"Bum a smoke?"
This time Alex's eyes widen at the researcher. "No," they say. "I— No, thank you, I don't smoke." They cough out a lungful of permachemicals. [slightly more]
The researcher notices the look of consternation on the young person's face. "You've lapsed again, haven't you Alex?"
"Twice in the last quarter-hour," Alex says. "I must really need a smoke." They're genuinely puzzled at the repeated slip, and doing a bad job of concealing their concern.
—-
"Can I smoke?"
This time the receptionist quirked her eyebrows at Alex. "No," she says. "You— No, you can't smoke anywhere onsite. Sorry."
Alex notices the confusion on the young woman's face. "I've asked you that before, haven't I?"
"Twice," the receptionist says. "You must really need a smoke." She's genuinely puzzled at the repeated question, and she's doing a bad job of concealing her concern.
"You think this is like Goncharov, don't you?" Alex offers, charitably. "You think I have gaps in my memory, and even when I'm in one place I might not really be present."
The receptionist has never seen that film. "I… guess?"
Alex smiles sympathetically and shakes their head.
Time passes. They toy obsessively with their lighter. They will become a senior researcher this year and are slowly greying, well on their way out of "twink" towards "silver fox". In their bag their phone bleeps because it's time for a pill, but they tell it to remind them later. There is a slight tremble in their fingers, ordinary nerves they imagine. They must be nervous because they're here to meet a Jay, and Jays are scary. Jays never want to see you for a small thing. It's the end of the world, or nothing. Neither of which is good.
Finally, the door to the inner office opens. Several high-ranked Foundationers spill out, carrying laptops or briefcases. As a group, they head straight past reception and out of sight. Alex half-recognises a few of the faces— the Site 17 site director, the head recruiter for Eastern Europe. None of them glance in their direction.
Once they're gone, Jane-Goe's assistant pokes his head around the door. He's twenty-something, improbably youthful, like a teenager stuffed into one of his dad's business shirts. His haircut is barely regulation. In one hand he holds a tablet computer showing his boss's day planner. It's packed. The woman evidently does not sleep.
"Alex? You can come through now."
*
The office door closes behind them with an unusually heavy mechanical clunk, as if the whole thing is part of a machine built into the office walls. While Alex takes the indicated chair and sets their bag down, the assistant turns and does some confusing additional things to the door, causing it to make several further strange noises. Jays have non-trivial privacy and security requirements.
The office is spacious, but somehow contrives to be dark despite two big corners of window and broad daylight outside. The walls are all bookshelves and dark wood panelling; perfectly stylish, but a style from the Nineties, a little worn, and not yet old enough to be fashionable again.
As for the gal behind the desk, well, a Jay never looks like you imagine.
Alex takes a deep breath. "So what's the topic? All I got was the meeting invitation, no agenda or subject. I mean, a Jane says 'jump', you jump, but—"
Looking to their right, they notice that the assistant, without saying anything or making any undue noise, has set his tablet down on a table, produced a gun and aimed it at their head. Alex stops talking. They sit still in their chair for a little while, absorbing the change of pace, letting their heart rate rise to a hummingbird's and then start to flatten again.
"Okay?" they hazard. They lick their lips and grip the arm rests, otherwise staying perfectly still, waiting for another prompt. The assistant's face is totally neutral now, like this is just how meetings go. Maybe it is, for people up here.
"Who are you?" Jane-Goe asks them.
Alex blinks. "What? Oh, God."
"Let me rephrase," Jane-Goe says. "Alex Thorley, forty-nine, with loving husband and two boys in tow. Likes camping, hiking and ornithology. Boring parent with perfect, airtight background and financials, as far back as we can examine. And you've got full Foundation credentials which we've never issued, including access to a list of installations and rooms which… some of these locations don't exist, or were torn down decades ago. At least one hasn't been built yet, yet you've got the front door key to it. That's before we get to your SCP access control lists, which I can only term as 'egregious'.
"So you're a spy, and your objectives are misaligned with ours, and Dave wanted to cut Xi-3 loose on you, but I was able to bring him around. I talked him into a face-to-face. I thought there was a slim chance that if we locked you in a bomb-proof room and asked politely, you'd have the good sense to spare yourself 'the rest'."
Alex has long since stopped listening. "You dullard," they say now they can finally speak, "I'm your chief of Antimemetics."
"We don't have an Antimemetics Division," Dave says.
"Yes, you do. We do."
Jane-Goe says, "We have a Memetics Division, a Telekontainment Division, Fire Services, Ops-A, Ops-B, Personnel, D-personnel and two dozen others. We don't have an Antimemetics Division."
