SCP-8382

Link to article: SCP-8382.

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=====
[[include :scp-wiki:component:preview
text= or Dr. Lillian Lillihammer in the Mind Palace; or HARRYBLANK'S Meme Proposal.
]]
=====

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[[/module]]

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[[include :scp-wiki:info:start]]
[[=]]
**SCP-8382: "The Minervan Mallet"**
There are some flags yet worth waving.

[[image https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/this-page-intentionally-left-blank/Mallet.png]]

**[[[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/this-page-intentionally-left-blank|More by this author!]]]**
[[/=]]
[[include :scp-wiki:info:end]]
[[/div]]

[[div style="height:12px;"]]
[[/div]]

[[div]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:anomaly-class-bar-source
|item-number= SCP-8382
|clearance= 5
|container-class= esoteric
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|secondary-icon= http://scp-sandbox-3.wdfiles.com/local--files/harry-blank-4/deicidium-logo.svg
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|risk-class= critical
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----

[[include component:image-block
  name=8382_Main.jpg|
  caption=SCP-8382, Dr. Lillian S. Lillihammer. |
  width=700px|
  align=center|
]]

**Special Containment Procedures:** Should containment of SCP-8382 become necessary, contact Thilo Zwist ([[[SCP-6382]]]). Should containment of both subjects become necessary simultaneously, contact the Emergent Threat Tactical Response Authority (ETTRA).

SCP-8382 is the self-deploying containment apparatus for SCP-001-BLANK-I [AWAITING DECLASSIFICATION]. 

----

**Description:** SCP-8382 is Dr. Lillian Shelby Lillihammer, Chair Emerita of Memetics and Countermemetics at [[[/secure- facility-dossier-site-43 | Site-43]]]. Dr. Lillihammer is a baseline human female born in 1966. Her physical aging processes have been partially arrested via advanced life extension technologies, to ensure continued execution of [[[/scp-5243 | priority one containment duties]]]. She possesses a genius-level intellect and eidetic memory, and is a presently unclassed thaumaturge specializing in cryptomancy.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]The thaumaturgical equivalent to, and one origin of, the science of memetics.[[/span]]

Her SCP Foundation staff profile is attached below.

[[div style="border:solid 1px #8E2C4D; margin-top: 18px; margin-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 18px; padding-right: 18px;"]]
+ ##8E2C4D|Lillian S. Lillihammer##

[[f>image Lillihammer_Staff.jpg]]

**##8E2C4D|Memetics and Countermemetics##**

**Senior Researcher**
**Security Clearance Level: 5**

**Post:** Site-43 (March 1995-present)
**Office:** MC-01
**Email:** l_lillihammer@43.net
**Present Assignment:** Section Chair Emerita

Dr. Lillihammer is the Foundation's most accomplished memeticist, with over two hundred successful projects and a wide-ranging purview including [[[/vikander-kneed-technical-media-hub | Vikander-Kneed Technical Media]]], the //giftschreiber// and //schriftsteller,// and object permanence anchoring for the [[[/antimemetics-division-hub | Antimemetics Division]]]. The full catalogue of her academic works cannot be enumerated for reasons of both sensitivity and incomprehensibility, but highlights include:

* "Thinking Machines." //Open Minds,// vol. 40 (2001): 97-114.

* //Making Me.// PhD Thesis, Site-43, 2002.

* //Hold That Thought, or How I Killed a God in My Brain.// Unpublished, available through ERACER with Security Clearance Level 5+ only.

* //Art and How the Brain Bends.// Site-43 Press, 2017.

* "Out of Mind: Tangent Timelines and the Noetics of Forgetting." //Spark: A Memetics Journal,// vol. 51 no. 1 (January 2020): 5-45, reprinted in //Neuroid: A Memetics Journal,// //Morpheme: A Memetics Journal,// //etc.//

* "Groupthink: Thoughtspace Combination in Nested Noöspheres." //Comparative Psychochemistry,// vol. 62, no. 3 (Summer 2021): 7-39.

She is presently on leave, pursuing a project of personal interest.
[[/div]]

Dr. Lillihammer received SCP classification in October of 2022 during a rigorous course of cryptomantic training under Austrian linguamancer Thilo Zwist (SCP-6382). As her anomalous capabilities involve the control of language and visual perception, she is functionally impossible to detain, amnesticize, or disable except with the assistance of a more powerful thaumaturge of the same type. Only three such individuals have thus far been identified -- and given the events of 2022-2024 detailed in Addendum 8382-1, reassessment may be necessary.

----

[[div class="raisa"]]
[[=]]
++++ NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 

The following does not meet the accepted clinical standard, and has been flagged for revision.

The HMCL officer on record for this file, Dr. Lillian S. Lillihammer, has been apprised.

-- Maria Jones, Director, RAISA
[[/=]]
[[/div]]

**Addendum 8382-1, Lillian Lillihammer in the Mind Palace:** It went a little something like this.

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**6 August, 2024**__
**In which I put the end before the beginning**

I can smell colours, and I can hear smells.

I'm standing in a village square, and the eastern façades are all painted a specific shade of mauve. It takes me less than a second to find it in the Paratone catalogue, which itself took me about a minute to memorize. 185-ω, "Rampant Red." What a bunch of assholes these guys are.

