While Evan rushes to cure as many people as possible, Light does everything she can to convince Jerry to join in the effort on the Foundation’s terms, but will the Foundation’s “cure” even work?
Evan
Evan stands behind a navy-blue curtain.
His hair is dyed blond, and he’s wearing green colored contacts. He’s about to speak in front of a crowd of civilians, and there are still some people in the world—his parents, Daisy, Quinn, Allen—who might recognize him undisguised. The odds of one of those people being at this particular event are remote, but in an era where everyone has a camera in their pocket, this precaution is necessary. The last thing Evan needs is more people from his old life learning he’s alive and trying to come find him.
Beyond the curtain is a crowd of twenty-thousand convention-goers, people with an intense interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy, who, hopefully, have read the Starlight Saga. It’s unlikely that every person here has read those books, but that’s okay. Dr. Erlenmeyer’s cure for the memetic agent is noninvasive. It’s okay if some people who hear it aren’t infected.
It’s the opposite question that’s haunting Evan. Will the cure even work? Will he even be able to purge this memetic agent while it’s dormant?
Dr. Erlenmeyer is working furiously to discover the answer to that question, but the situation is too urgent for them to wait to find out. Every day, every hour, is precious. If there’s anything they can do that has even a chance of purging this meme, they have to do it now.
Evan takes a deep breath while he waits for his cue. The Foundation arranged for him to be one of the speakers at the opening ceremony for this convention, which Director Sherman, director of Site-42, who often goes to conventions like this, advised would be the most heavily attended event.
A woman from the convention’s organizing team finishes speaking, and when she does, she introduces their guest speaker, Evan, by his alias. This convention has been planned for months, but, the Foundation being the Foundation, it wasn’t hard for them to get control over it, and arrange for Evan to speak at the opening ceremony.
Evan steps out from behind the curtain and approaches the microphone. “Hello, Astrocon!” he says. “Thank you for being here this morning. I hope you’re looking forward to all the wonderful events we have planned. I’m here to lay out the convention’s rules.”
Then he launches into the speech they had him memorize. Most of it has nothing to do with the Starlight Saga. That’s by design. Ideally, no one watching his speech should think it’s anything out of the ordinary.
Of course, he still has to mention the books somehow. They’re the linchpin of the memetic agent he needs to purge.
At the end of his speech, he makes a seemingly unimportant aside. “I know most of you already know these common-sense rules,” he says. “Still, we have to go over them because any crowd is going to have some wackos in it. A few years ago, we had a couple of Starlight Saga fans try to actually perform some kind of weird ritual from those books. Nearly got the whole event shut down. Stupid, isn’t it?”
And there it is. That off-hand comment—about a fictional incident, of course—is the Foundation’s meme-purging procedure.
Based on their current understanding of Evan’s abilities, hearing that statement from Evan should allow victims of the memetic agent to agree with it. Because said agreement is incompatible with the memetic agent’s effect, which would cause readers to perform a strange ritual from the Starlight Saga books, the agent should be destroyed.
That’s the theory. Hopefully, soon, they’ll have a test that verifies it. Until then, all they can do is hope, and work their asses off.
Evan is on a transport just a few minutes later. One of his comrades from Alpha-9, agent Rainer Miller is next to him. His objective is to help keep Evan awake throughout this endeavor. In many ways, he’s over-qualified for it, but Evan and Rainer have a history of working together, and, whatever else it’s good for, Rainer’s anomalous ability is helpful in this situation. “Want another coffee?” he asks.
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Evan says. Rainer portals in a bottle of “Sunrise Coffee Pit” branded iced coffee and hands it to Evan. Evan twists the cap open and takes a nice, long drink. “Thanks,” he says.
“No problem,” Rainer says. Once the portal is closed, the transport starts moving.
There’s some kind of trading card tournament elsewhere in town. Not quite as many people there as here, but still enough to be worth purging. Hopefully, there will be as much overlap between TCG players and Starlight Saga fans as the Foundation assumes.
Hopefully, their “cure” works.
Jerry
I look up at the screen as it plays footage of Evan’s interview with Callum. Part of me thinks I should resist watching it, cover my ears and close my eyes, but I don’t.
