SCP-8254

Link to article: SCP-8254.

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= //It's been nice.//

------

= Written for New Years Eve, 2024.
= [[[thatauthorpagethattime|More by ThatGuy]]]
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++++ NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT

The following file is in the process of being considered for removal from the Foundation database, as the Site-37 General Research team looks further into the anomaly and potential for recurrence. Until then, it has been restricted to only members of that team, as well as the Human Resources Department.

I know you miss her. We all do.

-- Stanford Li, Director of the Human Resources Department
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[[include :scp-wiki:component:image-block
name=A_woman_with_personnality_(396421310).jpg |
caption=SCP-8254-1, also known as Ethel Mary Kursh. |
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|item-number= 8254

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|disruption-class= dark

|risk-class= notice

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**ORIGINAL SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES:** Due to the nature of SCP-8254, no containment procedures are possible at this time. Research into the nature of the anomaly is ongoing.

**REVISED CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES:** Any employee of the SCP Foundation exhibiting similar symptoms to SCP-8254-1 is to be actively monitored by the Human Resources Department and reported to Deputy Director Yasu for further instruction and access to [REDACTED].

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[[collapsible show="INSERT CLEARANCE LEVEL 3" hide="CLOSE THIS MESSAGE."]]
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All Human Resource Department employees seeking access to [[[SCP-7824]]] must file a report containing the following information:
* The length of the subject's tenure at the Foundation.
* Any and all department affiliations during their tenure with the Foundation.
* Any family or historical affiliation with the anomalous, be it phenomena, individuals or entities.
* Any mental health records accrued by the Foundation or any other employing organization, healthcare provider or mental health professional.

Once these are submitted to my office, you are set to go and will receive approval within 3 days time. Access to the Infinity Gate is not limited in quantity but must only be used in the more desperate circumstances, so these restrictions are necessary.

Excellent work this year, folks.
[[>]]
//- Asai Yasu, Deputy Director of Human Resources//
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**DESCRIPTION:** SCP-8254 refers to the spontaneous anomalous disappearance of Human Resources Deputy Director and Site-37 Human Resources Manager, Ethel Kursh, on April 19th, 2024.

**REVISED DESCRIPTION:** SCP-8254 refers to the spontaneous anomalous disappearance and reappearance of Ethel Mary Kursh (SCP-8254-1), former Human Resources Deputy Director, within the staff lounge of Secure Facility Site-37. Although the exact mechanisms of her period of nonexistence are unknown at this time, the following information has been gained from preliminary interviews:
# SCP-8254-1 maintains she is no longer an employee of the Foundation; however, she maintains this is not a result of her absence but of a resignation that did not occur.
# SCP-8254-1 claims to possess no memory of the period of nonexistence, events that occurred during that time or what happened to her.
# SCP-8254-1 is aware that the date of her disappearance was April 19th, 2024; however, she was not aware that the date of her reappearance was December 31st, 2024, and insisted that it "must be earlier" as there "was no snow outside of [Site-37]"[[footnote]] Edited for language. [[/footnote]].
# SCP-8254-1 claims to be "feeling well" and "lacking stress", questioning interviewers about these questions, asked as a result of Foundation monitoring of the subject's frequent mental health issues prior to SCP-8254.

On the evening of December 31st, 2024, SCP-8254-1 spontaneously claimed to have important information regarding the anomaly that affected her, 8 hours after denying any information to interviews. The anomaly-affected individual claimed the statement could only be given privately to Human Resources Director Stanford Li; a transcript has been provided by Li here.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
Hey, Stan.

First, I lied. I don't really know what happened. I just figured they wouldn't let me talk to you if there wasn't something big happening; I know Emmett's been using any excuse he can not to think about the Appliances anymore.

Saw the memo on his desk when I was touring around the site earlier, by the way. Good on you guys for winning. I would have liked to see Nial again, but I'm glad he's in a much better place now. At least, according to Emmett. Not my jurisdiction anymore.

You look thin. It's only been 8 months, Stan, I'm pretty sure people don't lose that much weight in 8 months. I guess that's what happens when your dieting partner vanishes into the mist. I'll be honest, though: I never actually stopped eating donuts. I ate less because of Thaddeus and his meddling, but it was hard to wake up in the morning and not have something to eat at least. I live so far off-site and had to wake up early every morning to drive here that I didn't have time for breakfast at home, even if I wanted it. God, I would've liked that.

I'm- Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if Emmett wrote it down in the file,  but yes, I do feel a lot more energized. I'm glad you didn't comment on the bags under my eyes like Morgenthaler did, the old ass, but they're a lot less noticeable, right? It's odd. You vanish for 8 months and come back like it's been a luxury spa day if you work here for long enough, I suppose.

