They smoked in the car on the way down.
Kit put his feet up on the dash; Dawn playfully batted them off.
The radio crackled at them, coming through clear as they tore past a town.
“And dance, and drink, and screw-“
Dawn clicked the radio off, face flushing red, but Kit laughed out loud and flicked ash out of the window.
They chattered mindlessly. Dawn took them off the motorway and they ordered way too much fast food before skinning up. They hot-boxed the little car and joked about being pulled over, despite the early hour, with the windows blocked with so much excess smoke that the hypothetical cop would get a contact high.
“We could, y'know. Screw. Because there's nothing else to do.” Kit suggested, a broad grin on his face as he tunelessly sang the last line of Pulp's Common People.
Dawn frowned and took the car into the next gear with an unnecessary hardness that jolted the whole car and made it rattle.
“It's not right,” her pitch took on a tone mocking those who had said it to them. Their parents, their teachers, their friends. It did little to downplay the tearful tune in her own voice.
“I don't care,” Kit murmured in response, getting close to her ear. Dawn turned and scowled, pushing him away with one hand, the other on the steering wheel.
“I do care! It's not right, not yet!”
“Dawn…” He sighed softly but moved back. “One day, I'll convince you you're more than this. More than your body.”
Dawn shook her head and fell into silence, tears in her eyes, her hands shaking slightly as she gripped the wheel tight enough that her knuckles went white.
They stayed silent for what felt like forever. At first, Kit was worried he had ruined his first road trip as an adult – all of 17 years old, thinking he knew the world because he had a friend that drove and a destination in mind. But when the radio crackled again and crooned some old love song at the two, they were both soon laughing, and the tension was broken.
Kit wolfed his way through some combination of deep fried chicken, bacon and cheese, regretting it almost instantly. He rolled another cigarette, then rolled down the window as they drove past a sign that declared

No Racing
By Horse Drawn Vehicles

Kit hollered with laughter and then kept a keen eye out, pointing out to Dawn that maybe some vehicles were horse-drawn, and that the horses were invisible. Dawn responded with that there was no sign explicitly banning non-horse-driven vehicles from racing. She smirked and gunned the engine at an unsuspecting lorry driver, who glowered down at them as the two pulled their most innocent looks.
They soon turned off the motorway again to take a slightly more scenic route. They had time – check in wasn't until two, and it was only near six am.
But still, Kit couldn't wait to sit on the beach and breathe in the salty air – to look upon the big wreck of the West Pier, to stroll down the pier and through the noisy arcade.
Dawn was thinking of her last trip down here, as a family, shoved into a car that was strictly No Smoking, with the radio tuned to something stuffy, placed next to her sisters in the back when, as the oldest, she normally sat in the front.
“If you want to be a proper lady,” her father had said, sternly, “You'll sit with the other girls.”
She had been too scared to argue. First time going down to the seaside in a dress, legs bare and carefully waxed, body neat and compact as it could be at that time. She felt lucky to be allowed to do this – arguing could cause her to be left behind.
Absently, she had taken the same route as her parents took, in the old car smelling of pot and fast food, her thoughts two years behind and using instinct. Eventually, she came across a sign that gave her pause – and she pulled the car aside on the quiet junction. Left, or right?
She looked at the small brown sign that pointed to the right, which said '12th Century Church'. Kit had been dozing, but woke up at the sudden stop, a burnt-out cigarette still poised in his hand. He took a couple of seconds to get his bearings, but the sign was familiar - Kit knew Dawn and her family had always stopped here on the way down, to pay homage to some long-dead family member.
‘Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop,' Kit chanted in his head, but said nothing until Dawn frowned, crossed herself absently, and jerked the car back into gear, taking a hard left.
Kit laughed, slung a companionable arm around her.
“That's my girl!”
He liked the way ‘my girl' sounded.
She did, too.
They drove, shared another spliff, made plans for when they got there, wondering if the pier only opened from a certain time (it did) and hoping the wind wasn't too biting, because September wasn't a prime time for going down to the seaside.
Dawn was guilty of her own eyes closing a little bit when a sudden yell from Kit caught her attention.
“Stop! Shit, Dawn, hit the brakes already!”
She slammed her foot down, car skidding to an awkward stop, and realised they were at the feet of a giant something.
The feet were hooves, as of a horse (like the kind that weren't allowed to race) or maybe even a moose. The legs were numerous and stood both far and tall above them – a biological woodland of legs of some mammoth beast that shouldn't have been here, shouldn't have been possible in this realm.
Dawn slowly moved the car back, unable to find the words, her breath short and sharp pants. Wildly, she considered somehow negotiating the forest of legs – anything to get out of here. This wasn't possible. She looked for a nanosecond at the ends of the blunts in the ashtray but shook her head to herself – she trusted John, John wouldn't give her laced weed that caused hallucinations. For what end, anyway?
Kit was watching, just staring at this Thing. A head came into view, neck craning to look down at them, although it was still some good many yards away. It had a flat face, with watery eyes that drooped in each corner, clearly watching these people in this tiny metal machine. The nostrils, however, took up most of its face, with no visible mouth. It looked like its nose was running – could beings that shouldn't exist possibly be allergic to humans, to cars, to fumes?
Noises brought his attention back down the long legs to the feet. People in uniforms ran around the feet, tying large ropes around the Thing's ankles. It snorted and lifted its hooves in protest, but still did nothing outrageous, despite the sudden influx of attention. Kit tried to see what uniforms they were
…an insignia Kit neither knew or cared to know…
but, with the size of the creature and Dawn's quick reversal, the figures were blurry and he couldn't see what they represented, what they were doing, what they knew of this Thing.
The sound of snorting brought both of them back to look at the face.
The Thing reared its head back, narrowed its eyes
…and then sneezed.
Missiles.
Dawn screamed and span the car around quickly, foot lead on the pedal, hand grasping the gear stick as if their lives depended on it – which they possibly did.
Somehow, they avoided the main blast area of the missiles. The car, a rust-bucket before the journey, was well-dented now and even had the dark marks of the explosion that had happened around them. The windows were chipped from tiny stones, and one tire was flat – but they were both alive.
Kit, gripping the seat, the spilled ashtray staining his jeans – Dawn, still gripping the steering wheel and gearstick, looking at the blast hole the missiles had caused.
Kit blinked, feeling his heart race in his chest, his throat dry.
“…Someone should get that thing a tissue.”

« Kit, The Storyteller | Hub | Hands Under the Water »


Foundation Gothic

The holding cell was quiet, serene. Outside the door, the scratch of pen against paper could be heard as doctors filled out the forms necessary to relocate their latest acquisition to a more secure area. "'SCP-X was found on Stavely Road, shortly after midnight.' Does that sound correct?"
"Not quite. Clerkenwell Road." Director Alby scratched a few more notes down on his clipboard. Behind his spectacles, he wore a determined visage, though it now drooped with barely concealed fatigue. Still, he had that strong look about him which radiated authority. "Rude of him, making us work at this hour of the night."
"He didn't seem to care, unfortunately for us." The other doctor, Quincy, adjusted his lab coat impatiently. He scowled as he signed the fifteenth paper that night. "The wife will have my head for this, I'm sure of it."
Outside, the howl of some unknown beast could be heard in the distance, and the serenity of the cell was broken. There was a metallic clang, as a pair of hands gripped the barred windows with white knuckles, his torn and dirty clothes swaying from the motion. The figure they belonged to had wild blonde hair, and an equally unstable look in his eye. Barely above a whisper, he spoke. "Master. I hear you. I know you'll come to deliver your good and faithful servant."
Quincy sighed, putting the last form in an envelope. "He's at it again. Every damn creak in the night. A pox on him."
Director Alby skimmed over the relocation form for any discrepancies, not bothering to look up. "I'd be quite surprised if there weren't already. Do you have the date?"
"Seventeenth of January, 1877."
The wild-eyed man returned to a seated position in his cell. A spider that was crawling down the wall abruptly stopped, and shriveled into a dry husk. It fell to the floor, onto an ever-growing pile of insects.

