INEVITABLE; Dr Dan Gets to Work.

Link to article: INEVITABLE; Dr Dan Gets to Work..

:root {
    --header-title: "E.T.T.R.A.";
    --header-subtitle: "Emergent Tactical Threat Response Authority";
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:root {
--header-title: "E.T.T.R.A.";
--header-subtitle: "Emergent Tactical Threat Response Authority";
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[[include component:image-block
|name= http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/local--files/highway-karma-images/National_Security_Agency%2C_2013.jpg
|caption=The Newly Renovated ETTRA Headquarters, located in Pocket Dimension A-12.
|width=1000px
|align=center]]

Dr. Dan has been out of the office for 104 days. For those 104 days, he has instead been in a satellite office, just 12 miles and an entire pocket dimension away from where he normally works.

Why?

Because the Department of Architecture and Construction had some very convincing and fancy ideas for renovations a couple of years ago, and those ideas eventually made their way to the desk of O5-9, who was at one point an architect. He, of course, loved the new renovations and even went so far as to call the designer behind it the new Frank Lloyd Wright. The project was approved, and funding was assigned. Somehow, though, at no point was Dan told about this, and it came as a complete surprise that, one Monday morning, a team of construction workers walked into ETTRA HQ and told everyone to leave for an unspecified amount of time.

So, for 104 days, Dr. Dan has been sitting in an old, long-since-out-of-use satellite office, coordinating the actions of ETTRA. Until today.

Today, the director of the Department of Architecture and Construction told every ETTRA member that the renovations were done, besides Dr. Dan, and they went back. Today, Dr. Dan walked into the old, long-since-out-of-use satellite office and noticed nobody was there. Today, Dr. Dan noticed somebody sitting in his chair.

"Who the hell are you?" Dr. Dan said, dropping his briefcase on the ground.

The man sitting in his chair shot up, quickly looking around before his eyes settled on Dan. He fumbled with his name tag, clumsily, then reached out his hand for a shake.

"Ah, Dan, you're here. I'm the Director of Architecture and Construction. Mr. Lessig." His hand quivered as he spoke.

Dr. Dan looked him up and down.

"How old are you?"

"23, sir."

Dr. Dan did it again. The kid's tie was disheveled, swaying to the left and right as if it had been put on this morning, and his hair was a mess of frayed strands and dandruff.

"You're the director?" Dan began to lower so he could pick up his briefcase.

"Yes, and I've come to give you a tour of the new headquarters, sir." Lessig began to retract his hand.

"Oh, your department is finally done making a mess of the place?"

Lessig began to come out from behind the desk. "No mess at all, sir. We have training to prevent that."

"Neato. I assume the flight length is the same?" Dan joked.

"We've shortened it!"

Dr. Dan stopped moving for a second, processing the sentence. Did they move the building? Please tell me they didn't move the building.

"How so?" Dan hesitated.

Lessig began to reach into his pocket, causing a stir in Dan's mind as he began to calculate the possibilities. The idea that this was some Insurgency agent toying with him before he put a bullet through his head wasn't exactly a mainstay in his thoughts, but it was there regardless. Other groups would want him dead before the Insurgency. A lot, actually. Most of them, now that he thought about it. Almost all the churches, including the normal ones. Anderson would've done it with a drone strike. Ambrose would poison him, and the Sarkics would turn him into a flesh dog or something. Not this.

Lessig stopped reaching into his pocket and looked at Dan. "Oh, uh, sorry. I know what this looks like; it's just a small cube. Just give me a second."

That certainly doesn't make his case better. UIU? No.

Dr. Dan's thought process was finally interrupted by the production of a small iridescent cube from Lessig's pocket, who then gripped it tightly.

"What is that?" Dan's eyes began to scan the cube.

"A... pocket dimension transporter? I forgot the exact words the scientists down at Dimensional told me. It makes getting to the new HQ easier."

"How so?"

Lessig turns around and pelts the cube into the wall, making a loud bang and causing the wall to rapidly change colors for a second before turning to a single shade of blue, maybe purple.

"All you've got to do is walk on in."
----

Dr. Dan found himself on a hill, a situation that hadn't happened to him in 10 years. In front of him, across a vast parking lot, was the new ETTRA Headquarters, standing in full pride and glory, no longer constrained to the sad fate of being underground. And it was blocky. All the windows were either black or white, and neither option allowed outsiders to gaze inwards. A much taller building stood in the center of the headquarters, made entirely of concrete and reaching towards the sky.

Lessig entered the corner of his vision. "Ah, I see the network tower has caught your eye."

"Is that what that is?" Dr. Dan turned around.

"Yes. It maintains all the Wi-Fi for the building, connection to SCiP-Net, and connection to... some fancy pocket dimension network."

"I assume it does it well?"

"Fastest Wi-Fi in the west, sir."

Dr. Dan turned around to face Lessig, only to find something else looking at him as well. A log cabin. Intricately constructed.

