Per 
JEAN CITY
A jarring cellphone video starts, jumping between the barely distinguishable images of a face, a pair of sneakers, and a hand. The video then blurs to a stop, focusing on what looks to be the end of a non-descript city alley. It is difficult to tell what time of day it is; the glimpses of sky that can be caught between the rows of tall grey buildings appear overcast and dull. There are several voices muttering off-screen. What they are saying cannot be discerned, but it is clear they are astonished or upset by something they are trying to capture in the video. One of the voices begins to act as a narrator.
“Okay, okay. I know this is going to sound crazy, but…”
There is more muttering between the individuals involved before the narrator continues.
“This fucking place is – I don’t know where we are. We got off the freeway to get some gas. It’s hard to say what happened, but all of a sudden we were in this city, but there’s like, nowhere to get gas, and we can’t find our way back to where we came from. Everything here looks weird, like kind of all the same; like, it’s too normal. Like, fake – for a movie or something. There’s nothing that stands out to like, let us know we were already there, you know? The G.P.S. just straight up quit working for us.” The narrator, by the sound of their voice, is a young male. He sounds slightly out of breath, as if he’d just been running. “So I parked the car, thought maybe we’d try to find someone to talk to get directions or something. But there’s something really fucking weird about the people here. They’re all wearing jeans, but not just like, their pants – like, all their clothes are made out of jeans. And we got some really weird looks from them, and some started yelling at us, coming at us so we just fucking booked it. We lost them, but fuck –“
Some commotion as camera movement blurs the image. One of the other voices yells an expletive, and two others follow suit.
“Fuck!”
“Oh, fuck!”
“Shit! Shit!”
The camera stops swinging around awkwardly long enough to show a group of people at the end of the alley, slowly progressing towards them. Like the narrator had stated, they are all dressed in denim clothing from head to toe.
Another voice yells out, “Oh, Jesus fuck – RUN!”
The next several minutes are comprised of some vertigo inducing camera angles as the cellphone continues filming while the protagonists run as fast as they are able. At one point there is a scuffle, with loud yelling and screaming and the sounds of punching and kicking against human flesh. The individual holding the cellphone falls to the ground, but gets back up quickly and resumes running, all the while breathlessly muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”
The last forty seconds of footage loses the frenetic pace as the narrator, alone and terrified, has found some shelter. The camera turns to focus on his teenage face, flush with excess blood pumping from his rapidly beating heart. He whispers softly, shakily, “I don’t know where I am. They got Mikey. I watched them throw him down. They almost got me, but I got away. I lost Hooper and Reg. Man, I hope they got away too…” He coughs, fighting back tears. “I don’t fucking know where I am, but I’m going to try to get back to the car. I hope the others are there.” He pauses, alert to his surroundings and listens. The terror in his eyes appears genuine. He sniffs and wipes his nose before continuing. “Anyone that sees this, we were last on 80 East somewhere past Brookville. Shit. I don’t know where the fuck I am,” he finished desperately, pausing a moment before the video stops.
* * *
Dr. Scott Hargreaves continues to watch the screen for a brief moment, then blinks slowly as if he had just awoken from a dream. He leans back in an uncomfortable chair and turns to face a stocky, expressionless man seated across the utilitarian table from him.
“Okaayy…” He draws out the second syllable, probably due to the terminal case of sarcastic detachment he’s developed since being forcefully employed by the Foundation. He halfheartedly positions both hands up in the air on either side of his seated position, palms facing upward. “What was that? Was that for real, or was it the latest social media A.R.G.?”
Watching for any type of reaction, Dr. Hargreaves only observes a stone wall; either Agent Byron Anders is used to this type of laissez faire attitude that seems so common among Foundation staff, or he simply does not care. The agent’s grizzled face regards Dr. Hargreaves without the slightest betrayal of ideation. “Christ,” the doctor thought, “he must be in his late 50s, if not early 60s.” He knows that Anders has been with the Foundation since the 1980’s; one of the “Old Breed”, long before his time. Momentarily distracted by the worrying thought of having to work for the Foundation for the next thirty plus years, Hargreaves is brought back to the present by the dry, gnarled sound of Agent Anders responding to his query.
“No,” he replies flatly. “It plays out like one, but as you’re aware, it’s our job to research these things as thoroughly as possible.” He pauses before adding, “It’s the real deal.” Anders’ facial expression softens slightly, and his shoulders droop noticeably. “You know, before internet and smart phones, it was so much easier to contain information. Nowadays, someone posts a video of a Skip and before you can say ‘boo’, twenty others have spread it around to a half a dozen other social media networks.” He closes his eyes tightly and rubs the sides of his temple with a stubby thumb and fore finger. “It’s so much more work on our end. And then these games… The Scanners have a been having a hell of a time sifting through these things since they’ve gotten popular, so now we have to invest so much more of our resources just trying to make sure it isn’t a hoax. Twenty years ago, hoaxes came along about every month or so. Now we get upwards of fifty or sixty daily. And that’s just domestically. The rest of the world…” He waves his hand dismissively and exhales rudely.
“But I’m off topic,” he admits. “The video was vetted a little over a year ago. He tried posting it after he stopped recording, but it failed. He spent a few more hours in hiding before he claims he must have fallen asleep and awoke in a wooded area. He posted it shortly after calling 911. His police report synced up with our profile on the video, and our Crunchers started working it over. They zeroed in on the approximate location pretty quickly from the details, matched the individual in our facial recognition database, and we tracked the young man down. A Steven Francis Youst. The Foundation had a nice long chat with him. Administered class A amnestics, 451’d the paper trail, retrograded the web, all that…” He takes a swig of water from a plastic bottle. “It’s always a shame, but the big picture demands these tragic interferences.”
