I will go to where the sun is shining on the glass and steel, and dare it to break my heart again.
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rating: +83
Info
SCP-8605: The Steel Soul
Author: HarryBlank HarryBlank . This is a sideways sequel to SCP-7005 by Tufto Tufto , the best damn page on this website. Harry's other work can be found here.
rating: +83
Can a thing die which has never lived?
When I was very young, my parents built a metal jungle gym for me in our back yard. Two swings, a teeter-totter and a slide, all shiny and new. Painted steel tubes slotted together, blue and white; seats of white plastic and chains gleaming silver. There was a pattern on the tubes, but I don't remember what it was. I do remember what a vast, solid thing my swingset seemed to be, a pocket world with logic and motion and life all in itself. A discrete but open system of which I could be one part.
Years later, when rust had set in and the pattern was irrecoverable - both in fact and in my memory - and the sun had baked the seats until they cracked, and the chains would never again support a child's weight, and anyway I had grown so ponderous and inflexible that it had become by contrast something fragile out of scale, and our stock of sunny afternoons together had been spent, and my chest grew tight as I saw that once-beloved, lifeless thing reduced to so much scrap by age and inattention, and I looked on its remains with a guilt more appropriate to the shell of a dying friend, I realized for the first time just how much this piece of artifice had mattered to me. With what energy those slips from earthly bondage had imbued it. How much of my essence, and that of those I loved, I had invested there.
I placed my hand on every fragment, rubbing grit and grime into the ridges of my fingerprints, and I closed my eyes (though the light was too bright, and an orange glow crept through the skin of my lids) and I imagined something entered into me from the depths of every hollow metal heart. I imagined that this aggregate unmade thing which could not die would yet live on in me, that I was reclaiming what I had unknowingly but willingly given, that when both of us left this patch of yellowing grass which shortly would become a nowhere as a consequence of our parting and departing, something of what we had meant to each other, ride and rider, would be carried on in my breast. I stood in my back yard, a grown adult, and felt a remorse I could never justify to anyone but myself - and even then only in true darkness, where judgement's eyes are blind - and I silently apologized to an unfeeling oxide wreck.
I had never felt so ridiculous in all my life.
But I woke this afternoon in a puddle of my own sick, sheltered by blinds drawn against a world resting in the hands of men with hollow breasts, to whom there is no spark in any living thing worth speaking of, worth speaking to, worth saving, and I wondered if it matters where you glimpse the imprimatur of being. Whether you see it in the mirror, as the Overseers do, or in others, as Rosie must - if it's really her updating the files, and not just another cruel joke of the Council - or whether, like me, you see it in the places and things which have witnessed us at our happiest, our best, in our most bold and perfect moments. Because isn't simply seeing it enough?
I find that I want to see it again, if only once.
So I wash away the residue of failure and disgust, the poison that boiled up inside me, boiled over, and burned on its way out. I am raw and empty yearning. I will go to where the sun is shining on the glass and steel, and dare it to break my heart again.
Because if it still can be broken, then the rust can't have set in too deep.
~ Dr Simon Kells
SCP-8605
BY ORDER OF THE O5 COUNCIL
The following file is Level 5/8605 classified. Unauthorized access is forbidden.
8605
SCP-8605 and SCP-7005 in Universe Q417 "Fume Void".
Special Containment Procedures: Formal adoption of SCP-8605 instances by Interdimensional Logistics personnel is authorized on a case-by-case basis, subject to initial and annual review by Dr Rosie Hartlepool and/or Dr Simon Kells. Blanket permission has been granted for informal consultation, though this may be revoked at any time. No attempt will be made to influence the use of SCP-8605 instances by nonaligned ("volunteer") operators beyond the scope of Foundation control.
There is no known means of preventing the creation of new instances, and no effort will be made to discover one.
Description: SCP-8605 is a set of documents each identifying themselves as the "L-NESC Operator's Manual". Each instance pertains to one known component of or system relating to SCP-7005, the interdimensional transportation network known as Lampeter. Instances periodically appear at the workspaces of Lampeter personnel, updated in new editions with additional and/or altered content. The bulk of this content pertains to the care and maintenance of Lampeter apparatus; as the network is comprised of and accessed by a wide variety of transit technology across thousands of continuous and detached universes, the information within each instance is by necessity diverse.
Despite multiple attempts at enhanced surveillance, no instance's arrival at its respective station has ever been witnessed.
SCP-8605 instances invariably provide valuable and accurate instruction for Lampeter operators, though their content is by no means restricted to this. Several peculiarities have been noted:
- Despite the Lampeter Non-Euclidean Shipping Company having become insolvent in 2021, and the subsequent limited assumption of its responsibilities by the Foundation, SCP-8605 continues to refer to the L-NESC in each edition.
- Higher edition numbers, most often associated with older branches of the Lampeter network, contain increasingly eccentric and frequently irrelevant information presented with the same levels of specificity and gravity elsewhere employed for technical specifications, upkeep and repair procedures, etc.
- No author is indicated.
- It is infeasible for a single individual to have authored the over four thousand SCP-8605 instances presently known to the Foundation, plus undoubtedly innumerable others. Textual analysis indicates, however, that a single authorial voice pervades throughout.
- There is a definite correlation between higher edition numbers and a more erratic, conversational tone, though textual analysis does not suggest any change in the identity of SCP-8605's unknown author.
Below is a comparison between two editions of SCP-8605 for the same system, the t-bar surface lift in Universe H576 "Kharkhorum Unbroken" providing access for the Lampeter connection to Universe H235 "Mercury Shores".
This passage excerpts language introduced in the 45th edition.
UPGRADE AND REPLACEMENT
Improvements in materials science may eventually obsolesce wooden t-bars, which degrade in natural environments and develop stress fractures from impacting the rears of their passengers, and moving them uphill. Increasing obesity rates will also be a factor in wear-and-tear. While steel is impractical as a replacement material due to its weight - redirecting excess load to the cables which are much more difficult and costly to replace, and which fail only catastrophically - polymers and plastics presently in development are expected to obsolesce organic construction materials in the long term. Every effort should be taken to keep devices servicing a Lampeter connection in tip-top, modern condition.
This passage excerpts language introduced in edition 272.
TRANSCENDENT OBSOLESCENCE
The wooden t-bar is a relic, and relics catalyze awe.
Steel chairs soar effortlessly overhead, the literal heights of modernity, and the grounded would-be ascendant awaits instead a rough collision with the past in a state of near-religious trepidation. It touches a nerve which evolved to anticipate the blow of a master's cudgel, or the impact of falling rock. In this instant we are slaves to a crude device, wholly at its mercy. The seats swing free on the approach, unencumbered, and we wonder if once our turn comes 'round they might not swing past entirely, leave us quivering but otherwise motionless upon the platform, a figure of both fun and irritation for our peers as we become an obstruction to their own ascents.
When the blow finally arrives, it is always vulgar and ill-timed. This is key. We feel badly used, an afterthought, the only piece of this machinery whose presence is not necessary. We feel so superfluous that surely we are bound to slip off and fall, or else we wonder whether it will be possible to shed our companion at the apex of the climb. Has provision been made for our escape? Might we not be shoved back down again? One does not entertain such thoughts about plastic and metal; polymers are rational, but wood is older than courtesy.
Yet though it is often callous - and we will receive our knocks - it is rarely outright cruel. This seat of unreason was once a living thing. It can be negotiated. Though irrational, wood also mediates the modern with the ancient. The forest is forever, and even in rough opposition, life recognizes life. This kinship forestalls a greater terror by far, that of the new and impartial. The detached austerity of perfect artifice. Nothing so old that it was hewn from a tree can hold us in permanent thrall; this fear, though profound, is only a fleeting thing.
As the bar raises us without incident, we leave our trepidation far behind and below. We have lost the persistent primal dread of a sharpened stick which once made the difference between life and death to our forebears. The moment of doubt, the sharp-drawn breath, and the burn of cold in our lungs is an energizing sequence which cannot be replaced, but when it passes we see the truth in this landscape of cultivated lies: each blunted pole is an anachronism on the slopes, an oasis of atavism in that most contrived of outdoor spaces. This is the closest that an organized mind can come to the rapture of facing down a slavering beast, and the illusion is only sustained for an instant.
But o, that instant! It will compensate for the stymied catharsis a Lampeter passenger experiences when they mount at last the summit, and are robbed of the chance to descend again at speed. The past has passed. The multiverse awaits!
Upgrade at your peril. A voyage which sparks no wonder, trading a single sharp shock for the pervasive unease of streamlined steel, is little more than an odd commute.
Though their provenance is admittedly unknown, SCP-8605 instances contain institutional knowledge otherwise unavailable due to the destruction of the L-NESC's records in the waning days of its final administration. They have therefore been widely adopted for instructional purposes by both new and established personnel, within and without the Foundation. Discretion is nevertheless advised where content deviates from logical, pertinent guidance, though personnel having long-term association with the Lampeter network frequently disregard this admonishment.
As the Department of Interdimensional Logistics lacks the resources for a comprehensive investigation, no effort has been made to determine the true origins of SCP-8605.
Until today.
Because what else am I even here for? They set us up to fail. No, worse, they set us up and forgot. They're indifferent to our success or failure. The Council simply doesn't care.
Infinite possibilities in every direction, and they couldn't care less. Something crawls up the tracks, gobbling down the breathing cosmos and spitting out empty Levittowns and Plan Voisins, and everything that matters is quite literally on the line, and I've been generously granted the operating budget to do nothing about it but watch. At least I'm doing that much. These files probably haven't graced an Overseer's eyes in months.
Rosie is gone, lost to the heart (?) of the most dangerous mystery we've ever faced. We still don't know how to stop it. We probably never will. I could wait out that entropy in sterile safety. I could shut myself in my office, shuffle the paperwork, keep telling everyone who's left to rotate the tires and patch up the punctures. That's what the Council expects of me. Probably Rosie would expect no better.
But there's one last mystery left to solve, and if this entire enterprise is doomed to decay and ruin, I at least want to know exactly what it is we're losing.
I don't know who will be left to say it, but I want them to be able to say that I tried.
That at least one person did care. One version of one person wanted to do something, be something better.
So if you are reading this, you empty bastards, I'll be back when the circuit loops 'round, and not a moment sooner. Don't like it? Come and get me.
The following is an interview between Dr Kells and Anna Vardanyan, station master in Universe B247 "Red Gardens".
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells stands on a high wooden platform overlooking a broad green swathe. A herd of antelope graze by a pool of blue water far below. A gale is blowing; the distant foliage is bent almost horizontal, and there is a steady roar in the air. An electric hum becomes audible beneath it, and Dr Kells looks up to see a suspended monorail in International Modern style pulling into the station. The lead carriage stops in front of him, and its doors swing open. Dr Kells climbs aboard.
The carriage's interior is faded, but well-kept. A woman stands at the window opposite the door, looking down at the antelope. She looks up as Dr Kells approaches, and smiles in welcome. The roar from without is dulled as the door closes behind him.
Vardanyan: Hello, Director.
Dr Kells: Good afternoon.
Vardanyan: It is, isn't it?
The monorail begins to move. Its pace is slow, and the landscape scrolls past slowly. Dr Kells sways, nevertheless.
Dr Kells: I'm surprised you wanted to meet up here. Don't you have an office?
Vardanyan turns to face him, and leans against the window.
Vardanyan: One vantage point, forever? I suppose I could simply die, if moving is so much trouble.
Dr Kells laughs.
Vardanyan: I'm sorry.
Dr Kells: No, not at all. I agree. That was… refreshing.
Vardanyan purses her lips, and continues to smile.
Vardanyan: There's a romance to this thing. I get… carried along with it. Figuratively and literally.
Dr Kells: I'm out here on practicalities, mostly.
Vardanyan: Shame.
The monorail rounds a sharp bend. Dr Kells swallows heavily. Vardanyan offers him a look of concern.
Vardanyan: Feeling okay? You look a little pale. Is the motion…?
Dr Kells raises a hand. He places the other on a stanchion for support.
Dr Kells: I'll be fine. It's been a rough… just… yeah. Don't worry about me.
Vardanyan: We could stop the train. There's probably nobody else riding anyway.
Dr Kells: Really?
Vardanyan: Probably.
There is a pause.
Dr Kells: Well, that wouldn't be very good business, would it? Slipping the schedule just because nobody cares.
Vardanyan: Because they aren't here, they don't care? That's not how sentiment works. Quite the opposite. If you love something well enough, you can keep away from it indefinitely. I think that must be what perfect love is like.
