SCP-8382-2

Link to article: SCP-8382-2.
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[[div class="lillihammer"]]
**__3 June 2023__**
**In which I let Thilo cook**

One drawback of our **##green|peaceful little retreat##** is that I can mostly only practice 'safe' memetics. There's nobody to use as a punching bag. Thilo has promised to fix me up something in that regard, but so far it has yet to materialize.

This month was all building up to a field trip where I'd finally be able to to flex my mental muscles against someone else's. It was definitely becoming a problem, only being able to test my wilder ideas in the field.

Running a bread shop in Bern was a kind of combat, I'll admit.

"The odds of this resolving peacefully are slim to none, you know." I passed a loaf of //burebrot// over the counter; my patron accepted with a glassy-eyed stare, and left without paying. Thilo's way of making up for the fact that none of these people had bread on the brain until they saw my freshly-painted signage.

"I know." Thilo was labouring over the oven, and seemed to be enjoying it; apparently the trend where the older you get, the more manual labour parses as fun, does not significantly reverse when you get on in centuries. "But we are still going to try. I am not making a weapon out of you."

That was my cue to flip the door sign from OPEN to THIS SHOP DOES NOT EXIST. "I'll be doing the making, thanks very much. That's another thing I've got experience with." I grabbed my satchel from under the counter, and pulled out the little red case. He still hasn't asked me about it. "I'm upgrading my equipment, but it's already top of the line."

Thilo finished his latest masteryeast, and switched off the gas. "Isn't it exhausting? Always having to be right?"

I sat down on my stool behind the cash register. "It probably would be. If I had to work at it. Saves me time to work on being the best."

We breathed in the aroma of a dozen dozen bakings, in satisfied silence. This used to be part of a massive chain of bakeries piggybacking on the success of a single sign painted in the seventeenth century by one Thilo Zwist, apprentice //schriftsteller.// He's been misty-eyed the entire time.

There's an ongoing test in my education, and I flipped over the metaphorical sheet again. I thought I recognized the expression on his face. "Do you think you could ever be one of them again?"

He’s used to me trying to read his mind now, so he didn't look surprised. A little sad, though. "No. They were never what I thought they were in the first place." 

"Do you think they could be like you?" 

He chuckled. "Am I such a shining example?"

"You should see how your beard looks in the sunlight." I paused, girding myself for the thing I hate doing most in the world. "Yes. You're a terrific example. Minus the moping."

He looked touched, if unconvinced. "I have to believe we can all become better."

"How much of the way they are do you think is the result of brainwashing?" 

He didn't have to think about it. Probably he's spent more time on this question than I have spent alive. "I imagine it differs from person to person. The //schriftsteller// take who they need. Some of those people come very willingly. Some under protest. The ones who are eager to see these projects come to fruition will be difficult to reach. The others, it will be a matter of saving them."

"We're pretty good at saving people," I reminded him. 

"We may need to become even better at reaching them. I had no idea there were any Writers still left in the world, but now it seems there are far too many for us to overwhelm with force alone."

"I've been practicing my debate skills." 

He nodded. "That's good. Because this may end up being the most important, possibly the last, great argument of human history. You will need to be more than convincing. You will need to truly understand your opponents."

"You mean find things in common? Understand their perspectives?"

"Yes. That is what I mean." 

"And you believe I can do that without being swayed?" 

Something like pride crept into his elderly rasp. "Only slightly less fervently than you believe it."

I gave him a few seconds to see the effect his words had on me before responding. "You really are getting to know me."

Then I let that sit for a bit before ruining the moment. "Not going to lie, though, it'll be difficult to meet a fascist halfway."

He wiped his brow, and plopped his old man hat back over his old man dome. "That's the trick, though. You don't meet them halfway. You don't necessarily even concede anything. They might see their situation and all possible modifications to it as a line with two or three points -- certainly the //schriftsteller// and anyone who finds their ideals appealing will -- but you must perceive it instead as a plane. That is the true value of perspective; if you have it, and they don't, you can appear to give them ground from a two-dimensional perspective without actually getting any closer." He delivered this with all the force, poise, and obvious signs of rote memorization of a university lecture.

"And here I thought you were going to argue for radical sympathy."

He sighed. "I'm growing a little more practical in my endless autumn years."

"Or you and I are closing the gap between our perspectives." 

"Or perhaps it only looks that way." He glanced at the door. "This //zopf// won't eat itself, you know." 

I stood back up, and stretched my legs. "I am beginning to really appreciate the nuances of language," I told him as I walked to the door.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You know the French word for bread is //pain//?"
[[/div]]

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This one's personal, in the weirdest possible way. My first up close and personal encounter with a //giftschreiber// came when five of them [[[/12-aromantic-abatement | tried to blow up a building]]] I was in. I got one of them eaten by a tentacle monster, and a friend of mine shot two others to death. That left Alis Rydderech, who invented herself whole cloth, and Imogen Tarrow, who duplicated a real person in exacting detail. The //geistschreiber// mimic the appearances and personalities of their targets so effectively it's difficult to tell where one personality begins and the next one ends.

Alis has turned up time and time again in our lives, in worlds that now only exist in my memories. In this world she fed us information for a while, as a free but hunted agent, until eventually she fed herself to us in exchange for certain amenities I find too disgusting to discuss.

I always had her in mind for a chat, but the nice thing about putting people in boxes is that they usually keep until you need them.

Except for the fact that we also had "Imogen" in detention, and now we don't.

Anyway.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//Dr. Lillihammer leaves Area-219's central corridor and enters a wide courtyard with no ceiling. The heat from the facility melts most of the falling snow, but some flakes make it down to ground level. A single inmate, "Alis Rydderech", is leaning on the wooden slat walls. She notices Dr. Lillihammer, and smiles.>//

**Alis:** You're not my usual date.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're out of my league.

//<Dr. Lillihammer settles against the wall beside Alis, and looks down at her.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Aren't you cold?

**Alis:** Yeah, but at least I'm not cruel.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Funny. Hey, quick question. Are you familiar with the concept of 'time off for good behaviour'?

//<Alis snorts.>//

**Alis:** Are you about to tell me you've erased it from the noösphere?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I was thinking we could make a deal.

**Alis:** I've already got a deal.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's bad.

**Alis:** So am I.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Right now you give us the cognitive equivalent of table scraps, and we give you conjugal visits with the world's saddest sack. I would term this deal 'tat for tit'. Do you know what tat is, Alis?

[[include component:image-block

  name=Alis.jpg|
  caption=Photograph of PoI-6721-1 at Secure Area-219, 2023. |
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]]

//<Alis shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It means something which is useless. Like everything you've told us about the crypto cults so far.

**Alis:** What do you want me to say? I know you've seen the reports. My brain is a cloverleaf interchange full of crashed cars and roadblocks. They've tried everything. Hypnosis. Mental modelling. Mnestic therapy. If there's anything still in here--

//<She taps her temple.>//

**Alis:** --that you haven't heard yet, it's because somebody //really// didn't want you to hear it.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Which means it's something we need to hear.

**Alis:** Yeah. Too bad, huh?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. You're not a dead end, Alis. You're an unsolved puzzle. Do you know what the primary characteristic of an unsolved puzzle is?

//<Alis waits.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Me not having tried to solve it.

//<Alis laughs bitterly.>//

**Alis:** Unless you're planning on giving me that perfect recall of yours, I don't see--

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What if I could?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What if I could bypass your mental blocks with my own mind?

//<Alis looks concerned.>//

**Alis:** What, like... a mind meld, or something?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You remember Udo Okorie?

//<Alis grimaces.>//

**Alis:** She's the only reason you're still alive.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not nearly the only one, but yeah. You too, in fact. You would have died at 21 along with everybody else, if she hadn't stopped you.

//<Alis gestures at the empty courtyard.>//

**Alis:** I owe her so much.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Udo's working on a thing. If she gets it figured out, I might be able to dig through your brain matter and find whatever they buried.

**Alis:** You make it sound so appealing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Are you interested?

//<Alis considers her for a moment.>//

**Alis:** Can't you do it without my permission?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** In a practical sense? Yes.

**Alis:** Then why wouldn't you?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Because my friend wouldn't like it.

//<Alis laughs, more earnestly this time.>//

**Alis:** Zwist. You're afraid of pissing off Thilo Zwist.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe I'm just on the same wavelength as him.

**Alis:** Fat chance. I've seen you work, Lillian. If you think you're right, you don't think twice. Other people's considerations only matter if you can't get along without them.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And I can't.

//<Alis blinks.>//

**Alis:** What?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Don't get me wrong. I'm the best at what I do, and I'm only getting better. But there's a whole wide world of bullshit out there, and the one thing I //can't// do is be everywhere at once. I need more eyes. More //minds.// That's what Thilo wants, and that's what I'm offering.

//<Alis shakes her head.>//

**Alis:** I don't understand.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We're going to flush the //scheisseschreiber// and //scheissesteller,// Alis. We're going to negate them. And that's going to take a bigger 'we' than just old man Zwist and me.

**Alis:** Are you asking me...

//<She shakes her head again.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm asking if you really do want us to stop the cycle. And I'm asking if you'd help me make that happen.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Alis:** Betting I wasn't your first choice.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, not hardly. I never know if you're coming around or I'm going insane.

**Alis:** Like I said, I don't know much about who I was before the //giftschreiber// took me in. But I do know one thing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I am rapt.

**Alis:** I know I went with them willingly.

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That doesn't mean much. We don't know what lies they told you. Obviously you can't have known what you were really getting into.

**Alis:** Maybe not on a grand scale. But I think I do know how they hooked me. I think they told me I'd get to decide who I am, for myself. With no restrictions.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's a pretty big deal. And I guess they delivered.

**Alis:** Did they, though?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You can be anybody you want. You can change your appearance. You can assert yourself in ways nobody even thinks about challenging. Nobody thinks twice when you tell them who you are.

**Alis:** I do.

//<She squirms.>//

**Alis:** They told me who to be. What roles to fill.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And now you're not one of them anymore, so you get to decide that for yourself. That must feel like the absolute peak of freedom.

**Alis:** Except I've spent so long being what they wanted, I've never considered what I want for myself.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You've been out of their control for... going on //decades// now.

**Alis:** And I still don't know.

//<Dr. Lillihammer picks at the shoulder of Alis' detention uniform.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe it's the jumpsuit. The thing about uniforms is... well, it's right there in the word, isn't it?

**Alis:** Maybe.

//<Alis looks up at the light snowfall.>//

**Alis:** Have you ever questioned who you are?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Sure. Then I immediately answer the question, and act accordingly.

**Alis:** Sounds great. Doesn't work that way for me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe you're asking the wrong questions. Or maybe that's just what you are.

**Alis:** Wrong?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, the asking type. Maybe your thing is always renegotiating. You do love to keep us guessing, Alis.

**Alis:** That's true.

//<She wrinkles her nose.>//

**Alis:** Do you know how we take people's identities?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You've explained it pretty thoroughly. You get to know your subject through research, first, and then you sit down with them in an altered state and absorb everything you can.

**Alis:** I didn't tell the whole story.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What's left?

**Alis:** What's left. Exactly. I tried being Director Tarrow for a while, you'll remember.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Vividly.

**Alis:** I was once a chemist in Prague. An astronomer in Zurich. A panhandler in Melbourne. I could call them up again at a moment's notice, because they're still in there.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Right.

**Alis:** No, Lillian, //they're still in there.// It isn't that I don't know who I am, it's that I know that I'm all of them at once. I can think in their voices. Sometimes it happens without me thinking. I can think the way they think. I have so many options in front of me, and to a certain extent they are all me. They all feel right. But I feel like I want more.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe you need to construct a new self. Or two, or three.

