I Can't See The Sun - SCP Foundation

Alzin Cdag, with one piece of art by tiredSn0w

I Can't See The Sun

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Based on characters by tiredsn0w, Gabriel Jade, djkaktus, Dmatix, Metaphysician, MontagueETC, DrChandra, whoever came up with Percival Darke (Randomini, perhaps?), SoullessSingularity, PennywiseTheClown, snuggly face, interpretations of the Masked Lords by DrGooday in their work https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/poetic-records-of-the-alagaddan-lords, and interpretations of Grabnok from margssentif in their work https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/hopping-through-worlds.

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F.A.Q.

TITLE OF PREVIOUS

All That Copper, Glowing Fine

Part 2

The rebellion on Kepler didn’t take many chances to relax. They kept their guard up lest a false move alert the government to a suspicion of nonconforming behavior. Yet, things had been looking up lately. Their lost experiment, their martyred savior, had returned to them, and to boot had brought with him a man who knew more of the medical profession than any on even that advanced planet. And so, with the government temporarily at bay, some of them took a few weeks to rehearse a play.

The Companion

“Are you sure you are up for this, my love?”

“Of- of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” I replied. That nickname still didn't sound right coming from him, but after all that had passed between us, I could no longer reject it.

He made me feel… What was the right phrase? Like I’d reached an oasis of land in the middle of the vast ocean of my sins. I didn’t want to cause him an iota of pain, but when I would inevitably have a breakdown, he was the one person I felt comfortable going to. In the moments we were together, he made me feel like my life was worth something, that my needs were worth as much as those of others.

When we were apart, that feeling left, all my mechanisms telling me it was a lie. Without him, I was a blade of grass against the hurricane of my sins, of all I was raised to do and to be.

“It’s going to be a big room, and a long time to sit still watching. I’ve been to plays before; you haven’t. It’s not like watching a film; there’s pressure on you in the audience to act like you’re paying attention too, because the actors can see you. If that sounds painful to you, we can leave right now.”

“But you want to see the play, right?”

“Chéri, your happiness is worth a thousand times more to me than what I enjoy-”

“Excuse me,” interrupted the person at the ticket counter, “Can you two make up your mind? There’s a line behind you!” It slammed its fist down into the holo-projected keyboard, causing it to lose its game of minesweeper. It cursed.

“S-Sorry-” I said, before the Doctor turned to face them.

“We have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Least of all to you. 5a82, imagine I’m not here.”

“Then I’d go to wherever you are-”

“Imagine I don’t factor into this whatsoever. In that circumstance, would you want to go to the play?”

And at that point, I realized I didn’t know.

I loved human media, but I had never seen a piece that could see you back. Something that required both silence and attention. To be honest, that sounded way too public to be something I would enjoy.

And it reminded me too much of my Handler…

“We’re all waiting,” said the ticket-taker. I looked around and saw the vast line behind me. If I didn’t see the play at this point, they might get mad…

And I looked into the yellow eyes of my Doctor, and I realized that if he was with me, it would still be heaven.

“Yes,” I lied.

He lowered his mask beak and searched my eyes. I got the feeling he didn’t entirely believe me. He sighed. “All right. But we’ll talk about this later. You need to stand up for your own needs, sometimes.”

We paid for the tickets, to the great relief of everyone behind us in the line, and moved into the theater.

The Doctor

I liked my Ibis-beaked mask, most of the time. For most of my six hundred years, it had been a symbol of the distinction between me and my fellow men, a mark of the one with the potential to Cure. These days, of course, I didn’t have so many distinctions. My mind was clearer, no longer obsessed with the quest to defeat the Pestilence. It left more room in my life for other feelings, some of which I welcomed and some I kept barely at bay.

The problem with my mask, as I opined to my alien friend as we reached our seats, was that it prevented all possibility of my kissing him.

He laughed. “Well, if that’s all you dislike about yourself, you’re lucky.”

“Why?” I asked. “You have nothing to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Sure I do,” he said. “I’m so scrawny compared to all the other Twos and…”

“Compared to all the other Twos?” I said. “That’s no way to look at oneself. No matter how much you conform to a certain standard of beauty set by others, there will always be people who conform to it more than you do.” He bristled at the word “conform”, and I realized too late it was a sensitive spot in Keplerian culture. “I’m sorry, my love. But who is to say that they should not try to look more like you? You’re a survivor. You survived that crash landing. Would a larger Two have done so? Would a larger Two have had as much room to cushion him in the amniotic fluid sack? Beauty is all about surviving with grace, my friend, and you have survived so much more than anyone on this planet ever could.”