Vardanyan reaches down and runs a finger along the edge of the nearest seat.
Vardanyan: I hope I never love anything that well.
They watch as the field gives way to rolling hills, peppered with white flowers. A shaggy predator pursues a pair of antelope; its form is too motion-blurred to be properly discerned.
Dr Kells: What do you know about the Operator's Manual?
Vardanyan: Only that it doesn't say anything I don't already know.
Dr Kells: Surely the technical details are useful, at least?
Vardanyan: I suppose. I don't count numbers as knowledge. That's just…
Vardanyan shrugs.
Vardanyan: Rules. And rules fill the space meant for understanding. You never need both.
Dr Kells: You understand this train pretty well, I imagine.
Vardanyan: Less and less every day. It's like falling asleep.
Vardanyan reaches out to press her index and middle fingers to the window, tracing the path of the predator as it downs the first antelope. The flowers are stained. She brushes the glass as another turn in the track removes the scene from view, then reaches up to touch her own cheek. A faint imprint of rust is imparted to her skin.
Dr Kells: Have you ever seen anything in the Manual that struck you as strange? Whimsical? Inappropriate, even?
A look of guilty pleasure flashes across Vardanyan's face.
Vardanyan: Not nearly enough. But perhaps I'm too far gone, and it's just regurgitating my faded impressions back to me. Sorry.
Dr Kells swallows again, and waves away the apology.
Vardanyan: But we fail her so much, it's only natural that she fail us right back.
Dr Kells: She? The train? Lampeter.
Vardanyan: It's all the same.
Vardanyan reaches out to touch the windowsill, tracing a seam with the edge of her fingernail.
Dr Kells: Why do you keep touching it like that?
Vardanyan: Like what?
Dr Kells: You've been caressing the glass and steel.
Vardanyan blinks, and looks down at her hand in surprise.
Vardanyan: Was I? That's interesting. Maybe I'm trying to remind myself that it's still here. Or that I am. These things aren't as permanent as they feel.
Dr Kells: This is one of the newer legs of Lampeter. It's going to outlast either of us.
Vardanyan: It's already half gone.
Dr Kells: What?
Vardanyan walks to the opposite side of the carriage.
Vardanyan: Have you seen the rail?
Dr Kells: I don't understand.
Vardanyan: The actual rail. Did you look at it?
Dr Kells: No, I guess I didn't. It didn't seem important without the train, and then, well. There was the train.
Vardanyan: That's fair. Do you know what it means, Director? Monorail?
Dr Kells: It means there's only one rail.
Vardanyan: Do you know why that's worthy of note? So worthy of note as to name the thing?
Dr Kells shakes his head.
Vardanyan: Loneliness is a human kind of math. The result of subtraction.
Dr Kells: Difference. The mathematical term is difference.
Vardanyan: Yes. Difference. And this train is different now, now and forever. There used to be two lines here. They ran parallel for a good long stretch. If you look… yes. You can see it down there. The difference.
Dr Kells looks out the window, and down. A few broken pylons and the remains of a track are still visible, though overgrown with neon green grass.
Dr Kells: What happened to it?
Vardanyan: The same thing that's happening to the rest of the system.
Dr Kells: I didn't think it was this bad so close to home.
Vardanyan: That's your perspective, "close to home". In another sense we're far-flung, and the momentum is still in here -
Vardanyan reaches up and raps her knuckles on the ceiling. It rings like a gong.
Vardanyan: - still resonating, flying us apart.
The wind outside the monorail is increasing in intensity. It whistles in the space between the carriage and the track. Dr Kells attempts to match the pitch with a whistle of his own, then stops.
Vardanyan: Keep going.
Dr Kells: No, I just… got distracted, that's all. Can we focus on the Manual?
Vardanyan: The only parts worth focusing on will come up organically, as we talk. Little snapshots of the things that matter.
Vardanyan blinks.
Vardanyan: Snapshots. Yes. The Manual says we should take photographs!
Vardanyan brightens, nodding.
Vardanyan: Lots of them.
Dr Kells: The stationmasters?
Vardanyan: Everyone.
Dr Kells: Photographs of the train itself? The moving parts? Damage? What?
Vardanyan: Anything and everything. Outside and inside.
Dr Kells: But why? Sounds like something more appropriate to a tourist handbook. What do photographs have to do with keeping the line going?
Vardanyan: Nothing could be more important. Let me show you something.
Vardanyan reaches into her jeans pocket and takes out a creased, faded photograph. She hands it to Dr Kells. It shows a high windowed perspective on a gully filled with crystalline spirals in a variety of hues, with the apparent size and function of city skyscrapers. Fine detail is difficult to discern, but it is possible that humanoid figures cluster at the apex of each spiral, arms extended in greeting. A hand, presumably belonging to the photographer, is pressed to the glass in response.
Dr Kells: What am I looking at?
Vardanyan: A view on spires, from above.
Dr Kells: From the monorail. From the other monorail.
Vardanyan: That's right. This keeps me awake at night.
Dr Kells: Why?
Vardanyan: Because you couldn't take the photograph now. You can never take it ever again.
Dr Kells: So what? It's already been taken.
Vardanyan reaches out, and Dr Kells returns the photograph to her hand. She places it in her back pocket.
Vardanyan: That's not what I'm getting at. Someone was holding a camera and pointing it out the window, one specific window beside one specific seat, and in one specific instant, they pulled the trigger and committed that view to posterity. It was an event. They saw something they wanted to remember, experienced… I don't know. Interest. Curiosity. Confusion, surprise. Maybe just the impulse to make a record because the view was there and they were there. A sense of duty, or the moment. But it was a moment, is the thing. In some sense it mattered. They turned off the flash so the glass wouldn't catch it. They framed their subject. There was intentionality. And all of that happened in a point of space which doesn't even culturally exist anymore.
Dr Kells: Culturally…?
Vardanyan: You can't go to where that picture was taken, and take it again. It's all gone. They've taken the sky, without thinking, without even a whisper of intent. One insufficient digit in a ledger somewhere worlds away, and the heavens fell. That shutterbug had a god's eye view, and we let Olympus crumble.
Dr Kells: A bit dramatic, don't you think?
Vardanyan closes her eyes, reaches out, and presses her hands to a pair of stanchions which stand to either side of her.
Vardanyan: No. I can't express the drama in a way that does justice. When the other line came down, it took an infinity of vantage points with it. I just showed you the only record of an angle on the universe that you and I can never, ever access in the real world. That was a scene from a time-locked vault. And the people waving back? If they were here today, they'd be staring into space. The gap between what was and is.
Dr Kells: But that's true of… look. This line isn't the same as it was before, either. The land settles, the rails shift subtly. Gravity even pulls our eyes down lower.
Vardanyan: Exactly! That's also a nightmare. It's just an easier one to ignore. We're not really following in anyone's footsteps here. Their feet are anywhere from micrometres to centimetres above ours. And that's not even starting on the passage of heavenly bodies through the black. Really we're always treading new ground, second by second, the footprints behind us enshrouded in firmament.
Dr Kells: Scientifically, maybe. Culturally it's the same track.
Vardanyan smiles, and turns to look at Dr Kells again.
Vardanyan: There's hope for you yet, Director.
Dr Kells: Thanks, I suppose.
Vardanyan: But what if I were to kiss you?
Dr Kells: I beg your pardon?
Vardanyan drops her arms to her side, and turns to face Dr Kells again. She does not approach him.
Vardanyan: What if we embraced, right here, right now, and kissed? As the train runs on? Would you still feel the thrill when it crosses this stretch again, or would you understand that you can never go back?
Dr Kells: I…
Vardanyan: What if we'd kissed for the very first time on that other track? With the spires below as witness? Would we ever be able to look each other in the eyes again, knowing that our old selves were haunting an abstracted stretch of air, hanging, suspended over nothing where a something used to be? If we met that distant audience, how could we tell them, honestly, that we were truly in love, when they saw it consummated in a future oblivion now past? How could we live…
Vardanyan's eyes widen, and she shudders.
Vardanyan: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.
Dr Kells: No, it's… That was just unexpected, is all. I don't know. I don't really have an answer for anything.
Vardanyan: That's okay. I've thought it through a thousand times, and I don't have one either.
Vardanyan sighs.
Vardanyan: "The landscape should only change to introduce new points of interest, incorporate new sight lines, strengthen the ambience of the site. Human beings orientate themselves by landmarks. They pace out their lives from backstage to centre and back, counting steps, and their legs remember. When the context is lost, so too is the sense of place. And it is impossible to go anywhere if you don't know where you are, impossible for anything to be new if what was old has already gone". As the Manual would have it.
There is a short pause.
Dr Kells: You know, a whole universe is probably cut off from Lampeter, or at least harder to reach now. Fewer points of access, because that line fell. And here we are talking about old photographs and landmarks.
Vardanyan: It's not the same kind of problem.
Dr Kells: Of course not. It's much worse.
Vardanyan: Not worse. Just different. That universe is still there. My points in the sky are gone. Blown away on the gale. Both inaccessible, but not both extant.
Dr Kells: I suppose it's a question of priorities.
Vardanyan: I don't like to have priorities. Moods are more natural.
Vardanyan runs her palms along her jeans, left hand reaching back as though to remove the photograph again before jerking forward and forcing itself into a side pocket. She looks sheepish.
Dr Kells: Nothing about Lampeter is natural.
Vardanyan: Some things are. There is a fitness to them.
Dr Kells: Like what?
Vardanyan: Like decay. It all rots down to its most essential state, eventually.
Dr Kells: Like two trains becoming one?
Vardanyan: You were listening.
Dr Kells nods.
Dr Kells: What did you mean, a few minutes ago, when you said the ghosts were "suspended over nothing"?
Vardanyan: The spires went the way of the line that crossed them. They don't exist anymore, either.
Dr Kells: Why did that happen?
Vardanyan: Maybe there was no point having any of it if nobody could take photographs.
Vardanyan points out the window.
Vardanyan: We're passing what's left of them now.
Dr Kells looks out again. Shattered stumps of crystalline spires litter the gully below. The vegetation does not grow over them, though the surrounding earth is entirely subsumed in green. It vibrates in the intense breeze from above.
The remains of the other monorail can barely be discerned where the land begins to drop.
Dr Kells: Hang on a second.
Vardanyan: We're always hanging on. Every second.
Dr Kells: I thought the spires were some far-flung thing. They were here? Where the two lines ran parallel?
Vardanyan: That's right.
Dr Kells: So if they were still here, you could still see them.
Vardanyan: But not in the same way.
Dr Kells: Were the lines at the same height, or staggered vertically?
Vardanyan: Staggered. You could always see everything from here. The spires, and the other train.
Dr Kells: So nothing was really lost before the landscape changed.
Vardanyan: Nothing but context. So, everything.
The monorail turns, and the gully disappears from view.
Dr Kells: It's just a slight change in angle. A trick of perspective.
Vardanyan: You're describing reality.
Dr Kells: …point.
Vardanyan: Then again, I suppose that's what you do. Isn't it?
Dr Kells: And the Manual as well.
Vardanyan: No… No, I think you'll find what the Manual does is altogether different.
Dr Kells: A further insight you want to share?
Vardanyan: I think it's better if you find that angle yourself. Maybe you can bring me back a picture, when you find it.
Vardanyan turns back to the window.
Vardanyan: Assuming it's still out there.
Dr Kells: And assuming you're still here.
Vardanyan touches the window again.
Vardanyan: I won't be, even if I am.
<End Log>
The following is an excerpt from the 29th edition of the SCP-8605 instance pertaining to an orbital lift in Universe E197 "Transhumanist Singularity", and an interview between Dr Kells and Farax Nuur, station master in same.
ON AESTHETICS
The new aches to be clean. It should be scrubbed until raw, scrubbed until flesh would blister, so it gleams in the presence of the sun: the first and truest light. We go naked into the abyss, where the light is naked too - the atmosphere does not bend it, as it no longer bends us, extended from our bourn by this stark and startling bough.
Every accretion is weight, and the goal is perfect weightlessness. The past is filth, and the future is bright. A stark contrast should be maintained between. There is another time, another place, for the corruption of sentiment. If we go to the stars, we must not go venal. There is nothing evil there which we do not bring with us.
