Lintharo

Same ol', same ol

The morning light peeks through a window. Sleep is banished. Dreams dissolve, leaving nothing but a trace of nonsensical memory.

The man wakes up, slowly. He has a shower if he feels like it, gets dressed. Makes himself a breakfast of toast. He brushes his teeth, looking at himself in the mirror as he does so. He’s about thirty-three, with shortish hair. His face stares back at him blankly, still half-asleep.

His thoughts are on his job, as they often are. His company is taking on some third-party data entry work, and he mentally goes over the procedure that will be required of him. Which columns to copy over, which format the dates will be written in. He heads out to catch his usual commute.
Sometimes this morning routine is interrupted by a pleasant visit from a neighbor, but that hasn’t happened for a while. He doesn’t think anything of it. They are probably just busy with their own lives.

As he makes his way towards his cubicle in the office, he passes by a fellow worker. They are shaking, holding their head in their hands, only peering up every now and then to look back and forth feverishly. They seem to be muttering to themselves, although he can’t quite make out what. When he comes into their line of sight, they jerk backwards in their seat and begin to shout at him.

He takes a step forward in concern before speaking. “You alright?” The shouting increases in volume. “Listen Bernard, I know you’re new here, but there’s no need to work yourself to the bone. There’s been a bit of a bug going around recently, and you look like you could do with some rest. Don’t worry, the boss won’t mind if you really need it.” The other man's yell increases in pitch until it breaks off suddenly in a small, choking sound. “I know, but coming in sick doesn’t make a good impression either. You take care of yourself, you hear?”

The coworker stops shaking, and slowly raises his head to look around himself, as if he didn’t know where he was.

“…Y-yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking. I-I, would’ve called in but there was a presentation I needed to revise…”

“Why don’t you get yourself a coffee? That’ll put you back on your feet.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” The coworker rubs his eyes. He seems to have recovered from whatever uncertainty had been afflicting him before. “I’ll ask Penny if there’s any aspirin left. I think I'll stick it out though, I feel a lot better than I did a moment ago.”

“Well, if you’re sure. Just remember you can leave if you want.” The two of them part ways amicably, and the man walks to his cubicle, sits down in his seat and turns on his computer. He begins typing.

He doesn’t especially enjoy his job, but he doesn’t hate it either. Maybe one day he’ll try to get a promotion, or look for a better job, but today is not that day. Today is simply another plain, ordinary, normal day in his life, just like all the others.

~

As he walked towards the medical cabinet, Bernard passed by a strange circular symbol scrawled on the wall without sparing it a glance. He looked through the windows onto the motionless streets below as he made a coffee. He carefully stepped over the mess of paper on the ground, each sheet scribbled over with someone’s name, and made his way around the barricade that was blocking off his desk.

Finally, he sat down in his seat, opened his computer, and was met with a piece of paper taped to his screen. It said “Important: Read Carefully” in what appeared to be his own handwriting, followed by a page of text in the smaller print his work usually used. It must’ve been some report he hadn’t finished last night. He peeled it off, and began reading it closely.

SCP-1915 is a Caucasian man, thirty three (33) years old, of an unexceptional build and height…

At first, his eyes moved casually across each line, flitting from word to word, but as he kept reading, he slowed. His brow furrowed, he began mouthing each word as he read it, trying to parse its meaning. His face paled, and he started shaking his head as he slowed to a crawl on the last few lines. Finally, he finished, and he took a slow, shuddering breath as he lowered his head into his hands.

Several things had occurred to Bernard.

First of all, his name wasn’t Bernard. It was Frederick Raylen, although he found his first name childish, and tended to omit it when introducing himself.

Secondly, he was not a recent employee of the marketing department on the second floor, paid to take calls and send on relevant emails. He worked for the SCP Foundation as a research assistant, not even a full doctor. They didn’t trust him enough yet.

Thirdly, this was not a corporate office stuffed with workers from nine-to-five trying to make a living. It was Site-17, one of the Foundation’s many locations dedicated to anomalous humanoids. Or at least, it had been.

He remembered what had happened.

~

Raylen waited in a corridor. He was hoping to catch the Site Director as they made their way through the building, and talk to them about a new test he'd come up with for one of the Type Greens. He knew there was a procedure for approving new experiments, but he'd already filled out the required paperwork multiple times, explaining his ideas and the benefit it would yield to the Foundation, only to be denied on each occasion.

He doubted anyone higher up had actually looked over his work. The middle management still didn't take him seriously, so he’d decided to go straight to the top. Getting an appointment had proven to be impossible, however, so here he was, lurking in the corridors, leaning awkwardly against one of the walls and checking his watch every couple of minutes.

