Full name: Adam Bellamy Wheeler. Born February 27, 
1962 in Henge, Derbyshire, United Kingdom to 
Rosemary Leah Wheeler née Wizst and Jonathan ‘Jack' 
Philip Wheeler. No siblings. Early education: Henge 
Church of England Primary School, Matlock All Saints 
Secondary School. Demonstrated great musical acuity 
from an early age. By age sixteen had begun to be 
recognised as one of the most gifted classical violinists 
of his generation. Attended the Royal College of— 


Wheeler skips three pages. 


—after sustaining a minor injury while on tour in , he 
encountered SCP-4051, which had infested a wing of the 
hospital where he received treatment. SCP-4051 was 
protected by an unusual form of antimemetic camouflage 
to which Wheeler — like an estimated 1 in 145,000 
individuals worldwide — was (and remains) immune. His 
attempt to alert authorities to the infestation's presence 
was intercepted by a Foundation listening station. 
Operative Marion A. Hutchinson (100A-1-9331), then a 
field agent based in— 


Another page. 


—resistant to conventional memory-erasure procedures. 
Hutchinson applied successfully for an exemption, 
reasoning that even with his memories left intact it would 
be impossible for Wheeler to share the details of 
SCP-4051. They subsequently became romantically 
involved. 


"Oh, they 'subsequently became romantically involved’, did they? 
Tell me more, you featureless gray sphere of a biographer, |'m 
hooked now." 


The biography is contentless beyond this point. Adam Wheeler's life 
spent touring, playing, lecturing and occasionally conducting, writing 
and composing is documented in exhaustive, pointless detail. He 
withstands background checks and surveillance, and consistently 
demonstrates himself to represent zero risk of leak. He eventually 
receives the extremely low clearance level normally granted to long- 
term Foundation-external partners of Foundationers. They get 
married. She takes his name, which she, reading, considers faintly 
unrealistic. Blah blah. 


There is nothing about his personality. Nothing about their 
relationship. No content. 


She remembers acquiring SCP-4051. There was no one there. She 
remembers nothing. 


Up until the end of the third round of questioning, Adam Wheeler 
assumes good faith. He figures the repetition is a due diligence tic, a 
corporate procedural requirement. It's only when they start over from 
"What's your name?" with a brand new interviewer for the fourth time 
that he finally gets it: they don't like him, and they don't care what he 
thinks his name is. They're trying to grind him down, until he can't 
think, until he's just dust particles they can sift through for data. 


He reacts badly to this realisation. He asks for his wife, and asks for 
his wife, and they ignore him, and they ignore him, and she 
persistently fails to appear, until it becomes a cold form of torture. 
The questions keep coming and nothing stops them, not answering 
truthfully, not not answering, not lying, not rambling off on tangents. 
They don't stop until he begins falling asleep in the middle of his 
own sentences. 


He wakes up in a standard Humanoid Containment Unit, a stackable 
one-bedroom apartment with holographic fake windows, 
impregnable walls and extensive discreet modifications for the 


termination schedule for these subjects may be waived with 
authorization from Dr. 


Footnotes 


1. a French brand of candy bar which contains low-quality jokes on 
the inside of its wrapper 


« SCP-582 | SCP-583 | SCP-584 » 


security and monitoring of anomalous entities. This one is on the 
first basement level, but he can't tell that. The bright quote-light- 
unquote pouring in through the main living area window is authentic 
enough to tan. 


He wakes up on the couch, with a start, feeling creaky and 
dehydrated. He realises that he slept in his suit, and that his suit is 
creased. He hates that, that sensation of not looking his best, or at 
least presentable. That's going to gnaw away at him until he can 
find, at minimum, a razor and a change of shirt. 


What woke him was the heavy metallic clack of the door unlocking. 
He looks up, rubbing his eyes. It's his wife. "Marion! Oh, my God." 
He leaps up and rushes over to meet her. She stops him a few 
paces short, with a gesture and a cold smile. And that hurts. It hurts 
more than anything. 


So it really happened: SCP-4987 has bitten out the part of Marion 
Wheeler which cared about him. She wasn't absent because of 
some unrelated K-class outbreak. She just chose to be elsewhere, 
indifferent. 


So he doesn't embrace her. He stands at a polite distance. "How are 
you feeling? Did you sleep?" 


"I'm fine." 


"| can tell you've had your coffee. Have you eaten? Come on, I'll 
make you something.” The unit has a rudimentary kitchen area. He 
goes through and starts exploring the cupboards. "There must be 
something edible around here. Eggs and milk, at least. I'm ashamed 
to say | more or less fell asleep where | was standing when they put 
me in here, so | haven't had a chance to scout. Or do you keep the 
place empty, and the food arrives through a slot in the wall?" 


