Canon Hub » What a Wonderful World Hub / Those Twisted Pines Hub » Take It Away, My Darling » Diving in the San Diego Sea

Chapter I.IV

Girls.
If you were a boy who wasn't thinking about girls by freshman year of high school, you were going to by sophomore year, and if you weren't thinking about girls by sophomore year of high school, then there might have been a closet involved. At the very least you were aware that it was expected of you, and either played into it or tried to stay as far away from it as possible. I was very much in this latter group, back then. Tim, however, was not.
Tim was just as invested in the dating game as his peers. Or, so he thought, and so he let on. It was inevitable that the lunch talk, at least four of the five days of the week, led straight to a discussion about the whoever was the "hot topic" at the time, much to the dismay of the girls who sat with them.
This particular week, in junior year, it was Bobbie. She was this beautiful, blonde, big chested girl that had all the boys going primal. Deep within their baboon souls, deep within their ancient monkey brains, fireworks and airhorns were going off, telling them that she was by far the greatest, grandest, most important thing they had ever laid eyes on. Until, of course, next week, when it would be someone new. But monkey brain didn't think that far. Monkey brain was very in the now, and now was Bobbie.
In the grande scheme of things, Bobbie wasn't particularly special. She could be now, for all I know she's an architect who's sworn to celibacy. But back then, she was "girl of the week." The table talk was rambunctious, more than a little shallow, and highly hormonal. As was custom, each of the boys — except maybe Ricardo, who made it a habit to be mature for his age — talked about how they'd ask her out. Of course, none of them ever did. They were all pipe dreams and fantasies, the common excuse being those baseball analogies. "She's out of my league," they'd say. "No way I could even talk to her."
Tim, though, never had this excuse. Out of his friend group, it was no stretch to say Tim was the popular one. He was the one that got them invited to exclusive teen stuff, he was the one with all the connections, he was the "cool one" of his friend group. Sure, he couldn't be in the top league — there was a caste of untouchables in the school, and Tim wasn't quite that high. It could probably be chalked up to the fact that he actually cared about something.
In any case, Bobbie was a new girl, and new girls were not yet in the top league. Pointing this out, all the boys egged Tim on. "You gotta do it, man," they'd poke. "Now's your chance!"
The egging got even more enthusiastic, if a bit quieter, once they saw Bobbie walking, strutting, showing her stuff all the way from the courtyard to the cafeteria, where she was going to pass by their table. Eva and the rest of the girls were at this point, if they hadn't been already, rolling their eyes. One of them probably whispered, "boys will be boys."
But Tim did something he hadn't done before; he gave into the egging, and stood up. He didn't even wait for Bobbie to come close to the table. Maybe he didn't want the possibility of his friends overhearing, or interrupting, or otherwise sabotaging his chances. Either way, they saw him approach, begin to talk… then they saw her smile, and they saw her hand over a little piece of paper.
Tim came back, beaming, and the boys were all over it.
"I got her number," he said, and the crowd went wild.

* * * * *

So that weekend, Bobbie and Tim met at the beach, a prime date spot in San Diego. The sun was hot, the waves were cool, the beach was teeming with life. Human life, but life. Bobbie had kept asking for another beach — one a bit closer to where she lived, but Tim insisted on this one. She kept asking why, but he wouldn't budge. Said it was a "surprise." She finally gave in, and here they were.
Mission Beach. It was right next to a bunch of vacation homes, on its own little island.
The date was going rather swimmingly, excuse the pun. Bobbie and Tim didn't have much in common, sure, but small talk and flirting stood in for actual conversation rather well when the main reason for being there was physical attraction. She couldn't help but notice, though, that Tim was pretty eagerly checking the time on his watch. It was likely confusing from Bobbie's perspective. The mixed signals of impatience, but with active social engagement, left her in the dark. When she brought it up, though, Tim just smiled wider, and gave her a knowing look.
He tried to explain, as best he could, that in twenty minutes, a boat would be leaving to give a scuba dive tour. Bobbie didn't follow.
"Do you want to go scuba diving?" Bobbie admonished.
"Not quite," Tim replied. The whole time, Tim had slyly aimed their meandering towards the boat rental, and when they arrived, he laid his plan out clear. To go scuba diving, you needed a license. No such restriction with free diving! He had bought two snorkels and they were stored in the boat he had rented, which they could use to follow the scuba boat. The scuba divers would undoubtedly stop somewhere that was perfect for diving, so they would hop out close by and swim.
As he explained this, Tim's eyes couldn't have been wider, but Bobbie looked less than pleased. She curtly said that she wasn't going to go swimming; she was afraid of the water. As one might expect, Tim thought that was utter nonsense. They went to the beach, after all. What did she expect to be doing?
"Sunbathing," she replied.
She even teased that she might let him apply sunscreen to her. Now that was a tantalizing thought to teenage Tim. He wasn't a stranger to romantic encounters by this point — being the partier he was, he'd had his fair share of flings and month-long relationships. So maybe he thought, "I've been through this song and dance before." Maybe it wasn't so appealing, because he'd done it already.
But I think that, no matter what the circumstances, his priorities would have been roughly the same.

* * * * *

Tim clambered onto the tiny white boat, uncontrollably excited to go diving in the bay. Going out with a girl was a perfect excuse to spend money. "It's not all for me," he would have told himself. But deep down, he knew that he was going to be more into it than Bobbie was. He might not have expected to go alone, but oh well. He didn't mind it one bit.
As soon as he saw the signature blue and green of the scuba boat, he took off from docks and followed them from a distance. Once they had stopped and were jumping in the water, Tim fastened his snorkel, and dove for his first time ever.
When Tim told the story, right about here was where he got extra special giddy about being beneath the waves and looking out at all the fish. I don't think there are that many fish, sitting right there just off the coast, but the way Tim told it, the sea was bursting with life.
Maybe it was, to someone who'd only ever been in the city.
But that isn't to say that there isn't some natural, captivating beauty to the massive expanse of blue that suddenly surrounded Tim.
Through the hazy ocean he could make out craggy rocks below, with fish swimming in and out of the cracks and holes that had been punched into them either by erosion or microorganisms. Tim wasn't exactly sure, he only knew that the circular tunnels in the rocks looked unnatural, and he mentally pinned that as a point of interest next time he went to the library.
Above him was a shimmering mirror. It was impossible to see through the surface of the water, but those patterns, the waves, as seen from below, were mesmerizing, enticing, striking. Like a liquid glass barrier between the sea and the surface.
Back towards the beach, he could sometimes make out the rippling and underbelly that marked boats, and more frequently he could see the kicking of someone's legs, or the bright plastic of a float. Turning out towards the ocean, he saw…
Blue. And only blue. After the few floating fronds of seaweed passed out of view, all there was to see was the impenetrable azure of the unknown. To some, it's terrifying. Hell, to Tim, it was terrifying. But even more than the sparse life below, it demanded his attention. Tuning out the rest of the world, Tim just stared on, into the hypnotic darkness. It told of an entire unexplored world. Somewhere beyond San Diego. Just a boat drive away, Tim could be apart from civilization, the great wet wild from horizon to horizon.
But Tim didn't get to experience the sight for long.
In a strangely endearing way, we have a good gauge for just how exciting the scene must have been for him. His first real time feeling outside of the city, surrounded by nature. He began to feel palpitations, his heartrate rising in intensity.
The last thing he remembered were sea turtles, suddenly coming into view, and swimming towards him.
But that's when he fainted.

