Radical Acceptance - SCP Foundation

I thought I'd seen everything, but it was a goddamn Muppet that broke me.

I was the site director of Base-19.1 I thought my senses were completely dulled by some of the ultra-violence I'd seen in over 30 years of service. Someone stole SCP-447-1 and hid it in a morgue. I had to tear open an unsuspecting junior researcher's ribcage to access an encrypted data drive because someone decided to "get edgy" with the emergency response procedures of a keter. On a gamble, we neutralized SCP-2317-K by drilling a bargeload of poison into its skull before it could wake up.

Even then, we were on the way out. The Sarkic cults had managed to summon a creature they thought was Grand Karcist Ion, but… fuck if I know, someone forgot an accent mark on their unpronounceable magic words. A few millennia has left my memory fuzzy on the particulars. Either way, SCP-37238, object class Apollyon, was about to wipe us all out in a millisecond at 11:34 in the morning, December 3rd, 2329.

At least we had about five years' advance warning. All the human race could see the wad of flesh in low orbit, and they knew exactly what to expect when it landed. The world's central government had actually made our transition into oblivion a bit easier. The word "radical acceptance" was tossed around quite a bit on the airwaves.

Five years of peace. We threw away our money and let strangers sleep in our beds. It was an anarcho-libertarian's nightmare. You'd be surprised how good complete strangers could be to one another when we're all about to move into the same graveyard.

December 2nd. I sat in the onsite nuclear warhead's room of Base-19, popped open a cold one, and watched some TV on my laptop.

Sesame Street. After 360 years on the air, their series finale came on the day before the world ended. I knew they dealt with some pretty heavy topics sometimes - lead poisoning and Mr. Hooper's death comes to mind, along with that one episode back in 2148 about dealing with radioactive fallout. But at least with all those other "very special" episodes, there was an element of hope. A promise that something better is coming, so long as we look out for it.

This episode was called "Saying Goodbye."

"Elmo heard the news guy say that the whole world was gonna go away tomorrow. You scared? …Elmo scared too."

I dropped my beer.

I closed my laptop.

I walked into my office.

I screamed.

I spent five hours browsing through the Foundation Archives, most of which had been declassified the week prior to the end, if only to satisfy all our curiosities before we went away. There had to be some kind of way out, even if everyone else had stopped. And at about T-minus four hours to XK, I found it.

SCP-3319. "The Lotus." It was an old Global Occult Coalition project still in its launch base in Canada, and the Foundation got a hold of it after they disbanded in Operation Apoplexy.

If the world was about to go up in flames from an extraterrestrial threat, SCP-3319 could launch into orbit, unfold all its "tachyon displacement panels" like some kind of flower, and teleport the Earth to far-off, sun-like star somewhere in the Crab Nebula.

And here we were, letting this thing sit in the ice, all because we had made this ridiculous peace with our doom. Well, that, and it was barely functional - diagnostic testing of the Lotus yielded only a 30% chance of reaching the target star, and a 70% chance of an unintended extradimensional-juxta-huxta-manahmanah something-or-other causing all life on earth to data-expunged all the way to redacted.

30% was better than 0%.

T-minus 2 hours, I found the launch codes.

T-minus 1 hour, I pirated the launch control applet.

39 minutes to XK, with MTF Nu-7 knocking down the door of my condo in Baltimore, I launched the lotus.

What I wanted was someone else's sun. What we became was a moon in someone else's sky.

…and monkey food. God, I never thought I could joke about the first harvesting war, but time really does heal all wounds - and here in Corbenic, time is the best weapon we have.

My point is this: in Corbenic, you can't afford to accept what you've been given. That's the quickest way into a strider's gullet or one of the Elephant King's meat orgies.

Perhaps we did die. Perhaps the lotus took us to where we were going anyway. But this way, we were able to keep our planet, our armies, and our technology - and our clothes, thank God. With these, we had a chance to rebuild. To not accept.

When we came to the afterlife, there was no heaven and hell, so we built them. There were no angels, so we trained them. There was no god, so we hired one - Glory to thee, Jalakåra. (In the higher ranks, he even lets you use lowercase!)

And now, with the third moon being smelted apart for raw materials, we're the closest thing you're going to get to divine intervention.

You are watched. You are protected. And no matter how goddamn frustrating you are, you are loved.

- President Girard Niang, ☽☽☽ Initiative

Footnotes

1. "Site" was a product of your world. Lesson number 1 of working at Three Moons: Multiverse theory's a bitch.