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells stands at the base of a colossal tower which stretches to the clouds and beyond. The end is not in sight. A vast structure stands at the bottom, encircling the stele. A dozen loading docks are thronged with workers, trucks, and trains unloading cargo. There is a sense of impending completion in the frenzy of their motions. In the far distance, a line of passengers prepare to embark.
A man bounds toward Dr Kells from a secondary entrance, waving his hands and smiling widely.
Nuur: Sir! Sir!
Dr Kells waves tentatively as Nuur arrives in front of him.
Nuur: Hi Simon! Can I call you Simon? I already did, so I guess I can.
Dr Kells: I guess you're right. Afternoon.
Nuur gestures up at the tower with a flourish.
Nuur: Going up the well today? Well, not all the way, today, but. Up?
Dr Kells: I'm not sure I understand. "Up the well"?
Nuur: Gravity well. Earth's gravity. This baby goes from one g to zero in the blink of an eye! Assuming it takes you most of a week to blink.
Nuur blinks, three times, then winks.
Dr Kells: That has got to be the least efficient ride in all of Lampeter.
Nuur: Oh, the Lampeter bit's just an hour on, unless you're going to D473. You're not, are you? That's five days up. Faster to take the coaster to C926, then the marine railway to C847, then the tram to D192, then the closet in the junked space station in Duluth that opens up on the top of the elevator here. Lot of interchanges, but still shaves off three days.
Dr Kells: I imagine the elevator is more scenic, though.
Nuur: Oh, I don't know. Have you ever seen Duluth?
Dr Kells: I've seen a Duluth.
Nuur leads Dr Kells to the entrance. The walls are panelled in a foreign material, like steel but with a web-like structure.
Nuur: So, to what does this humble Lamp Man owe your visit, sir?
Dr Kells: Lamp Man? They call you that here?
Nuur: Oh, sure. Well, no. Mostly I call myself that. Everyone else just calls me by my name. But I'm working on them. They'll come around!
Dr Kells: Uh huh. You seem pretty happy with your job.
They walk through the cargo offices, where workers on telephones or holding data pads put finishing touches on the manifests for the next trip.
Nuur: Most people around here only get to take folks into space. Limited horizons, you know? They're all jealous of me.
Dr Kells: I'm sure. Ah, the purpose of my visit is the Operations Manual. You wouldn't happen to have -
Nuur: Right here, sir!
Nuur pulls a small, rolled-up booklet out of his jacket pocket, and hands it to Dr Kells.
Dr Kells: That… is a pamphlet.
Nuur: Well, of course. We don't maintain the elevator. It's not ours.
Dr Kells: Oh. What part is ours?
Nuur: Unisex bathroom in the cargo section.
Dr Kells: Oh.
Nuur: It's a very nice bathroom. Beatrice from the manifest office and I take turns tidying. Beatrice is very nice also, though I think she takes smoke breaks in there, so it's probably best not to breathe when you go through. Cancer, you know.
Dr Kells: Ah.
Nuur: Did you think Lampeter owned a space elevator, sir?
Dr Kells: No. Of course not.
Nuur: Must have given them a real shock when they finished chiseling out that hole in space and found it opened on… well, space. Shudder to think how many palms the Lampeters had to grease to get the lift built in Ecuador, just so they wouldn't be stuck in empty air, minus the actual air! Still, makes you smile, doesn't it? Them reaching down, us reaching up, meeting in the middle. Adam touching Adam, finger to finger. I think it was Adam Lampeter. I think there was an Adam -
Dr Kells slaps his own palm with the pamphlet. Nuur blinks again, and his mouth hangs open as though he has forgotten what he was talking about. Dr Kells brandishes the pamphlet at him.
Dr Kells: What's in here?
Nuur: Well, for starters, funny little bit that says it's fine to smoke in the washroom from time to time.
Dr Kells: Really?
Nuur: Sure. Industrial loos that don't smell like smoke smell wrong. Part of the atmosphere, you know? Even when you're past the atmosphere.
Dr Kells: Right…
Nuur: Something about how travel needs contrast, but you don't get that naturally by going straight up, so you need to work some in artificially. Smoke on the inside, pristine on the outside. There's a lot in there about keeping the elevator façade scrubbed. The company indulges us. I think they're afraid of the Foundation, though I don't see why. It's not like you have a space elevator. Us. I mean us! I work for you.
Dr Kells: Uh huh. Maybe they just don't mind letting you scrub their elevator for free.
Nuur: I never thought of that.
Dr Kells: Really?
Nuur: Maybe.
Dr Kells: What else?
Nuur: Uh… well, passengers aren't to queue in the loo. Encouraged to circulate. Keep the air moving. But they shouldn't make a fuss, or the regulars will remember them and start asking questions when they disappear. Don't want a repeat of that murder on the Lampeter Express.
Dr Kells: That what?
Nuur: It also says you should be alone at a window when we cross into the stratosphere.
Dr Kells: How come?
Nuur: From daring eagles to treading angels. A moment of reflection on the power of technology. You can't touch god's face, but it's only polite to look him in the eye as you pass. Personally, all I ever see is clouds.
An alarm bleats, three times.
Nuur: We should head to the observation deck.
The observation deck of the space elevator is a wide arc of windows and a glass floor, through which bare soil can presently be seen. The room is full of passengers; it is impossible to tell which might be also riding Lampeter.
Nuur: Going up!
Dr Kells watches the landscape of Ecuador fall slowly away, below and beyond.
Dr Kells: I'll bet this thing blots out the sun on a bad day.
Nuur: And the shadow stretches clean to the Galapagos.
Dr Kells: Really?
Nuur: I don't know, I'm just talking.
Dr Kells: I wonder how much of downtown Quito they had to demolish to build it.
Nuur: A lot. That was probably in the Manual, if they put out an early edition. "Make sure you demolish something to build the tower".
Dr Kells: Why do you think that?
Nuur: Because space elevators are the tops in futurism. Futurism is the crazy wing of modernism. Modernism hates context.
Dr Kells: And so people hate Modernism. Which also hates people.
Nuur: Very funny, sir!
Dr Kells: Funny? This is why nobody cries when they knock down some old Brutalist building.
Nuur laughs.
Dr Kells: You think they should? You think people should lament environments that are indifferent to them, their wants and needs?
The elevator has ascended past the tops of the tallest skyscrapers in Quito.
Nuur: No, I think they do. The idea that they don't, that's what tickled me. Somebody loves everything, sir. Somebody grew up in every environment that's more than a few years old. If it isn't new to you, you don't see it the same. Just the way it is, I think. And anyway, begging your pardon, I don't quite agree with your premise either.
Dr Kells: My premise?
Nuur: Next time you're walking the city, look around. See how much unmolested Modernism you can find. I'll bet there's not much, and a whole lot more of everything else. When its time was up, I'm telling you, it got far worse than it ever gave.
Dr Kells: Violence paid unto violence.
Nuur: But that only applies to environments built for function rather than form? The most democratic structures ever built? Or do you apply the same criteria to cathedrals and palaces, sir?
Dr Kells: Well. It's a question of what you want the world to look like, isn't it? You've got to admit, there's a lot more charm to Versailles than Cabrini-Green.
Nuur: Hmm.
Dr Kells: Unfortunate examples.
Nuur: Little bit. That pesky democracy again. Here's a better one: you ever see that ugly tower they built for the World's Fair, a few years back?
Dr Kells: I don't keep up with that sort of thing. And it's probably different in my universe.
Nuur: No, I'm pretty sure you have this one. It's kind of a bellwether for multiversal proximity. Great big thing in the middle of an historic district? Bare wrought iron, skeleton naked to the open air? Had everyone up in arms when they built it.
Dr Kells: I should imagine so.
Nuur: Be hard pressed to find anyone saying anything nice about it at the time. Turned up their noses. Probably their fingers, too.
Dr Kells: I'm sure you can say the same about this thing, here.
Dr Kells taps the floor with his foot.
Nuur: I certainly hope so! Time heals all wounds, even wounds on the urban skin.
The curvature of the Earth is now obvious out the window. Some of the passengers have begun milling about, and others are heading for their cabins.
Nuur: Still, I hear it's a popular place for photos. Lovers kissing in the Champ de Mars.
There is a pause.
Dr Kells: You were talking about the Eiffel Tower.
Nuur: Sorry, sir. I know it wasn't fair, but it was fun.
Dr Kells shakes his head. He is chuckling.
Dr Kells: So we're standing in the pristine cathedral of Lampeter, you figure?
Nuur: Something like that. There's a painting of this tower in the Tate, you know. A shining silver beacon in the sky. I like to think that all the scrubbing helps.
Dr Kells: I can't imagine why anyone would want to adopt this thing as a symbol. It's a commercial venture. The people who own it want to colonize outer space, to exploit resources, and get away from the little folks.
Nuur: But we outnumber them, sir, and eventually all the big folks die. Maybe all at once, if we're very lucky. There's not enough air up there for people who don't contribute.
The nearest passenger at the window stiffens, regards Nuur with suspicion, and walks away. He smiles, and waves at her.
Nuur: Some day, as far as my grandchildren are concerned, this tower will always have been there. And it will mean something to them that has nothing to do with profit margins. People buy the myth, not the history, sir.
Dr Kells: Which is good, because John Lampeter burned almost all of the L-NESC's history.
Nuur: Just the parts his family owned. He couldn't touch what belonged to everyone else. Context is king, and the public imaginary is its first and grandest palace.
Dr Kells: There's a philosopher hiding in every station master, apparently.
Nuur shrugs.
Nuur: The mind broadens. Occupational hazard.
The windows suddenly dim.
Nuur: Company guidelines say to look away now, sir.
Dr Kells: What does the Manual say?
The orb of the sun comes into clear view. Both men wince as they look at it.
Nuur: You guessed right.
<End Log>
There's a photograph of me as a young child sitting in a little wooden wagon with red rails, surrounded by all four of my grandparents. I think it's from my Christening, which is fun, because that certainly didn't take. I am surrounded, and I am loved.
Maybe ten years later and that wagon has been pulled around the backyard almost as much as the lawnmower has been pushed. I carry everything with it, even when the thing would be lighter on its own. But I don't go outside as much as I used to, at least not of my own volition. They have to kick me out, because I'd rather sit in front of the lights and make them dance. I think that makes me happier, although the bite marks on my controllers suggest otherwise. Conversely, I've never kicked the wagon in anger.
But I'm kicking it today.
The bottom has rotted out, because I never remember to put it in the shed when I'm done with it. The red sides are long since gone, so it's just the frame, the bottom, and the metal wheelbase and handle left. The wood in the middle has gone spongy, and I give it a kick, and there is give.
My friend asks if he can kick it, too. I let him. We kick the bottom out of it, wet splinters everywhere, and then my mother comes out of the house, aghast, and asks me what I'm doing.
And I realize.
My father makes up a new bottom, and paints the whole thing white. Like Gandalf after Moria. People have debated for a long time whether this makes it the same wagon, or a new one, or something in between. It's an interesting discussion, but I think I know the answer.
If it's not still the same wagon I killed, then why do I still remember the look on my mother's face whenever I see it in the shed, that clean white finish gathering dust and rat shit, and the metal no doubt rusting out below, where I can't see?
The following is an excerpt from the 487th edition of the SCP-8605 instance pertaining to a passenger locomotive in Universe K086 "Iron Marrow", and an interview between Dr Kells and Steven Goodman, station master in same.
OF HONESTY
A train does not pretend to be anything else.
It is not a drawing-room or hotel. It is not an intimate parlour. It is a mass of metal hurtling at inhuman velocity on a road custom tailored to admit no interruption. It is physical potential realized in full. It rumbles, it chatters, it thrums with power unbridled. It must be allowed to do these things. Its messages must be heard.
It speaks of a hunger for fuel. Of the brutality of speed. Of the labours of its drivers, and the legions of dead left in its wake. It boasts of mountains laid low and livelihoods made and lost.
Not every message is intended for every rider. The unacquainted will absorb the terror, the thrill, and something of the romance. The enthusiast will appreciate the nuance, that which separates each train from its peers, justifying its name. Those whose forebears worked the rails will be attuned to the legacies of Watt, Brunel and Fleming, and the coal-faced firemen and luggage handlers and conductors who lived what they dreamt, and made it possible. If there is iron in your blood, it will sing when the whistle blows.
A train's voice is a lullaby, half-remembered in the species substrate from the victorious trauma of civilization's cruelest chapters. Nothing can be done to quell this soothing savagery. Nothing should be attempted.