"What's with the house?"

"Oh, it's yours."

"What?"

Lessig gestures at the house. "O5-9 asked for it himself. Said it was about time you were rewarded in a more personal manner."

"So I have to move the stuff from my dorm to here?"

"Already done."

Dr. Dan takes another look at the house. It emanates cozy, warm, and all these other fuzzy and adorable feelings that he hadn't felt in a while.

Dr. Dan sighs. "Memetic carvings in the wood?"

"Yes, meant to make it feel like home."

"Can you turn those off?"

"The switch is on the inside."

"Thanks for that. Let's get to the building, then?" Dr. Dan turned back around.

Lessig produced the cube from his pocket again. "Right away, sir."

He threw it against the floor.
----

Now he was back in familiar territory. His office overlooks the processing room where the best intelligence agents the Foundation has to offer go through tons of data every day, looking for threats and leads. The byproduct of that is the sweet sound of typing. Keyboards clicking and clacking. Clack. Click. Before, he would have to sit by the window to hear it, but now it feels so much louder.

Lessig produces a small PDA from his other pocket. "We added a direct Ethernet cable to address your previous complaints of slow internet, as well as the obvious," he gestured around the room, "renovations."

"What's with the noise?" Dr. Dan half-spoke as he began to listen to the clicks and clacks once again.

"That would be the audio adjusters we've built into the window." Lessig walked up to a pane of glass, reaching his hand out and touching it.

A small circle with the number 150% became visible. Lessig turned his hand to the left, which lowered it to 50%.

"Very fancy." Dr. Dan applauded. "Anything else new?"

Lessig looked back down at his PDA. He swiped up and then down, looking for something. "As it turned out, when we began renovating this side of the building, most of the infrastructure wasn't up to code. So we had to remake most of it. Just trying to find the list, sir."

"Up to Foundation code?"

"Yes, but also OSHA... and most federal statutes."

That wasn't surprising. Last year, he almost died trying to go down to the parking lot because the stairwell railing gave in. Dan put in a maintenance request for it, but it never got fixed. He rode the elevator after that. Then, disrupting his train of thought about other OSHA violations, a loud pop came from his left, causing him to instinctively look over. Mounted to the wall and flowing out from the ceiling was a series of see-through plastic tubes. Air seemed to flow through them like water.

"What's that?" Dr. Dan asked.

"That's the new pneumatic tube system, meant for communication during emergencies or if the Wi-Fi goes down." Lessig mentioned as he continued to scroll.

"Who made you add that?"

"Regulation. They added it just last year, so communication is never disrupted. It comes with state-of-the-art memetic agent detection, as well as the traditional biological and virologic al suites." Lessig began to scroll furiously, "A-ha, here it is!"

Lessig went on to list every additional item to this side of the building, which was apparently a lot more than Dr. Dan was expecting. Everything from the HVAC to the piping, hell, apparently even the wiring in the walls, was out of code. They tore it all out, replaced it with the best they could offer, and made even more improvements. All computers now had Ethernet connections, as well as direct one-way connections to Area-12's Deepwell, which they installed a couple of weeks ago. Every computer was updated to the latest technology, which is actually a very interesting rabbit hole if you ever want to--

"That's good enough." Dr. Dan stood up, "I don't really need the specifics, as long as everyone can still do their jobs. Anything else new about this room in particular?"

Lessig tucked his PDA back in his pocket. "Sorry about that, sir. I get passionate when it comes to computers. The only other notable thing about the office is the..."

Lessig looked around the room, then locked his eyes onto the desk.

"It's in one of the drawers."

"What is?" Dr. Dan began to open the drawers of his desk one by one.

"It looks like a gear-shift, but the... shaft? Stick? Whatever the name, it's a ball." Lessig shuffled around in the comfortable chair.

"And what does it do?" Dr. Dan had found the drawer midway through Lessig's explanation, but wouldn't use it until he explained what it did.

"It moves the office around."

"Why?"

"When we began construction, we pulled some people aside and asked what they would like to change about your office."

"Why?" Dr. Dan began to interrogate.

"O5-9 asked for it, and who am I not to do so? Anyhow, sir, they all said that the time it takes for you to respond to in-person requests was too long, so we mounted the office to a rail system which allows it to move throughout the building."

Dr. Dan glanced down at the board, which had taken up one of his drawers. In the middle was a small metal ball, presumably representing the office, and several routes for the ball to take. Cafeteria, Archives, Threat Deployment, Council, and a bunch of others. However, most intriguing to him was the ETTRA Monitoring Hub. His new office was nice and all, but the monitoring hub was his second favorite room.

"I assume it's ready?" Dan's head began to reach down towards the ball.

"Yes. It's a bit... fast, though." Lessig gripped onto the edges of the chair.

"Oh, that's fine." Dan gripped the ball, "ETTRA's all about quickness anyway."
----

Up.

Down.

Left.

Further left.

A little bit more down.

Almost there.