That's when the alarm went off.

He was caught off guard, and although it was hard to make out exactly what the wailing siren was saying, he was pretty sure he heard the word ‘keter’.

Raylen wasn’t stupid; he knew that he was supposed to evacuate in this kind of situation. There were safety posters plastered with simple messages all over the place, and the site regularly performed drills for lockdown procedures — but whenever the practice alarm came on, he’d simply followed the mass of people who knew where they were going, too internally occupied by resentment at the interruption of his work to properly commit the route to memory.

Now though, he was in an unfamiliar part of the building, with only the vaguest idea of where to go. He picked a door at random, running through it in the hope of coming across someone else, only to find more empty corridors, empty rooms with their lights still on. He thought he heard a voice around the next corner, and sprinted towards it, but there was nothing, only darkness. He bent over, holding himself steady against the wall with one hand as he caught his breath, and decided he would have to go back to the part of the building he knew well, and make his way to the evacuation shelter from there.

He hated this, he hated how he was failing at something so simple, how this would prove everyone right about him, but he didn’t have any other options. He didn’t deserve it, all the condescension and pity, all the awkward pauses people had while talking to him. He just wanted to be treated as his own person, goddamnit! If it hadn’t been for that stupid doctor…

He stood up, and turned to go back the way he’d come, only to notice something strange. The corridor in front of him was dark, outlines fading to black only a few metres in front of him — but there were emergency generators to prevent power outages, and even if the lights in this particular hallway were off, he still would’ve expected there to be some illumination from other sources…

Raylen peered into the gloom. A slight sound came from within it, like the one he’d heard before, and the shadows began moving towards him.

He started running. For a few minutes he thought he’d escaped, but his sense of relief was dashed when one of the doors opened into that same inky nothingness. A sense of cold emanated from the incorporeal mass, and tendrils of shadow separated from it, snaking through the air towards him. He wasted no time in closing the door again. But as he tried to find another way around it, it seemed to fill each room, each hallway he accessed. It was surrounding him, cutting off his avenues of escape.

He desperately tried breaching the containment rooms, despite the consequences he knew he would face afterwards, in the hope that maybe one of SCPs within could help him — but each time he was denied. The rooms were locked down tightly in emergencies, not that he would’ve had the clearance to access them in the first place.

Except one. Among the heavy-duty magnetic seals of the usual containment chambers was a simple wooden door, with a small key-opened lock underneath the handle. Raylen would’ve found it comical, if it wasn’t for the wave of darkness sweeping towards him at that exact moment. It was unlocked, and he swung it across and flung himself through in an instant, only sparing a moment to look at the number on the door. Anything was better than what was out there.

He backed away from the door, waiting to see if it would come through. He felt the temperature drop, and an eerie reverberation came from beyond the door — just out of his range of hearing, but enough to set his teeth on edge. He could imagine it on the other side, subsuming the walls and floor and the very air itself, coming up to the door, pushing against it…

And then it left, and the temperature returned to normal. Raylen stood up slowly. Through the slight gaps on the sides of the door, he could see darkness. It was still out there. But at least for the moment, it seemed to have left this place alone.

He turned around, and was slightly befuddled to see the metallic, clinical architecture that the Foundation used transition to an office setting that might’ve been from a tv show. A pale blue carpet covered the floor, and a leather-bound swivel chair held the room’s single occupant, working at a desk with various pieces of paper and knick knacks on it.

As Raylen crossed into the furnished part of the room, the figure noticed him, and the air seemed to become fuller, less sterilized, and the light became warmer. The last dozen minutes of the alarm, the void, the running, all became lighter in his mind, less significant. His panic receded, and he stepped forward to thank his saviour. He hadn’t actually talked to any of the humanoid SCPs before now, but he’d read logs with them, and they usually seemed like friendly people — if strange, by their nature.

“There’s been a breach, I don’t know what, but it’s out there. I don’t think it can come in here though, this room seems safe, for now. That’s because of you, isn’t it?”

“Hm?” The figure looked up at him. “Oh, it was the least I could do, just keeping an eye out for each other. I’m sure you’ll fit in here in no time. Do you know where you’re assigned yet?”

“What?” Raylen mentally stumbled. That wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting, for… some reason. He tried to back up. His recent memories, already drifting away from his awareness, floated right out of his mind. He’d just entered this room through the door, after running for a while, from something…

“They’ve probably got you filing some simple paperwork. That’s the usual for new staff members.”