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells passes through a long carriage filled with mail sacks in neat rows, one of them marked with a stylized "L". The door at the end opens on a narrow, exposed walkway; wind whips past, and Dr Kells has some difficulty opening the opposite door.
The carriage beyond is empty save for a single man sitting by a window, looking out. Dr Kells sits down across from him.
Goodman: Funny how it all looks bigger from in here.
Dr Kells: What does?
Goodman: Everything. The landscape. You expect it to look like a kid's playset; all that guff people talk on how rails shrank the world. Isn't true, far as I can see. Motion magnifies. Gives perspective. Things just seem more important at speed.
Dr Kells: You're the station master, aren't you?
Goodman: One of. Riding home.
Dr Kells: Where do you live?
Goodman laughs.
Goodman: I live here. But I sleep in Chicago.
The sun is setting behind the distant treeline. Goodman squints into the glow.
Goodman: Riding a train's not like sitting in your car. When you're stuck out on the freeway, all you can think of is the destination. When you're looking out these windows, though -
Goodman taps the glass.
Goodman: - it doesn't really matter where you're going anymore. Nowhere bound, and bound to nowhere. The journey its own destination. You no more consider where the train is going than you consider the orbit of the Earth under your feet.
Dr Kells: Let me guess. The Manual has a lot to say about looking out the window.
Goodman: Whole damn chapter, last I looked. Might be there's more now.
Dr Kells: Where do you think it comes from?
Goodman: I think it's where all this goes.
Goodman taps his left temple.
Dr Kells: Your thoughts?
Goodman: And what's in here.
Goodman thumps his chest. There is a faint, muffled ring.
Goodman: Nowhere else for it to go, 'cept the ether. And I can't believe all that energy just evaporates into nothing.
Goodman shivers.
Dr Kells: Are you alright?
Goodman: Just the chills. Symptomatic. Ain't gonna kill me yet; not this me, anyhow. Them iron bones makes a powerful difference.
Dr Kells: Still, I'm sorry.
Goodman: Don't be. We all got our schedules to keep.
Goodman closes his eyes.
Goodman: You ever been alone on a train?
Dr Kells: Once or twice, maybe.
Goodman: First time it happened to me, I was just a boy. Right here on the Illinois Central. Can't say how, but I found myself the sole occupant of a Pullman coach at the edge of dusk and dark. Maybe they were playing cards up front, or down back, and nobody thought to tell the skinny kid with the hungry look.
Goodman smiles.
Goodman: Might be the gleam scared them off. Gamblers don't like risk so much as they claim.
Dr Kells: What was it like, having the train to yourself?
Goodman: It was like dying.
There is a pause.
Goodman: It rolls on. A train rolls, empty or full. Don't even notice the difference. A few hundred of me and you, that barely registers to eighty tons of freight. The rods churn and the wheels turn, and the black blur out the window keeps scrolling, and the whistle moans. The train don't care, but oh, you do.
Goodman sighs.
Goodman: If that's how the end is, I won't be afraid.
The two of them look out the window together for several minutes.
Goodman: Talk of travel between worlds? An empty train is a travelling world. I always wanted to be in a crash.
Dr Kells: Excuse me?
Goodman opens his eyes, and meets Dr Kells' gaze.
Goodman: I know how it sounds. But just think about it. Worlds colliding. Can there ever be anything so apocalyptic? First train I ever rode, I was still in short pants. We were headed for a rail bridge, and the other kids told me it was out. But those rods kept churning, and the trees blurred by, and I knew we were gonna take the plunge. Burn up or boil at the bottom. No way to stop it.
Dr Kells: Obviously they would have stopped the train.
Goodman: Obvious now, to you and me. Not to a kid. A kid, his mind works magical. You feel this thing moving 'neath your feet, hell for leather, you hear her calling out to everything in her path, crying "keep away", you feel yourself a part of that engine of entropy - that vulnerable moment when everything is possible, you believe it when you hear this is the last ride. To that last, best terminal. In the moment, it was easier to believe the world would end than that train ever slow down. How could she? All raw speed and danger. Nothing else to her, or to me.
Dr Kells: Was the bridge out?
Goodman: Of course not. Shot over that span like a bat leaving hell. Land dropped away all 'round, but we kept on. Held my breath the whole way.
Dr Kells: I imagine you were relieved.
Goodman: Hell no. Disappointed.
Dr Kells: Why?
Goodman: You don't come down from a thrill that easy. A destiny. A train that never crashes? That's just a journey. We could've been an event. Sometimes I think that's the only proper way to go out of service.
Goodman sighs again.
Goodman: They just fall apart now, the trains, each by each. It's undignified. A body shouldn't only rot, where nobody knows your name, or what you done.
The landscape beyond the window is now black. Goodman still stares out at it wistfully.
Goodman: It's like my nightmare's nightmare, this thing you folks let happen. The bridges are out, and we're plunging into depths more profound than I ever could have dreamed. I wonder where that goes. All that sorrow.
Dr Kells: Maybe it goes into the Manual, too.
Goodman: Might be. It does moan so.
As if in response, the train's whistle blows.
Dr Kells: There might not be many passengers now, but the trains still keep moving.
Goodman: Got to. Burn up or rust out. Machine don't know any other way, nor railway-men.
Dr Kells: I've seen dignity in rust.
Goodman: Well, I wager you've never had rust in your bones. Or your veins. It agitates.
Dr Kells: You'd win that wager.
Goodman: Fact is nobody sings about trains that live, Director, and songs are what keeps 'em alive. Suppose that's why I still ride.
Dr Kells: I don't understand.
Goodman: I mean I'll keep riding the rails until one of us dies.
Goodman taps the floor with a boot.
Goodman: Or both. Either way, the last'll be there for the other when it happens.
His face becomes blank.
Goodman: Maybe somebody'll write a song about that.
<End Log>
The following is an excerpt from the 10th edition of the SCP-8605 instance pertaining to a travelator in Universe M919 "Smithian Hegemony", and an interview between Dr Kells and Sandra Andronova, owner/operator in same.
MUNDANE CARPET
The ideal form is as follows: clean, unobstructed, aesthetically functional, unpainted. Visual variety is unnecessary, and in fact detrimental. The sole focus is continuous motion. No provision can be made for smooth transitions. The surface does not stop, or even slow, to admit or expel its passengers.
Continuity in ideal.
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells stands on a moving carpet in a vast commercial complex, multi-storey and bustling with activity. There are four lanes of travelator, and he stands on the outermost to the left. Customers are placing tokens in turnstiles and stepping onto each conveyor at complex cloverleaf intersections, many carrying bags bulging with a variety of purchases. There is an additional turnstile up ahead, marked with a simple electric sign bearing the livery of Lampeter - though there is text beneath, barely legible at this distance, reading "Wholly Owned and Operated by Andronova Industries".
Andronova herself is strolling leisurely on the other side of the rail, easily keeping pace with Dr Kells.
Dr Kells: I hate these things.
Andronova: Do you? Or do they just not make you feel anything, and you hate that?
Dr Kells: Definitely I hate them.
Andronova: Maybe you hate the associations. People don't like to be herded. They like to move at their own pace. But it's simply not always practical, and that's what these are for.
All around, the other riders are standing stock still. Some watch the storefronts and the long lines to enter. Most are staring at handheld devices. Most are apparently alone.
Dr Kells: It's not that my sense of individuality is wounded. It's that I don't like the ground moving under my feet. There's something very primal about that. If the ground is moving, you should move your feet until the ground isn't moving anymore.
Andronova: So you're experiencing this as a sort of… stabilized earthquake, that you can't get away from?
Dr Kells: That's about the size of it, I guess.
Andronova claps.
Andronova: Thrilling! I would be thrilled.
Dr Kells: Yet I notice you're not along for the ride.
She pirouettes, and stretches, without missing a step. The crowd outside the nearest shop murmurs, and a woman with a camera slung around her neck turns, sees Andronova, and kneels to snap a photograph. Andronova grins widely and strikes an appropriate pose until she sees the flash.
Andronova: When everyone else is walking, riding is a luxury. The inverse is also true.
Dr Kells: You're a cut above, then.
Andronova: I wouldn't ever say that about myself. We're all just moving laterally. That's what this is about. How society keeps rolling along.
Dr Kells: So, you operate a synecdoche.
Andronova: From New York to Beijing! When you've got a part this big, imagine the size of the whole!
Dr Kells wrinkles his nose.
Andronova: Sorry, sorry.
Dr Kells removes a token from his pocket as he approaches the turnstiles for the Lampeter travelator. He leaves the crowd behind; this line is apparently empty, no patrons visible, though as it passes through several declines and inclines composed of wide, featureless corridors, it is difficult to tell.
Dr Kells: I came here to talk about the Manual.
Andronova: This isn't a here. This is between.
Dr Kells pays his second fare, and transfers carpets. The turnstiles creak in protest.
Dr Kells: The manual, miss -
Andronova: Haven't read it.
Dr Kells: Uh…
Andronova: I have people for that. My people have read it. I've heard their summaries. Pretty dull stuff.
The Lampeter travelator is notably worn, and the edges show signs of fraying. It moves at a slightly faster pace than its commercial counterparts, though progress is still very slow.
Dr Kells: Maybe I should be talking to your people instead.
Andronova: I don't pay them to talk. I pay them to fix the moving carpet. Talk is cheap, so it's only a service if you're getting it from someone whose time is priceless. You're welcome, by the way.
Dr Kells: Alright. Well, I was hoping to figure out where the Manual even comes from. Discern its nature.
Andronova: Why?
Dr Kells: Because it's an anomaly. And unlike Lampeter itself, we don't even have a working theory to explain it.
Andronova: Every workplace is like that.
Dr Kells: Like what?
Andronova: Things that have been around so long, nobody knows who first put them there. Things that work, but nobody knows why. That sort of stuff just kind of builds up, you know? Like the Neon God.
Dr Kells: What did you say?
Andronova: I guess your random day-to-day accretion doesn't involve regular updates on fresh-printed paper, so there's that idea nixed. But then, maybe the network just has people for that.
Dr Kells: People we don't know about? People nobody ever sees?
Andronova: I couldn't pick one of my people out from a crowd, Director. Hell, some crowds are all my people, and I still wouldn't be able to tell.
The buzzing of the marketplace is already far-distant. The hall ensconcing the Lampeter travelator is silent, save for the squeaking of poorly-greased casters.
Andronova: Some of the folks who work for me? I'll never be on the same continent with them. Just because Lampeter is a money pit surrounded by a red tape cordon doesn't mean you can see the whole thing by standing at the edge and looking down.
Dr Kells: I'll add "little army of invisible typists" to the list of working theories, then.
Andronova shrugs. She looks bored.
Andronova: Or don't. Not like it matters.
Dr Kells: No? Your people use the Manual to guide their daily tasks. And there's stuff in there about operations, refits, renovations, repairs. You're not bothered that we don't know who's setting the agenda you work to?
Andronova: Not as long as it works. And it does. Gets us from A to B. I don't need to see the Hand if it's pushing me in the right direction.
Dr Kells: Your fortune rests on the whims of whoever is authoring that document.
Andronova: Not really. If it starts giving people bad advice, they'll just ignore it. You think they're drones who do everything I tell them? You think I think that? Not a chance. But I always get something roughly shaped like my way, and they feel like they've got a bit of wiggle room in their grind, and everybody's happy. Forward momentum, indistinguishable from futility.
Dr Kells: But it is futile.
Andronova skips into a turn, and begins walking backward.
Andronova: Damn right it is. Try turning around, and walk the other way.
Dr Kells: I'll pass.
Andronova: It feels good, though, right? We're carrying you. You'll get where you're going, on time. Along with the rest of the linear people. This line goes horizontal, my lines go diagonal, and society? Verticality, with no upper bound. What could be better?
Dr Kells: Why do you even operate a Lampeter line, with that attitude?
Andronova: Foreign money spends just as well. Especially when you're the one owns the multiversal currency exchange.
Dr Kells sighs.
Dr Kells: Where do you think the Manual comes from, really?
Andronova: Didn't I already answer that?
Dr Kells: No. You responded, but there's a difference.
Andronova laughs.
Andronova: I hope you're not the one negotiates the contracts. We're up for renewal soon.
Dr Kells: Can you just answer the question?
Andronova: We're pretending you don't know?
Dr Kells: I beg your pardon?
Andronova: I'm all for diplomatic fiction - Adam knows I've done worse for less in his name, anything to grease the wheels - but I do need you to spell out how blind you want my eye. Good manners and good business.