Hey, you've worked with me for long enough. The rest of them haven't, but you have, so I have a question.

When's the last time I took a vacation?

Don't look at me like that. The Overseers'- the simulation thing doesn't count as a vacation. I was there for 3 days and I got gassed as part of the experience.

Seriously, though. I've been working here- I was working here- over 2 decades... Jesus, 3 decades, and I can't recall the last time I stopped. There was never really a good time at all for it. Which is fine. It was fine. I worked away and I had things to do and the greater cause of the Foundation was the, you know, blah blah blah, priority or something. It was tiring, it was infuriating, it was difficult, and to be quite honest it was disheartening, but I did the work. It was a purpose to have in my life and it made me feel good about myself when someone noticed what we did here. Sure, maybe it was just O5-10, and maybe that's because we were his job, but it still felt good. It was validating.

I've told you about what it was like growing up. My parents were difficult. They supported me and they did love me, but they had expectations. My mother especially held me in such a high regard and she pushed me and controlled me to try to shape me into the woman I am now. We never had someone go to such a prestigious school before, we'd never had someone who could claim they were an important person to the world at large, so my grades in school made me a linchpin. It wasn't nice, but it wasn't the worst thing ever.

It was bad when I left the sciences behind. I was never a particularly social person, but I was someone- I am- I was- I don't know. I have a knack for understanding people as parts of systems. I'm not the most emotionally attuned to others necessarily, but I can get a good grasp on how their minds work- the way they make their decisions. That was a path for me, and my mom never really forgave me for seeking out Psychology and Human Resources. She never even knew I ended up here and that I ended up working alongside the doctors and inventors. I bet she would have been happy. Maybe. Though I did never marry that man from Brooklyn she wanted me to, for... semi-obvious reasons. Being aro-ace yields an interesting life with progressive-conservative family members.

It was hard to get recognized, especially growing up where I did and in a household that always held higher and higher expectations, but this place and Human Resources... it gave me something. It was something.

I can see the grimace, Stanford. I'm not here to accost you for getting the Director position. Even if I'm more efficient, you are the leader this department needed. Don't scoff at me with your sarcasm, you're a decade younger and have looks that can make even the nicest looking Site-37 researcher swoon!

Fucking with you. Sorry. Anyway. It did mean something to me. It really, truly, honestly did.

But as the years turned into decades and the decades turned into a majority of my life, it started to pile up. It only got worse when the appliance thing started. Site-37's depressing enough when we're helping rehabilitate or solve the Foundation's biggest pile of rejects, mental health cases and fools - almost always mutually exclusive - and it doesn't get better when toilets are exploding and killing people worldwide. It was worse than working under Stamos at 17, and he literally tortured the- fuck. Anyway.

Over time, it boils up. Those things irking me about my coworkers, the inefficiencies in our bureaucratic structure, the death and sulking of our facility, the death of my mom- you don't need to share your condolences again- it boils up and it makes a person that tries so hard to be stone-cold in the face of it want to explode. And then you sit awake one night, wondering about how your life has come to holding half the world on your back as you jump from task to task like a maniac, and it hits you just how... just how terrible things can be here.

I'm serious. People complain all the time about the Foundation - our own researchers call it Fascistic, which I neither agree nor disagree about - but it's so fucking hard to be here on a personal level. The people above you in this organization are always either up to something, stabbing one another in the back, colluding against their inferiors for the sake of some grand scheme, or all three. Competition fills the air with a noxious stink and leads people to just be nasty; I mean, when you're the ones "saving the world from the anomalous threat", you grow egos pretty quickly. Christ, Stan, I was accused of being "the equivalent of 9/11 for the SCP Foundation employees".

I have friends who themselves and their families were victims of the attacks. It's crazy to think that it's something that can be turned into an insult, but it was.

Anyway. It clicked in my head, and then my brain just couldn't help but hate being here. I'd walk in every morning and avoid talking to everyone for days. I wasn't filing or writing on time and was delegating massive projects - like the human-end of the 'appliance war' - to other people. I lacked interest in anything and couldn't even find myself the energy to laugh at stupid things, like that fanfiction someone wrote about Nial. In retrospect, hilarious, but I was too burnt out to care.

This went on for days, and days, and days, until one day... well, it happened. I blink one too many times from a lack of the sleep the night before, and I'm gone. I wake up here later, to find half the facility gawking at me as they place their "educated guesses" about what happened.

I can't tell you what happened, Stan, but I'm certain I don't work here anymore. I don't remember any of my passwords, my office is cleared out, and... I don't know why, but I'm not part of the Foundation, ever since I showed up again.

