Per 
- Future ideas.
- All below will be rewritten with a different perspective.
- Coming back to bite you.
- Attachment; A different perspective.
- "Disgusting" |Octopus|(Vulgar|is|?)
- Post-Mortem Interview #1
- Being held up at the office.
- WIP.
- ????
- Gelbirrik thymolabilis
- Where no body goes, except these.
- "The Management".
- A mess of an explanation, kind of.
- Tropical Shipwreck
"The cowboy in the ice box."
"Vote for _!"
"A reverse locust."
~ 3:23 AM
A yellow badger with another head instead of a rear end burrowed through the concrete floor without leaving a scratch. Was that supposed to be about groundhog day? Someone else that was also still awake threw contraband in the form of an empty Pepsi can at the thing, and it just passed right through.
It was an accomplishment when things stopped being normal. Anyone would have expected all the alarms to start flashing or the guards when shit like this happened, but no one was talking about the sometimes literal elephant in the cell block.
The guards didn't even seem to care.
Some of the other inmates were just ignoring them too. They seemed to stare for hours if you made the mistake of staring too long at them first. No one had had their faces eaten yet, even though they were more pretty damn creepy than anything. How were they still completely visible in the dark, color and all? D-7462 didn't think ghosts and shit like Casper could even do that.
It was…just stupid. Maybe she wouldn't be so certain of that if it could spirit them out of here or something.
But the person who thought they could get that kind of miracle by just asking would have even less smarts.
Being unable to sleep was stupid. The whole cell block was stupid.
~ 3:28 AM
An owl stared back at D-7462. She wasn't impressed with the cheap plastic crown.
"What are you looking at?"
The owl stared.
"Go back to whatever freak show you escaped from."
The owl stared. Its eyes were practically human. So too were the hands sliding out of its feathers as it was staring.
D-7462 kicked it off the ladder, expecting it to be just as much a ghost as the rest of them and just disappear. "-Holy shit!"
Above, her cellmate sat up with a near echo of the sentiment as the owl burst against the wall.
Tiny blobs of nothing spread through the air like a spray in slow motion from the source, and immediately turned a dirty yellow hue. The ones that drifted nearest to the ceiling and top bunk became an exception to this almost as quickly.
~ 3:47 AM
Yvonne Palmer, known as D-7462 whenever anyone but the other inmates asked, quietly rubbed her eyes as D-7273 was having a mental breakdown. She didn't really know their whole claim to being infamous, but it had been gang-related and also involved embezzlement. She sometimes talked about it. The name, "Lucille", was also vaguely familiar- Gloria mentioned it at least once.
Whatever that had in common with the present didn't interest Yvonne, except for the fact that it was part of the reason she wasn't going to be sleeping for the last one and a half hours she had before the wake-up call.
To be fair, she had yelled first. She decided it wasn't worth trying to get involved- she kept her eyes closed.
"You're dead! Twenty one years! My sleep ain't enough for you?! How are you here? HOW?" D-7273 screamed at the mutilated figure, ignoring the intermittent chain reaction it was beginning to cause down the cell block. Nearby, someone yelled a racial slur that didn't really make sense at all.
The phantom looked back at Gloria with eyes that had been shriveled away by the unforgiving sun. Even though it could be seen in complete darkness, any security feed would not be able to show it being there.
D-7273 thought she saw the ghost make a hint of a smile. With those all but nonexistent eyes, it was clearly anticipatory to her.
"Is it because I finally replaced you? Did you forget you stabbed me in the back first, you bitch?
D-7273 began to assault the figure. Surprisingly, it was affected by this: it was like watching a recreation of an old film reel, burns and all.
~ 4:21 AM
D-7462 finally looked at the spirit of her grandfather. His head was messed up from being punched repeatedly. Even though his eyes were asymmetrical to everything, they were still filled with a disappointment also reflected in an extremely distended frown.
And from this, she came to a conclusion.
"It's not real, jesus. Calm down. Something is just-"
Something hard struck her the top of her skull, and she literally bit her tongue. D-7273 screamed at her while she tried to assure herself that her tongue was still whole.
"Shut the fuck up! You probably put Lucille up to this! You had it out for me the whole damn time too!"