Elizabeth shifted uneasily in her dress, glancing out the window. She fanned herself, feeling smothered by the oppressive air of the garish room she was in. The wedding planner before her finished rummaging through one of the bags he had brought, and turned around. Automatically, her face shifted to a polite and pretty smile.
"And you're certain the arrangement is to your liking, Miss Elizabeth?"
Miss, soon to be Mrs. Elizabeth Stoke nodded her head, struggling to maintain her pleasant expression. She glanced at the slew of unopened letters next to her, impatiently, before returning her attention the vase of flowers. "Yes, it's quite lovely."
"And you're quite certain you wouldn't like these-" The wedding planner began to grab a vase of differently colored flowers, but Elizabeth interrupted him.
"I'm quite certain," She made a show of being enamored with the pink blossoms that had been placed before her. "They'll make a lovely wreath, I'm sure. And please, I really must be going soon."
The wedding planner tipped his hat to her, as he wrote down her selection on a sheet of paper, and passed her a complimentary vase of the flowers. "Of course, of course! You're to be at the asylum again, I gather? It's too good of you to volunteer to help those unfortunate souls. You're quite the saint, Miss Stoke!"
Elizabeth began to respond, but she was cut off. "Not to worry, that was the last thing on the agenda for today. Very good selections! Randolph always complimented your taste, said you had a man's brain behind that lovely face."
Elizabeth's smile became even more forced. "And it serves me quite well while he's away on business."
The planner nodded enthusiastically, packing up the rest of his flowers and displays. Far too slowly, Elizabeth noticed to her great annoyance. "I'm sure he'll be very pleased with your selections, once he returns from…?"
"The Netherlands, he's meeting with a client who's interested in buying an estate here in London. If all goes as planned, he'll be back by February." Elizabeth began to show the planner to the door, stopping to retrieve his coat for him. Considering how extravagantly he was already dressed, it didn't make much of a difference.
After slipping his coat on, he collected his packages once again. "The Netherlands? He's mad, going that far when he has a beautiful fiancé here! Someone could snatch her heart away-" He winked at her flirtatiously, "-and he'd be none the wiser."
He stopped on his way out to bow to her and kiss her hand. Elizabeth curtsied in return as he made his way to the waiting carriage. She waved to him as he proceeded down the path to the street. "Thank you once again, for your services."
Before he could respond, she closed the door behind her, breathing a sigh of relief. Setting aside the vase of flowers, she rubbed her temples and took a seat. The wedding planner would have been there all day if she'd allowed him to keep talking.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and sighed. She adjusted her dark hair into a bun, staring into her own weary brown eyes. She shifted uncomfortably in her garish dress. The whole room around her felt musty and oppressive, from the ugly pink drapes, to the coarse wallpaper, to the mildewed smell of the rug. But still, it was home. She slumped into the couch, picking up the letters that had arrived earlier that day, which she hadn't had time to see due to the wedding planner's arrival. The first of them was unmarked, save for a small emblem on the upper left.
A moment of panic ran through her mind. Immediately, she opened it, casting aside the envelope. She cursed internally, leaping to her feet and pulling on her gloves and coat. She grabbed a bonnet and put it on as she ran out the door, angling her head down so as not to be recognized.
Around her, London bustled with life as horse-drawn carriages rolled past down the cobble streets. The skyline was clouded and grey, with smog-spewing smokestacks rising in the distance. People glanced at her as she walked past, a determined expression on her face. Ladies walked arm in arm with their men, whispering into their ears as Elizabeth breezed by. Alone, she felt like a fish out of water.
However, it was a short walk, and at her pace she arrived at her destination quickly. Before her was a three-story asylum, encircled by a large gate, guarded by a man wearing a rather large bowler cap. Elizabeth looked up at him, and the man nodded in response, pushing open the gate enough for her to pass through. She continued inside, to the reception desk.
The receptionist smiled at her, tipping his bowler cap and eagerly tapping his cane twice on the ground. "Good evening, my lady. Are you here to see anyone in particular?"
Elizabeth bowed her head to him, and tapped her left foot on the ground twice, right foot once. It came so naturally to her at this point that she barely even noticed she had done it. "Yes, I am. The man downstairs."
The receptionist's smile instantly dropped, and he tapped his foot on the ground in an aggravated manner. "Do you have any idea how late you are?"
"I'm aware, Doctor. I was accosted by a wedding planner." Elizabeth gave him an apologetic look, as she pulled a small lanyard with an identifying badge from her dress, and placed it around her neck.
The receptionist rolled his eyes in annoyance, flipping a lever. Behind him, a section of the wall clicked, and popped ajar slightly. "Well hurry on in, Alby's been waiting."
She pulled off her bonnet, and placed it on the coat rack, before opening the hidden door. Checking behind her to ensure no one was looking, she slipped inside and sealed it behind her. She passed through the dark hallway, and emerged in an open room on the other side of the building.
Around her, scientific instruments clicked and whirred, and men in lab coats buzzed around like bees. On one side of the main room, there were cases full of objects, ranging from the mundane to the bizarre, separated from the rest of the world by a thick pane of glass. Beyond that, there was a staircase, leading down to humanoid containment areas. She had reached Site-23 of the Foundation.
"Miss Stoke."
She turned, and was met with a tall man holding a clipboard. Behind his spectacles, he wore a blank expression, though his posture gave away some impatience, and signs of fatigue. On his lab coat, there was an emblem in bright yellow, signifying his high status. Elizabeth curtsied to him.
"Director Alby."
"You're rather late, we've had the humanoid in the interrogation cell for nearly five hours now." He adjusted his glasses, peering over them at his subordinate.
Elizabeth looked away, a bit embarrassed. "My apologies, I was-"
The Director interrupted her, speaking in a softer tone. "You don't have to explain, I'm well aware of your current situation, Miss Stoke. And I wish you the best."
She breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Seymour."
"Think nothing of it." He cleared his throat, resuming his formal tone. "That being said, as your Director, I cannot tolerate continued tardiness just because I am serving as the best man at your wedding. I will consider this an unofficial warning."
She nodded to him in a silent display of gratitude, and the two made their way through the room, and continued down the stairs to the interrogation cell. Seymour flipped through his clipboard, and held a lantern up to better see.
"'The total scope of SCP-048's anomalous capabilities is currently unknown, but it has been observed to have a noticeable effect on small creatures, including insects, rodents, and small avians. It is believed to be unable to cause direct harm to humans at this time.' Mm. You'll be accompanied by Quincy, regardless."
"Understood, Director." Elizabeth responded automatically, mentally preparing herself for what was to come.
"Line of questioning at this time is to focus on origins, knowledge of its capabilities, and possible connections to groups of interest."
"Understood." Her job was simple, but important. Internally, she practiced her platitudes, her 'You poor thing's, and her 'won't you help me understand what's happened to you?'s.
They stopped in front of the door of the cell, where Seymour left Elizabeth to retrieve Quincy. Elizabeth took a deep breath, her mind absolutely clear and focused for the first time that day. The hallway around her was dark except for the occasional lantern, and the air was stagnant and cold, but it didn't bother her in the slightest. This is where she knew she was meant to be.
After a moment, Seymour returned with Doctor Quincy, who nodded dismissively at her as he adjusted his formal black tie. She curtsied in response as he opened the door for her. She steeled herself behind her facade, took another deep breath, and stepped inside.
The room was dark, containing only a small lantern, a table, and another man, who was affixed to a chair by a straightjacket. As Quincy and Elizabeth stepped in, he looked up for a moment. There was a wild look in his eyes, like that of a cornered animal. Shadows from the lantern danced across his face, making his expression hard to read. Elizabeth did her best to ignore this, and took a seat on her side of the table. The facade hardened into an iron shell around her, and she spoke.
"Can you please tell me your name?"
The figure across from her regarded her uneasily, giving her an odd, sideways look. After a moment of studying her, he spoke, in a raspy voice. It sounded as if he hadn't drank any water in years.
"…Gregor. You can call me Gregor."

Foundation Gothic | Chapter 1.1: Husk »


Panzer let her mind bask in her future victory as she walked down the hallway to the stage, as she ran through the hallway, flooded in light, ears ringing from the crazed crowd yelling her name, hands already sore from high fiving some of the fans before striking a pose atop the ropes as her theme faded away and her opponent's theme started. She let the crowd's jeers for her opponent as the announcer presented him as the reigning Men's Openweight Champion revitalize her, and the adrenaline giving her back all the strength she thought she didn't have anymore when she slammed his face into the ring's corner, first into the worn cushion that covered the buckles, then into the raw metal. And she let the sight of blood goad her into wanting more, more as she drove her screwdriver into his calf, more as she put him in a standing choke hold and savagely stomped on the injured leg when he reached for the ropes, until he did her favorite thing in the world: tap out.
It always felt better when they tapped out.
Something in the back of her mind wondered what the crowd saw the spectacle as, what the anomaly fooled their brains into seeing. She pushed that thought away and focused on lifting her arm along with the ref. Cries for the new Men's Openweight Champion reverberated across the arena and nailed into her head. She groggily took the heavy, golden belt and slung it across her shoulder, waving at the fans and stumbling backstage, across the long white hallway and into the locker room, into the tiresome inevitability of her report.
-
“We lost Wolf.”
“Ukichirou?”
“Yeah. Fuck.” Panzer would've buried her face in her hands, if they weren't too bruised for it. “Ethics board review. For saving Star Shooter's fucking life.”
“We might get him b-”
“The hell we will.” Panzer tried her best to focus on the laptop screen where her conference call with The Nightwatch droned mercilessly on; she had been up for over a day, keeping up a careful balancing act of training, doing shows and being consumed with worry in the locker room. “You know what ‘ethics review' means. They keep him out of action for half a year, then decide he's unfit for this and send him to another project. Probably mindwipe him too. Christ.”
“Eli-”
“Unfit for the project, dude. Because it's so god damn easy to find researchers who can wrestle.”
“Elianna!” The Nightwatch raised his voice uncharacteristically loud. “Look, I know this is stressful, but you can't let it get to you.”
“Mhm.”
“ Have you taken today's pill?”
No. “Yes. Don't patronize me. You're my project lead, not my dad.” And a shoddy project lead, at that, she thought - he'd been running in circles in tiny independent circuits for a decade, never close to a contract from anyone noteworthy - nothing from CMLL, from NJPW, not even from the somewhat larger promotions in England that everyone seemed to graduate from. And of course, nothing, ever, from the WWE. Wolf was the only one in the team to have ever gotten a contract with them, and a great deal of good that'd done them for the whole three months he'd held it before blowing his cover. Panzer felt a twinge of jealousy, fueled by the knowledge that she would have done better - navigating the intricate maze of treachery and backstabbing, fending for herself, winning the Universal Championship. National television. Foundation honors.
“You don't have to get uppity with me. I'm your friend, and I worry about you.” It took all of Panzer's meager self-control not to roll her eyes. “You have a two day break after tonight, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Relax. I need you to focus if we're gonna be one man down for god knows how long. Just, relax after today.”
“Thanks.” Fuck off and die. “See you.” Panzer closed the laptop. The small bottle of medicine on top of the desk rattled and glared at her with nagging insistence. Gingerly, Panzer fished out a pill, crammed it in her mouth and dry swallowed it. She gave a weak smile at the belt resting next to the computer, closed her eyes and vaguely remembered she had to do an autograph session just before she passed out.

