donated to the library by his great-granddaughter, because she didn't know what to do with them. And I live for that stuff, so I sat down to go through it."
"Uh-huh." Dr. Blank's eyes were shining now, and One couldn't help but grin. Nobody else they had told this story to had been interested in it, but he looked genuinely invested.
"Most of it was a day-to-day documentation of his life, which already made it an incredible find because, y'know, some of these communities are really remote and the fact that most of their history is recorded orally, especially before the invention of the typewriter, makes written records even more valuable."
The doctor nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah!"
"Yeah," he agreed. "Mostly regular diary stuff. However, there was a little section in there about this strange, like, ancient brotherhood that could harness the powers of words and use them to physically affect people."
Dr. Blank leaned forward. He suddenly looked very interested, and more than a little concerned. "And?"
"And that was the point I was forced to stop at, because whatever came after that inverted my vision for the next three hours."
He blinked. "Inverted?"
"Horizontally, vertically, and chromatically." He gestured with their hands as a visual aide as he talked. "One of my coworkers called 911, the Foundation showed up instead, and then after they grabbed the book and made sure I wasn't going to fucking die or something they sent me to Site-38 to talk about what I'd found and then they sent me to Site-19 for training and now I'm here." He spread his hands and grinned proudly. "That good enough for ya?"
"No, yeah, absolutely," said Dr. Blank, leaning back again. "Damn. That's crazy. I wonder…" He stared off into space, then remembered they were there again. "Sorry. Thinking about stuff. But yeah, that's really interesting."
One squinted at him. There was something he wasn't telling them. "Thinking about what, sir?"
"Don't worry about it," said Dr. Blank.
He went out on a limb. "Do you know anything about that brotherhood he mentioned?"
"Yes, but it's classified," Blank said. "So don't worry about it."
That was the least satisfying answer he could have given, but One didn't want to lose his job before he got hired. Instead, he said, "Okay. Uh, any other questions for me?"
"Did anyone happen to say anything weird about your transfer?"
"Uh, no, not that I can remember. Why?"
"Just wondering. We don't tend to get a lot of young researchers around here."
"Why not?" One realized the answer to the question as soon as it left his mouth. "Wait, let me guess. It's classified."
"Actually, I don't know," said the doctor. "Either way, you seem like a good fit, you're hired."
One whooped, realized they were supposed to be quiet here, and winced. "Sorry."
"You're fine." The doctor smiled broadly. "Welcome to Site-43, Junior Researcher Turner." He turned back toward the monitor. "I'll go ahead and let H&R know."
"Thank you, sir."
"You can just call me Harry."
That felt slightly too casual to them, but then again, they weren't the one who asked. "Okay. Just be aware that I'm probably going to slip up a lot."
"That's fine," said Harry, typing something. (Definitely was going to take some getting used to.) "It just makes me feel old. Oh, yeah," he hit enter and started typing something else, "Allan wanted me to update him on this too. For some reason, I get the feeling that 19 told him what you found but not me, the guy giving the interview." He sighed deeply. "I might just send you over to him directly after giving you the tour." He looked over at them. "You good with that?"
"Allan?"
"McInnis. Site director."
"Uh."
He must've seen the look that involuntarily crossed their face, because he added, "Don't worry, it's nowhere near as scary as you think it is. Again, 43 is weird. He has a one-on-one with all of our new hires, just like the previous Director did." He took a swig of the water bottle sitting on his desk, and added, "Some people think he's scary, though."
This did nothing to alleviate the sudden pit of anxiety in their stomach. "Is he?"
"Nah, just British and really formal. It's up to you, though."
They thought about it for a moment. We need time to get our bearings first, said Two. Three and Four concurred. "Can I have a day or two to settle in first?" One asked.
"Yeah, for sure." He typed something else, hit enter, then stood up from his chair and gestured for them to follow. "Come on. I'll give you a tour of the most boring Section after Theo and Telo."