Dr. Hargreaves has been listening attentively. He’d heard of Agent Anders before, but this was his first interaction with him. Not at all what he’d envisioned. Certain the agent had given pause for response, he takes the opportunity. “Well, yeah – the kid found himself in a Skip. Tragic, but it wasn’t his fault. I’m assuming the city itself is the Skip, that they didn’t pass through dimensions or something.” He fumbled uncomfortably with his hands for a moment before asking, “What happened to the others?”
“Even worse for them. We found them and the car, middle of nowhere not too far from where he said they’d been. Neurologists said there was very little that could be done for them. The damage was beyond anything they’d ever seen before. Physically they were fine, just a few scratches and bruises, presumably from struggling with whatever did this. But they’re all three in a vegetative state.” Anders shuffled through some of the files before him.
Hargreaves asks partially out of curiosity, but also out of concern for the youths that had had their lives tragically altered, “What was the cover story?” His position in the Foundation rarely has him interacting with the ‘normal’ world, so in times like these, he feels for those that have had their lives interfered with by the anomalous things that we’re forced to share our existences with. He understood the necessity of the Foundation altering the narrative to keep the public at large in the dark, because it’s just safer that way – and that’s what the ‘C’ in S.C.P. is all about.
“Car accident,” Anders announces frankly. “And young Steven will unfortunately have to live with the guilt of being responsible for effectively ending the lives of three close friends. Hard to say which one got the bad end of that deal.”
“Yeah. Jesus,” mutters Hargreaves.
Agent Anders steers the conversation back onto asphalt. “Seems this isn’t an isolated incident either. The Skip has appeared within a 60-mile radius at least fourteen other times that can be verified over a period of seven years. Nothing else we can find predates that. Usually no harm comes of it, but it does seem to unsettle those that get sidetracked there. The most recent appearance was only a week ago, number fifteen.”
Dr. Hargreaves nods, trying to follow along while deducing the reason for him being here receiving this briefing. Standard Foundation protocol: keep everyone guessing.
“SCP-5365 a.k.a. “Jean City” may seem to manifest randomly, but there is a pattern, and we’ve figured it out. At number fifteen, we sent in an M.T.F. squad in to observe. Things got a bit messy, but our guys held their own. We couldn’t have anticipated the unconventional aggressive behavior of the inhabitants, SCP-5365-1, based solely on attire.”
It took a moment for Agent Anders’ words to sink in. Dr. Hargreaves sat upright and gripped the edge of the table. “Wait – what?”
“It’s the denim,” Anders explained. “For whatever reason, the people of this city become exceedingly violent towards anyone not wearing denim.”
Dr. Hargreaves laughs a humorless laugh, thinking of the three teenage boys they had practically killed. “What the fuck…”
“I suggest you read up on everything we have on 5365, because in another fourteen days, you’ll be going into the Skip for a fact-finding mission,” announced Agent Anders. He continued to expound upon the mission parameters, attempting to reassure Hargreaves, whose speechless pallor said all it needed to relay the doctor’s reticence towards field work. “You will be escorted by a female M.T.F. operative who will act as your spouse. You will be issued an all-denim outfit…”
“Wait a minute,” Hargreaves interrupts the agent as he rises from his seat. The stiffness of his back protests, but he ignores the ache. “Wait. Wait. How are you to know these denim zealots have committed relationships? How are you to know they won’t react as violently to a heterosexual couple as they would to a pair of khaki pants?!” Anders answers in his humorless, unbreakable stoic demeanor that up until this point, Hargreaves had been entertained by. In fact, he’d seen impressions performed by several other staff members, and while some were pretty amazing, they all lacked sorely when compared to the real thing.
“Then we hope that you’ll be able to make it back to us in order to give us a more succinct presentation on how to better interact with them. But in the meantime,” Agent Anders rises from his chair and begins to gather his things, “I’ve got to figure out a way to prevent any other civilians from wandering into the Skip when it manifests next time. I’m thinking we’ll close the freeway exits, put out a report that a sinkhole collapsed the road, something like that. Lots of calls to make to the locals.” He heads towards the door and opens it. “Remember – read everything.”
As Hargreaves turns to look at the stack of manila folders on the table, Anders abruptly introduces his escort who had been waiting outside. “Sergeant Filipowski, this is Doctor Hargreaves. You’ll be working together from here on out. She’ll fill you in on everything else you’ll need to know. Good luck.”
And with that, Agent Anders was gone. “Shit,” was all that Hargreaves could think to say, blankly staring at the place he had last seen him.
“He has a gift for that.”
The statement didn’t seem to make sense to him. Distracted and confused, he directs his attention to the person that may very likely have to stop some denim fetishists from violently converting his grey matter into an omelet. “Excuse me – what?”
Motioning in the direction the agent had left, the sergeant explained, “Anders. He has a gift for hardly taking notice that he’s completely upended a person’s life. Leaving them with that same befuddled expression. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.” She extended her hand and said, “Hi.”
“Hi.” The doctor shook her hand and momentarily forgot about the abject horror he was feeling inside. “Scott.”
“Ag,” Sergeant Filipowski responded in introduction.
“Ag…” echoed Hargreaves, before announcing, “I’m sorry to do this, but I really need to… Um. I have to go. When can… I mean, when do you – we – need to start training, or whatever…” He turned back to the table and began gathering the files.
The sergeant thought briefly. “I’m assuming this reassignment has cleared your schedule, so do what you need to do today to get your head right and I’ll see you tomorrow morning at 9, at room 326 in K-wing.”
The doctor jotted this down on one of the files. “9. 326. K-wing. Ag. Okay.” He nodded to her as he scurried out the door, absently shouting back at her, “Sorry!”
* * *