Vince McMahon Dies At The End
« SCP-3144 | Hub | Two Falls Out Of Three


It was always about music. A mournful hum hit the walls, gently reverberating until it found its way to their young ears. Usually that call was a mere whisper, slithering through holes of the cloth but this time it reached a much wider audience.
Pink-skinned feet slipped against slick green floor in an endless tunnel as it ran and ran and ran and ran. Darkness doesn't need to chase, just follow.
Stitch the notes together and watch as a sweet hum turns into a song. Its sound is enough to keep memories on the edge of unreal, the melody permeating the souvenirs.
Soon, a pink, five-fingered hand of a god tries to grasp around, attempting to anchor itself in something, anything. Such irony.
Sweet little snippets of memories, spun into small little objects. And for what? You open the album and you can hear a hum, curling around your frame, slithering into your brain.
A gentle, shivering touch followed, readily removing anything the light brushed one of its five fingers against before darkness touched the hand itself, grasping it, imprisoning it.
You watch the photos change, you watch smiles twist and turn and curl into malicious smirks and hungry grins. Their teeth turn sharp and black. It is enough to close the album to make it all stop; memories, though, persist.
Magenta shuddered and screamed, but the darkness swirled closer and closer, the emptiness wiping the light away, dissolving it until it was gone.
They haunt your thoughts, colours oversaturated, even if the photos were black and white. They are bright, ringing in your head like a static noise you sometimes hear when things become too quiet.
Pink was light, and darkness was its void, a lack, steadily penetrating unknowable yet shivering body. Know the prey before you devour it.
In the end, though, something always will distract you from this. Humans can't live focused on one thing only. Variation is where they thrive, and so soon the memories dissipate. But all you need is a reminder, a push. A trigger.
Five would scream, but darkness was the silence absolute and it found its mouth, so instead, it let out a quiet, mournful hum, a song that was a cry for mercy.
A sound.
Many heard that weak hum in cracks where mauve seeped through, before darkness found its throat and settled it's silence here as well, shoving it up to its seventh vertebrae.
Senses are such a whimsy creatures. Anything can remind you of things old gone. Time is cruel and unforgiving for your focus, but memories turn your body into a vessel of records.
The shivering still lasted but even then a dark swirl crossed a pink slick skin, exploring the unknowable from the outside as well.
Doesn't it scare you, how everything that surrounds you can push that little button and make your brain replay what is hidden inside?
The unknowable was by its nature a mystery in everything it was. But now it did a thing understood for all - it feared.
You avoid meds, you avoid schoolbands, you avoid things that many find a little funny. They humor you, though, and you are grateful for that. People do have illogical fears, right?
The light understood fear.
Allegiances and musicshops. You were never one for music, not anymore, at least. Trashing out old cassettes brought relief. Idea of karaokes brings a mild panic. Your throat exists only for talking.
In any other situation, maybe fifth would welcome the attention. But this was too much.
One text message and a person you barely know name of digitalising what they could get their hands on online was enough to bring memories again. A push of a little button of a laptop. You spend next few hours browsing all the posts they posted and reminiscing.
The light was appealing to the monstrosity. Dark and curious tendrils turned sharp and probing.
Some memories resurfaced again and you sunk into them, remembering. You cried, even when you tried not to. The taste of those memories was fresh, and you heard everything again as when you heard it for the first time, except now reliving old life was oversaturated with nostalgia.
Darkness was nothing but lack of light, and it never stopped, even after it counted seventh tear falling from a magenta eye.
You didn't avoid lakes before. You could swim and you stared into a face of yourself from forty years ago doing exactly this.
Spikes thrust deeper into a star. The silence was almost perfect when darkness slowly bit into it and the star's struggles grew weaker.
Internet was an amazing tool, as you don't have to remember exactly what you are looking for. Satellite photos were blurred, and you couldn't see how much things have changed from comfort of your house. Pity, but magic of retirement is that you have a lot of time on your hands.
Magenta was not only the sound and light. It was smell and sensation and thousands of things for all to feel.
You went there. Airplane ride, rented car, it was easy, all things considered.
A pink star could no longer shine. Light exists but it is devoured by darkness - does it still exist if there is none to see it?
You didn't know, but any other day you would have heard a call by now. But today, it was quiet.
Can a light die, if it was never a light nor alive?
Bodies gently bumped against each other, as a light mist-like film covering them swirled away into a white fog. It was quiet. You entered the lake because you wanted to see who they were, as you simply didn't see their faces from the shore. You left your phone, with intention of calling the police after you were done.
Fifth was silent, and darkness moved onto its belongings.
Halfway through your swim to the beach, you sunk. Your memories are fragile things, after all. It was again that little button, this time not pressed but pried out of machinery of your brain with dark pliers.
They held its attention as well and the darkness sunk into them, spreading inside their substance. Light grew more and more dim.
Something told you there was supposed to be something else down below. You breathed water into your burning lungs and You do not recognize the darkness swirling beneath the bodies.
In the end, Darkness dissolved in the water as well.


