ATCGF: Growing Pains - SCP Foundation

Part 2

All That Copper, Glowing Fine

Part 4

Alzin Cdag

Growing Pains

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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.

The Star

2003 A.D. Earth

I am the star of my own story, I thought as I rounded third base into the home stretch.

It was just Mara and me in the abandoned parking lot, playing a game of night baseball. Our rules included the addition of ghost runners, whom we could leave on a base if we made it to one so that we could go back to bat, and who advanced one base for every base we ran.

And just as I was about to slide into home base, the ball clonked me on the back of the neck.

I skidded to a halt. "Gotcha!" Mara crowed. "That's a game!"

She offered me a hand. I took it, and she pulled me back on my feet. "Good game?" she asked.

"Good game," I said. I gave her a playful punch on the shoulder. "I was so close to winning that time, Mara."

"Why do you keep asking me here, Sam?" she asked. "It's not like I'm gonna be nicer to you at school or anything. I have a reputation to maintain."

"I… wasn't really thinking about our reputations?" I said, running my fingers through my hair and avoiding eye contact. "I have a hard time keeping track of all that. It's just that you're the person who talks to me the most, so I thought you'd be my friend."

"I'm…" She looked down. Squeezed her hand into a fist, then let it slack. She looked back up, her brow furrowed, her eyes wide, her-

"SAMIYA DUSKFIRE STARR, GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!"

"Shit, it's your dad. Gotta go!" said Mara, who broke into a run, grabbed her skateboard, and skitched a ride on the tail of a passing car.

The Doctor

1490 A.D. Earth

There are some who say, wrote the Surgeon, as he sat belowdecks under the light of guttering candles, That the greatest evil to menace humankind is the exclusion of choice.

Two roads diverge. I choose a path and walk it, never knowing what would happen had I chosen the other.

Sometimes, when I look back on my actions, I fancy there I see another person, myself yet not myself, who took the other path. Does he exist- do they exist, for never do choices come singly- hidden from my gaze only by the hedges between the paths?

And do these other paths converge invisibly, coming to the same place by different routes? I know not whether to hope for or to fear this. Shall I exult in the guiding hand of destiny, or curse it?

Looking back, there are many causes to which I could have devoted my life that would have all ended up in the same place. So many ills the infant science of medicine, hindered by superstition and propriety, has yet no word for. So many that fit under that vague, catch-all term of pestilence.

If things had turned out differently, perhaps I would spend my life crusading against greed, or ignorance, or compassion, or even the human race itself.

But instead, here is my dilemma:

Every man dies two times. Once when his body fails, and once when none remember him. The first I accept is inevitable. The second, however: this is something I can work with.

I have seen old men and women who have forgotten their children, and I cannot stand idly by.

I have seen men and women whose skill was just barely less than the greatest in the world omitted in the historical record in pursuit of the so-called virtue of brevity, and I cannot stand idly by.

Our foe is a pernicious one. The brain of every living being prunes away unused memories continually. Every second of every day, someone is forgotten for the last time.

I have been given the power to halt this process with my deadly touch. If I can restart the brain in such a way that all memories are strengthened and preserved, no matter what I have to do to the rest of the body to accomplish this… and subsequently prolong that brain’s life indefinitely… then I can stop people from being forgotten. I can stop the plague that dooms all mankind to a second death.

This is my thesis. This is my cure.

The Companion

The problem with my ad-hoc hospital, I found, was a general lack of patients.

The cityfolk fell into a pattern of behavior I knew well: denying themselves the self-love to properly confront their pain. Perhaps this was part of the reason for the endless debauchery in the city: a pleasure that denied the pain a place to roost. This made me think of my guide, and I cleared my throat to get his attention.

"You're the six hundred year old physician," I said, surveying the crowd on the street next to the Anesthesiologist, "How do you usually find your patients?"

"It's been hard without the Diagnostician," he admitted, "He was always the best at singling out people who could be cured. But my specialty isn't curing, it's helping ease the operation; all I really have an intuition for is finding people in pain."