Marion begins, "Mr. Wheeler—" 
Adam shoots her a disappointed look. 


"Okay," she says, "Adam. Please come and sit down. You're right, 
there's nothing in any of those cupboards." 


He closes the cupboard and sits opposite her at the kitchen table. 
"Scrambled eggs on granary toast," he suggests. "With a lot of garlic 
in the eggs. That's what we both need right now. Particularly you, 
because if | don't make something substantial for you you end up 
drinking those wretched wallpaper paste milkshakes seven days a 
week. Or you skip the meal entirely.” 


"Adam. We've been married for seventeen years, is that correct?" 
"Yes," 
"| don't know you." 


"That's fine," Adam says. "| doubt that that's going to be a serious 
problem. You've told me, many times, about your own people 
who've lost themselves in the work and had to bootstrap their own 
personalities a second time. You love watching it. It's like watching 
butterflies emerge from chrysalides. The best of your people can 
turn that around in ten weeks. Imagine how fast it's going to be for 
you." 


"No," Wheeler replies. Her tone is clinical, matter-of-fact. "I'm afraid 
it's not possible." 


"What's not possible?" 


"I can't begin a new relationship right now. Certainly not something 
as serious as a marriage. You have nominal clearance; you know 


what we do. | have responsibilities. | do not have... ‘time’. 


"This isn't 'new'," Adam says, deadpan. "It's pre-existing." 


"No," Wheeler explains. "That relationship is ended now, and we are 
somewhere else." 


Adam stares at her for a long moment, thin-lipped and far from 
happy. He asks her: 


"What do you remember?" 


The question is so open-ended that Wheeler doesn't manage to 
respond verbally. She spreads her hands slightly, the gesture 


saying, "What?" 


"You don't remember me," Adam says. "SCP-4987 also clearly ate 
the part of you which would care if you forgot me. And, additionally, 
the part of you which cares about brunch. 'What else have you 
forgotten?’ would be a stupid question to ask, so instead I'm asking 
you, what's left? | want you to tell me everything you can 
remember." 


"Everything | can remember?" 
"Yes. From 1995 to right now." 


It's still a farcical question at face value, and Wheeler's first instinct 
is to dismiss it as such, but she thinks again. She thinks, intending to 
genuinely try to answer the question. And she finds gaps. There's a 
dearth of specifics. It's like being asked to "say something" and 
immediately forgetting al! words. 


She says, "| remember... working." 


And driving home, and then sleep, and then driving back to work. 
Big, hostile buildings. Drug regimens, containment procedures, 
endless piles of opaque numbers, personal fitness drills. Running. 
Calculating. Never, ever stopping calculating. She remembers, with 
unfair clarity, a large variety of extremely bad dreams. 


And other than that, nothing. A huge, deep, ragged-edged black pit. 


Adam says, "You remember nothing good, do you? Nothing good at 
all. 


"When you come home, on the nights you make it home, you are 
ready to fold up. It has never been an easy job, but these past few 
years have been the worst they've ever been, because you're 
coming to the conclusion of something gigantic. You have explained 
to me how it is that you can never tell me, really, what it is that you 
do, without the act of you telling me killing me. And | — | couldn't 
stand that at first, and | still hate your job and | think it's a monstrous 
farce — but | trusted you in that. And | stopped asking. But | can tell, 
from the... rattle in your hands and the things you don't say, and the 


way you sleep, that there is some kind of war going on back here. 
And you're losing people to it. And you're almost at the end. And 
you're going to win. 


"So | scramble your eggs, and | play the violin for you, and between 
us we hack out about three-tenths of what | would consider to be 
normalcy. Not because you can't do this without me, you could take 
the whole universe by yourself if you really had to, but: to blazes 
with that, you don't have to. 


"It didn't happen instantly. But it happened pretty damned fast. We 
had music in common at first, Bach and Mendelssohn. We had 
tobacco in common and a mutual hatred of The X-Files. Then it was 
coffee and wine. And then after some time it became hiking, and 
birdwatching, and Perseid meteors. We like Bruce Lee flicks. We 
watch Law & Order and Jeopardy! and we read stacks and stacks of 
books. No, in fairness, it's mainly me for the books. You don't have 
the long-term time to spare anymore." 


He pinches the bridge of his nose for a second. Any two people can 
find that much common ground. Just being in the same place for 
years doesn't count for anything. What do they have? 


"We communicate," he says. "Better than anybody I've seen. We 
can be apart for two months while I'm on tour or you're overseas and 
snap right back and pick up a conversation from the word we left off. 
We are connected. We are in the same headspace. You'll see it all. 
It'll happen again, just as fast. You've just got to give it a chance." 