**Alis:** Or six?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Why not?

**Alis:** Is it like this for you, too?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Lillian-A saw half of humanity die and became one of the most important people left alive. She has more despair and a stronger sense of possibility than the woman talking to you now. Her life and mine diverge for only one year, '02 to '03. The rest range from half a decade to a decade and a half of altered history. They lived in worlds with no Breach, until the end. Their careers were dominated by different concerns. They had different friends, different lovers, different interests. -C lives in a void. Internality is everything for her, because there's nothing else out there. -D owns a secret that the rest of the Earth forgot. She's covert and more than a little bit manic. -E is one-seventh of our remnant of humanity. Everything is riding on her. She's ten years older than me, physically, and she's always at the end of her rope. Wants things she can't have. Wonders if I want them too. Sometimes I remember their lives instead of mine. I can always tell what they would have thought, or said, or did in my situation. 

**Alis:** What about -B?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** -B is a world full of spiders.

**Alis:** ...okay. But I meant Lillian-B, not the timeline.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Is question period over?

**Alis:** Do you resent them?

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. We don't resent ourselves.

//<She pushes off the wall, and heads back toward the corridor.>//

**Alis:** Would you miss them, if they were gone?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Think about my offer, and we'll talk.

//<Alis has to raise her voice to be heard now.>//

**Alis:** Did Willie come with you?

//<Dr. Lillihammer laughs, and does not stop walking.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Separate planes. Unlike you, I'm no masochist.

//<Dr. Lillihammer deactivates the recording.>//

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

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[[div class="flashyhammer"]]
[[=]]
++ Operation BURNOUT Transcripts, Excerpt
[[/=]]
----

**Context:** At the outset of this project I divided every known cryptomancer not already employed at the Foundation into two groups: candidates, and targets. Around the middle of the second list was a woman whose name very emphatically is not Imogen Tarrow. She's had her uses over the years, often looking for some of the same things I'm hoping to find, but she's always been a poisonous personality. Career highlights include replacing the Director of Area-21 (and stealing her name), getting permanently detained, getting out of permanent detention via the destruction of Site-06, getting permanently detained again, and getting out of permanent detention again via we don't actually know. I hate //geistschreiber.// So I've been keeping a weather eye out for her over the years, and a standing order to my antimemetic tweety birds to let me know if anything resembling her shows up. So when Joe Boswell spotted some inconsistencies in the rough shape of a certain someone, it was enough to send me all the way to Lisbon.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Lisbon is a maze. Its narrow, one-way streets twist and turn unexpectedly, and much of the architecture is consistent from block to block.  The medieval layout is impossible to navigate without a map.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer is walking along one such street. Cars brush past her, close by, but she does not seem to notice.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Something's missing.

**##C5000B|I can see how the city sounds. The wind through the streets and alleys, the sound of my feet on the cobbles, shutters creaking, voices through open windows, birds crying out on the Tagus. I can literally see this, because I have reprogrammed my brain to interpret audio cues as visual data. There are notes floating in the air in front of me, to each side, and behind me.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer spins in place, examining the data at her disposal.>//

**##C5000B| Being able to do this on the fly is exhilarating. I used to have contact lenses to confuse my senses, to simulate synaesthesia, but with cryptomancy I can actually tell my brain to see sounds. The //giftschreiber// are using that to encode the location of their safehouse. But there's an extra step, obviously, because what I'm seeing doesn't mean anything.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer begins to hum the notes. No obvious melody emerges.>//

//<A car passing by very close honks at her.>//

**##C5000B| I alter my synapses, and suddenly the notes are colour-coded so I can better see the difference between high and low. And suddenly, that's enough. All the notes come out blue, and I've got a very good idea of what that means. The underground PATH system in Toronto uses blue as a code for North -- heading for the arctic -- red for south, where it's warm, and orange and yellow for west and east, where the sun sets and rises. I need to keep heading north.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer moves into a new city block.>//

**##C5000B| Now there's some yellow notes in with the blue, and I know I'm doing it right. I move quickly through the block, skipping on the stones, labcoat swirling as the roads switchback, and I wonder if this ridiculous system would work half as well on a soulless modern grid. Medieval cities really do help out with the whole magical thinking deal. Maybe that's why the word wizards still love them so.##**

//<Several blocks later, Dr. Lillihammer stops in confusion.>//

**##C5000B| I'm starting to retrace my steps. Something isn't right. Something is //still// missing.##**

//<Another car moves past, slowly. Its driver supplies a single desultory honk to warn her of his passage.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, of course.

//<She steps into the street. Within minutes, there is another car behind her, honking furiously. The street is too narrow for the vehicle to pass her.>//

**##C5000B| And now the notes are complete. I wasn't seeing any orange until I got that most important element of the city soundscape in place. A few minutes later and I'm in the right district, based on what I can see now, and I wave my thanks to the motorcade that's been slowly accumulating behind me. A lot of them gesture back.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer stoops to the sidewalk, and begins tapping at what appears to be bare concrete.>//

**##C5000B| I can see symbols painted here. Well, I can smell that I can see symbols painted here, but I tell my mind to skip the interpolation. There's no way some random //gift//ed kid would be able to switch these impressions on the fly. This is the trail of a big-time word-poisoner, and they're expecting backup from similarly talented friends.##**

**##C5000B| They're going to get me instead.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer identifies a modest one-storey dwelling as her target. She shrugs off her dazzle coat, and rings the doorbell.>//

//<A slot on the door opens, and Dr. Lillihammer shoves her dazzle coat through. There is a strangled cry, and the door opens.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer kicks a doubled-over man into an umbrella rack, and pushes past him into a narrow hall. A male voice calls out ahead:>//

**Voice:** É ela!

//<She raises one hand in the air, and wiggles the fingers. A second man, deeply tanned, steps into the hall from a side door. He immediately stares at the fingers, transfixed; Dr. Lillihammer suddenly snaps them, and he falls to the floor, unconscious.>//

//<A female voice calls out this time. It sounds weary and resigned.>//

**Second Voice:** You ever had //migas?//

//<Dr. Lillihammer notices an electrical panel next to a set of stairs leading down. She opens it, places her optogenetic stimulator against the ground bus bar, adjusts her settings and closes her eyes before pressing the activation button.>//

//<The video feed is distorted as the lights in the house flicker in a seemingly random pattern. Loud thumping sounds are heard, on this floor and both above and below.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Isn't that literally just crumbs?

//<She walks through the door at the end of the hall. It leads into a simple kitchen, where "Imogen Tarrow" is still seated and eating.>//

**Tarrow:** You and I both know that "literally" is a loaded word.

//<Dr. Lillihammer sits down at the table across from her.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Did I get everybody?

**Tarrow:** Don't you always?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not really an answer, is it?

**Tarrow:** Not really.

//<Dr. Lillihammer examines Tarrow. The latter has dark bags under her eyes, and her shoulders are rounded.>//

**Tarrow:** You here to recruit me for your indie band?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're too mainstream. And I've heard your music, obviously. You know it ain't shit.

//<Tarrow shrugs.>//

**Tarrow:** It gets me where I need to go. I'm surprised you were able to read it. Used to be, you had to get lucky to catch me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That wasn't luck. The [[[/scp-8273 | best bulldog in the world]]] was on your case.

**Tarrow:** I hear she's busy these days. Got a family again. Married, even. You ever think maybe you ought to settle down, too?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not in this lifetime. Not when there's so many interesting people to meet. Imogen... should I call you Imogen?

//<Tarrow shrugs again.>//

**Tarrow:** I'll answer to it.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You've always been stubborn, Imogen, but you're no bulldog. More like a bloodhound. Always sniffing around for something.

//<Tarrow gestures at a pot on the kitchen counter.>//

**Tarrow:** Still some //migas// left.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not hungry for food, and I'm not going to be satisfied with crumbs today.

**Tarrow:** You got here by following breadcrumbs.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I got here by being better than you at what you do. So don't try to fuck with me. Tell me what it is you're looking for that's had you sighted in every capital on the continent, and then tell me why it's the //schriftsteller// guildhall.

//<Tarrow now looks alert.>//

**Tarrow:** How'd you figure that out?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You know the fun thing about bloodhounds? They're not actually any better at finding shit than any other tracking dog. That's all PR. Lady, every clue you've been following so far? I checked it out already. I've got spotters everywhere on the globe, and you're basically trotting a path I've left well behind me. You aren't finding anything.

**Tarrow:** Then why confront me now? Obviously it's not just to put me back in jail. You know I'll be out again, whether it's a week from now or a year.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Because I've never been to Lisbon, and I don't know why you're here.

//<Tarrow nods.>//

**Tarrow:** I will make you a deal.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I love deals.

**Tarrow:** You won't love this one. Let me go, and I'll tell you what I've learned.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Sure.

**Tarrow:** Sure? Seriously?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Neither of us trust the other. What's the point in belabouring the process?

**Tarrow:** I need your word that you'll let me go.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's a tall ask.

**Tarrow:** You're a tall woman.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Let's work out the phrasing, first. Then we'll see.

**Tarrow:** "I, Lillian Lillihammer, do solemnly swear to allow Imogen Tarrow to leave this place unharmed and under her own power."

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Except you aren't Imogen Tarrow.

**Tarrow:** I'm close enough. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Still seems like it's got holes in it. You know I've been spending a lot of time with **##green|those fuckers what steal shit not nailed down##**?

**Tarrow:** Word might've reached me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, they've given me a healthy respect for the dangers of oathbreaking. This has to be ironclad. How about...

**Tarrow:** Like I'm gonna let you frame this.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey, I really, really want to know what you know. Don't assume bad faith. You're the murderer here.

**Tarrow:** You murdered my sister.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Only once. In another timeline, she murdered //you.//

//<Tarrow sets down her fork.>//

**Tarrow:** ...what?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe I'll tell you that story next time we meet, when we're both free women. Okay, how's this: "I grant full power over my mobility and agency to Imogen Tarrow, until such time as she releases me, so long as she provides the information she has promised."

//<Tarrow's eyes widen.>//

**Tarrow:** Are you nuts? You //are// nuts. Fine. But add "Lillian Lillihammer" after "I." Deal?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Deal. I, Lillian Lillihammer, grant full power over my mobility and agency to Imogen Tarrow, until such time as she releases me, so long as she provides the information she has promised.

**Tarrow:** Awesome. You're getting stupid in your old age. Can you move?

//<Dr. Lillihammer does not respond.>//

**Tarrow:** Alright. Well, first, my part of the deal.

//<She leans across the table, and whispers into Dr. Lillihammer's ear before settling back into her chair.>//

**Tarrow:** Now, what was that about my sister killing me? You may speak.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** She was a //schriftsteller// all along. She was playing you.

//<Tarrow bites her lower lip.>//

**Tarrow:** Is that the truth? Speak plainly.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's the truth.

**Tarrow:** Wow.

//<Tarrow laughs.>//

**Tarrow:** I guess I should have seen that coming. Twins in opposition. That's already been the theme, the entire time, hasn't it? Wow. Anyway, I'm going to kill you now.

//<Tarrow stands, cracks her knuckles, and walks around the table to stand next to Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**Tarrow:** Maybe I'll just make you forget yourself. That's a little like death. How many selves do you have to forget, Lillian?

//<A female voice comes from the hall.>//

**Voice:** Sit back down, and don't do anything rash.

//<Tarrow snorts.>//

**Tarrow:** You've got no leverage. If I don't release her, your most important asset is completely bricked. 

**Voice:** I release you and restore your agency, Dr. Lillihammer.

//<Dr. Lillihammer knees Tarrow in the groin. The latter falls over, gulping down air and gasping in pain.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Nerve endings. The universal leveller.

//<Imogen Tarrow, Director of Site-54, enters the kitchen.>//

**Dir. Tarrow:** I hope you got that on camera.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'll send you a copy for personal perusal.

//<Dir. Tarrow kneels, and presses a syringe into her double's twitching form. The latter collapses, and begins to snore softly.>//

**Dir. Tarrow:** Site-06 was too good for her. She needs to learn what it's like to be kidnapped, chucked in a pit, and forgotten.

//<Dr. Lillihammer stands, and pats the other woman on the back.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Only make sure her cell has a removable nameplate. Just in case.