Dr Kells: Are you suggesting that we created the Operations Manual? The Foundation? And we're just not telling anybody?
Andronova: I didn't mean it to come across as a suggestion. Nothing I'd be liable for. More of a gentle hint.
Dr Kells: The Manual has been appearing at Lampeter sites for over a century.
Andronova: You've been around longer than that.
Dr Kells: Yes, but L-NESC only went bankrupt a few years back. You think we were seeding instructions for other people's employees to follow?
Andronova: Sounds like exactly the kind of thing you people do. But anyway, could have been the Lampeters themselves were doing it to start with, and you've just followed suit. Actually, yeah. That's more your level of creativity.
Dr Kells: To what end?
Andronova: Control.
Dr Kells: The Manual isn't about control. Less and less every year. It's filled with bizarre cultural nuance.
Andronova: My point exactly. I know from experience that wages buy people's hands, but their hearts? That takes a different kind of compensation.
Dr Kells: You think it's our way of… what? Brainwashing your employees?
Andronova: Definitely not mine. There's hardly anything froufrou in our Manual, far as I know. But we were one of the last acquisitions. That's probably why we've been spared.
Dr Kells: Have you considered that it might actually be because there's nothing nostalgic or romantic about a travelator?
Andronova affects a pout.
Andronova: Nonsense! We made a coffee table book full of photos a few years back, and it's still sells like hotcakes. Okay, look. We're reaching the end of the road here, and I won't have time to walk and talk out of time and space with you.
The end of the travelator is indeed in sight. The belt runs up to a blank wall, where it meets the return.
Andronova: You want me to level?
Dr Kells: That would be lovely.
Andronova: I think the Lampeters made the Manual because they were businessmen, and I think you make it because you're a government.
Dr Kells: We're a what?
Andronova: A government. You can't leave well enough alone. You want to be a soft glove on the Invisible. You've never seen a successful business you didn't itch to meddle with. You want a kinder, gentler world, because you don't understand the first thing about survival. You don't have to provide for yourselves. You hardly have to provide for others. You have no achievements that belong to you particular. All you can do is take things that other people built, and compromise them. That's what you use the Manual for.
Dr Kells: Then why is it also filled with technical specifications?
Andronova: That's the lure. That's how you get in. Make sure it gets used. And that's when - you figure - the insidious stuff starts taking hold. And maybe you're right, elsewhere. But people around here know bullshit when they smell it. That's why I keep the streets clean.
Dr Kells: And the Lampeters? Were they also trying to achieve a cultural shift?
Andronova: No. I think they were just crazies with a lousy business sense. And you folks capitalized on the crazy that was already there. Found a purpose for it, redirected. Might be the only thing about you I've respected, so it might not pay to disenchant me.
Dr Kells: Well. That's certainly a theory.
Andronova: I'll agree to call it that for as long as we have a working relationship. Andronova Industries is proud to be part of the Lampeter family!
Andronova flashes a quick thumbs-up.
Dr Kells: This isn't Lampeter. This place is nothing like Lampeter. Lampeter is… more.
Andronova: Do you draw that distinction with the forms you do like, or just the ones that don't make you misty?
There is a pause. There are only a few minutes of track left in the travelator.
Dr Kells: You could at least paint some murals on the ceiling. The Lampeters used to do that with their trains.
Andronova: That much is in the Manual, I remember. Something about how pretty pictures on the ceiling will just make people fall over backward trying to look at them. People are very, very stupid when you start giving them choices. They're at their cleverest when there's no agency.
Dr Kells: That doesn't make any sense.
Andronova: All I know is everyone on these carpets is bored out of their gourd, and when they step back onto unmoving ground, they're not going to miss a beat. They keep the spring I put in them. They get to keep the momentum they paid me for, and when there's no more pep in their step, they can pick it back up on the return. But if they hated the whole experience? All the more reason to put it behind them, at speed.
Dr Kells: Was that in the Manual, too?
Andronova: Probably. I think you've got trains on the brain, Director. Transportation isn't always about the journey it takes you on. Sometimes it's about the journey away from the journey. Hindsight is only comforting when the present is better than the past. You know what I think? I think Lampeter needs more airports. That would sort you romantic types out fast.
The end of the line is imminent.
Andronova: Be honest. Won't it feel wonderful to be master of your fate and feet again? That's my gift to you.
Dr Kells: There's only one way forward. And it's the same on all your carpets.
Andronova: Yes, but you get to decide whether you're going to attack the road with gusto, or be a speedbump for everyone else. Isn't that exciting?
Dr Kells does not respond, but steps into the wall.
<End Log>
The following is an excerpt from the 707th edition of the SCP-8605 instance pertaining to a gondola lift network in Universe Q417 "Fume Void," and an interview with Pachakutiq, station master in same.
ON HALATION
Fog-lights should be halogen, and kept bright. No LEDs. The aim is not to pierce the smog, but flood it. Flare out in it. Do not curtain the windows, or else curtain them identically - blinds, never drapes. The eyes should burn, or smoulder half-lidded, but they must always be perceptible as eyes. You watch them pass. They watch you in turn. This is reciprocity.
Do not replace every damaged gondola. A gap in the line is drama - the implication of loss, the anticipation of resumption, relief when the sequence does resume. When the lights go out, consider leaving them that way. Consider running the sequence dark for an interval. A thing that does not perish seems magical with the fact it can perish on display, and there is melancholy in a funeral procession. Melancholy is appurtenant to mist.
And all eyes one day dim.
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells is walking down a long boardwalk of steel, painted in flaking red. Red filament lights flicker beside him. The surrounding space is filled with a dense sepia fog; gondola lifts slide in and out of view on shining silver cables threaded through the casters of impossibly tall pylons. Most of the windows are brilliantly lit, fog lights diffusing in the air. There are gaps in each line. The gondolas are servicing a series of stations which fan out from a central hub, where a large kiosk of rusted metal with an open window stands. Dr Kells approaches the kiosk; a dim overhead light illuminates a single seated figure, who looks up as the sound of footfalls meets their ear.
Pachakutiq: Token?
Dr Kells pats his pockets.
Dr Kells: Must be in my other coat.
Pachakutiq narrows their eyes at him, then suddenly nods.
Pachakutiq: Oh. It's you. No token, then.
Dr Kells: What would even be the point? There isn't enough traffic here to turn a profit. Charging just seems… performative.
Pachakutiq: Of course it is. That's why they're tokens.
Dr Kells looks out at the gondolas, then walks to the edge of the boardwalk and looks down. Nothing but mist and distant lights can be seen below. He takes a deep breath, then begins to cough.
Pachakutiq: Bad idea.
Dr Kells: Thanks.
Pachakutiq: Have you ever ridden the gondolas?
Dr Kells approaches the kiosk again. Fog seeps in at the corners, and there is dust suspended in the narrow cone of light. There are few personal effects visible, but there is a cot on the far wall in a state of disarray.
Dr Kells: No. I don't think I will, either. I don't think I'd like being cooped up in there, while somebody drags me through the fog.
Pachakutiq shakes their head.
Pachakutiq: We're all being dragged through fog. At least here, you have a lifeline.
Pachakutiq points up at the thrumming cables.
Pachakutiq: And you don't need to know where you're going, because someone else figured it out for you first.
Dr Kells leans on the kiosk sill. He looks down, and notices a familiar green clothbound book leaning on the other side. He taps it for emphasis.
Dr Kells: I'm looking into this.
Pachakutiq shrugs.
Pachakutiq: Starting a book club?
Dr Kells: We're pretty far out now. I imagine your copy is full of strange stuff.
Pachakutiq: Everything is strange here. I live in a haze.
Dr Kells: I can relate. But I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the Manual. What it means to you.
Pachakutiq: It's nice to know I don't have to fix every part that breaks. Because I can't, anyway.
Dr Kells: I don't have control over the budget. Believe me, I wish I did.
Pachakutiq: I'm not talking about budget. No amount of money could fix what's breaking, around here.
Pachakutiq leans forward. They pick up a red Lampeter token, and run it between their fingers. Dr Kells watches, fascinated, as the token tumbles over each knuckle and winds beneath each joint.
Pachakutiq: You see the pylons?
Dr Kells continues to watch the token.
Pachakutiq: Nobody knows how far down they go. Maybe that's how they did it. Maybe it's easier to sink a pylon into forever than just fifty miles down. But whatever they're embedded in - even if it's nothing at all - I wouldn't be able to tell you how we'd go about doing that ourselves. And if they come loose, when they come loose, I don't know how we'll set them right.
Dr Kells: Nothing in the Manual about that?
Pachakutiq laughs.
Pachakutiq: The Manual tells me to just let them fall. And that's what I did.
Dr Kells shakes himself out of the trance, and recoils.
Dr Kells: You let one fall?
Pachakutiq: I guess that's the wrong way to put it. You don't let things happen when you can't stop them. I can still see it, though. A whole line going down. Pylons canting into the fog, the angle changing, the lights tracing hazy arcs as the gondolas swing, down, down, and then it's all gone. The fog took back the little strip of space we'd stolen, and now I couldn't point out where it used to be if you asked.
Dr Kells: That's terrible. Was anyone…?
Pachakutiq: Who can say?
Dr Kells: When was this?
Pachakutiq: Thirty years ago.
There is a pause.
Pachakutiq: We're probably just about due for another.
Dr Kells: No, I don't think I'll ever ride the gondolas.
Pachakutiq: Why not?
Dr Kells sighs.
Dr Kells: Where did the void come from, anyway? Does anyone know?
Pachakutiq: Isn't that backwards? Doesn't anywhere come out of the void?
Dr Kells: Could you humour me? Please?
Pachakutiq: Well, I've heard tell.
Dr Kells: Can you tell… tell? Me?
Pachakutiq shrugs expansively.
Pachakutiq: Used to be, long time ago, you could see the ground from up here. Rich earth. Things could grow. Then something else took root in the worlds next door, something that's else forever, you understand? Something built on life to make something less than death, and they were sure they could stop it spreading here. They had to believe they could stop it. The kind of nonsense that sprawls and towers, you understand. Bad news. So they dug, and they dug, and the surface retreated 'til they had their perfect, inviolable sanctuary.
Dr Kells: You mean to say they cored out their world until there was nothing left of it. Out of fear.
Pachakutiq: Could be. It's a pretty thought. Could be there's still something down there. I hear things, time to time. The Manual tells me to listen. Doesn't tell me what to do when I hear something, but I think what it does to my heart is the answer. Maybe you should go looking, see if there's a perfect little acre in the deeps. Maybe a little skyscraper on top, blinking out gibberish in Morse.
Dr Kells: Maybe there's a giant fog machine.
Pachakutiq: That's a good one. Can I borrow it?
Dr Kells plucks up the Manual, and begins rifling through.
Pachakutiq: Point is, this isn't a space any more. It's an interval. In a way, that's all Lampeter ever was.
Dr Kells: I've heard it said. Ah, I imagine there isn't much practical in these pages?
Pachakutiq: I think it's very practical.
Dr Kells: "WHAT TO DO WHEN THE LIGHTS COME FOR YOU". Practical?
Pachakutiq: Would you feel safer not knowing?
Dr Kells: What does it even mean?
Pachakutiq looks out at the fog, and the distant paired brilliances.
Pachakutiq: When you watch them too long, everything shifts. They aren't just passing by anymore. They're coming at you, out of the pale. It can be tempting to let them take you. But that isn't your - isn't my job, not yet. I don't get to go. I have to stay, and watch them go.
Dr Kells: Rapture of the heights. How do you deal with it?
Pachakutiq: What does the Manual say?
Dr Kells glances down, turning the pages.
Dr Kells: It says you should go. That can't be right.
Pachakutiq: It's what the last one did.
Dr Kells: The last one what? The last station master?
Pachakutiq: That's right. That's how I got their job. Maybe when it's my time, I'll look up at them, and they'll look down at me, and I won't be afraid, and I'll go. But not yet. Who would sit here, and talk to you?
Dr Kells: Or the next guy.
Pachakutiq: No, just you, I think.
There is a pause.
Dr Kells: They're like ghost lights, aren't they?
Pachakutiq: Mmm.
Dr Kells: There can't be people in all of those gondolas. Why are the lights on? Can't you turn them off remotely?
Pachakutiq: That's in the Manual. Somewhere around two hundred?
Dr Kells consults the SCP-8605 instance.
Dr Kells: "The lights must stay on, on the balance, for as long as someone is coming. When no-one is coming, all lights must go off at once".
