PeppersGhost

Finding Essie by PeppersGhost

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Out of all the clowns at the Circus, there were three I was allowed to be around.
Jojo LeBeaux watched her weight very carefully. She only clocked in at a measly three hundred pounds of pure whale blubber, but she did her diligence to maintain the illusion of weighing twice as much. My attempts to engage her in conversation would invariably end in threats of being sat on.
Wimbley Pinhead wore one of those pointy caps with a puffball on top, which he wore on an over-sized prosthetic forehead, which he wore on his real head, which he wore on a lurching storm of frills and ruffles so dense that some questioned if there was a person underneath. He was subtle like that. Avoided me like the plague, but it wasn't personal; the guy hated kids. There was one time he announced that 'clowning is a mature art form for a mature audience'. Many regard this to be his comedic peak.
Scruffy McGrubbins had the voice, grace, and heart of a chain-smoking grizzly bear, and he was worth more than all the grandmothers I never had. Dressed in drag more often than not. He didn't just talk to me, he talked to me the same way he talked to everyone else: like a freak. He smelled like home. But not in a weird way.
When I first caught wind of the rumors, Scruffy was the person I went to for information. He was wise (for a clown) and the sound of his voice was the conversational equivalent of a good, hard, deep-tissue massage. I found him on a stump behind the Den of Freaks, polishing the beast tamer's wooden leg for chump change.
"If a man can't catch a fish, he'll despair in want," is what he said when I approached. That's how Scruffy was, you see. He never used a stock greeting. He leapt into the conversation ass-over-ankles and waited for you to catch up. "S'alls I remember of what my ol' Great Grandsomething passed on to me before passing on. You ever been fishing before, Barney?"
"No." It didn't occur to me at the time that the question might have been anything other than inquisition of facts, so I jumped straight to a question of my own. "Who is Essie P.?"
Scruffy groaned an impressive groan. All of his groans were impressive. Every sound that came from his mouth was impressive. Pretty sure his vocal cords were just two rocks grinding together.
"You don't want to saddle your bean with all that," he told me, taking his attention back to the leg in his lap.
I didn't like this answer, so I ignored it. "Why's she coming after us? What's the big shots doing about it? Does The Man know about her?"
Scruffy continued to polish vigorously. "There ain't any Essie, Barney. Some people just like tellin' stories, and some stories ain't worth hearin'. You keep that space in your noggin resoived for things that'll keep a smile in your gut and your feet on the clouds. The soikus is safe and sound, and don't you let anyone tell you otherwise."
Soikus. That man was perfection incarnate. But I didn't want to hear that I was safe. I liked scary stories. I wanted a fright that would drain the blood from my bones. Without another word, I turned and left Scruffy to his leg.

* *  *

Gourdi Lanternskull was as much a showman off the stage as he was on. Every movement rolled off his body with effortless panache. Every cockney syllable dripped with a wry affectation, and he was never—not ever—under-dressed. Most times I was too awestruck by his honeysuckle aura to speak to him, but he was my best bet for a good scoop.
He was sprawled on the grass, lengths of limbs stretched in repose. Puffs of cigar smoke fluttered out in hypnotic spirals from the flickering caverns where his eyes should have been. Even a lazy evening on the lawn became an artform in Gourdi's hands, you see. He waited until I stood right over him before acknowledging my presence.
"Egads!" he exclaimed in mock surprise, his eye-holes shooting a burst of smoke and fire that came just shy of my face. I laughed, and this seemed to please him. "Looks like I've been found. What can I do for you, boy?"
I was clever enough to hold my breath when the smoke hit me, and I was so proud of my cleverness that I almost couldn't remember why I had been looking for him.
"What's the story on that Essie woman everyone's whispering about?" I asked.
"Ahhhh, I wish you hadn't asked!" he said with a skull-wide grin. Gourdi rarely needed much prompting to launch into a bit. He reeled his legs back and kicked himself upright. "So you've heard the murmurings, then? Those dark tales and ill omens the circus folk nary dare to whisper have reached even your innocent ears? The dread dame Essie! Her very name bites at my lips. Cast it from your mind. Don't make me relive the horror."
Every word had some corresponding bodily flourish, an expression, a turn of the hand. I nodded wordlessly, afraid to break the spell he was weaving.
"It is against my better judgement for me to disclose the secrets of this vast ocean of misery looming over us," he continued, not missing a beat. "But I suppose it's too late to spare you from the coming flood. For you, dear boy, I shall pull back the curtain and lay bare her truth."
Thus began the epic of Esther Pleiades-Pringlewoot, a young woman who dreamt of molding the world into one where magic and mundane lived side by side, where circuses would dissolve as the realm of the fantastic converged with society at large.
"She wants to tear down the walls that divide us, Barney! In her eyes we are but captives here, imprisoned by the cruel constraints of society!"
"But I'm not a prisoner. I want to be here. I like making people throw up."
"So do I, dear boy! So do we all! But where you and I see a conglomeration of miracles, Essie sees a bubble of magic to be popped. She will tear us from the circus while claiming to be our liberator, and she will make us live ordinary lives amongst the bland folk. But beware! If you dare raise your voice in defiance, she will ensnare you within a book, a fell tome of her own binding, and seal you within your own story, doomed to rest upon the shelves of her library until Zion calls at the end of days."
This bedazzling bullshit went on for some time. He bowed when he was through, and I applauded him, thanked him for his time, swore on 'what stone from which my grave be carved' never to share what I'd heard with another living soul, and left. He went back to staring eyelessly at the sky, smoking his cigars, and thinking about the handful of stories that he didn't like to tell.

* * *

Scythe was the kind of guy who never needed an occasion to wear leather. If you ask me, a person can't be too comfortable in their own skin if they're always wearing something else's. Despite whatever instability Scythe may have suffered in his romantic ventures, the dude showed unwavering commitment to his aesthetic. Applied eyeliner every morning with religious devotion, though for what god is anyone's guess. Maybe it was Satan. Maybe it's Maybelline.
Once a week I came to his practice tent and he'd pretend to teach me how to juggle. The big shots were adamant that I learn, and everyone else capable of teaching me either had seniority or was banned from interacting with children altogether, so Scythe got stuck with the job. He hated it. Granted, Scythe hated everything and everyone, though I think my reciprocal loathing caused him to respect me somewhat, albeit in his own stupid way.
"All right, Buttless," he said with exasperation, which was how he said everything. "Playtime's over. We're done with the hollow stuff. You're doing real pins today. No complaints. Got it?"
"Bottomless," I corrected him. "Barney the Bottomless Boy."
"I know. I'm mocking you."
He swung his head to flip his hair out of his eyes and hurled a juggling pin in my direction without so much as a "think fast." It met my fingers and I accepted its weight into my hand, then redirected it back where it came from. Instead of Scythe catching the pin as I expected, he barely even registered it coming toward him before it nailed him square in the chest.
"What the hell, kid?" He yelled, clutching his ribs. "This isn't a two person act, okay? You're going to be performing solo, so you're going to be practicing solo. Jesus."
"What if we combined our acts?" I suggested. "I mean, they're already really similar. What if we juggle together, pins and knives, and then I swallow the pins when you catch the knives in your torso?"
I was rewarded for my idea with a juggling pin to the head. Not hard. Just enough to hurt. I took the pins and started practicing.
"Well, look at you go," he said, slinking against a tent post. "Aren't we the little prodigy? Fuck if I know why they need me to babysit you."
I really was a natural at juggling. In hindsight, I think that's no small part of why Scythe despised me so much.
"Everyone keeps yammering on and on about that Essie lady," I said, keeping my eyes on the pins as they danced. There was no way Scythe would tell me about Essie if I asked him directly, but if I gave him something to complain about, he'd tell me everything. "Nobody even really knows what they're talking about."
"People here don't got two brain cells to rub together," Scythe replied. "I heard one guy say that Essie's in it with that Wondertainment hack. Can you believe that? I mean, how does that make a microfuck of sense? It's bad enough people think 'Essie P.' is even a person."
"She's not a person?" I asked, nearly missing a pin.
"Shoulda known you'd believe that shit. It's just a government front name. The feds don't like what we're doing so they're trying to shut us down. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out."
"Why'd they want to shut down the Cir—"
Scythe snatched a pin out from over my head. I was so thrown off that I completely missed the next one, and I probably would have lost a toenail when it hit my foot if I hadn't already lost that one to Mommy's bedroom doorjamb.
"It's 'cause they're afraid of us," he said, wielding the pin like a knife over my head. "People don't like wild animals when they're not in cages. A lion's only a pussy cat until it gets hungry, and kid, the world knows we're starving. These folks have their way, they'll put us down behind the woodshed and suck the goddamn fairy dust from our veins. They just have to find us first."
He tossed the pin back to me and I resumed juggling. Scythe passed the time by trying to see how many knives he could fit in his rib cage. He ran out of knives and got bored, so he left to me practice by myself while he ran some errands up his nose.