He blushed.

I thought with shame about my mask. In spite of my words, I had come to regard it as a hideous thing. Its beak kept my face always at a certain distance from my Keplerian friend. I had called a close acquaintance a few weeks back to consult him about the possibility of taking it off. He alone understood the risks and benefits of chitinous mask removal. When he arrived on planet, which should be fairly soon, he would help me make my decision.

And as I thought about this, he pulled me into a close snuggle. “Even if you can’t kiss me,” he said, “I can still kiss you.”

And so he did.

The Companion

The Doctor and I were too busy in our snuggling to pay close attention to the play at this point, which would have irked the actors to no end, had not they had more dire things to worry about.

We whispered to each other through the first act exposition, giggling, oblivious to the queen’s confession of having helped murder her husband and dishonor him in the disposition of his corpse.

We caressed each others’ faces as the shadowy figure appeared in the background after each and every murder.

I figured I should start paying attention around act IV, and wondered what I had missed and why the evil king would be worried about how much tribute he could give to that weird ambassador person who followed him around. Who was playing that person, anyway? And where did the prop department get that knife he carried around?

Then Act V started, and everything went to hell.

There was no way the props department, for instance, was able to fake guts spilling out of a person to that degree of realism, and no reason they would want to.

“With this, the tribute, in full it is paid.”

Additionally, how would a trick knife even be capable of causing that much fake blood to spill out over a neck? Where was it hiding it all?

”With this, fool’s blood, it is the Hanged King’s.”

The Doctor sat bolt upright at this line. “We have to get out of here, now,” he hissed. He began to pick me up and carry me towards the exit…

”With this, our blood, it is the Hanged King’s.”

And the lights started to fall as the shadowy figure marched right for us.

The Doctor

I knew of the shadowy figure, though I had never seen them in person. I had tried to bury my memories of my time in the City of Dead Truths, and my recent universe-switching hadn’t done my recollections any favors, either. The past of this universe’s former SCP-049 and the past from the Cured universe mixed together in my brain, muddling an already neglected memory.

The result was that even with all the references to Alagadda in the play, I had only acknowledged the place as I would any other real-world setting. Only the reference to the Hanged King had dredged up the proper fear to fully awaken my memories of that awful place.

And so I picked up my friend and ran like a bat out of hell.

The Ambassador, however, was the apex predator of all the bats in hell. And they were more effective at controlling them than white-nose syndrome.

The lights flickered, and the rebels in the room writhed on the ground, leaving only the Ambassador and I upright. The lights flickered again, and they ceased writhing. The lights flickered one last time, and I was paralyzed, and the Ambassador stood over me. Silent. And holding a dark scroll.

And then they spoke.

“Four lords must rule. Yet now there are but three.”

Their blank gaze stared without kind eyes to see.

”Dỳo, the Black Lord, left a will,” They said, making me feel quite ill,

”And wrote his lordship passed onwards to thee.”

They then read from the scroll. Apparently, the evil mask had said, in effect, "I hate being the Black Lord of Alagadda, so for whoever ends up killing me, I can think of no worse punishment."

“You’ve made yourself a man quite hard to find,”

”’Cross universe, our gaze you’ve sought to blind.”

I said, “That is not what I sought”,

but they would not suffer that thought,

“To Alagadd you’ll henceforth be confined.”

They clarified, "We can't have the new Black Lord start his reign as an absentee. There's too much work piled up from Dỳo's exile."

And when they spoke the very final vowel,

The portal’s sound began its awful howl.

I sought the arm of one I love,

Who pulled against the portal’s shove,

But men will fail against the gods that prowl.

The Companion

And then the strange figure left, taking my universe with them.

And then the theater-goers gradually got un-paralyzed, and started to tend to the dead and dying.

And then people started evacuating the room, started to clear up the blood, and mopped the floors, except for the spot on which I lay.

And people came, and they talked in front of me, their faces pointed at the space where I was, showing concern. They spoke softly, tenderly. They spoke harshly. Eventually, they left.

Fitful sleep, fitful waking. The sun set and rose, rose and set, etc.

Somewhere else, time passed. Twos were being born, Twos were dying. But time stood still for me, here.