Dr Kells shakes his head.
Dr Kells: So they don't mean anything. The lights are on, but nobody's home. Eyes with no life behind them. Blind and bleeding.
Pachakutiq: Like the Neon God.
Dr Kells does not respond.
Pachakutiq: Still, it's beautiful. The mindless procession.
Pachakutiq finally stops rolling the token, and snaps it into the air with a flick of their thumb. It rings as it arcs. They catch it, and frown.
Pachakutiq: It did change the tune. When the pylons fell.
Dr Kells: The tune?
Pachakutiq: That's what I call it. The resonance of the cables, into the boardwalk, the walls, and always in the tokens. I wonder if they ring no matter where they are, as long as the cables are running.
Dr Kells: I wouldn't imagine so.
Pachakutiq: This whole station is one big stringed instrument. The tune hasn't rung quite right since that line fell. You can't play the same songs on five strings. And I do miss the extra light.
Pachakutiq shakes their head.
Pachakutiq: The world's just that little bit less bright, now. Or maybe my eyes are going.
Dr Kells: Or both.
Pachakutiq: Or both.
Dr Kells walks to the rail again, and looks out at the passing gondolas. It is impossible to tell, with the glare from the windows, whether anyone is riding.
Dr Kells: You might be right, actually.
Pachakutiq: That's a comfort. What about?
Dr Kells: Comfort, yeah. I think it's probably very comforting to see the glare, when you're in one of those gondolas. You know you're not the only thing left in the universe when you can see another set of lights blooming out the window.
Pachakutiq: The lights aren't to let people know the gondolas are there.
Dr Kells looks back.
Dr Kells: Then what?
Pachakutiq: It's to let the fog know the people are there.
Dr Kells looks at the gondolas again, then back at Pachakutiq.
Dr Kells: I'm starting to think it's not healthy to breathe this stuff in.
Pachakutiq: Probably not. It burns when my lungs are raw.
Dr Kells: Raw from what?
Pachakutiq: Yelling into it.
Dr Kells: At?
Pachakutiq: No. Just yelling. Trying for an echo, if it helps you to imagine there's a purpose.
Dr Kells: Do you ever get one?
Pachakutiq: An echo, or a purpose?
Dr Kells: I'm guessing you say "no", even if I say "both".
Pachakutiq: You've played this game before.
Dr Kells sighs, then begins to cough again. He closes his eyes tight, then opens them again. The glare from the gondolas is blinding, and he staggers back against the far railing. It shudders, but holds.
Dr Kells flinches away from the gondolas, as though he has seen something. He half-raises both hands in a defensive posture, and squints against the light.
Pachakutiq: Now you get it.
Dr Kells stares at them, bleary-eyed, then backs away. He places one hand on the rail, guiding himself to the stairs he ascended to reach the kiosk. He doesn't take his eyes off the gondolas until they are indiscernible in the sea of glowing murk.
<End Log>
When I was very young, my parents and grandparents built a playhouse for me in my backyard. I don't know whether it or the swingset came first. Certainly it antedates the wagon. My childhood seems to have happened all at once, in a single instant, when I look back on it now. A flat, shiny token. All surface and impression.
The shed was blue and white. Like the swings, though I never really thought of that until now. But a different blue. Eggshell. Which I suppose is appropriate, in retrospect.
I helped them build it. That's the story I've always told myself, though I've also always known it wasn't quite true. I had my little plastic orange hammer, just a toy; the face was hollow, and it would have put a hole in it if I drove too many nails. But I put a few finishers in the boards that made up the threshold, anyway. I don't remember if that was their idea, or mine. I want to say it's because I recognized the power of that limin, the meaning of it. Crossing from one domain to another. Comings and goings, the margins between seeings and doings. Of course I wasn't actually that bright, but in my memory, it seems like the sun had me covered. My past is never dark.
It was just painted plywood. I don't know if it was meant to last. But it's still there, and mostly still blue and white. Eventually it was nobody's house anymore, unless you counted the mice and squirrels, and we started calling it a shed, and so the play was over.
It's rotting and flaking, like all things do when the people who love them move on to other things, and yet I really don't think I could ever bear to see it go. There's a version of me still in there, breathing in the must and dust, kneeling on the wooden slats, whiling time, never wasting. Sitting on the stoop and leaving my little maker's mark.
There's a knothole in the back wall, big enough for light to come through. Big enough that you could put your eye up to it and look inside, or out. I used to do that, from both sides, peering through the narrow aperture. It made the familiar seem strange, like something glimpsed in a dream, or through a dark glass. Like that threshold on the other side did really, truly lead to a different world entire.
That's where the wagon lives now. At least, I think it does. Sometimes I'm too anxious to check on things like that. To see if the landscape has shifted, and the landmarks gone. But no, no, I'm sure it's still there.
The hole is still there, too. No wider than before, and my eyes are no larger. I could still look, if I wanted to.
I'm just afraid that if I did, I might not see myself looking back.
The following is an interview between Dr Kells and an unknown Lampeter patron on a subway train in Universe X812 "Crosslines".
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells is searching the train, car to car. It screeches as it barrels through the tunnel; the darkness behind the windows is only occasionally punctuated by brief glimpses of white light, leaving faint streamers in the air. The lights within the train are dim, and the metal is rusted in places.
There is a man in the final car, on the bank of seats at the very front, before the driver's compartment, clutching a closed book. He looks up as Dr Kells passes the accordion connector.
Dr Kells: I'm looking for the station master.
PoI #8605-A: Did you try at the station?
Dr Kells: Yes. I tried at every station.
PoI #8605-A: Then I suppose he's gone.
Dr Kells: He can't just be gone.
PoI #8605-A: Most people who've ever been, are.
Dr Kells approaches, but does not sit down. The man does not stand up.
Dr Kells: Who are you?
PoI #8605-A: Only a traveller. Who are you?
Dr Kells: My name is Simon Kells.
PoI #8605-A: But who are you?
There is a pause.
Dr Kells: I just want to know what's going on.
PoI #8605-A: Everything. That's the beauty. Isn't it frightening?
Dr Kells: All the multiverse to wander, and everybody talking past me.
PoI #8605-A: It takes less time to say what I mean. We don't have a lot left. But if you're willing to sacrifice it, I can answer your questions instead.
Dr Kells: What do you mean, we don't have a lot of time left?
PoI #8605-A: Is that not your experience?
Dr Kells sighs.
Dr Kells: Okay. I want to talk about the L-NESC Operator's Manual. You've probably never heard of it.
PoI #8605-A: The gospel.
Dr Kells: What?
PoI #8605-A: The last, best testament of the lines. Of course I know it.
PoI #8605-A lifts the book, and turns it so Dr Kells can see the cover. It is an instance of SCP-8605.
Dr Kells: And you're not the station master?
PoI #8605-A: Do I look tethered to you?
Dr Kells: You sound unhinged to me.
PoI #8605-A laughs.
PoI #8605-A: That's right. The hinged can go either way. I, on the other hand, have chosen my arc, and it's too late to arrest the momentum.
Dr Kells: So, what does that make you? A priest of Lampeter?
PoI #8605-A: No, there are no priests. Or there are, but it's not what you think.
Dr Kells: What, then? What would be the priesthood of Lampeter?
PoI #8605-A wordlessly raises the SCP-8605 instance again.
Dr Kells: You're serious?
PoI #8605-A: This is our interlocutor. Lampeter is an unwritten song with four thousand verses, each unique. To ride the line is to commune with all who have ridden before, who ride now, whose rides are yet to come. To speak without words, to hear what nobody is saying. The Manual distills the essence of that communion.
Dr Kells: You're talking about a book that only operators get to read. Usually.
PoI #8605-A: They hold no secret liturgy, and the language is universal. This holy text needs no translation, only repetition. It interprets itself. The lines translate.
Dr Kells: You've lost me.
PoI #8605-A folds his legs underneath him, on the seat, and beams up at Dr Kells.
PoI #8605-A: Communication and translation. To communicate is to move a thing along. To translate is to shift it down an axis. Two different ways to describe the same thing. To convey - if you'll pardon me - that which transcends language. And there is nothing more transcendent than a thing out of place. Or a person. Transportation, you see, is always radical. Spread the word.
Dr Kells: But nobody does. It's a dead gospel. It's gathering dust on shelves in empty stations, visited by empty trains, read by armchair philosophers who can't give me a single straight answer about what it actually means. There is no choir. Lampeter is just a network of silences.
PoI #8605-A: These worlds are not silent. They will never be silent again. They were silent before Lampeter. Lampeter is sound.
The train shudders.
Dr Kells: Less sound by the minute.
PoI #8605-A: Silence is false. It's an untruth. It's the space between truths, no matter how long the wait. You should get off at this stop.
The train jerks abruptly to a halt, and the doors open. The station is poorly lit, and the overhead lights flicker. Dr Kells makes no move to leave, and eventually the doors close again and the train resumes its journey.
PoI #8605-A: Your prerogative.
Dr Kells: "No matter how long the wait", you said. Who's waiting? And for what?
PoI #8605-A: Creation waits for us. It was waiting before we were. It was only half a story, then. A world unbuilt. Form without flesh. We complete it. We are its truth.
Dr Kells: Arrogance.
PoI #8605-A: Before humanity, there was no such thing as sound. Nothing else perceives it as we do. Nothing else can make it real. Lampeter is the lungs of the multiverse, and we are its voice.
Dr Kells: So, that's how you'd define it?
PoI #8605-A grimaces, as though pained.
PoI #8605-A: No, don't try to nail me down. I don't define it, it defines me. Lampeter is Lampeter. For now.
Dr Kells: For now.
PoI #8605-A: And not for later. The life cycle nears its end. The terminal station.
Dr Kells: Life cycle? It's a transportation network. It's not even one single thing.
PoI #8605-A: Then why did we give it a name?
Dr Kells: We didn't. The people who built it did, and that was another act of arrogance.
PoI #8605-A: Do you have children, Director?
Dr Kells: No.
PoI #8605-A: That's why you don't understand. Tell me: if you did, would you name them?
Dr Kells: What? Of course I…
PoI #8605-A: There you go.
Dr Kells: You're describing a constellation of wormholes as a child.
PoI #8605-A: No, I'm saying that's what it used to be. It hasn't been a child for a long, long age. It's elderly now, and on the decline.
Dr Kells: Infrastructure doesn't work that way.
PoI #8605-A: Everything we build works exactly that way. Our buildings are born, and we celebrate them with great pomp and ritual. They age, and grow, and adapt. They take on many careers, and their skin falls off and regenerates, and the little microorganisms inside them live short little lives and replace themselves, too. In time every tower on every shore becomes old, becomes decrepit, and we regard them with a sweet and bitter mixture of resentment, affection and fear, until finally they are gone. They fall into that fathomless sea. The cycle is complete.
Dr Kells: You can make anything a metaphor with the right frame.
PoI #8605-A: You don't have to tell me. Before I was a believer, I was an architect. But some frames fit just right. We spend most of our lives in these shells that we build for ourselves. We fill them up. Do you believe you are more than just the matter that comprises you?
Dr Kells: I…
PoI #8605-A: If you do, then surely you understand you leave some part of yourself everywhere you go. You linger. You imbue. You make these things alive by sharing your life with them. Every Earth has been a patchwork quilt of living urban fabric since we left the caves and thatch. Perhaps even the caves are still ensouled.
Dr Kells: You don't sound significantly less deranged than the prophets of the Neon God.
PoI #8605-A: From French, desrengier. To disorder the lines. That process started the moment the first passenger stepped onto the first Lampeter train. We are the derangement on the lines. That's no prophecy. That's just the way things are. Always has been, and will until the end.
Dr Kells: But there doesn't have to be an end. Things can be fixed. You can re-string cables, rebuild roadbeds. Hell, most of the system isn't even technological. You just use that technology to reach it.
PoI #8605-A: You're still thinking of Lampeter as the holes it runs through.
Dr Kells: That's all it is! You think just because I drive my car down a sideroad, hit the right pothole, and end up on the skyway in A356, that sideroad and the skyway are both part of Lampeter? That's madness. That kind of logic would mean everything is part of everything, all of the time.
PoI #8605-A: Precisely.
The flashes of light outside the windows are increasing in frequency. Dr Kells starts, as though he has seen something.
PoI #8605-A: You believe, don't you? Or you once did. I've been preaching to a fallen congregation of one.
Dr Kells: I don't think of becoming more rational as a fall.
