It Seems Like Years Since It's Been Here - SCP Foundation

Alzin Cdag

All That Copper Glowing Fine Part 5: It Seems Like Years Since It's Been Here

More by this author

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.

▸ More by this Author ◂

F.A.Q.

The Companion

The sea didn't feel right.

It felt like a thing out of practice being a sea, that had maintained only its surface for so long that now that someone was below that surface, it hadn't the least idea how to act.

I could feel it trying, though. Wet planar surfaces brushed past me, changing their texture and consistency each passing moment. They kept trying to conform, as water normally would, around my form, but were only moderately successful. It felt like I was trying on a wool sweater four times my size, if the wool changed from wool to caterpillars to latex balloons to soggy tree bark to soap bubbles within the breadth of a few seconds.

If the tactile sensation alone, then, would have overwhelmed me, it was nothing to the auditory cacophony that visited upon my senses. Voices my brain interpreted, somehow, from the modulated roaring pattern of the sound of the waves.

Screams.

Screams of the imprisoned. Screams of the neglected. Screams of those forced into existence in a world against their own wishes, desiring nothing more than to die forgotten.

And as they screamed, I opened my mouth to scream with them, and the air was forced from my lungs and bubbled up through the shellfish around me that turned into steam that turned into ice that turned into-

Lavender.

Air perfumed thickly with lavender.

Air perfumed thickly with a scent that conjured up memories of-

Nothing at all.

And as I focused on this scent, trying to chase it down, the seascape about me stabilized slightly. A bubble of lavender-scented air around my face let me breathe, for the moment, in the midst of the haptic chaos.

And I opened my eyes

And saw so many eyes staring back at me

So I closed my eyes

And I heard more than ever the screams

And I thought to myself

At last I am among kindred souls

Those who have suffered as I have suffered

Those who understand my pain

And I thought to myself

How fitting

I always wanted to die surrounded by family

My family are those who understand me

Who scream when I scream

Who weep when I weep

Who smile when I smile

I can let go of the lavender

My anchor to nonexistent memories

And my family will be there

To take me in

To hold my hand

As I go

And as I begin

To let things go

I see the faces

Of those I know

I see the Anesthesiologist

Who stood by me

Who gave me confidence and moral support

When none else would

Who thought pain was a resource

And I see the masks

Of the Alagaddans I cured

And I see their grateful tears

Running beneath the mask and down their chins

And I open my eyes

And I see the eyes of the pattern screamers around me

Like looking into a fractured funhouse mirror

And I think to myself

Nobody has been there for them

There has been no Anesthesiologist

To help them grow towards their goals

As they scream

I scream

And my scream is theirs

And theirs is mine

And the lavender bubble

Grows

Filled by my screams

Defiant screams

Screams of a tiny man

Alien even to his homeworld

Who has found an anchor

A purpose

Once more

Who won't let his screams

Our screams

Be unheard anymore

And we burst from the water like dolphins

Bleeding blood as blue as the day I was born

That sprays like lightning onto the black waves outside Alagadda

And our screams

Reach to the sky-

The Doctor

Agent "Grabnok the Destroyer" Hopper of the Serpent's Hand looked at the emotional pair of myself and the Anaesthesiologist, the three of us fresh off of a joust of insults and affirmations about each others' respective identity crises, and sighed. "So what do you want of me?"

I let go of the Anesthesiologist. "He can't take a Way out of Alagadda," I said. "But your dimension-hopping doesn't use a Way. If you could hold on to him until you hop-"

"Nuh-uh," said Grabnok. "No can do, buckaroo. I can't choose my dimension of destination."

"Then how did you end up on the world without humans twice?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea," he shrugged. "It's just like lightning striking the same place twice, you know? It happens, but it's rare."

"All right. But what if you traveled to Alagadda via a Way, like the rest of us, and then held onto him until you hop into another random reality-"

"But then he'd be stranded in that other reality!" argued Grabnok.

"All he needs is to be out of Alagadda. Somewhere where he isn't barred from using Ways. Strap a dimensional homing beacon on him, and we can ask one of those Wandsmen with their multiverse maps for directions on how to get him home."

"That might work," mused Grabnok. "One question, though. Once I get to Alagadda, how am I going to find him?"

We all stared at each other in silence.

"He's a small person, alone in a big city. I'm not a detective, and as far as I can tell, he's no socialite. Does he know anyone there?"

The Anesthesiologist volunteered, "He used to, but he helped them all escape. Except for the Shark-Punchers, but I don't think they'll pay any attention to his current whereabouts."

Grabnok sighed. "I'll see what I can do. But I don't have high hopes. I can't find a needle in a haystack unless the needle wants to be found."