Try as he might, Raylen couldn’t remember what he’d been doing before he’d entered this room. Still, paperwork sounded about right. That idea — of looking over documents, editing them or adding notes and passing them on to other people — felt familiar to him. He felt some frustration associated with the task. But, he supposed, everyone had to start somewhere. This job was a good opportunity for him to get experience working in the real world, before he pursued his interests elsewhere.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

The man directed him to a cabinet that hadn’t been there before, and he spent the rest of the day carrying out small tasks for people who hadn’t been there before either. He read each file carefully, making note of the date they were written and whether or not they needed to be kept. He took drinks from a water cooler, and relaxed on a leather-bound couch during breaks. He chatted a little with the other man, asking questions about the workplace and sharing some trivial small talk. At some point he gave his name as Bernard.

Eventually, it was time to leave. Raylen made to exit the room, but whenever he reached for the door, his hand started shaking for some reason, and he was unable to get a solid grip on the handle. The other man passed by him and opened the door himself, leading them both into…

…This part was always fuzzy in Raylen’s memory. He recalled a furnished hallway, an elevator, a lobby, a sliding glass door, a street, a bus. The sequence of events was there in his head, like a slideshow, but he couldn’t quite visually picture any of the scenes, any of the colours or shapes. On the very edge of the flat, static memories of what his mind told him had happened, he had the vaguest impression of cold and empty corridors, hard metallic walls and ceilings, all covered in a blanket of darkness pushing up against the boundary of the small bubble of "normal" reality SCP-1915 created around himself.
And that bubble was where Raylen had stayed. He didn’t know exactly how the layout of the building twisted itself to provide the space for an open sky and roads, but some things persisted through the alteration, and when he saw a Foundation logo plastered on the side of a building as if it were graffiti, he’d remembered who he was…

…He got off the bus, and followed 1915 home. Being around 1915 without being affected was like balancing on a plank of wood. It didn’t seem that hard, until you got distracted and fell off. Now that he could think clearly, he could see all the limitations of the miniature universe.

Nothing moved. None of the people moved, no birds or insects moved. The bus didn’t drive away, it just stopped being there anymore. Everything was just… still. When he looked into the distance, everything became slightly transparent, and he thought he could make out the ceiling. It was both far away and only a few metres above him. He took a step away from 1915, and the temperature dropped. As real as the bubble looked on the inside, he knew that its actual area couldn’t have been that large. As long as he didn't let himself get drawn into the effect, a few steps would be all it took for him to leave it.

He turned around, falling back into step behind 1915 — who failed to notice — as the man entered his house. Raylen spent the night outside, huddled up against the wall as the sun stopped being in the sky. It was cold, and dark, but there wasn't any wind, and the concrete and dirt didn't feel hard enough to be uncomfortable.

The next day, Raylen tried to keep himself from forgetting who he was. He repeated his name and his job at the Foundation over and over to himself inside his head, holding on to his memories of the facility, of the anomalies he and his coworkers handled, of that stupid doctor, and the horrible void that had chased him into this mess. He’d followed 1915 onto the bus, which had stayed still under his feet while the rest of the environment sped past the windows. They got off, and it was only once they entered the building that 1915 noticed him. The words were a rhythm inside his head, reminding him of who he was, as regular as a heartbeat.

“Oh, hello Bernard. How are you today?”

It didn’t matter. A single conversational exchange was all it took to wipe everything out of his head. No matter how hard he tried to keep a grip on his thoughts, he simply didn’t have the mental resistance to withstand 1915’s effect. Repetition could only help so much, and as his identity drained away, for a fleeting moment he felt a red-hot anger at himself for being so weak, for letting it happen again.

Once again, he stayed as Bernard for most of the rest of the day, only coming back to himself when 1915 had wandered some distance away from him, leaving him with the same flat, nondescript memories of what had happened. Once again, he spent the night huddled up against the wall. Once again, he tried to plan for the next day. And once again, despite his efforts, he forgot who he was.

~

Each day, he had tried new things. He’d entered the work building before 1915 and drew the Foundation logo on the wall inside the building, wrote his name on pieces of paper, tried to block off the room and desks. It didn’t work. Any major disturbance had simply just stopped being there when 1915 got close, and the longer he spent in the SCP’s effect, the more difficult it became for him to snap out of it. This world was feeling more real, more solid every day. New rooms, people, places that hadn’t been visible to him before kept appearing and he could no longer make out the ceiling above the sky. Sometimes he could even swear a bird flapped its wings.

His memories of the Foundation started to feel fake, as if they were from a movie or book he’d read. A secret organization dedicated to containing entities and objects that could end the world? That wasn’t something that could really exist, surely. Reality was just too plain for something like that.