Wheeler is almost there. She sees the shape of what Adam is 
describing. It's distant and unclear, but if she concentrates she might 
be able to bring it into focus. It worries her, for nebulous reasons she 
can't completely articulate, but she can almost understand how 
there could be room for it. How it could lock into her life as it 
currently exists, and still make sense. 


But Adam just said something crucial. He said a keyword which 
means the marriage counselling session is over and this is now a 
situation. Wheeler can't ignore it. She forces herself to drop the 
other thread and seize this one. 


"What war?" 


And now Adam really doesn't know what's happening. "Good God. 
The war, Marion. | don't know how else to describe it." 


"What war? How many people?" 


"| don't know," Adam says. "There are names. Names you stop 
mentioning, and then you ignore me when | bring them up again. | 
assume there are reasons. | don't know the specifics. How could | 
know? Why don't you know?" 


Wheeler races through the reasoning. The existence of a war 
computes. It confirms long-term existing suspicions. It could have 
been going on for years without her realising it. It makes sense to 
her that she could be fighting it, winning, even, and not know; 
managing her own memories or losing them in skirmishes. This 
certainly won't be the first time she's uncovered it. It makes sense 
that Adam, naturally gifted with the mental equivalent of a thick layer 
of blubber, could stand on the edge of the conflict and dimly be able 
to perceive it. And the Division — so understaffed. 


People are disappearing around her. 


"And what if—" she begins, and stops dead in the middle of the 
thought, as if the thought itself was stolen out of her. 


"And what if we get back together, and—" she begins again, and this 
time hard instinct seizes her around the midsection and bodily hauls 
her back from thinking a thought which, it knows, would kill her. 
She's Wile E. Coyote, she's already run off the edge of a precipice 
into clear air, and thinking that thought would be like looking down. 


She feels SCP-4987 moving around her, abstractly bound to her, a 
winking speck of glitter in her eye. "Something's wrong.” 


Adam scratches at his own eye. "Do you see that?" 
"How can you see that?" 


"| have a mild immunity to antimemetic influence," Adam says. He 
knows it's in his file and he knows Wheeler has read the file, but 


apparently it needs to be said again. "I can tell when something is 
fritzing with my memories. | can resist it. Up to a point. So, Marion, | 
was hoping to have a relaxed conversation over coffee and get 
around to this topic organically, but I'm going to have to skip to the 
end: | have the impression that SCP-4987 is trying to kill me." 


"...No," Wheeler says. "That's not its behavior model. It doesn't 
sustain itself that way, by eating people. It eats memories. And it's 
never done this. Not to you, nor me, nor anybody. Not since the very 
early days. It's tame. It does exactly what | tell it to do. Even when 
I'm waiting, and I'm bored, and | let it eat my short-term, it sits and 
waits to be told to eat." 


"Then what is it doing to us?" Adam is getting nervy, and won't let go 
of his eye. He stands up and backs away. "I would like it if we could 
figure this out quickly. We don't have a way to put SCP-4987 down." 


There's a sound in Wheeler's mind, but not in her ear, like a distant 
chorus of baying dogs. She stands too, and moves after Adam into 
the middle of the containment unit. 


She says, "It's trying to protect you." 
"I— How does wiping your memory of me protect me?" 


"| can't explain," Wheeler says. "And | can't explain ae | can't 
explain. | don't fully know myself. There's an 


"A what?" 


"You can't be here," she says. "You can't be in my life. You have to 
leave, or you're going to die." 


"I'm not leaving you," Adam says. "Christ, that's why we did it in the 
end. Got married, | mean. It was scintillatingly obvious to both of us, 
very early on, that we were forever. But | wanted to get it on the 
public record. | stood up in front of everybody | respect and | swore 
to them that | would protect you. Forever!" 


SCP-4987 is agitated. Wheeler feels it flitting around the room, 
incoherent, trying to tell her what it needs. 


She says, with sudden actinic clarity, "| must have made an identical 
promise." 


Adam doubles over, blinded in both eyes now. Closing his eyes 
does nothing, covering his eyes does nothing. The gold-white light is 
strobing for him, moving into violet. He panics. "Help. Help me. | 
can't see." He reaches out, unsteadily, for Wheeler's hand. She lets 
him take it and pull her close. The light doesn't fade. He clings to 
Wheeler for a few moments, and she holds on to him until he 
realises that SCP-4987 is completely within her control, and this is 
all intentional. 


"You're going to do this?" Adam says. "This is the Foundation 
mandate, this is what your definition of ‘protect’ amounts to? You've 
got no idea what you're about to do to yourself. You don't even know 
me." 


"| think | know," she replies. 


"You will feel this for the rest of your life. Every day, you will wake up 
with a sick cold feeling in your stomach where there used to be a 
real life. And you'll wonder why." 


"I'm going to win this war," Wheeler says to him. "I'll beat the 
universe. And then | will come and find out why."