//<She heads for the door, then stops suddenly and snaps her fingers.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You have to provide the information you promised, to completely release the geas.

**Dir. Tarrow:** Oh, sure. Salt cod? There's a good place on Rua do Bojador.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Fuckin' A.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

All the data points are converging, but on what? A picture is forming, but it's a really crazy picture. Almost too big to hold in one mind all at once.

Luckily, I have more than one mind.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**1 June 2023**__
**In which it's your turn**

We're playing //schriftscrabble.// That's my name for it. Probably won't catch on.

"Recidivism," he repeats, squinting at my most recent play. "I will allow it."

"Generous." As he focuses on his tiles, I indulge in the metagame. "You were a kid when you're training started, weren't you?"

"Yes..." The sibilant draws out to serpentine length as he tries to split his attention. "Though that was the norm at the time."

"What's the youngest apprentice you've ever had?"

"Hmm?" He rearranges the tiles on his shelf. It's a meaningless act in //schriftscrabble,// but manual mnemonics are a very real thing. "Not very young at all."

"I'm sorry I called you Yoda, then."

"Hmm?" He places six more tiles on the board, tapping one of the empty squares before covering it up with a blank tile. "Theory. Triple word score."

I can see no means of contesting this, so it passes without comment. "You do know what Scout thought about recruiting, don't you?"

It's always easy to get Thilo going on the topic of 43's founding Director. "Oh, yes. He and I discussed it often. Other Directors wanted tenured professors and grey haired experts. He wanted fresh PhDs, or even young adults fresh off their master's."

I've already selected my next word. I'm already a lot better at this game than its creator is. "Do you know why?"

"Certainly." He watches me lay down another seven-letter word with a scowl; I'm doing it to piss him off now, more than anything. "The cycle leaves deeper whorls in the flesh of your mind the older you are. When your brain is still at least a little plastic, there is hope to set you on a better path."

I momentarily lose my own focus, and the play is in danger. I reboot on the fly, and come in clutch. "That... makes sense. Wow. Well, we've really fucked that system up. No wonder we're circling the drain instead. Unvexed and apex, triple letter on the 'x'."

He has to consider that for a good long while. It's a tough sell, and I've also left him an opening. In the end he goes for the opening I also left him in our dialogue, as he nearly always does. Play the opponent, not the game. "It's not too late to change course. I understand that some of you are teachers. Real teachers. It has never been more important to instruct the young, Lillian." He couldn't look more earnest if he was a crying baby. "It is so easy to make them hateful and afraid, and there are so many reasons to do so. Even without the Writers' influence."

He knows he's preaching to the choir. He wants me swinging at a softball rather than pitching screw while he uses up his final tiles. "Yeah. Well. When I collect my little clique, I'm going to bring them here. And you and I are going to teach them together."

"Yes. 'Pointed'. Double word score." He lays down the last word. "But that won't be quite the same. I imagine your candidates are jaded researchers and turned former foes?"

"Mostly." I gather up my tiles as he finishes play. 

"Not entirely?"

"Not entirely, no." I slap the tiles down, sliding them out of my hand like an automatic bricklayer. 

"Interesting." He's not even looking at the board now. Or my hand. "Very interesting."

"You think that now. There's a good chance you'll just find it infuriating in the end. 'Ataraxy'. I win."

He stares at the featureless grid full of completely blank tiles, and tries to see his way clear to a challenge. But there's no further play. We've both been convinced. "It's been too long since I was genuinely furious."

"Yeah, I think screaming at some dumb kid would really fix you."

I clear the board, making sure he isn't watching when I return the extra tile to my sleeve.
[[/div]]

As usual, I'm way ahead of him.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

Among most Foundation duty sets is the maintenance of your civilian identity. I'm an online tutor for hire; I started up the service on a whim, and I'm very selective with my students, but it hasn't been an exercise completely devoid of merit. Or, occasionally, reward.

The following is a transcript of my direct messages with an anonymous student going by the handle 'Avys'. I've been tutoring them through grad school for just under a year. They'll be finishing their doctorate some time in 2025, if the fucking FSD gets off my back.

And Michelle, since you're definitely reading this, I haven't opened your last three emails yet. It probably wouldn't be a great use of your time to draft a fourth.

Suppress though you might, I'm a firestarter by nature.

[[div class="blockquote" style="background-color: #2A2A2A; color:white"]]
<Server: Avys has connected.>

**##teal|Avys:##** you busy

<Server: Dr_L has connected.>

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** For you? Never. 

**##teal|Avys:##** lame cliche is lame

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** It makes up for how I tell everyone else "Yes, fuck off."

**##teal|Avys:##** that is pretty badass
**##teal|Avys:##** check it out

[[=]]

[Avys sent:]

[[image Avys.jpg]]

[yo.jpg]
[[/=]]

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** What did I tell you about sending pictures online?

**##teal|Avys:##** its scrubbed
**##teal|Avys:##** gives u a headache if u try to unscrub it

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Where did you learn how to do that

**##teal|Avys:##** well
**##teal|Avys:##** thats what i wanna talk to u about
**##teal|Avys:##** fell into a crowd 

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** What? 

**##teal|Avys:##** is that not how u say it
**##teal|Avys:##** in english

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Oh. You mean you've fallen in with a bad/the wrong crowd?

**##teal|Avys:##** dunno
**##teal|Avys:##** was hoping u could tell me 

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Give me the details. 

**##teal|Avys:##** so like
**##teal|Avys:##** last time we were talking about refresh rates
**##teal|Avys:##** and u were a loser about it

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** You were making shit up. 

**##teal|Avys:##** yeah u big loser thats what I do
**##teal|Avys:##** that's why ur old ass talks to me

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** I'm gonna put my old foot up your college ass if you call me old again.

**##teal|Avys:##** made u call yourself old, loser 
**##teal|Avys:##** anyway
**##teal|Avys:##** i was saying i bet u can overclock the refresh rate on ur eyes right

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Right. You were saying that wrong thing. 

**##teal|Avys:##** because like 30 to 60 fps is pretty bad
**##teal|Avys:##** and theres studies say we can probably see a lot faster than that
**##teal|Avys:##** and they sell monitors at like 144 fps

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** They also sell so-called gaming mice that start double-clicking within a month. 
**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Razer is a joke company.

**##teal|Avys:##** cool tangent boomer

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** You're probably the first person to use that word correctly in years.

**##teal|Avys:##** anyway
**##teal|Avys:##** was thinking u could use super high frame rate to hide messages and shit 

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Yes, you could. They'd be very well-hidden because nobody could see them. 

**##teal|Avys:##** exactly
**##teal|Avys:##** oh ur makin fun of me again
**##teal|Avys:##** okay 
**##teal|Avys:##** so

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** You can type out multiple lines before sending, you know. 

**##teal|Avys:##** gotta go fast
**##teal|Avys:##** (old joke for old lady) 
**##teal|Avys:##** anyway i was looking this shit up and i found this chat room

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Okay.

**##teal|Avys:##** first i thought they were all chuds because the mod was doing an attack helicopter thing only it was a kill sat

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Oh no.

**##teal|Avys:##** but no it turns out theyre cool

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Chill, even. 

**##teal|Avys:##** ya theyve got a whole
**##teal|Avys:##** wait
**##teal|Avys:##** do u know what i'm talking about 

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Rarely.
**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Finish your story. 

**##teal|Avys:##** so i get to talking to these folx and they say maybe im on to something
**##teal|Avys:##** and they start showing me these wild pics

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Of?

**##teal|Avys:##** just weird blurry shit
**##teal|Avys:##** one i remember was a dragon curve of menger sponges

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Ah.

**##teal|Avys:##** yeah it made me pass out
**##teal|Avys:##** but before that i could see between the frames on my monitor 
**##teal|Avys:##** which u know
**##teal|Avys:##** impossible

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** See anything interesting there? 

**##teal|Avys:##** nope 
**##teal|Avys:##** thought i saw a screaming face for a hot second
**##teal|Avys:##** but it was probably me screaming because i was about to pass out
**##teal|Avys:##** reflected in the black 

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Uh huh.

**##teal|Avys:##** so like
**##teal|Avys:##** its gotta be some hot government shit right
**##teal|Avys:##** those images

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Could be. 

**##teal|Avys:##** am i gonna get put on a list if i keep talking to these losers

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** What makes you think you aren't already? 

**##teal|Avys:##** ur always such a comfort
**##teal|Avys:##** in these hard times

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** How's that thesis coming? 

**##teal|Avys:##** keep hitting dead ends

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** How come? 

**##teal|Avys:##** because everything that interests me is apparently bullshit

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Like what? 

**##teal|Avys:##** like i had this idea for a zoetrope 
**##teal|Avys:##** u know what a zoetrope is

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Yes.

**##teal|Avys:##** k so u spin it and u see images really fast and it looks animated
**##teal|Avys:##** well
**##teal|Avys:##** what if u could do that in reverse

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Which part? 

**##teal|Avys:##** spin around a thing at a constant rate of speed
**##teal|Avys:##** so that it looks like ur standing still

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** You'd have to be moving very fast.

**##teal|Avys:##** is what im saying

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** A person couldn't do it. But an image...

**##teal|Avys:##** ya

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** A projection.

**##teal|Avys:##** like that james bond car

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** No. If you could project the environment onto someone's eyes, perfectly, in stereo, without including yourself...
**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Huh.
**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Yeah, that's another good one. Thanks. 

**##teal|Avys:##** am i ever gonna get to know what u do with this shit

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Keep playing your cards right. 

**##teal|Avys:##** at least u listen
**##teal|Avys:##** i think my supervisor needs a hearing aid
**##teal|Avys:##** also glasses

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Why glasses?

**##teal|Avys:##** cuz he can only see in binary

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Oh. One of those. 

**##teal|Avys:##** ya
**##teal|Avys:##** everybodys like that here
**##teal|Avys:##** if u dont either jiggle or play ball, ur invisible
**##teal|Avys:##** on a good day
**##teal|Avys:##** best case they ask and forget
**##teal|Avys:##** worst case they argue
**##teal|Avys:##** with their grandmas hand up their ass
**##teal|Avys:##** like its a negotiation
**##teal|Avys:##** like i gotta clear it with them case by case

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** I've told you to tell me if anyone gives you a hard time again. 

**##teal|Avys:##** ya
**##teal|Avys:##** the kill sat told me that too 
**##teal|Avys:##** think he could death ray some jocks for me

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** I would appreciate it if you didn't ask. 

**##teal|Avys:##** ur always keeping secrets from me

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** But at least I tell you when I'm doing it. 

**##teal|Avys:##** word
**##teal|Avys:##** oh
**##teal|Avys:##** i figured out that thing

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Can you be more specific? 

**##teal|Avys:##** thing u sent me last time
**##teal|Avys:##** the brain teaser

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** It's not something to be figured out. It's recursively encrypted. Just an exercise, one that never runs out. 

**##teal|Avys:##** nope

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** What do you mean, 'nope'?

**##teal|Avys:##** i mean i found where the mouth meets the tail
**##teal|Avys:##** code is trinary

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** No, it isn't.
**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** What are you talking about? It's binary. 

**##teal|Avys:##** extra digit is in the signal noise 
**##teal|Avys:##** the carrier wave 
**##teal|Avys:##** add them in and u can track the data cycle to its start

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** My third eye sees more clearly yet again. 

**##teal|Avys:##** keeps u coming back
**##teal|Avys:##** so worth it
**##teal|Avys:##** sending the dump over now

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** I might have some actual work for you, soon. Commission, if you're interested. 

**##teal|Avys:##** fuck ya
**##teal|Avys:##** need me a new lego set

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** I envy you your free time. 

**##teal|Avys:##** the secret is to stop being so old

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** Pass.

**##teal|Avys:##** ur loss
**##teal|Avys:##** loser
**##teal|Avys:##** but ya send that commission my way
**##teal|Avys:##** pls

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** In the meantime, I'm sending you a link. Read up. 