“Hey Draven?”
James surprises him in the kitchen; he hasn't been up at all since the hospital had released him, but there he was now, with his glasses on, head shaved and bandaged from the procedures, blanket around his shoulders. Bare feet on kitchen tile. Glasses on, but eyes bleary. Grisly scars running from the edges of his mouth to the back of his jaw, the kind he didn't want mentioned and that neither of them wanted to know the source of. Draven looks from the pot of spaghetti he was working on and smiles at him.
“Yeah?” he responds. “You're up. How do you fe-”
“Draven.” James' voice is sleepy and serious, like he's trying to push through a haze. “Did I write this?”
He's holding a thick book bound in a hard tan cover. Draven recognizes it from where it sat on one of the bookshelves in his boyfriend's living room; there's no markings on the outside save for a couple words stenciled into the lower spine in blocky, ruthless white lettering:
TALLORAN
2014
“Yeah,” he responds, stirring the pasta absentmindedly. “It's your Master's thesis.”
James blinks, holding the blankets around his shoulders with a sense of strange removal from reality. Master's thesis. Master's thesis. He definitely remembered it- not what it was about, mind you, but presenting it, crying over it, hating it- but not what it was about.
But that wasn't the most alarming thing about the numerous books he saw around him in his home.
“Do you remember writing it?” says Draven. His boyfriend hasn't said anything wrong, but the words already hit him in the gut enough to bring tears to his eyes. Master's thesis. That proved it, then.
“Draven,” says James, choking back tears. “I think I forgot how to read.”
“What?” His boyfriend looks at him with alarm. “Wait. James, just give me a second.” Draven throws the switch on the stove top to low, and James reflects on what's transpired since he awoke: turned on his phone at his bedside. Couldn't read the notifications. Looked at the book Draven was reading on his side of the bed: couldn't comprehend the title. Staggered into the living room with alarm and looked at the main bookshelf. No understanding. Picked the book he recognized the most because he felt like it was closer to him than the rest, like it was part of himself at some point in his life, like it was something he created. Carried it into the kitchen.
Held it uselessly and stupidly in his hands as his now very concerned partner turned back towards him.
“Can I see it?”
Draven lays the book flat on the kitchen counter, and James stands next to him, feeling something numb and shuddering in his chest. His boyfriend opens the cover, then flips past the title page (with large characters he can't understand) and the table of contents (James swallows hard to keep tears back now; he can only tell it's the table of contents because of the layout of the words themselves) and lands on the first page, page 1, which is actually page 10 because James Talloran had written nearly 400 pages of original research content for his dissertation and this had constituted a considerable amount of chapters, but he only knows its page 1 because of the layout and what he knows about books in general. Page 1. Okay. Page 1. Page 1. He tries to slow his breathing, and Draven holds the book open with one hand and touches James' back with the other.
“Hey, it's okay. Just calm down, okay? The doctors said that Class Cs can do this kind of thing,” Says Draven. “It'll come back with a little work, yeah? Let's just start with the first bit and work from there.”
James swallows and nods and Draven is rubbing his back now, talking softer, being gentle but James is not to be handled gently right now Draven this is serious Draven I can't read I can't read this, please, Draven-
He points at the title. It's one word. It's not even a title as much as it's a section designation. James has read this word hundreds and thousands of times in his life effortlessly.
“Let's just start small,” says Draven, still rubbing his back, watching hot tears run down his partner's face. “Hey, it's okay. Just this one.”
James stares at it blankly. He scans it, then looks at the characters, their individual shapes on the page. He's supposed to read it from left to right. He rakes through his brain frantically, then feels stupid, so fucking stupid, and Draven must know that he just doesn't know what it says because he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
“James.”
He's looking away now.
He's looking anywhere but the stupid fucking book. He's looking at the floor, then rubbing his eyes again, then avoiding Draven's gaze, too. He wants to run away. He wants to hide, or fall asleep. Whatever it was he went through, whatever it could have been- nothing could possibly have been worth this trying to erase. How was he going to work? He was a researcher. He wrote academically for a living- god, how much did he read and write per day at the Foundation? How incredibly crucial was that simple fucking skill of basic literacy to his job? To his life? To everything he did and was? How bad was it? Could he get it back at all? He used to be able to speed read technical writing with full comprehension and write lab reports six at a time; could he function in the Foundation, a place where the main kind of communication was written word, without that kind of skill?
“James. Hey.” Draven's voice is soft, coaxing. “Hey.”
“I don't know what that says.”
“I know. It's okay.”
“It's not okay.”
“James. Look at me.”
He doesn't want to look. He feels stupid, so endlessly fucking stupid, but he looks. He looks up at Draven and feels like a child and of course Draven is so fucking forgiving, the prick, who the fuck does he think he is being so calm and so nice and so cute at a time like this, who even does that, like seriously, he probably thinks James is stupid and not worth his time anymore, like really, honestly, who the fuck does he think he is, anyway-
Draven covers up all but the first letter of the word with his finger. James is shaking with rage and frustration and grief and loss. Draven rubs his back and James wants to shrug him off but doesn't because he wants that touch more than anything else in the world. Draven tells him to look at the book again.
“What's that letter?” he says.
“A,” chokes out James.
“Okay, see? That's right. You got it right.” Draven moves his finger over one letter. “What about that one?”
“B.”
“Hey, look at that, two in a row.”
“Draven, this is so fucking stupid, I swear to god!” James explodes, but it loses effect because he's sobbing and his voice is cracking hard on ‘god' and he even sounds like a child, and he dramatically throws the blanket on the floor for emphasis but again it really doesn't have much of an effect so to make up for it he turns and tries to storm out and Draven follows him a few steps and grabs his hand with a soft hey, hey, hey, babe, and somehow that completely subdues him, brings him back, reduces him to angry tears in front of the stupid book again, brings him back to the third letter with Draven holding him tighter now.
“S.” He's crying harder. Draven holds him close and tries to coax him to try the next one and he can't, he just fucking can't do this-
“Babe,” says Draven. “Hey, listen. Hey.” James shakes his head no.
“T,” says Draven. “R. A. C. T.”
James swallows.
“A-B-S-T-R-A-C-T,” spells Draven. “Do you know what that spells?”
It hits him.
The meaning hits him all at once and he feels a surge of relief and comprehension, of understanding, of some small memory fragment of what that spelt and what it meant, how he chose to write it last when he had all of his data together, how he was afraid the section would be too long, all the little bits and pieces of those 8 letters that he most definitely recognized. James whips his head out of Draven's chest and looks at the completed word and reads it once, twice, three times.
“Abstract,” whispers James in a sort of disbelief. “It's my paper's stupid fucking abstract.”
Draven holds him tightly. James slows his breathing and finds his tears slowing with it.
“That's right,” says Draven softly. “It's all still there, James. You need a little practice, but it's not like you're gonna have to learn how to read all over again from scratch.”
“Oh my god,” he whispers. “Oh my god. I'm so sorry, I was just-”
“-Scared. I know.” Draven smiles and kisses him where he can feel it, the place where they hadn't stuck wires and patches in the procedure, the shaved top of his partner's head. “It's okay. You know, when I first saw you after they finished in the hospital, I came in to take you home once they told me about everything and how to take care of you and stuff and you recognized me, but you couldn't remember my name.”
James laughs nervously. “Seriously? I don't remember that.”
“Yeah. You were having a hard time understanding me when I spoke to you, too.” Draven says. “That really scared me.”
His voice is light, but James can hear the residual fear in his words.
“I'm sorry.”
“And then there was the whole, ‘you being half dead in the hospital' thing.” He continues. “And before that, there was the whole, ‘you being missing for three months' thing.”
He's serious that time - very serious. James' heart drops in his chest in response. He didn't remember any of that; all of that had been wiped with the amnestic procedure that had him laid up at home with Draven looking after him in the first place.
But Draven remembered. And he had been scared. And he had waited, and then put up with his shit some more when he got back, and then was taking care of him now as he reeled from the procedure that wiped the memory of those past four months away.
“Look,” says Draven before James can say anything in response. “I just don't want to lose you again, okay? Like, fuck, James, I'm supposed to be the one who goes missing for three months on the job. Researchers don't just do that, you know?”
“Hey babe?” says James. “I would really love to have this deep conversation about our relationship and what it means now and all that, and how this affected both of us, and how we plan on dealing with any and all associated traumas coming from this portion of our relationship. I think it's super important to address at some point. And I'm sorry that I hurt you, and we need to talk about how to get you feeling better, too, since you seem really shaken up by all this and I can totally understand why. But your pasta's boiling over.”
Draven's eyes widen, and he lets go of James Talloran- previously the center of everything that happened to him, but not as much anymore- to address the loudly rattling pot on the stove.


« Previous Tale | Maim the Sky, Slay the Sun | Next Tale »

Welcome to
AUGUSTVILLE, MONTANA
Population: 754
Good living under God's law.

Dhole sat in the crook of a tree in an unknown place, surrounded by a vast field of strange plants, overwhelmed by the calls of unseen animals, and utterly oppressed by the alien sky. Clear, blue, ominous, it hung far too low for her liking. It revealed the terrible face of this place's sun too honestly and bared everything to the attentive stars beyond.
"Getting fresh air for once is nice, isn't it?" chirped Egret. Dhole's partner sat on a different branch, smiling crookedly while bearing an unceasing watch on the long road before them. She toyed with a small black device as she spoke, flicking its plastic lid back with a loud pop, then forcing it back into place with a louder click.
"Assuredly." Dhole turned her masked head away. In truth, only peasants would prefer dirtied winds. The air itself had an unpleasant quality, each breath like fingernails dragging from nostrils to brain.
"Are there places like this where you're from?"
"The lands are hale and the waters are teeming. Want is an exile." Hard gray earth was all that surrounded the Howling Pillar for a great many leagues. All the succor that could be wrung from the earth was served to the city curled around the great edifice's base. Dhole sometimes saw the withered forms of beggars wandering the streets outside her family's bookstore, but they were always swiftly whisked away.
"Sounds nice. I grew up on a farm, you know."
"In truth?"
"Probably. Saying it feels right."
The pair sat in near-silence as they watched a tractor roll slowly down the dirt road, passing over a line of freshly filled holes dug into its center. The steady rhythm of clicks and pops ran together with the chattering of small, furry creatures, and the low whisper of the wind. Dhole adjusted her dog mask, savoring its smooth texture in her hands.
"Yeah, I'm bored too," said Egret, sounding entirely too cheerful for that to possibly be the case. "What about family? Are any of them running around? Do you all wear the same masks?"
"A great catastrophe snatched them up in its jaws." Her relatives teemed in greater numbers than Dhole cared to guess at, all operating the city's many bookstores. They wore the faces of sheep, as she once did, to show their great skill at wringing money from nothing. To be milked, to be sheared, to be butchered, no creature was better suited to the quest for wealth.
"It's like that sometimes," she said, as though Egret herself was not a living catastrophe.
A dented blue car spend down the road, bouncing slightly and kicking up a long plume of dust. Its shadow flickered out across the greenery as it passed. Transient, thin, and insubstantial, it was not the kind of shadow that would be cast by their soon-to-be victim. All the same, she could not imagine its owner would live long. Heart failure, perhaps. Of one sort or another.
She looked up at the sky again and regretted it immediately. It was a terrible thing. Cruel, unyielding, and nothing like distant gray clouds she was used to. The exarchs of her homeland would be well suited to this place, as would the slugs engulfing their hearts.
"And your own brood?" asked Dhole, curious in spite of herself.
"My family? Who knows. They're dead, or ran away, or something like that. There's a record of it all somewhere. The Overseers have records of everything."
"You permit yourself such ignorance?"
"It's not a big deal, I just don't remember them all. I'm sure there was a good reason to forget."
"Is that state not unbearable to you?"
"No. It's not."
"To be without council, or comfort, or–"
"But, hey, what about that one that was with you before? Were they related to you?"
Dhole gritted her teeth under her mask, face twisted a perfect imitation of its snarl. Disgusting. Egret was disgusting, and her master was even worse for binding her into this situation with a contract worded tighter than the proclamations of a god. Trading life for service had seemed reasonable before she learned who she would serve alongside. Dhole might wear the aspect of a dog now, but such was her partner's nature in truth.
"He was nothing. The sheep has been slaughtered, as by nature."
"That's all?"
"It is as I said! Cease your whimpering. Stuff your maw with rocks if you must."
Egret's laugh was less cruel than it should have been by any right, more songbird than carrion-feaster. Dhole growled, fought against the urge to say any more, and picked at her bandaged fingers instead. She would not mourn a dear friend in the presence of their killer. She would not expose herself so easily.
Another car drifted down the road, dark green with mirrored windows. Its shadow was thick and oily, crawling across the ground like a living creature, and far heavier than the others she had seen in their weeks at the edge of the world.
"It's that one," said Dhole quietly. The lid of Egret's device popped once more. The car sped across the distant spot across from their perch, passing over the mounds of freshly turned dirt. A loud click sounded beside her and the road underneath the car erupted. Billowing plumes of orange and black bore it into the air with a roar, casting the vehicle up into a slow cartwheel that dared gravity to drag it back down.
She winced as the car hit the ground. Whoever was inside could not be safe, not by any sane definition of the word. Their wounds were her doing. Their pain was her fault. Their death would be… She shook her head and struggled to unwind the knot inside her gut. Whatever minor role she played, it was nothing compared to Egret's. It wasn't her fault. She didn't enjoy it. She didn't want any of this. Dhole took a deep breath, shook her head once more, and felt assured that was not yet a monster.
The true monster was already stalking through the ankle-high greenery. It had been a tremendous misstep to ever assume Egret was a knight of any sort, let alone a warrior with a single drop of chivalry in her being. She did not ride forth to do battle with the lone figure struggling out of the smoking wreck, but to swing her cleaver against the butcher's block.
Dhole's ears were not so keen as to hear the conversation between Egret and the dark-haired man bleeding from a hundred cuts and a missing foot. Her partner gestured vividly with her free hand, weapon firm in the other. A familiar situation, and one with an obvious conclusion. All the same, she could not manage to look away. Their shared victim said something of his own, a single word that made the air around them tense and tremble. Egret shot him three times.
The bullets ricocheted off a patch of air, sparking and flying in wide arcs. The next three, fired at different places, had the same result. The man said more, though none of his words shook the world in the same way, and Egret tried to punch him. Her fist stopped in the same place. Dhole watched as the woman struck the air again, and again, and again, a red stain slowly spreading across nothing at all. She watched as one last blow was delivered, an open slap that splattered droplets of blood out across an invisible dome.
The two of them retreated the same way they arrived, trekking across the wide fields to an off-white van parked outside a colorful eatery. Egret muttered dark things about sorcerers and their ways, cursing whichever new ones would be arriving to help their wounded comrade. Dhole tried to ignore her, and tried to ignore the sky as well. It had drawn particularly low to watch the entire affair unfold.