"A- All right, then; do you see any of those people now?"

"Hundreds within a block of here. Take your pick; it seems to be this city's sole demographic."

"So what good does that do me, then?"

"I'll tell you. Pain comes from a variety of sources. Some of those you can help with. And people tend to gravitate towards people who hurt for the same reasons they do. It's simply a matter of asking around. In a city like this, you're bound to strike a cluster of people with incurable viral infections sooner or later."

"But- what if they hurt me?"

"Then they'll soon find themselves in no pain, ever again." He gestured to his quick-draw syringe harness.

I turned away. "You can't take the Surgeon's place, you know," I said. "He's the only one who gets to say stuff like that to me."

"My apologies," he said, bowing. "I'm not trying to take his place. You'll notice I'm keeping my emotional distance from you. But I don't want you to die on my watch, either."

"All right," I said. "Who do you think would be a good first person to ask?"

"Hmm…." he surveyed the crowd, and pointed. "Her, over there. She seems like a person whose pain you could empathize with, even if it doesn't end up being something you can cure. She seems low-risk enough to be a starting point to begin to build up momentum."

I turned, and saw a haggard-looking young woman in a star-covered and bloodstained white gown which was wrapped from the waist up in loosely tied coils of lavender plants. Her gaze was downwards, all forlorn.

"Go on!" said the Anesthesiologist. "I'll be right here behind you."

As he prodded me, I stepped backwards.

I didn't want to give this person false hope if her illness turned out to be something I couldn't cure. I didn't feel comfortable asking so personal of a question to an absolute stranger. I didn't-

"Excuse me, miss," said the Anesthesiologist, "Would the problem that brought you to this city happen to be viral in nature?"

"N-no," she coughed, her gaze slowly turning up towards us. "It's a physical manifestation of unrequited love; it's quite common in my home uni-"

And then, as her gaze alighted upon me, she stumbled backwards in shock, almost falling over; she grabbed on to the bricks of the walls for support.

"I- I'm so sorry to c- cause you this distress, miss!" The words tumbled from my mouth as I bowed in supplication, beginning to back away.

"No, no-" she breathed, "it's fine, it's fine. You just looked a lot like- like someone I knew. Like someone who ended up with my true love."

"Perhaps it would grant you closure," remarked the Anesthesiologist, "if you were to tell him what you always wanted to tell his lookalike?"

I shot him a What are you getting me into glare.

He nodded and withdrew to a safe distance, leaving me to the mercy of this very discomfiting interaction.

She sighed. "All right. If you're sure you're up for it…" she continued, eyes closed and thus oblivious to the fact that I was vigorously shaking my head, "My name is Samiya. Not that you ever noticed. All you ever saw was him…. and all he ever saw was you. No matter… no matter who else was in front of him. No matter who else valued him for who he was."

"You…. you changed him," Samiya continued, "You took away everything that made him who he was. He was confident and zealous and mysterious and you… you made him soft. Domesticated. Like some common parrot…"

"Odd that you're choosing a bird analogy to describe your love, but go on," I muttered, mainly as a release valve for my panic. I did not sign up for this today.

"I was the one who cared for him when he got injured or sick!" she shouted. "He was the only one who noticed, who told me to take care of myself, when I forced myself to come to work with the flu. It was always meant to be me and him, you understand? You had no right… No right at all… to come between us…"

"I'm… I'm sorry," I said, confused as to how much I was apologizing on behalf of my lookalike. "That must have… felt awful. If my love chose another, I don't know what I'd do. Who I'd be…"

"But your love hasn't, has he?" She sneered. "His love has never wavered from you. You don't know an eighth of what I'm feeling."

"I don't," I agreed. "All I can offer you is my empathy. It…it hurts when you can't be with the one you love…. But I don't know, really, what else I can do for you, so perhaps I should be going-"

"You're looking for people who are in this city because they are sick with a virus?" Samiya asked. "That's how this interaction started, after all."