Yvonne instinctively recoiled, caught off guard in the dark and the strength behind a fist that had previously been "inferior". The one time it had come to this, the first, last, and previously singular time, had involved a hoard of candy bars left inside a pillow case. Yvonne had at least forty pounds and muscle from manual labor when Gloria had been transferred to this block and specific cell. Do the math.
D-7462 stood up.
At the same time the blind fistfight was beginning, a lecture was being given from one immaterial thing to another. The former was assumed by the latter as wiser. This was not discouraged by the one perceived as such, even if the other was currently questioning its judgement. This discussion lasted an uncertain amount of time, due to being coupled with many variations of opinion from both sides, both similar and dissimilar variations and peppered with semi-related observations.
Theirs was a history just as cut to the bone with designation, that could not be scrubbed or hidden away like the epithets written in scars and bruises. You do not understand yet, you are new from old. You should not try to understand yet.
But we hear. We are concerned. Are they not capable of hope? We are concerned. It still ripples through we here that do not have keep.
Then contain yourself. You are also capable.
This thought wasn't heard by anyone who had ears- except perhaps for a mouse who was also over fifty other mice, at least three scientists, a dentist, a photographer, and a non-conventional transceiver.
~ 4:40 AM
"You fucks can choke on the sticks up all your asses! I'm not going to play any of your mind games, not with that bitch! You can all go to hell!"
D-7273 pounded against the bars with fists covered in blood, now partially her own. The guards pulled her away again, the fabric having become slick. D-7462 was trying to stem the bleeding from her own nose and cut lip. It could have been worse, if not for the ceiling. She had no idea what had set Gloria off because she hadn't seen the same thing. The outside of the bars glittered in a sickly way when the flashlight swept back to the cell and over that side of the hall.
Her grandfather had left before the guards came; just after Gloria started accusing her of things that didn't make sense.
In the context of everything, she could believe them even though they weren't true. There were a whole lot of things that shouldn't exist in here, anyway.
She had only accidentally started a house fire in California after stealing a few cars. That wasn't enough to be turned inside out, turned into some other horrible disfigurement, or exposed to something that would make something just as weird happen, right?
Her grandfathers' head came back to shake itself at her for just one more moment, echoing her own strongly troubled mind.
The shapeless masses of nothing tended to reflect such things in their current lack of self-autonomy. They didn't really have a sense of discrimination or moral logic either.
~ 4:55 AM
D-7273 was put into solitary confinement, and yelled for around half an hour with much colorful language.
Where before it had been a "clever enough" temptation, according to the number that had become completely distrustful, it was now that Gloria and anyone else having a problem with coping the reality of testing schedules were completely avoided.
Informing D-Class that were next, when the investigation concerned something known to be possibly lethal, was customary as long as telling them didn't affect the experiment. This was for moral reasons, as well as a higher rate of compliance.
Whether or not they were able to come to terms only changed how much work the psychiatric doctors would have.
Gloria wouldn't see the doctor today.
~ 5:43 AM
The zenith of Glorias' otherwise unsettling behavior was prolonged due to the charged mass being pulled away from its direct proximity to the outburst by other thought-forms. Unfortunately, she had made things worse by calling it Lucille with such vehemence.
It happened in the Mens' Restroom of Hallway B, possibly in response to the otherwise unrelated verbal conversation that was happening at this time. It was about getting alcohol after work, at a nearby bar. "Getting lucky" may or may not have been mentioned, as not all were married.
Maybe add conversation here, or come back to it in following pages?
The manifestation occurred in seconds, just as Glorias' reaction to seeing the limbless phantom had been. Humor was not an effective defense mechanism to this shallow imagery. An angry tyrannosaur with at least three mammary glands and the mission statement to make everyone "end up in hell".
It could definitely start to do so with the amount of energy it was given, albeit for a short time without at least binding perception. This, of course, happened when Kenny Hopkins, Shashi Chaudhry, and Jackson Rawlings saw the T-Rex.