The Companion

I hauled myself onto the Alagaddan shore, muscles screaming against the riptide, brain abuzz with the Screamers. Back within the city limits, the city's peculiar laws of nature were strictly enforced once more, and my blood was once again a legal red.

We came into an unremarkable empty building (a state shared with most buildings in the festival town, for which interiors were unnecessary), which formed a cavernous backstage space holding paints, brushes, ropes, scaffolding, and the like- a theatrical resource for changing the scenery of a play-acting town.

They all clamored for attention. My aching body was too tired to corral all of them at once, even if they had a physical presence.

"One at a time," I called, "One at a time."

" VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE ON THE WRETCHED ONE WHO THOUGHT US INTO EXISTENCE-"

" I… I can't make a difference…. I'm stuck here screaming and nothing comes of it… Nobody's coming to save me…"

" YOU'RE ALL STUPID AND DUMB AND I HATE EVERYONE YOU SHOULD HAVE NOTICED ME A LONG TIME AGO BUT YOU KEPT ON CLANKING AROUND LIKE YOU OWN EVERYTHING- "

This was a triage scenario. I could only personally attend to one or to two at a time. The rest I had to try to occupy as best I could. Hell hath no fury like a bored Pattern Screamer.

But I knew, now, how to think about triage. For however long I had been in Alagadda, I had been planning with triage in mind. I had had to think on my feet, see motivations beneath a veneer, to convince Mr. Darke to work with me. I had had to exploit the natural behavior patterns of others to get the Lords to sign the paperwork for the Shark-Punchers without noticing that they were different from the others.

"All right," I said. I didn't know what right I had to expect these existential horrors to listen to me, but they had followed me this far.

"You, the parasite on intelligence with the ability to create patterns in the dust- pair up with the artist who wants to create things, but can't influence the mental static of its environment. Make something together." The pair followed, and I sensed several others with the same properties starting to pair up as well.

"Those of you who scream at spending eternity in a blank informationless void, pair up with those who scream at once having lives, or of being part of the fundamental knowledge of the universe. I'm sure you'll find a ready, hungry audience for the stories you have to tell." The screaming in my own mind lessened considerably, and the small, growing glitches in reality I had started to notice around me stopped. I sighed in relief.

" What about those of us who do exist, solely in the cursed curiosity of our mother, who scream for her death? " asked one voice.

"You come to me," I said. "I've got something to say to you."

And it came close, and I began to speak.

The Doctor

I knocked on the house's door and waited for an answer. I tapped my stick on the gravel of the driveway at a frequency usually reserved for telegraph operators. If this went wrong, as was likely, it would go very wrong. But I had to make the effort. For him.

"Whoizzit?" asked a voice on the other side of the door.

"A friend of your son," I said.

"What do you want?" I could hear the sleepiness in its voice give way to wariness, as the person on the other side of the door scrambled with a heavy metal object. Presumably, its shotgun.

"Only to help your flesh and blood."

It was only stalling, now, listening for my voice as it began to take aim. "Why? What's wrong with it?"

"He's lost a lot of flesh and a lot of blood."

I could hear the click of the shotgun being primed. "There's regen tanks for that. Why come to me?"

"His DNA's been changed, corrupted in the line of duty, just enough that the regen tanks won't work. He needs a donor of his own bloodline," I said, as a bullet ripped from one side of my mask beak through to the other side. One great thing about the mask was the way it funneled the sound of my voice, so that it appeared to be coming from somewhere further up the beak. When I used this power well, it helped to misdirect the bullets of those who aimed by sound.

Still, the impact put enough torque on my neck to twist it badly, and I fell over, feeling like a certain cartoon duck. I was, for the moment, paralyzed from the neck down; were I human, I would already be dead. As it was, my anomalous body's muscle memory (and circuitry- remind me to tell you one day about my stint at Anderson) took over, and my hands fumbled into my bag for the appropriate tools to fix the snapped blood vessels, nerves, and vertebrae. I was so practiced at such self field repair, and my tools were of such good and anomalous quality, that it was a mere hour's labor to stabilize enough that I could stand up of my own will with only moderate chance of relapse.

Unfortunately, just as I began this hour, the door opened and quadriphalangeal feet kicked the bag out of my grasp. Hands dragged me inside the house. And I knew where they were taking me. Having spied on the residence earlier, I knew there was an empty coffin lying open in one of the rooms. A coffin with the designation 5a82 graven upon it.

Believe it or not, everything was so far going to plan.

The hands folded my large frame into the very small coffin, and my own, after flailing around for a while and finding nothing, went to the emergency tools stowed away in secret pockets of my robe. It would take much, much longer to fix my neck with these tools than with my special kit. But I was in no immediate danger of death from that wound.

I did, however, have to worry about the suffocation that would follow once the person in the house decided to close the coffin lid.

