Opening Moves - SCP Foundation

Site Security File 11/11/4/8888/PR – Suspicious Letter 49,003,668

Letter received at the private residential post office in the South Cheyenne Point community. Letter had no stamp, post mark, or other identifiers anywhere on the envelope other than “To my father's captors” written in ballpoint pen ink on the front. Current leading theory is that the letter was somehow hand-delivered to the post box, even with a lack of any suspicious video evidence on the day in question. Analysis has shown the envelope and paper to be basic commercial stock, and lacks any finger prints or DNA residue.

The letter itself is hand-written with a black ball-point pen, also from basic mass-produced commercial stock. Handwriting analysis is thus far inconclusive, pending further threat evaluation determinations, requiring more exhaustive review. Due to the subject matter, copies of the text body are being forwarded to Site Security for base review and database entry.

Current threat index is low. Forwarding to Site Security and Central Records in compliance with diligence protocols. No in-depth probe is proposed or recommended at this time.

When I was young, I saw a short film. A cartoon, it detailed a fantasy kingdom that suddenly discovers that they are the dream of a sleeping man, and that soon his alarm would ring. They mount an expedition to the world and cover the man's ears and muffle the clock. He then starts to dream of flamingos, but the concept was so striking at the time that I never forgot it. The concept of reality as a plastic, immaterial stratum and not at all the bedrock of the world.

Is it possible that we're all flamingos-to-be? Swirling and running about in utter confidence, only to find we're less material then the average soap bubble, and much more transient? What would that do to our view of ourselves and the world? Suddenly the sacrifices we've made, the pain and suffering endured and caused, all count for nothing at all. I'm sure you can appreciate the blind horror of a realization of that nature. How much suffering and bleak moral choices could be invalidated by the next alarm clock?

I should be another faceless, shapeless victim. Another sacrifice made for the greater, intangible Good. And I was, for a while, both my mother and I. Left to twist and sway like leaves in the wake of your shadowy passing, bobbing around the sudden void left behind. She will most likely remain a victim. I will not. You can take what you wish, as you wish, and have done so for some time. You are thieves on a grand scale. My father once said, however, that no matter how good you are at something, how confident you may be, there is always someone, somewhere, that is better.

I am going to prove his theory.

You have taken something from me. So I, in turn, shall take many things from you. I know you will ignore this for now, but later, when the time comes, you will look back to this letter, and despair. As a red spider once said, “I am going to make you cry.”

My father, for all his intellectual might, was a cripple at chess. Something about it just confounded his sense. Even at my tender age, I was able to beat him with some regularity. He insisted on being white, always, as his handicap. Forever the white king.

I am the Black Queen. And I will be crossing the board to you soon.

We go forward…

Queen To Pawn

And go back…

Splinters