* * * * *

No one knows exactly how much time had passed before Edna got the call that her son was in the hospital, but when she did, she just about ran out of a cat surgery at her clinic. For reasons that must have been solely kept in memories since forgotten, Elliot never made it to the hospital room, but the grapevine took the information to several of Tim's friends. Firstly, being the pragmatist that she was, Edna immediately called the school to inform them that Tim was going to be on an indefinite leave of absence, explaining that he was likely to stay in the hospital. Blake's mom worked in the office and overheard, which led to Blake finding out shortly thereafter, and following that, everyone that would want to know, knew.
Edna barely registered that Ricardo and Pablo were already in the hospital lobby as she rushed to see her son. A nurse led her to where he was lying, unconscious, breathing irregularly. The nurses explained that he had been taken by ambulance from Mission Beach, where he had been near some divers. No one knew how long he was out before they noticed him limply floating there, snorkel just barely above the water, out into the deep blue sea. As soon as they could, they had pulled him on board, made it back to the shore, and called 911. There was even one of the diving instructors staying in the lobby, hoping that the young boy made a swift recovery.
The good news is that he hadn't inhaled any water. The bad news is that they didn't know what was going on. Edna asked what they'd done. They said that they brought him into the ER, done a CT scan, an EEG, and they didn't find a thing. Edna wasn't taking that as a good thing. There were a few reasons why.
First and foremost, he was still out. People didn't usually faint for this long. But before Edna could complain, Tim started muttering, and moving to sit up. After some confusion, Tim had been filled in, and he was skeptical, but his protests were drowned out as Edna and the nurse went back into conversation.
Tim didn't pay much attention, but a couple times Edna had turned to him to ask him a question. Something about his performance in PE at school, something about his breathing, and that's all he heard. Lastly, Edna placed a hand on Tim's chest all of a sudden.
"What's this about, Mom?" Tim asked. "I just fainted in the middle of the ocean on a diving trip you didn't even know I was going on, what's the big deal?"
Maybe he didn't say it quite like that.
But Edna explained to him that her family had a history of heart problems — specifically tumors. She'd been holding out hope he didn't get any of it, but in the wake of this event, she couldn't put it off. They were in the hospital, and he was going to get an ultrasound.
Tim of course thought this was ridiculous. He was fine, his breathing was back to normal, he was sure this was a one time thing. Even as the ultrasound machine was being wheeled in, Tim had this bemused smile, like he couldn't believe they were really wasting their time on this.
But the mood was different in the lobby.
Blake, Ricardo, Pablo, and Eva had all made the commute to sit and worry together. Pablo was doing his homework, but Ricardo, Blake, and Eva were too eaten up to do anything but sit. Ricardo's brow was furrowed, Blake's shirt was buttoned wrong, and Eva tapped her cleats on the floor at a humming speed. Ricardo was hoping that whatever it was, it wasn't Tim's fault.
The conversation had been brief, and they'd tried to keep the tone light. It wasn't a fun feeling to have a good friend in the hospital. It was less fun to not know what the problem was. It was worse still that it was Tim. With the exception of Blake, Tim was the glue for the table group. When he wasn't at school, some of them even hung out elsewhere on campus. He was the socialite that made everyone come together. Blake was terribly aware of how much his circle would close if Tim were out of the picture.
Eva had just begun to pace when Tim was wheeled out. The response was so immediate that they didn't have time to process the big, dumb smile that Tim had on his face before he was berated with questions about his health. He told them, after some protest and "it's nothing"s, that he had heart problems.
The spirits died then and there.
But Tim went on. He had cardiac myxoma — a benign tumor, in his heart. It put certain things into perspective. Tim knew, of himself, that he wasn't very athletic. He had put on just a little weight because exercise made him tired and light headed much, much faster than his peers. He knew that when he was walking with his friends, he tended to slow them down. But for Tim, it was only an "oh" moment. Not quite the reaction the doctors had expected from him; they had recommended he have surgery, but they didn't get Tim to budge.
"Benign?" he had asked them.
"Benign," they'd confirmed.
"So, it won't kill me?" he tried.
"It greatly increases your risk of heart failure, later in life," they told him.
"But it won't grow?"
"No."
And that's all he had to hear. He knew the surgery would be expensive, that his parents weren't rolling in it. He figured that he would have the surgery, later in life, if ever he needed it. Once it was his own money, and not his parents'. There were concerns, of course, but Tim's weren't among them.
Trying to raise his voice above the questions, trying to interject inbetween the relief and the worry, Tim was sincerely annoyed that no one seemed to want to hear about his diving trip. Every time he brought it up, they were more concerned about the fact that he fainted than what he saw. The diving instructor was relieved he was okay, Eva seemed more invested than Tim had really expected, Blake couldn't stop nervously blabbing, and Pablo had given him a small hug. The only one who seemed to be silent was Ricardo. In fact, Tim thought he looked a little angry.
He finally gave in, and started answering their questions. Questions about how life threatening it was, questions about what he was planning to do about it. Questions, questions, questions. At that point, Tim just wanted to be home. His friends weren't being as supportive as he had hoped they would.
Soon enough, the state of his heart had all but left his mind, and all that remained was the joy of having been underwater. For months to come, turtles had replaced caterpillars, and his journals were filled with fantasies of being a sailor. Over the coming days, he took some time off from school. He had a lot of visits and calls from friends and family, asking all sorts of questions, but all they got in response were smiles and dismissals. Tim was more disappointed in the fact that no one was asking him about the dive. They were all stuck on this "small stuff", like his wellbeing, and his heart. They thought he was having a rough go of it.
They couldn't have been more wrong.

« Blake Tillerson | Stories My Dad Told Me | The Beginnings of Love »


The universe can be an empty place.
For millions of years, I've been drifting in space as nothing but an assortment of nebulae enlightening the void. I've come to realize this place as home as life goes on.
My time here has felt so short, and yet, it feels like it lasts forever. Every so often, I feel fragments of myself drifting away as the frigid, solar winds push me into the darkness. I shouldn't worry, my consciousness will live on, but this form won't.
However, I've experienced many things in this form. I've seen unusual objects that others haven't: a collective of small raptors, a floating lobster, and even a bull god. They're unable to communicate correctly, but they managed to give me a word that defined who I am.
Oria.
It's an interesting name. My collective consciousness says it means "the keeper of light" and it means that in a literal sense.
My father had a similar name, his being Orion. From one of his stars, he gave birth to me as his successor. He told me he once was a hunter and was placed here. After my mother's physical form decayed, he predicted that she would be here, although it seems like that isn't the case.
I'm very unsure about my father's whereabouts and I have little hope that my mother is out there. I'm assuming the last pieces of him are drifting about since he hasn't come back. All that's left in his place is me and the stars as I think silently.
My father once said to me that time is relative. Everything experiences time, but the effects differ with every sentient being. Time is an eternity to me. I'll live as long as the universe and see it fade away, but I hope to experience something new in the future.
Till then, I sit in the darkness, waiting and hoping for my parents to return.

…ping…
I hear something from the darkness: a soft beating. It sounds like a newborn star, which isn't new. So, I sit and wait again.

…ping…
The sound echoes again, but it doesn't sound the same. There's a uniqueness to it.

Have I heard this sound before?

…ping…
It comes back once more, but I feel it throughout my body like a pulse. I'm curious.

…ping…ping…
It keeps repeating itself, like a heartbeat. It begins to get faster over time.

…ping, ping, ping…
It pulsates a strong force like it's pulling me. It's not a star, so, could it be my father? I follow the beating as I drift across the tenebrous expanse.
…ping, ping, ping, ping, ping…
It gradually becomes louder and louder as I soar past gas giants and traveling comets.
I can feel myself slipping away as my speed increases. I become more worried as I fear I won't reach them, but then…

It stops.
I come to a sudden halt as I examine my surroundings. I take some time to recompose and relax before I realize where I am.
Eight planets, a dwarf planet, an asteroid belt, and a sun.
I remember father telling stories about these things. My hopes ran higher as I moved around and watched the planets rotate. He could be here, I thought to myself. I listen closely.

…PING.
I stare down as I find out where it came from. A fascinating location for it to originate.
He called this planet "Earth", the place where his old body withered away.
My hopes to find my parents got sucked away. A trick, I thought, I'm such an idiot. Then, I had an idea: if he couldn't find my mother, then something from this planet can help me find both of them.
And so, I removed a fragment of myself and sent it to Earth. I left the system as I transferred my consciousness into the fragment, taking on a new form I didn't expect.
A human.

« Oria | The Stars and I »