"You shouldn't have knocked, jerk," it said, using a word much stronger than jerk. It chuckled to itself, crowing at its triumph. "The old Handler's a hard one to kill if you play fair like that. You shoulda just snuck in like you and the jerk did with my barn last time we tangled."

My lungs still worked, but weren't under my motor control, so as a consequence my words came out as slowly as their automatic motion would allow. "It tempted me," I admitted. "But recently I've come to respect that I need to ask permission of someone before performing surgery on them. Your son helped teach me that. 5a82 is the reason I'm asking nicely."

"Begged you, did it, not to hurt me?" it sneered. "Just as much a weakling as I always said."

"Wrong on both counts," I said. "5a82 is not a weakling, and never was, but we'll get to that soon. No, I'm not really here on 5a82's account. I'm here of my own accord to find out something. Something about you. Something about me."

"And what might that be?"

"I need to know if a monster can be redeemed."

The Companion

"My parent never wanted me," I told the nonexistent child. "It thought I was too small. Too weak."

The Doctor

"You thought 5a82 needed toughening up," I said. "You gave him the most intense job out of anyone in the unit. You beat him if he did anything wrong. You hoped if he feared failure enough, he would shape up and be the soldier you always dreamed he would be."

The Companion

"But my parent was wrong," I said. "If you punish a person for not being someone they can never be, they won't suddenly fit your fantasy image of who they should be. They'll only despise you and despise themselves. They'll stop trusting in their own abilities to do anything."

The Doctor

"You had a good soldier, in the beginning," I said, desperately hoping it wouldn't close the coffin lid. "He wasn't the soldier you wanted, but he was the soldier you needed. And I think you saw that, towards the end. You told him he was valuable not because he was big or powerful, but because he could think his way out of situations. But by the time you told him that, you had told him he was useless so many times he thoroughly believed it. So no. He was no weakling. You had only taught him how never to use his strength."

The Companion

"So it took until I found…. someone else, on a different planet, before I began to trust anyone in the outside world," I told the nonexistent children. "And it took until I accomplished something great with nothing but my wits here in Alagadda before I began to trust myself."

I looked straight at where the child would be if it was there. "This city is all you've ever known, and it doesn't appreciate you. It's made you hate everybody who ever thought you up, made you want revenge. But it's wrong, don't you see? You need a friend who can appreciate your worth. You need to leave this city forever with a loving home."

" And how do you propose I do that? " it asked. " Nobody can see me unless they look for me, and people know not to look for children in Alagadda. "

"Leave that to me," I said.

The Doctor

"But 5a82 is cloned from your genetic material," I said. "And that gives me hope. Because 5a82 developed a conscience. And that means it's possible you have one as well.

"I know I can't expect us to join forces," I said. "I know your soul belongs to the government. But your body belongs to you, to do with it what you will. You have regen tanks. We can make it look like rebels attacked your home and you earned your injuries defeating them. I'm begging you, Handler: I need to know that people can change, that we can begin to make up for our past mistakes."

I waited in silence for a while. I worried that it had left.

Then it poked its face over the rim of the coffin. I felt relief. Then I noticed something else beside the rim.

A sledgehammer.

My mask crumpled, absorbing the impact. When I opened my eyes back up, it was only in time to see its second blow land on my jaw.

I couldn't speak. And backup wouldn't arrive on its own for another twelve hours.

"You white-beaked poison-blooded disu, how dare you accuse me of having anything to do with 5a82's inadequacy!" it shouted. "You come here thinking me a day-old child, in need of chiding for my supposed mistakes? I tried as hard as I could to fix 5a82…"

He never needed fixing, I thought.

"But at the end of the day, if it couldn't shape up, that's its problem!" It shouted, as it closed the lid. "All that matters in this world is that you do what a superior tells you, and 5a82 couldn't make the cut-"

And whatever it said after that was muffled, because the lid was closed.

I began to worry.

Two minutes passed.

Five minutes passed.

Eight minutes passed, and my automatic repairs had nearly restored the neural connection from my brain to my arms.

Nine minutes passed, and the oxygen supply was getting low.

And I was finally able to lift the lid of my own accord, and prop it open with a tongue depressor.

Time passed. The Handler hadn't come back yet; I could hear it thumping about on the floor above, destroying pieces of furniture. By the time I had restored function to my legs again, it had quieted down some; perhaps it had run out of furniture.

By the time I had repaired just enough that I could turn my neck slightly without too much risk of relapse, it was silent in the house.

I pushed the lid fully open, and it echoed through the house.

I stood up. Put one foot in front of the other. I dragged my bloodstained fabric upstairs.

There it lay, unconscious, under a cloud of foul smoke, surrounded by a halo of discarded cigarettes and bottles. Overdose was written all over its features.

My fingers pulled from among my secret pouches some drugs of my own.