* * *

Asking folks about Essie became something of a pastime of mine. Everyone, and I mean everyone had a different idea of who or what she was.
Jeremiah Puzzle Guts said Essie comes from a world that's upside-down, and that she'll pull your teeth through your toes to make you into her idea of rightside-up.
Laurie-Jean the Spider Queen explained that Essie P. is the leader of a group of religious zealots who consider the Circus to be anathema in the eyes of the Great Ululating All-and-Evermore.
Tiberius Montgomery Shin, who helped with the lights, told me that the Essie P. Foundation is just a charity that won't stop hounding the Circus for donations.
Time went on. The stories grew weirder for a while, and then they started to die out. Same could be said for the old crew.
Scythe turned out to be right about me: I didn't need juggling lessons. Our weekly bonding time didn't last more than a few months. When I was in my early teens, the big shots made my idea of a combined act a reality. After a couple years of that, I developed such a unique and complex repertoire that the folks in charge decided Scythe was holding me back. Poor guy ended up strapped to a wheel while I chucked scimitars into his chest.
He took it pretty hard. Eventually he quit performing in the Big Top, then quit altogether. They put him in the Den of Freaks where visitors paid to impale him. One night he and his friend Jack Daniels decided it'd be nice to relive his glory days by tossing around some flaming katanas.
Do you have any idea what burning leather smells like? Neither do I. I wasn't there.
Now that I think about it, he couldn't have been older than thirty when he died. I was too preoccupied with stropping myself on his brother to attend the service, but everyone said it was lovely. I'm not sure which half of that sentence he would've hated more.
Gourdi Lanternskull, by contrast, was a performer to the very end. When he died, it happened in front of the largest audience the Circus had seen in decades. Everyone always loved when Gourdi would take a swig of kerosene and spurt ribbons of flame from his various facial orifices, but it was nothing compared to the sight of his famous lantern skull unexpectedly exploding like a butternut squash on a powder keg. Some called the volcano of gore a tragic accident. Others said it was the grand finale he'd been planning for years. Either way, I firmly believe he'd be pleased with the spectacle.
JoJo LeBeaux stubbed her toe and went septic not long after my twenty-first birthday. Her remains were burnt, as per the ironic stipulation in her will that her body not be used for any funny business. Story goes that her flab proved to be more flammable than anticipated and the furnace went spiraling out of control. Most of Sleeper Row went up in smoke that night. I had dirt for a bed from June to September.
Wimbley Pinhead hung up his ruffles and left the following year. Said he wanted to pursue the dramatic arts. Sometimes folks make a big messy deal of it when people try to leave the Circus, but human clowns were basically vestigial limbs at that point, and Wilford Pembrook ran away to join the real world with no fanfare whatsoever.
And Scruffy McGrubbins, the last true clown at the circus, the last human clown at the circus, the clown who held me after I accidentally suffocated my border collie inside my stomach and challenged me to put his cigar out with my tears?
Well, I don't know what happened to him. People tell stories, of course. They always do and they always should. The second most popular theory is that he simply left without a word and lives his days quietly in a flat down in Kent. The most popular theory is that the other clowns didn't like having someone around them who wasn't one of their own.
I never imagined I'd end up finding out firsthand who Essie P. is, let alone did I think that she might be just as curious about the Circus as it was about her.
You asked me to describe Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting. I'll tell you what it is, doctor.
It's people.


WARNING: אK SCENARIO IN PROGRESS

To all remaining Foundation employees,
In accordance with O5 Council mandate 3731-Ov627, Procedure 99-LILAC has been activated as the final line of defense against the ongoing TPK-Class ("Thaumaturgic Proliferation") Scenario. The procedure involves the detonation of multiple Thaumobaric Stratosphere Clustercharge Munitions over Earth's remaining landmasses outside of the Orange Zone. As such all personnel are to report to the lowest sublevel of their respective facility immediately for the highest likelihood of survival.
Completion of this procedure will result in the cessation of the current TPK-Class Scenario and the creation of an אK-Class ("Foundation Apotheosis") Scenario, where all living humans are under the control of the SCP Foundation. Due to this, personnel meeting the requirements outlined in Document-31459 are asked to report to their immediate superiors for participation in post-procedural political structures.
All Foundation sites still capable of broadcasting will repeat this message until Procedure 99-LILAC's completion.
Normalcy will prevail.

T-Plus Thirty Minutes
It was a cool February evening when the last rat cleared the burrow. Doctor Xander Moore, as he'd once been known, stepped out of Provisional Containment Area-13 onto a windswept plateau.
He looked down at the pistol he was so tightly clutching, only to find an utter lack of anything left. The Old World had gone silent whilst the New still persisted in the hazy horizons beyond existence.
Rationality had been preserved in the face of madness, it seemed. The sands were blasted a meaningless beige and the faint hum of the bombs still persisted in his ears. The sun was setting, hanging full and low in a sky shaded with a brilliant orange glow. Dr. Moore sat down and watched the sun fade away from the rocks.
The land was dead but unlike the rest of PCA-13, at least the Mojave Desert died normal.
He smiled, for normalcy had won against her enemies. Now all that was left was for her champions to rebuild the world.
Nothing was left outside but tomorrow's glory; Dr. Moore slowly forced his way to an upright position. and limped his way back to PCA-13. He was going to find somewhere he could rest. Not many men could say they survived the apocalypse.
Tomorrow, when he awoke, the sun would rise on a humanity finally free of insanity.

T-Plus Fifteen Hours
When the sun rose for the first time on the logical world, Dr. Moore had already been awake for several hours. His sleep had been erratic— fleeting glimpses of rest scattered among tumultuous hours laying on the floor of his cubicle. But he'd put himself to work, gathering what he could find of the rations. Most of PCA-13 had collapsed into the mesa around him, a mixed blessing. Nothing would have survived that. Human or otherwise.
He worked in the dark, the site's generator long since fallen into the abyss. The sinks were left running, damned to fill as many water bottles as possible before the water supply gave out.
That happened far too soon.
He estimated he had maybe a week's worth of water, a few days' supply of food. It would last longer if it was rationed. He could get by on a meal a day, humanity depended on him— the new world depended on him.
Dr. Moore's days slipped into a constant routine of slipping down abysmally dark hallways; the headlights of his coworkers' SEGURO suits lighting the way; as if ghostly streetlights lining an abandoned dirt road. Maybe he could find a backup generator somewhere in the dark and heat of the tunnels. If he could, he might even be able to contact others. He couldn't be the last normal. He refused to be. Humanity would thrive on this new world, that he was sure of.
He couldn't be stumbling deaf, mute and blind into a useless cycle.

T-Plus Four Days
Fresh from another day of fruitless searching, Dr. Xander Moore limped out of the elevator shaft and out onto the rocky outcropping. The sun swelled low in the western sky. It had become routine for him to watch the sunset, witnessing the orange glows of the early evening fade away to shades of dusky lavender.
He gazed onward as the setting sun slowly slipped away beneath the horizon, leaving a hazy, azure butterfly to hang far above. Its great wings flitted softly across the final twilight, floating lazily upwards along a gentle stream to unseen stars. Its eyes — kind, infinite, and wise in their gaze — met Dr. Moore's on a rock positioned high above the Mojave sands.
Rage consumed him. This thing had destroyed humanity, corrupted them until there was no choice, nothing left for the defenders of normalcy to do than drop the bombs. Now it was off to bastardize another society somewhere in the stars. He said nothing and yet he screamed the words out to all that could have been had it never rested down on this boundless well of potential that was Earth.
For a moment, it lingered up there. Dr. Moore felt its impossible gaze slipping into his very soul until all he could feel was the creature's response. Its last words to a world ascended. They were words of pride — of wonder at humanity's potential, at their ascension. Then phrases tinged with a quiet anguish, sorrow at the devastation their gift had wrought. All rushing down onto him like the drizzling rains from a world gone beautiful.
Then the empyrean left too. He was alone again on the world's drifting carcass.

