To my staff - SCP Foundation

portrait of your father:

ATTENTION

THE FOLLOWING PAGE HAS BEEN LOCKED PENDING INVESTIGATION

ACTIVITIES ON THIS PAGE ARE BEING TRACKED AND RECORDED

Name: Dr. ████████ Kondraki

Security Clearance: Level 4, Special Permissions

Occupation: Administrator, Director

Site of Operations: Site 17

SCP Files Authored:

SCP-396 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)

SCP-408 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-250 (Current Project Head: Researcher Voct)

SCP-295 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-330 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-336 (Current Project Head: Dr. Vang),

SCP-515-ARC Pending declassification per Acting Director Escobar

SCP-252-ARC Pending forced reassignment

SCP-122 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)

SCP-208 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-266 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-276 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-570 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)

SCP-460 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-375 (Current Project Head: Dr. Roget)

SCP-625 (Current Project Head: Dr. Vang)

SCP-705 Pending forced reassignment

SCP-577 Pending forced reassignment

Log Files: FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.

Dr. Kondraki's Work Log FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.

Profile: FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.

History: FILE LISTING LOCKED. SEEK ASSISTANCE TO CONTINUE.

THE FOLLOWING WRITTEN TO BE RELEASED ON ACCOUNT OF DEATH

DATED SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2006

RELEASED DECEMBER 8TH, 2017

To my staff:

If you're reading this, it means I'm dead, either by my own hand or some inexplicable luck of the draw. Shit sucks. You win some, you loose some, I guess.

I know a few directors who left everything written out for everyone. Like Ghost, you know, when he died, he left just binders of shit detailing everything to be carried out on-site in a single 24 hour period for us to look through. It freaked me the fuck out when they appointed me to this position and I saw it, maybe 18 binders that he neatly laid out on his desk when I walked in. That's what he did before he offed himself. He left stacks upon stacks of data and paperwork and meticulous instructions behind.

I know a lot of the older people on site will remember that night well, and I'm sorry as fuck you had to go through two directors in one lifetime if you're living to see my night come, too. It's a rough job. You know how it is, but anyway, it turns out that the binder thing is a pretty common thing that Directors and Senior Staff do before they die if they know they're gonna go out. Like, they get ready and shit, leave all the crucial information the site needs to run behind, and before you guys get excited I want to let you know that no, I didn't compile death binders, because I've never heard of anything more morbidly capitalistic and depressing then higher staff at an organization preparing for their deaths by doing unnecessary paperwork. You should be out doing shit! If someone told me I had three days to live, I sure as hell wouldn't spend it writing down every single thing I do everyday for my staff to find! If I ever decide to kill myself, I'm not gonna spend extra time telling you how to run my site the way I ran it. If I'm dead it's not mine anymore. It doesn't need to be run like I'm still there.

You guys are your own people. All of you. You'll figure out a better way, I know you will, and it'll be better than anything I could have done.

Also, I never read those binders anyway. There comes a point in a man's life when you just have to bullshit until you make it, and that's what they did when they handed me the keys and told me to get shit together for tomorrow morning because our director killed himself. My colleague, like literally, my friend and mentor, who I'd worked under for years, who treated me with the most compassion I'd ever seen out of anyone. They told me he died and that I had to get the site's shit together. How fucked up is that? Are you kidding me? Like, don't get me wrong, I did it and it somehow all came together right by the next morning, but the worst part about the idea of dying to me is that someone else is gonna get handed my keys at 1am1 and told that they have until 8am to figure it out. Whoever that ends up being, I'm sorry I put that on you, but I'm not sorry enough that I'm gonna make you a sad death scrapbook of how to carry on my legacy in B45 files. I have faith in you, you young, unexperienced Level 4 that just got handed my shit and became a Director. You're probably terrified. Your friends are suddenly looking up to you. You meet with 05 for the first time on video chat and they probably tell you something along the lines of 'good luck, buddy'2. You have over a thousand personnel and around 500 anomalous entities shoved into a facility the size of a small city and have to break it to them that the person that they looked to for direction for decades just offed himself and you're the new bitch in charge. People will hate you. The transition will be rough. You poor, poor bastard you, you thought that your life was hard before and it's about to get a whole lot harder. I've had a cot installed for you in my office. Use it well.

Speaking of poor bastards, my Senior Staff. You guys are amazing, completely incredible. Not only do we work together in a somewhat coherent manner, but it's been how many years now and the site is still standing and you make it seem like I know what I'm doing usually when I really don't. I give to you the gratitude of one million death binders for putting up with my shit.

One of you will be chosen over the course of the next couple of weeks to take my place. It's like The Bachelor but with the worst job you will ever experience in your life. The 05 council makes the final decision after reviewing all of you carefully, so no, I don't really have a say in this case3. They will learn everything about you. A background check is an understatement, because they'll give you a frontground and a sideground and an assground check, too. This isn't a Director position at a tiny backwoods site in the middle of nowhere; this is a Director position at one of the largest backwoods sites in the middle of nowhere in the world, damnit! You are all vying to become dictator of what is legally nothing, but physically everything. If you do your job well, then it will remain that way. In the meantime this job will push you past your limits every day of the week. It ruined my marriage, my health, my faith, my sense of self preservation, and my ability to give a fuck, but I lived, bitch, I lived. What would I do if I didn't do this? Who would I be? Where would I be? It's a weird question to think about. Any job in the Foundation changes you, though, but you all know that already.