PoI #8605-A: But it is. Do you think it was rational to raise a fist to heaven and beat holes clean through the empyrean? Ascension is always disorderly. Order propagates on the horizontal axis. Everything in its place. You must be aberrant to rise, and falling is the province of philosophers. All that thinking weighs you down.
Dr Kells: Down is the trend. We're mice on a sinking ship.
PoI #8605-A: No, this is not a story of defeat. A thing doesn't need to last forever to be mighty. We moved the earth, we moved Earths, pulled them so close together you can see strange peaks from the top of each world. We have unfolded the universe. That is a work worthy of naming. It's worthy of song. Our labours and lamentations only add a note of bitter to the sweetness of the tune. Sing in protest of the silence. Disturb it.
Dr Kells: You sound like a revolutionary.
PoI #8605-A: Transportation always radicalizes.
There is a faint squeal, as of a sudden but brief application of brakes.
PoI #8605-A: Some people act because they can't stand still. Some make noise because they can't abide stillness. There's a specific sort of individual who can't be left alone with themselves, and interiority. So they push out.
Dr Kells: And then they haven't got the money to get back home.
PoI #8605-A: Or they have no home to get back to. Perhaps they, too, transcended. Carried home within them, with them. Shared theirs with us.
Dr Kells: And now it's just ours, and they're gone.
PoI #8605-A: But their right to see it survive remains. It was built by the dead, and they still have their stake in it.
PoI #8605-A places his hand on the windowsill, and slides his fingers along. When he pulls back, there is rust and what might be blood on his palm.
Dr Kells reaches out to touch the sill as well, then catches himself and stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets.
Dr Kells: We have a responsibility for what's happened to it, too. It's hard to see all of this as anything more than a beautiful failure. A respectable attempt that fell short of the mark. I hate to agree with the Smithians…
PoI #8605-A: Then don't. L-NESC didn't go bankrupt through mismanagement. Any endeavour that vast and audacious is doomed to accrue a mountain of debt. But it's all worth it, because the view from the tops of those mountains…
Dr Kells: I guess you have to be a visionary to see a mountain as a challenge, not just an obstruction.
PoI #8605-A: There's always an element of chance with investment. Always a risk. That multiplies exponentially when your investment crosses the multiversal boundary. The Lampeters knew they wouldn't be on top forever. But they set that against the fact that they'd see farther than everyone else before they had to come back down.
Dr Kells: They might have taken the time to build a safety net first.
PoI #8605-A: They were fighting to see who could realize the same vision. The L-NESC and the Neon God. Steel from sea to sea to sea. Bounding the firmaments. Then the L-NESC stopped, and now we reassess. Does Lampeter fit the bill, as a fait accompli, or will the God overtake it in the end? Or is there an end, or is reality just a circuit, an endless course with no terminus?
Dr Kells: Or will they march us, one on either side, into the sea?
PoI #8605-A: We're not so easily led as you think. Humanity is a species of trailblazers. This is why I say we need no priesthood, not of flesh and blood and bone at least. We lay down trails, lay down roads, lay down tracks. You really start to dream, when you lay down. In this shared dream we walk the same paths, guided by the same instincts, wearing the soil into ruts and filling those ruts with asphalt and glass and steel, driven by the dream within a dream of being elsewhere.
Dr Kells: Until there's no more elsewheres. Until we've killed them all.
PoI #8605-A: The multiverse was dead before Lampeter.
PoI #8605-A taps the floor with his foot.
PoI #8605-A: These are the arteries of a beating heart, now. You can feel it through your boots, humming in the rails across your bones. It beats low, but the blood still moves.
Dr Kells: Not for much longer. There's rust in the veins. And then what? What comes after the life cycle ends?
PoI #8605-A shrugs.
PoI #8605-A: Recycling?
Dr Kells huffs impatiently.
PoI #8605-A: I'm sorry. It's too easy to riddle in the dark. What happens, Director Kells, when a made thing ends its life, is this: it becomes all the more precious. When it no longer matters, it's left to those who truly care. The authors of this gospel, written in their heart's own blood.
PoI #8605-A draws the SCP-8605 instance to his breast.
PoI #8605-A: Every man his own hymnal.
Dr Kells: So you think, what? The Manual was authored by the people who ride the line? Literally?
PoI #8605-A: No. As I said, sir, no interlocutors. Only the riders and the ride.
Dr Kells: Then…?
PoI #8605-A: The Manual is Lampeter writing love letters back to us. I read them in voyeuristic rhapsody.
Dr Kells: I've never read a love letter where the writer just talks about themselves.
PoI #8605-A: Something is always lost in translation, you know.
PoI #8605-A smiles.
PoI #8605-A: She's telling us how to understand her. That's the greatest gift a lover can ever give. Love is understanding, Dr Kells. True love is understanding you are understood.
Dr Kells: If that's what the Manual is, then what is Lampeter itself? Alive? Sentient? Sapient? Or is it another God?
PoI #8605-A: I think you already know.
Dr Kells: …connections.
PoI #8605-A: Yes. An everlasting, all-encircling cable. Connection is everything. Lampeter is nothing when divided from us, and we are lesser without it. We are parts of the same whole, Simon. Lampeter is the steel soul of humanity. All humanities.
The screeching suddenly rises in pitch and intensity, and Dr Kells falls to his knees, clutching his ears.
PoI #8605-A: You should have taken the last stop.
PoI-8605-A reaches up to pull the emergency cord. The brakes squeal, and the blur of light outside the window stabilizes into a meaningless, pulsing maze of neon.
PoI #8605-A: End of the line.
All along the length of the train, the fluorescent lights snap off and are replaced with emergency red. The doors slide open.
Dr Kells staggers to his feet, stares at PoI #8605-A for a moment, then turns and plunges out into the darkness.
The details are all smoothed out and indistinct. Half of the next station is exposed. The tiles are gleaming, not grungy and cracked as they had been where Dr Kells first boarded the train. The station name on the wall is a jumble of meaningless symbols, almost words, but really just the impression words would give to something that knew how to create the illusion of form, but never the fact of meaning. A thing that wouldn't know what to do with a word, either written down or spoken aloud. A cry so strangled it is mute.
There are advertisements on the wall as well. Images that do not hold up to an instant's scrutiny. Architecture where the lines don't meet. Faceless figures with too many fingers. None of it means anything, but one thing.
PoI #8605-A comes to the front of the train. Dr Kells raises a hand in farewell; PoI #8605-A raises his instance of SCP-8605. Before he is out of sight, the lights go out. What comes on a moment later isn't really light at all. Not true light.
So Dr Kells ignores it, puts it behind him, shining grey on nothing.
<End Log>
The following is an excerpt from the 1000th and presumed final edition of the SCP-8605 instance pertaining to the subway in Universe X812 "Crosslines", and a transcript of an extemporaneous conversation between Dr Kells and an individual fitting the description of Nanami Tani, stationmaster in Universe X810 "Panpacifica".
OF BELOW
"Worm's eye view" is a misnomer. Worms are blind.
But they can sense light, and they can sense dark, and the press of bodies against their flesh. But they cannot sense the end, and so they will not notice it, and so they will outlast. If we are to survive like worms, persist beyond persistence, we must adopt the worm's perspective.
The space beyond the windows should be lit only intermittently. Within the body of the beast, all is light. Without, all is dark. The train is a single organism pushing through black, racing between snatches of white, shrinking from the safety of stasis. Passengers packed together like annelid segmentation, writhing upon each other with every turn. Rush hour is the zenith to universal one-ness.
Above the crush of stinking automobiles, a carpet of unmoving flesh-in-synthetic, awaiting fire from the sky to transform them into rivers of exposed and stagnant slag. Below, the worm is free, and will remain so.
A subway crawls so that humans may walk, to the final threshold and beyond.
<Begin Log>
Dr Kells is walking through the subway tunnel, alone. There are few overhead lights, and visibility is extremely poor. A silhouette appears in the distance, and he moves toward it.
An older woman is walking slowly in the same direction. She glances back at Dr Kells as he approaches, and nods.
Dr Kells: I know you. Don't I know you?
Nanami: Don't we all know each other by now?
Dr Kells: You're Nanami, aren't you? A stationmaster from further down the line?
Nanami: Maybe I used to be. When there was a station there.
Dr Kells: Are we safe here?
Nanami: Nowhere is safe. But if you mean, "do we have time to talk"?
Nanami smiles.
Nanami: I like to think we always do.
Dr Kells: I'm sorry for what you've lost.
Nanami: We should have seen it coming. I bet that's what they always say.
Dr Kells: The Neon God.
Nanami: Foolish to even give it a name. You can't apply signifiers to a thing that signifies nothing. It's like trying to glue steel. Then again, I guess it speaks more of us than it does that…
Nanami shrugs.
Nanami: Thing.
Dr Kells: We name our experiences, like we name ourselves.
Nanami: Which makes sense, since we are our experiences. And very little else, in my opinion.
Dr Kells: And what experiences.
Nanami: Right. Enough to change the rider. Maybe enough to change the ride.
Dr Kells: And not for the better. Lampeter is turning into a long, long ladder that everyone pulls up behind them.
They walk in silence for several minutes.
Nanami: At least when floodwaters rise, they carry a reflection. You can see yourself in them if you look down. The Neon God is nothing like that.
Dr Kells: I think it says something about us in negative. What we could be, but aren't.
Nanami: The dead end of all ambitions. The great cancelling-out.
Nanami gestures at nothing.
Nanami: All our innovation, webs of steel across every eternity, and the best we can do against it is to turn and run away. Some might call that a sick climax to such a promising story, and nothing but the denouement after.
Dr Kells: But not you?
Nanami smiles sadly, but does not respond.
Dr Kells: Escape is just another kind of journey, isn't it?
Nanami inclines her head to acknowledge the point.
Nanami: It ends that way, for some. The lucky ones. But it always starts with losing everything, and that's inauspicious.
Dr Kells: I won't trivialize what you're going through, but when I first started the trip that brought me here -
Nanami: This is no here.
Dr Kells: - I felt I'd lost everything too. Everything that mattered to me. And that after a long life filled with watching things I cared about wither to nothing. It was kind of freeing, honestly, just walking away. Riding away.
Nanami: It's always freeing. As long as the ride continues.
Nanami looks up at the tunnel ceiling, as though seeing past it.
Nanami: And humanity? Humanity rides forever.
Dr Kells: That's a nice idea, if a little difficult to believe at the moment.
Nanami: Maybe once you've lost everything a few more times, you'll understand resilience.
Dr Kells: I wish Lampeter was more resilient.
Nanami: In every way that counts, Lampeter will last.
Dr Kells: This may seem very trite to you right now, and I hope you're not offended, but my journey started for a reason too, and I'd like to see it through. It's not all I have, but it's not far off.
Nanami: You have questions? Go ahead. We've got nothing but track ahead of us, and that's always been good for conversation.
Dr Kells: I'm out here because of the Operations Manual.
Nanami laughs.
Nanami: How metatextual.
Dr Kells: What do you mean? What do you know about it?
Nanami: Not very much, I'll admit. The technical things I need to know to do my job. A few pages of the other stuff I've snuck a look at over the years. But generally I let it lie.
Dr Kells: I thought most of the stationmasters consulted the Manual a lot. Especially this far out.
Nanami: That's their prerogative. I don't think it's for me.
Dr Kells: Not for you? It pretty explicitly is, unless I'm missing something.
Nanami: Like I said, the practical bits. Those are for us. The rest is for posterity.
Dr Kells: Posterity? What do you think the Manual is?
Nanami: I think it's the record of a voyage.
Dr Kells: What voyage in particular?
Nanami: None in particular. Ours.
Nanami gestures to take in the empty tunnel.
Nanami: All of ours. From the start of Lampeter to the end. The first drafts are rough, like outlines. Mechanically sound but lacking depth. The later drafts… convey.
Dr Kells: Just like Lampeter itself.
Nanami: That's a strangely poetic position for a Foundation administrator to take.
Dr Kells: I've found myself in plenty of strange positions since I started this trip.
Nanami: Every step of a trip except the first is always strange, Director.
Dr Kells: Isn't that the truth.
The darkness is gradually shading to grey, behind, and a sickly yellow ahead.
Dr Kells: So, the Operations Manual is humanity's memoirs.
Nanami: Our meaning on the move. Emotions in motion. I like to think so.
Dr Kells: And who's meant to read it?
Nanami: Maybe we are, when we reach the end of lines. Maybe it's meant for whoever replaces us, when we're gone.