T-Plus Five Days
The ten-oh-clock sun beat down onto the Mojave scrublands as Dr. Moore picked leaves off the brush around him. His ever-dwindling stock of rations finally existed only in the dusty confines of his memory. Shrubbery, it seemed, was going to be his only form of sustenance until he could get into the rest of PCA-13. It was painfully ironic, the new age of rationality starting with a man picking leaves off bushes to eat.
He'd given up the quest for the backup generator. He had enough water for a few more days. All that mattered was moving forward, restoring a Foundation their descendants could build off of. A return to society.
He reached out to grab a leaf just slightly beyond his reach, then his body collapsed into the dust.
His body seized and Dr. Moore found himself incapable of moving his arms. Wracked with weakness, he tried to crawl forward, back to the safety of PCA-13. He couldn't die! He was going to save humanity! They would reclaim the Earth, then they would vanquish the cosmos! With a final burst of strength, he forced himself upwards. he stood, taking a few, stumbling steps until his vision grew blurry. Fuzzy shadows ate away at the sides of his sight-line until all he could see was a beautiful lilac floating in the breeze before him.
It danced in the wind, its petals swirling back and forth with poise and grace. He reached out and found his body was his again, strong and powerful. The lilac came to a rest in the palm of his hand before a gentle breeze picked up and carried it away again. For a brief moment Xander Moore felt a sense of peace with the world. Behind him, he could hear something hit against the dusty scrub-lands beneath his feet.
Under the noontime Mojave sun, Xander let the past go and followed the lilac in the wind to a cleaner world.


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Suicidal ideation
Near attempted suicide
Domestic abuse
Gender dysphoria
Self-loathing
Dissociation

i'm watching my corpse.
i'm floating an arms-length, give or take a few, behind, flowing through the chair at the computer desk at myself the body. the screen's on — too blurred for me to care. the ceiling and bedside lights twist around, entering clockwise deathspirals that spin to dangling glowing points before fizzling out. the ritual setup netting my desk isn't fluid, though. the bones and incense are Concrete Spokes. Fixed. Static. they try to drive through my vision like Anchors but i turn away because i don't need that, never needed it, never do.
blade's in my body's hands. frozen. absence of red, on it or my wrists. the silver of the edges is a soft one, almost inviting if it weren't for, well. you know. Dad would be proud to know his shaving lessons will go to use.
this is why i went astral? right?
because i couldn't go through with it otherwise?
yes
yes?
right
right.
..
jesus get a grip on yourself
intangibility doesn't give you permission to be indecisive again, this isn't some wavering 'oh how ethereal' spirit realm. reality doesn't work that way, this isn't some narrative. life never went that way. look at how wishing it did went — there was never the chance for a tearful reveal, some swelling orchestral score drowning out the 'she's' and 'her's' and 'you'll always be our daughter's of my Parents' affection. not enough of a daydream for it to have worked that way.
so pull the trigger
razor
metaphor
semantics. just go.
i spin my nonexistent hand, wafting trails of astral ink, bleeding from my form and bubbling upwards in thin clouds that nobody who isn't projecting can ever see or ever will see. with enough fumbling i sense a tug — invisible strings taut between my real and unreal fingertips. twitch one, body twitches too.
splay, clench, splay clench. the actions slowly sync until i'm a puppeteer bound to the future grave stuffer. i barely recognize myself from here. in jerking motions the blade raises
raises
raise
…
raise
just. up. over. closer. closer. closer. closer
this isn't my body. this should never have been my body. i shouldn't have been dragged out of some soul vacuum and stuffed inside this thing. maybe it was like that thing Lilith told me about — where sometimes a soul drops out of the ether too fast and misses the body it was being summoned into, landing into the wrong brain stem and being ensnared by the neurons even when it was wrong and the soul knows it was wrong but the body doesn't know because bodies never know they don't
i should ask Lilith more about that. ze knows a lot about this stuff. it's cool—
RAISE
no, the blade aims too high. it's cutting at the air, at the incense still spewing higher than even my astral arms can reach. i need to lower it, gently, like this. downwards. sweeping. controlled. unhesitant. unhesitant unhesitant i never had a point to this life, so why does it have to be so hard?
i
i catch the light glinting off the edge. somehow it traces a line (electromagnetism working differently here? could be interesting to ask Lilith about). before the razor lowers a hair's length over me and disrupts the line, there's a beam piercing straight to the opposite side of my bedroom. i twist my head (do astral forms have heads?) and look over and see the light fizzle right off of
.
.
.
no
gods, no
why did you have to remind me
why did you have to fucking remind me
it's not the bed that it had to hit. it's not the rocketry posters. it's not the eva unit figures, or the textbooks, or the pride month sigils Vesta sent me, or any of the other things the light could've fucking hit by my bed that wasn't
that
wasn't
…
no, of course it would.
where the light hit is every failed body. every time i've tried to fix myself into what i want. a cheap bargain buy binder Dad got for school that I used instead to compile every sigil and incantation i'd need to make my body me. it's come close to working. sometimes, when i've layered the symbols over my floor and drip my blood onto a dais of my tears, i feel a twinge, the pull of a locked away piece of my head finally unchaining my body. there is Breath in my lungs. and then it just.
it stops.
it just stops.
it's never gone through, not once, doesn't matter how many times i try because it just. doesn't. it stalls out Every Single Time, and trying to see my actual body, see my actual self, see MYSELF crumbles. i'm not skilled enough for it. Lilith could teach me, ze's good at this. i wonder how much effor
no
no no no
don't be a fucking idiot about this tayler
you know why you can't do this. i know EXACTLY why i DON'T DO THIS
it's because you can't take a goddamn stand for the life of you
you can do it but noooooo you just can't show Dad that you're above him, that you're better than him, that you're better than those godforsaken Jailers he licks the boot of every waking hour of his life
he thinks he has it hidden but no
you've heard the radio
you've PROJECTED into the radio
you've HEARD EVERY ONE OF THE REQUESTS PASSED DOWN TO HIM
BUT
YOU
CAN'T
ACT
because i'm a coward
because i can't do anything against the Person who'd get me hauled to a cell if He ever found a single one of the sigils i stash under the bed every night hoping he never looks under there because he looks everywhere else but there
Lilith and Chloe had the strength to run away from their homes because they could take a stand but I couldn't I i couldn't even if i tried because i'm fucking pathetic. Lilith even cut off her wings for gods' sake. i could never do that. ze should be ashamed of me why does anyone bother with me when i'm worthless
i should run away
i shouldn't run away
i should run away
i mustn't run away GODS YOU'RE REPEATING REFERENCES TO A SHOW ABOUT OVERCOMING DEPRESSION IN YOUR HEAD THAT DOESN'T EVEN APPLY HERE BECAUSE YOU'RE THAT SHALLOW?
i don't have a home here
i never had a home here
i don't have a home anywhere
i belong in a cell
i can't bring myself to run away because i'm pathetic
i deserve to have a jailer blow my head open across a wall with a 12 gauge shotgun.
i could never bring myself to do everything my friends do because they're stronger and i'm loading them down like worthless baggage
i deserve to be chained in a room with sigils that make my mind bleed and rites that make my body rip
i deserve to be isolated underground for centuries because nobody deserves to deal with me
my friends don't want me. i know they shouldn't want me.
i'll never have a home anywhere
i deserve to be killed

WHY HAVENT I USED THE RAZOR YET I SHOULDVE USED THE RAZOR I CANT EVEN DO THIS ONE THING RIGHT JUST LOWER IT LOWER IT LOWER IT MY MAGICS WORTHLESS MY FRIENDS PRETEND THEY WANT ME BECAUSE THEY IM WORTHLESS ILL NEVER HAVE THE BODY I WANTLOWERWHYDIDNTYOUKILLYOURSELFWHENYOUHADTHECHANCE LOWER IHAVENOTHINGOINGFORMELIKELILITHORCHLOE LOWER VESTANOVADOVEBONESTHEYALLHAVE
LOWER
THERECANTBEAHOME
THERECANTBEAHOMEBECAUSEIDESERVENOHOME
LOWER
THERECANTBE
LOWER
THERECANT
LOWER
THERECANT
LOWER
THERE
THERE
THERE
I
I
I
I
i
lower
i
lower
i
i
i
lower
i
lower
i.
lower
..
lower
…
lower
…
lower
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
..
. ..
i know what'd happen if i told dad.
about the sigils.
he'd call the jailers on me. he'd have me locked up. the teams would check my computer, find the chatlogs, find out about everything i did and planned to do. once they did that they'll either confiscate it or scrub it.
could be preferable. dunno.
after that i'd be wheeled off on a gurney, brought into a room with bright lights. they'd, i think, want to see what makes me tick. a surgeon with combat fatigues under his biohazard suit, after shutting the door behind him, would approach me with scalpels in his hands. just before the remaining equipment is wheeled in, just before they shine the spotlight on the table my organs are soon to be on, he'll kneel next to me. lean towards my ear.
and then
he'll whisper, the last words
i'll
ever
hear
:
.
.
"Did you know that world-renowned writer Stephen King was once hit by a car? Just someth—
pfffft
okay, okay
i
gods. i'm such a fucking wreck.
i. gods. okay.
someone had to have seen the message i sent before i left, right? the one that—
…
probably getting messaged about it by now…
…
i — my body — still holds the razor, a hair's length from my wrist. it hadn't moved any lower. i can still see the incense, the last curls of it puffing up and out. the ink still bleeds from my astral form. i'm still here.
i still hold the razor.
.
.
.
.
oh fuck this.
i swing the razor up, right, over, and slam—

Downwards.