Dhole felt naked without her mask. She felt empty without it. She felt dead. Egret had insisted that wearing it would reveal herself to anyone prepared to see things beyond banal normalcy, but it was torture all the same. Brown hat pulled low to shade her orange eyes, brown shirt ruffling in the hot wind, she dutifully carried a cardboard box up to the front gate of a respectfully large house, rung the doorbell twice, and walked away at a measured pace.
Dhole was resentful, yes, but for more than the issue of her mask. She resented being pushed to carry the box, though she had not built the device inside. She despised being pushed to make the delivery, though she would not be the one to put it to use. So much bitterness, all because she knew herself to not be a monster in truth.
Minutes later, an explosion rippled through the suburban neighborhood. No casualties were ever reported, much to Egret's vocal annoyance.
Days later, the two of them began trading shifts surveilling a brick building's entrance. Days became weeks. Weeks stretched out into an apparent eternity. They lurked in a tiny apartment furnished only with a single mattress, staring out the tiny window in a fruitless, unending watch. A tiny radio announced the scores of sporting matches, the changing of the skies, and violent expeditions to foreign places. Dhole hated the small thing, hated Egret, and hated herself. She ate paper cups of steaming noodles and did her best to push everything else away.
A series of muffled cracks woke her from fitful sleep one morning. Egret gnashed her teeth as they fled the place without having achieved their goal yet again. It sounded like nothing so much as knives sharpening against each other.

"He's here, and the Overseer is impatient," said Egret immediately after ending a phone call. Her chipper tone was intact, but only barely. Dhole could hear the cracks forming in its foundation.
"Such is the houndmaster's wont." The two of them stood next to a tiny creek, surrounded by old trees and lit by shafts of light from a noonday sun.
"Don't call her that. She's busy. She needs this done! We're failing her."
"To slay a mage is no small thing. Should we not–"
"No. You know what to do. Go."
Dhole could have argued further, as she had for most of the day. She could have screamed louder and wailed on top of that. The pull of her contract would not be denied though, not if she wanted her heart to keep on beating. Obeying its words was the only course left. She walked alongside the creek, down a short hill, and along a path at its bottom. The sky sunk down above her, alter and unblinking. Her coat's pocket felt unnaturally heavy under its gaze.
Her trip felt hours long, though the sun hung in place all the way. The narrow path led to a sheer cliff, a nearby bench, and the man sitting on it. His black hair was thoroughly combed and his thick beard was neatly trimmed. He exuded a sense of calm Dhole had never felt before, not even in the holiest of men. She only paused for a moment before sitting on the bench too.
"Hail, friend," he said, looking down at her mask. "Is a coven nearby? You have our air about you."
She stared up at the man, impossibly aware of how very alive he was. There was vigor in his eyes and passion in his voice. There was a lifetime of experiences crammed into his being. Bile rose in the back of her throat.
"I usually wouldn't turn away a fellow's company," he continued, "especially not in a place of power, but you should leave. Jailers are on the hunt. Book burners too. I can feel their malice not too far off. It isn't safe near me.”
Thinking of any response proved impossible. No words came out when Dhole opened her mouth. None came to mind in the first place. Instead, she twisted sideways and pulled the trigger of the stubby gun stuffed into her coat's pocket. The bullet flew true toward the wizard, piercing through skin, muscle, and stomach. Pain contorted his face, parting lips, flaring nostrils, before a distant shot sounded and his head snapped forward. She stared mutely at the corpse, and kept staring as it slumped down to the ground.
Dejection. Disdain. Disgust. Those emotions metastasized as she looked up at the low sky. Coming to this alien place bearing precious books had been a mistake. Not objecting over her friend's dedication to their dangerous task, a blunder. Most of all, worst of all, groveling for her life like a common mongrel proved to be a terrible transgression. Dhole could have insisted that she was still no monster. She could have repeated that it was the Overseer who bore ultimate blame for the day's tragedy.
Not a single word of it rang true.

« Previous Tale | Maim the Sky, Slay the Sun | Next Tale »


by DarkStuff

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More by DarkStuff~!

Independent SCPs

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Title

SCP-445-EX
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France & the Tale of the Well-Intentioned Understudies

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Better Safe Than Sorry

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Only Birdbrains Live the American Dream

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#MassaTruthetts

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In Short…

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No Man is an Island

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Co-Authored SCPs

SCP
Title
Co-Author

SCP-1549
In Absence of a Perfect Medium
Billith

SCP-2983
Choco-Wonder Explosion Marshmallow Bites!™ by Dr. Wondertainment
Uncle Nicolini

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Varaxous

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Too Many Legs to be Going Nowhere
MaliceAforethought

Vend-a-Friend

Chapter
Title

Act I

Chapter 1
We Just Make Toys

Chapter 2
To Think I've Spent My Whole Life Waiting

Chapter 3
I Don't Get It, I Functioned Before

Chapter 4
You Can't Win Them All

Chapter 5
Be Strange or Be Forgotten

Act II

Chapter 6
Sometimes the Best Intentions are in Need of Redemption

Chapter 7
Life's a Show

Chapter 8
...And I'm the Star!

Chapter 9
Back in Habit

Chapter 10
Pepper's Lament

Chapter 11
Souls & Somas

Chapter 12
Deceptive Cadence

Act III

Chapter 13
And I Think To Myself...

Chapter 14
Everything Will Be Okay

Chapter 15
Holding an Umbrella but the Sun's Still Shining

Ascension

Chapter
Title

Chapter 1
Sometimes I Wish This Moment Could Last Forever

Chapter 2
Waiting on the Good Times

Chapter 3
Forever Young

Chapter 4
We Didn't Do This For Nothing

Chapter 5
URA-1902 aka The Missing Link

Chapter 6
The Consequences of a Deep, Dark Disassociation

Chapter 7
The Call to Action (for a Modern Audience)

Chapter 8
The Elusive Mx. LaFerrier

Chapter 9
It Feels Like I Only Go Backwards

Chapter 10
Along for the Ride

Chapter 11
A Hole in the Tapestry

Chapter 12
XXXXX

Chapter 13
Industrial

Chapter 14
Dancing with Rachael

Chapter 15
Ascension

Epilogue
A World Unto Yourself

Collaboration Contest Entries w/ Ellie

Make America Normaler

Off the Hook

Misc. Tales

Cornelius the Collector

Curtain Call

The Really Really Real Adventures in Capitalism

I've Been Through the Desert on a Horse with No Name

On the Radar for the miniseries The Ursus Maritimus Incident

Group of Interest / Canon Hubs

Hub
Notes

Dr. Wondertainment Hub
Made w/ taylor_itkin does not match any existing user name

What a Wonderful World Hub
Made w/ help from Uncle Nicolini, a canon sprouted from Vend-a-Friend!