It's the eastern walls because that's where the sun rises, and the //giftschreiber// are on the ascent. A hundred years ago they would have painted the western walls, and maybe I wouldn't have noticed the paint until after noon. As it stands, I'm sniffing wet adobe for breakfast. It tastes like pins and needles, and sounds like hot egg salad, but step three of four in my synaesthetic cycle gives me a street name, number, and about half of the words I would need to make this a quiet and painless exercise.

Somebody's already repainting one of the walls. Maybe they do it every day, to keep the password fresh.

That's okay.

I've got half a dozen skeleton passwords ready to burn at a moment's notice, and that's assuming I don't just put the whammy on whoever answers the door, and make them open it.

You would think they'd be on to me by now. I've been sticking my nose so far up their business, it's easily halfway rampant itself. And I've never been one to keep a low profile, especially at six and a half feet tall.

Quiet and painless are ideal descriptors for six days out of seven.

But when I err on the side of variety and kick the door down instead of knocking -- seven of seven is leg day, this week -- they're legitimately surprised to see me, and I make them legitimately sorry. When I've gone through them like a hot scalpel, their friends won't get spooked, because their friends won't remember them.

They'll all remember me, though.

They'll remember what I did.
[[/div]]

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

That's now; the rest of this was then. "Then" starts in late 2022.

I got my first shot from a woman in a fox suit. That's how you know this journey is going to be magical.

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

//<Dr. Lillihammer is sitting on an examination table in the medical wing of [[[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-s-c-plastics-hub | Site-87]]]. Dr. Katherine Sinclair stands beside her, wearing a full-body fox costume with well-articulated fingers. She inserts the needle of a syringe into Dr. Lillihammer's arm, and presses the plunger down with one large, padded thumb.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** All done.

[[include component:image-block
  name=Sinclair.jpg|
  caption= Photograph of Dr. Katherine Sinclair at Site-87, 2022. |
  width=225px|
  align=right|
]]

//<She steps back to examine her handiwork.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not everyone can hit vein first try when they're all paws. Nice job.

**Dr. Sinclair:** I'll say. Not even any blood.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I don't bleed.

//<She rolls the sleeve of her jacket down.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** Of course you don't.

//<She disposes of the syringe in a sharps bin with a glowing pentagram overlay, then looks Dr. Lillihammer up and down appraisingly.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** Judging by that colour, you're just skin and bone.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** How's the kid?

**Dr. Sinclair:** Still has a name.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And obviously I remember it, but it's out of character for me to show. Having perfect recall makes performing yourself a complex act. 

//<Dr. Sinclair shrugs.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** Sure. Right now? Phoenix is probably driving 87's daycare up the wall. In general? Kids are a lot like junior researchers, except they die less often when they screw up.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Right on. That's my limit for niceties hit. 

**Dr. Sinclair:** You've rarely been accused of being nice. 

//<Dr. Lillihammer pats the bloodless pinprick.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Anything I need to know, health-wise?

//<Dr. Sinclair shrugs. Her second skin absorbs much of the effect.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** No idea. This is silly bullshit you're doing. I'm just showing you how to do it right. You were paying attention?

//<Dr. Lillihammer shakes out her fingers experimentally.>//

 **Dr. Lillihammer:** That's what makes me so dangerous, Katherine. I don't even need to.

//<Dr. Sinclair chuckles as she picks up her head from a side table.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** Sure. That's what's doing it.

//<She pauses.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** You know, Monty and I are lucky, really.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Dr. Montgomery Reynolds, Dr. Sinclair's husband.[[/span]]

**Dr. Lillihammer:** "Go on," I say, because that's what the social script demands. 

**Dr. Sinclair:** The Foundation hasn't got any hangups about pitching in for childcare, within reason, for us. Not everyone's that lucky.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Uh huh.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You mean people who aren't with the Foundation? Or...?

//<Dr. Sinclair grimaces.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** I've heard stories. Mostly from places like Site-17. And there's that Fire Suppression thing. Me and Monty, the things that make us different? The Director tells the higher-ups it's fine, so fine it is. Not everybody has that kind of protection.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Blurt, or hold peace.

**Dr. Sinclair:** Are you sure you know what you're doing?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I think we've just established that nobody knows what I'm doing.

//<Dr. Sinclair sighs.>//

**Dr. Sinclair:** I don't mean about that. I mean the other thing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I directed my Section for years. I know how to manage people.

**Dr. Sinclair:** You're not talking about corralling academics. The people you're interested in recruiting? They're going to be more than a handful.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not raising children. I'm raising an army.

**Dr. Sinclair:** Might not be as different as you think. I've seen your list. None of them would pass the usual background checks. None of them would get hired at 17. You're going to have to fight to keep every single one. And you're going to have to show them how to survive in our environment. Because the Foundation only accepts difference if it doesn't threaten the //status quo.// Maybe what makes them special won't survive the transition, even if they do.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I know something about surviving transitions. And Thilo and I fully intend to be very good parents to our little brood.