—
Tayler crashes onto the floor. Her head aches, both from the projection and the astral-to-physical contact she made into the wood paneling. Wincing, she heaves herself up, shivering in the returning cold of the room. She collapses back into her chair. Scattered across the desk before her are the remnants of the ritual: a wreck of wax, bone, and ink, razor cracking through the central iconography like a hammer — a fractured astral rite.
She breathes. Shakily; slowly.
Taking in accidental whiffs of choking incense, she raises her left hand up, splaying the fingers like they were newly affixed to her body. Then, with the right.
Her wrists are intact.
The razor is on her desk.
She isn't holding it anymore.
.
.
.
Tayler breathes.
.
.
.
This place isn't home. Not in the slightest.
.
.
.
Behind the ritual setup, her laptop glows dimly. A red light blinks in the corner of her screen — part of a notification masking a purple-and-green mecha charging over her wallpaper. A ping dated 11:23 PM, one hour ago, sent from the channel 'queer of the unknown.'
She smirks. Still not emotionally dead enough that Vesta's dumb pun game can't get a reaction out of her. Counts for something.
Sweeping an arm over the desk, the occult rubble is thrust off the table in a clatter (she can clean it up later). The razor goes clattering into some out-of-sight crack (she won't need to go looking for it). She pulls the laptop over, placing her hands back onto the keys. For a moment, she freezes. Fingers unable to press downwards.
She breathes.
In.
Out.
Then, Tayler types.

> tabris has entered the chat.
tabris: hey
tabris: is anyone up right now?
tabris: i need to talk

At least she'll always have a home somewhere.

THE EARTH IS NOT A COLD DEAD PLACE
|| Hub || True Trans Soul Rebel »


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Anabasis I've been waiting here for what now seems the better of an hour
Start here
Eat more of my SCPs. Eat them all.
Also please eat some of these

Anabasis Hub Probably the greatest story involving a pair of redheaded siblings whose infighting causes the end of the world
Manna Charitable Foundation 2000 The sequel to the above, collaborationed with Dr Reach
The Stuff Industry What happens when everyone around you at work is a complete idiot and so are you, but not only does no one get fired, but you actually turn a profit? I don't know, some stuff.
When MCF and Stuff happen A fun story of incompetence

The WestCiv militias were impatient and forced a start to the operation before the National Guard was ready. They started moving south in jeeps, school buses, and pickup trucks, hooting and howling as they blitzed for several miles then came to a complete stop and waited for the National Guard to move out. The WestCivvies filmed it all, oblivious to the buffoonery of their hooting and the absurdity as jacked up pickup trucks sporting machine guns got stuck in traffic, men unaccustomed to four wheel drive ran jeeps into ditches, and sedentary fascists got red-faced and sweaty just from driving with the windows down in the South Florida heat.
The very same day, West Florida went dark. By sunset, the Everglades were red. The bacteria had arrived. Whether by ignorance or recklessness, the WestCiv militias continued to push south. Rumors began spreading that the WestCivvies had weaponized the bacteria and were using it, evidenced by their complete disregard for their own safety as they moved dangerously close to the reddened Everglades.
The bacteria had stopped. The Everglades, the massive preserve of tropical wetland that encompassed most of South Florida and gave precious water, wildlife, and farmland, had halted the aerial spread. Rainforests, swamps, marshes, and bogs were slowing down the rapidly moving red clouds around the country, almost sucking them in and preventing it from spreading. It did not prevent wildlife from getting infected and fleeing. They ran out into the streets thrashing and flailing wildly as they burned from the inside and slowly succumbed, only to have their corpses continue to writhe and thrash after death. People ran over the corpses with their cars and smeared the bacteria on their tires and let it loose once more.

Marlowe had ordered all the classrooms emptied of desks and furniture and converted to makeshift medical rooms. Most of the classrooms could fit barely one or two beds. Others had to have walls torn down between them to be usable. Some doors were removed and replaced with airtight metal doors which proceeded to grind the floor tiles to powder. The rest of the doors just had duct tape applied to the edges when the infected were brought in. Reports were that the Red Death Cloud had arrived in Florida but was somehow being slowed or stopped by the Everglades.
People had been brought in a week early. At first it was people from further out west and south needing refuge after their homes were overrun and behind enemy lines. Then there was a brief panic as the first signs of infection began to appear. Most of the refugees fled the neighborhood while it was discovered that these newly infected people were not as contagious as the others had been. Many of the refugees came back, especially as news traveled of the WestCiv/National Guard offensive moving south towards them.
Then one day Marlowe got an e-mail telling her O5-11 was coming to interview her directly. She spent the entire morning in a panic, waiting for the arrival of an MTF to secure the site, an armed escort to whisk her out into a black helicopter to take her to some subterranean compound nearby where she'd speak to a shadowed figure at the end of an imposing desk in a darkened room filled with glowing computer terminals and maps decorated with light patterns significant only to the O5 Council.
She was in her own office when it happened. A text was sent to her phone, "Make ready for 11". Half an hour later the door opened. It was a young woman, about Marlowe's age, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and jeans. She had reddish-blonde hair and big blue eyes and a ready smile on her pale and pasty face.
"Are you O5-11?" Marlowe asked.
"Yeah." She chirped, shutting the door behind her and taking a seat across Marlowe's desk from her. She even reached out a hand to Marlowe for her to shake. No pomp or technocratic security protocols. Dr. Marlowe had only this woman's word that she was who she said she was.
She sat in the chair and turned it slightly so she was facing away from Marlowe, looking just slightly to her side. She crossed her legs and placed a cell phone on the desk, nudging it over to Marlowe. Marlowe glanced at it. A text was on screen. Something about wolves? And some numbers?
"If you could, please? Foundation portal, SCiPNet?"
Marlowe looked again at the phone, then suddenly understood. She turned to her computer and opened up the Foundation intranet browser. It took longer than usual to establish an encrypted tunnel due to the loss of internet in the area; they had to rely on satellite internet. Once the browser opened up to its normal login page the woman across from her reached over to press her fingers on the keyboard, holding down four keys at once.
"Click 'login'."
Marlowe clicked it and was taken to a new login page. This one had only a single text box.
"Type in what's on the phone."
Marlowe did so, pausing only to ask the woman if some digits were the letter "O" or the number "0". Then it logged her in immediately and took her to a new page she'd never seen before. It was a web portal, but not the one for Level 3 personnel like her. This had to be the highest possible security clearance.
"Click anywhere on the page and take your hands off the keyboard." The woman said politely as she took her cell phone back. It started to vibrate angrily with text messages she swiftly responded to, then pocketed the phone. Marlowe's screen blurred and a speaker icon appeared in the center of the screen.
"I'm going to record this conversation. Is that okay with you?" The woman, O5-11, asked.
"Do I have a choice?" Marlowe asked numbly, gripping the edge of her desk anxiously.
O5-11 laughed, "Of course you do. This is just for my own reference later on. I just want you to be aware you're being recorded and that nothing you say in here to me will be in any way held against you or shown to anyone else. Nothing except the matters at hand."
Marlowe nodded and hesitantly drew her hands away from the desk and into her lap, "What do you want to know?"
"Between Asia and Florida what's changed?"
Marlowe furrowed her brow at the woman. Was it O5 policy to be broad or was she probing her for some hidden information? She shrugged and looked down at her desk, conjuring up as many basics as she could, "Everything we gleaned from Asia, Australia, and the West Coast was that the bacteria was quick and brutally efficient. Almost merciful in how quickly it spread and killed. But something's happened to it somewhere along the way. It's no longer airborne—- or rather, as airborne as it was. The infected aren't burning up as fast as they used to. Not as much thrashing and flailing. Instead they're mostly sick and weary, high fever, vomiting, internal bleeding, diarrhea, dehydration. But they're alive. Some of the first infected we've taken in are still alive right now. We don't know how much longer or how quickly they'd die without treatment."
"What are your working theories?"
Again she shrugged, eyes darting between her desk and the woman's pasty face glancing just off to the side as if facing someone behind Marlowe and to her left, "There's nothing particularly different in terms of our climate or humidity that isn't similar in much of Southeast Asia. Logically there'd have to be semi-functioning communities there with infected living for days or even weeks. It might be the extreme humidity is slowing it down. Other people would probably know more about that than I would."
"Are personnel here at risk of infection or have they been immunized?"
"Uh… There is still some risk of infection but the slowdown has allowed medical personnel to do their work without full body hazmat suits. We've been testing immunizations on D-Class personnel and up until last week we were sharing information with Site-4502 and coordinating vaccine progress. Some of our personnel are going to be immunized starting tomorrow."
"How many people can this building safely contain?"
"I think maybe about three thousand. Three thousand five hundred. A lot of areas are open areas so there's a lot of space that isn't actually secured. Predominantly hallways between the major buildings. The major um, there are separate buildings all connected to each other but we're in the main building right now. That number includes all the sub-units, too. This building alone would probably hold just over one thousand."
O5-11 was barely moving, hands placed in her own lap and voice smooth and affectless. "If you eject the civilian infected how much of your site staff would you be able to contain on-site?"
"Uh, all of them? I don't have that many people under my purview so there'd be enough space for them and the civilian infected. The main problem would be recalling everyone as they're kind of spread out around the city."
"In this building alone or the whole campus?"
"This building alone. Are you planning on evacuating personnel to this building?"
The woman's eyes seemed to flash and her lips spread in a little smirk, "You don't evacuate people, you evacuate locations. We see no need to start congregating personnel in a single location in the midst of a warzone at this time. Things might change in the weeks ahead."
Marlowe quirked a brow at her, "Do you think we have weeks?"
The woman smiled again and looked directly at her, "What do you think?" She asked earnestly.
"I'm just the Site Director here, I don't know about infectious diseases. My area of expertise is space-time, spatial, visual, cognitohazardous anomalies."
"Which is why you were perfectly placed here. Don't worry about the bacteria, it's being handled."
"I, uh," Marlowe hesitated and tensed up as the woman looked directly at her again.
"Go on."
"You haven't asked me anything about Anabasis."
"Do you have anything to say about it? Keep in mind I've read all the reports filed. Lots of confusion. It seems like your staff knows very little about it. One or two have been babying it like it was precious to them. I hope you haven't been telling them it's our last hope. There are no deus ex machinae in the real world. The way out of this mess is a long grind, and a lot of us won't make it. I might not make it."
Marlowe had known deep inside that the Anabasis was a dead end. The testing had been constantly giving inconsistent results. It seemed to contradict its own 'rules', oftentimes showing preference to whichever universe it was occupying, only to then disappear into another. They would have lost it altogether if it didn't come back on its own. A D-Class had supposedly figured out that the settings had to be reset before it was powered down in order to make the merging permanent otherwise it would snap back. She hadn't been willing to risk losing the Anabasis altogether testing that theory.
"…indicated if they were going to evacuate to a different universe, then the evacuees would be limited to the 3,000 or so they crammed into this school building." O5-11 had been continuing on while Marlowe's thoughts wandered, "We're not saving the entire world with this thing. If it's a last hope failsafe, it's only going to be for top level Foundation personnel and anything like that is days away from even being discussed. Weeks away from being implemented."
"I know, I just…" She sighed, "I thought you were coming here to like, make evacuation plans for the O5 Council and top level researchers and site directors to come here and get them all out."
"If and when it comes to that, I promise you will be informed of that." The woman rose to her feet, "Until that time, just stay the course. Yours isn't the only site we have working on this so we're making good progress on a vaccine. These things normally take years so we're very lucky. Just stay the course."
"What about outside of the school?" Marlowe perked up a bit, "The device's range stretches at least up to a mile. We don't need to cluster everyone into the school building unless we plan on taking a chunk of the neighborhood with us."
The woman shook her head, "We lost access to Turkey Point so you're not going to have enough energy to fire at max strength. Not unless you want to risk a few thousand people sustaining some coherency issues. If the time comes… Better to save a thousand of us fully intact than five thousand of us in ten thousand pieces. Restart your computer, please."
Marlowe glanced over at her computer screen. After a moment the blurred icon went away and she went over to close all the windows, disconnect from SCiPNet, and restart her computer. Once it was booting back up the woman smiled and turned to leave. Marlowe huffed and sat back in her chair, looking around her office aimlessly. All the words had been put together properly but something about O5-11's questions and demeanor left her feeling uncertain as to who she was talking to and why. She wasn't entirely sure that was the actual O5-11. It wasn't completely out there to suspect an O5 would send a decoy in their stead, but why so low key? And why to probe for basic information that could've been covered in a secure phone call or e-mail?

