Irene in Leafy English Suburbs - SCP Foundation

She'd look at them, and feel exhausted at the prospect of a love affair, but there they were. There was else nothing for it.

Spiros. Musa. Ai-Fan. Zhang. Franklin.

The woman spoke their names each morning, pronouncing each syllable slowly, carefully. The effect was one of a rhythmic chant, but under her breath; it gave them a quality that was both hurried and pedantic.

She would rise, and Irene would shift slightly next to her. She moved a hand to touch a shoulder, thought better of it, and climbed out of bed, dressing quietly and carefully. She closed the door lightly on her way out, but the click of the lock still jerked Irene awake, blinking at the blank wall.

The woman walked downstairs, the wooden steps each creaking. She went to the kitchen, poured herself a bowl of cereal, and went up to the first floor. She brushed away the gauzy curtains, and say, crosslegged, eating her breakfast and staring at the window opposite.

The house was in Ealing, in a Sol variant. It was a pleasant Victorian building. The mark was a scientist - an innocent, she supposed - who would invent a time machine. This machine would, purely by chance, end the world. She and Irene had been dispatched to stop this by any means necessary.

Houses like this had a deadening quality to them. They were light and airy, but the wooden floor and plaster ceilings felt like they absorbed sound. She closed her eyes, and listened. A car went past, and then there was nothing. No vibrations in the world at all.

"You're up early."

Irene Cassavetes stood at the bottom of the staircase, blinking blearily, her head cocked on her shoulder. So the woman smiled. "Couldn't sleep. Wanted to get an early start."

Irene smiled and nodded, then stumbled downstairs. The woman's smile was turned off. She turned to look out of the window.

She had not wanted a partner on the assignment, but she'd been given little choice. Her superiors had heard about what happened in London, and they'd insisted that she have a partner this time. She'd objected, but there was little point; the decision had already been made.

Irene was, at least, someone she knew. They'd plunged into Site-01 together; they'd done a couple of other missions, back in the old days. But she'd never been part of her crew, her little band, her real comrades. The seven of them who'd been part of Division B992, an Extrauniversal Retrieval Crew based out of Orchard.

Irene was a friendly, cordial face to her; someone she could rely on, sharp, severe and efficient. She was four or five years older than her. She'd been on sixty, seventy missions, far more than her; but this came with a twitchiness, an anxiety. Things going wrong seemed to sharpen her, but the woman always got the sense that she was one crisis away from collapse.

So when she'd seen her outside the house, holding a brown briefcase and dressed in a battered pinstripe suit, she'd almost smiled sincerely. The others were dead, but the shape of things was almost the same.

The routine was simple: morning, afternoon and evening shifts. The purpose was not to keep eyes on the target at all times but to understand his routine. The idea was that a single, well-placed disruption could alter his day-to-day sufficiently to never let his train of thought wander the way it was meant to, eventually leading to discovery and destruction. So the universe would never explode, and the resulting multiversal instability would not come about.

This led to their first major disagreement. It was about half past eleven in the morning; it was the woman's shift, and Irene was sitting with her, reading a book and making occasional comments.

"Tea. Black. Earl Grey."

"No - Assam."

"He takes his Assam black? But he steeps it for so long."

"Only five minutes. It's not undrinkable."

"Speak for yourself."

Irene made a note in a her book, and saw Nieves give her a sidelong glance.

"Is it necessary to note down all of this?" Nieves's eyes were like cobalt. Irene hadn't noticed that before. The younger woman rarely gave her direct eye contact.

"Of course." Irene turned a page. "We have to document every detail, no matter how small, in order to come up with a plan of action. You know that."

"We should just kill him and get it over with."

The unstudied bluntness with which Nieves spoke startled Irene. She stared, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. Nieves noticed this, and smiled. She enjoyed getting to her.

"We can't do that! You know we can't!"

"It would require significantly less manpower."

"It would wreck the variables! Changing someone's thoughts is an entirely different affair to removing them from time entirely! A death can have a huge impact, completely alter events. He's already an important physicist, what if someone looks at his notes and - "

"So steal the notes. Or kill whoever reads them."

"Even worse - the more deaths, the more people come looking."

Nieves smiles wider - for a second, just a second, it's a real smile, contemptuous and bright. Irene shudders. Then Nieves shrugs, and is herself again.

"It's also wrong."

"We've killed people before."

"Only when we had to - when the mission necessitated a death. We don't kill people just because it's easy."

"Yes, we do. Every person we killed could have lived. They could have been taken away, imprisoned, contained. We have - had - all reality as our jurisdiction. There's always somewhere you can put them."

"To do what? We can't keep track of every reality."

Nieves shrugged again. Irene turned away, flipping a page of her notes. This woman, she thought, it a little monster, a goblin. She doesn't mean what she says. She just wants to get a rise out of me.

The woman, meanwhile, laughs inside her head, knowing what Irene will be thinking, predicting her thoughts.