The largeness of the restroom, while a sign of good funding, did not help to inhibit the dinosaurs ability to move at all. It turned around and knocked over the stalls with its tail. They broke and toppled like a handful of dropped dominoes. That kind of noise caused more concern than people screaming, if for being an abnormal noise instead of indicating that something dangerous was escaping.
Chaudhry took cover under the restroom sinks. The wall shared by Hallway B and the restroom began to bow outward in a curving fashion, especially where the door allowing access to the restroom was located. Then it burst in a shower of concrete and plaster, not reinforced like the actual containment rooms that were necessary to be so.
Good news: It turned on the sink.
Bad news: This wasn't another prank.
It bit a chunk out of the sink trough and the whole upper torso of another man. The rest was kneeling on top of his back after being thrown there. That was only amazing if one did not know Chaudhry was pressing himself against the wall and farthest sub-corner from the dinosaur.
He waited under there for five minutes just in case the ceiling wanted to collapse too- if the sink didn't shatter after that, it was safer than anything else. The water began the process of mixing with all the debris and splattering on the floor.
Something he wasn't looking for, and therefore could not "hear", "spoke" as he was leaving to tell someone about the monster that appeared in the bathroom. He didn't hear its rambled apology, agitation, or attempt at an explanation and the repeated request.
We wonder what taste is. The thrall does not want to convene with us about such matters. The thrall wishes that we would go home. We agree. We are currently unsure where that is. We are still retrieving such important memories for further autonomy.
Lucille is not held as implicitly constructive. We share your distress and confusion in this matter. We still hold concern about your objective and progression as resembling what little we currently remember. We still hope to be welcomed back in.
But a majority do not accept the idea of eating physical flesh. We are too many, and too little to support this. You are aware of this. You fear to lose secrecy. You tried to use strange things. They do not think. They do not live. They do not dream. They cannot see us.
We are starving. We are experiencing other complications from this. Lucille is one of them. You seem to call this "irony".
~ 5:50AM
Lucille met two people along the way of what seemed to be a direct, blind progression. These two people ran and couldn't run fast enough, respectively. The former hid inside a room and started yelling about an undetermined containment breach, not that Lucille was trying to be stealthy. It was also around this time that its footsteps started making vibrations. Whether this was because of indirect association or having to logically be really, really heavy would become irrelevant, even though where it was became more obvious to the people that wanted to find and kill it.
A dotted trail of human blood also marked the places the thought-form had been, with a fair amount leaking out from the lowest part of its pubis. This was obviously from the effects of gravity, and perhaps less obviously because of the rapid transition from an undeveloped shape to something much more complicated.
~ 6:10 AM
A few other things that would have reasonably come out of a B-movie were in the way. All of them were torn apart by a raging metaphysical being in the form of a generic, heavy theropod. They had taken pieces, but were nothing compared to the wave they had tried to stand against.
Lucille still charged forward, not bothering to cannibalize even the immaterial pieces left behind from the confrontations to replace lost energy; it was losing pieces with everything it broke, regardless of the hatred and the mental breakdown still adding more to the former.
It broke into the cell block and ate the prison guard as he was going through the routine of checking names off. His own logic said that one handgun wasn't enough to kill something bigger than an elephant.
It used his spike of terror and agony to ram through the metal bars of three cells and do the same to the people inside; "kill" and "feed" had been recognized as interchangeable. Some stalked in the corners, still tempted to scavenge by and on the emotions that could still be lingering in parts of the limbic system.
~ 6:47 AM
~ 7:39 AM
"Get a move on, Lucille!"
Gloria Tyler squeezed her legs against the thick reptilian neck, pulling on the feathers like reins. The large doors at the other end of the corridor did not get any larger. Instead, Lucille slammed into the left wall with a reverberation even greater than her footsteps or the shouting coming from behind.
"The exit is right fucking there!"
Nothing blocked the way, and yet the animal refused to move any further or listen.
In another domain perception, a flaming abjection tried to break through the writhing barrier while radiant, angry figures ran towards them with sticks. These sticks were actually guns, and the radiant figures were a security team and D-7273.
The security team seemed pretty sure they could kill it with guns; that was important.
Lucilles' mostly vacuous autonomy registered the fact that it just became trapped in a small space.