The moment I injected them into its catheter, its eyelids fluttered open.

I don't know what thoughts crossed its mind, then. I don't know if it knew I had saved its life. I don't know if it recognized my pulverized mask as its handiwork.

"I don't know what to make of you, jerk," it said, slurring slightly. "You're not a One. Not a Two. You've got the face of a bird and the smell of a plant. Of all the people on this planet, you're the most Other there has ever been.

"And that's why you're the only one I feel comfortable telling this.

"I loved 5a82. Twos aren't supposed to love their children, but I did. It's why I kept it clse in the beginning. I was afraid to show it. Afraid it would bloom into something irrepressible.

"The more I… did it, the more distant it became from me, the more I loathed myself. But nobody stopped me. Everyone else saw what I was doing, but if they cared, they were all too scared of my rank to report me for retribution. So I was left in my own head, certain I was a sinner but never sure, and too afraid of facing up to my actions to stop. And though I waited for someone to tell me I was wrong, I knew, deep down… I knew it wouldn't have changed an oesu-damned thing. Because I'm nothing but a short-tempered piece of shit who takes all its emotions out on those around it, and that's all I'll ever be.

"I'm not changing who I am. I am a loyal Keplerian citizen, and whatever our government has to do to keep control, I'm in full support of it, damn the cost to our personnel. My soul belongs to the government.

"But my body… my body belongs to me.

"I wish I could believe you, bird-face. I wish I could give of my flesh to repay my… my son… for the harm I've caused him. But the ledger's never going to be equal. I've hurt him more than I can be forgiven for, and I don't want forgiveness."

I don't know what I was hoping for. I don't know whether my question was answered or not.

The Handler lay there, determined to wallow in its own damnation. I don't know what that meant for me.

But although no medical board would ever call it as such, it had given me as much consent as I could expect. I wish I could give of my flesh… It was certainly closer to the Hippocratic Oath than I had ever come before.

I sighed. It was progress, I supposed.

So I procured its hand, called the Kepler government to send in an ambulance, and left.

The Montage

The lady who sits down on the steps of the nameless house- we would describe her as a young lady had her worries not aged her features beyond her years- sobs, and beneath her overgrown bangs slender plant matter peeks out and falls to the ground with each spasm. They fall over her weathered labcoat and stained t-shirt whose emblem once proclaimed her a star.

As she draws into a foetal position, passers-by step over her to get to the art-supplier inside the nameless house. Persons, gods and ghosts, and things at acute angles to all three, barter inside and intertwine outside. The red smoke rises from their revels, covering the black roots of the hairy sky and blocking out the conspicuous absence of the sun.

The sun fails to rise over the whole city. The dimension-hopper looks up for it when he can, the ancient rhythms of his biology attuned to its wheel. But every time he does, his eyes have to fall, eventually, unsatisfied. He sighs, his circadian clock crying cuckoo, and stops the next passerby, his worn poster of the face of his goal high in his hand, towards what he hopes is the creature's eye. Had the creature seen 5a82? It hadn't. The hopper sighs, and looks around for someone else who can spare a moment from the revels. He searches a long time before finding one. He looks up to the sky as he approaches, hoping this time not for the sun, but for a benevolent god to hear his prayers and just let him finally find the gentleman.

The gentleman sees someone waving around a poster of some helpless albino and moves past without a hint of recognition. A cloth over his mask to protect his nose from the orgiastic miasma, he keeps the folio secure under his arm and enters the gallery. Would they be willing to buy the art he had to sell? No, it wasn't his work, he was merely the agent. Not up to their standards of quality? Not at all a problem, he'll keep trying to find a home for the art and come back if he thinks there's another piece of art more up to their tastes. They should have a nice day. What is a day? Well, you see, on some worlds where light and energy comes from a sun…

The brilliant fungal yellow of its cloak makes the woman look up from her lavender tears. A wave of odiousness exudes from the figure as it sits down besides her, repelling all passers-by in a fifty-five meter radius. She can tell, somehow, that it is making an effort to exclude her from this repulsion, but she doesn't much care.1

The gentleman picks himself up carefully, having been hurled out of his twelfth consecutive gallery. He scavenges through dumpsters behind artists' lofts to pick up discarded, half-filled tubes of paint.

He returns to his base in time for paint to splatter all over his face as the Screamers' frustration mounts. Their desires remain unfulfilled; none of their art is able to satisfy what they wanted to create. What was it they wanted to create? They don't know. All they know is a series of complex emotions that they had been screaming unheard for so long that they are unable to articulate them.

The lady speaks then, to the strange ochre-clad person. She speaks of a life defined by unrequited love and childish lashing out, of the cruelty of the systems and people who kept her and those around her trapped in their stations, unable to meet, unable to love. She is the youngest ever Foundation researcher, deprived by family pressure of the opportunity to emotionally mature.