"Well-"

"I could give you some tips on who to ask. There's a few within sight of here right now."

"Really? That would save me so much time-"

"Not so fast," she grinned. "This is a city of transactions, not one of gifts. Before I tell you…first I want you to write me a song."

"W-what? Why?"

"You heard what your friend with all the needles said. He wants this interaction to give me closure. I need you to write me a song from the perspective of my love; then I'll give you the leads you need."

"All- All right."

I cleared my throat and began to search my head for songs that had names replacable with Samiya. "Oh! Susanna" by Stephen Foster came to mind.

"Oh! Samiya,

Now don't you cry for me.

'Cause I'm stuck in Alagadda

With a saline-drip IV."

I glanced at her; she tapped her feet, apparently wanting more. "Now a verse to your boyfriend," she said.

So I cleared my throat and started with his name. The words came slowly, falteringly at first, as I searched for rhymes. But these were my thoughts, and in the universal translation field of Alagadda, rhymes began to come as easily as gerunds.

"Haselhurst

In my heart, you're always first

You're the sun to my earth

You caused my rebirth

All my clouds of woe, you dispersed!

Oh Four Nine

How I wish that right now, you were mine

That the bravest of men

Would be by my side again

Yellow eyes a-shine!

Surgeon, true,

I'm doing my best to try to rescue you

But my coppery blood

May as well be mud

For it's not running blue. "

Samiya looked stunned for a moment. "Th- Thanks very much!" She said. "Now. Our deal… That guy over there with the yellow-and-black striped cape and the high red collar sprouting all the antennae- he's the best connected sick guy I know of in this town."

"The guy with the tentacles, or the guy with spider legs?"

"No, it's that other guy, with spider legs sprouting out of tentacles. I've fulfilled my part of the deal now, and I need to get back to work-"

"Before you go," the Anesthesiologist stopped her, "It's not healthy to pine after another, especially when you know he doesn't reciprocate. You're hurting yourself and him."

"When I want your advice, needle-man," Samiya scoffed, "I'll ask for it!" And she walked away, disappearing into the throng.

"What was that all about?" I asked the Anesthesiologist. "That made me very uncomfortable; was it necessary?"

"Yes, it was," said the Anesthesiologist. "For two reasons. That was the worst possible outcome you could have gotten. Now you know it can't have possibly gone any worse than that. When you know, when you've experienced the worst that can happen already, it means things can only look up from here. And what happened in it? She ranted to you about the people in her past and gave you some leads. You're still here. You're still alive. And you've done her good, helped her to get the pent-up feelings she felt off of her chest."

"Secondly," he continued, "You want to start up an impromptu hospital? You need to work on your bedside manner. People want to talk about their problems. They need a good listener, a source of comfort. This experience just gave you practice in that."

"You let me go through that whole ordeal as practice?"

"Listen, kid, I'm your guide here, not your paramour. I'm here to give you support, not to shield you from the world. You want to get through this alive, you need to build up your resilience. Now go on, get all your feelings out. You don't want to lose your lead on those other patients."

So I shouted and beat the wall with my fists, and walked over to one of the folks Samiya had pointed out.

"P-pardon me," I said nervously, as they turned around, "Would the reason you came to this city happen to have anything to do with an incurable virus?"

And as they came, fully, to face me, I glimpsed the parts of their form that peeked beneath their volumnious clothing. Their left eye was a butterfly shutter in front of a dull yellow lens; fully half the skin that showed was being eaten up by shards of clockwork.

"So what if it does?" they slurred.

"My- My name is 5a82-"

"Sounds like a robot name. You sure you aren't one of those lousy Mekhanites?"

Why does everyone have trouble with Keplerian naming conventions? "No, I- I don't know what those are. My name is- is not important. But my blood- My blood might be."

"So you're a vampire?" I saw him perform the mental assessment. Is a robot vampire possible? What would one drink, oil?

