fragment:target-audience-8

Link to article: fragment:target-audience-8.

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[[a class="style01-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/7" target="_parent"]][[span class="style01-plaintext animation03" style="--content: 'Return to previous page';"]]Return to previous page[[/span]][[/a]]

----

[[=]]
[[span class="style04-plaintext animation04" style="--content: "Chapter 8";"]]Chapter 8[[/span]]
[[/=]]

Because of the glowing letters of endorsement from the faculty and Vera’s alleged disability and crippling dysphoria, Harvard was quite generous in how it accommodated her ability to study. While she was enrolled as a regular student, she was effectively studying at a distance. Professors would videotape lectures and seminars, then hand them to me along with coursework and other assignments so I could bring them to Vera. Of course, unbeknownst to them, the videotapes were entirely superfluous as she did actually attend every lecture and seminar without anyone knowing.

While she didn’t get the full college experience, Vera took an incredible amount of pleasure in getting to study at one of the greatest universities in the world. Ever impatient and eager to learn, she ended up pursuing both a Bachelor’s degree and a concurrent Master’s in physics, allowing her to graduate with both in just four years. Following that, she began to work towards earning two PhDs in a joint degree program—one in physics and one in materials science and mechanical engineering. Typically, that kind of program would take eight years to complete, but she managed to do it in just three. Then again, it was hardly surprising given that she doesn’t lose any time to sleep.

During those seven years of attending Harvard, Vera continued to evolve. She figured out how to physically materialize for brief periods of time—mere seconds at first, but eventually she was able to do it for several minutes at a time. However, doing so took a lot of energy out of her, which she then learned to partially offset by consuming food—the more calorie-rich, the better. As a result, she developed a habit of eating toffees, potato chips, and a variety of other snacks and junk food. This, in turn, was aided by another talent she developed—the ability to store objects in some kind of pocket dimension, allowing her to retrieve them whenever and wherever she wanted.

With her ability to materialize came a desire to take care of her appearance. She began to take lengthy showers in the middle of the night, during which she used up a lot of shampoo and conditioner. Thankfully, any fur or other piece of her that separated from her body instantly dissipated, so I never had to worry about her clogging up the drain.

Vera’s appearance became so important to her that she ended up regularly doing her hair, polishing her skull, fluffing up her tail, and even began to wear clothes. Though, she struggled to keep them on whenever she dematerialized at first. After experimenting with several different outfits, she finally settled on a pink turtleneck sweater and light brown pants as her default look. I couldn’t help but think that she took some inspiration from Carl Sagan with that one.

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

In addition to being able to dine with me and allowing her to fully interact with the world around her, Vera’s ability to materialize also changed our lives in other ways. For one, she took care of me whenever I got sick, helped clean around the house, and we started to cook together every now and then. However, she also became somewhat more disruptive—she often took things apart in order to figure out how they worked, and at one point she even attempted to build a particle collider in the basement. While I did get cross with her a couple of times because of that, I nevertheless respected her desire to learn.

And learn she did.

Vera gained a reputation for being a reclusive genius and polymath. She always leaped at the opportunity to expand her knowledge and derived so much joy out of it that I couldn’t help but to feel inspired by her. And what started with a need to learn Romanian so as to strengthen her cover story fostered in her an earnest desire to learn yet more languages, which was also partially fueled by her newfound habit of chatting with people online.

Most notably, though, Vera became an incredibly prolific theoretical researcher, publishing four to five papers a month. That kind of brilliance and work ethic from a self-employed researcher ended up attracting the attention of Synapse Consulting Partners, a private research institute that had developed something of a reputation for hiring some of the top students at Harvard and MIT. Ever since Vera first earned her PhDs they had been calling her at least once a year to try to recruit her, and every time she struggled to turn them down.

Given that she had to live in hiding, she had little choice but to work in a theoretical field, but I could tell that her heart yearned for experimentation and practical application, and that was precisely what Synapse was offering her, which was why she found it so difficult to reject their offers. Whenever they called, Vera and I would end up discussing and often arguing about it for days.