Before I was imprisoned, I thought all it would take was a bit of heroic willpower to defy the Jailors at every turn. I thought I could refuse to work for them, stop them from experimenting on me, even refuse to speak to them, just by choosing to.
But when you’re a captive, every expression of defiance against your captors costs you. They do everything they can to wear you down, to give you so many orders that you simply don’t have the energy to resist them all. If you want to keep your willpower for the things that matter, you can’t waste it on the things that don’t.
The conversation is just as Light described it. The story Callum told Evan is identical to the one Light told me.
Does that change anything?
It changes the odds that Light made it all up. It doesn’t make those odds zero, but it means Callum would have had to be in on that plot, which is hard to believe.
Could it be true, then? Is the fate of the world at stake? Are millions of people, Theo among them, in danger of having their minds hijacked by the Fifth Church?
I look up at the camera Light is using to watch me. “Is this supposed to change anything?” I ask. “Because it doesn’t. You can’t have me as both an ally and a prisoner. You free me and treat me like an equal, or you don’t get my help.”
I don’t even need to see the look on Light’s face. I know it’s there, and that knowledge is so satisfying as to banish any doubt that I’m making the right choice.
“How long are you going to spend badgering me about this?” I add. “If the world is in danger, shouldn’t you be off helping save it?”
“Unfortunately, your cooperation is vital to that effort,” comes Light’s reply from a speaker in the opposite corner.
“And yet not worth letting me go over?”
“Not to the overseers.”
“Well, then, come get me when they think things are urgent enough. If this crisis isn’t enough for you to let a handful of anomalies loose, you can’t possibly need my help that badly.”
Evan
“So, did you hear about the weird ritual thing people were doing last week?” Evan asks the attendees of a large book club meeting in Santa Barbara. He’s wearing a long brown wig. This is one of the smaller venues Evan has visited, but there aren’t a lot of larger meetings this late at night. It’s worth a half-hour stop to cure what is, hopefully, a few hundred more infectees.
“Who are you again?” asks the club’s leader.
“Mike Michaels,” Evan says. Doctor Light chose this alias purely to antagonize a specific coworker. In times like this, she needs to let off steam however she can. “I’m sorry. I hope that’s not an inappropriate question. I’m new here.” Once Evan is done speaking, he can’t help but let out a long yawn. He’s been at this since early this morning, and he’s starting to feel tired.
“Okay, but this month’s book is Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.”
“I know,” Evan says. “You hadn’t declared the start of the meeting yet, so I was making conversation.”
“I understand. We are to begin momentarily, though.”
“Of course,” Evan says. “Still, weird as heck. What a dumb thing to do.”
Five minutes later, he gets up to use the bathroom, and, from there, goes straight to an unmarked Foundation vehicle. He has another few hours of flying, and hopefully sleep, ahead of him. It’ll be early morning by the time he arrives at his next event down in Los Angeles.
Jerry
Over the following weeks, Light does everything she can to get me to help the Foundation on its terms. Of course, all her plans are really just minor variations on the deals she offered me during our first conversation in her office. Deal one, make things better for me and my comrades, but don’t let us go. Deal two, let someone go, but not someone of any significance to me. It’s never anything else.
Throughout every second of it, Light tries to gaslight me into thinking I’m the one being unreasonable.
It’s at the end of my workday, about two weeks after this started. The door behind me opens, as it always does at the end of my shift. I stand and turn toward the door. There are guards there, as expected, but someone else is with them. In the same light blue jumpsuit that contained anomalies are required to wear is a boy just a few years younger than me.
About the same age Evan was when they took him, which probably isn’t a coincidence.
The three of them—guards and prisoner—enter the room.
I look up at the guards. “He infected with something?” I ask.
“No,” the guard says.
“Then what’s he doing here?”
To my surprise, the guard looks down at the kid himself, and says, “go on, explain.”
I sit back down. I think I know where this is going.
“…Hey,” the kid says. He’s shaking. It seems like a struggle for him to speak.
“What is it?” I ask. I try to keep my tone completely even. No hostility or anger to frighten the boy further, but no warmth, so the Jailors know their manipulation isn’t working on me.