Spiros had been forged of brass and gold, a multi-limbed automaton capable of independent thought. His body was a marvel, a clockwork monster that moved with such grace, such swiftness. He clambered up and down the shelves, picking books out, up and down and…

The dream faded, slowly. She woke up and mumbled, stroking the sheet with her hand. Irene's bulk rose up, covered in cotton and heat. Nieves instinctively shrunk away from her, and got up.

"Why don't you use your name?", she'd asked her. Last night; Irene watching through the window, talking distractedly; she, sitting quietly by the radio, listening to Bach variations. She'd turned her head, barely sure she'd heard her properly. How dare she? She swallowed before answering.

"Names don't tell you anything about a person. People confuse the symbol with the reality. So I don't like to be associated with one."

Irene had then turned herself, giving Nieves such a withering look of "what pretentious nonsense" that she'd almost felt ashamed. She'd sat up, and turned away. She did not want to tell her the real reason; it would sound just as silly, and besides, she didn't have the words for it. She wasn't like Simon, she didn't have the gift of -

"Nieves, it's a name. Not everything has to be some mind game. Besides, I've always thought that a name gains associations based on people you know with that name. And I don't think I know anyone else called "Nieves del Rio".

Her face burned hot. She hated Irene in that moment. She was like a blunt instrument, all lines and angles, bulldozing her way across her. What right did she have? How could she know what she meant?

She'd got up, delicately, carefully, and walked out of the room. Irene watched her go, surprised, a little hurt, a little sorry. It had been belittling, she supposed, but it was so hard to get her to talk. It was so frustrating.

At midnight, Irene, having had time to think, put away her gear and turned out the light. She went upstairs, changed, slipped into bed. She leant over and whispered, "I'm sorry", and then turned around and went to sleep without an answer. She'd assumed Nieves was also asleep.

Hoarfrost burnt the inside of the chimney. So many worlds exist in the same world. Refugee camps in the West Sahara, lime-green basements of Brooklyn bars, damp and silent beaches unde the moon, Victorian houses in Ealing. Nieves could have wept with it all. But she didn't. She just stared at the wall.

Musa, sitting there, the cigarette in his hands, smiling at her… this time, she wrenched herself from the dream.

After the first month, the tension had started to become unbearable. What struck Nieves most about her was her hands; they were thin, bony, quick, impeccably manicured. She'd look at them, and feel exhausted at the prospect of a love affair, but there they were. There was else nothing for it.

The two of them were sitting by the window again. They'd been discussing potential methods of disruption, and once again the spectre of her earlier comments hung over them. A pause had come up. She'd sighed. "I didn't mean what I said, you know. The other day. About killing him."

That little smile, like Irene was having all her hopes in her confirmed, was unbearable. "Of course", she said quietly, writing something down. What was she writing down? Why did she have to write everything down?

"Why do you have to write everything down?"

Why had she said that? There'd been a hint of a snap in her voice. Once again, Irene raised her eyebrows. She was always raising her fucking eyebrows, always an expression of slight, pleasant surprise, like she was genuinely interested in you, happy to learn something new about you. It was exhausting. This was all so exhausting.

"I like to keep a diary, and I don't always remember details. So I write things down so I don't forget them."

"Isn't the point of a diary to be spontaneous? To write things down as they come?"

"Maybe for some people. My brain and my memories tend to be a bit of a mush; I like to write things down to keep them ordered in my mind. I can proceed from there."

"Isn't that a little… pre-planned? Surely you have too many thoughts to fit into a single diary."

Irene laughed, shifting slightly, curling up. Nieves almost winced. "You flatter me. Maybe I do, but it's the important ones that matter, the ones that bother me. I need a way to sort through them logically, and as I said, it's all too much of a mush in here."

The binoculars felt hot on her face. When would the moment come? Why did it always take so long?

As it happened, it came that night. They were sitting next to one another again, Irene watching, here eyes sharp, narrowed. Their hands were on the sill, Nieves turned away from the window, reading a book. Her finger had brushed against Irene's; she had not removed it. Time extended, dilated. It was torture. Gradually, over several minutes, their hands became entangled; Irene barely moving, staring across the way, shallow breaths. Nieves sighed.

"They discourage fraternisation, you know. It's bad for us. So many realities, so many… temptations, when you get too attached to other travellers."

"Oh, please. When has that stopped anyone? You're looking for an out before we've even begun."

That startled her, cutting right through. She looked up at Irene, eyes wide, blinking; she was still staring out of the window, a mocking smile on her face to match her own. She was enjoying this. She moved her hand across, grasping hers with conviction, purpose…

Musa had been laughing, in bed, the morning she'd left. He'd been smoking, shirtless, looking at her with a mocking grin. His hair, that curly black hair…

"It'll be fine. I'll see you before tomorrow, anyway. Jobs in Orchard never take that long. What's the worst that can happen?" She'd kissed him, smiling, and left. What was the worse that could happen? Death meant resurrection, after all…

That was what bothered her. It was so obvious. It was a cheap thriller way to go out. The calamity, happening in such a banal fashion, the ironic goodbye. It was like a story you'd tell someone else - but weren't stories always embellished? Was that not right? Was that different for other people?