**Dr. Sinclair:** Right.

//<She nods.>// 

**Dr. Sinclair:** How's his track record with that, again?

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

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

Before you start, Director Bailey has reviewed the above transcript and determined that Dr. Sinclair did no wrong in the above conversation.

You fucking vampire bats.

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[[/=]]

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

**Context:** By August of 2022, the SCP Foundation had been engaged in open warfare with two diametrically-opposed cryptomantic cults for over nineteen months. The //giftschreiber// performed acts of memetic terrorism against the Foundation and the public at large, with the apparent goal of causing as much chaos and collateral damage as possible, while the //schriftsteller// focused their efforts on the Foundation and its allies, with the apparent goal of strengthening the former against future attack. Both were augmented by a seemingly-inexhaustible wealth of cryptomantic energy, believed to have been derived from two entities classified as SCP-001-A and -B in the as-yet-unpublished SCP-001-BLANK-I: the //Unyielding// and //Uncontained,// both presently in Foundation custody at Site-43.

The combined efforts of Thilo Zwist (SCP-6382) and Dr. Lillian Lillihammer (me) were sufficient to neutralize the majority of these incidents, though not without considerable manpower and materiel cost. Having secured a leave from active duty in order to train together in private, both Zwist and Lillihammer completed their final field assignment under Operation FIREBREAK on 12 August 2022, transitioning to Operation BURNOUT: a continuation of FIREBREAK with a new focus on the recruitment and training of Foundation cryptomancers to offset the //giftschreiber// and //schriftsteller.// The events depicted below occurred at the conclusion of the pair's defence of [[[/scp-6836 | Site-232]]] against rogue elements of GoI-608/806/086/717 ("Mnemarchs of Lethaios").

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Zwist is leaning against a corridor wall, winded. There is an emergency telephone mounted beside him. Dr. Lillihammer is holding a young man in a leather jacket by the scruff of his neck; he is wailing in pain. She pulls him across the corridor to where Dr. Bradley Fellows is kneeling on the floor, blinking in dazed fashion, and roughly presses both men's foreheads together.>//

**Mnemarch:** OW!

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Put it back.

**Mnemarch:** Fucking fascist!

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Put it //back.//

**Mnemarch:** I don't have to take--

//<Dr. Lillihammer releases her grip on the mnemarch's neck, steps away, then plants her foot in the small of his back. He squeals in protest as she pushes them closer together.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Put that shit back //right now// or so help me I will make you //kiss.//

**Zwist:** This is not one of your more elegant solutions, Lillian.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Threats are a kind of memetics.

**Mnemarch:** Pig!

//<Dr. Lillihammer leans forward. The mnemarch cries out again, inarticulately.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Your job title is "memory king." You're a memory one-percenter. You are a memory dragon sitting on a memory hoard. You do not get to play righteously indignant prole with me. //Put. Them. Back.//

//<The mnemarch reaches up to touch Dr. Fellows on the face, fingers probing his left temple and jaw.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's it. Your mind to his mind, //et cetera.// Today.

**Mnemarch:** //Na thymásai óti tha zíseis.//

//<Dr. Fellows jerks to consciousness. Dr. Lillihammer twists her foot, and the mnemarch stumbles to the floor. He looks up at her, and his mouth opens.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer has her Foundation-issue telephone in her hand. She points it at the mnemarch, and presses a button. The camera light flashes in a rapid sequence.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** //Gamísou.//

//<The mnemarch spins onto his chest, scrabbling away from Dr. Lillihammer until he strikes a corner wall and crumples.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If I was James Bond, they'd have finished my better gadgets by now.

//<SCP-6382 sighs, and picks up the emergency telephone receiver.>//

**Zwist:** Possible cranial trauma in E-12. Beneath the... what was it?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Slop Shop.

**Zwist:** Is that right? My word. Beneath the slop shop. Over.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Site-232 is located beneath the Strathroy-Caradoc Plaza in Ontario, Canada.[[/span]]

//<He hangs up after receiving confirmation.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer kneels down.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey, Brad. How's the head?

//<Dr. Fellows is touching his temple, gingerly.>//

**Dr. Fellows:** You ever eat too much, right after throwing up?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No.

**Dr. Fellows:** Me either. But my memories are back. Wow, that was awful.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Did you get their license plate, at least?

//<He blinks at her for several seconds until understanding dawns.>//

**Dr. Fellows:** It was the cults. I don't know which one. But the first attackers said something like "We are the Lords of the Cycle," or "The hours turn, and this one is ours" or something like that.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Those are very different statements.

**Dr. Fellows:** Yeah. One of them they definitely said. The other I probably got stuck in my memory when you made that guy give me all of mine back. He was kind of in a rush, threw out some of his babies with my bathwater.

//<He cocks his head to one side and pounds the opposite ear, as though attempting to dislodge water.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer stands.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They're still rabble-rousing, then. Trying to get all the other GoIs to do our dirty work for us.

//<Zwist nods.>//

**Dr. Fellows:** That's not great. London has more GoIs than parks, and it's got more parks than we've got guards. If they stir everybody up...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You've put off the next phase for too long.

//<Zwist pushes off the wall, with some difficulty, and approaches them.>//

**Zwist:** I haven't been putting anything off, Lillian. I've been assessing your readiness.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If you could finish your deliberations before the Death Star vaporizes us, Yoda, that would be awesome.