A fake moustache and a janitor's uniform adorn the gentleman as he makes his way through the cursed library vaults of Alagadda, hands wheeling a laundry cart covered in a blanket. He knocks from the shelves wholesale books with titles like Plaid, Corduroy, or Cross-Hatched: A Schédiomicon and Life of Fred: A Case Study in Pattern Screamer Success, as the rowdier of his compatriots fuzz up the library security behind him. Later that night (for it is always night in Alagadda) he begins reading them to those elements of his daycare as would listen, as are desperate for context, for words to describe themselves.

The hopper raises his poster for the umpteenth time as the winds knock it out of his hand. He runs after the piece of paper and watches as it is picked up by… himself. Grabnok stares at Grabnok, and they shake hands and go to get a coffee together.

Having to explain a metaphor in one of the works, the gentleman finds himself lecturing at a large easel, on which is a patent-style rigorous drawing of a bagel. No, they don't sell the bits from the hole separately; the toroid contains all the dough. Even though it looks incomplete, it is whole. The hole is part of its design.

And he feels, as he explains this to them, this thing that he had explained again and again, that this was how maturity worked. The immature person assumes that one speech, one resolution, changes a person's mind for good. But the mature person knows that it takes repetition to lodge a new idea beneath the surface level, to heal the emotional wounds, to re-forge the will.

And the Yellow Lord of Alagadda tells the woman something many times. He tells her that he is sorry for the wounds her family inflicted upon her. He tells her that they weren't her fault, that she should grieve it, should mourn the wounds for all they were worth, and for all she felt they were worth. Scream that mourning skywards, as he demonstrates by screaming the loss of his melodious station, the loss of all his worldly friends.

And he tells her after they screamed that the disease that made her cough flowers was widely misunderstood. The flowers grow, not from her body, but from the empty places in her soul; a failed attempt by ancient Alagaddan alchemists to fill them up with beauty. He tells her that she had been looking in the wrong places to fill them. No matter how pure a romantic love may be, it will never be enough to fill that gap. It could fool the flowers, but not their roots. The holes can only be filled when she loved a god and loved herself, for those were their size and shape.

Grabnok and Grabnok find the coffee shop filled with other Grabnoks, and they share a moment of laughter as they join hands and dance in a circle. Some had shifted there and some are time-reflections of the others, but nobody cared. They had found themselves.

The gentleman's next portfolio at the art galleries is slightly better received. He holds up self-reflections of nowhere men and shots tailored to the abyssal gaze. Coin is exchanged with mutual thanks. An art-supply store next, to buy parchment and ink in bulk for his long-term project, though for some reason he feels he must give a wide radius to the woman and the yellow-cloaked fellow by her, practicing their affirmations and religious explorations on the steps.

The Grabnok party takes to the streets, passing a curious hooded figure stumbling away from an art-supply shop loaded with parchment, and, in synchronization, flash their posters to the various members of the street-orgy around them. They aren't getting much of anywhere, but what does that matter? They are among friends and equals, people they could implicitly trust with their darkest secrets.

And the inside of the gentleman's headquarters begins to be painted with style and motifs and a sun high on the ceiling, the work of screamers in relative peace. It buzzes with courteous conversations and improvisational jazz solos, and smells of illusory lavender.

And as the young woman passed the unassuming building front and got a whiff of that painful scent, she realized with great shock that she hasn't coughed up flowers in an imprecise, yet significant interval of time.

And the Yellow Lord begins calling in favours. A parchment contract manifests before the Red and White Lords in Alagadda, and before the Black Lord on Kepler. All are confused, but all agree to release the young woman from their service. The Yellow Lord opens a portal to her home world, and she steps through, but not before asking that the Yellow Lord send the Doctor and 5a82 her letters of apology for her role in this whole affair. The Yellow Lord agrees to her face, then burns the letters after the portal closes. One act of kindness had been enough to work the parasite loose; why should he push matters, fall down that slippery slope?

But the smoke that rises from the burnt apologies made it to the gentleman's nose, and unlike all the other scents of this city, it makes him smile a bittersweet smile, though he does not consciously know why. He smiles as he puts up the sign outside his headquarters, and he smiles as just a few, a very few cautious tourists make their way inside, to hear what he has to offer. They're not the most visually observant ones here, overwhelmed both by the constant novelty and shock factor of the city outside and by the magnitude and implications of the gentleman's offer. As a consequence, they don't note the offerer's appearance, and when the hopper later shows them his poster, they fail to identify him.

The Box

I'd been in this cursed city for a long, yet indeterminate amount of time (long enough for at least two jumps, in the uncertain time frame of Alagadda) now without any sign of my target. The merchants hadn't seen him; Darke's group was apparently lying low for the moment, waiting for the heat to blow over. The librarians hadn't seen him. The most attentive of the people parading around the streets hadn't seen him. I was losing hope that I'd ever see him.