At first, I thought that she was just suffering from cabin fever given how much time we had spent in our house, and so we began a tradition of traveling abroad every summer to get a change in surroundings. While it seemed to have helped at first, it ended up not being enough for her.

As the years passed by, it became increasingly clear that something had to give, sooner or later, and that scared the hell out of me.

All I ever wanted was for us to be happy and for her to be safe.

That’s all I wanted.

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Almost twelve years had passed since Vera first came into my life, and for the past few days she had been riding the high of her latest breakthrough—a proposal for a hypothetical metamaterial capable of phasing through regular matter. The paper was absolutely brilliant and had been praised by some of the top minds in the scientific community.

I had just returned home from work with a bag of takeaway when Vera met me in the dining room.

“Welcome home, Huey!~” She practically sang as she pulled me into a hug. “Ooh!~ Is that pad thai I smell?”

“Sure is. I figured that it's been a while since we had some, so I grabbed it on the way home,” I replied.

“Yummy!” She exclaimed as she teleported one of the boxes into her hand.

Plates, forks, napkins, and drinking glasses then appeared on the table in a puff of black smoke before Vera teleported into her seat. By the time I sat down, she was already in the midst of eating her food, murmuring in delight as she did.

“Mmmh.~ So how was your day?” She finally asked after her sixth bite.

“Pretty good, actually,” I said as I scooped the food out of the box and onto my plate. “I’ve made some great headway on my paper on quantum information preservation.”

“Ooh, look at you!~” Vera cooed as she regarded me with pride.

“What about you? How’s your day been so far?” I asked before taking a bite of food.

“Very interesting, actually,” she said, then paused as if she was unsure of how to continue. “Synapse called again.”

Hearing that, I couldn’t help but to sigh in frustration. “Those guys just can’t catch a hint, can they?”

Vera didn’t respond at first, instead took a few bites of food and ate them in silence before she finally said “The thing is… I didn’t turn them down this time.”

I dropped my fork and stared at her. “What?!?”

She raised her finger. “I didn’t say yes! I told them I’d think about it.”

“What is there to think about?!” I asked.

“Huey, their offer was, like, really good!”

“It doesn’t matter how good it is!” I retorted. “Need I remind you that you’re not human?!”

“Maybe not, but I can tell that they value me and my work!”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Vera, you’re the smartest person I know, but you’re incredibly gullible if you think they’re going to care about that once they realize what you are. They’re going to be far more interested in studying you than employing you as a researcher.”

“Even if they’d want to study me, I don’t see why they couldn’t see how useful I’d be as a scientist.”

“Listen to yourself!” I shouted. “Vera, I know it hurts to hear, but the truth is that no one but me will ever see you as anything other than a monster—some //thing// to be poked and prodded, and put under a microscope!”

“Don’t be silly,” she replied as she took another bite of food. “I mean, yeah, some might see me like that, but not everyone.”

“No, but those in charge would!” I pointed out. “After all, they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, something you merely existing challenges!”

“Yeah, but think about it logically—what other scientist has my credentials and can do what I can do? Either no one or a teeny tiny number. That makes me incredibly valuable as a scientist,” she retorted. “So those in charge would also have an interest in employing me in one form or another.”

I scoffed at that. “So you’re telling me that you’d be fine with living in a cage as long as you’d get to pursue your own research?”

“I already live in a cage.”

I felt as if I had been punched in the gut. I just stared at her in disbelief. “Is that how you see our life together? Everything we’ve built?”

“Huey, I can’t be seen by anyone but you. I can’t pursue the things I’m passionate about. And even when we go on vacation, I can’t materialize anywhere but in the hotel room,” she pointed out. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful little cage we’ve built together, but it’s too small. And every year it feels smaller and smaller. I just can’t take it anymore.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Without saying another word, I got up and headed for the door.