"No, that isn't it. My immune system is magic. If you infect me with your disease, once it fights off the infection, I can give you a blood transfusion that will halt the progress of the infection without needing the support of your contract with Alagadda."

I saw the butterfly shutter widen in shock. In hope. A hope denied them for however long they had been in Alagadda, returned at last.

The Doctor

"What was it you wanted me to sing, again?" I asked, frowning as I put down my journal for the moment.

She repeated the lyrics.

So, a bit confused, I started to sing:

"Oh! Samiya,

Now don't you cry for me.

'Cause I'm stuck in Alagadda

With a… saline-drip IV?"

And she jumped in with another verse:

"Oh Four Nine

How I wish that right now, you were mine

That the bravest of men

Would be by my side …. for the first time

Yellow eyes a-shine!

Surgeon, true,

I'm doing my best to try to… comfort… you

But my …. Iron-filled…. blood

May as well be mud

For it's not running…. red."

She had come in a few minutes before as I was reading the journal, and had introduced herself as Samiya, the servant the other Lords had sent to make sure I was adjusting well to the position. I had acknowledged her presence and gone back to reading my journal, until her interruptions had grown too frequent to ignore.

Now, I stared at her, wondering on her true motivations; and she stared back at me, eagerly awaiting… something.

"You came up with these songs?" I asked.

"Just for you," she said, smiling.

"All by yourself?"

"Of- of course!"

"Odd, then, how it reminds me of a lost friend…" How gullible did she think I was?

I had to play along for now, to see what she wanted, to see what she knew.

Because she had changed the words, but she couldn't change the natural rhythm and rhyme. The redactions stood out like an all-caps "DATA EXPUNGED."

She hadn't written those verses. They belonged to my alien.

And that meant… Probably nothing good for him.

The Companion

“Are you going to tell me the rest of your plan?” asked the Anesthesiologist as he began the blood transfusion.

“I wish I could,” I said, “But if this is going to work, as few people as possible have to know. This place feeds on more powerful truths more than it feeds on smaller ones, so if I keep my true plans only in my own mind, the city can’t hurt them.”

“That was a rather convoluted way of telling me you want me to be surprised by the outcome, wasn’t it?” asked the Anesthesiologist.

“Fine, you caught me,” I said. “But secrecy is crucial. The powers that be can’t find out until it’s too late.”

In truth, I wished I had a whole plan.

I had but one resource to bring to bear here, and that was the panacea that the scientists of Kepler had installed into my blood. An immune system that could cure the incurable viruses.

If I survived the disease long enough to develop the antibodies, that is.

“I checked with the Alagaddan Census Bureau to find out how many people were serving here because of incurable illnesses,” said the Anesthesiologist.

“And?” I said, grimacing as involuntary movements jerked the virus-needle into the burn tissue.

“And I found it a nest of raving madmen,” said the Anesthesiologist. “The true number of the population was eaten long ago. Besides which, time’s wonky here; at any given moment you could end up meeting seven of yourself.”

“Hmm,” I said, “So there aren’t any concrete numerical figures in this city at all?”

“Just the number of Masked Lords, and the number of Ambassadors, and the number of Hanged Kings,” he said.

“Which are?”

“Four, one, and negative one respectively.”

“Hmm.” My attention returned back to the needle. Somewhere in my veins, the virus was spreading. A system rendered more fragile by the recent burns would be put under attack, and forced to weather what would kill a healthy man.

I had a doctor with me, and a panacea in my bloodstream. I would survive.

But the disease would have its fun before I conquered it. Already, I could feel my muscles burning, my nerves under attack. There was no way I would get out of this whole and hearty.

“Anesthesiologist,” I said.

“Yes?”

“In case this all goes wrong… promise me you’ll start preparing that ritual to be able to perceive the Wanderer’s Public Works folks. I need to know that you’ll be safe.”

Almost insultingly fast, he said, “Done.”

And time passed, so very slowly.