It was midday; she was finishing her shift. Irene came behind her, lazily draping her arms over her, giving her a peck on her cheek. She'd smiled, and handed her the binoculars; she'd dipped underneath her, laughing. She'd gone over to her desk, in another room, and continued her work. A piece of paper was spread across the table; connections, bound to and fro, ideas, maps, theories -

A warmth, near her right shoulder. She looked around; Irene was looking at her work. "What is all this?"

She covered it up with her hands, smiling, a rictus grin. "Nothing, it's - it's just something I've been working on - you should be at your post - "

"It looks like…"

Twenty million Foundation personnel, dead. The multiverse, burnt. Every site destroyed at once. And nobody knew why.

Every site had been destroyed by entirely natural, or at least predictable, phenomena. There was nothing to trace. A freak landslide. A local war gone wrong. An entirely normal blip in the fabric of reality. Some of them turned out to be routine problems known about for years, that always had been more severe than anticipated. All of them investigated, all of them banal. There was nothing, no leads to go on. The only connection was the Foundation, the timing. It was a matter of who and not what.

"Doesn't it drive you insane?" Nieves stared up with a pleading in her voice. Irene's face looked cold - but Nieves knew her, by this point. That was just an intent look, a concentrating look. What would she say? What would she think of this obsessi -

"Of course. Yes, this makes sense - going over Foundation records, matching the exact, to the second, timings of when the disasters began. Yes, I understand - you're not looking at times, you're looking at place. An inside job… I expect the Administrator doesn't want to think about that."

Nieves smiled, grinned, laughed. Irene gave her a quick smile, and began picking up documents, making notes, offering comments. The mark was ignored for the day. Nieves brought a cup of tea, sitting beside her, discussing, referencing, cross-referencing…

The weeks turned to months. They were happy. They listened to the radio on warm nights; one armchair, another armchair. Irene took up knitting. The lightbulb was warm, flickering - but the lampshade was insufficient. Sometimes, she'd stare up into it, into the electric glow. A fly might buzz around, twitching and buzzing, burning itself, shrieking away.

"You never talk about yourself, you know that? You never talk about Asturias, or Orchard. I'm from Sol - it's all very different there."

She frowned, intent on her book. She didn't look up. Irene wasn't looking at her; she spoke casually, without really thinking. She didn't understand the implications of her words. That was good. That was how it should be.

"There's not much to tell. It was a boring childhood."

"All childhoods are. They're only interesting in hindsight. Come on, tell me something. Anything."

She shifted, uncomfortably. "We had a house, by the mountains. North of Burgos. Very conventional."

The winds would pick up, she remembered; the sound of them whooshing past was gentle, soothing to her, especially on grey days…

Was it, though? Were you there? Or was that someone else? Did you forget London already?

She shook herself. It was a normal question.

Months went on, and on. Spring to summer. She remembered Ai-Fan, bustling over her plants. She remembered Musa, grinning widely; him gambling, him in ecstasy, him open-mouthed in death, when she'd seen the body. She remembered Spiros, marvelling at his brass and copper joints…

Zhang, sailing into black seas, cackling. Franklin, pushing his glasses up his nose, stroking his beard, his bristly little beard. Simon…

But Simon had survived. Simon was still alive, the last member, bright and dreaming. She stared out of the house, at the mark, at his life, unseen, unseeable. She learnt more and more - Irene's habit of smoking after sex, only after sex; the way England's weather changed without warning, with the black umbrellas bobbing up below; the mark's taste for French music. A gramophone, turning around, grooves upon grooves.

She could feel it coming. She could see it collapsing again. She saw Musa fall, she saw Ai-Fan strangled by her plants. Zhang in the bottom of the ocean. Her hand, gently, stroking Spiros' face, the mechanical light dying, fading, spluttering…

"You don't have to tell me - but please tell someone."

And there it was; Irene's face, uncomposed, vulnerable, almost trembling, pleading with her. Nieves had been thrashing in her sleep, moaning. She'd had no idea. And now Irene came to her, in the middle of the day, with her favourite tea - her favourite tea - and asked her to open up. How dare she.

And they'd been arguing, and here the woman was, a smile splayed on her face, contemptuous, mocking. And Irene, not knowing what she'd done to deserve this, trying to keep herself together, while soothing her -

"Let me show you something."

The woman got up, walked across the room, went downstairs, opened the door out. She looked up - Irene in the window, suddenly getting up, mouthing "no"!, horrified. The woman walked towards the door of the other house, and rang the bell, and now it was a race, would Irene get there before the mark opened it? Would time go one way or another?

The door opened. The woman smiled, raised her gun -

Afterwards, she walked back into the house, cleaned her gun, put it back in the case. The weight of it was enjoyable. Something was beating in her head, something muscular and new. It had been fun to let him live. His life would be very different now.

Irene came back in, breathing hard, staring at her. "Why - "

"How do you still love me now?"

The woman smirked as Irene stared at her, cried for her. She let her. Then she cocked her head on one side, and said, quietly, "This is how I will remember you, Irene. In leafy English suburbs. A memory, solid and free."

Irene's look softened. She opened her mouth, reached out an arm - but it was too late. The woman who others called Nieves walked out of the building, into the street, and disappeared.

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