Marlowe stepped out of her office and into the frenzy of movement and noise unlike that she had grown accustomed to over the past year. Voices were deeper and more urgent and there were no silent periods punctuated by the ringing of bells. Everyone around her seemed to know what to do and moved briskly from task to task, calling out to one another and confirming status reports, treatments, patients' responses to the experimental vaccinations. All she found herself doing was walking in circles around the school, occasionally pausing to look into a room or direct someone to someone else.
She found herself in a hallway near the southernmost staircase with Locke standing at the bottom of the stairwell looking back at her. She approached her and frowned.
"Where do you need me?" Locke asked flatly.
Marlowe started to respond, then noticed how the other woman looked. She was paler than usual, stiff and unmoving and expressionless. Her fingers were straining and tensing. Marlowe shook her head, "You don't look like you're up to dealing with patients. Just go out front and control the crowd."
Locke nodded and moved away. Marlowe couldn't remember a time where a simple interaction with Priscilla Locke went as quickly and without backtalk thick with sarcasm or contempt. She actually found a subdued and compliant Locke to be very unpleasant.
She turned her head and saw Edgars coming toward her. He was the same as ever, agitated and world weary all at once, a mass of big dumb muscle with a mind finely tuned for math and physics. Started out as a mud-lover, got himself dirty in one of the less reputable Mobile Task Forces until someone noticed his skills were being wasted and got him reassigned to her.
"Locke?" He asked.
"What?"
"She causing problems?"
"No." She looked him over, confused. What was his problem all of a sudden? He turned and left without another word. Her instincts told her he was going to start causing problems. She turned and went after Locke, finding her standing on top of the steps in front of the school looking over the small crowd bunched up against the security cordon set up around the entrance.
"Hey," Marlowe said to Locke, awkwardly nudging her shoulder with her knuckles, "Maybe you should head home."
Locke nodded without looking at her and went back inside to get her things. Marlowe went back to her office. She opened up the big binder full of Anabasis testing data and skimmed through them. Then she turned to her computer and started to draw up plans to recall everyone to the site by the end of the month. She was tired of waiting for a miracle. If nothing changed until May, she was going to use the Anabasis.

Aurianne dropped down into the chair next to Locke, who was splayed out on her couch. Locke glanced up at her, not moving.
"You were right…" Aurianne said in a strained voice, hand close to her mouth as she suppressed a cough, then went on, "I probably should've brought a mask or something. I knocked over a pile of boxes down there. I could barely breathe. Giant clods of like, thick stringy dusty bullshit floating everywhere."
"What about the room?"
Aurianne wheezed and shook her head, "I couldn't get it open all the way. You're right, it does smell kind of like the room we found Annie in. But that doesn't mean anything."
"You're calling it 'Annie' now?"
"I don't know. I guess."
"What did you see?"
She shrugged, "I shined a flashlight in there. It's kind of hard to describe. Like… they stacked some shelves on the far side of the room, then I think maybe put a wooden board on top of them and stacked some more junk on top of the board? Then the board rotted and cracked and all the junk on top of it came pouring down. I didn't go in, I couldn't fit. You would have to crouch to get under it and inside. But there was nothing else in there. No corpses. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"
Locke pouted up at her, "You were the one freaking out over my dream, wanting it to be real!"
"And you're the one who came up the steps shaking in your boots about how it was just like the room. 'The room', you were whining, 'Anabasis room!'"
"It just shocked me. I wasn't expecting it. It was like, the exact same smell."
"At first maybe, but not exactly the same." Aurianne slowly rose up out of the chair and glanced down at Locke. She stared for a long moment down at her. She was starting to tense up and fidget.
"Listen… I'm leaving."
Locke looked up at her.
"I've requested re-assignment to Tennessee. Marlowe's okay with it. Some high ranking admin came by earlier today so I have a chance to tag along with them. I haven't heard from my family in a while so I want to just go up there and…"
Locke nodded and looked away.
"I'm not abandoning you."
Locke reached up with a hand, "I know."
Aurianne took her hand and Locke pulled her in. She tensed as Aurianne knelt down to her level. They kissed. Aurianne winced and pulled away. Tears were welling in her eyes.
"I know you don't feel the same way towards me," Aurianne grimaced and wiped at her eyes, "I'm okay with that."
Locke nodded again, face burning red.
"I get the very distinct feeling we will never see each other again. I know it's cliche and you already know but it's worth saying out loud at least once. I love you, Priss. You've been more than just my best friend. You've been… the highlight of my life for the last 9 years. I only regret I won't be here with you at the end. But my family, you know…"
Locke nodded again, unable to see anything as tears pooled in her own eyes.
"I know this won't end well for me. But I can't just up and leave this world— this universe, whatever, find another universe to flee to and make a new life there. I can't do that. I've got family here. Brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews. I made my life here and I lived it how I wanted. This is my world and I'm going to die in it."
Locke closed her eyes, turning over to press her face into the couch cushion, unable to stop the flood of tears.
"That dream you had, maybe we interpreted it wrong. Maybe you are from this world, but you don't belong to it. You don't belong here. You should go when you get the chance. Leave and find a better world for yourself. Maybe see your sister again, or some other version of her. Or just start anew. A clean slate. You deserve it. Of everyone I've known and worked with, you of all people deserve it."
Aurianne turned to the door and quietly made her way out. She glanced back at Locke for a long moment. She couldn't think of anything else to say, so she turned and left.