If I stopped taking my intravenous feeding mixture, maybe I’d stop feeling this way.

A black-cloaked form approached me. I turned away. I didn’t want to be reminded of something I’d rather not think the name of.

“Excuse me, are you Five Ay Ate Too, also known as Es See Pee Six Thousand One Hundred and Eighteen?”

Go away go away go away….

“It’s just that I’m a close relation of the Surgeon, and I hear you’re the last person to see him.”

There’s lots of surgeons around here, get lost…

“I suppose you wouldn’t know him as the Surgeon. Let’s see, his other aliases… Bartholomew Artz, Haselhurst, Es See Pee Oh Four Nine for some reason? … Why would he give himself a ridiculous numerical designation like that anyway?”

He was about to continue, but wasn’t able to because I had begun to clutch at his robes and scream, "TRAITOR! SPY! TRAITOR IN OUR MIDST!"

It was about seven minutes later when the rebellion had dragged me off of the man when I finally got a good look at him.

He was dressed in the same black chitinous robes as was the Doctor, but was rather shorter in build. Under his hood, his visage was skeletal in nature, though softened by accumulated layers of porcelain-white chitin. There were marks around the edges of the face and beneath the eyes, however, showing the telltale breaking points of a grown-on mask sliced off by some cunning surgical tool. His eyes behind an archaic pair of bifocals were cerulean, further differentiating him from the man I knew. He carried himself, not in the alternate obsessive and languid states I had seen in the Doctor, but with purposeful, carefully-judged steps, with just the right amount of carelessness to suggest some measure of trust in the world.

“Believe it or not, that’s not the worst welcoming committee I’ve seen,” said the man, when he was sure that I would no longer attack him, because the rebels had locked me in a cell.

“You step in here, and I’ll show you a welcome,” I said, baring my gigantic teeth.

“I’m sorry about him,” said 7CB7. “He’s never lashed out like that before. It’s completely contrary to everything he has yet done, ever.” It turned to me. “5a82, buddy, are you all right? Are you cool?”

“Not yet,” I said. “This man has the nerve to walk up to me in my state of grief and call himself a brother to the Doctor? And then make fun of the entire concept of numerical designations? You’re trying to replace him, and I won’t have that!”

I turned to 7CB7. “Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that the very next alien that arrives on Planet’s sacred shores happens to be a relative of the last one, who just vanished? He’s obviously a government spy, trying to worm his way into our affections! Lock him up as well!”

“You know, that is a bit far-fetched,” said 7CB7, turning to the stranger and cocking a firearm. “What have you to say to that?”

In answer, the stranger slowly, methodically, under the close observation of 7CB7, took out a letter from his own black bag, and handed it to 7CB7.

7CB7 looked at the letter. “I can’t make heads or tails of this,” it said. “It looks like chicken scratch to me.”

“But it is chicken scratch in the Surgeon’s handwriting,” said the stranger. “Hand it over to 5a82 there, it’ll be able to confirm it. It’s his letter inviting me to the planet, about possibly removing his mask.”

I checked out the letter. Unmistakably, it was the Doctor’s handwriting. I even saw the imperfection corresponding to the splayed end of the fountain pen he used.

“Stolen in transit?” I offered.

“How would the government be able to read Old Alagaddan?” countered the stranger. “I stated why the Surgeon wanted to bring me in. Surely his concerns about his mask are information he would not give to just anyone. Surely the government couldn’t have gotten wind of that.”

As far as I had known, I was his only confidant on that point. I slumped to the floor, defeated.

“Listen,” said 7CB7, “I’m glad to see you up and running, and very surprised to see you somewhat proactive rather than just going with what an authority figure is doing, but an outburst like that is not the way to do anything.” It unlocked the cell door.

I cowered in anticipation of retribution at the hands of the stranger.

The only ways I knew to solve a problem were by violence, as I had seen my elders and even the Doctor do, or by sacrificing myself. If I could not rectify this person’s presence by the former, surely the latter was the only option left to me.

He offered his gloved hand. “No hard feelings, 5a82,” he said. “If my experience with the Surgeon has taught me anything, it’s that good people can do all sorts of terrible things if they think it’s in the service of the greater good.”

I hesitated, then shook his hand.

“Pleased to meet you, 5a82,” he said. “I’m the Anesthesiologist.”

TITLE OF PREVIOUS

All That Copper, Glowing Fine

Part 2