**##teal|Avys:##** new assignment?
**##teal|Avys:##** what the fuck is this
**##teal|Avys:##** nobody reads webcomics anymore u fossil 
**##teal|Avys:##** am I searching for secret nazi code words in this one or

**##C5000B|Dr_L:##** No. Just read a bit, see if you like it. Something to mention to Bones next time you talk with it. 

**##teal|Avys:##** wait

<Server: Dr_L has disconnected.>

**##teal|Avys:##** i didnt tell u its name
**##teal|Avys:##** goddamnit
[[/div]]

This conversation actually got me a C&D notice from five different internal agencies, and may have accidentally caused the creation of the Department of Webcomics. I got to play my BURNOUT reverse card on them, which was exceedingly enjoyable. I am that rarest of beasts, the one who both can, and can teach. You could sail a refloated Edwardian ocean liner through the leeway I'm afforded.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

By this point, I'd been neglecting the burny part of BURNOUT for too long. My proxies could manage most of the flareups, but sheer volume demanded the occasional executive intervention.

[[div class="flashyhammer"]]
[[=]]
++ Operation BURNOUT Transcripts, Excerpt
[[/=]]
----

**Context:** It's a boom market for populist hatemongering, and one of my primary targets has dedicated nearly her entire life to that art. It took some time to trace her movements through the American right, to Mexico, to the UK, to what I'm sure she considered a theatre well beneath our notice. Though I'd had such a fruitful discussion with Noopy and The Gerund, I was eager to see how I'd perform in a more structured debate. Time to put my high school civics knowledge to the test!

----

The following is an excerpt from the //Congressional Record// of the Philippines, 19th Congress, 2023.

----

(Applause.)

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
The ayes have it; the motion is approved. 

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
On behalf of my constituents, I want to thank you all for your prudence, and wish you a most happy Independence Day.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Majority leader.

CONSIDERATION OF 
INDP. RPT. NO. 8382

**REP. SUAREZ.** 
Mr Speaker, I move that we consider Independent Report No. 8382 as submitted by Congresswoman Lillian S. Lillihammer.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Congresswoman Lillian S. Lillihammer is now recognized.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER, S.** 
Hey, Liz.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Congresswoman, you will address the House together. This chamber is not for casual conversations. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Sure it is. 

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Oh. Okay. Carry on. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I know you can hear me, Betty. I can see your old lady face curdle up.

**REP. BABASAGIN, M.** 
Hello, Dr. Lillian Lillihammer of the SCP Foundation.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
That's right. I represent the good people of the SCP Foundation congressional district. Where were you elected, again? 

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Pekeng Nayon.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I'm sure that's a really good joke in Tagalog.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Get to the point, please, Congresswomen. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Sure. Hasn't the Philippines had it rough enough already? What are you even doing here? 

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Serving the interests of Filipino democracy, of course. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Gerontocracy, you mean. And worse. You probably helped Duterte get his job, and I know for a fact you're in bed with Bongbong. 

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
The representative for the SCP Foundation is making personal attacks on the president.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
No, I'm not. 

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
You can't just stand there and deny it. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I'm not denying anything. Elizabeth. They've got a centre-right government here, and a president who denies the human rights abuses that made him rich. That's the second protofascist government you've been propping up in recent memory. What gives? I thought you were supposed to be into chaos. 

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
We'll be at nuclear war by the end of the decade. What about that isn't chaotic? 

**REP. SUAREZ.** 
Mr Speaker.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
The honorable Majority Leader is recognized.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
No, he isn't. Elizabeth. Do you even realize what you're doing? Whose plans you're playing into?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
You've badly misjudged this situation.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Fine, you force my hand. Honorable whatevers, genders and stuff, I'm here to present Independent Report 8382 on the topic of You Have Elizabeth Crocker In Your Government and She Is Going To Kill You All.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Mr. Speaker, I move for the adoption of Independent Report 8382.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I think I'm supposed to do that?

**THE PRESIDING OFFICER (Rep. Libanan).** 
There is a motion for the adoption of Independent Report 8382. Is there any objection?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Yes. I object.

**THE PRESIDING OFFICER (Rep. Libanan).**
Okay. Independent Report 8382 is hereby defeated.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Good. Let's get on with the real business, now.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
You're out of line, Congressman.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
No, I'm not.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Oh. Okay. Carry on. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
What?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Now you'll see.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Mr. Speaker, dearest colleagues, patriots all, I am humbled to be bringing this new piece of legislation to your attention.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
We are kind of doing a thing over here?

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
I have served this fine country for as long as any of you can remember, and today I come to you with a matter of the utmost urgency.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Stop talking.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
I speak of the issue of national security posed by the presence of agents of enemy powers in this very chamber.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Here we go.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
On several prior occasions I have attempted to reveal to this House the identity of the putative Rep. Babasagin, who is in fact former CIA Agent and anarchist Elizabeth Crocker. She has at every opportunity stonewalled my efforts to make this fact clear to you. To my surprise, today, Rep. Lillihammer has provided testimony supporting my allegations.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I did do that.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Rep. Lillihammer is herself an agent of the SCP Foundation, an organization inimical to the continued self-governance of the Republic of the Philippines. I move for the adoption of House Resolution 001, the noospheric obliteration of Rep. Babasagin, with the following amendment: that Rep. Lillihammer be obliterated as well.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I am opposed to this motion.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
I also oppose.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Sorry, can't hear you.

**THE PRESIDING OFFICER (Rep. Libanan).** 
There is a motion--

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Nuh-uh. Hey. Over here. 

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Maybe if you took your clothes off.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Maybe if you banged your shoe.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
On the podium?

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Bit precarious, but if your back's up to it.

**THE PRESIDING OFFICER (Rep. Libanan).** 
There--

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Does the Constitution have provision for erasing people from the noosphere?

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Yes, the Secret Amendment of 2021.

**REP. BABASAGIN.**
 They weaponized public belief in the nation's institutions. There's over one  hundred million people in this country. If he convinces the House, and then the Senate, and the motion passes, we'll be overruled on the topic of our own existence.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Okay, I'm crossing the floor. Metaphorically-speaking.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Thought you might.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I call into question the Hon. Congressman's record on the topic of eating trash from the House dumpsters like a fucking raccoon.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Congressman, your response? These are serious allegations.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
They're trying to cloud your judgment, Mr Speaker. But it won't work.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Follow my lead, Lillian.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Ugh.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Point of disorder, Mr Speaker.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Proceed.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Neither individual named in Rep. Makabayan's motion exists, and the motion is therefore meaningless.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Your response, Congressman?

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Having an alias is not the same as not existing. 

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I think what Rep. Whatever is saying, is that we have no standing in this room, because we're not really Congresswomen at all. We're playing pretend.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Is this true, Rep. Babasagin?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
It is. It is also true of Rep. Makabayan.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
An obvious lie. My long service in this Congress is well-documented.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
No, it's not.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
It is, actually.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
You are not helping.

**REP. PANGALAWA.** 
I support Rep. Makabayan's motion.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Washed brains don't count.

**REP. PANGATLO.** 
I also support the motion.

**REP. PANG-APAT.** 
Supporting.

**REP. PANGLIMA.** 
Support.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
They aren't brainwashed, are they.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
No.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Is this entire Congress schriftsteller?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Just enough to form a swing bloc.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Okay, well. Principle II of the Rules of the House of Representatives states--

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Won't work. They'll just shout it down.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
This is definitely a problem we solve with bureaumancy. Oh, for fuck's sake. I should have recruited Paul first.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
I think we've entertained this circus enough. Mr Speaker, we should move to a general vote.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Hey, Liz?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Yes?

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Now you follow my lead. Where does this body derive its legislative power from, Mr Speaker?

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
The Constitution.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
And when was the Constitution created?

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
1987.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
No. Don't do this.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Is this body aware that every constitution drafted since 1969 contains antimemetic language granting pre-eminent veto and amendment power to the SCP Foundation?

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
You're not serious.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
This is why I was trying to kill them all, you imbecile. This very thing, and others like it.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I am hereby amending the Constitution of the Philippines to cover every jurisdiction containing at least one Filipino, worldwide.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
You can't do that. There can only be 250 Congresspersons.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
"Unless otherwise fixed by law." I am hereby fixing your laws.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
I won't allow it.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Neither will I. I know what you're thinking. You're going to make emergency nominations of Filipino Foundation employees to every district, and merge the districts actually in this country to accommodate them. You're going to turn the entire world into a piecemeal Philippines.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.**
 Think I'll call it the Lillippines.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
That's enough. That's more than enough. Ladies, I am a registered voter in this country. I am actually from this country. I could boil the rules down so far that the only Writer left in the room would be me, and then I could convince all these dazed dupes to vote for your eradication.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
You'd do that? Burn the whole thing just to fuck me and this washout over? I'm flattered.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Of course. This country is just a series of stepping stones on a long, long path to glory, and I'm not giving you kanâs an inch. If I have to unilaterally take control of this House, and the Senate, and ram your excision through, I will do it. So unless you want to start a wizard battle in the middle of this chamber, your options are to withdraw or be removed with extreme prejudice.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
You won't need to go that far. I'll support a measure to get her out of here, if you grant me safe passage. I'm sick of eating adobo anyway.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
And this is how you end up with a President named Bongbong. Really proud of you, Elizabeth. Failing upward from necrocracy to kleptocracy.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
We're all thieves, Dr. Lillihammer. The only thing that matters is who's got the full purse at the end.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Did I understand you right, earlier? Were you saying you've granted this body ontokinetic powers by harnessing the consensus reality of the country's population?

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
I move for a vote on the motion.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
So presumably you also tapped into that spiritus loci to insert yourself into Congress as legitimate members.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
The motion is seconded, et cetera.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
So if, for example, someone had an artificially intelligent conscript uploading this entire session to the official record, ahead of schedule...

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
What?

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).**
There is a motion to approve House Bill 001, as amended, on Seventh Reading. 
All those in favour, please say Aye.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
And if -- I'm just spitballing, here -- someone had used the occasion of June 12 to insert a patriotic desire in the people of the Philippines to read about the workings of their political representation...

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Is this a bluff?

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I dunno. Why don't you ask your Speaker?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Ask him what?

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Oh, anything.

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Mr Speaker, I move to have the rogue element in our midst restrained by the National Police.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Madam, this is the House of Representatives. How did you get in here?

**REP. MAKABAYAN.** 
Call the vote!

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
And who are you, sir?

**REP. PANGALAWA.** 
Call the vote!

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
This session is out of order. Sergeant-at-Arms?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
You unbelievable bitch.

**REP. MAKABAYAN.**
Roll up your sleeves, jailor. I'm going to show you how a real--

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Thank you, Rep. Lillihammer.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I don't do flashy, but I'm a crack hand at duels.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
I believe we were discussing Independent Report No. 8382?

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
I think that's mostly handled now. You gonna flashbang out, Lizzy?

**REP. BABASAGIN.** 
Why don't you just kill me?

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
When you're going to become such a profound symbol of Second Independence Day? I wouldn't dream of it.

**THE SENIOR DEPUTY SPEAKER (Rep. Gonzales, A.).** 
Thank you, Sergeant-At-Arms. This Congress is now in order again.

**REP. LILLIHAMMER.** 
Not while I'm still here. Peace out, and don't forget: ang inyong presidente ay isang kriminal, at ang kanyang ina ay nakasuot ng pangit na sapatos.

(Applause.)
[[/div]]

She did flashbang out, of course.

So, that was pretty much the proof I needed that the //schriftsteller// were messing with everyone's pudding. The documents I got from the Mackenzie Institute, coupled with what little I could squeeze out of Hart, delineated their scheme to match the //geistschreiber// with an equal opposite. They called them the //stiftsteller//: very real, very visible politicians with anomalously strong charisma. Impossible to ignore, and with a preternatural sense of the times.