**Dr. Fellows:** It took Yoda about five minutes, if I remember correctly. Also, you're thinking of the only one of those movies that doesn't even //have// a Death Star.

//<Dr. Lillihammer glances down at him.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You //have// seen those movies, right? Those aren't his memories?

//<She gestures to where two medical technicians are now attending to the unconscious mnemarch.>//

**Dr. Fellows:** You're asking if I've seen //Star Wars?// Hasn't everybody?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You might be surprised. Best go get checked out anyway. We'll finish cleanup over here.

//<He shrugs, rubs his forehead where a red bruise is beginning to form, then complies.>//

//<Zwist and Dr. Lillihammer watch him go.>//

**Zwist:** You're not really concerned about him.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Brad? Brad's a good guy.

//<Zwist waits.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, you're right. I just didn't want to get into a fight in front of the kids. Thilo, //it's been over a year.// I'm ready. You're ready. This op is played out. We need bigger, better pyrotechnics for the sequel.

**Zwist:** You mentioned //Star Wars.// Are you somehow unaware of the potential for disaster, should I choose my apprentices unwisely?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I am staggered that you're capable of making this reference.

**Zwist:** I am connected to the very mindscape of mankind. You are proposing I grant you that same capability. I just watched you put your boot in a man's back.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm wearing Birkenstocks. See?

//<She raises one foot in front of her. Zwist steps back.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But sure, point taken. Nothing about this fight has been pretty. So, show me your better way. Show me how you can win a war with pacifism. Show me how mind magic can be anything but an affront to the ideals of free will. Show me //something,// man, or admit that you aren't going to. You said you wanted to train up the next generation. That starts with me.

**Zwist:** If we are to spin down this cycle, though, it cannot //end// with you. That is my concern.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So, we multitask.

**Zwist:** Meaning?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You take me to witch camp on the weekdays, and I hunt up prospective schoolmates on the weekend. Or maybe vice-versa; I'm gonna need to keep doing these crackdowns every once in a while, 'til we've got agents at every facility who can do our jobs at least half as well as we do.

**Zwist:** Do you foresee that happening soon?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's going to have to. I've got a shortlist of candidates for your //auslöscher// and //serumschreiber//--

**Zwist:** Erasers and cure-writers. Name them in your own tongue. Native words have native power.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Great. So, let's do it for the natives, then. Make sure everybody, everywhere gets to speak their words loud and proud. Make sure there's enough time to hear them all. You teach me, Thilo, and we'll teach them, Pokémon, //et cetera.//

**Zwist:** What?

//<She pats him on the shoulder, affectionately.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Just checking how deep that cultural brainrot has sunk in. Don't worry about it.

//<Zwist sighs.>//

**Zwist:** That isn't what I'm worried about. There are so many ways this could go wrong. So many ways this could turn out to be a worse mistake than simply doing nothing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Nope. There aren't. I'm right, and you know it. End transcript.

//<Dr. Lillihammer deactivates the recording.>//
 
//<Transcript ends.>//
[[/div]]

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[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**12 August, 2022**__
**In which my sounding board is sounding bored**

"If you could anthropomorphize regret," I sigh, "you'd get an old man. That old man, specifically."

"Mmm. We've got plenty of things we regret, too. Don't we?"

I wave it off like I don't know what he means. "Not like this. This guy is the kind of guy to apologize for original sin. He barely has time to do new things, what with all the time it takes to feel awful about all of the old things. That means a lot of what I do, in my professional life, is grounded in someone else's guilt and shame."

Because Thilo Zwist was the Rosetta Stone that helped us translate cryptomancy into memetics, wild magic into science. One [[[/scp-5382 | mistake he made]]] four hundred years ago created the preconditions for the Foundation's mastery over mind and matter both.

And every time he talks about it, he has this look on his face like he's the dog who just crapped on your rug.

"Maybe it's just healthy perspective? Remembering what you did wrong, so you can do right."

"Or maybe it's just misery loving company. Only I'm not miserable yet, so he needs to grind me down." I stare at the telephone receiver like I expect to be able to see the face on the other end. Probably there's some cryptomantic means of achieving this, parsing the buzz on the line as atmospheric--

"I can't say much about this topic in the abstract." It doesn't take magic to see the smirk, now. "Perhaps you could be more specific."

I sit back against the curve of my cognitive decontamination tunnel, and cradle the phone to my breast. Probably that muffles my voice. Not my problem. "Sometimes his misery manifests as remorse. He's sorry he stole fire from the gods, then left it burning where we could find it. Sometimes it manifests as mistrust; he knows enough about our kill agents and compulsive code phrases to doubt any assertions of... altruistic intent. He is //not// psyched by the prospect of collaborating with us, in either mode. He wishes we didn't have to do what we're doing, and he blames us for the way in which we do it."

"You're sure you're not projecting?"

No, I'm deflecting. "I think this is what happens when you live forever."

"What?"

"You lose the fire." Something goes //ping// on the other end, and I wonder what wacky-ass machine is doing that. I don't ask. "Zwist can do amazing things, but there's always the possibility he'll choose not to. He might rise to the present occasion, but he won't do it gladly, and he might not do it at all next time. He's a provisional saviour at best, and we need something more permanent."