But then he would remember what had happened to him, and his resentment would rise up to the surface and clear his head. He’d worked so hard to make a new life at the Foundation; he couldn’t just forget it.

When he found the time to think, Raylen considered things. Every now and then, he had tried stepping out of 1915’s effect, and the temperature still dropped. For all he knew, the whole world was covered in that blanket of darkness, except for his little bubble of safety, keeping the nothingness at bay. Or maybe the Foundation had contained it to just this wing of Site-17, and even now were fighting their way through it, and at any moment they would break through the veil and he would be able to leave, and return to his old life. Maybe all he had to do was step through boundary and they would be there, waiting to welcome him with open arms.

He had no way of knowing. He didn’t even know if whatever was out there was actually dangerous. Perhaps he’d been wrong to run.

He paused in his recollection, and drew something out of pocket. It was a small piece of paper, with a number of marks on it. He counted them.

Twenty-three. He’d been here for twenty-three days. Not counting any days that had gone by without him realising who he was. How much longer would he have to go on like this? How much longer would he have to spend each night shivering outside the house belonging to the god of this tiny world?

He looked over at the cubicle 1915 sat in, typing away for a company that no longer existed in a building that had never existed. He was stuck, unable to change anything, following the patterns of a life he’d once led, their grooves cut so deep that he would never see out of them. Yet, he was content.

Only by making the SCP file seem work-related had Raylen been able to get past his own filter, and he wasn’t sure it was going to work a second time. He didn’t have any other ideas for what else he could try, and while maybe he could’ve thought of something, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Every day, he’d made the choice to keep going, to try and stay himself. But what did he have to look forward to?

His memory of working at the Foundation went back several months, and then stopped. But he’d been working there for years. “Freddie”, they’d called him. A silly name for a silly person. He’d been a doctor, well-liked by other members of the site — for being friendly, for cracking jokes, for keeping up morale when times were tough — but utterly terrible at actually doing his job. He’d written reports humorously, leaving out the major events that happened until the last sentence as a punchline. His experiments had involved repeatedly exposing the same SCP to different food items. He’d put live-action skits in the presentations he showed at meetings.

But then something had happened. Raylen's memory had been wiped, leaving no recollection of any personal experiences in his life, not a single one. However, he had retained a lot of the impersonal knowledge regarding anomalies and containment procedures that he’d picked up while working for the Foundation, so they’d moved him down in rank and kept him employed. He hadn’t been able to learn what exactly had happened, as the event report had been above his new clearance level, but he’d picked up enough from the people around him to know that one of the doctor's antics had gone to far, and finally backfired on him.

At first, he’d looked at his past life, and tried to continue where it had left off. He’d tried to please the people around him, getting them to laugh or crack a smile. But after a couple weeks, he’d stopped. It simply wasn't coming naturally to him anymore, and he didn’t want to have to keep forcing it. So he’d decided to make a clean break with the past, and striven to do the work he was given and do it well, to change people’s opinions of him. But it hadn’t worked. No one took him seriously. Everyone still thought of him as the bumbling and endearing doctor, and when he refused to lighten the mood, they thought of him as rude and aloof. He couldn’t win.

He looked once more about the office, at the light streaming through the windows, at the furnished carpet and walls, at the people who were almost, but not quite, sitting at desks around him. He could feel the constant pressure of 1915’s effect, telling him who and where he was, offering to relieve everything else from his mind, giving him a home.

He sighed. One thing he did regret was that he was never able to have a proper conversation with the entity who had saved him. He seemed like a person who had sorted things out.
Maybe the third time around, things would be better.

~

The morning comes, and the light streams in through the window onto the man’s face, and he wakes. He repeats the motions he’s done a thousand times before, getting ready for the day. He walks to the same bus stop, takes the same commute, looks at the same buildings and people on his way there. Sometimes, maybe a few times a month, the thought of doing something else — going on a trip perhaps, or taking up a new hobby — enters his mind. But he is alright with where he is in life, and doesn’t mind if things could be better than they are. He doesn’t feel a need to change.
He passes through the lobby, offering a pleasantry to the receptionist, and takes the elevator to his floor. He sits down at his desk and begins to work. A short amount of time passes, and another of his coworkers enters from the elevator. They have a short conversation. His coworker mentions sleeping well, and the man is pleased to hear it. They talk about a few more things, and then part ways.
The man is glad he can have such interactions in his life. They are small things, but they make him feel grateful for the life he has. If he can make another person feel just a little bit better, that’s enough. He wouldn’t dream of having a greater impact on the world than that.
The day goes on, ends, then begins again.