It would be great to think they were responsible for making everyone so selfish and fed-up these days, but no. There's nothing compulsive about them, minus their means of taking power and the looseness with which they can operate. From a distance, they don't look anomalous at all.

And as long as they keep playing on our preconceptions, we won't even notice that they've completely replaced every democracy, monarchy, and dictatorship in the world with the ultimate rule of law.

Because it turns out that might be what most people think they want.

Luckily, "Give most people a piece of my mind" has always been on my bucket list. And my mind has many, many pieces, and I won't be kicking the bucket for a long, long time.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
**__8 September 2023__**
**In which a cat gets me**

//Ubergrammatik// was the secret to Thilo's success.

One thing that always seemed wrong, seemed like some kind of cheat, was when cryptomancers employed basic phrases with no obvious alterations, and produced anomalous effects. I have sophisticated, computer-generated fractal complexes printed on cardstock at 12000DPI that can fuck you up royal, but Thilo could achieve the same result with a placard reading simply SLEEP. This has never not pissed me off.

When I guessed //ubergrammatik// was some sort of invisible superstructure, he told me I was nearly correct. What he meant was that I hadn't gone far enough.

Not usually something you can say about me.

"There is a logical limit to what we can achieve without access to the Font," he told me. "Were you a fully baptised //schriftsteller// the sky would prove no limit, but even a mind so remarkable as your own will only glimpse the over-realm dimly without said consecration."

"You might be surprised," I said.

He smiled. "I allow that I might."

We were standing in **##green|a clearing of the thickets##** which I had not yet seen. From out of **##green|the green##**, **##ce005c|a woman with long, slender, digitigrade legs##** approached us, smiling warily.

**##ce005c|Greetings, friends.##**

"Well met." Thilo shook out a lawn chair, and settled into it with the usual huffing and puffing. The **##ce005c|cat-centaur-whatever##** watched him like he was actually a smoke-wreathed dragon. "Lillian, this is **##ce005c|an old friend of mine##**. In **##teal|this meeting place##**, nothing will be taken from you that is not freely offered."

"Of course." That was Thilo-ese for //cover your ass.//

**##ce005c|What## ##blue|the ghost of long-drowned sorrow## ##ce005c|says is true. Your cause benefits us both. I have no urge to witness a second thinning of the trees.##**

"I have explained to you the principles of the //untergrammatik,//" Thilo wheezed. "You will not be vying for names today, but you will be negotiating meaning."

"What meaning?"

**##ce005c|Every meaning.##**

"Have you, by chance," I smiled, "ever caught an episode of //The Destructive Commons?//"

We sat down in the grass, facing each other. The air was hot, but the breeze was pleasant. Thilo folded his hands, and spoke no more. I focused on **##ce005c|the receptive other##** to the total exclusion of all else.

**##ce005c|You speak of destruction. You have all but destroyed us, and still you are not satisfied. You are a //race// of destroyers.##**

I knew this to be true, but it felt wrong. "You mean humanity?

**##ce005c|I mean the Foundation.##**

And there was the turn. "The Foundation is..."

I wanted to say we were no race, but I couldn't. If the blank //schriftscrabble// tiles said something other than what I'd been told, the deception was fully opaque.

I took refuge in a slow blink. When my eyes cleared, the riposte was already on my tongue. Thilo, in my peripheral vision, was clutching the arms of his chair.

//Ubergrammatik// is all about touching the uttermost meaning of a thing. If you're willing to be flexible with your definitions -- if you know what must be inviolable, and hold back nothing else -- then anything becomes possible.

"The Foundation is not me." 

I was surprised how easily the words came.

**##ce005c|My substitute teacher##** grinned.
[[/div]]

I had a backlog of credential renewals I'd been neglecting, and I went through them all when I got back. Just to keep ahead of things. At the Foundation, it's important to have all your shit in order.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

It took me ages to decrypt the stickier files I'd liberated from the //schriftsteller// think tank. A lot of what I eventually learned had long since become obsolete, as I'd expected; they knew they'd been breached, even if the fire I set made it difficult to know precisely what had been taken. But with the code that Avys cracked, I was able to make a very educated guess about who could tell me more about the //stiftsteller.// Going back over a few old Parawatch files, I found it hard to believe that all roads led here.

There was nothing so complicated as an operation involved. It was what it appeared to be: an appointment, long-awaited by us both.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<A smiling clerk leads Dr. Lillihammer into a luxuriously-appointed office, and closes the door behind her. A man in a wheelchair sits behind a tremendous teak desk, smiling up at her. He gestures for her to take a seat, which she does.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well. 

[[include component:image-block

  name=Oberoi.jpg|
  caption=Photograph of Nirav Oberoi in Mumbai, 2023. |
  width=225px|
  align=right|
]]

**Oberoi:** I'm not what you expected. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Several times over. Under? //Beyond.//

**Oberoi:** You, on the other hand, live up to the hype. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We can do that in a minute. The part where you try to flatter yourself out of this. Right now I need to ask you a question that's going to make me feel very stupid. 

**Oberoi:** I'm open. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Are you falcon_crazy? I mean, you must be, but...

**Oberoi:** But it seems a stretch. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Little bit. 

**Oberoi:** Yes, that's me. Or at least that's me on Parawatch. You won't be surprised to hear I have several other aliases. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'll get you to anti-alias them for me later. Right now I want to talk about... Parawatch. Sure. 

//<She shakes her head in wonder.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You belong to about a dozen different sites on Wikisplotch, and you exert your gravity on all of them. Turning conversations away from topics you don't like, via subtle cryptomancy. Whether it's important or not.

**Oberoi:** All discourse is important.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're on the fucking [[[/the-bathrooms-wiki | Bathrooms Wiki]]], for crying out loud.

**Oberoi:** Not by choice, I assure you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What were you trying to accomplish? 

**Oberoi:** Just keeping things civil.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, don't quit your day job.

**Oberoi:** Yes, I know my success rate was less than stellar.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Ha, ha.

**Oberoi:** I'm afraid my activities caught the attention of a fellow traveller, one walking in the opposite direction.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** reifire_rose?

**Oberoi:** That's right. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What do you know about them? 

**Oberoi:** I know they're a //giftschreiber,// and I know they're a murderer.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They're about as active as you, with much more overt results.

**Oberoi:** Subtle chaos is not really a thing which exists.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So you tried, what? Reporting them to the mods? 

**Oberoi:** Several times, yes. But the nature of their powers precluded any permanent consequences. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** From what I've seen, it looks like the power of suggestion. 

**Oberoi:** More like demand. 

//<Oberoi sighs.>//

**Oberoi:** For champions of liberty, the poison-writers sure do engage in an awful lot of compulsion. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Okay, let's talk about compulsion. You're a //schriftsteller.//

**Oberoi:** I am. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Specifically, you're some whole new thing called a //stiftsteller.//

//<Oberoi claps his hands together once, excited.>//

**Oberoi:** You know about that now? Terrific.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Is it even proper German? 

**Oberoi:** How should I know? Do I look German to you?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Tell me what you do, in your own words. Preferably not compulsive ones. 

**Oberoi:** I wouldn't dream of insulting your abilities like that. What do I do? On Parawatch, and on many other sites, I do what's known as backseat modding. Almost always discouraged by the rules, but I play by my own set. I nudge the authorities here and there, and I help keep the communities that interest me -- or the ones I'm forced to monitor -- safe. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Very noble of you. 

**Oberoi:** I like to think so. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So you white knight on the internet, but you also moonlight as a kingmaker. 

**Oberoi:** You're joking, but the internet stuff is in many ways a lot more difficult. Face to face, or face to crowd, I'm in my element. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You love the crowds. And the public. Every sitting politician in this country either has a photograph of themselves with you in their office, or isn't a piece of shit. There hasn't been a blackshirt rally you haven't rolled up on since the 2010s. 

**Oberoi:** I'm a real man of the people, yes. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Right. Only that's not what //your// people do. The //schriftsteller// pull the strings from the shadows. You flaunt your access. And some of the folks you prop up also behave suspiciously like cryptomancers. Gibberish speeches that rile up a crowd. 

**Oberoi:** I heard what you did to Mary-Anne Hart. I assume that's where you got your information from. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The prospect of getting memory-holed does wonders for a body's cooperativeness. 

**Oberoi:** I imagine she cried. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Swore, mostly. But her eyes were definitely getting pretty shiny. 

**Oberoi:** Are you going to lock me away with her? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That depends on you. 

**Oberoi:** Well, I would prefer if you didn't. I'm willing to cooperate with your investigation, assuming I can do so discreetly. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If you saw what I did to Hart, you know nothing about this operation is discreet.

**Oberoi:** You will want this visit to be. You wouldn't have gotten this far without flaunting some of your newfound antimemetic capabilities. Does anyone outside of my office know you're here? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. And they won't, until I want them to. 

**Oberoi:** Good. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You sound like you're gearing up to try and make a deal. I think you might have misinterpreted the tenor of my conversation. 

**Oberoi:** Yes, your easy manner is very disarming. But I think we can help each other, Lillian. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Do tell, Nirav.

**Oberoi:** Would you like to know what we're planning? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes. Do I want to hear it from you, though? If I thought I could believe anything you say. 

**Oberoi:** You and I are uniquely well-aligned, in both aims and circumstance. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh yeah? 

**Oberoi:** We both know what it is to be self-made. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I think I know that a little better than you do. 

**Oberoi:** I don't think so. Differently, maybe, but not better.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh?

//<She considers Oberoi more closely, and frowns.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Huh. 

**Oberoi:** In my country, people like us are often poor. Outcasts. The out-caste. In other parts of the world, you speak of community. In India the term is literal. Clustering together for protection. The laws and the rhetoric are improving, but accidents of birth can still mark a man, a woman, or a //hijra// for life. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Everybody I've been talking to lately wants me to think we're in this together, or they've had it harder than me.

**Oberoi:** I simply want you to understand that I'm not what you think I am, and you aren't the only one to be deceived. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What does that mean?

**Oberoi:** My office has dealings with the //Sangh Parivar,// an affiliation of political and cultural organizations promoting //Hindutva// ideology. Are you familiar? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not really. I've heard those words, but only earlier today when I finished setting up your dossier. 

**Oberoi:** They are nationalists. Cultural chauvinists. They would tell you they are not fascists, splitting hairs because they have no Hitler. But they promote a racist ideology backed by fraudulent history, and they call for violence against those they deem less worthy of life in this country. This is no fringe movement. I am speaking about the people who govern, Dr. Lillihammer. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Uh huh. 

**Oberoi:** They attack scholars and their scholarship. They foment hatred. They call for the creation of an ethnostate.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And you help them, because that hurts us. 

**Oberoi:** Does that hurt you? The Foundation? Haven't you historically gotten along much better with authoritarian regimes? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, so this is you guys //helping// us again? 

**Oberoi:** This is one part, a very important part, of a //schriftsteller// scheme to lay the groundwork for a greyer world. And you are going to be a partner in that. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Over my dead body. 

**Oberoi:** Do you really think your Council would find that too high a cost? If they could truly rule the world through the mechanisms we are constructing, control the narrative completely, do you think they would take a moral stance instead? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Part of me has been //on// that Council. Maybe another part will be again, some day. The Foundation isn't a monolith. And it's changing every day. I want to make it the best version of itself.

**Oberoi:** I can relate to that impulse. I'm driven by something similar. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, yeah. You're back on that "actually, we're a lot alike" bullshit. 

**Oberoi:** We are. You might be more famous for it, but I'll wager we've both done similar amounts of damage to the cause I've just described. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hold up. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Are you saying you've been sabotaging the //stiftsteller?//

**Oberoi:** From the start, yes. The calculus has been cold, and I have been forced to support or at least allow a great many distasteful things. But I think I can claim, little comfort as it gives me, that my actions have largely canceled out the //schriftsteller// attempts to entrench this country's right wing in the halls of power. I won't say I'm proud how many of my countrymen are cheerfully supporting the //Hindutva// anyway; patience is in awfully short supply across the world today, it seems.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You have proof that you've been doing this? 