“Dad, Dad, we want to play the freeze game!”
Simon smiled, blue eyes wrinkling at the corners. “Again, Rachel?”
Rachel nodded. She stood in the doorway of his office, eyes wide and hopeful. He looked over his shoulder at her and gave an exaggerated sigh. The blue overalls she'd just changed into were somehow already speckled with brown mud.
“Well, alright,” he said, with mock reluctance. He put his computer to sleep and rose from his chair. “I'll get the mask and meet you in the backyard in three minutes. Better hurry!”
With a squeal of delight, Rachel dashed off.
A few minutes later Simon was walking out the back door, wearing the mask that went with this game. It was cement grey, covered in black and red blotches, with two green circles around the eyes. The mask was hot, and the narrow eye holes made it hard to see, but the game wouldn't be half as effective without it.
Outside his three children were standing on the back stoop. Alex, the oldest, was smiling, but he was tense and ready, like an arrow waiting to be released. Luke was studying a bug on the ground but gave his dad a quick smile. Luke liked the game the least, but was always up for whatever his siblings were doing. Rachel was still bouncing with excitement, but was staring out at the sprawling patch of woods in front of them with a remarkably unchildlike look of calculation. Simon found that the most gratifying.
He adjusted the mask so that he could see a little more clearly. “Alright! Close your eyes while I hide!”
Rachel, Luke, and Alex all dutifully squinched their eyes closed. It only took a few seconds for Luke to poke Alex, and the two boys began to go at it until Rachel shushed them. Simon chuckled and jogged away.
Past the patch of grass that served as the backyard proper was something approximating a forest. A patchwork of trees blocked most of the light and kept the ground perpetually covered in brown leaves. A small stream with a bank deep enough for a person to hide in wove its way across the property. Old, stubborn bushes snatched up whatever light was left over for the trees. Simon contemplated hiding in one, but angled towards the riverbank. Hiding in thorn bushes was always an effective surprise, but he rarely enjoyed it. Instead he jumped into the riverbank, crouched under a cluster of overhanging roots, and yelled, “Ready!”
Far above him the children started moving forward. They were attempting to walk in a triangle. Luke faced backwards, stumbling a bit as he went, while Rachel and Alex each kept their vision angled to the sides. It was by no means a perfect formation; every few seconds someone would trip and they would disperse, dissolving into nervous laughter before reforming their triangle. Simon waited, watching from behind a dense bush that clung to the edge of the bank.
When the three giggling children reached the edge of the riverbank, Simon began to climb out, keeping the bush between them. On the other side of the bush, Alex and Rachel clambered down the steep muddy bank, keeping careful watch to either side. By the time they splashed brown water, Simon had climbed the six foot bank and was creeping around the bush. The two children in the river were too short to see over the bank, and the second Luke turned to check his footing Simon lunged at him, bursting out of the bush and tagging Luke before the child realized he was there. Luke let out a wail of delighted despair and let himself slide down the bank, coming to a stop with his eyes closed and his tongue out.
Rachel and Luke spun, fixing on their father. Simon made himself go absolutely still.
“Blinking!” Rachel said. Her voice was high and nervous, but she was smiling as she blinked. A second later Alex mirrored her, also blinking.
“Walking!” Rachel said, and began to stumble backwards, sloshing through the creek, never taking her eyes off her father. She fell once, landing in the stream but got up again.
“I think we're gonna win,” Alex said, smug.
By now Luke had gotten bored of playing dead and climbed to his feet, and was scrambling up the bank to stand next to his Dad. “Not uh! We never win with just two!”
Alternating their movements backwards and carefully timing their blinks, the two remaining children moved until their backs were to the edge of the muddy slope. “Climbing!” Alex said, and turned and began to climb.
Simon watched his daughter's face, studying it intently. Her eyes never wavered, but her nose wrinkled for a second, and Simon tensed. The second his daughter sneezed, he pushed off, covering the two feet to the edge of the stream bed. Rachel's eyes snapped back open and she squealed. Simon smiled behind his mask. He could still move unnaturally fast, despite his age. Good to see not all of his training had been subsumed by his transition to being an egghead.
“Done!” Alex yelled, turning to face his father. Rachel clambered up afterwards while Alex held his eyelids open with his fingers. Simon had to stifle a laugh.
Once she was up, the two began backing up in sync, still facing their Dad and never blinking at the same time.
They were halfway to the small shed that represented safety when their careful strategy fell apart. As they backed up, Rachel tripped on an old, rotting log in her path. She let out a small yelp of surprise, grabbing her brother's arm to steady herself, and fell over backwards.
Simon started moving before either of them hit the ground, leaping almost ten feet across the small stream and flinging himself up the bank. As the two children struggled madly to right themselves, he ducked soundlessly into one of the bushes. By the time the children were upright, they had lost track of him, and both were looking the wrong way when Simon flopped out of the bush, tagging both of them.
They squealed in shock and outrage and tumbled to the ground. Simon sat down heavily and pulled off the mask. The warm summer air felt cool on his face and he blinked in the cheery sunlight. Beside him, his two children pantomimed dramatic deaths next to him, finally falling motionless on either side of him.
Then Rachel's eyes shot open and she grinned at him. “Again, again! This time we'll win!”

“How do you think of these things?” Mary's arms circled Simon from behind, chin tilting up to nuzzle his neck. Simon reached down to take her hands in his and let his body relax against her. She was warm from the sunlight and still smelled of the outdoors.
They stood on the deck, looking down into the backyard, completely transformed from its normal wildness. Instead of the usual bushes and overgrown grass, a series of plywood walls stood forming an interlocking series of rooms large separated by crude doors. From their vantage point they could just see their children working diligently in one of the furthest rooms. The room had a number of lamps in it, and Rachel and Alex were manipulating them at Luke's direction. The door to the room was padlocked, and a small silver key hung on a peg next to it.
“Just things I come up with,” he murmured, watching his three children working together, dividing up tasks with the ease of a decade of teamwork. He was constantly amazed at their ability to tackle problems with nearly no communication, each knowing their role. He pursed his lips. Maybe next time he'd find a way to make them each solve the sorts of puzzles they were weakest at.
His wife brought him back to himself. “Well, the kids love it. Luke told me that his friends were begging their parents for an escape room for their birthdays. What are they doing now?” His wife asked from her perch on his shoulder.
“Before they can move on to the next room, they have to arrange it so no shadows fall in a certain spot. It's quite hard. It took me nearly an-” He sighed as Alex whooped and grabbed the key from where it hung on a peg and jammed it into the lock. “-hour,” Simon finished dryly, looking at the timer on the deck. The children had been in the maze for 29 minutes. He was going to have to start making these harder.
Alex unlocked the door while the other two stood back. Very slowly, he peered around it, limiting his vision then yelled, jerking his head back.
Mary squinted. “What's that on the wall? Is that the symbol from the other game you guys play?”
Simon nodded, pleased. “The rule is if you see the entire symbol, you're out.” The three children, hands over their eyes, trooped into the room, using careful, limited glances to verify that every wall had the symbol painted on it. “They'll have to locate the key without being able to see.”
Mary turned him around, facing him away from the kids and met his eyes. The sunlight made her face glow and her eyes light up as she looked at him. “I swear, the amount of time you put into these things.” She paused. “The three of them seem like they can do anything. I've seen some of the neighborhood kids. They fight and bicker amongst themselves. They have trouble even making the smallest decisions. Our children, well, I don't know how to say it. They're more mature. They work together. Have you seen them play sports? No one will let all three of them on the same team. Doesn't even matter what the game is.”
She gave him a smile and a long kiss. He closed his eyes and pulled her to him. Here in the quiet house things seemed to stand still, warm and full of sunshine. Then she pulled away. “It gives me hope. That they'll stay a family, even after they grow up and move away.”
He smiled. “When they leave their old and decrepit parents behind?”
She swatted him. “You'll be decrepit. I plan on being young forever.”
Below him there was another celebratory cry and unmistakable click of a padlock.

“Look, Dad, I just don't want to do this anymore.”
Simon frowned. They sat in the living room, Luke perched on the couch, his father sitting in an easy chair angled across from him. The room was sparsely decorated, but the furniture was rich, solid oak, old and well taken care of. A grandfather clock slowly ticked away on the wall.
“Luke, we had a deal.” He said, keeping his voice even.
“Yeah, I know Dad,” Luke shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “I don't care about the deal anymore. I don't enjoy it. You can take away my allowance or not let me go to parties or whatever, it just freaks me out, you know? I don't get why this is so important to you.”
Simon studied his son. It was hard to believe how fast he was growing. He was nearly as tall as Simon was. His sandy hair was short and spiked in a way Simon found unbearable, but that seemed to be the fate of all parents, someway or another. He had his mother's bright blue eyes and he met his father's gaze fearlessly, at odds with his uncertain tone.
Simon started to demand, to order his son to suck it up and go back to the shooting range with his siblings, when something stopped him. Alex had taken to it well enough, and Rachel was already winning state marksmanship competitions. But Luke…Luke had always hated it. Simon let out a breath, the words dying on his tongue.
The little games they used to play had fallen away over the years, and it had taken more and more work to corral them into doing the things they used to enjoy. Meditation, escape rooms, games of tag, memorization. All of them were gone now, slowly trampled down by the inevitable march into adolescence. Shooting had been the last thing he could get all three of them to do together, and even that had cost him dearly in a combination of bribes and threats.
Simon suddenly felt very old, and very tired. He looked up again, and saw Luke looking at him expectantly. There was some fear there, and a sort of proud, defiant courage. Even defeated that courage made him want to smile, at least a little.
“Of course. Don't worry about it. Rachel and Alex can quit too if they want.” The words hurt to say, but less than he thought. He felt the familiar flicker of anxiety at the idea of his children, out in the world and defenseless. There was always a chance things would work out, that all of this was for nothing. That the world they lived in would stay safe and comfortable. There might never be another containment breach.
But he had never been very good at self deception.