There was no sleep in the dreamlike city. The fever came and I lay delirious, yet fully cognizant of my pain, inflamed muscles jerking back and forth. The burns didn’t heal, either. I hurt inside and out.

When I came on the mend, the Anesthesiologist began to fill vials of my blood to distill the antibodies. Light-headed, burning, and aching all over, I watched as the theater troupe hooted and hollered, their virus beaten at last. If they returned home, they would no more be shunned. There was still one problem, however.

When I no longer raved gibberish of the exultant Researcher Talloran waltzing in Swann Lake, they came and showed me their contracts. My eyes, for the moment, were still untouched by the ravages of disease, and I saw them clearly.

“Employment under the Four Masked Lords of Alagadda can be renegotiated by employee no sooner than the day after eternity, at 4:00 PM. All attempts to leave the city before such time without written permission from every one of the Four Masked Lords of Alagadda, or from the Ambassador of Alagadda or the Hanged King, will be punished severely.”

“We’re grateful and everything for all you’ve done,” said the lead actor, “But it’s hopeless. We can’t risk helping you unless we’re freed when this is over.”

I sighed and curled into a fetal position. “I’m… I’m sorry everybody.” I said. “It’s all my fault.” The city seemed in that moment to collapse around me, the leering masks of the three other lords mocking my futile efforts.

“It’s not your fault,” said the Anesthesiologist, who sat down next to me on the cot.

“Ah, yes. The much vaunted power of contradiction to change someone’s mind. Effective as ever.”

“No, my friend. You’re still learning how to plan things out for yourself. It’s not your fault that there were things you didn’t consider.”

“You’ve done real good in these actors’ lives,” he said. “You’ve been kinder to them than anyone else in this selfish city of sin. You’ve sacrificed for them, and that matters to a person.”

“It’s about the only thing I know how to do that’s good,” I muttered under my breath.

“But you’re learning, and you’re growing. The plan may yet succeed if you continue at this rate. Look at the ways the contract can help you defeat it.”

“What ways?”

“Figure it out.”

“But I have no legal acumen in business whatsoever!”

“Then it’s time to learn to delegate. I’m sure there’s someone in this city who has that acumen.”

The Doctor

I decided the most reasonable explanation was that my alien was in league with Samiya, and had had to resort to this method of signaling that she was an accomplice of his without alerting the prying eyes of the other Lords. If this was so, it was good; I needed the moral support right now as I uncovered the secrets of the journal.

"You're a good woman, Samiya," I said, "I'm glad you're on my side."

She blushed.

"The Lords of this city…" I said, "They want me to believe that my quest to cure the Pestilence is foolishness. They sent me this, my journal, so that I could decide for myself whether or not it was madness. So far, I've discovered that the Pestilence is the natural process of a person being forgotten."

I paused, considering my next words carefully.

"I don't know why I would have decided this was worth ending lives over. I'm going to keep reading, but I fear I'll discover I am a monster.

"From what I've told you so far, what do you think that… a person who loves me… would say about the nature of my former quest? Is that foe worth the sacrifices I've made?"

She blushed deeper. "Absolutely, Forty-Nine."

"You've lost the man you once were, Doctor. You cared, once, about saving humanity. You would work yourself sick until… someone else… had to take care of you, but you wouldn't have anyone else do the same.

"And now… now all you care about is one person.

"I know… what it's like to be forgotten. I know… what I would give… for certain people to remember me forever. It's worth any cost to fight that plague. Any cost whatsoever."

"And that's… that's what someone who loves me would say?" I asked.

"A thousand times over, yes," she breathed.

The Merchant

The small man squirmed in his seat as I stared at him. I took in the details of height, build, and body language that showed beyond the mask and the heavy garments of Alagadda. Not an innocent, by any means, not pure; but the type who was forced to go through many traumas far too early without having anyone with him to trust.

Someone who didn’t know who he was. Someone currently in desperate need.

A soft smile beneath my mask. There’s nobody easier to fleece than a needy man.

“Before you begin, tell me what it will profit me to keep listening,” I said, careful to keep my tone careless but my eyes focused.