I would search for him as long as I reasonably could. But eventually, the Hand would need me for another mission.

He was a small man who, as long as I had known him, had tried to keep an even smaller profile. And this was a large, loud, busy city. It would take a miracle for me to find him.

And I turned, and I saw a miracle.

Someone had put up a poster on the side of a nearby building. As I looked around, I saw many such posters. But their number wasn't what caught my eye.

It was the familiar logo that was on the posters- familiar, and yet new- a logo watermarked with a curious phrase that confirmed to me the identity of the artist beyond a shadow of a doubt.

And I began to run.

The Screamers

We are void-dwellers

Our home, the null-mirror of nonexistence

Our lives, reflections of the existence we see

So we have explored your absent memory, Caretaker

As thanks:

You who have heard our screams and stayed

We've gone through the cavities it left in its wake

We know not its bulk, its substance

Simply the shapes at the edges, Caretaker

Connections cut off at the void

This Symbol

And these Three Words

They connected to the lost memory

Are you proud of us, Caretaker?

Why do you cry?

The Box

I ran to the building mentioned by the poster to find its interior walls covered in works of art, sketched finely in dust and decay.

"Hello?" I heard someone say. "Are you interested in the extradimensional adoption of a pattern-dwelling child?"

I saw him, then, at a desk, nose to paper, busy at work on more posters.

"No, 6118," I said. "I'm here with a prescription from your doctor." He inhaled and looked up. "He prescribes a trip back home."

"Grabnok?" he said. He tried to get up, but stumbled. "How did you find me?"

In answer, I held up one of the posters.

For Extra-Alagaddan Adoption of a Pattern-Based Child (which in no way, shape, manner, or form exists within the city), go to 155̫̆͒͛̚5͋͋͋͋5͋̚̚̚̚̚̚̚̚̚̚5͖5͋͛6 Main St, Alagadda, Zip Code -5͛.5͛͛͛͛55͛͛͛͛͛͛͛5^5 + 7.2͛ i + 99͚9.332 j

"Who else in this city would be so freely referencing both the Doctor and the SCP Foundation?" I asked. "Still not sure why you chose that as your in-Alagadda watermark…"

"It's a memorial for his memory," he said.

"But I thought you didn't remember him."

"Exactly. I'm mourning the loss of the memory. This is all the information my pattern-based colleagues could scrape up from the edges of the hole in my mind, plus his distinctive silhouette the brief time I saw him after my memory went but before he left…" This all came tumbling out of him faster than I'd ever seen him talk. "It is a 'he,' right?"

"Yes, the Doctor identifies as such."

"What else can you tell me about him? I need to know! What color are his eyes? Does he play Tetris? Which Star Trek: The Next Generation character does he most identify with? Oh, god, does he even like TNG? How does he feel about my former role as a Kepler shock trooper? What-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, kid," I said quickly. "You can ask him all these questions yourself. Hold on tight to me and sometime, probably in the coming weeks, we'll dimension-hop out of here, and then the Hand will come take you home."

"Finally, an end to this nightmare!" he said. Then he paused. "But what about the child?"

"What child?"

"Don't bother looking, never mind, there's no child!" he panicked. "It's just… my sick idea of a joke… who would even find that funny…. heh, heh…."

"All right," I said. I wanted to press further, but I curbed my tongue in embarrassment at whatever this ploy was.

"Before… before we go," he began carefully, "I need some alone time by the shore. Do you think you can allow me that?"

"It's your funeral if I end up hopping while you're doing that," I said. "I suppose I can busy myself in taking down the posters-"

"I'll be quick, thanks, bye!" he said, gesturing me to the door and shutting it. I heard him talking inside, though it was too dim for me to make out words; then he opened it again, held it open, and began to limp down the street.

"All right, I'll be around here if you need me," I said.

The Companion

"All to sea that's going to sea!" I said, limping to the ocean, Screamers following behind me.

I was leaving. I WAS LEAVING! Oh frabjous day, the nightmare was over. But I had to tie up loose ends still. As the only person in Alagadda who could get along with the Screamers, I had to return them back to the Nevermeant before they started wreaking all kinds of havoc.

Still, they were much quieter than when I had come. They had learned to speak in turns, to talk as well as shout, to whisper as well as talk. Many spoke to each other as friends, realizing for the first time that they could fulfill each others' needs.

Whether they would stay that way, I could not say.

Some of the more artistic Screamers chose to stay in the city, taking part in the revels. It was their own decision, though I could not fully stomach it; and I wished them luck.

But most of them jumped back into the Nevermeant ocean. Back to where they called home.

At last, only one was left.