“You…” the kid begins. He takes a deep breath. I don’t know how much of this shyness is natural to him and how much of it is the result of life in containment. “They told me who you are. They said you were with the Serpent’s Hand, before they captured you? The terrorists who try to let anomalies go?”
I think about objecting to his use of the word ‘terrorist,’ but all that will do is make this conversation last longer. “I am,” I say.
“My name is Harry,” the kid says. “They told me that if I could convince you to help them cure everyone with a supernatural brain disease, they would let me go.”
I clench my fist. I was exactly right about what they were doing. Damn them.
“I… I don’t know exactly what it is they need you to do for them,” Harry continues. “I’m sure there’s a reason you haven’t already agreed to do it but… please? I… I know you don’t know me, but they said I could go to Three Portlands. They said they’d let me live there. They’d even pay for me to go to one of their colleges.”
“The Jailors’ promises don’t mean anything,” I say. “Just because they said all of that doesn’t mean they’ll actually do it.”
Light’s voice comes through the speaker. “If you need verification that we’ve honored our end of the deal before you start working, that can be arranged.”
“Of course you’re watching,” I say.
“Please,” Harry says. “I’ve been here for years, and this is the first time I’ve had a chance of getting out. They said they’d let me see my parents again, and my little sister. None of them even know I’m still alive.”
I ignore him and look up at the camera.
“You know,” I say, “this is just the same trick with the woman in the padded cell.”
“Please listen to me!” Harry says. “I think this is the only chance I’m ever going to get. I know you don’t know me, and I know there are other people you’d rather the Foundation free instead of me, but… please, I’ll do anything. Anything I can do for you once I’m out, just say it, and I’ll do it. I promise.”
As desperate as that offer is, it isn’t worthless. This kid could get a message to someone. He could make sure Theo is safe. He could tell my parents I’m alive.
Except, the Jailors won’t let him go if they think he’s going to tell my parents anything, and I can’t tell him to check on Theo, because then the Jailors would learn that Theo exists.
“You know, this is a bit convenient,” I say, still looking at the camera. “Exactly Evan’s age, and with the younger sibling. Part of me almost wonders if it’s too good to be true.”
“I’m not lying!” the kid shouts.
“This anomaly has been in minimum security containment for seven years,” Light says. “Hundreds of other SCPs are prepared to testify to the reality of this situation.”
Of course they are. I think about calling that bluff, making them actually go to the trouble of getting testimony from their prisoners, but that would just give them more chances to guilt trip me.
I look back at the kid. There’s desperation in his eyes. I falter for just a moment, but then I steel myself. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’ve seen what these people are like. I can’t help them.”
“But isn’t that what you’re already doing in this room?” the kid asks.
“It’s different,” I say.
“How?”
That question is disconcertingly hard to answer. How is it different? Just because I don’t have to wear that collar in here? It can’t be that selfish, can it?
The kid senses he’s made a dent, and he presses the advantage.
“Like she said, I’ve been stuck in here for years. I don’t think I’ll ever get another chance to get out.”
“Giving up on escaping is the surest way to make sure it never happens,” I say.
The word ‘escape’ makes the kid tense up and glance at the guards. He shakes his head. “I’m not the kind of person who can do that,” I say.
Considering how young he is, that’s easy to believe.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do what they want me to.”
The kid steps forward. “Please?” he repeats. “Isn’t it your job to free people from them?”
I find my mind wandering back to conversations I’ve had with Sean. The times, during my training, when he told me what his life was like the first time he was in containment.
Not that I need his testimony to know what it’s like. I’ve been here for months now.
I can save this kid from that. That’s the deal they’re offering me. All I have to do is let them cart me from town to town, in a collar, while I cure the public of a Fifthist mind virus.
The kid sees a tinge of weakness on my face. He jumps on it like a drowning man grasping a life preserver.
“Please,” he says. “I don’t just want out for myself, okay? Once I’m out, I’ll help people. People like us. I probably won’t be as… violent as they say you are, but once I’m out, they won’t be able to stop me from helping people.”
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry, but that’s my final answer.”
“Please? They’ll let me see my family again!”
“But I won’t get to see mine.”