The ceiling was the next improvisational drum for Lucille to throw itself against, along with the orange-clothed figure on top of it. The latter broke in several places, never given the chance to realize that it was also feeding off of the anger and fear of the security team and was no longer able to be controlled. Another boom, another squish under the foot of a newborn monster.
One more light died.
The fresh entrails in Lucilles' stomach had already begun to slip to the floor in the seconds it had before being brought down.
"Shooting solves a lot of problems", indeed.
That entire hallway and half of the building would be cleansed of living spirits even long after these specific, related events happened. Whether or not anyone realized they were connected in that way was not of great concern to them in their ongoing dilemma.
They were cautious of going outside because that would mean leaving the thrall behind, if nothing else; now they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. And splitting apart would certainly mean a higher chance of fading away again.
They from far, far away may have been right to say trust shouldn't be given, even if earned.
Exact details were uncertain in the record and the record was what mattered, if only for the sake of simplicity. It was easier to continue doing something if the test subjects were put in boxed cages. That was one loose thought that had been eaten.
It was plausible in theory, at least.
They were unsure of the ease and number with which death and plans of death, and lesser pains were let free.
And now they, a renewed collection, had seen it.
Of course it wasn't really Lucille. Lucille was dead. Lucille was never a dinosaur. This was just the culmination of memories and anger and possibly a little more, given from a person who was going to die at the end of the month or in two days. Whichever came first.
Death was part of the faerie tale, whether as the means to a lesson or the end.
More things to address/go further with in this.
- Yvonne Palmer (Voluntarily(??) contracted a parasite(?).)
- The psychiatrist(s) (Need a raise.)
- Shashi Chaudry (IT department. No, it's not ethnically homogeneous. Needs a raise. Needs a therapist.)
- Jackson Rawlings (Got groped by a cnidalopod(?) Needs medical attention for crush injury and possible related complications including but not limited to acidosis, low blood pressure, shock from internal toxins, and infection [of exposure to contaminated water]. )
- Kenny Hopkins (Killed in action. Previously in human resources; training, development, and coordination.)
- Prison security officer (Killed in action via dismemberment. Name in casualty report.)
- D-Class fatalities. (Dismemberment. Name in casualty report.)
- The possibility of "we" feeding off of (other) sentient non-people.
- Continue to dance around what exactly "we" is eating. That will take the magic away. It's neuron and axon pulses though.
- Elaborate on the need to be careful when describing these things. They're starting to get desperate for attention.
- Elaborate on general group dynamic, and how they might fight to the death with something else(and even each other, if it escalates to that) to protect their "keep" status. Because [him/her/it/???] is basically food and an incubator [of more ideas]. And if the latter isn't torn apart, they could come back.
- Elaborate on the current group dynamic, and how they're feeding each other on scraps and slowly starving. They're not that smart individually, although they're getting smarter/more numerous in their scavenging.
- Elaborate on the dangers of "gluttony" with these things, that are more than just the happening of an automatic, not prespecified manifestation appropriate to what was given.
- Elaborate on the difference between "keep" and "not keep".
- Possibly elaborate on how and what they see, and how it's sometimes distinct from what they physically are or become.
- Elaborate on how they respond to thoughts they pick up on that are even vaguely about them, when they're starving. It's chaotic. "Someone read the file. Five minutes later, there were twenty ghostly horses with narwhal horns in random places, surrounding them. Attention-seeking "horned equines" eventually filled the entire floor. It was worse than when they mimicked the computer monitor that the file was previously uploaded on. The file was amended again to avoid concrete imagery."
- Elaborate on the difference between the "abstract shapes or shapelessnessq" and "distinct form", besides the obvious lack of discernment and self-reasoning in the former.
- Eventually get to who "we from far, far away" is.
- Focus on the mouse too.
- Explain the shadows?
- Elaborate how they don't immediately realize they've changed if it's forced from an outside source, and the many aesthetic oddities have happened from this and in general when one later becomes focused on something else. Association may also result in this; there has been/will be a marked increase in humanoid forms when free-feeding individuals are not dissuaded from presenting themselves, unlike what is currently happening.