Wilson's Wildlife Solutions Hub
My pride and joy, my very own Group of Interest

"Rachael!"
An annoying, high pitched voice was calling from the distance.
"Rachael? Hey, uh, Rachael," Robert Dorer peeked his head around the corner of her door frame, which she really should have left closed. "You know there's no shame in eating with everybody else in the cafeteria, right? Or, uh, at all? I brought you something!"
Dorer shoved a plate with a burrito and some white salad on the side on top of her papers. She took a deep breath and was finally forced to look up at Dorer. He had a big grin on his face.
"It's Dr. Davidson."
"Nah it ain't, you never got a PhD. Besides, you don't eat enough. I uh, I saw the menu today and thought of you so I thought I'd pop over. Do you always leave your door open?"
"No, no I don't."
"Lucky me, then. What're you working on?"
"Classified."
"No it's not, it says 'General Level 1 Access' at the top."
"You shouldn't be looking at a paper immediately after I say that it's classified."
"Oh I looked at it before that. Riveting stuff. You know I worked on that paper last, right? I mean, heh, I don't really remember it. Got accidentally infected with that window meme. I'm all good now, though," Dorer tapped the side of his glasses, "see?"
Rachael hated Site-31. That word, "hate", albeit strong, is thrown around a lot, but Rachael really did. She needed downtime from her last assignment, of course, and that's what Site-31 was good for, but the professional attitude was all but lost here in an attempt to be friendly and cordial. Her own office didn't have a lock on it. Apparently that one site up in Wisconsin was doing really well, and the experiment had started to spread and pervade. She of course understood its importance, but it didn't make her any more accustomed to it. She wished that she had some easier way of having her own space.
"Thank you for the food, can I get back to my work? I'm not working on the top paper, and it really is classified. You're a level below me, and have no relation to this anomaly. It would be in your best interest to leave."
"Did you know we have the same initials?"
Rachael Maria Davidson took one long, deep, exasperated breath, and spun her chair to face Robert Maximus Dorer. It was clear that she wasn't going to shake him that easy, and she had gotten complaints about her behavior here. For a site, the whole place seemed irritatingly anti-work and efficiency. Just because the place was filled with Safes didn't mean there wasn't something to get done, and Rachael felt like she was the only person there who really knew that. However, some official requests had suggested to her that she lighten up and engage in more social activities. It was the place's specialty, of course. Being sociable.
If only her god damn door had a lock.
Mustering up a fake smile, or maybe it came across as a wince, she began to… engage the eager fellow that wasn't more than three years older than she was. That made him the second youngest person in the whole site.
"Yes, I had noticed that before. I found it funny."
"Quirky, even! I bet it means something, eh? Some sort of mystical connection between the two of us, eh? What do you think? How often do the two youngest people share the same initials — and hey, did you know I was born in Mexico too?"
"Honduras. I was born in Honduras. They're different. And no, I don't think it means anything."
"You know what I like most about this job?" … "Well do ya?" … "It's that we're scientists. We are predisposed to disregard horoscopes and star signs and ghost videos online. So of course we'd assume it's just a coincidence. But! The coolest thing is that we're parascientists. Just as easily as we can brush it off and be right, sometimes we can take a good long look at something and find out 'by God, there really is something there!' That's what this feels like. I feel like our names mean something. The RMD! We should find some good acronym for that, eh?"
Rachael chewed on her salad only because it gave her an excuse not to respond for the time being.
"And besides, I am certain I can get the Level 1 run down of whatever you're working on. I'm Level 3 site-wide, and that gains me access to Level 1 knowledge of any anomaly Euclid or Safe. Is it Keter?"
Rachael groaned.
"No, it's Safe because although it's global it's self containing."
"Ooo, sounds interesting." Dorer took a seat on the desk, brushing aside some well organized papers. "Give me the stuff."
"If only I had more sighs to sigh, you took them all out of me."
Dorer chuckled. "Oh c'mon, you tell me this and I'll get out of your hair. I promise. Speaking of your hair, nice hair."
"No flirting between co-workers."
"Ain't flirting."
Rachael gave Dorer a long, cold stare. Seeing that he really wasn't going to yield, she pushed aside her plate and picked up the stack of papers beneath it. Flipping through them until she landed on the one she wanted, she began to scan it. The motion was less to remember information and more to not have to look at Dorer. She knew the whole thing front to back. Clearing her throat, shifting her eyes up to Dorer to give him one last chance to leave… she started.
"It's anachronism. Objects that appear out of time, before they were invented. We thought it was just a side effect of other chronology affecting skips, but it has its own logic to it. Objects created through this form of anachronism will be looked on by all people as normal, and the few people immune to this effect who try and point it out will be ignored and called crazy, or conspiracy theorists. We thought it was a pretty standard anomaly, barely a blip on our radar — especially because it does its own disinformation campaign — but the real tickler is that it starts on a certain day."
"What day is that?"
"Can't tell you that, then you could read it. There are, decisively, no records of this anomaly before a certain date. We're trying to figure out why. That's it. That's all I can cover under Level 1 access. You may leave."
"Hmm. Alright, I'll leave you to it. If you need me, I'll be in my office across the cafeteria — or in the cafeteria, hanging out with Victor. Oh, and one thing."
"Yes?"
"If I get transferred to this 'anachronism' project, will you believe me then? That we're connected?"
Rachael looked up at Dorer, and smiled a wide, confident smile. Genuinely, this time.
"No."
"Well alright then, see you!"
Dorer skipped out the door, danced down the hallway, and was out of sight. Rachael got up, closed her door, jammed a mini-fridge in front of it, and sat back down at her desk. The burrito was, unfortunately, really good. She finished it quickly. Setting back to work, she studied dates and major events and anomalous records on site for clues. So far, she had been noticing a pattern. A creation pattern. Anachronism didn't seem to be the only anomaly that started on May 10th, 1829. It was an odd sort of coincidence. Something a scientist might brush off — like horoscopes, star signs, and ghost videos online. However, she wasn't a scientist. She was a parascientist.
She was beginning to develop a theory.

Tom and Abe sat at a dingy hole in the wall bar. The smoke in the room was thick, and the sound of clinking pool balls echoed only barely louder than the bellows of football announcers on the television. A beautiful lady whose life had went nowhere sat behind the bar and cleaned glasses in stereotypical fashion. Her name was Tulip, and Abe knew her well.
Tulip saw Abe looking up and down her every curve. She didn't mind it — she was a showgirl once, and Abe was a willing customer. Recently, though, she had noticed a spark missing in Abe's eyes. He looked ever less ravenous, ever less willing to come back to her room with her and give her the few fleeting moments of real feeling she usually ever managed to experience. He was growing bored with her. No, it was more than bored. He was growing disappointed. And yet, he came with her each time, and they spent their nights the same way that they often did when he was in town. She thought it might just be her imagination, but she couldn't help but notice a desperation in his movements. Where there was once an exchange between them, Abe seemed to retreat behind his eyes. No longer was she part of his equation. He was only doing it for himself, she thought, and yet he still went to her. As if he didn't have countless other lovers. What did he hope to gain? She caught him again, glazing over and failing to appreciate her. Instead of taunting him, she went around the corner to grab a cigarette in her room.
Abe sat up. He hadn't done more than gazed at his drink. Slumping ever more on his stool, and setting his drink aside, he looked to his left and caught Tom staring at the men playing eight ball. They puffed on cigarettes, and they barely spoke. The majority of their conversation consisted of calling shots, and the rest of it was asking for smokes or saying what a good game it was before restarting. Tom seemed intent on watching their every move. Abe struck up small talk.
"Would you like to move closer?"
Tom turned to Abe and held up his glass. "This stuff doesn't do anything for me anymore."
"Then why have it?"
Tom slid the drink down the bar to where Abe's was, and turned to look at the pool tables again. The men had restarted once more, and a satisfying clack was heard when the first shot was fired and the triangle broke.
"Because we always do."
Abe stared at Tom for just a moment longer before looking at the two drinks in front of him. Playing with the small umbrella in one of them for just a second, Abe scooted the drinks even further out of view and turned to look at the pool game with Tom. For a good couple minutes the two sat in silence while the other two shot balls into pockets. Before long, Tom spoke.
"How long do you think you can play pool?"
Abe shrugged. "It can keep me engaged for around five games, each one takes around twenty minutes, so almost two hours."
"Huh. I meant more in the long term. If you made it a point just to play pool, and get good at it and go to competitions. How long do you think you could do it?"
Abe looked oddly at Tom. "I've gotten good at pool before. Some men let it take them a lifetime. That seems reasonable. Most things can last you that long if you're interested."
"Do you think it would be worth it?" … "To take up pool?"
"Well, worth what?"
Tom sunk a bit. "That's what I thought." It was inaccurate to say that Abe had never seen Tom like this before, but it had all been recent. Within the past decade, at the very least. They were getting more frequent recently, and Abe didn't have any really good idea what they were all about. He'd known Tom for most of his life, and he wasn't a pessimist. No, Tom was a realist. And, realistically, most of the time life was as good as either of them could have asked for. Unfortunately, Abe thought that might have been what was getting to him. Abe might have felt it too, if he were more introspective. Abe didn't understand Abe the same way that Tom understood Tom. When Abe was indulging himself, Tom could be found just thinking. Tom thought a lot. Abe thought it wasn't good for him. Being alone with his thoughts had never been comforting to Abe, and he couldn't imagine it being any different for anybody else.
"Hey, Tom —"
"So how many trick shots do you think there are? In pool. You can get a bank shot, you can hit the two off of the one and into the side pocket. Could you get the eight ball in on the same shot you got the last of your balls in? Would that work? How many variants do you think there are, really? When would it get stale? At what point does it stop feeling new, when do you admit that you've seen the same board before, and that you've made the same shot before. Maybe in a different context, maybe the other balls were in different positions, maybe you were stripes last time, it doesn't matter. You've made that shot before."
Abe expected him to continue, but suddenly Tom stopped and twitched a little. Another peculiar silence sparked between the two, and Abe decided it was time to get up. The bar was giving them that melancholic air that it sometimes did, and Tom would do better to get to sleep. While Abe was beginning to stand, Tom started up again.
"I asked a question."
Abe shrugged it off. "I think it gets stale when your opponents never win."
Tom began to stand up himself and pull his jacket on. "What if they never do?"
"Well, what do you mean 'what if'?"
Tom pursed his lips, and then sneered, and then sighed in a short facial evolution. "Yeah. Sure. You're right. I think you should stay and have a couple more drinks."
"What?"
"I said that you shouldn't follow me. You wouldn't like where I'm going."
Just as Tom walked over and was about to reach for the door knob, it disappeared. His hand hovered in mid air for a moment, and then he straightened the hunch in his back.
"Abe, bring the door back."
"I'm not stupid, and I'm far from a bad friend. I might not get it, but I'm not going to go let you hurt yourself."
"Now is not the time to be sappy."
"Not trying to be, Tom. Just trying to understand you."
Tom turned halfway around. "Let me out of your head."
"You know as well as I do that you can leave whenever you want."
Tom turned back to where the door should have been and walked through it without a word. Abe stood in the midst of the bar stools and tobacco smoke and hum of the air conditioner. He wondered if he should give chase… and he decided against it. Tulip returned to see Abe slink back into his seat. She flashed him a look, and he simply shook his head. He fondled the tonics, and then downed both. Soon enough he stood back up and made his way, determined, towards the wall. The door appeared again, and he pushed his way through it. In the snowy street, Abe found Tom's jacket. Abe still had the choice to follow him, but Tom didn't want to be followed.
Abe made a short yell, stomped the ground, and everything went away. The road, the buildings, the people, all of it. He stood in void for a second, before stars began to fade back in. Soon he was surrounded by the milky way and all the constellations that he found familiar. The stars sparkled and nebulae blurred and galaxies swirled and turned but everything was silent. Abe felt only his heart beat, heard only a low ringing. He didn't want those either. His body faded — his skin unraveled in glorious velvety strands, his organs conformed to basic shapes and shrunk, his brain separated into lobes. His neurons and axons expanded into gaseous balls of plasma, becoming celestial bodies and attracting thoughts like planets and asteroids. Finally, he couldn't feel or see or hear. Finally, he couldn't do anything but think.
Finally, he was alone.

