fragment:target-audience-7

Link to article: fragment:target-audience-7.

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[[a class="style01-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/6" target="_parent"]][[span class="style01-plaintext animation02" style="--content: 'Return to previous page';"]]Return to previous page[[/span]][[/a]]

----

[[=]]
[[span class="style04-plaintext animation03" style="--content: "Chapter 7";"]]Chapter 7[[/span]]
[[/=]]

As much as I appreciated LSD’s effectiveness in helping me perceive Vera, I was not a fan of the stuff. More often than not, I ended up having bad trips and needed her to calm me down. Eventually, I decided to forgo the substance entirely and instead turned to self-induced hallucinations via active visualization exercises. It took me much longer to be able to see, hear, and feel Vera as vividly as I did while on LSD, but the lack of side effects and being able to do it in a more controlled manner made it much more rewarding.

Every day, I devoted half an hour in the morning, an hour after work, and an hour at night to train my brain to visualize her. At first, I could only perceive her while I was focusing all of my attention on her, but after a month of daily exercises I was able to do it as long as I actively paid attention to her. And after two months, I was able to perceive her at all times and as vividly as I did any other person. No longer requiring LSD to see her, I saw that she looked exactly like her reflection, and her voice couldn’t really be described as ‘ethereal’ or ‘angelic’. No, her voice was almost laughably ordinary in every way imaginable.

As my ability to visualize her improved, so did her ability to communicate. By the time I was able to perceive her without having to actively pay attention to her, she had mastered both sign language and spoken English. Between that, us both being supertaskers, and her craving both visual and auditory stimuli, we began to have what she called ‘separtaneous conversations’—two entirely separate conversations held simultaneously, with one being in sign language and the other in English. While it wasn’t something I would’ve ever come up with on my own, it was certainly a fun and extremely efficient way to communicate.

Of course, seeing her roaming around in physical space was very different from seeing her through reflections. As it turned out, Vera rarely walked anywhere, instead preferring to teleport around—literally disappearing and reappearing elsewhere in a puff of black smoke. Between that and the fact that she was over seven feet tall, Vera would often accidentally startle me by appearing out of nowhere, and it took me months to get used to it.

Once I was able to hear and feel her, Vera developed a habit of waking me up in the middle of the night, either to talk about science or to ask me to put on a new audiobook or PDF for her. Although these disruptions to my sleep schedule were at times rough to deal with in the morning, I actually didn’t mind them. When I was little, both Haley and I would often wake each other up in the middle of the night to talk or read together, so my nighttime discussions and excursions with Vera always filled me with nostalgia.

And her mind was simply incredible. In a mere ten months, she had gone from knowing next to nothing to possessing the knowledge and intellect of an extremely gifted college graduate student. I rarely had to simplify things for her anymore, and at times our discussions reached a level of complexity that I was unaccustomed to, which was both fun and refreshing. And not only did she learn to anticipate my moves in chess, but she grew exceptionally adept at using deceptive moves that forced me to respond in ways that left me vulnerable to attack. As such, she would win more often than not, but I didn’t particularly mind. If nothing else, she was forcing me to get better at the game.

Vera truly brought so much life to my once dreary existence, and this was best exemplified by the holidays and my birthday. I had almost always spent those days alone, and the few times I hadn’t, I was reminded of how much more it hurt to be around others who couldn’t understand me. But Vera was like a candlelight in the darkness—she made those days an absolute joy as we came up with new traditions together. And so instead of seeing each holiday as yet another sign that I was inching ever closer to my death, I instead came to look forward to next year.

Christmas was the best example of this change in attitude. Before, it was the holiday I dreaded the most as it embodied everything I had lost—family, joy, and innocence—but my first Christmas with Vera was one of the best I had ever had in my life. We spent much of it sitting together in front of the fireplace while reading research papers, discussing string theory, and coming up with our own variants of traditional Christmas songs about scientific phenomena. And while Vera wasn’t able to give me a gift, I did manage to make something special for her that I knew she would love—a 15 hour compilation of all of Carl Sagan’s interviews and lectures, something I had made for her during my office hours at Harvard while she was too distracted by the various lectures held on campus. While she would only listen to it once given her photographic memory and drive to learn new things, I could tell that her attention was fully absorbed while she listened to it.

With how much joy and meaning Vera had brought into my life, it was only right that I’d return the favor.

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“Huey?~”

I let out a soft groan as I slowly stirred awake.

“Huey Dewey Decimal?~”

“Mmh… What?” I asked as I opened my eyes.

