Bees? In My Cognitoaffective SCP? It's More Likely than You Think. - SCP Foundation

Agent Teal had somehow forgotten that bees were attracted to flowers, and was facing the buzzing consequences as she ran by the break room with the Hummingbird's Cottage bouquet she bought for her desk. Some people don't know that hummingbirds and bees share taste in flowers. She had a way with people, not with bees.

She bounded down the hall, turning like a racecar past Dr. Joseph Edmunsen, Junior Researcher Mint El-Waylly and Dr. Johannes Ashby, as the bees following her buzzed just out of earshot.

"Listen, I'm absolutely certain today is gonna be the day that we find those damn bees in 5765." Edmunsen said, the obsessive tone in his voice a familiar sound to Ashby. Dr. Ashby resisted the urge to chuckle to himself. He knew there was nothing in 5765 but thin air; the fact that there were no bees in the chamber was part of the testing. The fact that Edmunsen was so vehement that there very much were bees in there was a result of the chamber's effects; you could tell someone — for example, Dr. Edmunsen — that there was something — for example, bees — in 5765, and they would believe you no matter what, no matter how impossible it proves to be.

"You've covered a D-Class covered in pollen and sugar in there twice, and there was STILL no evidence of bees? That's a puzzle," Mint said, stroking their chin.

"Hey, you know what they say, forty-third time's the charm," Ashby replied.

"It's a borderline miracle they've stayed in there for so long! What could attract bees to such an absolutely barren chamber?"

Agent Teal opened the door, threw the flowers in the chamber with a grace trained from years of field work, lured the swarm in, and slammed the door. She didn't know if she would come to regret this later, and didn't care. Maybe they wouldn't even notice. Wishful thinking, right?

D-14417 didn't expect to be drenched in honey, pollen, and sugar in a skin-tight technicolor suit to attract bees when the court first assigned him to this weird-ass jail, but if there was one thing he'd come to expect during his… however many… weeks? there, it'd be that you will never know what to expect from… wherever this was.

At the very least, he'd put on a suit with sticky goop on it for stupid tests like this before, and knew that it went sticky-side out, so that taking it off wouldn't result in a third-rate full-body wax. He felt blessed that his hair was still in decent shape.

"Good morning, Vince!" El-Waylly said. Vince was surprised by their earnest chipperness. From what the staff talked about, he'd have expected their job to be absolutely harrowing. Must be new.

"Call him 14417. Don't get too attached." Johannes said. Vince couldn't help but agree. With all the bizarre rituals they put inmates like him through, he was bound to either die, suffer a fate worse than death, or get transferred. And then die. He just assumed this was cruel and unusual punishment masquerading as science.

But still, with many a grumble, he put on the hood, and went with the rest of the group to 5765.

5765 looked the same as it always did. Yellow door with a red warning sign about the possibly nonexistent bees within, faint buzzing which may just have been the fan. Though Edmunsen could swear it was louder than usual, Ashby just attributed it to tinnitus.

"You can get me out of this, right?" the D-class said, masking his fear as he usually did.

"C'mon, it's just some bees. What's the wor-" Mint said.

"I know exactly what you're gonna say. Don't. Say it." 14417 interrupted, fire in his eyes borne from fear of those six cruel words, forged directly from his personal hell.

"O-oh. Okay, sorry," Mint said, timidly.

"Alright, June 14, 2022, 6:31 AM. Let's open up that chamber."

There's something you, the reader, should realize before the scientists open up the chamber. If you've convinced yourself over the years that the cognitoaffective chamber you've been studying will contain nothing but thin air no matter when you look into it, you may unknowingly fall prey to its effects. So if one day, someone just happens to lure a swarm of bees into there with a five dollar bouquet right before you start testing, you don't consider that in the moment. The much more logical conclusion is that there is an exception to something as simple as object permanence. In other words, there is a goddamn miracle.

"BEES!" said Edmunsen, with the glee of successful mad science.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" said Ashby, his reality shattered.

"OH GOD!" said Vince, seeing a swarm of bees being attracted to his bee-attracting garb. Vince had never had a fear of bees, but he was damn close to developing one at this point. Who knows what supernatural bees coming out of thin air would do?

He went into the unisex bathroom, undressed, threw the bait suit outside, and slammed the door. If anyone asked why he was down to his underwear, he'd give them a signature death glare.

Meanwhile, Mint and Edmunsen observed the bees with a childlike wonder, as if bees were fabled things that materialized for them and only for them to experience. Ashby was still trying to piece together the broken pieces of his mind.

He ran to the first person he could think of when it came to forest anomalies, an anomalous fox-human.

"Cassius! Cassius!" Ashby shouted.

"What is it?! What is it?!" Dr. Cassius Zerda replied, looking up from his crossword and dropping his pencil.

"Bees in 5765!" Ashby yelled. Cassius paused, and his massive fox ears fell to their sides as a sneer spread across his face. He took a sip of his earl grey, sweetened with honey from the site's own apiary, and collected himself before responding.

"You found bees… in a place where, as I recall, bees are kept? Catastrophic, I say." He said, going back to his crossword. Ashby processed the statement as Cassius processed his, then turned red as a stove burner set to high.

"Thirteen down," Cassius mumbled to himself, "Live broadcast no-no…"

"…FUCK!" said Johannes.

"No, it's eight letters!… Oh, 'THE F WORD,' however…"

"THEY'VE FUCKING… ESCAPED?"

"Lead off with that next time!" Cassius said, running out pencil and crossword in hand, to see… two very professional doctors fawning over some very regular looking bees. He cautiously creeped up, wondering what exactly was so wrong with those bees. He got closer. Nothing wrong. He turned to Ashby. He gestured in the bees' general direction. So Cassius got closer, and glanced at Ashby. Still nothing. Wonderful demonstration of Zeno's Paradox, Cassius though to himself.

The bees didn't seem to be doing anything unusual. In fact, they didn't really look unusual at all. They just looked like… well… bees. His worry quickly turned to appreciation as he looked over them. Bees weren't anomalous by any means, but they did indeed have a certain magic to them, according to Zerda.

"Are they… anomalous?" Cassius asked, squinting.

"Maybe not, these bees seem pretty standard," Mint said, letting one crawl across her fingers.

"Well, I know anomalies, and not every anomaly looks anomalous at first glance," said Edmunsen, holding up his hand to try and look at a bee's underbelly.

"And I know bees. Didn't get an entomology degree for nothing," said Mint.

"I have to agree with… uh…" said Cassius.

"Mint," said El-Waylly.

"I have to agree with Mint here. If there was an anomalous energy coming off of these things, I surely would have felt it by now," Cassius said.

"You can… feel… humes?" Edmunsen said.

"N-No, just instincts and experience, nothing more!" Cassius said. Edmunsen nodded. "However, even if these were to be anomalous, they surely belong outside."

Edmunsen's face fell. "I guess you're right, bees belong outside… I just…" He sniffled a bit. "Two damn years. I'm seeing two damn years of research right before my very eyes!… They're… beautiful. I never noticed how pretty they were until now…"

"Why else do you think someone would get a degree in entomology?" Mint said, smiling.

"Heh, that makes a lot of sense." Edmunsen stared wistfully at the bees. Cassius looked to Mint, then back to Edmunsen.

"Are we going to take them outside?" El-Waylly said.

"I guess so," replied Edmunsen, "Just let me mark all these bees with some albumen powder."

After the rest of the doctors had released the bees, Ashby cautiously went back to 5765, now closed from the experiment, He opened the chamber, and saw… nothing. But he knew in his heart that there were bees in 5765.