The screams hit them like a wall of sound.
Seconds earlier everything had been normal. Alex had just thrown a jalapeno from his Chipotle at Rachel; she had caught it in her mouth, turning slightly red as the juice hit her tongue. Then the other end of the mall erupted with fear.
Before anyone else in the food court reacted, the three were on their feet staring in the direction of the sounds. At the edge of the food court was an overlook, a giant hole in the mall floor looking down onto the patrons below, and past that the mall turned ninety degrees. The screams were echoing around the bend.
Then the other patrons began to react, adding their own confusion and alarm to the cacophony.
“Shooter?” Alex asked. He and Rachel both had their weapons out, for once grateful for their dad's insane rule that they always carry them. Rachel nodded and kicked over the table, crouching behind it and drawing a bead around the bend. Luke was already moving backwards towards cover, unarmed as he was. Alex knew what his job was. He took a deep breath and started forward, gun raised.
This was just like the drills, he told himself. Just like all the active shooter training they had done. His pulse was pounding in his ears, but his hands were steady. Up until he made it to the other side of the railing surrounded overlook and could look around the corner. Then they started to tremble violently.
The hallway between the shops was littered with bleeding and broken bodies. There were dozens of them, rent and covered in gashes. The whole hallway seemed like it was painted a dull, oozing red. In the middle of the corridor, an olive skinned man shot forward and slit a woman's throat as she screamed. He wore black, flowing robes, and Alex could barely make out tattoos covering his skin. The woman was almost halfway to the ground when the man threw himself forward, effortlessly catching another fleeing patron and stabbing him in the back. Christ the man was fast. Alex didn't know it was possible to move so fast. Even his dad, who could move uncannily quickly, couldn't have done that.
Then fear drove all of that away and Alex opened fired, emptying the entire magazine into the Middle Eastern man. He was a hundred feet away and moving fast, but Alex could see the man's body recoil slightly as at least some of the bullets slammed into his chest and shoulders. The killer barely even stuttered at the impact, and grey eyes snapped up to lock onto Alex's. He looked…excited. Like he was happy to see Alex. Then the blood soaked figure started sprinting directly towards him. Alex's gun clicked on empty, and he turned to run.
“Rachel, body armor, move right,” Luke shouted desperately as Alex scrambled back from the railing. Alex had never heard his brother sound more scared. He glanced over his shoulder to where Rachel was running, face completely white, trying to line up on the man. A second later, the robed man was in view, moving almost too fast to see. Right before he hit the railing he took a flying leap, sailing out over the gap. And Rachel's high caliber glock started pounding.
Rachel clenched her teeth, trying not to wince as her gun roared. I did not do all that stupid practice for nothing, she thought. She was going to deal with this. It didn't matter that the man was somehow sailing across a forty foot gap in the mall's floor; her entire world had narrowed down to his head as she began to pull the trigger. The first two shots missed completely as the man sailed past, but she adjusted. The third shot blew his jaw off in mid-air, flinging it away. She could hear Alex's gun firing again in the distance, but ignored it. The robed man landed and Rachel's fourth shot hit him in the side of the head, snapping it to one side. Then he straightened and a dark blade materialized in his hand as he leapt for Alex.
Rachel didn't wonder about how he was still on his feet. She snapped off another shot, then another, both smashing into the man's skull. One of Alex's bullets took him in the eye even as his knife plunged into Alex's forearm near the elbow and ripped all the way down to his hand. Rachel fired again, and this time part of the man's skull exploded, bone and brain spraying. Very slowly, he turned his head towards her. His remaining grey eye met hers, and he nodded with what looked like approval. Then he collapsed to the ground.
All at once, the world came rushing back to her. There was a ringing in her ears, but her brother's screams cut through it, high and thin. Luke was already sprinting towards Alex, ripping off his belt as he went. Luke had been terrified, shaking behind his pillar, but now there were no thoughts. All of this was reflex. Someone was in danger. He had never been a fighter, but first aid? That he could do. He was at his brother's side in a few seconds and slapped the belt around Alex's ruined arm.
Rachel shook her head. She was on her knees now, and a distant part of her mind registered that she was throwing up. Everything was too white, too bright. Then there was another sound, a buzzing in her pocket. Automatically she reached down and picked up her phone. Her phone. She should call the cops. An ambulance?
“Hello?” Her voice sounded hollow.
“Rachel. Are your siblings there?” Something was different about her dad's voice. A few feet away Luke glanced over at her as he worked on Alex. Mercifully Alex had passed out now.
“Yes,” she told her father. “Something-something terrible has happened.”
“Is everyone alive? Where are you? Put me on speaker.”
The mall was eerily quiet now, everyone having fled, or…something. Her dad's voice sounded small in the silence. She hit the button. “We're alive. We're at the mall.”
“Fuck. That's the closest possible—okay, listen. I don't have much time.” There was something chattering in the background of the call. More gunfire? Rachel's hand was shaking. “Get to the car as fast as you can. There's a trunk in the back under the tarp with weapons and medical supplies. The code for the trunk is 9007.” There was a high pitched squeal, then her father was back. “Get on 70 West and start driving. Don't stop for anything.” She heard a scream in the background, and more gunfire. “Do you hear me? Don't stop until the car is out of gas, and then you keep driving. When Mom's back from her trip, she'll find you.”
“Dad,” Luke shuffled towards the phone, still on his knees. “What's happening?”
“I love you,” he said, and the call ended. Rachel stared down at the phone. Luke did too, then his gaze snapped up.
“You heard him,” he told Rachel. With an effort he shrugged Alex over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. “Let's move.”
Luke started jogging towards the exit, moving as fast as he could with the load. He didn't want to look behind him at Rachel's vacant, shattered expression. He didn't want to think about the corpses, or the fact that their assilant's body had melted away in front of them. They had practiced this too; putting things out of their mind in order to act. Fuck. Had their dad known? Known this would happen? Had all of that weirdness been for a reason? Put it out of your mind, he told himself. Can't think about it. Have to get to the—
There was a statue.
He was in the stairwell, Rachel behind him, and at the bottom was a statue, a beige cylinder with an oblong head maybe five feet tall and short stubby arms. He frowned and blinked, and suddenly it was on the landing. It had…it had a strange red and black pattern around its face. And green eyes.
“Do you see this?” Luke asked. He was trembling again. He had thought he had run out of fear.
“Yeah,” Rachel said in that strange, detached voice. “I see it.”
“Walking,” Luke said, moving as carefully as he could down the stairs, keeping his eyes on the statue.
“Blinking,” he heard from behind him, and he kept his eyes open. There was a horrifying nostalgia to it. Blood ran down one of his arms from Alex.
“Walking,” Rachel said, moving down the stairs. The statue stood inert in the center of the landing.
“We don't know it's dangerous,” he said. His voice was higher than he was used to.
“Of course it's dangerous,” Rachel said, voice soft. “We can do this. We've done this a hundred times. I'll watch it, you go.”
Trying not to look away, Luke edged around it. The thing's arms were only a foot away from him, but it stayed still. Seconds later he was at the bottom of the stairs, watching it as Rachel navigated around it. When she reached him, the two backed out of the stairwell, eyes still on it. Once they were out, Luke slammed the door closed, still peering through the window. They kept their eyes on the mall door until they had backed out into the parking lot towards where they had parked their car. Nothing moved.
At the car, Luke unceremoniously dumped Alex in the back seat while Rachel watched the mall entrance. Once Alex was in, Luke circled around to the back of the car. The corner of the trunk had always been filled with old junk, tool boxes and the like. He located the ragged green tarp, ripped it away to reveal a battered silver case the size of a small instrument. He hauled it out of the trunk and tossed it into the back seat, following it clumsily. Luke barely had time to steady himself as Rachel threw herself into the driver's seat and the car peeled out of the parking lot.
They didn't speak as Luke flipped open the case. It was organized into compartments, like it had been custom made to hold these contents. There were four guns, one of the kind each child favored, and a duplicate of Rachel's. A box of what looked like ammo. A small bottle that held three pills and was labeled “Cures anything; use sparingly.” Several thick bundles of hundred dollar bills. A first aid kit. A phone with a sticky note taped to it with the words “Read me first” printed in his father's neat, precise handwriting. A number of sealed packages, each with a neat handwritten label. And a stack of manilla envelopes with a symbol printed on each one, a circle with three arrows pointed inwards. Each folder had the letters “SCP” stamped on the front, followed by a four digit number.
“What's in there?” Rachel asked, voice still flat and hollow. They were on the highway now, and she was weaving in and out of traffic, going almost 90.
“It's like a spy kit from a TV show.” Luke grabbed one of the guns, checked the magazine, and slipped the holster around his waist. He met Rachel's eyes in the rearview mirror. “As insane as this is,” Alex's voice was harsh, strange even to his own ears, “Our childhood is starting to make a lot more fucking sense.”