Priscilla Locke checked her e-mail again, refreshing the page every hour or so waiting for a new response from her uncle in D.C, Otis Umber. The last message had been nearly a month ago. She sighed and refreshed again. At some point she would send a response but for now she couldn't do anything. She didn't feel up to reaching out to anyone for any reason. She'd spent hours sobbing, blacking out, waking up and sobbing some more. She was thoroughly drained. She hadn't moved from the couch in hours. It was the perfect mood to be in when someone came knocking at her door and didn't stop for several irritating minutes.
She dragged herself up to the door to answer it. It was the UIU woman, Fatima Cortes, in a tanktop and dress pants, with a small backpack hanging off one arm. She was slightly sweaty and had what looked to be dried blood along her temples. She handed the backpack to Locke.
"The FBI's left the city and headed north. UIU isn't responding to my calls and they abandoned the field office. No one seemed to care about Rhiannon Locke's case except for me and I didn't get too much information." She nodded to the backpack, "I'm giving it to you. That's the original case file they gave me. I also included a tape recorder with some of my own notes and an external hard drive with some other files and video and audio. Maybe the Foundation can do something with all of it when this is over."
Locke stared down at her as she turned and headed down the steps. Her car was almost on the sidewalk. Locke called out to her, "You're leaving?"
She turned to look back at Locke, "There's nothing left for me here! You should leave while you still can!" She called back, then got into her car and drove off.
What difference would it make where I'd go? Locke thought to herself, setting the backpack down on the couch and rifling through it with one hand. The only options were death by anomalous bacteria or death by gunfire. She took out the contents of the backpack and set them down on the coffee table. A case file, thick as a book. She set the hard drive down and connected it to her laptop. Fats had thoughtfully included the USB wire with it. She looked through the case file idly while waiting for her laptop to read the hard drive. Like she'd suspected, the cops had been watching Rhiannon, though not for as long as Locke had initially suspected. There was nothing new in it. All it was was keeping tabs on Rhiannon in the days leading up to Key Biscayne, the night she disappeared. Some of the pages had writing indentations in them, purposefully placed, possibly written on sticky notes attached to the pages but since removed.
She sighed in frustration and glanced up at the computer screen. The hard drive was empty. 128 gigabytes, all free.
"The stupid fuck." She snarled and took out the tape recorder, rewinding the tape and playing it back. It was empty. No sound for several minutes. She fast forwarded a few times. Nothing. The tape was blank.
"The stupid fucking fuck. What the fuck?" She dropped back onto her couch and kicked away the empty backpack. Pain twisted in her legs again and she started coughing from acid reflux. She sat back up after the coughing fit and tried the hard drive again. 128 gigabytes free, none used. Then she flipped over the tape and tried playing it again. She let it play uninterrupted for half an hour. Complete silence.
She looked back over at the case files and spent the night reading through them. She passed out and dreamed she was still reading them. In her dream, the files told a fantastical story of Rhiannon Locke leading police on a wild chase through the state, culminating in a dramatic stand-off and arrest, after which Rhiannon was taken into custody only to never be heard from again. She imagined in her dream that the Foundation had somehow gotten to her and she woke up anticipating a call from Marlowe inviting her to come talk to her sister, who'd been whisked away and contained in a Foundation black site just for her.
She sighed and looked over at the case files again. It had just been a dream. The case file on Rhiannon Locke was over 400 pages with plenty of repetition and wild tangents with only the faintest connection to her or her cult. The timeline of Rhiannon Locke's existence seemed to end with Key Biscayne, over seven months ago.
She picked up the tape recorder and looked it over. She fast forwarded the tape a few times, checking to see if it was truly empty on both sides. Then she rewound it to the beginning and hit record. After a few minutes she played it back. It played back the background noise in her living room, along with the steady hum of the air conditioner. She touched it to her chin and recorded again, "Status report… Might fuck around and… visit another world. What would I do if I found my sister, another version of her? What would I say? I don't know. I never had much to say to begin with."
She played it back. It played back her voice. She frowned. The recording was deeper than her voice usually was and the vocal fry irritated her to hear reflected at higher volume. All at once ideas started flooding into her mind. She went back to the laptop and started to copy files onto the external hard drive.

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✖

Traffic had nearly shut down as everyone who could flee was fleeing north. The fascist WestCivvies who had come barrelling out of the city of Fort Lauderdale were now clumsily acting as a security checkpoint. What they were checking for depended entirely on the flabby in-over-his-head WestCiv guy made to stand out in the heat and stop every car. The checkpoints did little to stop people from going around, especially as the WestCivvies had apparently forgotten about the Turnpike and left it "undefended". The backlog wasn't any better there. At some point the WestCivvies stopped stopping people but the damage was already done.
Fats tried taking Route 27, which went straight northwest through Hialeah, as far as she could with the traffic as it was. Then she stopped off at a gas station for a map and began to navigate the back roads past the airport. People were flooding into the airport even though all flights had been cancelled days before. She parked there and slept in her car overnight. When she headed back out she realized most of the cars stalling traffic were simply abandoned. She forcibly pushed some aside with her own and kept going northwest.
She managed to make her way out far beyond the city, continuing north on 27. Cars were abandoned by the side of the road every few miles but the highway was otherwise barren. She realized right away why that was; the Everglades were red. It looked like bright red snow, or more accurately ash, was covering the vegetation as far as she could see. The skies were clear but every so often she saw a strong enough gust of wind dislodge some of the red from a tree or two and the red dust would spill out onto the road. That had to be the "Red Death" cloud. She shut off her car's air conditioning and sealed the vents, then fished out a gas mask she had pilfered from the FBI-UIU office before leaving and pulled it on over her face. She had no way of knowing if it would work but the illusion of safety at least calmed her nerves enough to keep driving.

{$caption}
✖

The highway was seemingly endless and she could see no other cars driving either way. She stopped in the road as darkness fell and awoke late the next morning, her and her car undisturbed. She rushed out of the car to refuel it with one of the gas cans in her back seat. She couldn't hear anything in the Everglades. No birds or insects calling, no city noise or cars from the east. She got back in and kept driving.
Hours passed and she was still driving. She squeezed her eyes shut every few minutes as her eyes began to strain and her legs cramped in the seat. She opened her eyes one last time and she was standing on the side of the road, walking. Her car was behind her and smoking. She kept walking, her legs tired and body numb. Someone was standing several yards ahead of her by the side of the road, apparently trying to make a call on their cell phone. It took what felt like an hour for her to reach them.
"Oy." The man said in a thick accent as she got close, turning to look down at his phone again, then looking back at her as she kept coming closer, "Your car broke down?"
"I don't know." She replied wearily. She felt suddenly dizzy.
"You lost then? Need to call someone?" He indicated his phone.
"No."
"Right, then, suit yourself." The man went back to looking down at his phone, "The name's Marvin, by the way."
"Okay." She mumbled.
"Think you might be knackered from all the walking. You better sit down before you fall."
"Okay." She mumbled again and dropped onto the grass beside the road. A small cloud of red puffed around her and she sighed.
"You should breathe." Marvin said casually.
"Okay."
"Take that thing off."
"Okay." She mumbled and put her hand on the gas mask, wiggling it about until she figured out how to push it up off her face and let it drop away. The sky was cloudless but the sun had gone somewhere. It was not yet noon the last she checked but the highway was dim and gray.

{$caption}

"Now just go on and breathe. Slowly, you don't want to burn your sinuses."
"Okay." She slurred, head nodding as she struggled to stay upright. She breathed in deeply and felt a sudden rush of energy go through her.
"Breathe us in. Slowly." Marvin was saying over and over. He hadn't moved from the side of the road nor looked up from his phone. Each breath Fats took gave her just enough of a jolt to keep her conscious but she could tell she wasn't going to make it. She had to breathe faster or she'd black out.
"Oooay." She whispered and fell back into the grass, her vision getting blurry and red.