"Something more like--"

"Confident," I continue, "in both the mission and the self. Able to move past the sordid origins of the crisis and our tools for reversing it, see what has to be done, and shape a better future without fear or remorse."

"This is starting to sound rehears--"

"If he really has lost the fire, someone else needs to find it. Carry that torch. If you could anthropomorphize the needs of the present moment," I conclude, "you'd get me."

There is a beat, only one, and then: "I like to think I got you from the start."

I laugh. "For sure. That's why we never talk anymore."

That ends the possibility of a deeper conversation. Not all kill agents are visual.

Zwist believes, and I've seen enough evidence to agree, that both cults are locked in an ontokinetic death spiral that's dragging us all down with them. Their projects of chaos and order make the fabric of reality increasingly less stable, and that's the intended effect. The two groups are in constant conflict, and if either saw a chance to win they'd almost certainly take it, but if that's not possible they'll gladly settle for the end of the world instead.

Because somehow, they both expect to survive it.

"We're not choosing sides here," I tell the receiver as much as the person on the other end. "We can't. Whatever the //schriftsteller// might say, however tempting it might be to want to use their powers for our own little experiment in planetary panopticon, they are not our friends. In the context of this fight, we barely have any."

"You've never been good at holding on to people," he remarks. "You always found it easier to parachute out, and leave it all on fire behind you."

He isn't wrong, on the face of it, even if he means more than he's saying. "Now who's being abstract?"

I can almost feel the shrug. "Was there something else you needed, Lillian? Because this has been almost entirely monologue."

I scoot up the wall until I'm standing again. "Well, that's the thing. There's so much //me// in me, any internal musing becomes a dialogue at least, if not a //hexalogue.// I need a partner if I'm going to talk to myself and not have to worry about getting a response."

He hangs up. Probably that was a cruel choice of words on my part. 

I'm going to have to be a lot more careful with them, where I'm headed next.

And I'm also going to need a lot more partners.
[[/div]]

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[[/=]]

I've got a few friendly-by-default names in my little fractal book. I took the opportunity to check in on one before Thilo took me out of wi-fi range; I won't miss most of my responsibilities, but they'll definitely miss me.

First stop: ##white|████████## Area-##white|██##. You can't read that. Don't worry about it.

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

//<Dr. Lillihammer enters a cluttered office, without knocking. Its occupant -- Dr. Joseph Boswell -- looks up at her, first annoyed at the interruption and then visibly unhappy to discover its source.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** How's my ace in the Hole?

**Dr. Boswell:** Some day I'm going to laugh at that.

[[include component:image-block
  name=Boswell.jpg|
  caption= Photograph of Dr. Joseph Boswell at [PARSING ERROR], 2022. |
  width=225px|
  align=right|
]]

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That'll be our sign you need to retire.

//<She glances around the office for a second chair. Not finding one, she leans on the wall.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** Antimemeticists don't retire. They just get forgotten.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Not by me.

**Dr. Boswell:** Lucky for us.

//<Dr. Boswell pushes back from his terminal, and sighs.>//

**Dr. Boswell:**   Did you come all the way to ##F4F4F4|███████## just for the annual report?

**##C5000B|If you've somehow gotten this far without being caught up on my deal: I'm the sole point of contact for##  ##F4F4F4|█## ##C5000B|different antimemetics workgroups scattered around the globe. Antimemetics workgroups quickly become antimemetic workgroups, so they need someone who can't forget to send them their money and their Monster Energy and also listen to their fascinating reports about all the nothing they've been looking at. There's your context. Try to keep up.##**

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, but I might as well get it while I'm here. Beats a phone call.

**Dr. Boswell:** I like phone calls. You can roll your eyes and nobody knows. Skype was the beginning of the end.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Everyone knew, Joe. Your eyes roll so hard, your tongue twists in sympathy. But that's enough small talk. Where do we stand since last year?

**Dr. Boswell:** Still no sign of anything resembling [[[/scp-3125 | 3125]]] in the noösphere, and as of January this year, the last of its cults have either dissolved or converted to worshipping something else.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Took them long enough. What something else?

//<Dr. Boswell shrugs.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** It varies. Mostly they're thrown in with the //giftschreiber.// Pretty easy transition, chaos to chaos. Some liked the sense of connection, though, so they went //schriftsteller// instead. Turns out people who want a global hegemony based on person-to-person violence have pretty flexible political leanings.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Awesome. Well, I guess it's a relief to have that mess fizzle out finally. Lets us focus on the other mess. On that note...

//<Dr. Boswell leans back in his chair.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** The //geistschreiber// have been a pain to track.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]//Geistschreiber// are //giftschreiber// capable of antimemetic camouflage, and assuming the identities of existing personages.[[/span]] Even more than the obvious. [[[/scp-6721 | Area-21]]] changed the game considerably.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** How so?

**Dr. Boswell:** The //giftschreiber// used to deploy them in tiny groups, or on solo missions. Anything where wholesale replacing someone would get them what they want, but also wouldn't be that difficult to conceal. They took a big risk replacing an entire facility with doppelgangers. On the one hand they cost us a ton of top AcroAbate researchers; on the other they lost a few hundred of their own people.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We didn't even know they had that many.