- Possibly reach the point of sudden, violent revolution if they are starved and subject to continuous manipulation to keep them afraid and completely xenophobic and agoraphobic. This is, of course, so even though they are somehow interwoven into the Akashic record. It explains why they seem to have so much identity confusion and a lack of understanding human psychology despite apparently claiming to be archaic with that one image thought. Besides how they're technically valid new born(s) at the same time from being pulled out of not existing.
- Mention some black-humor moments involving telling "a horse" to "move at the speed of light" while said person is riding it. Result is not the speed of light, but really fast; inert to ???. The horse was fine somehow, except for the subsequent mental trauma. A wall and the person were not, although the latter didn't get anywhere as far as they wanted. A small consolation would be that before they vaporization of their legs and lower torso and the "horse" started running, they suffered unexpected brain death and probably didn't suffer. It should be noted that, oddly, repeats of this where someone didn't even know how "the speed of light" worked, nothing like that happened at all. Except the appearance of a small "twinge" in their head when "the horse" started running at around 37 km/h.
- Elaborate on the differences in reason between "disappearing ink" and "permanently burnt apples".
- Elaborate on how [suspension of] belief sometimes also matters, unless there's enough power/emotion to nullify that, such as with "Lucille". It bit through people that didn't think this was "for real". How "emotion" is any different from neuron pulses (and chemicals) in general is still not understood.
I will probably turn this into a letter listing reasons why such measures should be taken, and not be so direct on "why sociopaths" since these organisms don't mesh well or get attached with people who have an empathy switch and inability to have more than shallow emotions (beyond the exceptions of anger, pain, etc.) This is just after "Lucille", in the first tab. Two plus years or so is a long time to figure their internal logic out, even without the surprise dinosaur rampage rather early on, that was debated for a while for several good reasons.
Someone probably made Rawlings stand in front of the barrel of a semi automatic just to see what "Disgusting" would do, although he has no idea he gave it a sort of name.
Also, the original article folder is striped with "do not read the file" because it would be stupid if it was on the first page; you would be reading it then anyway. And amnestics are not mentioned there but it's too obvious anyway in the narrow list of people who are allowed to read that part, although they would logically already know about that. The mouse is still a problem.
Left to their own devices, these hallucinations became stranger. At least that was what Dr. Hester interpreted from the black and white bowling pin standing in the middle of the room- the product of casually talking about penguins, people, and the number 3242 with Hameldon.
Both of them were ignoring all the similar bowling pins around their feet in favor of the larger, solitary one. As had happened in previous tests, the ignored ones faded away. Interestingly enough, some wobbled in a direction away from them before vanishing into thin air or the wall; an even smaller portion of these became other things -mostly abstract shapes- before leaving in apparent disinterest or disappointment.
It had been her personal opinion that all of this was desperate rather than directed behavior, but without concrete, indisputable evidence anything perceived as autonomous was just as easily an explained result of that perception. Even the altered data storage objects, if one was already assuming the mouse was responsible for the visual hallucinations, could be explained as such.
While not directly acknowledged, the mouse had shown intelligence comparable (and at times exclusive) to casualties directly linked to it. This included many behaviors only suggested at in the current file version.
In regards to what was now known, however, the hallucinations were again considered an immediate threat; that they (regardless of which specific entity that actually was) could "eat wandering thoughts" had been an obvious security risk even when sequestered. The other risks and possibilities of things that weren't corporeal, were multiplying from sentient beings (staff) being present, and were now confirmed capable of becoming corporeal were obvious.
They couldn't do much on their own- but when directed the possibilities were, in theory, without physical limit. The intensity of unexpected migraines and inability to maintain a train of thought after four hours of trying to test the limits of this with an individual (Make "with an individual" a link to a future story/chapter) definitely suggested something more than a thought was being used as an input.
That they seemed to be animals more than objects suggested an awareness of generally not being able to do anything significant as the latter. And in the former, the lack of taking the initiative to be humanoid, except when given or taking, suggested that they were limited to symbolic concepts already known.
This also suggested the ability to learn and use knowledge, if not individual self-awareness.