“Are you in the exotic real estate market, Mr. Darke?” asked the man. Curious; he seemed a touch too confident in his tone here. Almost as if he was relishing the feeling of giving whatever this was up. Very curious. He seemed to think this was a no-lose situation.

The best deals happen when the client thinks they can’t lose. I leaned in, and nodded for him to continue.

“I know the location of a habitable planet in the same plane as your Earth. A planet which already has an established trading route with Earth, that loves your Earth culture, and that has tracts of land its government refuses to acknowledge exists.”

I kept staring at him. Silence would unnerve him, force him to keep talking, to slip, to disclose the flaws that would make it easier to trade him as little as possible.

But he was comfortable in the silence, it seemed. It stretched for a long time. He never made eye contact, suggesting this wasn’t due to a huge amount of confidence. I hazarded a guess that his youth had been spent being yelled at for disobedience rather than being taught by his elders to recognize right and wrong for himself.

Which suggested a different tack to devalue his offer.

“Is it a stable government? Ruled by love rather than fear, the kind of government that nobody wants gone?”

“Well, no,” he said. I chuckled to myself, already halving the anticipated price in my head.

I watched him sink into his seat, feeling he had failed already. I saw him look at the word he had written on his hand: Delegate. And then I saw a spark come back to his eyes.

“No siree,” he said. “The government is quite totalitarian. But already it is losing its grip on power. It doesn’t understand what I’m sure a businessman like yourself understands: the way to keep clients happy. The government expects everything and gives only suffering.”

“So why do you sound like this should be a positive thing?”

“Mr. Darke, how would you like to rule a planet?”

I began salivating.

“The government must fall sooner or later,” he continued, “and the rebellion is so very small, it couldn’t possibly control the chaos that would follow. There’s room for an intelligent person to establish a government favorable to his own trading empire. A trading empire on a planet advanced in genetics and medicine, and rich in copper and other minerals.”

“And what,” I said, “would you ask for in return for this information? You are not selling me the keys to a planet, just the directions to get there.”

“So it’s not valuable to you, then?” he said. “In that case, I will find a lawyer somewhere else in this city. Good evening to you, Mr. Darke.” He got up and started to leave.

I was smarter than this. I had swindled fortunes from the wealthiest men and women for centuries. Once I talked a man into trading his five-hundred acre estate for a #2 pencil.

I knew the tactic he was using. It was a closer companion to me than my own shadow. I acknowledged my own greed. I accepted it.

And then I caved.

“Wait,” I said. He stumbled, then kept going. “Wait.” I said again. Damn it, he was going to make me beg. “Wait!”

And he hobbled back.

“I’m not saying we have a deal or anything,” I said. “It’s just my own personal curiosity about a man who would sell out his whole planet to get a lawyer.”

“It’s not my planet, not anymore,” he said. “My home is with… someone else.”

“So what is it that you need from me?” I asked.

He stared into the middle distance. Delegate, he whispered. And then he turned back to me.

“I need a way to get each of the Masked Lords to sign a small addendum to many of their employees’ contracts,” he said, “And a way to make sure they don’t realize what they’re signing until it’s too late.”

“So you need a swindler, eh?” I said, stroking the chin of my mask. “You’ve come to the right merchant.”

The Doctor

1590 AD, Earth

It turns out, Wrote the Surgeon in his hiding-hole, carved in the walls between the palace kitchen and ballroom, whose noise and music diffused into the musty space, That a cured man is not necessarily a happy man.

I can do it now. I learned to operate on a brain to stop it from losing any memory, and on a body to keep such a brain alive. I thought that at this point in the process I would be focusing on how to fine-tune the body, to prolong its life indefinitely. But that is not the stumbling block I find myself on now.