Right.

The office came to a standstill as it arrived at the monitoring hub. The windows, which had previously viewed hundreds of meters of concrete as it moved through room-sized tunnels throughout the building, now viewed the many terminals and consoles of the monitoring hub. The heart of ETTRA. Dr. Dan's pride and joy, redone. Just as he specified when he first started the administration.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
Dr. Dan stood in the hallway. The O5s got rid of all the chairs. He knew why. Anyone who ever stood out in the hallway knew why. It's to put you on edge. You can't sit. They would never let you take comfort without permission.

It's ETTRA's 10th budget meeting. 10th year in operation. This year was muddied. In blood. Not his blood, or the Foundation's at all. It was 2009. Terrorism was rising. That isn't the Foundation's job, but anomalous terrorism certainly was. 10 dead in Mogadishu in an attack by a rouge Sarkic sect. Triple that in Baghdad's Green Zone, after some normal, traditional terrorists got hold of some tech from MC&D and drove into a grocery store. Hundreds more.

Most were excusable due to the relatively small scale. It simply didn't fall on our radar. Tragic. He felt like most of the O5 understood that. He hoped they did, as he didn't. It was inexcusable. He was given a second chance at life with this administration, and he can't even do something as simple as stop major homicidal maniacs from committing terrorism with veiled tech.

He had to do better. Dan began to pace back and forth in the hallway.

A lady stepped out of the boardroom and into the hallway.

"They're ready to let you back in, sir." She spoke softly.

"Thanks... Do you know why--?"

"It's to keep people on edge, sir."

"The lack of--?"

"Yes."

"Thanks."

Dr. Dan walked past her and into the boardroom.
----
$2 Billion, 5 years. Bring down anomalous terrorism. Every Department was now at his disposal when it came to innovation. If he needed new tech, he got it.

Yeah.

He could do that.
[[/div]]

The P.A.T.D.S., or the Proactive Anomalous Threat Detection System, pronounced Patts. One of the first major .AIC systems developed for a security-oriented department. It scans through every known news source, intelligence agency, online forum, and deep, dark internet pit for clues relating to unknown anomalous activity and reports it to either ETTRA or the Department of Discovery for further action. Most of the time, ETTRA gets the call.

P.A.T.D.S. wasn't enough, though. ETTRA also employs thousands of undercover agents. They do the same thing, but primarily for terrorism.

This was his pride and joy. A screen spanning 70 feet across and 70 feet tall, displaying the entire world. Every red dot was a known act of anomalous activity or terrorism. Yellow was for suspected activity. Blue was for concluded, and only stayed up for a day.

The world was empty.

"We kept the screen. It's pretty modern, and, well, looks cool." Lessig stood up, rubbing the side of his forehead.

"What did you add in here?" Dr. Dan stood up as well and approached the window.

"If you look down, we added terminals to handle specific continents, as that was previously in the room next door, as well as some empty ones for any emergent situations. Had to redo the cooling for the screen, switched it to a fancy liquid cooling, which minimizes the noise." Lessig reached out to the window and set it to 100%.

No more droning. He'll miss it in a couple of months.

"The new consoles come with little red alarms at the top of them to indicate, for lack of better words, emergent threats. We did a trial of them a couple of days ago, and they're loud enough to get attention." Lessig stepped back from the window, "Another cool thing about these windows is that they can do this."

Lessig reached his hand out to the window and flicked his finger upward. A large black rectangle appeared on the windows before filling itself with a drawing of North America.

"They also act as screens. This one is mirroring the P.A.T.D.S UI, so it should still be usable."

"It's beautiful."

Lessig turned around.

Dr. Dan stood there in awe.

"Are you okay, sir?" Lessig stood there, awkwardly.

"Yes. It's just... This administration has always meant a lot to me, and it's almost euphoric to see it--."

A klaxon rang out. The North American desk. It then moved to the US sub-desk. P.A.T.D.S. found it in seconds, nano-seconds even, and put it on the map.

"Is that a--?" Lessig attempted to say, but Dr. Dan instinctively clicked on the dot, revealing a box of additional information.

[[div class="modal"]]
= [[size x-large]]**INCIDENT: 32-2023** [[/size]]
**CODE NAME:** INEVITABLE.
**INCIDENT CLASS:** MASS TERRORISM; ANOMALOUS BIOLOGICAL
**SUSPECTS:** UNKNOWN.
**INITIAL REPORT TIME:** 11:30 AM.
**LOCATION:** Cregg University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

**DESCRIPTION:** UNKNOWN.
[[/div]]

"Oh god. You have to-." Lessig turned around to face Dr. Dan.

Dr. Dan was not there. He was doing his job.

[[include :scp-wiki:component:advanced-navigation-toolbar-source dual= false
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|hub=https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ |hubtext= INEVITABLE
|next=https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ |nexttext= INEVITABLE: The Cregg Situation
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INEVITABLE; Dr Dan Gets to Work.

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