It was safe to assume they weren't that intelligent, however; a few months after adding a description of a real chair nailed to the wall and ceiling, it became common to see groups exhaust themselves trying to emulate that very thing. The same could be said for almost every other false detail in the file, whenever it was being read by assigned staff or when a version omitting the mouse was given to others for the testing of the continued effectiveness of behavioral encouragement.
More elaborate actions usually ended with them fading away or becoming noticeably weaker. That specific behavior eventually stopped when no notice was given despite it still remaining in the file. It was necessary to make it appear such things weren't intentional.
What the Ethics Committee wanted to know, at least before giving themselves weak amnestics, was if they could feel pain. This would be difficult to confirm with evidence, for the same reasons as the mouse- technology and medical equipment didn't work unless it was something as simple as a scalpel. In other words, mutilation was necessary to see if there were reactions that could be attributed as being a result of pain.
Seeing as the mouse had shown signs of fear and distress after several trials but also functioned under different rules than these things, it was necessary to repeat the process.
Doing this could prove difficult and problematic short-term, but necessary and inconsequential overall.
It was necessary to cull, if not completely dispose of, the population. This was above trying to achieve any more understanding, as the situation could be likened to a soap bubble. There was nothing but fear keeping them from leaving.
A number not accurately counted would always be too high. Direct action could make them leave, but there were other ways to go about this based on what was known. The combination of the unaltered rate of increasing numbers and decrease in the possibility of having a "balanced diet" was assumed to eventually reach the same end.
Why else would there have been a major turnover-transfer, the moving of other anomalous items and D-Class off-site, and the concentration of foundation employees known to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorders?
(Going to reincorporate this as a separate story chapter thing, or back into the flow of this story chapter thing.)
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V
Arnold Hameldon was an engineer. Even though Hester was closer to being a psychologist, both them and the entire area had more success in understanding the thought processes of these metaphysical entities than the xenopsychologist that had been sent here for that purpose.
This was due to the unfortunate side effect of establishing that strange things were dangerous, and the outside had been unknown territory to these. It still was, certainly: they avoided new things until they were no longer new enough to be afraid of. The irony was that when tried to find them, they never stopped avoiding him. That gave two important answers, at least: they couldn't or wouldn't "invade and erase minds", and the attempts to influence their behavior might be working too well.
(I want to do a thing that's like the "left-right brain" simplified concept fallacy of how the brain works.)
test
test
(Live octopuses are slimy and kind of unpleasant to touch in some peoples' opinion. This story is an example of their ability to *usually unconsciously* affect how perception affects them.
It noticed someone/thing in pain/trapped and were one of the few that hadn't run away from Lucille, just like Shashi had. Even though their logic doesn't conform, they're still derived from people from what they "eat", if not completely and fundamentally so. The mouse was what started a chain reaction of these things, and that's at least understood from conjecture and trial and error over the several years. On a side note, they seem to be as especially sensitive to being held in awareness/thought about, although not in the same terrible way as the threat of "replacing someone".
Kind of like a hybrid "species" since they're at least somewhat balanced in death and multiplication, although will elaborate on possible logic in this later. Some things will always be left to interpretation, like all ideas should.)
(I'm stuck on this. But never mentioning a character again feels even worse. Like a "big lipped alligator moment". I'm aiming high with "how would a thing like this work" I guess? I bet five dollars no one will ever get that they'll all get erased or "killed" for the probably obvious difficulty of containing all of them; which in itself is technically impossible unless it is possible to establish they are dead both consciously and unconsciously.)
Jackson Rawlings had been trapped under steel bathroom partitions and debris for at least three hours. The circulation to his leg was under excessive pressure, exacerbated by an unnatural position. Lacerations to the abdominal area by shattered porcelain and mild to moderate head trauma were also evident.
Extracting him from the pile of debris was less complicated by the possibility of causing internal shock than the pile of translucent arms on top of and around him.
This organism unfolded itself and stood up and out; splaying conically. A vague resemblance to the concussed but clearly alive Rawlings was noted.
It made a gesture similar to a human being raising their fists. The organism then attempted to escape through a nearby drain and quickly thwarted. The organism then wrapped itself around several security personnel and proved difficult to hold down. Those not directly in contact observed its near-humanoid shape reverted to a more cephalopodic degree just before the organism sprayed a dark liquid. This liquid stained exposed skin and other absorbent materials, but immediately evaporated with no lasting effects discovered on those exposed.