**Dr. Boswell:** Right. They don't know our workgroups exist -- we think -- and we have no idea how many cells they've got. We can only follow their actions by studying the absences. Holes in people's backstories. Holes in personnel rosters. Projects that come and go without paper trails. Empty offices. Headcounts that don't match security footage.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Which is why we only catch one or two a year. And they don't talk.

//<Dr. Boswell nods.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** Because they can't. Outside their cells, they only remember their specific missions. Forgetfulness can be a powerful tool.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Wouldn't know. 

**Dr. Boswell:** Still, with what we've been able to glean, it looks like the cleansing of Area-21 was a major blow to them. They can't have an army of thousands; they wouldn't be able to hide that from us, and anyway if there were that many of them we would have lost already.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Right.

**Dr. Boswell:** So we've not seen any more concentrated pushes like that. Not even on the level of what you stopped [[[/12-aromantic-abatement | back in '03]]]. It's all been single actor stuff.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What kind of stuff?

**Dr. Boswell:** They replaced an accounting clerk at 17. Messed up payroll for a month. Cheques are the only thing that balances out life in that shithole.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Wordplay acknowledged.

**Dr. Boswell:** One replaced an Overseer's factotum.

//<Dr. Lillihammer rolls her eyes.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Ugh.

**Dr. Boswell:** I think you mean 'holy shit'?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, just ugh. They've done something similar before.  [[[/we-need-to-talk-about-fifty-five | Ask Marion]]].

**Dr. Boswell:** The thing is, they don't really do anything antimemetic. It's just what they are. So all the workgroups can do is detect and report, then wash our hands of the outcome. It's not very satisfying work.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Unlike most antimemetics studies, which provide much long-term stimulation and closure.

**Dr. Boswell:** That's what we signed up for, though. None of us wanted neighbourhood watch duty. We're meant to be spotting gas leaks.

//<Dr. Boswell stands up, and sits awkwardly on the edge of his own desk.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** Lillian, the terms of this project were always clear to everybody. You hear that?

//<He raises a finger. She pauses, then nods.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I hear the nothing, yes.

**Dr. Boswell:** That's twenty-two people getting on with their things what need getting on with. Limited outside contact, frustrating work, poor compensation, and no lasting legacy, and they're all still plugging away. One cell of many, all reporting to you, all forgotten by everybody //but// you. We went into that eyes-open, and that says a lot about who we are. Nobody who's lasted long at this is a complainer by nature.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And yet you would like to make a complaint.

**Dr. Boswell:** Yes. 3125 was like a cockroach. A survivor, sure, but also one of a kind. In the original meaning. It almost certainly //has a kind.// There are going to be more things like it. If there's an adjacent idea-space from which aggressive, predatorial concepts can emerge into our noösphere, it's not likely to have hosted only one organism. It's much more likely to have been an ecosystem.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** At the very least, something that complex must have had something to eat.

**Dr. Boswell:** And some means to learn and practice predation. Yes. Lillian, if you see one cockroach, there are always more. There is always an infestation.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** To change metaphors: 3125 was an iceberg-tip.

**Dr. Boswell:** Right. And every day we spend entertaining your overzealous bohemians is another chance lost to course-correct.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Noted. And for what it's worth, I agree with you. Do you think this might be part of their plan?

**Dr. Boswell:** Distract us with minutiae until something bigger can kill us? The thought had occurred to me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Shit sucks.

//<Dr. Boswell crosses his arms.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** Is that what you came here to tell me? Shit sucks? Because I was actually already aware of that.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I didn't come here to tell you anything. I'm all asks today.

**Dr. Boswell:** So, ask.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I probably already know the answers, after all that, but. How do you like it here?

//<Dr. Boswell frowns.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** This is not the kind of boss you are.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Humour me.

**Dr. Boswell:** I hated working at 43.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I got that impression.

**Dr. Boswell:** The way it is now? It's always been like that. For all the good work getting done, there's an equal amount of time wasted on screwing around.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Cabin fever is real. Even when it's a really, really big cabin.

**Dr. Boswell:** Sure. I know how it is. Academically. But it's still frustrating to watch all that potential gone to waste. And that problem suffuses all of human society.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We're cockroaches too.

**Dr. Boswell:** How many perfectly good movies dedicate a chunk of their run time to the obligatory romantic plot tumour, whether it helps the script get where it's going or not? How many meaningful conversations never get finished because hormones get in the way? The more you heighten emotions, the more likely that rotten safety valve kicks in before you can get to something really interesting.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I will admit that I have missed out on the end of some potentially glorious arguments that way.

**Dr. Boswell:** The people who signed up for //this// job? They either had no attachments, or they wanted none. The latter set are the ones who stuck around. We get stuff //done// around here. When it's done, we have more time for our hobbies. And we actually //talk,// without that constant undercurrent of an ulterior reproductive motive. We don't have to worry about the biological imperative interrupting with coitus.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And no kids.