“But…”
“And it’s because of these people. They’re the reason I’ll never see them again. Helping people who are right in front of me is one thing, but letting them cart me around, and deactivate me at will like I’m a fucking machine? I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”
The kid has hours of pleading left in him. He tells me about his family. His mother. His father. His baby sister. How much she looked up to him. How they’d been planning a huge vacation right before he got taken to celebrate his birthday, and that they might even be able to do it if the Foundation let him go.
I turn away from him. I close my eyes, tune out his words, and picture a massive, roiling campfire. I imagine it with all my might. I force myself to give every last speck of my attention to it.
Eventually, one of the guards whispers into a communicator. “How much longer do we give it?” he asks. “It’s way past lights out.”
The kid’s pleading takes on a newfound urgency, as he sees the possibility that his chance will be taken away forever. He runs up to me, grabs my hand, and falls to his knees, begging.
I refuse. I still refuse. I keep refusing, as he begs and begs. I’m not their tool. I don’t belong to them. I won’t do what they want. Not after everything they’ve done to me.
Eventually, Light orders them to end things. The kid collapses to the floor, sobbing. I keep my eyes closed. I only hear them drag him away. Only once he’s gone do I allow myself to shed a tear of my own.
Evan
“It really has to be this site?” Evan asks as his transport approaches Site-666. He’s no longer wearing the wig, but thick glasses and a false beard lie in the seat next to him. He’s been shuffling through different combinations of these items at each event he’s gone to. The Foundation is already struggling to ensure he has sufficient cover to speak at each of these events. His appearances would be even harder to explain if someone noticed that the same person was appearing at convention after convention to briefly talk about the Starlight Saga.
“It was the nearest site,” the driver responds.
Evan sighs. He leans back in his seat and closes his eyes. It’ll be a few minutes before he needs to walk again. He can sneak in a bit of rest.
He hasn’t been getting much rest. He’s been hopping from location to location for weeks now, sneaking in as much sleep as he can when he’s being transported.
This is not, as it turns out, all that much sleep.
He was at another convention, this time in Las Vegas, when the call came through. They’d managed to identify the noospheric signature of the memetic agent. That meant they could now test for it.
Straight away, Evan was hurried into a vehicle. Now, he’s about to arrive at Site-666, where an infected D-Class waits outside a scanner. They’re going to make sure the D-Class is infected, Evan is going to do his speech, and then they’re going to check for the infection again, verifying once and for all that their procedure can cure it.
Or that it can’t.
If it can’t, the Fifth church is almost certainly going to win.
Evan’s merciful few minutes of rest end when his transport reaches a staff entrance in the back of Site-666, which the public knows as the Luxor Hotel & Casino on the Vegas strip.
Evan thinks about hitting Rainer up for another drink, but he’s asleep in the back of the transport right now, and Evan doesn’t want to wake him. His whole job is keeping Evan awake, which he can only do if he’s well-rested.
Evan forces himself out of the car, then drags one foot in front of the other as he and the agents handling him head down to the site below.
In some ways, it’s barely different than the casino upstairs. Soft red and yellow carpets. Facilities for gambling, and people using them. Flashing lights and loud noises that make Evan’s head hurt.
Plus, there are demons everywhere. Demons who, now that they’re in a Veiled space, don’t have to hide their horns and tails. A lot of them look at Evan as he walks by. Are they just staring because they don’t recognize him, or because they have mind-affecting abilities and can sense Evan’s immunity to them?
Right now, it doesn’t matter. He just needs to get this test done so he can move on to his next crowd.
The site’s research facilities are at least a little more clinical, though the slot machines outside are still audible in the distance. Evan is led into a testing chamber, where a trio of researchers, including Erlenmeyer himself, wait next to the site’s Noospheric Scanner, a large metallic tube reminiscent of an MRI machine.
“Oh,” Evan says. “I didn’t know you’d be here in person.” A moment passes, during which Evan remembers that this man outranks him. “Oh, also, good afternoon, doctor,” he hurries to add.
Erlenmeyer laughs. “Don’t worry, kid. They haven’t been letting me sleep either.”
“I’ve gotten a bit,” Evan says. “Not as many crowds at night. I’ve managed to steal a wink here and there on the transports.”
“Glad to hear it,” Erlenmeyer says. “We’ll try to finish early here. Hopefully, you can get some more shut eye on the way to your next venue.”