I feel a lot better. I feel like the weight of a thousand iron chains have been lifted off my head, my brain, my body- I feel free. I can't describe it properly, but all of the anxiety, the fear... it's gone.

Well, most of it. Anything I've incurred from this place. It's weird, and I don't know why, but it's gone. Those 8 months, wherever I went- it did something. It's odd, because I still have fondness for this place in my heart. Even while I was walking around Site-37 earlier, I could feel my heart tugging at the strings as I got reminded of all the things that made this place more than just an office. Not that much more, but a little bit. I can't say that I can imagine what the last 30-odd years of my life would have been like without the SCP Foundation.

With everything so distant, all the little things flow in too. I've worked here for so long and yet through all the paperwork and business and death and the tragedy, there are so many people at this facility. Site-37 was the dumping grounds, right? The "loser hole"? Yeah. Even so, among these losers, social outcasts, deviants, idiots and pranksters, it's been nice. There's so many people here that before, in the tiredness and the vitriol, I would forget. But now, sitting on the outside, it flows back and can't make me feel anything but a sticky nostalgia.

You, Emmett- my closest friends at the facility. Fisk, the rest of the IT department, the wild ones in Astrophysics - happy to see Lee and Mayfield still stuck together like molasses and glue - everybody still operating as normal. I don't think I've ever looked at these people and //smiled//, but today... it was nice.

I could just start listing names, Stan, and I'd start remembering some menial reason to have interacted with these people. Ryan, in accounting, from his faulty business ventures, and his rival Ryan River, the ghost. The fish people and cicada monsters we stored in the basement. William "Fancypants" Wojeck, the research sent here to fix our arcane pipes? Even all the strange people outside of 37 that ended up here for some reason or another these past couple of years. Merry, Flixman, Indy, Chudley, Everwood, O5-10... man. This place, this facility, it's... god, it was all of our homes.

I need to leave though.

Don't start. I love this place, Stan, I really do- but I can't come back. Even through all these rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, it still stinks of concrete and steel down here. You were fantastic boss, really but-

...

I do love the work I did here. It was important work. I don't intend to go out and become an anti-Foundation paragon. I'm going to go through the Infinity Gate, Stan. Wipe it all clean. I was happy to see everyone for one last time, but that has to be it. No matter the important work or the joy some people brought me temporarily, it's a matter of my own sanity. I can't spend the rest of my life in this desolated hole in the ground, and I've finally been given an out.

I don't know what SCP-8254 did to me. I don't know who or what made me vanish for those 8 months. And in the back of my brain, even though the Filbuson syndrome won't let me remember, I'll miss this place. But my life... it's going to move on.

I'm going to move back to New York. Maybe get a PhD. I feel refreshed, and I think that a professorship is calling my name. That was my original plan if corporate or monolithic clandestine magical pseudo-governments didn't work out.

Yeah, that was a joke. I'm capable of making jokes. I just wasn't funny before.

That's it, I guess. Seems you guys shipped all my things back home when Yasu took over my job. She deserves it. Always was a bright spot. Just please, don't let her touch the printers, especially nowadays. I jumped a little bit when I went to the bathroom and it didn't flush properly. Toilet seat nearly fell on me and gave me a heart attack.

Thank you, Stanford. I know you have a bright couple hundred years left in you when O5-10 retires. Don't give me that look; you know you deserve it.

Oh, and I know you're recording this. You're not subtle, and I used to be the one to remind you to record the interviews we did. It's fine, it's procedure, and it's appreciated. If you wouldn't mind emailing me a recording from your personal, it would be nice. I know you probably can't, given protocol. Or reasonable, rational decision-making. But still. Try?

To whoever's listening to this: I probably know who you are. I've spent the last 3 decades of my life probably reading your files and figuring out your problems. I've been really glad to help you all, unless you're one of the people who fought back or gave me a hard time. In that case, I don't really care, and I hope you can keep doing your work.

You do important work here, all of you. Don't ever forget that. You will keep doing important work, and even when you have to stop your time here or it becomes too much, the fruits of your labor will have been worth it.

I just know it will.

Goodbye, SCP Foundation. I better not see you on the other side.

[[/div]]

SCP-8254-1 has been released from Foundation custody via Operation New Years. Ethel Kursh's declassification from the Foundation database is pending.

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> **Filename:** A woman with personnality (396421310).jpg
> **Author:** Pedro Ribeiro Simões from Lisboa, Portugal
> **License:** CC-BY 2.0
> **Source Link:** https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_woman_with_personnality_(396421310).jpg

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SCP-8254

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