**Oberoi:** I can show you how hard they've been pushing to make India their model for the rest of the world to follow. I can show you how my overt successes, to gain their confidence, have been uniformly manufactured out of existing mundane trends. I could lay out the course of events that led to you crashing the rally for Freeman. I could give you enough evidence that I have not been half as effective as the Writers think, that you could turn them on me in an instant. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What if I decide to do that anyway? 

**Oberoi:** The internal division would do a great deal of damage, for sure. I wouldn't be satisfied, but it still wouldn't be such a bad legacy for one man. 

//<He smiles.>//

**Oberoi:** And oh, how it would gall them to realize who they'd really been dealing with all these years. But no, I think there's still work left to be done before I get that satisfaction.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're burned anyway. They're going to know I met with you.

**Oberoi:** Possibly not. The throne behind this power is in many ways a seat of complacency. My masters are not imaginative, else they might be //giftschreiber// instead.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I have a crazy idea for how we can still get something good out of this situation.

**Oberoi:** Assuming what I've told you is the truth.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. Well, you're smart. So you know not to try and make an ass of me alone.

**Oberoi:** I'm not sure your confidence will be echoed by your friends at the Foundation.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've got sort of a free hand. And I've also got some cats that need herding, so maybe a minimod is just the sort of thing I need.

**Oberoi:** You're asking me to come in from the cold?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** More like trading for a different sort of cold. The job I have in mind doesn't come with an office. And you'd have to leave all this expensive furniture behind.

//<Oberoi gestures at the office.>//

**Oberoi:** The trappings of structure. All part of the story I tell about myself. That's the magic of the //stiftsteller,// Dr. Lillihammer. We don't escape notice, we overwhelm it. I don't think I'd be very much use on anything less nuanced.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, I guess you have until your buddies figure out how bad you've been fucking them to decide.

**Oberoi:** I could fuck them a whole lot worse on the way out, if they press the issue.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're a politician at heart, though. One big event can help, but it's a lot better to stick around and push change in the long term. Be part of the process.

**Oberoi:** Says the woman with a whole deck of cards that let her live in the moment.

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm appealing to your inner rules lawyer. Me? I like to play fast and loose.

//<Dr. Lillihammer deactivates the recording.>//

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

The next time I checked, Oberoi was gone. All the records attesting to his existence still stood, and the Greater Mumbai Police were treating it as a kidnapping case.

Specifically, one they weren't trying very hard to solve.

Not to be trite, but there's ways to escape notice that don't involve memetics or cryptomancy at all.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

And then there's this.

[[div class="flashyhammer"]]
[[=]]
++ Operation BURNOUT Transcripts, Excerpt
[[/=]]
----

**Context:** After my interview with Nirav Oberoi and his subsequent disappearance, a new packet of data arrived at my office from an anonymous source. Triple-checking it for authenticity revealed more deeply-encoded data still, hints and intimations of things I'd already had on my mind. The most important breakthrough let us track //schriftsteller// access to our secure databases, and attempt a forecast of their subsequent actions. Multiple potential action points were identified; as the primary asset of Operation BURNOUT, I assigned myself to check out the most potentially disruptive. The Overseer Council was evacuated from Protected Site-01, and all members of MTF Alpha-1 ("Red Right Hand") not required for bodyguard duty were assigned to lock down the entire facility.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer stands at a sealed vault door deep within Site-01. The door is of vintage 1960s construction; when it is opened remotely from the Site's control centre and swings open, it can be seen to be two feet thick and laced with beryllium bronze inlay.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer walks through a sequence of five such doors before emerging into a cavernous space housing a reactor of unusual construction which dwarfs the scattered equipment left behind when the sector was decommissioned. At the apex of the reactor, the remains of what was once an enormous oriykalkos crystal can be seen, attached to twenty-six insulated power cables which hang from a massive socket in the ceiling.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer activates her radio.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** All clear in the reactor room. Seal me in.

**Technician:** Confirmed.

//<Behind Dr. Lillihammer, the door swings shut and audibly locks.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Alright, let's see you.

//<Silence on recording.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer strolls through the chamber, kicking at discarded electronics and picking up the occasional empty clipboard from the monitoring stations, before discing them through the air to clatter on the polished, though dusty, concrete.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I dunno, maybe you've got ideas about putting my brain into a perpetual loop where I only see the reactor powered down, like the whole camera thing in //Speed.// Have you seen //Speed?// That actually gets somebody killed, in the movie. Or maybe you're thinking if you get behind me... hell, I shouldn't be giving you ideas. Whatever you're planning, if it involves pulling the wool over my eyes, you should know that my eyes are certified wool-proof.

**Voice:** Steel wool.

//<Dr. Lillihammer reaches up, as though to rub at her eyes, then suddenly stops.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Almost got me there. Good trick.

//<She takes out her optogenetic stimulator.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You want to see another?

//<A polite cough is audible. Dr. Lillihammer looks up to see a figure resembling the late Director Julia Kijek of Area-21, standing on the remains of the oriykalkos crystal.>//

**[[[/SCP-6721 | PoI-6721-2]]]:** You don't look so tall from up here.

//<Dr. Lillihammer places her hands on her hips.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And you don't look like a ghost, though you //do// look like a dead woman.

**PoI-6721-2:** I take it you mean that in more than one sense.

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Just the one, for starters. This doesn't have to end bloody, though you're really tempting a Disney Death as long as you stay up there.

**PoI-6721-2:** I'll take my chances.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You know the real Kijek had a family? Husband and two kids. They never got to bury her, because you melted her into a slurry along with everybody she worked with.

//<PoI-6721-2 picks at the reactor's framing panels idly.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** You know she was cheating on her husband? You know she despised her kids? I know more about her than you ever could. I //was// her.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You took her memories, after you took her life. When you guys replaced Tarrow back in the day, I guess human life mattered more.

**PoI-6721-2:** We underestimated how much mental training you give to your Directors. 

//<PoI-6721-2 clucks disapprovingly.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** We took Tarrow's memories, and left her locked up for the replacement to study her image. Didn't expect the personality to re-assert. Didn't expect her to escape. Definitely didn't expect the remote kill agent not to deposit her in some ditch somewhere. I hear you made us pay dearly for all that.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not as dearly as you deserve. We didn't find her for five years. She was running a middle school in Salzburg when facial recognition software picked her up, and even then we thought she was your gal. Weren't even sure there ever had been a real Imogen Tarrow. You know she still had flashes of who she used to be? Couldn't ever settle down like that. Tore her apart, not knowing which version of her was real.

**PoI-6721-2:** I assume this pointless discursion has just closed that file for you. You're welcome.

//<Dr. Lillihammer is still pacing the floor of the reactor room. PoI-6721-2 follows her, walking around the edge of the crystal, careful to keep one hand on the dangling cables.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It wasn't pointless. I've been wondering, Julia. What's it like having all those different people bouncing around inside your head? The identities you've stolen.

**PoI-6721-2:** Like you don't know.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, I do know. But I get along with my headmates. Alis, for all her faults, can say the same. You killed a woman and ate her neurons. Does she ever cry out?

**PoI-6721-2:** Every once in a while.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And that doesn't bother you?

**PoI-6721-2:** No. Are you haunted by the lives you never led?

//<Dr. Lillihammer pirouettes, dazzle coat flying.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They're still living in me. Because I don't try to suppress who we are.

**PoI-6721-2:** How lovely for you. Why don't you climb up and show me your better way?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Feeling fine down here, thanks.

**PoI-6721-2:** You're feeling //fine.//

//<Dr. Lillihammer's spin ends in a sudden twist of her ankle. She falls to her knees and cries out in pain.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** Our dainty and delicate Dr. L. Such a fragile little thing you are, down there.

//<Dr. Lillihammer glares up at PoI-6721-2.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Little.

//<PoI-6721-2 blinks, and then begins moving back and forth on the reactor cap, scanning the floor with a squint.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** Where did you go?

//<Dr. Lillihammer stalks across the room, stepping softly.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What's the plan today, Jules? Gonna try firing up that reactor and amending the noösphere? Because I might have some //fine detail// you'll want to know.

//<PoI-6721-2 is still searching for Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** I know they chiselled out most of the orichalcum for other projects over the years. I also know a lot more about channelling thaumic power through a conduit than they did in the Johnson presidency.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** 1969. It was Nixon.

**PoI-6721-2:** Pointless trivia. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But I'd clean up on //Wheel of Fortune.//

**PoI-6721-2:** You're thinking of //Jeopardy.//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. //You're// thinking of jeopardy.

//<PoI-6721 suddenly spasms, as though she has touched a live wire, and lets go of the cable she is using to keep herself steady. She teeters on the edge of the reactor for a moment before closing her eyes and recovering her balance.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** This is what it all comes down to, right? Semantics.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Like //giftschreiber// or //schriftsteller.// Distinction without a difference.

**PoI-6721-2:** Oh, there's a difference alright. The //gifties// all want to think everybody will eventually be on their side. That's why Alis is cooperating with you. That's why they never knew I wasn't one of them. My people //see others very clearly.//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Trying to psych yourself up? It won't work.

**PoI-6721-2:** You'll make a mistake eventually.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Or you will. Or, and hear me out, the Red Right Hand will collapse this useless waste of way too much space and bury us both in it.

**PoI-6721-2:** You're too valuable for that.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I know you know that's not true. 43 is designed to blow up two different ways if your gods so much as twitch the wrong way. Everyone is expendable.

**PoI-6721-2:** Everyone is expendable.

//<Dr. Lillihammer has just passed the master console. She turns back to it, and begins typing. There is a low thrumming beneath the floor, and a faint blue glow is visible at the catwalk surrounding the reactor.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Everyone. Everyone in this entire facility. If I have to kill them to stop you, I will.

**PoI-6721-2:** Oh, come off it. You're not that easy to control. You wouldn't let a little wordplay slip past your defences.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Come off it?

//<This time PoI-6721-2 nearly steps off the reactor before catching herself. It takes her a moment to regain her composure.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** Good to see you're still with us. So if I didn't convince you to turn on the reactor, why did you?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe I want to see what you're going to do with it.

**PoI-6721-2:** What are my options? Sell me on something fun.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You might be able to shut down the Frontispiece, though that's unlikely. Certainly you could punch some holes into it. Or maybe you're thinking you could make a smaller alteration to the noösphere. Something we wouldn't notice until it's too late. A vulnerability.

**PoI-6721-2:** And you're going to help me do that?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Obviously not.

**PoI-6721-2:** Then again, I ask. Why fire up the reactor?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** //Fire// up the reactor?

//<There is a sudden roar, and PoI-6721-2 screams. She begins slapping herself, drops, and rolls on the surface of the reactor.>//

//<She rolls off.>//

//<Her boot catches a cable, slowing her descent and turning what was a straight fall into an arc. She strikes the far wall, hard, before the cable snaps and she falls the remainder of the distance to the floor.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer deactivates the air coolant flush, and walks over to PoI-6721-2's twitching form.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Disney Death.

//<PoI-6721-2 coughs blood.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer kneels beside her, and keys her radio.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Can I get medical in the reactor chamber within five minutes?

**Technician:** That's a negative. Doors won't open until the reactor spools back down. You're both going to be alone in there for the foreseeable future.

**PoI-6721-2:** You know that already.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** //You// know that already.

//<PoI-6721-2 shudders.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** Was it easier the second time?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What, killing a ghost? No, you put up a lot more of a fight than the last one.

**PoI-6721-2:** Not what I meant.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I know. But semantics matter, eh?

//<PoI-6721-2 shudders again, and does not respond.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer sits on the floor beside her, cross-legged.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Looks like you die before the world does. Gotta suck after all that prep work.

**PoI-6721-2:** You're not going to disillusion me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, I'm definitely not doing that. It really would be cool to know what you were hoping to achieve with the reactor, though.

**PoI-6721-2:** Would it be cool?

//<They lock eyes.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** Would it be //very cool// for you, to know what I was hoping to achieve?