I don't care much for my given last name. Call them the Heart family.
People say family is forever, the people you can always go back to.
Though, I highly doubt it's true for us Hearts. We are a highly proud, bitter clan. If we weren't so hot-headed and stubborn we would probably be closer.
Did you know that legally no more than 1 Heart is allowed on an international flight?
That says something.
Water's thick, but blood is thicker. Right?
Well, we Hearts know how thick blood is, but we generally don't choose to embrace that in a familial sense.
Like last Heart family reunion, my cousins showed up blackout drunk, my aunts started a fist fight over some dumb argument they've been having for over 30 years, and my dad brought a bomb. A little funny how normal that is.
Actually, I had left early since I didn't care much for the bull shit they insisted on pulling every time we have one.
Normally calling my mother a whore, or telling me I'm a mistake. They would constantly try to one-up me, unknowing that even without the commissions I pull in from writing music, I'm probably making more than them. God knows I'm more successful than any of them have and will ever be.
A really sad part is that of my brother. He disowned the family, and he isn't a Heart anymore, and he doesn't talk to us…
Probably better that way.
I often wonder what he's up to nowadays, where he went, and how he's doing.
Does he have a wife? Kids? A successful career? Is he happy? Is he dealing with health issues?
Is he still alive?
Jackson and I were close when we were younger, and we would share everything. Then, suddenly he just disappeared. Changed his name, and left me. We were like twins, inseparable and even looking and dressing alike.
Before he cut ties, he had told me “This family is too much for me. If you won't follow me and stop feeding into them, then I can't be related to you.”
Sometimes when I think about it, I cry. It hurt me when he turned his back on me like that. Jackson was always a proud and strong younger brother, but I hadn't expected him to be so bitter.
I kind of wonder what made him leave. Was it my dad when he started doing cocaine, or was it my mom, when she started disappearing more and more?
We later figured out she was having an affair and they still haven't divorced. I don't think she was ever happy with Dad, but she could have broken it off with him before then.
When we were younger, our parents would be in and out, sometimes we were left alone for a while. I still don't know what they were doing, though, I should have known more, being the older sibling and all.
I digress.
My grandpa used to own a farm. Our parents would leave us there some times. See, he had pictures on the wall. My dad was one of 7 siblings, 4 boys 3 girls. Most of them are dead now. Either caught up in gangs, drugs, or alcohol. What do you expect?
Actually, most of my family has been on probation or in prison.
Most of them own guns, rocket launchers, or grenades. Heavy weaponry they're not even allowed to own. How they got their hands on them is beyond me.
The one aunt who wasn't constantly berating me or my mother led me to my love of music. She owned a piano, and I would love to play stuff on it. She soon paid a private lesson teacher to teach me. Then I picked up the oboe and it was my life. She supported me.
Auntie Robbin was always my favorite. Then she died of a heart attack.
Rest in Peace Auntie.
Sometimes I'm glad I go by Dr.Heart now. My family name isn't anything to be proud of. The shit related to it isn't funny. All they do is fight and illegal shit. We're crumbling slowly. My cousin's kids are trying to leave the family.
Do they not see what their parents, grandparents, or brothers and sisters are doing?
I try not to associate with them. Yet it always gets me when someone comes to me for money, or being in need of help. I always help them even though I know it's wrong. Most of them do drugs or whatever else, and I know if I keep helping them it only makes things worse. I know that if I give them money, they'll turn around and spend it on crap.
It's a horrible reality…
Family weak spots, what can I say?
It's kinda funny. I have all of this shit blood related to me, yet I'm not as fucked up as that.
The worst thing I do is drink. I mean, I'm entangled in the Foundation, but it gives me a purpose to live and exist past music.
It's like making a new family…
What's really funny is that I didn't choose the name Dr.Heart when it came to me.
Nowadays I need not worry about blood being thicker.
I have a new family that actually cares about me, and is willing to help me or go drinking.
They're my new brothers and sisters here at the Foundation. Truth be told, I prefer our new family, no matter how weird or funny we are.
It beats constantly being put down and made to feel like I'm nothing or being forced to bail them out of jail. Things at the Foundation are calmer, like the family I wish I had when I was growing up.
I even feel a kinship to the human and humanoid skips we keep here. None of them are crazy as a single one of the Hearts.
If I'm being honest, I'm pretty sure the Hearts are the real SCPs. I mean, they can't even have a civil conversation without exploding things or doing drugs.
Maybe they need a wake-up call…
The shit they do has carried them this far. I'm very surprised the Hearts still exist.
I don't love my family anymore. I don't enjoy being in their presence.
Yet, I miss Jackson so much. I wish I could find him again.
It's all a part of being in one of THOSE families…
~ Dr.Heart


Fear…
We, at the Foundation, do hold some of the most horrible, horrifying things in the universe.
Yet.
I still wonder.
What is fear?
What are we afraid of?
Sometimes when you ask others they tell you something dumb or you might not listen, you know? Like Dr. Cimmerian would say some arbitrary crap about living or whatever. Really he would just be afraid of losing his alcohol, though, I can't blame him. Then if you would ask Bright he would say something about the excruciating pain he feels when he gets killed, and never wanting to feel that again. Rights would probably go on about not having sex or human contact. Clef would probably talk about being the devil and lying.
Then sometimes I wonder what I'm afraid of…
Because I'm not afraid of the doctors or the anomalies around me. I'm not afraid of the shit we keep in containment.
No, I don't need to be afraid of them.
I'm afraid of immortality; I'm afraid of an end of death scenario, yet I know that I will, through my music live on forever. Well, that's an overstatement on me.
I am not meant to live forever, and that would go against everything I know. Sure watching the universe end might seem nice, but that's not for my eyes to see.
Don't take this the wrong way, I don't wanna die, well, now. I have come to terms with the fact that I am a mortal being, I knew that since before I joined the Foundation. I had come to terms with it when I was very young.
Too young.
I never dared to question where or how I would die, only when I would die. It was always a given.
I feel bad for him, Bright I mean. Because he will live forever. He has to watch everybody that he loves die. Everybody that he pretends not to care about, he is made to watch them all die. He has to experience the end of the universe. He is forced to watch every single star in the sky slowly fade out, or explode right in the middle of the night.
I don't envy that. I don't want that. I don't wanna watch the universe end, or watch my friends and family die before my eyes. I don't want people to suffer if it is an end of death scenario. I don't want to watch as people get older and older and then never die.
Death is the prize we win for living. which I know it's wrong to say that, but it's the truth of us, especially at the Foundation.
I am genuinely afraid of watching things and living when I am not supposed to be there. It's not like if I'm supposed to be alive, or eavesdropping. I know I am not an immortal being, I was never meant to be. I die when it's my time to die and the world goes on.
It doesn't just stop.
See in Bright's case he has come to terms with it. He knows he is immortal, and he knows he's the one true constant. He has to live with the unkillable or immortal skips that we keep, it is for him, his life.
He doesn't get to die…
At least when I imagine past the sadness and loss he will feel, I like to think that in the last few moments, Bright will lay on SCP-682, and they are watching together as the universe ends in front of them. It's a sweet thought.
Which then, I guess it's not fair for me to say, but I am afraid of what he has to deal with.
He is the reason I am afraid of it.
I don't know if it's worse to watch your loved ones grow older and older and older or to just watch them die. But I don't want either of those realities and yet, I would rather choose the ones where we all die than ones where we are all left alive, forced to live by some fucked up trick or anomaly or whatever you wanna call it.
It's not for humans. It's not for those of us who are actually smart enough to realize the consequences. I don't want that at all. And, I'm not trying to call myself smart just because I understand the consequences.
No, that's not true at all.
Fear is a powerful motivator, but when you are un-afraid of everything when not in danger, what reason do you have for living? I like to think of it like this: Would you help those who are afraid or just watch them become consumed by what they should be rightfully afraid of? I would prefer to be a part of the solution. See, fear doesn't just work if you are afraid, it works when those who you care for are afraid as well.
Fear motivates you to keep moving forward with your life.
In the end, we have to live. You could make the argument that I am afraid of living, but if I had been afraid of living why am I still here? Talking and doing my job? Playing games and having fun? Is that being afraid of life?
Yet, I still have to wonder.
What are we afraid of?
~ Dr. Heart


It was common knowledge that the janitors working for the Foundation were privy to all sorts of sensitive information: containment details, gossip from underpaid and overworked interns, and tidbits of knowledge found in the dusty corners of long-unused rooms.

Despite their bright yellow attire, they were the unseen sect of the Foundation. Chances were, if there was a break room at a site with especially chatty researchers, there would also be some janitors who knew a lot more than they let on.

Well, this is the story of one Custodian Woodworth.

Joe Woodworth — often called ‘Joe' or just 'Custodian' by the especially cold — cleaned the halls and rooms of Site-19's Administrative Wing. He worked hard every day, not including the days he didn't. On those days, he could usually be found in the nearest custodian's closet, drinking whatever liquid that happened to be in his flask.

Nobody really cared what Joe Woodworth did with his free time, nor did they particularly give a damn about his work ethic. In fact, the only noteworthy thing about Joe Woodworth was the discovery he made on July 19, 2078.

July 19, 2078 was not a noteworthy day. Nothing extraordinary or world-ending occurred during that date: no containment breaches, no new discoveries, nothing.

However, it was the first day Mr. Joe Woodworth cleaned Dr. Bright's office.

“Now,” the esteemed Head Custodian Sam spoke to him, before the fated day arrived. “You're the first person to ever clean Bright's office, you hear? He's protested about custodial services, but the higher-ups don't give any fucks about those now."