"Do we have an Irony Division?" Alex asks. They hesitate hopefully. "No? Alright. Well, try this: why do you think the Antimemetics Division would show up in the listing?"
"This is just a cover story," Dave says to Jane-Goe, not taking his eyes off Alex. "It's a good one, but they've had it worked out in advance."
"Dave, lose the piece," says the Jane.
Grudgingly, Dave does so.
Alex relaxes fractionally. "There are SCPs with dangerous memetic properties," they say. "There are contagious concepts which require containment just like any physical threat. They get inside your head, and ride your mind to reach other minds. Right?"
"Right," Jane-Goe says. She could name a score of SCPs fitting this description without even thinking.
"There are SCPs with antimemetic properties," Marion goes on. "There are ideas which cannot be spread. There are entities and phenomena which harvest and consume information, particularly information about themselves. You take a Polaroid photo of one, it'll never develop. You write a description down with a pen on paper and hand it to someone— but what you've written turns out to be hieroglyphs, and nobody can understand them, not even you. You can look directly at one and it won't even be invisible, but you'll still perceive nothing there. Dreams you can't hold onto and secrets you can never share, and lies, and living conspiracies. It's a conceptual subculture, of ideas consuming other ideas and… sometimes… segments of reality. Sometimes, people.
"Which makes them a threat. That's all there is to it, really. Antimemes are dangerous, and we don't understand them; therefore, they are part of the Problem. Hence my division. We can do the sideways thinking that's needed to combat something which can literally eat your combat training."
Goe stares back at her for a long moment. Clay fidgets, disliking and distrusting the story, but the Jane seems more open to the concept.
"Name one," he says. "Name an antimemetic SCP."
"SCP-L055," Alex says promptly.
"There is no SCP-L055," Dave retorts.
"Again: Yes, there is," Alex says.
"There isn't," Dave asserts. "SCP numbers aren't assigned sequentially. There are gaps. That number hasn't been assigned. It's not superstition, we have enough to be concerned about without arbitrary numerological mysticism. We have SCP-666 and SCP-013. But there's no SCP-001. And there's no SCP-L055."
"Dave," Jane-Goe says, "you should look at this." He turns his monitor so Dave can see the file that he has just retrieved. Dave bends over and reads it from top to bottom. Stunned, he scrolls back and reads it all a second time.
"But…"
"The file's dated from 2008," Jane-Goe says. "It's got all the right flags and signatures. It's keyed and coded. It's real."
"You've seen this before?" Dave asks her.
"Never in my life," Jane-Goe says. "As far as I can remember, anyway. On the other hand, if the content is accurate, both of us have probably seen it dozens of times."
Dave glares at Alex. "This isn't possible."
Alex nearly spits. "For Christ's sake, Dave, how long have you been working here?"
"But if this SCP is this powerful…" he begins.
"Yes?"
"Who wrote the file?" the Jane finishes. "And for that matter, how was the interview conducted, and who is 'Makuwa Yurika'? And most importantly, how do you, Mx. Thorley, retain knowledge of any of this?"
"Makuwa Yurika wrote the file. She's dead," Alex says.
"What happened to her?"
"You don't want to know."
There is a very long pause while both Jane-Goe and her assistant react to this. In fact, they pass through a long, discrete sequence of reactions. Indignation at the seeming rudeness; confusion at Thorley's incaution in front of sinister superiors; surprise at the magnitude of the claim; pure disbelief; comprehension; and finally, horror.
"What…" Jane-Goe asks carefully, "would happen if we did know?"
"It would happen to you as well," Alex says, levelly. "…As for the rest of your questions: we manage that pharmaceutically. You know we have class-A amnestics, for people who very badly need to forget things? Of course you do. Who could forget about class-A amnestics? Well, in Antimemetics, we have a different pill, for people who need to remember things that would otherwise be impossible to remember. Mnestics, class W, X, Y and Z. Same Greek root as the word 'mnemonic'. The M is silent."
In their bag, their phone bleeps again.
With a nod of approval from the Jane, Alex reaches into their bag and turns their phone off, acknowledging the prompt this time instead of postponing it. They pull a blister pack from another pocket and pop a pill out. It's hexagonal, and green. They hold it up, and are satisfied to see a flicker of recognition on Jane Go's face. She's beginning to put it back together.
Alex says, "These are class W mnestics, the weakest, suitable for continual use. Two pills per day. Go down to the site pharmacy and ask. The pharmacist will claim they don't stock any such thing; they're misremembering, tell them to double-check."
