Mister Nobody - SCP Foundation

Global Occult Coalition. Serpent’s Hand. Chaos Insurgency. I know everything there is to know about all of the Groups of Interest on record. I have placed agents into every single one of them; they relay everything they discover straight back to me. I have lifted the veils of several mysterious GoIs: we can now shut down almost every single Are We Cool Yet? installation before it even begins. But there was one I didn’t know until recently. One I needed to know about. And that one was Nobody.

My experiences with Nobody began when I was appointed as head of the Foundation’s Group of Interest monitoring agency. Each entry had vast databases of people believed to be members of the organisations and comprehensive descriptions of the motivations behind each group. Then, while I sat at my new computer, I discovered a somewhat atypical entry; one for an individual referred to as Nobody. The log claimed their identity or identities, motives and everything else about them was unknown, cloaked in mystery. They have worked with and against essentially all GoIs and have kept all information about themselves entirely hidden from view.

At first, I was convinced that a more revealing description existed. I liased with other, more experienced members of Foundation staff and even went so far to communicate with the Global Occult Coalition. Every time, I was told the same thing: nobody knows, but Nobody knows. This did not satisfy me. I continued my search, leafing through archaic documents until the sun rose the next morning. The case was a dead end. Nothing that I could find got me any closer to discovering the true identity of Nobody. Eventually, I realised I was getting nowhere and I gave up hope. ‘Some mysteries never get solved’, I told myself.

The next part of my life relating to this enigma of a man came years later. Now a veteran by Foundation standards, I controlled almost all aspects of inter-GoI communication from the Foundation’s side. One uneventful Saturday, I reentered my office after lunch. While I unlocked and opened the door, I was aware of a chilling draught. At the time, I had subconsciously blamed it on an open window, but my office was below the ground. Entering the office, I discovered a folded piece of lined paper which had been deposited on my desk. My child-like curiosity outweighed the logical side of the brain at this moment, and as a result I quickly opened the document. The text was handwritten in perfect cursive and was extremely brief, however I have never been so pleased by any other correspondence. Below, I have attached a scanned copy of the letter I received:

Greetings, Arthur Barnes.

You will be meeting with me soon.

Nobody

One of the few things I had discovered about Nobody is that they were known for extremely vague, cryptic communication. For this reason, I elected not to attempt to seek out Nobody; Nobody would come to me. But I was ready. This time the mystery would be gone, the facade would be broken. Nobody would be Somebody now.

Days became weeks and weeks became months. The thought of Nobody was in the back of my mind, but it still lingered. One night, I found myself leaving the Site by foot, having left my car at a mechanic to fix its squeaking brake pedal. A thick covering of cinereal clouds blanketed the dull streets, darkening alleys and dispersing crowds. I shivered slightly as a cold breeze penetrated my thin white shirt. I entered one of the darker alleyways. In hindsight, this was probably a bad idea, but I still had ‘Nobody’ plastered all over the inside of my overworked mind.

As I strolled down the narrow street, I heard a purposeful cough erupting from a figure behind me. I span around to view the figure, heart in my throat. “Who are you?” I asked them.

“I am Nobody,” the figure replied. It was wearing a charcoal trench coat and a jet black fedora, obscuring its body and face from view. The voice was high-pitched, although it was distinctly masculine.

Fearing that I was going to ruin my opportunity to solve this mystery, I neglected to ask any questions relating to his identity. Instead, I asked about the reasoning behind his presence: “Why are you here?”

“You see, Mr. Barnes, I know a lot about you. I know about your obsession with my identity and my motives. I have even more insider knowledge about your Foundation than you have about anything on your extensive list on Groups of Interest,” he responded. “And this is not the place where you will find out. My identity remains hidden, cloaked behind countless veils to the point where I am not even entirely sure myself. My motives? They’re even more ambiguous. I don’t stand anywhere morally, at least not for any significant amount of time. I jump around between organisations like they’re beaches on a hot day. And do I even have an identity? I am many.”

I was enraged at what Nobody had said. He has stalked me using whatever he could use and knew everything I did. He came to me to taunt me, to tell me I would never get anywhere.

In a brief outburst of rage, I grabbed Nobody’s trench coat. Ignoring his cries for me to let go, I began to tear apart the vertical column of buttons separating me from his body. When I got closer to revealing his identity, he screamed in rage. The ear-splitting scream no longer sounded angry, he sounded desperate. It almost felt like the scream was erupting from his entire body, not just his open mouth. I was not affected by this outburst: figuring out anything about this man was my lifelong ambition.

As I tore open the final button, I grabbed the now-torn trench coat off of Nobody’s slender shoulders. What was left in front of me was even more shocking than any theory I could have come up with myself.

Below me lay three small figures. I removed a small flashlight from my pocket and focused its yellow beam on the shapes. Each one was a young child, approximately eight years in age. Before I could consider the implications of this, each of the youths had vanished into the darkness.

I had discovered the true identity of Nobody, but (typical of this character) a question remained. How had I believed this misshapen beast had in fact been a human being with a regular appearance? I presented the trench coat I had retained to Foundation personnel upon my reentry to the site. Following close examination, it was discovered that a very similar anomaly had already been contained, and that there could be even more of the same item in circulation. The total amount was unclear and remains so, but at least I had answered the question I had set out to answer:

Nobody was three kids in a trench coat.