Sam was hunched down, currently in the middle of lighting a cigarette, or at least attempting to. They weren't allowed, of course, but none of the janitors snitched on each other, lest they be shunned by their coworkers.

“Who cares about what's in the guy's office, anyway?” Joe bemoaned. “All the important documents are in a safe. We're not spies, for Chrissake. We're freakin' janitors.”

Joe never cursed. Not because of any moral obligation or to hold onto the illusion of elegance, mind you. He thought it'd make him sound different than all of the other custodians, and therefore refused to utter a single curse word, funny as it sounded in his thick Brooklyn accent.

This isn't important, by the way. It's just amusing.

Sam turned his attention back to his cigarette, not really caring about the particulars of Bright's office.

“Just get it done, Joe. D'ya think I care about the particulars of Bright's office?”

Joe nodded, wrinkling his nose at the thick smoke blown into his face.

“Got it, sir.”

A hearty chuckle sounded from Sam, who, at the jaded age of 79, responded to most forms of disrespect with a smile and a shake of his smoke-smelling beard.

“We'll see where that attitude gets ya when Bright's found burying your body.”

On July 19, 2078, Custodian Joe Woodworth found a piece of paper.

Of course, there were the moments leading up to the finding: Joe getting cursed out by a disgruntled researcher who was seemingly unsatisfied with the job he did, Joe texting his wife about picking up some Instant-Ready meals for the kid, and, of course, Joe entering Bright's office. But nobody is here for that, right?

The paper itself wasn't all interesting. It was the regular looseleaf paper, commonly found in most places of work. No, what drew Mr. Joe Woodworth to this particular piece of paper was the shoddy, child-like drawing of SCP-963.

The colors looked to be made by a red highlighter, and the pen did a poor job of emphasizing the necklace's metallic sheen.

But Mr. Joe Woodworth smiled anyway. No matter how poor the quality was, it made the mysterious Dr. Bright seem a little bit more human.

So, he took a picture (remarking how Sam would get a chuckle out of it) and tucked the paper into a desk drawer.

And that was that.

The drawings continued.

After a while, they were no longer confined to the side of a surprisingly very important document. Instead, they thrived within a small compact sketchbook, able to be fit inside a lab coat.

Crude sketches of Bright's poor intern juggling four cups of coffee. Bright's coworker sleeping in the breakroom. Dr. Light gazing at something above the page, a slew of curses still on her lips. Dr. Cimmerian sneaking a can of Pillsbury dough into his pocket, looking both ways in case of prying coworkers.

They were surprisingly… cute. Joe felt embarrassed for thinking that, but it was a perfectly apt description. The tiny portraits cemented a fraction of time within the leather-bound book, the only remains of a moment long gone.

Once, Joe even found one of him. Of course, this was multiple years after the first discovery — by then, Joe had gained a considerable amount of weight — but it still bore the 5 o'clock shadow and large bags he had earlier in life.

In it, he was sweeping up a hairball from the ground. It wasn't very flattering, and Joe couldn't even see his own eyes through the Foundation custodial cap he wore.

But Joe smiled anyway.

Joe's hair slowly turned more salt than pepper as the years went on, and the sunny grin omnipresent on Bright's face matured into rigid plaster.

More and more of Bright's former subjects dropped like flies to the Foundation and its horrors.

Which isn't surprising, by the way. The 30% mortality rate in 5 years might be tucked away in the fine print of the Foundation's contract, but it finds life in the stilted whispers of scared interns and jaded senior staff.

But we're all human. And despite knowing the risks, we never fully comprehend them.

And as Mr. Joe Woodworth continued to collect snapshots of Bright's daily life bound within two thick leather covers, he began to do something quite peculiar of him.

He began to worry.

Bright would occasionally try to draw his old body throughout his venture into the art world. But as the years passed by, the shapes and contours that were once so elegantly sketched out on Bright's notebook began to lose their shape and fall flat.

His old, high cheekbones melted into a uniform curve.

The slight scruffy beard slowly faded away.

Even his glasses and casual bedhead disappeared over the years.

As the now Head Custodian Joe Woodworth stared at the frenzied drawing of a blob of a person donning a “Dr. Bright” nametag, at the total lack of humanity left within this person shaped figure (although which person- he couldn't tell), an ounce of something began to blossom in his stomach.

Throughout the day, that blossom developed into a tree which wrapped itself around his gut. Until, inexplicably, Joe Woodworth found himself in front of Dr. Harley's office with an intimidating serif font reading “HEAD OF HUMAN RESOURCES” on the door's frosted glass.

The door swung open, and Joe had to jump out of the way to avoid getting a concussion.

“What.” A neat, pencil-pushing type of guy glared at Joe through his thick rimmed glasses, uttering the word through pursed lips.

“I'm worried about Bright.”

Dr. Harley sighed, and closed the door on Mr. Woodworth.

Before Joe could turn back defeated, the door opened again- this time, Dr. Harley held a bottle of something strong in his gloved hand.

“Please come in. Or don't. It'd make my job a hell of a lot easier.”

Joe grunted at that and followed the man inside, who sat with his feet perched on his desk.

“So, you've been noticing it too?” Dr. Harley said with a sad smile. He continued on, seemingly not interested in hearing Joe's reply.

“The truth is, Bright's state is well known to us. The human mind can't handle 80 years of memories without going cuckoo, and that functioned perfectly well when humans only lived a hundred and odd years.”

Dr. Harley smiled at that. Joe still doesn't know what about this amused the man, so if you can figure it out, please let him know.

“Unfortunately for Bright, he's lived for around 200 years and has to store 200 years of gunk and horror in that little glistening jewel of his. Human hardware isn't built for 80 years, and neither is the human psyche apparently.”

Joe clenched his teeth at the apathetic stare present in Dr. Harley's eyes. He knew the Foundation were a bunch of unfeeling bastards- if you didn't, you most certainly haven't been here long enough- but the high and mighty attitude made Joe's blood boil.

“Have you considered doing something about it?”

Dr. Harley barked at that- a short, barely audible, snort that reeked of patronization.

“Giving Bright a perfectly healthy mental state is harder than killing 682 at this point. We're not assholes- contrary to popular belief. We've given him enough meds and therapists where the effects of 963 have slowed tremendously. Besides, he's much less… rebellious with all the brain clutter. He concentrates on doing his work, the only thing he remembers at this point, and having a knowledge of the past 200 years of Foundation secrets. That's his job at the Foundation, and all that's required of him.”

Joe wanted to scream at Harley.

He wanted to shout, There's a soul in him, and show Dr. Harley the tens and tens of drawings stored on Joe's smartphone. He wanted to show him the bright, sunny portraits made in Bright's earlier days. He wanted to convince the Foundation to help that Bright.

But Joe knew. Joe could feel the cold, numb voice in the back of his skull, telling him the truth, whispering in his ear that Dr. Harley is right. After all, there was no cure for immortality.

And so Joe turned around, grabbed his lucky broom from the men's bathroom closet, and went back to work.

Joe was sweeping that night when he encountered Bright for the last time.

It was part of his job to do a final, large clean before he clocked out every night. Joe would start every night in the offices (the most interesting parts of cleaning), snake his way through the hallways, and end up at the messiest part of the site: the break room.

But as Joe approached the break room, eager to get home before 7 PM, he noticed someone hunched over one of the tables.

Bright was sitting on a plastic chair. It was too small for his larger, obese D-Class body, but Bright didn't seem to mind the discomfort. Despite the obnoxious jingle of Joe's keys clipped to his belt, the man did not seem to notice Joe as he entered.

Instead, Joe watched Bright. He watched Bright gingerly pick up a piece of stubby vine charcoal and flip to the one of the last pages in his now-worn sketchbook.

Joe watched the final bits of light fade from the windows as the doctor jammed the charcoal into the page, his black-powder covered hands etching circles and spirals on the whole page.

Joe watched Bright's eyes, barely blinking, not moving from the center of the page; a dull, thick, lifeless black peering into the charcoal darkness.

And as Bright continued to stain his fingers and clothes with black, Head Custodian Joe Woodworth turned away and left.


Had a shower thought I couldn't shake. Thanks to hawkguyy for making sure I was handling the story with the proper respect.

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F.A.Q.