When you prevent a brain from losing memory, every path a neural signal travels can only become stronger and more solid. And the senses constantly send information to the brain, trying to travel these paths, further strengthening them. Within minutes of the cure, pathways come to an end as they run into existing ones. The old pathways become so strong and rigid that new ones cannot be formed. The brain becomes locked in an infinite loop, going through the old memories again and again for the rest of its existence.

Present Day, Alagadda

"Forget about the individual people," pleaded Samiya when I voiced my concerns about this macabre effect of the Cure. "Your Cure is most effective! You know this!"

"But…" I said, "What about the people I care about?"

"What about them?" asked Samiya. "If it's necessary for the survival of the species memory, some of us would just be happy to be part of your grand plan. As our consciousnesses fade, we'd take comfort in your face being the last we'd see."

1792 A.D., Earth

I don’t seek to make men happy. I seek to keep them alive in others’ memories after they die.

But it has become apparent that I cannot use my curing process on everyone. I must only use it on those who are about to forget the last remaining memory of another person.

But how am I to tell these individuals from the teeming masses of humanity?

This is the mystery I must now solve.

The Companion

Another day, another disease.

The plan was progressing nicely. Every week (or so it seemed; Alagadda’s linear time flow got eaten billions of years ago), more and more of Alagadda’s servants came to seek me out. Their illnesses were varied beyond belief; unmercifully, they were not beyond description.

There were two separate variants of a virus that turned organic life into clockwork. The first converted my left hand before it stopped, leaving it in constant pain; the second continued where the first left off, getting about halfway to the elbow.

There was the disease, somewhat less fatal to me than to its intended Fae victims, which ratcheted up my blood iron content to toxic levels.

There was the coyote virus that put me in pain and caused me to sprout fur all over before it stopped.

They told me the pain would have stopped, too, if I had transformed all the way.

We had to turn down those infected by the disease that turned entire towns into fleshy monstrosities, since it was not viral in nature. And I felt sorrow turning away the metal people suffering from the virus that turned them into organic beings; as an organic being myself, I could not catch it.

The last link we needed: a very muscular group of ladies and gentlemen were desperate to cure their virus. It had, they claimed, taken over all life in one or more of their worlds, and they would rather face death than succumb to its effects. They asked that my immune cells be fitted with boxing gloves for the task before the Anesthesiologist shooed them away, so he could begin injecting me with the virus. My burned skin became inflamed as denticles began to extrude.

“Crazy shark-punchers…” the Anesthesiologist muttered.

The Doctor

I was not becoming a monster. I was rediscovering who I always was. The alien would be so happy to hear it when he found out….

1792 A.D., Earth

I have worked out the way to pinpoint those with the last copy of a dying memory, The Surgeon wrote, huddling in a cave in the Alps from a massive thunderstorm, But I fear the toll it will take on me.

I have studied with those who have attempted to map out the local noosphere, the space of all human knowledge. I have studied with mages and with parascientists, with Yeren and Fey alike. I have consulted the Wanderer’s Library and the memeticists of the schriftsteller, before their fall.

Ideas in the noosphere are like stars in space. As large enough ones die, they begin to collapse in on themselves, exerting a stronger gravitational pull on the surrounding noospheric fabric. They pull near-enough lower-mass ideas into the burgeoning black hole with them, never to be seen again.

Present Day, Alagadda

Samiya began coughing. "Are you all right, my dear?" I asked.

"What? No, no, this shouldn't keep happening! You chose me. You chose me!"

"What are you talking about?"

One final cough into her hand, and a stem of lavender fell into it. A stem which she then turned around and handed to me, tears in her eyes.

"I still don't understand."

"I can't have anything else, Doctor; why can't I have your love? Why do you have to attend to every little irritant of that helpless alien when you could have a more equal partner, someone who could care for you when you get sick and assist in your great quest?"

"So… you're not working with 6118?"

"Oh, Samiya…" she moaned, her arm cushioning her head from the wall, "You fucked up your opportunity with your home universe's 049 and you've fucked up your chance with this one, too."

"But those poems… you must have met him somewhere… and you exploited him to get his songs?"