When you're able to do anything whenever you feel like it, with nobody challenging you, with absolutely no limits at all, what's the point anymore? Once there's nothing more to win, what do you do with all your time? If you can't die and you're a jack of all trades, if you've traveled the multiverse twenty times over, if you've become everything you've ever wanted to be. If that, what then?
What happens upon your mind when you hear the word "god"? Does the lack of a capital make you jump not to the monotheist visions of the Abrahamic religions, and lead you on an odyssey through Greek and Roman lands, perhaps the great thunderous wraths of Zeus and the curses his lover Hera may put on his mistresses? Do you think of the nights Hephaestus spent toiling over his anvil, hammer in hand, handing his cyclopian helpers tools and barking requests? Do you believe in Hermes' treacherous journeys through Hates' domain, making it out alive with scorch marks on his winged shoes, just to bring the departed souls through?
Maybe you are more familiar with the Norse myths, of the similarly stormy nature of Thor, and the omens of Odin's Ravens, or the mystical powers of runes. Perhaps when you think of gods, you think of idols, of men and women you look up to, of geniuses in their respective fields, be it music or science or athletics, be they Jerry Garcia or Stephen Hawking or Usain Bolt. Maybe you were raised in the deep south, and God is a sacred word to be feared and respected, and His name must not be used in vain.
However it is perceived, I assure you that these are tall tales. If ever these gods lived, for which there is an argument to be made, they have long since left us. Since the world as it is now was made, gods have been finite and static. There's one titan, and two gods. The gods were human, once. They were born just like you or I, from a mother's womb and into a hospital room, or perhaps at home assisted by a midwife. They were mortal, and they went to school. They got degrees, their names became recognized, and one discovered that whether someone is observing the universe or not changes the laws of physics at their base. His name was Thomas Young.
I won't go into him much. Everything you need to know about his backstory can be found on wikipedia or the like. We live in the digital age, and I do not intend on communicating useless information. There are things they don't tell you, though. He was a hero. True blooded, to his core, a hero. The world was in peril — they don't mention that either — and he was far from giving in. The public blissfully unaware, Tom recruited myself and we got to work. A year passed, and another. We toiled on a new model, and then a newer one. Continuously improving.
Each one had a more impressive name; Gaia, then Atlas, then Chronos, but the final model was called Brahman. Each one better. Each one grander. Each one safer. The smiles on our faces widened, breaking an otherwise professional veneer. Nobody would even notice. We'd be like doctors, the earth our patient, and we'd repeat the ancient phrase "This won't hurt a bit."
There's another thing they lie about. Tom didn't die in May. On the 10th of May, 1829, Mr. Young and his companions, myself included, flipped a switch… and that's when the world turned on.