//<Dr. Lillihammer leans in close, a sudden rush of air blowing her hair sideways so that her view is unobstructed.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** //Ice cold.//

**PoI-6721-2:** I was going to blow the whole thing sky high, and your precious Council with it.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Bullsh--

//<She suddenly begins twitching, and the camera view becomes blurred. She raises her hands in front of her face, and they are shaking uncontrollably. She drops her optogenetic stimulator, and PoI-6721-2 sends it spinning away with a weak kick of one boot. She laughs as Dr. Lillihammer's teeth begin to chatter.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** How's that for a... chilling effect...?

//<A medical technician is examining PoI-6721's injuries, while a second is setting up a stretcher beside her.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** What...?

//<Dr. Lillihammer is laughing through her chattering teeth. She responds in a sing-song tone.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** "You're g-going to be alone in there for the f-foreseeable future."

**PoI-6721-2:** "...you know that already."

//<Dr. Lillihammer takes the optogenetic stimulator from a third technician's hand. It takes several seconds for her to manipulate the controls correctly in her condition, but she is eventually able to activate the device. She blinks away the sudden light as the technicians carry PoI-6721-2 away for treatment.>//

//<PoI-6721-2 sits up on the stretcher, teeth clenched against the pain.>//

**PoI-6721-2:** You don't understand. Don't //fucking// pretend you understand what I was trying to do.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Don't fucking pretend?

//<PoI-6721-2 howls in frustration.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, it's fine. I don't need anything more from you than you've already given. And when I get there, Jules?

//<Dr. Lillihammer staggers to her feet as the technicians carry PoI-6721-2 from the reactor room.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** When I get there, I'm gonna tell them //you// sent me.

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

I choose not to dwell on the fact that the engine we used to cook humanity's shared noodle has been kept in operational nick. It was a useful fact for my purposes.

I expect it will be again, at least once.

[[=]]
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@@ @@
[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**18 December 2023**__
**In which I finally tell him spoilers**

Thilo told me from the start that there would be a moment where we hit a wall. Where he couldn't push me any further, where I would reach the limit of what was possible without a direct connection to the noösphere.

I could tell it was starting to bug him that our progress hadn't stalled yet. When I finally showed him why, he hit the wall alone.

"You can't..." he sputtered as I put the needle away again. "You can't //inject// yourself with life force."

I do wonder what he'd thought it was before, but it would be just too cruel to ask.

"It isn't life force." I put the little case back in my satchel. "Common misconception by you mystical types. Elan-Vital Energy is //sentience// force. The wiser you are, the more you get. Hence, wizards." 

"I will amend my statement," he said through grit teeth. "You can't inject yourself with sentience."

"No, //you// can't." I kicked the satchel under the kitchen table, and sat back down in front of the lovely red leather-bound workbook he'd given me. "And most other people can't either; they can shoot up when they're spent to get another little boost, and [[[/scp-6500 | when the magic was dying]]] a few years ago it was all that kept our wizardfolk awake, but there's normally a functional limit. However, Thilo, as you may by now be aware, //I am very weird.//"

"I don't understand."

I started doodling on the book. A fractal recreated from memory. "I have the memories of six different versions of myself, and I have one-seventh of a god stuck on my soul like a piece of gum." I drew multiple overlaid fractals at once, not illustrating the point, just channelling the sensation. "I tested this very thoroughly. Those patterns of consciousness can all share the EVE load, giving me a framework for hextupling down without burning my brain out."

Thilo sat down across from me, heavily. That's not an insult; I mean the way you do where you just sort of let gravity put you in the chair. Like I'd stunned him into forgetting his old man knees. "The frameworks... prevent all that consciousness from driving you mad? Or all that consciousness prevents... injecting yourself with too much life force from doing it?"

I shrugged. The page was already a madcap morass. I put a lot of my selves into this work. "Well, it's too early for me to have meant the latter, isn't it? I might be batshit by the time this conversation ends."

He shook his head, and I saw a little of the awe that had crept in when I first defended my name from no, no, no coloured text today. He was obviously thinking the same thing, because suddenly he spat out: "That was how you did it. That was how you kept yourself, despite that arrogant introduction."

"Sort of." I pushed the book away; no point creating a memetic stun agent imbued with fragments of this conversation, and anyway I probably owed him my full attention. "It's more that my identity is so thoroughly fixed in baseline, reinforced by the existence of so much //me,// that it's like trying to take a bite out of concrete."

He was still shaking his head. I wondered if he was trying to give himself a migraine, just to focus on something else. "You take too many liberties with your mind, Lillian."

"You're too conservative with yours. Which, I suppose, tracks."

Thilo is a world champion brow-furrower. "Meaning?"

"Meaning you're a //schriftsteller.// The word wizard aristocracy."

"I'm.." His expression was suddenly a lifetime, maybe several lifetimes, away.

"Thilo?"

Those bleary eyes met mine, and he was back. "I was about to say that I'm nothing like them."

"Which you aren't. I was just trying to get your goat."

"No, but it made me realize." The bleariness became a watery sort. "I've stopped thinking of myself as being one of them. When they were dead..."

"It was easier to remember them better."

He looked down, realized he was staring at my fractals, then looked back up. "Yes."

"I've had that problem with dead people before."

"How did you handle it?"

"They died again."

He sighed. "There needs to be a better way to come to terms with our opponents. We will erase their words and heal the wounds they leave behind, but I have no desire to blot out the Writers entirely. I don't think I have it in me to even watch someone else do that."

"Then you can look away while I do the deed. If you won't stop them, I will."

If anything, he watched me even more closely after that. "And who will stop you?"

I snapped the book shut under his bulbous nose. "Who else? Me again."
[[/div]]

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@@ @@
[[/=]]

At this point I was getting near the end of my shortlist, having gotten essentially the same answer from every candidate. But I've never been one to quit while I'm behind.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer enters a heavily padded containment chamber. There is no furniture. Leokadia Krzysztof, former Area-05-PL kinesthesiologist, is lying on the floor with ner arms behind ner neck.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, don't get up. I'd like as little of you moving as possible.

//<Krzysztof glances in her direction.>//

**Krzysztof:** You're not the only one.

[[include component:image-block

  name=Krzysztof.jpg|
  caption=Photograph of Leokadia Krzysztof at Area-05-PL, 2023. |
  width=225px|
  align=left|
]]

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Your body is a deadly weapon. You're a danger just existing in people's view.

**Krzysztof:** So are you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes, but I suspect we don't mean the same thing by that.

//<Dr. Lillihammer sits down on the floor. Krzysztof sits up.>//

**Krzysztof:** Why am I seeing any of you, Dr. Lillihammer? I don't get the impression I'm anybody's idea of a high-value asset.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Certainly not the //schriftsteller,// judging by how they blew you on a nothing gesture. Or are you a //giftschreiber?//

**Krzysztof:** I'm a prisoner.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I realize that's a mastery category, but...

//<Krzysztof hums to nerself, smiling.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** At the very least, one of them cults put you up to it.

**Krzysztof:** Nah. It was my idea.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It was your idea to go to jail for starting a conga line?

**Krzysztof:** Do you realize what that says about you? The Foundation?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** "White people can't dance" is hardly what I'd call radical rhetoric. And I'm not exactly your typical jailor.

**Krzysztof:** For ten years I came to work with short hair and a suit, and nobody batted an eye. I walk in with a leotard and a wig, and move against the grain, and everybody loses their minds.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, that's what you get when you introduce STEMheads to interpretive dance. Also, y'know. You were performing aggressive kinetoglyphs.

**Krzysztof:** Do you understand how that works?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. You move in mysterious ways, and everybody gets wrapped up trying to solve the mystery.

**Krzysztof:** No. You subvert the body's language. That's what I've been doing for as long as I've been here. Present myself one way, build expectations, then break them. Do you know what I'm proudest of?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Rocking that pixie cut?

**Krzysztof:** There's a fake project workgroup on the Site's intranet, for gossip and general backbiting. I set it up in secret with a dummy account. With absolutely no prompting from me, by the time I had to do my little dance, there was a thread raging on there about whether I was a woman pretending to be a man, or a man pretending to be a woman.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What was the consensus?

**Krzysztof:** That whichever it was, it was immoral.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So you made them beat themselves up.

**Krzysztof:** No, that was always the plan. It just sweetened the pot a little.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Everybody wants to teach me a lesson these days. This lecture is entitled "Existence is Political."

**Krzysztof:** Visibility is political. People don't care about things they can't see. There were gay communities in every major city while the myth of the nuclear family was being crafted in the forties. There have always been gays in the military. Nobody cared if they didn't need to see it. But you start opening up the lines of communication, you let people see things they used to be able to miss entirely, and suddenly we need norms and morality legislation more than healthcare and civil rights. If something offends mine eye, pluck that thing out.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You realize that all you did was worsen that issue, right? You made yourself visible, and the Foundation cracked down. You started the process you're angry about.

**Krzysztof:** No. It's been happening the entire time. Everything you people have done for over a century was in the name of normalization. Occlusion. Erasure. By making myself visible, and forcing you to act against me openly, I made //that// more visible, too.

//<Ne smirks.>//

**Krzysztof:** I dragged you into the light.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, I //do// like that. Did you--

**Krzysztof:** On the spot.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Holy shit, that's hot.

**Krzysztof:** It all needs to be one thing or the other, with the Foundation. Anomalous or mundane. Contained or uncontained. Active or neutralized. No room for nuance. I kissed a woman at my first Christmas party here, and nobody batted an eye. Or rather, plenty of eyes were batted. I kissed a man on Valentine's the next year, and suddenly I did not exist. To any of them. One thing or the other, doctor.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Have you considered that maybe you just worked in a really shitty Site?

**Krzysztof:** How you considered that maybe there's no other kind?

//<Before Dr. Lillihammer can respond, Krzysztof continues sharply.>//

**Krzysztof:** How do you detect //geistschreiber?//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What?

**Krzysztof:** When they first started appearing, you already had a means of ferreting them out. What was that?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You think I'm going to tell you?

**Krzysztof:** I already know. You've got an auramancer on your payroll. Someone who can see beyond appearances. You don't need to confirm or deny, I already know it's true. She's public enemy number one for both sides.

//<Krzysztof kicks back, and leans against the padded wall.>//

**Krzysztof:** You have a woman whose entire job is to check and see if people are presenting themselves as one thing, when you define them as another.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Just because you can read a metaphor into something, doesn't make it be that thing.

**Krzysztof:** Is that what you really believe? As a memeticist?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Krzysztof:** You know there was a guy at 17 who accused his research partner of being a //schriftsteller// because she wouldn't sleep with him? Totally baseless, but now the stank is on her and it doesn't ever wash off. You know they've clamped down on "politics" in casual conversation at 19, because they can't tell the difference between an SJW and a //giftschreiber?// You're the worst possible parody of centre-leaning shitlibs, and I used to wake up every morning wanting to puke at the thought of spending another day in your company. Showing you all who I really am felt //amazing.// After all these years of pretending I was just like the people around me, the people who pretended that I didn't exist, I got to be //me// in a way they couldn't ignore. I forced them to watch me win their little argument. I made them see me. And now I'm an exhibit, the body of the regicide on display for her crimes, and the king I killed is //civility.// It's perfect, really.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Foucault, huh? I guess you really were a //giftschreiber.//

**Krzysztof:** Or maybe it's hard not to think about the carceral complex when I'm literally incarcerated. The state needs to exert its control over my body. I had way too much. I'm too much of a threat. Your bosses have divine authority over who lives and dies. Who walks free, and who rots. Even who dances.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Krzysztof:** Especially who dances.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Simultaneously made an example of and ignored, huh? Doesn't that doesn't seem like a contradiction in terms?

**Krzysztof:** That contradiction is at the heart of the nature of power, doctor. All of human society is built on it. No wonder we wobble in the wind.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Huh.