I considered the person I had found I truly was. The pain I had inflicted that was totally, inarguably justified.

It was all for the greater good. It was all to honor the memory of every living person.

Every person…

And she-

She had plagiarized from my true love.

She had besmirched his memory.

Such besmirchment should be punished.

"You're right, Samiya. Nothing should stand in the way of a good old-fashioned curing. And it's occurred to me that the memory of the time you exploited my alien to get at me needs to live on in your consciousness… forever."

1792 A.D., Earth

If I have a large enough memory of my own lie in a constant state of dying, kept alive by a name and a vague idea, then I will be able to sense the gravitational fluctuations of large ideas in other nearby people’s minds beginning to die. It must be a memory of which I am the sole remaining owner.

I am afraid there can be but one memory that fits that description for me.

To stop others from dying the second death of fading from memory, I must kill my own knowledge of what the Pestilence is.

I must infect myself.

And though by this I will be able to cure others…

For my work to continue…

There must be no Cure for me.

The Companion

“Can you do something for me, Anesthesiologist?”

“Who do you think I’ve been doing all this for?”

“Can you take away my pain?”

He stopped. Turned to face me.

I had tried to shave off the coyote fur, but the combination of having a mechanical hand with two separate mechanisms, the burns, and the fact that my dexterity had declined immensely since the first virus meant that every time I tried, I ended up bleeding profusely all over. The scabs were hideous, especially so in the four-color world of Alagadda, and very prone to bacterial infection.

Every moment, pain hit me all over my body, in my muscles and my nerves and my spine, in my veins and my organs and my head. It was all I could do to stand up straight and not curl up weeping.

“I can,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I will.”

“Why not?”

“Because we need pain to live.”

He turned away from me. “I’ve taken away the pain of so many people over the centuries. People who suffered more than you are suffering now. Sometimes I check up on them years afterwards. And do you know what I find?”

He turned back. An intensity in his eyes reflecting the red and yellow candlelight. “They’ve become like lepers, all of them. Body parts falling off because there was no pain signal to tell them to stop doing something dangerous. And with how deeply I buried their ability to feel emotional pain, their minds became the same way.”

“I don’t want you to take away my ability to feel pain entirely,” I argued. “It’s just that I’m suffering-”

“Yes. But you’re suffering for a good reason,” he countered. “Don’t get a martyr complex on me or anything, but your pain is helping to heal others. Most of my patients would have killed to give their pain a valid reason. I’ve realized over the years that what I really make people stop feeling is meaninglessness. And you don’t have that, do you understand?” He was breathing heavily now. “You have so much more meaning in your life than most people do. Sick as you are now, physically, in your soul you’re healthier than all my patients combined. It’s one reason I’ve stuck with you in this awful place. And I will be damned if I help you lock that all away.”

“Hmm,” I said. “And that’s your final decision? No painkillers whatsoever? What kind of an Anesthesiologist are you, anyway?”

He turned away from me, hurt by the insult. “I’m a very good Anesthesiologist,” he said. “But maybe I’m not such a good man. Goodbye, 5a82.”

He walked away and began to prepare the last stages of the hitchhiking ritual.

“Wait!” I stood up, coughing. “I still need your help in executing the rest of the plan!”

“No,” he shook his head. “The longer I stay with you, the more you’d tempt me into performing my cursed function and ruining your life.”

“I still need your care-”

“I’ve done everything I can for you, medically speaking,” he said, replacing his glasses with red goggles. “All that could possibly be left at this point is palliative care.”

“But-”

“You have everything you need to execute the rest of the plan yourself,” he said. “I believe in you, 5a82, and I always will.”

“I’m sorry-”

“You’re always apologizing, and I can’t think of a single thing you’ve done to me that would warrant it. I reject your apology, and hope you can find peace, whatever happens next.”

And he punctured his own doctor bag, causing a rift in the space-time continuum. He stuck out his thumb, and in a few seconds was gone.

Part 2

All That Copper, Glowing Fine

Part 4