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I gave up my old name yesterday. It was the one thing my dad gave me that I'd never thrown away. But joining the SCP Foundation changes you. You have to give up your past. Become a ghost. If it's the only thing I have left, it can't be worth all that much anyway.
In a way, I think the world must be much more complex than it was when Dad pulled out the label maker and said "Alright. Carmen seems like a good choice". 18 years after that he threw me away, of course. So I suppose I shouldn't feel too guilty.
I like to think now that if he knew he was an asshole he'd probably have thought differently. Or at least been a bit more reasonable. But he thought he was the good guy. I was sitting in a car outside my dad's house with my girlfriend, about to tell him that I liked girls. I knew what would happen next.
You carry so many things around with you when you're young and haven't figured out how to unburden yourself. Most of the weight is tied up in expectations. Family, teachers, your peers. The weight can be crushing. And I got to carry something else around. A lie. Rooted in a fear of disappointing the man who paid for everything I used and ate and loved and never let me forget that.
The truth of who I was got to go up against ten thousand years of crushing cultural pressure and a screaming genetically instinctual need to please my father.
But once upon a time, we were a happy family. Sort of. I guess.
He'd brought me into this world. Kicking and screaming of course, but into the world I came just the same. He looked at me with pride back when I couldn't move an inch on my own. He rocked me to sleep when mom left us. Then I got a little older, and slowly he came to the realization that perhaps this whole single parenting thing was going to be more of a hassle than he'd expected.
He used to tell me a story about when I was 2 and he hadn't fastened my diaper quite well enough and somehow I managed to drag shit all over the living room carpet. He did the parenty thing and picked me up, cleaned me off, put me in my room and cleaned the mess up. He said that even though he was furious, he couldn't help but be a little proud. "I couldn't have made a mess that impressive," he'd said. But in a way he had.
The problem was I'd done the childish thing and decided to grow up. I was taller. More opinionated. Eventually he knew for a fact that if I could vote I definitely wouldn't be voting for the people he liked. Maybe I'd be one of those disengaged kids who didn't care about politics. But no. He was stuck with a daughter that cared.
I kissed a girl when I turned 15 and everything… everything changed. My entire world is split into two epochs. One where I was confused and scared and worried that I was broken somehow and another where I tasted strawberry banana lip gloss.
I realized that the crushing weight of wrongness was replaced with a somewhat more manageable Dad problem. Lies could handle that. Society had been lying to me until then, so what was a little lying back?
Righteousness was the real problem though. He loved me, in his own disappointed way. But he definitely thought he was the hero. A single father raising a kid. We'd get into arguments over the stupidest of things. Because I was a bit of an asshole myself I'd end up insulting him as a parent. He'd say "at least you never went hungry" as if that was an accomplishment. He was right, of course, but fulfilling your basic legal duties isn't the kind of thing you get extra credit for.
So when I walked into the living room and asked him to turn the TV off cause I had something to say, I knew what was coming next. But he didn't say anything. For a long time we just looked at each other. Then he said "You're not my daughter anymore. Get out of my house." And then he turned the TV back on.
I didn't get it then. It took a few years before I finally came to terms with it. But if you think that who you love is something that you can choose… I guess he was at least consistent.
My girlfriend and I packed my things into the back of her car and he never said another word to me. My past has been dead for a long time. Changing my name so I can work for the Foundation just put it into the ground.
Which is good because I'm tired of carrying it around with me.


Your land is supposed to be dead. This you are certain of, this you have seen with your own eyes and your own hands - dig down tendrils of sorcery deep enough, through stratum after stratum, and you can watch, over and over, the end of the world. You can watch seas of flame pour from fissures in the stone, forests collapse and be devoured in sickly grey moulds; you can see insects drop from the skies and bloated-silver fish slick the rivers before rotting and sinking to stinking clay on the beds. Shells pile atop them like silver pieces, like sand - death on death on death, under a smoke-filled sky.
The hills are green, now, though, forests as thick as the ones before the fire. No-one would ever know, to look.

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…but then again, you are supposed to be dead, too. Not that anyone has ever told you this in so many words, straight to your face, but no-one was ever exactly subtle about it, either. You are what happens when the bird's-nest flower and the thistle fail your mother - when the tewekm-reukós-selē fails her and you are still born, and breathe, and suddenly are worth more alive than dead.

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"What do you know how to do?"
You are pulled out of your thoughts with a jerk, back into the noise and dust of the market. The auctioneers have been coming down the line asking; with a shock you realize you are almost at the front. The man's face is hard - he has a quota to make, it says, and if he has to ask again the answer will be drawn from you with the flat of his hand.
You manage to stammer out something, a list of plants the healers of the household had always been sending you out after, tasks they had always had you perform. It only counted as training because no-one else had wanted you - but the healers and alchemists always needed hands, and did not care what was attached to them.
Carefully, you neglect to mention the words. The letters you had meticulously traced out into the dirt in the snatches of time you were alone, the matching sounds. To have words, as a slave, is death, and you do not want to die today.
The auctioneer's nose crinkles with contempt, but he marks his tablet and says nothing else. Businesslike, he moves onto the girl behind you. You snatched one glimpse of her as they led you out: she's pretty, long hair and unmarked skin, and you want to apologize for that - not, of course, that what was or is in store for her is in any way your fault, but if you don't who else could be expected to -
"Next." The other auctioneer deftly unfastens your hands from her, shoves you stumbling up onto the block. With equal efficiency, its chain is looped through your arms and bolted back onto itself, lest you decide it would be wise to try and flee now.
You do not think you could move even without the bolt. The gaze of the crowd is crushing pressure, spears through your chest; the sound of the chatter, the crying like stepping into a thunderstorm.
Instead, you turn your eyes down, let your vision unfocus. Let the world shrink to the bloodstained sandstone under your feet and the weight on your hands. You pinch the hem of your tunic between your thumb and forefinger; there's a broken thread poking out of the weave, and you twist it until it coils down into a small hard knot. Then the other way. Twist. Coil. Twist.
You try to look valuable.
(It comes to nine marks twenty kúan, which you inscribe in your memory, and your hands are unfastened. The woman takes your chin roughly, checks your eyes and ears to be sure that you can see and hear and that they have not been cheated, and adeptly changes over the working on your collar while her probably-husband counts the glass and copper pieces into the broker's hand.
As simple as that, you are theirs.)

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"What do you know how to do?"
Slightly more, now. And you can answer the question with more immediacy, because by now you know it is coming.
(Ten marks, two-twenty-and-five kúan.)

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“What do you know how to do?”
(They have drawn up a young man, but the girl with him - his sister, most likely - fights, refuses, clinging onto his arm with a grip so tight you can see the hurt on his face. She screams and wails, crying out no and his name, telling them they can't, can't do this he's everything I have -
You wish she would stop. Doesn't she know? That this won't avail her anything, that this will just make them angry with her, and by extension all the rest of you as well? And true enough, her hands are ripped off and he goes, over her howls, to a tall bearded man in a green tunic. She stills finally when he is no longer visible, but does not cease weeping.
There's something sour in your mouth, when you step up. You don't know if it's anger or envy. No-one has ever clung to your hand.
Perhaps she soured everyone watching's as well; you make but eight marks two kúan.)

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(Eleven, twenty-and-sixteen.
Let it never be said that you do not know how to esteem yourself.)

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How to escape:
Don't die.
…see, usually it's the opposite. In your tongue, the words for release and slay are one. You've seen enough others preempt their mistresses' fury by slashing open their own throats, invoke it and then laugh unsteadily as the rods fall, or plait up their hair and wash their faces and simply walk out into the wilderness, eerily calm and empty-eyed even when you try to call them on the road. There are worse darknesses than death, you may be told, if they deign to say anything in answer. Mi laśkema kolam.
Maybe this is where you are defective. You still do not want it. For years you have not wanted it, enough to melt layers and layers of glass and clay over all your words, and all your power, bind it down until you are a sealed vessel from which nothing can escape. Until you are blind to the beauty of the strata and deaf to the pulsing of sap and blood that was from your childhood in time with your own heartbeat, feel only what other people feel, see only what they see.
But there is only one thing that can happen to a sealed vessel building pressure, a stone chamber surrounding magma. And when it does -
The world blinks out white, and you are dragged screaming to your knees with the pain, all your instincts howling in confusion and shock. You melt and merge and reform like candle ice, cell and molecule, frozen in that one moment of pain so intense as to be unrecognizable, caught between unendurable life and unacceptable death.
Your palms slam into dirt and hemlock-needle. But your thought, now no more controllable than a fire in fallow against the wind, does not stop where they do, falls and falls loosed through dirt and bedrock and time. Below, you feel all their graves - the many-legged beetles, the feather clams, the spiny sharks and blooming polyps, the spiralling shells, mighty ferns, and monsters that slithered many-toed through the mud. You cannot survive this, their memory whispers. Give in. Take your release, and be satisfied, and be still. We ought to know, we who fought all our deaths as well and to no avail - you cannot live, not soft-skinned as you are.
It would be so easy. There are worse darknesses, right?
But it is very difficult, right now, to bring any of them to mind. If you are too weak, if you cannot live as you are - then I will be something else, your heart responds. Something - whatever - that can. The muscle twitches, then convulses gracelessly. You are aware of every fibril, every filament and cistern - it quivers, then beats: once, and again. Mi ojma eläm.
You open your eyes.
There is blood in your mouth, in your ears and your eyes and your nose, and you cannot stem it. It covers your throat and hands and forearms, spills between your fingers and drips black into the dirt before your boots - a libation, yourself unto yourself. Good, though, right? Your future stretches out before you wide as the steppe, and you shall not begin it in another's blood.
The path linking forest to town is still there, though. And you were not the only one living in it.