Vera didn’t follow me. She knew from experience that whenever we fought, I needed some time to myself to clear my head.

I left the house, got in my car, and began to drive. As I drove around town, my thoughts raced.

Why couldn’t Vera just see things my way? We had such a wonderful life together! Why couldn’t she just be happy with what we had? Why did Synapse have to keep ruining things for us and creating this rift between us?

However, more and more, I couldn’t help but feel guilty and ashamed for what I had said to her. Yes, it was the truth, but I could’ve put it much more gently.

I hated the thought of us not being on good terms, and her feeling unfulfilled… but I hated the thought of losing her even more. After all, there was no telling what might happen if Synapse found out the truth about her.

It was dark when I finally returned home. Vera was in the office where she was busy researching her next paper, and so I didn’t want to bother her.

No, that wasn’t true…

I didn’t want to apologize. Not because I wasn’t sorry, but because I didn’t want to risk encouraging her to take Synapse’s offer.

Instead, I went down to the living room to watch some TV, but when I got there I realized that I wasn’t in the mood to watch anything.

As such, I instead opted to grab one of my old family photo albums and sat down with it, reminiscing about Haley and I’s childhood as I slowly flipped through the pages.

Things back then had been so simple. Life was just something for us to enjoy and explore, and while we did occasionally encounter obstacles that felt like a bigger deal than they really were, we nevertheless figured out how to overcome or endure them.

I missed those times.

I missed Haley.

Suddenly, I felt Vera hugging me from behind. “Thinking about her again?”

I leaned into the hug and stroked her hand. “I miss her so much.”

“I would’ve loved to meet her.”

“You would’ve gotten along really well,” I said as I turned to her. “You two are a lot alike.”

She maintained her embrace for a few moments in silence before finally saying. “Hey, I think we need to continue our discussion about the job offer.”

I let out a sigh. “Why is it so hard for you to understand the danger you’ll put yourself in?”

“I do understand,” she replied. “I’m just willing to take the risk.”

“Well, I’m not!” I shouted as I pulled away and turned towards her. “I can’t lose you! I can’t! I just can’t!”

“Then why don’t you come with me?” Vera asked. “They told me they’d be willing to make any accommodations in order to get me to sign on, so I could tell them that me doing that would be preconditioned to them hiring you as well. That way, you could be there, even if they do end up poking and prodding me, and putting me under a microscope.”

“You really think they’d let me anywhere near you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’ll happen,” she admitted with a shrug. “What I do know is that I want this, more than anything… and I’m planning on accepting their offer.”

“No no no no no no,” I repeated as I clutched her tightly and buried my face in her chest. “Vera, don’t do this! Please don’t do this! Please! Please! I can’t lose you too! I can’t!”

She cupped my cheeks. “Then come with me.”

“No… No…” I repeated as I collapsed, Vera holding me in her arms to prevent me from falling onto the floor.

I don’t know for sure how long my episode lasted, it might’ve been hours. All I know was that I kept begging Vera to reconsider in an increasingly incoherent manner, and she kept comforting and reassuring me, while remaining steadfast about her decision.

There was nothing I could say or do to make her change her mind, and I felt so powerless because I knew it would end badly. I just knew it.

It was as if she was telling me that she was going to jump down a chasm and asked me to jump with her.

But if the choice was between watching her take the plunge alone or taking it with her, then there was only one option I could take.

“... Okay,” I finally relented. “I’ll come with you.”

[[=image https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Lovelace_scene_8 style="width:600px;"]]
[[=]]
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++ [[a class="style05-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/9" target="_parent"]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation02" style="--content: '“I’ll ';"]]“I’ll [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation02" style="--content: 'come ';"]]come [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation02" style="--content: 'with ';"]]with [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation02" style="--content: 'you…”';"]]you…”[[/span]][[/a]]
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[[/=]]

[[/div]]

fragment:target-audience-8

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