"Don't make me go back there, Caretaker, please don't," it said. "There aren't any mommies in there."

"But you can't stay here in Alagadda, can't you see?" I said. "You can't exist here. At least in the Nevermeant you'll be among others of your own kind."

" The other Children of Alagadda won't p-play with me anymore," it argued. " They said giving up on revenge means I'm no longer welcome among them."

"But it's your home!"

"My home isn't where I come from. It's a place where the people care about me."

I sighed. What was I to do?

Grabnok ran up to me. "I can feel it coming, 5a82," he said. "We have to go now. Come on, hold on to me."

I looked from Grabnok to the space where the child would be if it existed, and back again.

And I made my decision.

The Doctor

On the road back to the rebel base, I multitasked, fixing my jaw and driving at the same time. It was a miracle that I avoided accident. But by the time I returned, they told me: he was there, too.

"Out of my way!" I shouted to all the medics in the operating room. "This is my patient-"

"You're not getting rid of me so easily, Surg," said the Anesthesiologist.

"What are you doing here?" I snapped. "You don't even ply your trade anymore-"

"Here's the thing about anaesthesia," he said. "It's not a cure in itself. It only helps when it's a transitory thing, to make the cure easier for the patient to handle."

And he gestured to the operating table. 5a82 was unconscious, in a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

"Without your work, Surg, I'm only a poisoner and a drug dealer," he said. "Only when my work pairs with yours can it be truly helpful."

So we got to work.

Two of the Children of the Barrow working together is a dance the universe has not seen for six hundred years.

We siphoned out the pockets of fluid trapped in the joints and the muscle that had caused their motion to rebel against the body.

We chopped off the mechanical hand and stitched in its place the recently obtained organic one.

We performed a total blood transfusion and introduced into the bloodstream solutions that would repair the damage wrought to the organs by the high levels of iron.

The halted beginnings of therianthropy were the hardest to correct, by far, for what had happened was that the nervous system had begun to change in shape in anticipation of the other tissues following suit. It was therefore a task of many, many hours to chop off the beginnings of a nerve here, splice that tissue to lengthen another nerve there, and connect it all up to the tissues and cells they were meant to go into.

No human doctor could ever have been so thorough. But we, who collectively knew more of anatomy than the entirety of the medical profession, and had steadier hands than the finest robotic surgeon, accomplished the job.

We worked with the notes of the rebel scientists to develop a spray that could change the DNA of our patient's epidermis on a genetic level, to essentially spread a non-replicating virus that would destroy the selachian DNA and tissue that had developed there.

"What?" asked 7CB7 when we told it what we were doing.

"We developed Plague Doctor Shark Repellent, ok?" I sighed. "Didn't you ever see the 1960s Batman movie?"

At last, the patient was back to normal. At last, all that was left was for his body to knit its cells back together and heal.

The Companion

And then I woke up.

There were sympathy and thank-you cards on the table, mainly in languages I didn't recognize. I'm pretty sure some of their pop-ups moved through more than three dimensions.

One came from the office of Percival Darke, courteously thanking me for selling him an in to the economic conquest of my homeworld, and offering me a gift certificate to Darke-Roast Coffee Co., now popping up in government and rebel establishments alike. I don't know if this boded for good or for ill. It seemed like he was playing all sides, and I wasn't sure what I'd unleashed on my planet.

One came from Lolly, who in her meandering way, wished me luck on my relationship with the Doctor. She said it was fitting that we were together, since our numbers matched: (6+1)*(-1 + 8)=49. It felt a bit more like a third-person Valentine than a get-well card, but I knew she meant well.

Good. So it wasn't a dream.

I pulled on my medical stockings and braces. I looked in the mirror.

I was myself again.

I looked like myself, and I felt like myself…. and that was nothing to be ashamed of.

I opened the door to my room and walked over to the Doctor's. I heard chaotic sounds inside, and opened the door.

There stood the Doctor and the Anesthesiologist, having a rather undignified pillow fight. The Doctor was standing over the bed, while the Anesthesiologist was underneath, guarded by a pillow fort, looking for a gap in the Doctor's defense. Feathers were all over the place, clinging statically to both of their black cloaks.

"Those feathers suit you," I said.

The pillow fight stopped, and the Doctor ran over to hug me. "You're awake at last!" he shouted.

I held up a hand to stop him.

Then it turned into an offer for a handshake.

"Hello, Doctor," I said. "It's nice to finally meet you. I'm 5a82, Alias SCP-6118."

I made eye contact with him as we shook hands.

"I've heard, from some of our mutual friends," I said, "That we make a very good match. I'd love to get to know you. Want to go out for dinner sometime?"

The Anesthesiologist burst into a fit of laughter.

