Nobody Can Save You Now.
It was supposed to be just a standard grab. There had been five missing persons within the last month, all near this abandoned barn- apparently, Intel had "confirmed" a scip, and I was supposed to go get it. Easy. I went in, and it went… badly. Two of my squad was dead, and I was hiding in this small room near the top. Then I saw him. A man in a grey suit and fedora. He started explaining how the thing in the barn, the thing that had killed 5 people, the thing that slaughtered my squad was meant to be kept safe. He kept going on about it, and when he went to stop me, I'd… just had enough. I shot him twice. In the head and the chest. I'd expected him to shrug off the bullets, or teleport, or something, but no, he just dropped to the floor. After the mission, they did a biopsy- nothing. Just a middle aged, normal man. They even found a name, although I'm not high enough clearance to know it. The mystery of Nobody was solved- an extremely lucky lunatic.
But the more I thought about it, that couldn't be right, could it? I mean- it's not the way he went up against the foundation for so long. We're not perfect, that almost makes sense. But when he was talking about that scip- it was like he knew something. Some big plan. He didn't sound like a lunatic. I got worried, you know. What if I'd killed the only person trying to save us? I "got some extra clearance" (it’s almost funny- you can get state of the art security measures and firewalls and anti-fraud machines, but you can't stop the site director accidentally leaving his card behind in the break room) and found all the scips that Nobody had been involved in. I looked and compared and… at first it looked random. But when you look closer, you can see the connections. I mean just look at the numbers. 1743, 1695, 1241. That can't be a coincidence, right? You see it too, right? Hm… Anyway, I'd almost got it when the Foundation burst in my room. Apparently, the security measures aren't quite as useless after all.
When I explained what was going on, the pattern, the numbers, the site committee was fairly sympathetic. I still remember what they said- " doesn't seem like a double agent. I'd say just a standard psychotic break, happens all the time around here. Just give him some anesthetics for the classified intel and some therapy and he'll be right as rain". So they put me in the psychiatric unit. Took my pills and did the talks, but I still remembered the pattern. I even understood it more, what it required, how to predict it. That must mean I wasn't crazy right? So the next day, I managed to overpower the guard and run. By the time the base was locked down, I was out and running towards civilization.
Now, I'm in town. I have to be careful- I heard what they put out, "suspected of links to global terror, arrest on site". But I can do that. I look at myself in the mirror; I look good in grey, don't I? Now, if I do understand the pattern, the next important SCP will be some little girl who can make stuffed animals real in California. Harmless and silly, maybe. But the pattern says she has to be saved. And who am I to argue with the pattern?
Nobody. That's who.
The Big Questions
Well hello! I see you have seen my work. Do you like it? It makes you remember- I see you’ve noticed. And what are you remembering? Some terrible monster tearing through the world? Some horrific, endless ever-changing labyrinth? A strange man or woman who could do unimaginable things. Something like that? You’re wrong. You’re remembering a question:
Are we cool yet?
You see, long ago, somebody else found this piece. He looked at it, and the more she looked, the more they saw. It saw god and Jesus, staring down with hate and rage on this world, Xe saw endless shapes. She saw a future of art reality and heard the voice of the world. Maybe some of them we’re real. But it doesn’t matter, for the most important thing the founder heard was the question.
Are we cool yet?
And the question spread. In the grand museums of France, it was phrased as “an offering to Mammon.” On the streets of New York, it was phrased as “ossify wall street”. It was phrased as “ were clowns always yellow” and “the skeleton was inside you” and “Loewes” and so many other ways. But it didn’t matter, for regardless of the words or the order or the content, the question remained the same:
Are we cool yet?
And the chaos spread, and the Founder saw that we had to stop it. We must no longer call blindly into the dark, but organize. Not by creed or faith or payment, but by the truth, the only real truth: the world does not deserve art, or life, or even reality itself . The world deserves only one thing, the question, the only question that matters
Are
We
Cool
Yet?
Well, I know I am.
If you come with me, you can be too.