**Dr. Boswell:** Unless we're sure we want them, and then there's ways to go about it with a lot less fuss. The only time the way things are is a problem is when someone like you comes from outside, and makes it one. And that doesn't happen very often. So, yes. I like it here.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You ever wonder if the Foundation sent you here because you're different?

**Dr. Boswell:** Not very often. What made you think of that?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Weird talk I had with someone. 

**Dr. Boswell:** Well, tell them to keep their weirdness to themselves.

//<Dr. Boswell frowns.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** Actually, don't do that. Never do that. But to answer your question again: no. I don't waste my time with suspicions, and I won't appreciate you wasting it with yours. I just want to get on with my life, and today that means getting on with my job.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, that's about what I figured. Makes this next part seem a little trite, though.

**Dr. Boswell:** Well?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You wanna come back to hormone central and dedicate yourself to fighting the cycle full-time?

//<Dr. Boswell stares at her.>//

**Dr. Boswell:** No. What? No.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm putting a team together.

**Dr. Boswell:** Pass.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You didn't even ask what kind of team.

**Dr. Boswell:** Noticed, did you? I didn't ask because I could not be less interested. We need more eyes on this project's real focus, not fewer. It's no use stopping one apocalypse only to get squashed by another you don't even see coming. And we've already lost too many promising minds to your crusade.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I miss Bernie every day.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Dr. Bernabé Del Olmo, former Chair of Memetics and Countermemetics at Site-43.[[/span]]

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I wouldn't be honouring his memory if I let this thing beat us.

**Dr. Boswell:** And I have a duty to my forgotten colleagues. We've been sidelined for too long. Erased, even. Together, connected, we're too big to ignore. Too real to forget. That was always the point.

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Point taken.

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

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

It's not my decision. It never will be. In the end, all I could do was plant the seed. 

Joe probably wouldn't like that metaphor very much.

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[[/=]]

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

**Context:** Thilo agreed to finally start my training after we satisfied a few preconditions: no recording devices once we got where we were going, no record of our interactions beyond my keeping a simple journal -- he should have specified whose standards of simplicity we'd be using -- and no passing on any information he didn't want passed on. 

We were able to squeak it past the O5 Council by a very narrow margin -- although personally I think everything comes down to a 7-6 vote, for plausible deniability -- and got Asheworth from 120 to put me under an appropriate geas. I thought it was very cute that Thilo trusted him when he said there was no way I could break it. I thought it was less cute that he still thought my name was "Lillianhammer" after god knows how many years.

I didn't know where the old man was taking me at first, but I figured it out pretty quickly when I saw **##teal|the place of drawing water##**. I decided to let him imagine he was the only one of us who knew what was going on, and flicked on a recorder for my last leg of freedom for a spell.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer and Thilo Zwist are walking through **##green|a dense and mysterious forest##**. The sunlight catches streams of dust, which move slowly and glow with an unnatural golden hue. As they move down **##sienna|a gently arcing path##**, **##ce005c|enigmatic figures##** can be glimpsed in **##green|the distant underbrush##**. Zwist occasionally nods in their direction, or doffs his hat. Dr. Lillihammer universally ignores them.>//

**Zwist:** You will obey my instructions precisely.

[[include component:image-block
  name=Zwist.jpg|
  caption= Photograph of SCP-6382 [[span style="color:#008000"]]somewhere that's green[[/span]]. |
  width=225px|
  align=left|
]]

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm feeling sleepy. Very sleepy.

**Zwist:** Don't joke. This is the most dangerous space you have ever occupied in your life.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I feel like you ought to know that isn't true.

**Zwist:** You will tell your name to no-one. Not even me. You will never respond to the same appellation twice, nor will you describe any object in the same way. If you are offered a gift--

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hello there.

//<**##ce005c|A humanoid figure in a long black tailcoat with the face of a jackal##** has appeared on **##sienna|the fateful footpath##** ahead of them. **##ce005c|Said fellow-traveller##** bows deeply.>//

**Zwist:** If you are offered a gift--

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey there. I'm Lillian.

//<Zwist gasps, and clutches at his chest.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Lillian Lillihammer. What's your name?

//<**##ce005c|The approaching entity##** is clearly taken aback.>//

**##ce005c|I am... I //should// be... how have you done this?##**

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Let's keep chatting, and maybe you'll find out!

//<**##ce005c|The attempted waylayer of the ignorant##** shakes its head rapidly, stepping back the way it came without facing away from Dr. Lillihammer and Zwist.>//

**##ce005c|I know a bigger fish when I see it, friend. I will tell my family to avoid your path. Please, allow me to depart in peace.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer gestures amicably, and **##ce005c|the chastened canid##** beats a hasty retreat into **##green|the depths of the deepest wood##**.>//

//<Zwist is gaping at Dr. Lillihammer, eyes wide.>//

**Zwist:** You gave **##ce005c|that rapacious beast##** your name.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Did I?

//<She pats herself down.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's weird. I still seem to have it on me. Huh.

//<She heads along **##sienna|the way to semantic ruin##**, in the same direction **##ce005c|the defeated thief of names##** was heading.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, keep up. If you don't point out your fork in **##sienna|the long and winded road##**, we're liable to end up back at **##teal|the fucking well##** again. And I don't think **##ce005c|that poor idiot##**'s heart could take a second encounter with **##C5000B|She Whose Shit is Firmly Locked Down##**.