« In this Twilight | The March | Zero Sum »
Anabasis Hub


< < < < < Static In My Attic
I am three years old. I am in a toy store when I do not hear the hole whisper for the first time. Did he who make the lamb make thee? My mother asks me which stuffed animal I want, and I choose a tiger. I do not know why.
* * *
I am seven years old when a boy pushes me off the swing at recess. For the second time, the hole does not speak to me. Nessuna opera che non abbia un carattere aggressivo può essere un capolavoro. I can explain why I hit him, but I cannot explain why I keep kicking him after he fell down. I break his nose and blacken his eye; I am suspended for two weeks. When I get back, everyone is afraid of me. After that, even though I cannot hear it, the hole begins to speak more often.
* * *
I am thirteen, and my mother is in a casket at the front of the church. Cancer. I watched her being eaten from the inside, both by the disease and the cure. Her last weeks, she could barely open her eyes. I want to cry. At eleven thirty-five strength came unto them; and yea, they were stronger than Him. The tears will not come. Everyone calls me a brave little girl. I am still too young to correct them, but I know that I am not brave and I already suspect that I am not a girl. I grow increasingly upset, but I am still unable to cry. The tears come only later that night, when I am alone.
* * *
I am eighteen years old. My father asks me whether any boys have asked me to Prom. I wince internally, and am about to tell him a little white lie that will excuse my absence from the dance, when something I cannot hear commands me otherwise. Gnothi seauton. It all comes out in a rush. I cry in front of him, for the first time since my mother's death, and I tell him that I am a lesbian, and then I tell him that I am not sure I am actually a woman, and then I am halfway through explaining modern gender theory when he gives me the tightest hug he has ever given me.
* * *
I am twenty years old, a sophomore at my dream college, and it is time for me to declare my major. I am leaning towards psychology, but my father wants me to be a physicist; he ended up as an engineer, rather than doing theoretical work, and he never forgave himself. I'm waiting outside my adviser's office with the completed forms when I do not hear something. Daddy's girl is what he always called you and now you treat him like this? I scratch out "psychology" and replace it with "physics".
* * *
I am twenty-three, and I'm deciding on an exact topic for my graduate thesis. I didn't get into any of the Ivies, much to my father's disappointment, but the massive public university has plenty of research funding in the sciences - especially, my adviser points out, if it's a topic the government would be interested in. My area of expertise is slightly too esoteric for weaponization, but then again, Einstein probably thought the same thing and look where that got him.
I am considering all sorts of theoretical and experimental topics when nothing whispers directly in my mind. Ex nihilo nihil fit. I seize upon an idea and begin to write my proposal: a thesis on the conditions necessary for the creation of a true vacuum. My advisor is satisfied, and my research begins.
* * *
I am twenty-five years old. I have just been informed that my grants have all been cancelled and my research will no longer be supported by the university. I am asked to change my focus of study or leave the program. The Dean is sympathetic, but unyielding. He will not tell me why I am being cut loose. My adviser is the same. Such cowardly pricks. I lash out. I accuse them of conspiring against me, of bowing to outside pressure, of abandoning the cause of science, of all manner of other sins. Campus security escorts me from the administration building.
When I return to my lab to pack up my personal effects, there are two men in dark suits waiting for me; they say they are from the government. They offer me an opportunity I would be a fool to refuse. I fill out the paperwork on the spot, and they drive me to the airport. There is a charter jet waiting for us. The plane is half-empty; I am about to sit by myself when I do not hear a voice in my head. They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin. I look around once more, and recognize one of my fellow-travelers. He's a Philosophy grad student; we were in the same seminar on scientific ethics last semester. I sit across the aisle from him and introduce myself.
His name is Manny, short for Mandeep. He remembers me; I was the only STEM student in the class who wasn't insufferable. His research wasn't suppressed like mine, but it did attract the attention of our new employers - ethicists are apparently in high demand in the world of shadowy government organizations. A few more people board while we chat, and then the plane takes off; I find myself getting tired, and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
I am still twenty-five, and I am definitely not working for the government. That was the first thing they told us when we got off the plane in an undisclosed location, somewhere in the Midwest. The orientation was surprisingly brief; a few words from the Site director, a demonstration of a "Safe-class anomaly," and a break for lunch. We're being divided into smaller groups later; for now, Manny and I are eating some mediocre eggplant parmesan in the cafeteria, and talking about how much stranger our worlds have just gotten.
We've moved on to trying to figure out why the new world order can't figure out how to make the vegetarian option good when someone with a thick Boston accent asks if he can sit with us. He's a gangly, geeky-looking white guy with curly red hair and too many freckles; we give him the OK, and he slides down next to Manny, almost spilling his coffee. His name is Eamon, and he's a librarian. The conspiracy needs archivists too, he explains with a shrug, and he is apparently one of the best there is. By the end of lunch, Manny and Eamon are flirting shamelessly; I leave a little early, before I really start feeling like a third wheel.
Later in the day, after more orientations and meet & greets, I am taken to the office of the recruiter who originally found me. He compliments my research, and tells me why I could not be allowed to finish it—the closure is nice, but the flattery is frustrating. Then he offers me a choice: I can continue my old research, working with anomalies in the abstract; or I can join the containment research division, and actually work directly with things that defy the laws of nature. He stresses the danger of the second option, and my natural cowardice almost wins out. Forty thousand men and women every day… But curiosity beats cowardice, at least today. I'll hear about my first assignment within a week.
* * *
I am thirty-two, and I have been assigned to a new anomaly. I will be the head of the research team, on something that has barely been cataloged. I have staff now - my assistant, Dr. Watkins; a few junior researchers; and a handful of D-Class, just in case. We've been relocated to Unit 23, a small complex built around the anomaly for in-situ containment; the containment procedures are pretty serious, but all the countermeasures are in place, and it's time to begin testing its properties, so we can figure out exactly what we're dealing with.
It's the eve of the first test, and I'm in my office with Dr. Watkins, figuring out what we should start out with. He suggests some simple objects: a cube of iron, a glass bowl, a wooden ball. I'm writing all his ideas down when I hear nothing out of the ordinary. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. His late-night snack catches my eye, and I point it out. Organic matter, relatively simple, and if the anomaly is conceptual, rather than physical, it's got plenty of cultural associations for it to work with. Watkins agrees, and we add the apple to the list of experimental materials.
* * *
I am thirty-two (32) and I have 1 (one) hole in my head.
I do not know why I put it there. This little light of mine… It feels right, like something that I have been waiting to do my whole life. It does not hurt when I turn the power drill inwards, right through my forehead and into my skull. I'm gonna let it shine… It releases some pressure, allows something that was trapped inside to breathe a little.
When I align the hole in my head with the hole in the wall, and the pink light shines through, I can feel it change me. Let it shine… It pierces through my cerebellum and illuminates my pineal gland. My third eye is opened, and then overloaded, and then burnt out. Let it shine… And the light consumes me
and my mind is flung apart
and the viscera is reassembled
into a new perfect whole
a perfect hole
and i am not worrying about the body and i am not worrying about the body and i am not worreeng abot the bodee and ia m no tth ebo dy
Let it shine.
And I wake up in the Site-17 medical ward's memetic isolation chamber. There are no cameras, there are no microphones, and the only line of communication to the outside is a screen with a selection of pre-written requests. The Foundation believes I have been contaminated with something dangerous, that my mind contains ideas that cannot be allowed to spread. The last thing I can recall is the new assignment; I assume something went wrong, and they had to amnesticize me. I feel fine, beyond the lingering amnestic brain-fog. The screen says I've been out for two months - either they took away the whole span just to make sure, or it took them a while to notice something was wrong.
The screen has a selection of movies and books, curated so as not to have adverse memetic reactions with whatever they think is lurking in my mind; every input is carefully sanitized, so that I cannot actually transmit any ideas to the outside world. I am about to request some food when I hear a voice that I have never heard before and that I have heard all my life.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when in the course of human events the best of times and the worst of times of number four, Privet Drive…
I lunge for the button that would let the Foundation know that there is still something wrong, but I find myself unable to press it. A stitch in time saves NaN. My hand won't move. I close my eyes, and then realize that I never had any. I raise my hand to my forehead, and feel nothing but static. And then I fall back on my cot, as the memories of the hole crash through my mind one by one.
Hot Latitudes, Cool Attitudes > > > > >


