You Would Think Cataclysm Could Shake the Feeling That Change is Slow - SCP Foundation

"A hotdog. You make those?"

The vendor didn't reply, and simply crouched to reach for the ingredients and throw together a dog. English second language, Nobody figured, turning around and squinting at the summer sun's reflection in the windows of the skyscrapers. They held their hat to their head as the breeze picked up, and listened to the crowd's chatter at the beach.

A hot dog, ketchup and mustard and relish. "Thanks. Hey, do you believe in magic?"

"What?"

"Nevermind." They slid a bill across the counter, and didn't wait to receive change. The vendor would forget about the interaction soon enough anyways.

Nobody breathes deep, and finds a seat from which they can observe the beachgoers. They watch joy anew, and try to feel something about it. It's surely comfortable — the change of pace, the peaceful moments. Things are slower here. Safer. Not that Nobody was in much danger.

They take a bit of their hotdog. Food tastes better, they note. Crisis averted. This is a good moment.

And it is. Nothing can take that away from them, just yet. It's an unending good moment — with the healthy amount of doubt that Nobody holds for all things at all times, they're confident assuming that this day won't have any nasty surprises for them. The transition had succeeded — Cornelius' plan had worked.

He's dead now, of course, also by his own design. Poor soul, Nobody thinks, but the thought is automatic, and doesn't carry much emotion. No, they're having trouble shaking the thought that they've seen this before. This display of joy, this everyday happiness.

Their hat blows off, and they follow its path into the street with their eyes. They debate tracking it down, but instead reach over and pluck a hat from a passerby. Nobody chuckles as the pedestrian squints at the sudden sun in their eyes, but fails to notice Nobody's new style. This is a tighter fit, it should stay on better.

This time, Nobody had chosen to care. They'd rarely gotten involved, except for their own amusement or in exchange for something they'd wanted. Needless to say, someone missing their hat wasn't the worst thing Nobody'd done. Not by far. And though Nobody was aware that they could split their actions into better and worse, these terms carried little weight to them.

It's easy to lose yourself when you've seen everything. In the immensity of their memories, Nobody themself made little impression. They think they might have been born, once, but they're not sure anymore. They've never felt human, but if they are, then that might explain the amnesia — if their brain had limited space, then they had outlived its storage capacity and started overwriting everything. People they once felt were incredibly important, they couldn't put a name or a face to anymore. Places that appear in their dreams feel rich with associations, and yet none are made. Their day-to-day is a minefield of deja vu — a natural consequence to the mundanity of everything, they think. I've already been in love, I've already killed. I've already ordered a hotdog. I've seen this beach empty, or on fire, or at night with turtles rushing to the water and getting picked off by seagulls. Nothing's new, and nothing ever will be.

But the last time felt like it had finally been the end of all things, forever. Not merely part of a cycle of misery and utopia — of famine and excess, of wartime and peace, of slaughter and rebirth — but the final note to humanity. Nobody had considered that if they didn't have humans to keep them company, they could probably find something else — they aren't even sure they originated on Earth, and they're relatively sure they remember surviving the vacuum of space at some point. But that was a risk. Nobody wasn't willing to take it. It actually felt important to step in — the feeling gave them vertigo.

So they pitched in. They didn't meander past genocide and slavery like they had so many times before. They did their part. It even felt like something they had been waiting to do for a very, very long time.

And here they are on the other end. Some poking around elucidated that the Factory still existed anyways — looks like Cornelius hadn't quite gotten rid of them — but they weren't expanding as exponentially as one might expect. Why? Some people had floated the word Foundation, with a contradictory air of both awe and disdain, alongside the Global Occult Coalition and a handful of other names. Horizon something, others that surely were just acronyms. They hadn't heard definitives, but Nobody was willing to bet whatever they were, they were behind the way the world looked.

And it looked boring.

There wasn't a speck of floating architecture anywhere. No leylines shooting through the earth, people had much more uniform skin tones, not to mention numbers of eyes, limbs — less cybernetic implants, the technology seemed to have reverted some hundred years — fewer runes, and half the ones Nobody found people toying with didn't do a thing.

A research project, Nobody concluded, finishing off their dog and standing up to take a walk.

People. Talking. The Factory. The Veil. It felt patchy. Nobody couldn't shake the feeling that Cornelius had fixed little, and prolonged much. I have seen this before, Nobody considers, with more confidence. This is always what the world looks like, right before the pressure bursts. This attitude, this comfort and ease, this mundanity — it's never real. It's always preamble.

But I found it important, didn't I? Nobody picks an ice cream cone from a kid on a stool outside a dessert parlor. Maybe horror is the preamble to calm, not the other way around. But the world had come so close, so close to death, that Nobody has trouble convincing themself of that. Peace wasn't endless: when it all came to a close, horror and struggle would be the last things the world saw. Nobody was sure of it. They'd just gone through their first honest-to-god apocalypse, and saved everybody. Was it even my first? Hard to know. Nobody wondered how many times that could happen — how many times they could get close, before it all went kaput. Would Nobody feel the same drive to action the next time? And if they did, how many apocalypses could be averted with their skillset?

Nobody sighed, and walked into traffic to stand in the middle and feel the rush of air as the cars passed them by. I should start writing this down. Keep a journal, or something.

They stood there for a while, and felt for the same drive that pushed them to action just some weeks ago — found it missing. They thought that should bother them, but it didn't. They shrugged, at themselves.

"I'm thinking a handsome bellhop and a hotel," they said out loud to no one. "And then maybe I should ask around about this Veil thing I keep hearing about. It seems important, by some certain definition of that word."

They started walking, and a driver that suddenly noticed them, swerved, and honked. The driver suddenly wondered what had scared them so bad — before getting rear-ended, an occurrence that would ultimately lose them their rent and consequently their degree as they are forced to retreat back to their parents' house.

Individuals rarely do much anyways, Nobody muses. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself.