Dr. Cimmerian Almost Goes Out On A Limb

by Doctor Cimmerian

based on a true story

▸ More by this Author ◂

{$comments2}

F.A.Q.

{$doesthisfixthebug}

Photograph of the damage sustained to the safe house during the SCP-7700-A incident.

Item #: SCP-7700
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-7700-1 is not allowed to leave Foundation employment for any reason. SCP-7700-1 is to be monitored at all times and improbable events should be logged.
Additional measures are to be taken once there is a better understanding of the core anomaly or anomalies involving SCP-7700.
Description: SCP-7700 is an unexplained probabilistic phenomenon surrounding Dr. Jeremiah Cimmerian (hereafter referred to as SCP-7700-1). This phenomenon causes unusual and unlikely events to occur in any situation where SCP-7700-1's life is in danger.
While these unusual probabilistic outcomes do not necessarily result in SCP-7700-1 remaining uninjured, it has uniformly led to his survival in all recorded circumstances. This effect does not extend to any other individuals or property surrounding or near to SCP-7700-1.
SCP-7700 occurs without need of conscious thought and without any regard for the wishes of SCP-7700-1. Additionally, when SCP-7700-1 deliberately places himself in life threatening situations, SCP-7700 will still prevent SCP-7700-1's death. Current understanding of this effect indicates that it has been in place since SCP-7700-1's birth. It is also believed that some or all information regarding SCP-7700-1's life prior to Foundation employment is fabricated.
SCP-7700-1 has not visibly aged during his 10 years in Foundation employ (though given the short time period, this is not a definitive indicator). It has been surmised that the phenomenon that keeps the entity alive during short term emergencies has also acted over the long term to prevent incomplete or imperfect cell replication. Tissues samples extracted from SCP-7700-1 are not under the effects of SCP-7700 and appear to replicate and die normally.

+ Show SCP-7700-A  Incident Record.

- Hide SCP-7700-A Incident Record.

The following is a log of the investigation which lead to SCP-7700's discovery.
On July 21st, 2022, Dr. Cimmerian was staying at a Foundation safe house in central Alabama. Around 1600, local time, a flash storm generated severe winds. These winds sheared off a large section of a tree, which then fell into the room that SCP-7700-1 was working from. Despite the total destruction of the room, SCP-7700-1 suffered no serious harm.
As part of the project Dr. Cimmerian was investigating per his duties as a floating ethics committee liaison, several macroscopic probability detectors had been placed around the safe house to protect against an incursion by agents of the Serpent's Hand following an attack the previous month. These detectors recorded a spike of 16 De Moivres1 at the time of the event. Given the De Moivre scale's baseline of 1, this was determined to be significant enough to investigate.
This investigation came to three conclusions.

The probability event was of a significant nature and protected SCP-7700-1 from harm.
The Serpent's Hand was not active in the area at the time of the event and it is unlikely that this probability event was causally linked to the attack on the safe house in June.
Dr. Cimmerian's personal history both before and during his Foundation employment indicates frequent similar events.

Considering this, the Ethics Committee has placed Dr. Cimmerian on administrative leave until such a time as this and similar events can be fully investigated.

+ Show Record of Potential SCP-7700-1 Incidents.

- Hide Record of Potential SCP-7700-1 Incidents.

The following is an incomplete log of events gathered in the last 48 hours involving Dr. Cimmerian both before and during his employment at the SCP Foundation.

Event Date
Location
Estimated De Moirve Reading
Log of Events

December 8th, 2009
Maputo, Mozambique
4
A helicopter Dr. Cimmerian was riding in suffered a severe mechanical failure resulting from an impact with a rocket propelled grenade which did not detonate. The helicopter was able to make a safe landing and all crew and passengers survived.

March 19th, 2010
Vladivostok, Russia
12
During a fact finding mission in eastern Russia, Dr. Cimmerian became involved in a short relationship with a Russian GRU agent. This agent detonated an explosive onboard a train that resulted in derailment and Dr. Cimmerian's hospitalization. He was one of two survivors of that event.

April 26th, 2012
Erie, Indiana
Unknown
Dr. Cimmerian was isolated from his team during an investigation into an occult organization that was attempting to summon a trio of deities. He used the gun of one of the fallen agents and eliminated the emergent entities before they were fully formed.

October 11th, 2014
Mobile, Alabama
3-6
While shopping, Dr. Cimmerian was trapped under 3 Sealy Posturepedic Hybrid mattresses for 28 hours. He was freed after the store owner returned on Monday morning. While this has been reported anecdotally by others who learned of it afterwards, it has not yet been independently verified.

February 29th, 2016
Near Montgomery Alabama on Interstate 65
8
Dr. Cimmerian was involved in a firefight during the transport of a highly dangerous SCP Object. He managed to deal with his pursuers but the vehicle he was riding in was struck by a semi-trailer truck carrying coal. Dr. Cimmerian was the only survivor of both the incident and following accident.

January 12th, 2019
Biloxi, Mississippi
24
Dr. Cimmerian was thrown out of a plane by Chaos Insurgency agents while flying approximately 2.5 kilometers above sea level. He survived with serious but non-life threatening injuries after crashing through several tree branches, landing in a trampoline in a back yard, and then bouncing into a pool.2

June 25th, 2021
Site-88, Alabama
32
Dr. Cimmerian survived the explosion of a Gotrax Hoverboard that Dr. Gerald was attempting to demonstrate the use of.

July 21st, 2022
Birmingham, Alabama
16
As described in the -A log above.

+ Show SCP-7700-1 Interview Log.

- Hide SCP-7700-1 Interview Log.

Dr. Gears has performed a post incident interview with SCP-7700-1. The log of that interaction is below.
Date of Interview: July 24th, 2022.
Subject: SCP-7700-1
Interviewer: Dr. Gears
Begin Log
Dr. Gears: I wanted to talk about the incident at the safe house.
SCP-7700-1: Yeah. The roof tried to kill me.
Dr. Gears: What happened? Was it a tree?
SCP-7700-1: From the looks of it a tree split in the next yard over. But then it fell into another tree that split off and crashed into the house.
Dr. Gears: How much damage was there?
SCP-7700-1: Catastrophic. Honestly if the Hand already knows about the place we oughta just put it down as a loss anyway.
Dr. Gears: You are probably right. Are you feeling alright?
SCP-7700-1: Shaken up a bit. I mean, I was 5 feet from certain death. I don't think it's fully hit me yet.
Dr. Gears: I can imagine. But this is not the first time something like this has happened, yes?
SCP-7700-1: You talking about the plane thing?
Dr. Gears: That and a few other things. The bombing in Russia comes to mind.
There is a delay of several seconds before the interview continues
SCP-7700-1: You wanna know how I got scarred?
Dr. Gears: No. I just want to parse an incongruity.
SCP-7700-1: Gears, you'd tell me if they were considering a designation for me, right?
Dr. Gears: Do you feel as though you need one?
SCP-7700-1: I've survived some things other people didn't. Statistically that's bound to happen from time to time.
Dr. Gears: It does seem to happen more often to you than others though, does it not?
SCP-7700-1: We work for the Foundation. We're put into life and death situations regularly. If we didn't survive we wouldn't be here to ask how we survived.
Dr. Gears: Are you familiar with the De Moirve sensors?
SCP-7700-1: I am.
Dr. Gears: And?
SCP-7700-1: And I think it's more interesting when the character survives.
Dr. Gears: What is more interesting?
SCP-7700-1: The story. If your characters died every time something bad happened there wouldn't be much of a reason to keep reading.
Dr. Gears: Cimmerian, I don't understand.
SCP-7700-1: That's because I'm not talking to you.
SCP-7700-1 looks directly at the hidden camera recording this interaction.
SCP-7700-1: I don't want to die. There. I said it. It's not something I'm proud of, but it is certainly something that's true. I think it's true of a lot of people, actually. It's just such a primal fear that it's hard to put it into words.
Actually, let's break out of the box, it's a bit more confining than I'd like.

I've always known I don't want to die, on some level, but it wasn't until I started writing on the SCP Wiki that it came into sharp focus. I first found the wiki in 2012, so 10 years ago next month. I was browsing around TV tropes and kept coming across tropes from the wiki on other pages. Eventually I clicked through. It wasn't quite as big at the time, but it was still pretty popular.
Then I tried to write something. It was very bad. Hit on all the cliches. It used a copyrighted image. It was on some level embarrassing to me, I think. So I left. I came back in 2014 and tried again. The wiki's attitude at the time wasn't necessarily always positive to new writers, but I persevered and made something that stuck. It also wasn't very good, but it was certainly good enough.
And then I bounced around for a while. Finding writers I liked, learning from them, then bouncing off when they disappeared. And on and on and on. Now I'm one of the site's most recognizable authors. Right or wrong, it's certainly true.
But what does any of this have to do with my fear of death?
I create in order to be unforgettable. To be undeniable. I want to make worlds and stories that will be told long after I'm gone.
My immortality is in my work. My work is how I breathe. I create a character that hates himself and people love him. I create continents and forests and mountains and nations with long storied histories and then I shatter them in a moment. It's all there. And it's all a part of me.
So always. For all time: Writing is how I know myself.
I've always held that to be the truest purpose to creating anything. To know oneself.
I started to find patterns in my writing too. I write about immortal white guys. What does that say about me? The white guy part is probably negotiable (though probably speaks to a certain amount of self-projection), but the immortality comes up again and again. It's like I said earlier, I believe it's just that I don't want to die.
Then two days ago the roof really did cave in on me and I was left sitting amongst rubble, looking over at the heavy wooden rafters that landed edgewise on where my bed used to be. Rain started pouring in and I had to act to save some stuff but about 2 hours later I finally had a moment to reflect.
And I just kinda sat there and stared off into the middle distance, reflecting on the events of the day. Worrying about the future, certainly, but also knowing that I'd come mightily close to the one thing I most fear.
Then I finally grabbed the laptop I'd salvaged from the dust and chaos and opened it up. I sat on the floor of my living room, loaded discord and started talking about it. And hours after one of the most horrific things in my life happened to me, my main thought was "I'm gonna write this into my 7k entry. Cause why the fuck not."
And here we are. Hope you like it. Cause this just proves what I've always known deep down.
One way or another, I'm gonna live forever.
Thanks for reading it. And, genuinely, good luck to everyone else.

Dr. Gears: So you are saying that you are immortal because your author wants you to live on after he dies?
SCP-7700-1 returns his attention to Dr. Gears.
SCP-7700-1: I guess?
Dr. Gears: We will take that into consideration then.
End Log

Footnotes
1. A De Moivre is a general measurement of how much a particular incident deviates from standard probabilistic predictions. A higher number indicates a more improbable result.
2. I know we experience unlikely events daily but this should have been investigated more thoroughly when it occurred. ~ Dr. Gears

« SCP-7699 | SCP-7700 | SCP-7701 »