The remote goes click; beyond glass, click goes the machine. The "record" function turns on, and strangely, the anomaly starts producing sound — not through the wired speakers, but directly from the cassette itself. This should be impossible, as it's just a plastic box full of magnetic tape.
"Impossible" has been excised from Researcher Penelope Gore's dictionary, because she works with the Foundation. "Illogical" is still useful, because "logic" is a human invention, a scientific process for defining consensus reality. Most other definitions have gotten much, much… fuzzier over the years.
She still hates electropop, though. That much has not changed.
"…not sure what it means, but this photo of us, it don't have a price…"
She doesn't know what this anomaly is designed to accomplish, or even whether it "accomplishes" anything. That's why she's here. The cassette (Provisional Item #4581) could be an anomalous item or an SCP, but that must be decided soon, because it's part of a list that just keeps getting longer. When they divvied up the week's assignments at Site-76, Gore volunteered for this one, because it seemed pretty straightforward.
She will come to regret this decision.
"Paparazzi" finally draws to a close. There is no reprieve. It rolls right into the next song, which seems familiar but Gore can't recognize it offhand, so she looks it up. Turns out it's Dennis Edwards, "Don't Look Any Further". She jots down a few notes ("Camera > Don't Look > ???"), then taps her chin with the pencil. Not a lot of data points so far but Penelope has a hunch about this anomaly's "personality", for lack of a better word.
It knows I'm watching… but if it's trying to intimidate me, it's the sleaziest threat I've ever heard. Meaning…
It's not a threat. It's a joke. The next track is Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and it starts playing so abruptly, it actually makes her laugh. Been a long time since I got rickrolled. Penelope starts writing this down, then reconsiders; her bosses would either consider it unprofessional, or not understand at all. Instead, she reports that it's "like a really tacky FM radio station", and moves on with the experiment.

In their long history, the SCP Foundation has studied a great many things and prepared an incredible range of people for extremely unique, often unprecedented work. As such, they have invested endless time and energy into developing effective curricula for all fields of professional education and cross-training (human and otherwise). They have, or are in immediate contact with, "top men" in every conceivable discipline… except one.
There is one skillset that they cannot train for, in part because they don't really understand what it is. It defies empirical and semantic analysis. To some, it is a "non-anomalous memetic subcultural complex", and to others, simply "a thing". Foundation staff (in lab coats, starched shirts, and some in very nice suits) have discussed it in passing; then in brief; then debated at length, only to discover that it makes no sense to them, at all. It is "a thing" that the "younger" staff seem to "get" occasionally, but not consistently enough for results, let alone return.
It is the skill, quality, subculture, discipline and/or trait of being "extremely online".
Like most of the world, the Foundation was unprepared for this. It's… weird and fluid and many people claim they hate it, except they're having fun, but not really? They sent a few AIs to plumb the depths of this digital ocean, and most have come back cranky and/or racist. (Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.) I/O-Series webcrawlers have had more success, but they're like whales feeding on krill. It's gradual. Actionable intel leaks out slowly and the world moves fast, extremely fast for the "extremely online", even the allegedly normal ones, because those weird abstract memes are here and gone in an instant, yet eternal, yet boring? It's… baffling.
This problem would be purely academic if not for one Group of Interest that has, thus far, remained one step ahead. Yes, they are small, and the Foundation has much bigger problems to deal with, but they are a known unknown and good golly they are annoying. They are absolutely "extremely online", whatever that is, and their leaders keep slipping the net. They leave messes in their wake, some of them very public, and cleanup efforts have been both costly and embarrassing. Despite their stated pacifism, this group's potential to disrupt the Veil and their resentment towards the social bedrock of normalcy makes them… well, still a relatively low priority, but a priority nonetheless.
GoI-5869. Known amongst themselves as "Gamers Against Weed".
They claim that "the name is ironic".
There have been many successful raids. Anomalous items have been confiscated and categorized. There have been apprehensions, interrogations and some long-term detentions. Ex-members and anomalous humanoids notwithstanding, the Foundation has completely failed to turn any major assets. All infiltration attempts have gone sour. Their social network is too dense. It's like trying to go undercover in a crime syndicate, except they're a bunch of incomprehensible young stoners with magic powers.
The Foundation has developed a new strategy. They're calling it Project CLOWNFISH. They will put together a small group of staff who score above a certain threshold on a custom test. This survey is weighted by three factors: case experience, age cohort, and a tricky little assessment of the subject's evasiveness when questioned about certain subjects.
The survey designer's idea hinges on the nebulous, performative modern definition of "irony": the idea that you "could be into something, but you're not, because it's super duper weird/esoteric/embarrassing and you don't like to own up to it in public, except the Internet is itself public, so yes you are into that thing, maybe even a lot." By their reckoning, shame is a necessary part of the equation, even if it's fake. In other words, the Foundation probably already has people who are "extremely online"; they just don't want to be professionally associated with that kind of "thing", let alone this kind of assignment. Casework pertaining to GoI-5869 often ends with getting dunked on at the office, your computer being haunted, or your entire body of work being overwritten with punk music! Nobody wants to be associated with that! In point of fact, the survey designer consulting on Project CLOWNFISH is themselves "extremely online", but absolutely does not risk volunteering for the actual assignment. They know better.
Unlike some people.

On a scale of 1 (very unfamiliar) to 5 (very familiar), how would you rate your understanding of the following:

…social media platforms?

…communities, subcultures, and/or fandoms?

…comedy routines, jokes and non-anomalous memes?

…cultural references and allusions?

…the work of novelist Stephen King?

This time, Penelope Gore sees it coming, sort of. She realizes the significance of the questionnaire just one moment too late. Penelope has a moment of incredible crystalline clarity and before she clicks SUBMIT, she realizes that she's actually on the cusp of volunteering for a very special assignment that she does not want.
Click!
"Oh… shit," she whispers. "Please… don't pick me."

The "lucky winners" of the CLOWNFISH "sweepstakes" will be assigned a specialized clearance, then cross-trained for memetic resistance, digital security countermeasures and other relevant skillsets. They will be given additional dedicated terminals separate from SCiPNet, and they will dedicate a percentage of their working time to surfing the same begotten corners of the Web as GoI-5869, building a plausible profile (the spies call it a "legend"), and using the Foundation's captured intel to worm a way in.
It's not a full-time job. Quite the opposite. Nobody will relocate. No field work, unless absolutely necessary. In fact, most people saddled with CLOWNFISH clearance will end up fulfilling their responsibilities on coffee breaks. (These people will fail, as they are not sufficiently online.)
There is one interesting candidate, referred to in project documentation as Codename "NEMO". Their results were borderline, but again, the selection is weighted: this person is young, they've contained an SCP adjacent to GoI-5869, and they even interrogated its creator. The case in question… did not go smoothly, per RAISA, but it was ultimately a win.
"NEMO" is asked (i.e., told) to join the team.

Have you ever tried to apply basic childhood lessons to the problems of an adult? Seems simple, typically doesn't work out. The older you get, the less those so-called "universal constants" seem to apply. The black-and-white contrast you saw as a kid, that doesn't exist, never did; start moving through the world and you recognize its depth. Values get filled in with shades of grey, and the further you move, the more you see. "Do unto others" is a solid start, philosophically, but some "others" will never respect you no matter how well you treat them, and some "others" will always respect you even when you treat them like garbage. Some might call this inconsistent, except… it's consistently challenging. Nothing is clear-cut. Nothing is easy. When I look back at the lessons of my childhood, they almost make me laugh, because they were almost completely wrong.
Example: Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion. Straightforward, right? "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." It's like the "do unto others" of elementary physics. When you push something, absolutely anything, it'll react proportionally. Right?
Well, no. Like many childhood lessons, this universal maxim works best on paper. It works in basic experiments and elementary textbooks and provides a building block for much larger conversations about more complicated topics, increasingly granular fields of physics, math and science. That initial nudge is affected by friction and drag and… many other factors. Regardless, after years of diligent study, you eventually look back at that first push, and you think… "well damn! That wasn't proportional at all, that was the first in a series of dominoes."
That's where I'm at right now. I'm at the end (?) of a long string(s?) of connected(?) variables. The dominoes are scattered around my feet. I see the result, and I see the initial push, but connecting beginning and end? Tracking the energy from Point A to Point B? From where I'm standing? Fat chance. In fact, there aren't enough dominoes! I feel like I've missed some really important steps but somehow ended up here anyway.
(I guess life really do be like that sometimes.)
My name is Penelope Gore. My friends call me "Pen". (Unfunny jerks call me "Tipper". Please don't.) One very special group knows me as "whistl_stahp".
I may not know how I got here, but I absolutely know how this whole mess kicked off, because I was there. In fact, I was the one who knocked over the first domino, not to mention the second and third.
This is the story of how I got to know steakshift.
I mean… PoI-6966. Wren Masterson.