Vera was standing over me, her eyelids raised in a smile and her tail wagging behind her.

“I believe I’ve accomplished something quite extraordinary!” She exclaimed with absolute enthusiasm. “And I need your help to verify it.”

I sniffled and smacked my lips as I resisted the urge to go back to sleep. I hated how difficult it was to get up sometimes.

“Alright, let’s see it,” I finally said as I got out of bed.

She giggled excitedly and bounced around before teleporting to the doorway. “Come on, we’ll need the camera for this!”

As I followed her to my office, I asked “So what’s this about?”

“Oh, you’ll see!~” She replied with a glint in her eye. “Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise now would we?”

“I suppose not,” I said back, playing along with whatever she had planned.

Then, once I had retrieved the digital camera from my desk drawer, Vera gestured at herself and said “Take a picture of me!”

I, of course, did not like the implication of that. After all, keeping Vera hidden relied on her being invisible, and if that was no longer the case—

“Stop dilly-dallying and take a picture already!”

“R-right…” I replied before complying with her request.

[[=image https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Lovelace_scene_6 style="width:600px;"]]

Much to my dismay, Vera was visible clear as day in the photograph.

She teleported behind me and rested her chin on top of my head as she hugged me. “What do you think? Pretty cool, huh?”

“No, Vera. This is pretty much the opposite of ‘cool’,” I replied. “If you’re no longer invisible, then—”

“Oh don’t be such a party pooper. It’s not permanent whatsoever,” she reassured me before teleporting back to her previous position. “Here, take another one!”

I did as she asked, and was relieved to see that she was correct—the picture showed nothing but books, shelves, and cabinets.

She teleported behind me again and resumed her hug. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

“I suppose…” I said, not feeling entirely convinced. “But what if it eventually becomes permanent if you do it too much? That does seem to be the pattern when it comes to your development.”

“I mean, I get why you’d worry about that,” she replied. “But I don’t think that’s the case here. In order to project myself like this, I really need to exert myself, and while that might get easier with practice, I don’t think I could ever get stuck.”

“How can you know that for sure?”

“Well, I can’t, of course. I’m just making an educated guess,” she admitted. “Would it really be so bad if it did happen, though? You can’t expect me to stay as I am, after all.”

“I’m just scared about what might happen if someone finds out about you,” I said. “If word gets out, the same people that disappeared my students might come after us.”

She nuzzled my cheek. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“I guess that’s all I can ask for,” I said with a sigh as I closed my eyes.

Normally I hated the sensation of being touched, but I didn’t mind it with her. In fact, it was actually kind of nice.

Eventually, I asked “So what else can you do while ‘projecting’ yourself? Could you, for example, interact with the physical world?”

“No, unfortunately not,” Vera replied and demonstrated this by phasing her hand through my desk. “But I’m pretty sure I can project my voice.”

“That could potentially be quite useful,” I noted as I considered the possibilities. “I know they’re developing some new kind of speech recognition software at John A. Paulson’s. Maybe I can grab you a copy of their prototype so you can use the computer with your voice?”

“Oh my gosh, could you?” She asked excitedly. “That’d mean so much to me!”

“You know I’d do anything for you, Vera,” I said as I stroked her arm.

Suddenly, she let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!!!”

I turned to her. “What is it?”

“Huey, I just got the //best// idea!” She exclaimed as she struggled to contain her excitement. “What if I could take distance courses online?!”

“Wh-what? No—”

“Why not?” She asked before I got a chance to respond.

“Because you’d need a high school transcript to get any sort of college-level education,” I explained.

“I’m sure we could figure out a way to get one somehow!”

“It’s too much of a risk, Vera!” I almost shouted at her. “Not only could we get caught if we forged that kind of documentation, but we’d constantly be in danger of getting caught whenever you’d attend those courses.”

“But I wanna get a real, formal education,” Vera pleaded.

“Why?” I asked. “Is it really that important when you’re in hiding? If anything, you having any records tied to you is a liability. So why do you want it?”

“Because I wanna be a scientist like you.”

I opened my mouth and tried to say something, anything that might dissuade her… but I couldn’t. It had always been Haley’s dream to become a scientist, but she never got the chance to, and now I was standing in the way of Vera’s dream.

I simply did not have the heart to tell her no, no matter how bad of an idea it was, but I didn’t even know how to go about it.

I shifted around and rubbed my elbows. “Look, I want to help you, Vera—I really do—but I can’t even begin to imagine how to go about it without getting into trouble.”