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Most of the houses had been built with basalt skeletons, and so somewhat stand, albeit with all their wooden roofs and wall-supports newly green and flowering. But the shrine was limestone, hauled up from the plains with labour for the veneration of the fief-spirit, and this is now no more, dissolved into a mass of brown-green slime that has spilled over the surrounding paths. In it are embedded alien things, overwhelming you in a wave of precious salt and vivid rot, spiralling and slithering, gleaming prismatic and hornlike, large and small.
Curiously, you pick one up - a coiled shell that fills your entire palm, spilling a mass of writhing arms mottled in shades of creamy brown. They twitch and retract at your touch, revealing, briefly, a siphon contracting and expanding in the unfamiliar air, and then an intelligent, dark-pupilled eye. Its owner lays a line of ivory-white suckers along the back of your hand, and, evidently considering the taste of your skin satisfactory, winds the rest around your wrist like a stack of bangles.
You go on. Hemlock and henbane, nightshade and death-cap press up green, purple, and ghostly white from every chink - between cobblestones, within windows and doorways, through the bare-stripped ribcages of a horse and rider fallen in the street and flensed and devoured by the sudden flood of your new-freed sorcery.
(It would take a lot of suffering to devour an entire town. How had you never noticed before?)
You go on. A glint of fallen beads among dark-leaved flax surrounding a cluster of slender, scale-barked trees catches your eye, then the dropped harness of another team and the ruins of the cart to which they had likely been hitched. You had thought you would have mourned, if someone razed down everything even semi-familiar, forced you out of yet another town. Perhaps it is different, if the perpetrator is yourself.
When you glance back, flybane eggs like bloody eyeballs litter the ground in your footprints.
The first living person you find is cowering in the shadow of a wall half-split by span-thick roots. He flinches away at your appearance. "Who are you?" he cries. And then, more tremulously, “Can you help me?”
Your knuckles leave a dark smear on his jawbone, as you lift up his face. “Yes,” your mouth shapes. “Of course.”

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How to be a king:
Don't die.
No, truly. The wars drag on because wars always drag on, because the complex and every-changing net of alliances between the matriarchs and allies always adds new players, because - well, you have everything to fight for, now, life and limb and all the people who have come to your banner and for whom you have taken responsibility because what else could you do, but - so do the rulers in Daevon. They're wrong, but -
You are not foolish enough to believe that righteousness will grant you any upper hand, because if that were the case you would not be fighting at all; Daevon would never have attained its power in the first place. You shall be right whether you win or lose; that, the war will not prove. But if there is one thing war is very very good at proving, it is who is left.
(The victor is never he who dies for his ideals. The victor is he who has the opportunity to live for them, day after day after day.)
No mortal could face down a god-queen. No mortal could demand a divinity yield, flee, and be honoured.
So, when you stride from the temple doors drenched in burning gold, bare-handed but for a fragment of gilt-and-garnet that was once a throne (because let them see this, nothing is true if it does not take place in the daylight, in the sight of all the people), you aren't. Not anymore.

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(Your land. What is your land now? The well of your control stretches from sea to sea to sea, and in it there are more than just the green hills that once were all you had ever known. There are deserts within you, and salt flats, and tundra, and mountains that jut upwards like blades of glass. A land so vast you cannot be in all of it at once, and yet all too small, for your arms do not yet encompass the whole of it. You cannot clutch it to your chest and stare up defiantly into the faces of the gods and say no and you can't have it and it's mine -)

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(It is no longer all yours, but there is still blood in your mouth, as well. Every time.)

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“And why,” the man asks, lifting his chin in an obviously-deliberate display of insolence, ”ought we to believe any word of yours?”
(You killed his empress less than an hour ago, her palace placed above the city on a hill like a slag-heap, all raw rock and crumbling cliffs. She had obviously not thought anyone could scale it without being seen first, because there had been no guards, no-one to shout a warning before you rent yourself into a room screened in red yew and painted paper and thrust a blade through her stomach.
The blood had not dared to approach you, not though it formed a miniature ocean on the polished boards, not though even in dying she had grinned sharp-toothed at you and, as an attempt at last vengeance, sketched out and spoken wine-dark runes in it.
But you barely even listened to the beginning of the curse - you have been cursed a thousand times by a thousand different people, only a fraction of them genuine. Only a fraction of those powerful enough to dig any barb into the shells you have secreted, and curse-breaking is too easy now. Too simple, to unpick the threads of a spell and cast it off to be carried away on the wind.
Still, you wondered what was to be laid upon you this time. Was she to cry illness upon you, who can disassemble and recreate your every cell with a thought? Famine, when you can tear your nourishment from the air itself?
“I curse you to be what you are,” she said. “You think I do not see, with the eyes of death? Power gnaws at your heart already, your followers whisper and plot. There is naught I could do to you worse than you already have unto yourself.
“You do not know what you have taken upon your shoulders, Lord of Life,” and it was in your own tongue she mocked, Käsekelä. “And when the day comes, that you yearn for death and do not find it, you will remember this.")
But despite yourself, you are slightly endeared. There is no reason for anyone to believe your words, no more than the words of any other thing that names itself a god. At least, not without proof.
Here in the east, they do not build as high. Whereas the architecture in the western provinces is flat roofs and staircases, balconies, floors stacked like the uplift of mountains, and therefore a plethora of rostra from which you could speak, this city is wood, and shallow as a floodplain. Nowhere that you may claim as your podium, nowhere meant to be visible to an entire throng. Whatever you answer will be heard by him only and those nearby, not by all of the people.
Well. Nowhere but one.
As the gathering crowd grew in size, the merchants mostly fled, and so had the auctioneers - a way to preserve their wares, preserve their lives in case violence came on its heels, and return another day. Their booths, now, are empty, and so is the block. And it is this you stalk over to, and step up upon. The loops of the chain drape over the worn edges; you pick it up, wrap it around your right fist.
From your left hand, Saarn shoots you a sudden, half-panicked look. You can almost hear her thinking what are you doing? How can - no, get down, you shall defeat yourself by this, they will never afford you authority if they see -
But authority is not contained in the dais, or the palace, or the throne; it is not contained in weapons or in armour, in the formulae of spells or runes or sorcery, in the bloodline the Daeva hold in such esteem. It is not afforded by anyone but seized and forged again for every ruler in the dark spaces of their own minds.
And this stone may drain it from you?
The smile crawls unbidden onto your face. "Saarn," you say, and stretch forth your hand towards her, "do you trust me?"
Her eyes are wide and dark as fen-pools, but something must show on your face, because her fear sinks back down into their depths. "You know I do, lord," she answers, and you catch her palm and haul her up beside you. There is only sufficient room if you stand close, wrap one arm around her back, and so you do - the warmth of her soaks into your chest.
This is as it should be: your deputy at your left side, brother and sister who never shall be separated, who need fear nothing, for there is nothing and no-one with power over you - a glimpse of your dreamed future, flung back to strike into your present. And, your sight filled with that, you look up into the host of expectant faces, imaging for a moment what they see - a creature magma-bright, crowned in horn and ivory, come for to -
Well, tell them, you think to yourself. What do you know how to do for them?
And the words have always been easy, weaving themselves together inside your throat and spilling out like flame - more than enough to glut a world on. You speak of cruelty, children starving while offering dishes are filled with meat and honey, prisoners unransomed while silver and gold line sanctuaries.
Yes, you say, truly under such a pall one might think death desirous, were there no other escape. Were this state of existence fixed, and unchangeable. But it is not: since the beginnings of the world, mountains have been raised up and ground again to meal; rivers have not maintained their courses, nor coastlines their shapes. Though we do not see, all is made and remade interminably beneath our feet, through ages past and into ages yet to come. Nothing lasts forever - you are suddenly, savagely glad of it.
And is Daevon stronger than the mountains, or older than the coast? Should suffering be the only exception? They will change, or be ground away. You have and do and shall see to it.
(You may stand here, on the same stained stone, and yet unbound.)
Ripples. Heads bend towards each other, and people whisper. You see movement as people turn to go, bowed heads. Unwilling to hear, unwilling to unstopper the lies from their ears. Some would demand that they stay, call anything other than immediate submission betrayal at best - but why should you? You know who and what you are and how to esteem yourself, and it is no curse. You are no more than you must be - deliverer, legend-made-flesh. The sword and spear turn from your hide, the chain is in your palm and turns back upon itself, all joints slipped -
What is it to you, if they cannot see the value?
And yet all those knowings are subservient to the one, the bright burning core that gives fuel to the entire cycling and divergent web of your convictions:
In despite of the universe, you still exist. Your land is green yet, although it burned. Not even an ocean of fire could drown it, nor could the acids sear it, nor could the smokes suffocate it. You have sprung from soil that rose and rose again, and this, before all else, is what you know how to do:
Rise.

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