Jane-Goe sighs. "And now, I think, I get it. I see why we're having this conversation at all."
"Yes," Alex says, popping a second pill out and handing it over to him. "It's because you missed a dose. You're supposed to be on these, the same as me and everybody on my staff. It's the only way we can work. You forgot to take a pill, and then you forgot all the information that the pills were helping you retain. You forgot why you were taking them, who gave them to you, where to get more. You forgot about me, and my entire department. And now I have to bring you up to speed."
"And if I take this," Jane-Goe says, "I'll remember this whole conversation and we won't have to have it again?"
"Hopefully not," Alex says.
Dave pipes up. "Uh, should I be taking those?"
"Sorry, kiddo," Jane-Goe says. "Need to know. Maybe when you're a John yourself." She swallows the pill. Alex swallows theirs too.
"So what is SCP-L055?" Jane-Goe asks.
"SCP-L055 is nothing," Alex says, now relaxing entirely. "SCP-L055 is, as described in the file, a powerful information autosuppressor. As far as experimentation has uncovered, it can only be defined in negative terms. We can only record what it isn't. We know it isn't Safe or Euclid. We know it isn't round, or square, or green or silver. We know it isn't stupid. And we know it isn't alone. But what we do know is that it's weak. It's weak because it's the only antimemetic agent in our possession which has a physical entry in the files. We have paper records of the thing. We have containment procedures. It's not Safe, which means it's dangerous… but it's contained."
Jane-Goe blinks. "You have procedures? Where?"
Alex points at ther head.
"Then how many other antimemes are there? How much more dangerous do they get?"
"Ten that I know of," Alex says. "Statistically, probably at least five more that I don't know of. This does not count the antimemetic entities freely roaming the halls, not under containment. There are at least two in this room with us right now. Don't look. I said don't look! It's pointless!"
Jane-Goe does an impressive job of controlling herself, keeping her attention focused on Alex. Dave doesn't fare so well, and quickly sweeps the whole room, even checking behind his back. Making an ass of himself, essentially. He finds nothing. He looks baffled.
"There is an invisible monster which follows me around and likes to eat my memories," Alex explains, patiently. "SCP-4987. Don't look it up, it's not there. I've learned to manage with it. It's like a demanding pet. I produce tasty memories on purpose so it doesn't eat something important, like my passwords or how to make coffee."
"And what's the other one?" Dave asks.
With another nod from Jane-Goe, Alex goes to their bag again. This time they pull out a gun and shoot Dave twice in the heart.
More aghast than in pain, Dave collapses sharply against the bookcase behind him. Pulling his head around to face Alex, he manages, "How did you— kn—"
Alex stands, aims more carefully and shoots him a third time, this time in the head.
Jane-Goe, again, does an impressive job of not reacting. "That's Dave's gun," she deadpans. "You stole it from him."
"It's tricky to steal a firearm this heavy from someone without them noticing," Alex explains, unloading it and carefully setting it down. "But stealing a firearm and then stealing their memory of the theft is a little easier. Like I said: a pet. Some pets are dumb enough that they can be trained."
"Yes," Jane-Goe says, evenly. "That much I'd guessed. But why?"
"Because you were supposed to be taking class-W mnestics," Alex says. "You can't skip a dose of class-W mnestic. I've tried. You can postpone a dose, but you can't forget unless someone actively prevents you from taking it. There's only one person who could get close enough to you to do that, and that's your assistant. And remember when I asked him how long he'd been working here?"
"He didn't answer," Jane-Goe says. "I thought you were being rhetorical."
"He doesn't work here," Alex says. "He's an antimeme. Since when do you have an assistant? You don't have an assistant, Jane. Look at this office. It's got one desk. You've got a receptionist outside: she's the one who screens your calls and schedules your meetings. Where does Dave even sit? Where does he fit? Don't blame yourself. You're human, and these things are redaction incarnate. You need to think like a space alien to get around them."
Jane-Goe asks a question which, in any other workplace, would be absurd. "Is he dead?"
"Maybe," Alex says. "I can put his corpse in our research queue and we'll see what we can see when we open him up. There's a duality here, though. They're like parallel universes sharing the same space. It's conceptual versus concrete, figurative versus physical. It's very unusual for things to cross over. I don't know what Dave was, but he had a human body, which instantly makes him weird, even by our standards. As ever, the search for stalemate continues. I will let you know if we get any closer."
"Any side effects of these pills?" Jane-Goe asks.
"Nausea, and dramatically increased risk of pancreatic cancer," Alex says. "And very bad dreams."
Next: Introductory Antimemetics