She cupped my cheeks. “Huey, you’re the smartest person I know. If there’s anyone who can figure this out, it’s you.”

“Vera, it’s not a matter of—”

She stared deep into my eyes, leaned in closer, and whispered “I believe in you.”

I wanted to scream. There was no way in hell that I’d be able to get her enrolled anywhere serious that would allow her to earn a PhD, but I couldn’t tell her that. I simply //couldn’t//.

“I’ll, um… I’ll see what I can do…”

“Yay!” She bounced around, giggling in both excitement and delight before hugging me. “Thank you, Huey! You’re the best!”

“D-don’t mention it,” I replied as I hugged her back. “I’d… I’d do anything for you, you know that.”

She let out another giggle. “I know.”

“Hey, uh, by the way, if you’re going to be pursuing a formal education, then you’re going to need a last name,” I said. “Any suggestions?”

Vera thought about it for about a fraction of a second before she exclaimed “Ooh! Ooh! What about ‘Lovelace’?”

“As in ‘Ada Lovelace’?” I asked. “Hmm… That does fit you quite well given that she was the mother of the computer algorithm.”

“Aaaand she was total besties with Charles Babbage!” She cupped my cheeks again. “I can be the Lovelace to your Babbage!”

I huffed a laugh at that. “I’m fairly certain we’re a lot closer than they ever were.”

“Well, duh! Of course we are, silly!” She replied as she rubbed my cheeks. “But we’re still besties! And if I can just get a PhD, we can become the ultimate scientific duo!”

“Yeah… Yeah, I’m sure you’d make a great scientist,” I said as I did my best attempt at an encouraging smile.

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Over the course of the next couple of days, we began to research and strategize on how to get Vera the education she desired. First we had to make sure that her ability to operate technology was sufficient to actually allow her to pursue a formal education. The speech recognition prototype developed at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences proved to be an invaluable asset in this endeavor, as it enabled Vera to operate numerous programmable functions on the computer. And as it turned out, there was also a more basic version of the prototype designed to work on an iPhone. As such, I got Vera a phone, modified it to disable the cameras and optimized it as a hands-free device, and then installed the prototype into it. With a bit of tweaking we finally had a setup that allowed her to interact with the world and surf the web using nothing but her voice.

Having cleared the technical obstacles, we then focused our attention on how to get her a formal education. The most obvious option was distance learning, but as I had suspected, every single one of the online schools offering degree programs required personal identification in one form or another. The other option was to take advantage of my position at Harvard to get her into an undergraduate program. There was some precedent to Harvard accepting unusual students, as I personally knew of a couple of undocumented immigrants studying there, and the university prided itself on providing accommodations for special needs students. And while I had never been particularly sociable, I did have a personal and professional network at Harvard by virtue of having worked there for years.

As I did not want to risk forging a fake identity for Vera, I decided to pursue the second option, even if it meant having to step way outside of my comfort zone to do so.

We crafted a backstory for her that provided a good excuse for her reclusiveness while also eliciting some degree of sympathy from the faculty. The story we ended up settling on was that Vera was a disabled trans woman that had fled from persecution in Moldova in the hopes that she could live as her authentic self in America, but lacked any sort of documentation due to falling out with her family and because of her identity. I told my colleagues that I first met her online and had been drawn to her incredible intellect and cheerful personality, but had no idea about her being undocumented until after she moved in with me.

To my surprise, most of my colleagues told me that they had noticed a change in my demeanor since last year, and that they were glad that I had found someone who made me happy. I then told them how brilliant Vera was and how much she wished to pursue a higher education, and when I asked them if they would be willing to privately assess her capabilities over the phone, many of them actually agreed to do so. As it turned out, I had woefully underestimated just how much my coworkers cared about me, which ended up working to Vera and I’s advantage.

When it was finally time for Vera to send in her application to Harvard, it was backed by numerous letters of recommendation and recognition from some of the top professors at the university. Because of that, despite her not meeting most of the requirements to apply let alone be accepted, she nevertheless managed to get in.

The day we received her acceptance letter was by far the happiest day in Vera’s life.

[[=image https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Lovelace_scene_7 style="width:600px;"]]
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++ [[a class="style05-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/8" target="_parent"]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'And ';"]]And [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'I ';"]]I [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'was ';"]]was [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'so ';"]]so [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'proud ';"]]proud [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'of ';"]]of [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation04" style="--content: 'her.';"]]her.[[/span]][[/a]]
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fragment:target-audience-7

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