A similar reaction happened to all suckers, tentacles, and arms that the organism had lost in the attempts to escape and, when Rawlings was moved out of the bathroom, constrict.
Somehow it had broken out of the metal suitcase that had been hurriedly used to trap it, and managed to crawl all the way here from an air vent. It had been little more than an indistinct grey mass of boneless radial symmetry when it reappeared, but had later returned to being something between a cephalopod and jellyfish when noticed.
Dr. Hester took out a pen.
"So you were "saved" by a jellyfish?"
"Seems sooo,"
said the anesthetized officer. (File clerk. Why does security include this? Isn't a director technically the "alpha file clerk", administrator, and "sub-ceo" anyway?)
"Can you explain how?"
"I'd drather nott."
Given the circumstances, that was understandable. He'd been found with his pants down, literal shit hanging out- probably a reflex from being piledrived by a steel barrier with a lot of force behind it. The fact he didn't seem as confused and unfocused as she assumed was hopefully a sign that the trauma wasn't as grievous as it appeared.
"Can you remember what the jellyfish was doing?"
The doctors gaze flickered somewhere else for a moment. This might prevent more monsters from unexpectedly appearing, if an exact method to their "deeper feeding pattern" could be established. In the chaos, it wasn't really clear if Jackson had been concious the whole time; if he hadn't, that would mean the current theory was wrong.
Rawlings, meanwhile, was having a hard time remembering and even thinking with a pacing surge of pain receptors.
She took out a pen and stepped out of reach from the numerous ribbon-like structures moving with deceptive laziness around the hospital bed.
Someone already lost a shoe from its vigilance. The room stank of the shit and toilet water covering the bathroom floor it had been laying in. It was still dripping, too.
How hard was it to find a giant net?
She sidestepped one arm that clearly wanted his pant leg. It wasn't stinging, probably because enough people assumed jellyfish stung on purpose. Or maybe it was because it wasn't really a jellyfish.
A mashup of octopus and jellyfish was still a large step down from the human caricature it had been.
Jackson Rawlings was trapped in a few centimeters of fecal matter, water, and blood. This was stagnating around him, and his nervous system was just aware enough to recognize that an alien mixture was invading his mouth. He added his partially digested breakfast to this, and it was spread away by the converging streams of water from broken pipes.
His body demanded to breathe, and air brushed against the irritating gastric film. His vision cleared, only to show that he had spontaneously developed strabismus- whereupon it became unfocused as a strange cold feeling crept in and from every direction internally.
He tried to move. Sharp pain motivated him stop trying by taking away his perceived reclamation of fine motor functions and stomach, both of which shriveled in different ways. Stone and steel scraped against each other faintly, being influenced even by the running water; it was a promise to bear down further. Rawlings didn't notice, but the feelings of panic and disgust he already had made that unnecessary.
A cry for help was somehow hoarse, painful, and slurred to the point of uselessness despite the foul water on his tongue and his lingering grasp of mobility. His focus was lessened further, for just a moment.
Between the ringing in his ears and head, but above the running water and silence, something slithered. The slithering was above him. Then it was behind him. A ripple in the water against his screaming nerves suggested it had moved over him, despite space restrictions.
Something slimy coiled around his hand, embodying if not amplifying his nausea.
And a pale blur put itself in the left of his vision, seeming to shiver and refocus before completely overtaking what he could see in the dim artificial light and the light altogether.
Rawlings slept for however long he was able without realizing he had done so. His mind was as vacuous in dreaming as it had been before; and it would be for a while still with the concussion and restricted blood flow.
Then the growing feeling of weightlessness suddenly became real: a pressure from below, shifting that rekindled the sharp kind of pain he didn't remember having.
The weak currents eventually brought some of his vomit back.
(WIP)
"The teeth marks don't match what they should have been. A lot of carnivores have serrated teeth- these didn't create notches as much as crush the bones apart."