**Krzysztof:** The fact that you put me in a box for it just proved my point further. The fact that nobody's even bothered talking to me for months...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm here now. You don't seem terribly interested in the reasons why.

**Krzysztof:** It's because your mask is slipping.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** My mask?

**Krzysztof:** Memeticists all wear costumes. Dazzle coats or //haute couture// or whatever that is you're //rocking// right now. You say it's so people don't forget you, but that isn't true.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Why, then?

**Krzysztof:** It's so they can define you at a glance. Categorize you. Classify you as strange, but safe. Weird, but on their side. You're presenting as someone special, but not too special. Within tolerances. Because you know what will happen if they see the real you. You've caused it to happen to others so many times already. I'll bet they opened an SCP file on you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I opened it myself.

**Krzysztof:** Even better. Doing their job for them. Internalizing the violence. Simulating their authority over you, inside yourself. But you know they won't even be satisfied with that forever. You came here because you need to know how to hide in plain sight. Because your mask is slipping, and you can't afford a wardrobe malfunction. You've climbed the ladder by playing nice, but a fall from this height would kill you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Now who's defining who?

**Krzysztof:** Am I wrong?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not here for advice, Leo. I'm here to ask if you want out of this closet, permanently.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Krzysztof:** On whose terms?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Mine.

**Krzysztof:** Really yours? Or theirs, with your lipstick on?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Krzysztof:** That's what I thought.

//<Ne narrows ner eyes.>//

**Krzysztof:** What number did you pick?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hmm?

**Krzysztof:** For your file.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** 8382.

//<Krzysztof laughs.>//

**Krzysztof:** Isn't that just Zwist's number, but higher? I thought you would've chosen something unique.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You don't get the significance?

**Krzysztof:** Explain it to me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm the new model. I'm top dog. The upgrade. The cults need a number one enemy? You're looking at her.

//<Krzysztof looks away.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer deactivates the recording.>//

//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

We've gotten to the point that every time I visit someone in containment, I get ten angry emails from everybody who's ever been connected with the file, pre-emptively protesting their release.

Luckily, there's nothing in Foundation guidelines that says you can't set up a spam filter.

[[=]]
@@ @@
[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/the-b-b-decommission/Asterisk43.png]]
@@ @@
[[/=]]

By this point the yappers were getting desperate. Both sides. Probably I'll never know whose bad idea this was, but Jesus Christ was it bad.

Like bringing a flamethrower to a liquid nitrogen fight.

[[div class="flashyhammer"]]
[[=]]
++ Operation BURNOUT Transcripts, Excerpt
[[/=]]
----

**Context:** It was an attack. Anything else will make your eyes and ears start bleeding if I describe it. Read ahead at your own peril.

----

This transcript has been machine-reconstructed by compartmentalized artificially intelligent conscripts. Questionable data is colour-coded to indicate degrees of confidence in its accuracy, with **##red|red##** indicating low confidence, **##orange|orange##** indicating average confidence, and **##green|green##** indicating high confidence.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##** enters the **##orange|body/facility##**. **##red|A quantity##** of dead **##orange| bodies/skin cells##** can be seen on the **##red|floor/ceiling/monitor/feed##** as **##green|she##** quickly crosses the **##red|hall/space/facility##**.>//

//<The entire **##red|space/facility/hall/room##** beyond appears to be filled with **##red|corpses/waste/dust/debris/giftschreiber/schriftsteller/personnel/guards/agents/researchers/administrators##**, littering the **##orange|floor/scene/area##** . **##green|Dr. Lillihammer##** picks **##green|her##** way through with great care, attempting not to dislodge the **##red|corpses/waste/dust/debris/giftschreiber/schriftsteller/personnel/guards/agents/researchers/administrators##**.  As **##green|she##** passes one **##red|corpse/piece of debris##**, a **##orange|hand/tentacle/glove##** snaps out to grab at **##green|her##** **##orange|ankle/boot/leg##**. **##green|She##** looks down to see a  **##orange|bleeding/filthy##** **##orange|giftschreiber/schriftsteller/guard/agent/researcher/administrator##** crawling out from beneath a pile of **##red|filth/corpses/debris##**.>//

**##orange|Giftschreiber/Guard##:** **##orange|You're/we're##** not **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**.

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Yeah, and neither are **##orange|you/any of you##**.

//<**##green|She##** kicks the **##orange|hand/tentacle/glove##** away, and continues **##green|her##** exploration.>//

//<The remainder of the **##orange|body/facility##** is in much the same **##orange|state/condition##**. Many **##red|giftschreiber/schriftsteller/guards/agents/researchers/administrators##** are clawing at **##orange|their/various##**  **##red|skin/faces/eyes/compatriots/enemies##** and screaming incoherently. There is a general **##orange|topic/theme##**  of **##red|identity/coherence/personality/uniqueness/falconry##** to their **##orange|complaints/cries##**. **##green|Dr. Lillihammer##** does not stop to investigate, instead heading deeper into the **##orange|body/facility##**.>//

//<After several **##red|minutes/hours/sectors/corpses##** have been passed in this **##orange|way/manner##**, **##green|Dr. Lillihammer##** finds **##green|herself##** in the **##orange|Containment Wing/Administration Wing/Mobile Task Forces Wing/detention centre/oubliette##** of **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**. **##green|She##** examines the **##red|doors/cubicles/cells/stalls/boxes##** for several more **##orange|seconds/minutes/hours##** before settling on the **##red|door/cubicle/cell/stall/box/one##** **##green|she##** is looking for.>//

//<She opens the **##red|door/cubicle/cell/stall/box##** to reveal **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**. **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** does not acknowledge the **##red|presence/appearance/entrance/authority/face/voice/identity/uniqueness/instance##** of **##green|Dr. Lillihammer##**. >//

[[include component:image-block

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  caption= [[span style="color:#FF000E"]][SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED][[/span]] of [[span style="color:#FF000E"]][SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED][[/span]] at [[span style="color:#FF000E"]][SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED][[/span]], 2023. |
  width=225px|
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]]

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Hey there, **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**.

//<**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** does not look up. **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED##**, **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**, and **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** with bloodshot **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** and a badly-torn **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**.>//

**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]:##** That's **##red|me/you/us/everyone/everything##** alright. Hooray for **##red|me/you/us/everyone/everything##**.

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** I bet **##red|you/people/you people/we/I##**  really get tired of hearing **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##**, huh?

**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]:##** That obvious?

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Those **##red|corpses/giftschreiber/schriftsteller/guards/agents/researchers/administrators##** seemed quite taken with **##orange|it/themselves/me/us/you##**.

**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]:##** Not like **##red|they/I/anyone##** had much **##orange|agency/choice##** in the **##orange|matter/end##**. **##orange|You/Everyone##** should get out of **##orange|here/the body##** while **##orange|it's/that's##** still **##orange|possible/desirable.##** 

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** **##red|They/We/Everyone##** tried to break in and **##red|free/capture/kill##** **##red|themselves/you/us/everyone##**. Didn't go so well for **##red|them/us/anyone/you##**. 

**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]:##** Just leave **##red|me/yourself/them/everyone##** alone.

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Afraid **##orange|I/we##**  can't do that, Elly.

//<**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** looks up, confused.>//

**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]:##** Elly?

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Sure. Ellison Ackhart.

//<**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** stares at  **##green|her##**, **##orange|eyes/mouth##** open wide.>//

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Alias **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED].##** 

//<**##orange|Silence/weeping##** on **##orange|recording/feed##**.>//

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##:** Trahkce Nosilla. That **##orange|one/term/name##** is probably **##red|burned/destroyed/inaccessible/unusable/abstracted##** now, but **##green|I##** can rattle off **##orange|some more/a few more/a lot more##** if--

//<**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** clutches at **##green|Dr. Lillihammer##** **##red|desperately/anxiously/excitedly/fearfully/repeatedly##**.>//

**##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]:##** **##orange|It's/I'm##** not **##red|affecting/controlling you/everyone##**?! 

//<**##green|Dr. Lillihammer##** leans forward and envelopes **##red|[SAFEGUARDS ENGAGED]##** in a **##orange|hug/blanket##**.>//

**##green|Dr. Lillihammer:##** **##green|I'm one of a kind,##** **##red|agent/prisoner/detainee##**. But **##red|I/me##** and **##orange|you/the rest of us##** are gonna **##orange|work/think/act##**  on **##orange|it/that/you/everyone else.##**

//<Transcript ends.>//

[[/div]]

Even with all three streams of //grammatik// at my disposal, even as my scalp is tingling with all the power I haven't yet begun to use, there are still scars I can't heal. Words I can't erase.

But that's a good thing. I'll need new projects after this one is finished.

As long as I've got a direction to move in, I'll be impossible to catch through sheer momentum.

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[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**2 February 2024**__
**In which history is literally repeated**

"Have you ever thought of writing a history of cryptomancy?"

Thilo looks down at me impassively. It's easy to manage with so little visible face. "Another trove of secrets for the Foundation to rob? I think not."

The floor of the cabin is covered in cards. I've spent the entire day creating them, in a mad rush of enthusiasm, and //I// am covered in paint, ink, and bits of discarded tape. The old man watches me indulgently, like Harry's parents when he and I used to set up Domino Rally in the front hall of his house. Only something a little more dramatic will happen when I set these things in motion.

"I'm not suggesting you write an almanack of trade secrets, to go along with the almanack of bullshit you wrote back in the day. I just think it might be interesting to see how it all evolved."

Thilo grunts. "Harold has been needling me on the subject already. I hardly need this refrain in stereo."

I roll my eyes. "The 001? Vaporware. You know they're calling me the primary containment mechanism for an anomaly they've been failing to classify since the turn of the last century? This is what I'm saying. We need to hear how it really went down, so we can figure out where to go from here."

He considers, as I put the finishing flourishes on a lovely bit of tarot that will instantly burst your appendix. Hey, if there's a medic on-site, that's not necessarily fatal. Of course, if you don't have an appendix... hmm. Maybe it can instruct your body to grow a new one. "I think," Thilo finally replies, "that it would make for a very sad story. And I'm not sure the world needs many more of those at present."

"Well, that's fine." I gather the cards in front of me -- I see the light of hope in his eyes as it looks like I might be packing up, then watch it die as I produce yet another pack of blanks -- and crack my neck. "This thing you and I are working on should be plenty uplifting. You can keep it all from seeming too saccharine. What's so depressing about the //schriftsteller,// anyway? I thought all the really bad stuff happened right at what you thought was the end. There must have been hundreds of years of good times, first."

He glances out the window. Only **##ce005c|my friend the half-cat##** has dared come close in months, so really he's staring into **##green|greenspace##**. "There was a schism," he sighs. "I was told it came down to the difference between guiding humanity and exploiting them, but of course I was naïve to accept that. In reality, my master and his pupils were the ones doing the exploiting, while the dissenters..."

"Did the exploding." I'm going through a card every seven seconds now. Having cracked all three branches of grammar, I can't seem to stop myself from whipping up new effects. It's like a dam has burst, and even blathering on like I'm doing now can't distract me long from the need to create. "Sure. But it's not like they were ever really on the same page."

He shakes his head. "That's just it. I think the seed of poison was always there, in every act of creation. Every fire lit contains a mote, at least, of control. What I took to be a struggle between armies of vice and virtue was really fought in every breast, an orgy of self-loathing and self-harm. There was only ever one cult, Lillian, and its utmost aim was death. Would a history of such a thing be of value to anyone?"

"Might be." I think I'll try my hand at something pataphysical this time, in memory of... well, he knows who he is, even if mundane grammar can never quite place him. It's one of his most charming qualities. "As an object lesson for how not to be."

This time he harrumphs. A word invented in anticipation of the person of Thilo Zwist. "And who would be willing to learn?"

"That depends. You handle the words," and I brandish my brushes at him, "and I'll paint the pictures, and between the two of us we just might manage something special. They'll probably hang it in the Louvre."

"More likely," he said, sourly, "they hang us both instead."
[[/div]]

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