"Just as friends, of course," I said. "Obviously, I may come to find you immensely attractive, and once I know you as well as I used to, I'll be comfortable with all sorts of non-sexual physical ways of showing affection."

Was this oversharing? Was this even true? My instincts were to snuggle with him, to kiss, but I didn't know whether that was just for him or something I'd do with anyone I'd shared as much of my life with as him. But I would do it. I wanted to be with him so, so badly…

"But no matter what relationship we were in before, we're different people now. We've got to decide these things all over again."

And the thing was, as a Kepler, I hated labels. Boyfriend, girlfriend, gay lovers… these were all human concepts, uncomfortably tied to sex that I wasn't interested in. It wasn't important to me that I distinguished "best friend" from "lover," no matter what the newspapers said, no matter how 7CB7 tried to play matchmaker.

"Of… of course," said the Doctor. "Nice to meet you, too… 5a82."

"By the way," I said, "You should know that I don't live alone at present. I've been taking care of a little one who needs a good home. I don't know if that home is with us, or with someone else, but it's something we'll need to discuss."

"That came out of nowhere," remarked the Doctor.

"I know. With our current instability, I don't know at present whether we could even support a child. It's possible we'll give it up for adoption and never speak of it again after this day."

"Where is it?" the Doctor asked.

I led them to a room I had told the rebels to repurpose as a nursery, and then leave alone. I figured that while I had been asleep, the Screamer would incarnate in the most suitable place.

And it turned out I was right. I held a finger to my lips as I turned on the light.

Curled up on a deep yellow sheet was a tiny figure covered in a black onesie that included gloves. It had something white like a mask over its face, though contrary to the usual state of things, this did not seem to impede its' breathing. It grasped in one hand a rattle which appeared to be made of a pair of eyeballs held together with optic nerves.

The Baby

"It's beautiful," said the Doctor, sniffling with joy. "Oh, I want to be involved in that child's life."

"Where did it get those eyes?" wondered the Anesthesiologist.

"From its birth mother," I said. "I hear there was no love lost between them. Best not to bring her up."

The child woke up. It looked around at each of us in turn.

It cooed in delight, perhaps on some level excited to have changed, like Pinnochio, into a real organic being. There was wonder in its eyes (the ones in its head, not on its rattle).

"Hello, child," said the Doctor. "Welcome to the universe."

It started crying.

"What's it crying about?"

"Does it need a diaper change?"

"Doctor, how do you even open that chitinous suit to change a diaper?"

"Why do you assume this is a problem I know how to solve?"

"Because he looks exactly like you!"

"Sigh. This had better not be one of those time travel things where it grows up to be me."

"What are the odds of a circular time-travel loop involving you, Surge?"

"Unfortunately, pretty good."

"Is it hungry, perhaps? What do you feed a baby? Soup? I could make you some soup if you want, please stop crying…."

"All right, stand back, Ani, 6118! I'm going to try to change its' diaper! … There, all better!"

"….How did you even do that, Doctor? That onesie seemed pretty seamless to me."

"Maybe if our date goes well-"

"SURGE, PLEASE!"

"All right all right. Ani, 6118, I'm sorry…."

"It's- it's okay, Doctor, I'm not even sure what you were trying to say."

"Oh, you sweet summer child…"

"Hey, I suffered great pain to get you out of Alagadda, and I don't even know you now! Please, don't make fun of me!"

"All right, all right…"

It's a few weeks later now. We're standing in line at "Marshall, Carter, and Dark Present: For the First Time Ever on the Planet: Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting!"

I'm holding the Doctor's hand in the line, of course. We've caught up on each other's sides of the story, and I've been learning all about him. A fascinating man, I'm so lucky to be his friend….

We're at the front of the line now, and I see the posters. And I remember that I don't particularly care for clowns, even though I appreciate what Lolly did for us.

"Are you all right, my friend?" asks the Doctor.

"Y-yeah," I say.

But he can tell by the look in my eyes. "Maybe we skip this show, eh?" he says.

I look at him. I look at all the people waiting behind me in line, and at the ticket-taker, who mutters about not having all day here.

"Sure," I say. And we step out of the line, and walk back to my room.

"Phew!" says the Doctor. "I'm glad you said something. I was going because I thought you liked it, but I have some…. bad memories with that Circus."

"So let's make some good memories together," I say.

And we snuggle, and the Doctor pulls up on the newly installed lid of his mask as we close the door to my room.

And we have a great time for the next hour arguing passionately over whether to watch Doctor Who or Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Part 4

All That Copper, Glowing Fine

{$next-title}

Footnotes

1. Does she want to talk about it?

What does it care, being a big fancy eldritch tetrarch?

It is a big fancy eldritch tetrarch who had been universally loathed for a century, and then someone showed it Kindness. The kindness bothers it like an alien parasite, and it needs to worm its way out.