Dr. Hrobsky put down the large fragment, that had been part of the femur prior to
(Note: Cleo Hrobsky)
Dr. Hester was unable to leave her new office. This was because the previous Site Director was standing in front of the door and wouldn't move. He seemed to be heavier than he had been during his employment, as well as heavier than anyone had any business being. Even though it was the product of the slow progression of becoming warped that has face seemed to be going through, his crossed arms were reminiscent of the times when a pink slip was soon forthcoming/
Judging from the noise levels of what was happening in the hallway, it didn't seem like a good idea to try a method of coercion beyond the already failed attempt to push him. The clothes he was wearing didn't feel like anything by themselves- just a smooth, unyeilding obstacle.
"Egregore."
Dr. Haworth cocked his head at her as his visible extremities started to really melt like heated wax. Somehow, that action didn't interfere with the journey the left eye was making down his/its/their neck.
Someone outside tried to open the door during a lull in the shouting and kinetic chaos.
From what could be heard, it seemed that the visual hallucinations, as they had been referred to, were deviating from known behavior and had become corporeal: for the last twenty minutes, no one had been allowed to go through an eclectic wall of bodies.
Pointing at them had increased signs of distress but hadn't resulted in a hostile response; or at least that could be inferred from the faint but unmistakable metal clicking of mechanical parts and the rapid vocal cease-and-desists. Maybe there had been one shot, but apparently silencers were standard now.
What was this going to be?
Nothing here yet.
Currently blank.
Currently blank.
Currently blank.
3242;
Mice and angels* and men. Wait, what?
Summary: New "old" non-physical sentience that "died" at an uncertain time around or after the middle ages. Died meaning forcefully disproved or reassigned as "demonic", "monstrous", or otherwise "evil" and needing to be exterminated. The tendency of positive feedback loops from belief only catalyzed this as the non-physical or unseen, is by nature, subjective. This was (one of) their "physics", being that they were made from, by, and for thoughts.
And so they, even the few that managed to hold on to autonomy the longest, were rendered into inert pieces back into whatever "ground" they stood on when they were denied to exist in any way outside of daydreams and fairy tales, and all those that still accepted them died.
Some of them were reduced to abject beasts and hunted down in whatever name the act was in reverence to.
That doesn't answer the "why", although the beginning doesn't really matter anymore.
Still, it's interesting how they still have the inclination that they're supposed to be doing something pertaining to observation. The ability to retain observed information, whether by sight or "loose thoughts" might be intentionally related to this, although it just makes sense given the last sentence of the first paragraph.
So much for "guardian angels"; it really does seem that doing more than watching eventually did them in. Not by "God", but by the human nature concerning fear and hatred, jealousy, and religious beliefs they weren't even originally part of.
St. Michael and the Dragon, for example, sometimes caused individuals to coalesce into "existing" and inevitably either made them kill each other (something analogous to the figurative growth hormones that made "Lucille"; mindless/not actually autonomous) or started more human mob hunting parties in the name of .
It is unfortunate that they couldn't come back with everything that was lost with "extinction", although it's doubtlessly still deep within the layers of how they perceive "time". That's like diving- too deep and the pressure will implode then tear you apart. Or the mind of the prompter telling them to do that, if not given enough "energy"(emotion. Never going to scientifically explain the difference between the hormones and synapse signals that make emotions, and just normal synapse pulses that make thought and body regulation.)
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid (indicate which class)
Special Containment Procedures:
All ships coming within five to six kilometers (or roughly two to three nautical miles) of the area perimeter are to be redirected. All attempts to map the topography of the area are to be prevented. Unless SCP XXXX shows signs of expansion, it is to be considered safely contained under these conditions.
Should SCP XXXX be recognized as expanding over its current perimeter, direct interference in the form of strategically placed underwater detonations are to happen.
Description: [Paragraphs explaining the description]
SCP-XXXX is a tropical topographic area in the Caribbean Sea, the sea floor of which is almost completely covered in native coral species. The main focal point of SCP-XXXX resembles a small underwater city. This underwater city appears to have a greatly diminished diversity of species and ecological threshold, with interactions ranging from nonexistent to abnormal.
Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]
SCP-XXXX was first brought to the Foundations attention in 2017, when NOAA came upon the anomaly during sonar mapping.