Let me back up for a second: I'm writing this in the September of 2006. I realized that I didn't really have anything in the case that I died inexplicably, and with this job how it is it's just one of those things that needs attending to. Maybe I'll live to be 87 and still working this same job, and maybe by then I'll decide to take the death binder route, but for the time being something I wrote while eating Hot Pockets at 3am perfectly embodies the raw essence of my human experience. My son is sleeping in the other room. He's 14 years old. He's probably reading this right now sometime in the future, so for him: I know I've picked up some habits in the past few years that you don't like to see in me, and I don't like you seeing in me. I'll get better, okay? I promise.

My son's pretty damn amazing, honestly. He loves reading, and The X Files, and music that I'm not completely into but I'm not about to tell him that. Pretty sure he's gay, too, or at least not straight. I think he knows and is nervous to tell me. I think it might be a while before he's ready to tell me that, and that's fine. Whenever you're ready, Draven, it's okay. If you're reading this, I love you. I always have and I always will.4

It's occurred to me that you guys might be sad about this. I'm bad at comforting people experiencing emotions, so I'm not gonna try and do it here. Some of you might have had me as a mentor, or worked closely with me, or maybe even had more of a life with me (Senior Staffers and Draven5, I'm looking at you). Some of you might have only seen me around or met me in passing. I'm grateful for all of you. Grief can be a bitch, but that's out of my hands.

Anyway. The reason we're here.

The fact that this site stumbles through even one day of operation is a fucking miracle. You have no idea how many moving parts make up a Foundation Site, forget about a large humanoid research and containment site. There's a line in Jurassic Park that's always really stuck with me: "We have all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo and the computers aren't even on their feet yet,"6 and I think that's a pretty solid representation of what we're up against here. See, at Site-17 we have all the problems of a zoo, a prison, a university-scale research facility, a military base, multiple apartment complexes, a local government, a corporation7, a small city, a secure facility, an intelligence operation and a theme park8 and we have our computers up and running and causing problems all of their own! Who the fuck decided this was a good idea? This was a terrible idea, but here we are. There are hundreds of other sites on Earth doing the same thing right now. Hell, Site-19 is bigger than us and does the same thing in Siberia at 40 below! It takes a special collection of people to run this big of a shitshow, so thanks to all of you. You guys are the best.

The Foundation has been running at some capacity 24/7, 365 days a year since the beginning of the 20th century, and it's 2006 and we're still going, despite the danger, despite the millions of stupid problems that happen on a daily basis, and despite me dying, it's gonna be okay. You don't need me to tell you that. There's 1,000 of you people; the way I see it, even if every single thing on site was to breach, that's still a 2 to 1 ratio. Find a breach buddy! Get a blunt object! You'll be fine.

Oh, and have fun with it.

Yours9,

Director Kondraki

Footnotes

1. There's always been a thing in the Foundation with people dying at night. There's probably something poetic about that, but superficially it seems so weird. Why can't people die in the day? Why can't it wait until morning, so I don't have to have that awkward midnight brood around my apartment to force myself through the five stages of grief before work? Like, maybe they need to get in the mood or something. I'll let you guys know if I find out.

2. You will find over the course of your career that 05 presents many nuggets of wisdom not unlike this one. I would say that out of the 13, about 4 of them on average have had experience as a Site Director. Yes, it's important to listen to them, but as you will promise when they swear you in to this position, your first priority is your site; not to the Foundation and certainly not to them. Be smart about it. If you feel like you could make a better decision but it's not what they want you to do, do it your way. They might have to actually step foot on your site to know things as well as you do, and god forbid that happen.

3. If you're having trouble picking up on a pattern here, 05 has many similarities in knowledge and expertise to those on the boards of large companies and capitalist governments. Take this information how you will.

4. It would be awkward if I die and you're not actually gay. That would be really awkward. I love you and shit anyway though, like, that's the same.

5. Honorary Senior Staffer through proxy, paid with pizza and fatherly knowledge (including such gems as 'don't put metal in the microwave unless you want to see something cool' and 'vodka goes bad if you don't drink it all at once')

6. I have no idea who says that and don't care enough to look. Suck it and fuck it, nerds.

7. Side note, you may wonder how much money I make doing this shit. Ironically not much, but I'm a simple guy. I live in a two bedroom apartment. It's the same one I've been living in for twenty years. I have enough for coffee at the end of the day. The real upside to my job is that I get my utilities paid for, which isn't half bad; the downside is that my son needs to order pizza for me to keep our address off the public record. It's a life.

8. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

9. See you all in Jewish hell