Evan shakes his head. “I’m afraid I have a lot more to do in Vegas. This is the city that never sleeps. There are events at all hours, all clumped together on this strip.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Erlenmeyer says. “Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
Erlenmeyer turns to one of his research assistants. “Alright, bring the test subject in.”
In comes a man in an orange jumpsuit, with “D-12859” printed on the front.
Most of the time, Evan does his best not to remember that D-Class exist. That’s easier for him than it is for a lot of people in the Foundation. He’s usually either treating patients or doing missions in the field, not interacting with test subjects. Also, when he does interact with D-Class, he’s never the one hurting them. He’s usually performing a test, like this one, aimed at confirming his ability to cure some ailment they have.
That doesn’t make it easy to think about what happens to those people, or how openly the Foundation doesn’t care about them.
Evan understands it’s necessary. He really does. He’s read the same files they give everyone who has trouble accepting the idea. SCP-4162. SCP-2845. Anomalies that cannot be contained except at the cost of human life.
None of that makes it easy, though. None of that keeps him from hating it.
Focus. He can’t let his mind wander, now. The world is in danger, and this test isn’t going to hurt this man even if it fails. Evan stands back while the D-Class is placed inside the scanner. He waits patiently for Erlenmeyer to confirm the presence of the memetic agent, which he does.
“Alright, 7851-1, you’re on.”
“Wait, there’s another test subject?” D-12859 asks.
“No,” Evan says as he sits down next to the scanner. “Don’t worry about who I am. I’m just here to talk to you about a bit of news.”
“News?”
“Did you hear about that weird ritual a bunch of people in LA did a few months back? Some fans tried to perform one of the spells in the Starlight Saga.”
“Uh, no, I hadn’t heard,” The D-Class says. “I don’t get a lot of news in here. I guess I could look into it once I get out.”
God damn it. This is one of the ones they pretend they’re going to let go.
No time for that now. The only moral quandary Evan can afford to think about right now is “should I save the world,” and the only answer he can entertain is “yes.”
“Yeah, stupid, isn’t it?” Evan asks. “Can’t believe someone did that.”
Evan looks at Erlenmeyer. He’s still watching the screen. A second later, he glances at Evan and shakes his head.
“It’s still there?” Evan mouths.
Erlenmeyer nods.
Not good. Not good at all.
Evan can’t give up yet. Maybe he just didn’t hit the agent from the right angle?
“You still awake?” Evan asks the D-Class.
“Yeah,” the D-Class says.
“Isn’t that story crazy?”
“I don’t know,” the D-Class says. “I mean, before I came here, I definitely would’ve told you it was crazy, but after everything I’ve seen, fuck if I know whether some stupid ritual from a kids’ book would work.”
Hopefully, it was just that thought interfering with the cure. One way to find out. “We’re not about to let real magic disseminate that widely,” Evan says. “The fact that it’s out there means you can be sure that no one has anything to gain by doing it.”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. If these were just people doing a fake ritual from a book, that’s pretty weird.”
“We have a winner,” Erlenmeyer says.
Evan closes his eyes and takes a long, deep breath.
The agent is curable, even in its dormant state. Evan hasn’t wasted the last two weeks, and there’s at least a chance of purging the agent from the civilian population before the Fifth Church can activate it.
“Good to hear,” Evan says. He turns to the D-Class. “Thanks for your help.”
“Wait, that was the whole test?” The D-Class asks.
“It was,” Erlenmeyer says.
“What was the point of th—”
Evan’s already being led back to his transport.
“Remind me, what’s my next stop?” Evan asks one of the agents guiding him.
“Raider’s Stadium,” the agent says. “Massive crowd.”
There are few, if any places with a greater selection of large crowds than Las Vegas. Some of those crowds are so large that they’re worth purging even if their members aren’t especially likely to be infected. A six-figure stadium crowd might have just as many infectees as a tournament with hundreds of contestants, even though a larger percentage of the tournament’s attendees will be infected.
When he’s done at the stadium, Evan is going to be driven over to another event, and then another, and then another.
He might spend a week in Vegas, or more, and the whole time he does, he’s probably never going to sleep more than half an hour at a time.
It’s fitting that this is the city that’s secretly full of demons, because Evan’s time here is going to be hell.