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An Intermission…

Pen.
Pen to paper.
Pen on paper.
Pen tapped on paper.
Polly tapped the pen on the paper.
Polly tapped the pen.
On the paper.
Polly tapped.
The pen.
On the paper.
Polly tapped the pen on the paper.
Polly tapped the pen on the paper.
On the paper.
On the paper.
This was about the same time that Polly tapped her pen on the paper.
Hey you.
Yes hello?
Hey, did you know?
Know what?
Well just have I ever told you?
Uh, what about?
Well about how Polly tapped her pen on the paper.
No, uh, no I don't think you've ever told me about that, might you elaborate?
Ah, well, you see. Polly, right?
Uh-huh.
She's got a pen, right?
Right.
And she also has a piece of paper in front of her — you follow?
Yeah I follow.
Okay, here's the hard part…
I'm listening.
She uh, so she takes her pen.
Uh-huh.
She takes it, and she taps it.
On what?
The paper.
Okay you lost me.
So I haven't told you about this before?
I don't believe so.
Okay, let's take it from the top. So, there's this girl named Polly and —
"Polly?"
My hand jerked suddenly upward and I smacked myself in the nose, which made a soft "honk" as its red puffy surface was so abruptly smushed.
"Oh my are you okay? Oh I'm so sorry!"
I crouched down and tried to massage the pain out of the bridge of my nose. "I'm okay! I'm alright, really."
"I can go get you some band-aids, or a Boo-Boo Blaster? Tee emm? Oh I'm going to call up —"
"Oh you don't have to! Really.—"
"Are you sure? It wouldn't take more than —"
"Yeah I'm sure, I don't want to be a bother —"
"If you say so, but seriously it would be no trouble —"
"You're so sweet 3T, but honestly I'm fine, just startled a bit."
"You absolutely sure?"
"Absolutely."
"Really actually? Positively?"
"Yeah, thank you so much for the consideration but really I'm fine…"
…
"…So, why did you come over?"
"Oh uh, just passing by and you were just talking to yourself again and I wanted to make sure everything was a-okay, you know? Heheheh… Is it?"
"Yeah, it's —"
"Is it all okay? Is there anything I can do?"
"Yeah! It's fine, it's quite alright, I've uh… I've just hit a block."
"Aww."
"Yeah, just a hurdle to get over! Nothing serious, nothing —"
"So sorry to hear that."
"— worth worrying about, just a —"
"I really don't like when that happens."
"— phase that will pass. Uh, how about you?"
"Oh I'm good! Just uh, finishing up a collaboration with Brainy."
"Aw, that's cool."
"Yeah. I mean, I'm going to present it under my name, but really I couldn't have done it without him. He's good. One of the goodest good Toy Tinkers to have come into our department. He's good, Polly. He's real good."
"I know! It's so cool that you get to work with him."
"Yeah…"
"It's real cool."
"Yeah, yeah it is…"
I leaned up against my work bench, still pinching my nose with my left hand, and smiled at Thomas Timothy Thompson. The happy bumbling droning of all the others working on projects in the Toy Creation Department, along with the loud whir of their instruments and tools, assaulted the ears of all in the great metal hall (if they didn't feel like using company provided Too-Much-Stuff Sound Pounder Earmmuffs™), and made it hard to hear one another.
"So… I'm going to get back to my work, Tom."
"Yeah, your work."
"Yeah…" Polly looked down at her blank piece of paper. "…my work."
"…Well okay! I'm going to go head back to my work station."
"Yeah!"
"Next to Brainy…"
"Yeah! See you later, alligator."
"Yeah you too… I'm always there if you need me!"
"Yeah!"
"You know where to find me!"
"Yeah I do, see you 3T!"
"See you, have a good day!"
"I will, take care!"
"I will, bye!"
"Bye!"
3T sulked backwards around the corner of the next workshop over, maintaining eye contact and giving an ardent wave. He passed by the Super Saws™, the Heck-Hard Hammers™, and the Edge-Ripper Hedge-Clippers™ on the tool wall before he disappeared into the sawdust and (pink, red and green) smoke of the hall. I smiled at him all the way, but as soon as he was out of sight… my waving hand curled and slumped as I let out an exhausted, exasperated, unmotivated, unenthralled, absolutely uninterested — and maybe even slightly disappointed — sigh. For as much as common courtesy said that everything was quite alright, everything was far from it. The presentation was in three days. Just three.
I sat down and leaned my head on the palm of my hand. What was I to do? What was I to do. I picked up my pen, and I tapped it. Where did I tap it? On the paper. Polly tapped her pen on the paper. Very important detail. Polly tapped her pen on the paper, and thought. What was I going to do? Tap. Would I forfeit this presentation? Tap. I couldn't afford that, I couldn't afford to miss one. I had to take every opportunity I got. Tap.
Maybe I shouldn't have lied to 3T.
Tap.
Maybe I needed to go back and ask for help.
Tap.
Serious help.
Tap.
Help conceptualizing, help making things reality, help getting anything, literally anything past the finish line.
Tap.
But that would require getting up.
Tap.
I didn't want to get up.
Tap.
Sigh.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tap.
…
Tap.
The pen was vigorously thrown at the tin wall, and it made a less than satisfying "ting" sound. Polly tinged the pen on the metal. I smiled. Initiative! There was no shame in asking for help. I was taking initiative. People don't learn before they have teachers. Maybe I just needed a teacher. A 3Teacher. Thomas Timothy Teacher. I chuckled at my own jokes. Things were looking up! Things were looking up. Polly pat her feet on the concrete. I took an apple from a basket and passed it to a low flying glow snake (swarms of which made up the only source of light in this place). I passed workshop upon workshop, Toy Tinker upon Toy Tinker, my confidence growing with each sideways look. I was going to have something to present this Gumday! I was!
I turned the corner, my chest puffed out and a fire burning in my eyes.
"Thomas Timo… thy… Thompson…"
He… wasn't at his workbench, that was for sure. I saw his tea, his small pack, a bag lunch, and his framed picture of that girl from the Sweets & Consumables Department. Maybe he was in the next booth over, with Brainy?
Shuffling one over, into Brainy's orange and black painted work space, I found myself still alone and a little confused.
"Uh, guys? Hello?"
He had his two tiger posters up as usual. Sometimes he changed them, in case he dressed up differently that morning, but most often it was all tigers. There were various tools sprawled about, some blueprints, some… jello? Just lying about, and a tin full of hard fruity candies. Notes were scrawled in his ever neat, dime tall hand writing. Blueprints were rolled into cylinders and put up as big columns all over his desk, and an inkwell for his old timey purple feather pen was accumulating a small pool at its base. Though recently used, the place was deserted.
"…Pals?"
Leaning backwards, and looking around both corners of the space and down the long, worn walkways… nothing. No Brainy, no 3T, no one useful in sight. I decided that I'd wait for them. Tom said they were collaborating on something, maybe they had both gone to find some materials or talk to someone about a project detail. Maybe they went to the bathroom together? People do that, right? I know I didn't, because I didn't have any friends to do it with, but I had heard it was a thing that normal people did with other normal people. So I'd wait. Standing, though? I couldn't stand that long. I'd sit.
I sat in Brainy's spinning chair (I wished I had a spinning chair in my space, but mine broke and hadn't been replaced yet), and began to twirl. Good thinking time. Motion was good for thinking. I couldn't help but let out a quiet "wee" as I flailed in the chair and turned every which way. He had a really good gig with his place here. I was a little jealous. The slightest bit envious, but not too much. Just enough to think of taking his chair. Maybe. Maybe one of his pens. He had some really nice pens. He'd be a lot less likely to notice a missing pen than a missing chair… What did he have lying about?
I pushed the chair out into the walkway, this time hoping not to see Brainy or 3T… and then I set to work. I mean, I wasn't planning to take anything, what was the harm in looking? I was just curious! It was going to be fine. I looked at all his little cabinets and read their labels:
References. Could be useful, I liked drawing references. They could have been culture references too, though. Not too interested in those. Next!
Paper. For taking notes on. I had been running low… and there's so many of those, he wouldn't mind if I took some. I opened it, and stuffed a small stack of printer paper under my coat (it was nearing winter up here) and zipped it up to keep it safe. Next!
Office Supplies. Boring. Next!
Ooo, a big wide one. Blank Blueprints. Maybe he had something in here? Below it was another one that said Works in Progress, which I assumed were other projects he was planning to get back to. I thought… but no, I couldn't break the code. I wouldn't want to steal an idea, that would just be preposterous. Next!
Scrapped.
Scrapped? Scrapped what? It was another wide one, so… blueprints? Scrapped huh? I opened it, and found many blueprints and notes crumpled up and shoved into the space. Ah, scrapped ideas. Ideas he wasn't going to work on — trash, it was his trash. His… trash… stuff… that he wouldn't miss if it was gone. I could look through a legend's trash.
I was trash. I was really bad trash, I was some putrid garbage rotting in some hole somewhere — figuratively. Don't want to be confused with Sewy. Poor Sewy. But Brainy's trash couldn't be worse than my trash. In fact, I was so bad, it was probably better than my best! And he didn't want it?
I re-checked the name of the drawer.
He didn't want it.
I lit up. What treasures awaited me? What trove had I just plundered, what gold had I found? I pulled the drawer completely out, rest it on my lap, and dug in.
Squishy Squeezy Hug Slugs! No.
Can of Bookworms. Ew. No.
Ant Seeds. Hmm? Oh, for your ant farm. I got it. No.
Bedbug's Bed Bites. I was sensing a theme. Still no.
Ring-Ring Ring. What? Oh. No.
A… Piano Plant? Ooo, now that was cool. And… it incorporated… you like, actually used plants to make it. Some pretty flowers, too! And some vine type things — and you got to do it in your voice! Ooo! It looked pretty easy, too — even I could make it. This was perfect! It even had a good ring to it. Polly's Piano Plant. Polly's —
"Polly?"
I convulsed and the entire spinning chair fell over, throwing the drawer up and letting it smack me in the cheekbone and spewing its contents all over the floor.
"Oh my, are you okay?! What are you doing in Brainy's work space?"
"It's not what it looks like, I'm just —"
"You can't be —"
"I swear I'm not —"
"Stealing from Brainy? Polly Gary —"
"I'm not! I'm really not! I just came over here —"
"To steal!"
"Don't talk so loud, people might believe you!"
Thomas Timothy Thompson immediately shut up, and straightened up (moreso than he already had), looking embarrassed. In little more than a whisper, I spoke up again:
"Help me clean this all up, please?"
"What?"
Right, it was very loud in there.
"Help me clean this all up, please!"
He looked helpless, glancing between myself and the walkway behind him. I beckoned him several times, each time he looked just a little more shaken and antsy. Finally, he gave in and crouched down next to me.
"So what are you doing?"
"I was coming over here to find you, because I needed to ask for help."
"I thought you said you were fine?"
"Well I'm not — presentations are on Gumday."
"I know…"
"And I don't have anything."
"So you noticed I wasn't there…"
"Yeah…"
"…and decided to steal from Brainy."
"No! No, Tom, no I didn't! I was waiting for you —"
"In Brainy's booth."
"— and I had nothing to do and I figured that — and look I went over here thinking you were with Brainy — I figured that he didn't need the stuff in his 'scrapped' drawer so I strolled through it looking for inspiration and look! I found one, I found inspiration!"
"Inspiration…"
"Yes, inspiration."
"…that's… not stealing?"
"No, it's not, I'm just… going to take some of his ideas and mold them into something of my own. Everybody learns from the greats, and I need a teacher, so I… well, I guess I should've asked him, but that's what I came over to do and nobody was here, so!"
"…So you just… rummaged through his desk…"
"His trash, 3T. I rummaged through his trash. He's not going to miss it, I swear. And I'm not. Stealing."
"You're not… stealing."
We both had our hands on the Piano Plant blueprints.
"No. I'm not. Tom, I wouldn't do that. That's mean. I'm just drawing inspiration from Brainy. Anyone can do that."
I tugged once, and he held fast.
"Tom?"
I gave him puppy eyes. I wasn't meaning to be deceitful, or guilt tripping, I just… really wanted those blueprints. And I wasn't going to steal. I wasn't. I was going to make something Polly Gary Ashley would make, just taking guidance from the greats. That's how it was going to happen. It was.
3T loosened up, and I gently slipped the blueprints out from under his hands. He stayed sitting on the floor, brow furrowed and lips pouting, while I slipped the reorganized drawer back into its place.
"So… where is Brainy?"
"He's —"
"Oh hi Polly!"
I quickly hid the blueprints in my coat while turned away from Brainy, and then promptly greeted him.
"Hey Brainy!"
"Hi! How are things?"
"Things are good — I was just here talking to 3T about the presentations. I don't have anything yet, and —"
"Aww."
"— so I was going to get tutoring from Thomas here —"
"I hate it when that happens."
"— but he wasn't around so I waited in your booth and… here we are! Heheh."
3T looked pitifully at me, realizing I wasn't going to tell Brainy about taking his scrapped blueprints. He shot me that "so you are stealing" look, and I shot him that "I am not, I'm just not going to tell him that I was rummaging through his desk because that would make me look bad and I wouldn't have been put in such a compromising position had you not shown up and started accusing me of things and I would have been able to go through this more properly then" look. Well, maybe he didn't get all the intricacies of that. But I think he got enough.
"So why is 3T on the floor?"
"… I'm tired."
"Makes sense."
"Yeah, it's been a long day."
"Yeah. That's how it goes, three days from presentations."
"Yeah…"
I stood, Brainy stood, and 3T sat in awkward silence. For a while. I mean, it wasn't really silent, because the whole room was so loud, but it was between us. Eye contact. More eye contact. Licking lips. Brainy's smile was fading.
"Alright, mind if I steal 3T for a bit?"
"No, not at all!"
"Thank you, Brainy, I swear I won't be long."
"Don't work him too hard, heheh."
"I won't! C'mon, 3T, I have something to show you."
"…You do?"
"Yeah! Get up, c'mon, I won't keep you long."
"…Okay…"
3T stood up, brushed some dust from the floor off of his pants, and sauntered towards me, his head hung low. Brainy raised his eyebrows.
"Wow, 3T, you get tired quick."
…
"Alright, see you two! Good luck at presentations!"
"Yeah, bye Brainy!"
"Bye Polly! I'll be at my desk if you need me!"
"Yeah, see you!"
"See you later!"
"Bye!"
"Bye!"
Taking 3T by the hand, I practically dragged him back to my work space. Past workbench after workbench, Toy Tinker upon Toy Tinker, my confidence lowering with each sideways look. Finally, we arrived at my bland and barren desk.
"So you are stealing."
"I am not, I'm just not going to tell him that I was rummaging through his desk, because that would make me look bad, and I wouldn't have been put in such a compromising position had you not shown up and started accusing me of things, and I would have been able to go through this more properly then! This is on —"
He pouted.
"…Oh fine, this is on both of us, okay? This is on both of us. But look, it's… it's really nothing, I swear."
"You're not going to present the Piano Plant?"
"I am not going to present the Piano Plant. I am going to make it my own thing. I promise you. 100%."
"Pinkie promise?"
I held out my pinkie, and he held out his.
"Pinkie promise."
He smiled and lightened up. We pinkie shook on it.

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