Dr Kells: Maybe it's meant for the Neon God.
Nanami: I hadn't considered that.
Dr Kells: Maybe all our wanderings have been about crafting a glue that will stick to steel.
Dr Kells and Nanami consider in silence. There are faint sounds in the distance, both ahead and behind, though they are indistinct.
Dr Kells: You know, I've asked people what they think the Manual is dozens of times now. You think I've ever heard the same answer twice?
Nanami: What do you think it is?
There is a pause.
Dr Kells: It's an open question.
Nanami: So, answer. Or at least try.
Dr Kells: No, that was my answer. The Manual is an open question. A reason to go out and ask. A thing is what a thing does. And what it did was bring me…
Dr Kells nods.
Dr Kells: What it did, was bring me.
Nanami: Is that a good thing?
Dr Kells: Yes.
They walk in silence for a moment. Dr Kells begin to hum.
Dr Kells: Yes, I think it is.
They round a bend into a straightaway, and Dr Kells blinks in a sudden light.
<End Log>
The tunnel was filled with bodies.
They were alive. In spite of everything, they were alive. On the walkways in the tunnel, or huddled against their pilings on the tracks, just inches away from where the train would pass. Scars on skin where it passed too close. Wide, staring eyes, and tattered clothing.
Thousands of them.
We walked for miles. It was black as pitch, and silent as death. We found each other one by one, as Nanami and I had done. And we kept on finding until you couldn't say for sure where one body began, and the other ended. A horde. A caravan. A huddled mass in search of sheltering shores.
It felt like something was forcing the air out of the tunnel, an oppressive absence of anything pursuing us up the line. Eager for its next meal. No, not eager. No anticipation. Grinding concrete tombstone teeth. Mindless mastication.
So, I sang a song.
Some of them had heard it before, and sang with me. Some hadn't, but they picked up the chorus and joined in when it came 'round again. A song about a voyage from day to night. About how some things end, but no thing is ever forgotten, not so long as you can sing about it.
A song about a train.
After a while, I lagged behind. The danger was long past, driven back for the present moment by the strength of our connection. By a medium in which it could not propagate. Communication it could never translate, and so it sat upon its axis, lurking at the periphery where distance rendered it almost a passable facsimile of the things that frame life, if not life itself. Livid, but inert.
And when I was truly alone again in the darkness, I saw a single red bulb spark in the middle of the concrete wall, cracks forming around it, metal winding into plastic winding into pale, twinkling wires. The predator kindling its fairy light. The lure set.
I watched the wires wink on and off, and squinted at them in the gloom. Fibre optics, I thought. That was interesting. Perhaps the slabs obstructing the tunnel were asbestos, and the windows double glazed. Might they one day be webbed lattice, like I saw on Nuur's space elevator? It was a pretty thought.
And as the wires branched out further, and the dappled false-light raced out ahead of them, I saw these words upon the wall -
IT LIVES
- and I knew it didn't matter who had written them. Which madness they reflected.
Because I knew that either they were right, today, or they might well be, tomorrow.
So I turned away, again, and I kept on walking.
The following log records the events occurring upon Dr Kells' return to the terminal station in Universe X812.
<Begin Log>
The refugees are filing into a dimly-lit station, filthy with age and neglect. There are carts set up on the rails, carrying people to the siding where the Lampeter connection to Universe X820 is located. Cots and sleeping bags are set up everywhere, and there are stacks of supplies in every corner.
Dr Kells hauls himself onto the platform and lies on the floor for a moment, catching his breath.
Voice: Simon?
Dr Rosie Hartlepool is kneeling over Dr Kells, a look of concern on her face. Dr Kells laughs.
Dr Kells: Of course it's you.
Dr Hartlepool helps Dr Kells to a sitting position, and kneels in front of him.
Dr Hartlepool: What were you doing in there? What are you doing on the line, in the first place?
Dr Kells: Starting a book club.
Dr Hartlepool: What?
Dr Kells: It's not important.
Dr Hartlepool finishes her cursory examination.
Dr Hartlepool: You don't seem injured.
Dr Kells: I feel pretty good. Hey.
Dr Kells takes Dr Hartlepool's hand.
Dr Hartlepool: Yeah?
Dr Kells: You made it back.
Dr Hartlepool: Never any doubt.
Dr Kells: What did you see, at the far end? If you finished the report, it was after I left.
Dr Hartlepool considers.
Dr Hartlepool: Not important either. What did you see on your trip?
Dr Kells: Lots of things. But I think the value was in what I heard.
Dr Hartlepool shakes her head.
Dr Hartlepool: I'm very surprised to find you out here, if that wasn't already obvious.
Dr Kells: I was surprised to find me, too.
Dr Kells sits up. Dr Hartlepool releases his hand.
Dr Hartlepool: I saw your last few updates to the 7005 file. Nothing we do counts for anything.
Dr Kells: It doesn't count to them. The Council. But they don't count either.
Dr Hartlepool: Radical notion.
Dr Kells: Occupational hazard.
Dr Kells slowly rises to his feet, and looks around. The refugees he entered the station with have not been further supplemented, and the relief efforts appear to be winding down. In the light it can be seen that many are openly weeping, or have been for some time. Some are carrying luggage, or loose possessions. Others are carrying their compatriots. Conversation is hushed, but snatches of song can still be heard. The refugees are teaching it to each other, one at a time.
Dr Kells: Is there anything I can do to help?
Dr Hartlepool: No, we're just about done here. You were the last bunch. I can't believe you and I… Were you following me?
Dr Kells: No. Maybe the line brought us together.
Dr Hartlepool considers him curiously.
Dr Kells: I was looking into the Manual, Rosie.
Dr Hartlepool: And?
Dr Kells: I think I brought us from no explanation to a dozen that only go halfway. But I don't think it's worth asking whether any of them are true, not really. What they all have in common, what really matters, is that in some sense they all tell me Lampeter is alive.
Dr Hartlepool: Alive.
Dr Kells: That's right.
Dr Hartlepool: Alive in what sense?
Dr Kells spreads his hands wide.
Dr Kells: Take your pick.
Dr Hartlepool considers Dr Kells, then the last of the refugees and the volunteers tending their injuries.
Dr Hartlepool: No crazier than anything else, I guess. Makes it even more sad, though.
Dr Kells: What?
Dr Hartlepool: That Lampeter is dying.
Dr Kells: Everything dies.
Dr Hartlepool: That doesn't mean it has to die badly. There's still a chance for this thing to achieve something, be something more, and we're squandering it. Once it's gone, the story is over.
Dr Kells: I don't believe that. Not anymore. Death isn't when something stops meaning anything. It's when you can finally see the scale of how much it meant.
There is laughter. Both Directors turn to see the source; Nanami is hugging one of the refugees. Both are in tears.
Dr Kells: It's all going to be okay, I think. Even if it isn't.
Dr Hartlepool: But why?
Dr Kells: Because when you get right down to it, Rosie, I think our story and Lampeter's both point to the same conclusion.
Dr Kells shrugs sheepishly.
Dr Kells: Matter, matters.
Dr Hartlepool shakes her head in disbelief.
Dr Hartlepool: I think you've been huffing fumes.
Dr Kells: Oh, for sure.
Dr Kells shakes out the sleeves of his jacket, and stretches.
Dr Kells: I imagine the Manual is going to start publishing its final editions soon. I'd love to see what it looks like in some of the worlds the Neon God has taken over.
Dr Hartlepool: Probably blank pages.
Dr Kells: Maybe not. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the only thing that hasn't been changed.
Dr Hartlepool: You're getting awful mystical about this book, Simon.
Dr Kells: Why not? The book gets awful mystical about me.
Dr Hartlepool sighs.
Dr Hartlepool: I feel like I should stop trying, but I know I'm not going to.
Dr Kells: Of course not. I see you've already been busy doing good while I was crawling out of my bottle.
Dr Hartlepool: One of us had to.
Dr Kells: Might be easier with two.
Dr Hartlepool cocks her head to one side, considering Dr Kells. She then places a hand on his shoulder, just for a moment, and nods.
The overhead lights flicker. The assembled mass look up as one, concern etched deep on every face.
Dr Hartlepool's expression of resolve gives way to a rueful smile.
Dr Kells: What? What is it?
Dr Hartlepool: I guess I'm still wondering whether or not it's going to make a difference, even if we bring our best.
Dr Kells: I don't think so. You get difference from subtraction. If we bring our best, if everyone does, that's the sum of all humanity. All humanities. It can't help but be better than that empty quantity. The zero beneath the dividing line.
Dr Hartlepool nods absent-mindedly.
Dr Hartlepool: Sure. But if I know anything for certain now, it's that the whole damn system is bound for a fall. It's an unavoidable fact of the road we're on. A certainty.
Dr Kells: The bridge is out, and the train keeps going.
Dr Hartlepool: If you like.
Dr Kells: Yes, it probably is going to fall. But you said it yourself.
Dr Kells smiles.
Dr Kells: The words will stand.
There is a pause.
Dr Kells: Are the lines home still running?
Dr Hartlepool: As efficient as we can make them, given our resources. Eager to get back?
Dr Kells: Not quite.
Dr Hartlepool: I've got some paperwork to finish, if you can wait.
Dr Kells: I think I'd like to run on ahead, actually, if that's alright with you.
Dr Hartlepool: How come? You just escaped the grey apocalypse. Where are you off to in such a hurry?
Dr Kells: To kiss a woman on a train.
Dr Hartlepool: What?
Dr Hartlepool laughs.
Dr Hartlepool: Why?
Dr Kells: Because if I never pass this way again, if the lines end or we end or everything, everywhere ends, even if there isn't so much as a single scrap of evidence left to prove it… I'll at least know a part of myself is still out here. Still hanging in the air.
<End Log>
Final Report from Dr Kells.
Life's most wonderful characteristic is its capacity to love other life. But its strangest, by far, is its capacity to love the inanimate. Our drive to see ourselves reflected in the things we build, to see others in the things they build. To see our forebears in the rust, and the promise of our children in the shine of new-lain steel.
That isn't something we were born with. That's something we, all of us together, have created. Set aside a place for in our hearts. And there is room for expansion, still.
I remember the pattern on the swingset now. It was a chain. That which binds. That which connects. Across the span of years, that chain connects me to someone I thought lost forever, the boy who saw it first in summer sunlight on a day that seemed eternal, now long-dead. The memory was waiting for me out there on the line, a snapshot of my missing link that I could hold, and bring back with me.
What other connections might we find, what links might we forge, if only we muster the will to get up and go?
Perhaps someday even the Neon God will be looked upon not with fear, mania, or resignation, but the warm and sentimental glow of long association. Perhaps that will change it. Make it ours. Give it meaning. If Lampeter can die, perhaps the Neon God can live. Perhaps that is our collective way out of this long decline into desperate anomie; fear cannot forever withstand familiarity, nor can love resist it.
Probably not. But it never hurts to dream. Lampeter, after all, is a dream made manifest.
I think of Nuur's shining elevator, and Andronova's tiresome treadmills, and I think I understand now why nothing in any universe dies unmourned. Though iconoclasm is a blade, time blunts every cutting edge. And love? Love can turn them, as it turns the ever-spinning wheels that drive us forward in our multitude of worlds.
At the moment I left the Council chamber at Site 01, I knew why I'd lived the life I had. Seen the things I'd seen, lost the things I'd lost. I knew what I'd been prepared for.
I was going to be the one to witness the end of everything.
The Overseer I spoke to confirmed that the multiverse was doomed. That Lampeter would die. Not that nothing could or should be done, but certainly that nothing would. The Neon God was real, and destined to win. Humanity was an elaborate joke. I was a crude one. A limerick about a slip, and a fall, and a crack of bone on ice. In one conversation, he took everything from me.
And the very next day, I realized I've been waiting my whole life to lose it.
There is beauty in rust.
There is meaning in failure.
But most of all, there is the simplest and uttermost fact of life in every single universe.
Stasis is nothing.
Transition is everything.
There is always another way. There is always a way out.
Turn your head ninety degrees from what you perceive as loss, and in its third dimension you will see it for what it truly is.
Change.
And as anyone who has ever ridden the rails can tell you, enough change can get you anywhere.
So, we ride on.
Cite this page as:
"SCP-8605" by HarryBlank, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/scp-8605. Licensed under CC BY-SA.
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This page contains quotations from SCP-7005 and SCP-4989 by Tufto Tufto .
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