//<Zwist shakes his head in astonishment, but soon follows after. As he passes Dr. Lillihammer, he offers her a brief, wondering smile.>//

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

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@@ @@
[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**22 August 2022**__
**In which I enjoy my first full day on vacation with grandpa**

Zwist wanted to start with the basics. He found us a cabin out in **##green|the blah blah woods##** that nobody else will ever find, at least nobody human, and gave me a few minutes to get my shit stowed before launching straight into his spiel. "I presume nothing," he said in that way he has where his chest puffs out real far, so you know he's storing up a lot of oxygen for one of those famously convoluted pontifications, "and will begin where my masters began. Whatever knowledge you already possess is warped by the means by which it was first discovered. To show you what it really means to write with words of power, I would need to return to first principles."

I shrug. "You backtrack on this every time, so I'm not really surprised. What do you need from me now?"

"I need you to convince me that this apprenticeship will benefit us both, and human society writ large. This is a demand made on me by my first master, Keil; he has fallen so far in my estimations that I would take no further lessons from his example, but in this case his course was wise. Make me believe, as I made him believe. Argument is the first principle of this art."

I had what I needed for my response before the first sentence was even over. Under that massive beard, Thilo has a very expressive face. "No."

One bushy eyebrow went up. "No?"

"No. You didn't convince Keil."

And there went the other one. "Do tell."

I picked up my bag from the dusty floor, and pulled out the little red case. "All good writers are excellent liars. You write on a scale that can't even be properly measured. You might be the greatest writer in human history. That makes your lies so spectacular, I can see them in your eyes before they make it to your muscles and your mouth. Because buddy, I can //read.// And here's how I read you: you're afraid I'm going to fuck this up, that I'm going to be //your// next fuckup, so you desperately want me to be better than you were. I'll wager you blubbered out some nonsense to Keil, and then maybe your parents slipped him a //deutschmark// on the side to take you off their hands. You want me to succeed where you failed, at every step, so why would the first step be any different?"

He blinked at me, then went to fiddle with the fireplace. It hadn't been lit in a long time. "Not bad," he admitted. "Not correct in every particular, and of course you missed the point entirely, but not bad at all."

"What was the point, then?" By the time he was done with the fireplace, I was done with the needle, and it was back in its case.

"As you said, you were able to read me. Figure out how my mind works, interrogate my intentions. That's what I needed to know. //That// is the true first principle of what we're going to be doing here: writing and reading are two sides of the same //'mark.// Keil took pity on my blubbering, Lillian. As I knew he would. You may find this hard to imagine now, but I was once a very persuasive child."

I expected the fire to be green, or throw sparks, or perhaps be simply invisible. Instead, it was just fire.

"We'd better get started." He winced as he straightened up, that wizened old back giving him trouble as it no doubt had for centuries. Imagine that. No thank you. "We'll need you on the recruiting trail by Friday."

I glanced out the window again. **##ce005c|Something with cat's eyes##** flitted away into **##green|the bushes I should not have bothered to reference here##**. "I'm not sure there's that much of a rush. We can probably spare a couple weeks of solid practice first."

He shook his head as he sat back down. "Certainly we cannot."

"Why?"

"Because you must meet your future collaborators as equals, not subordinates. And if I judge your potential well, it won't be long before you're wondering if we'll even need them at all."
[[/div]]

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@@ @@
[[/=]]

It was a productive week, though maybe not as much as I had hoped. The old man, for all his bluster about my passing his test, still didn't really trust me. Every human body produces a certain amount of Elan-Vital Energy, but learning to do anything with it takes decades. I laid out my knowledge of the scientific principles undergirding memetics, and what I'd learned ages ago about its more mystical origins. He clicked his tongue and tutted and shook his head, and then he restated everything I already knew in language he thought would register as profound. Baby steps, I told myself. Even when the baby is over four hundred years old.

But I had more than one avenue of progressing this project, and progressing down one might mean headway on the other as well. So once I was out of **##green|name jail##** again, I called in some chips in a game I'd been playing for years, and attempted something very risky: going two-for-two in my encounters with tricksters of nebulous motive.

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

//<Dr. Lillihammer enters a bare and dilapidated warehouse space. The floor is littered with moss, mold, and pieces of broken masonry; light coming from the windows is bright enough to wash out the picture at times, though she entered the space in the early evening. Dozens of desks are spread out across the cavernous, crumbling space, occupied by a variety of mostly humanoid individuals wearing button-down shirts and purple ties.>//

//<She spots her target, a woman of early middle age with blonde hair unevenly dyed purple, who is presently engaged in an animated telephone call. Dr. Lillihammer moves past the desks; most of the employees look up as she passes, though none make any effort to stop her. One, a rhesus macaque, waves enthusiastically. When Dr. Lillihammer's target sees her approaching, she drops the telephone receiver.>//

**Uncatalogued PoI:** Fuck.

//<Sounds of confusion are audible from the dropped receiver.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hello, Phoebe.

//<Phoebe rolls her chair back and leaps to her feet. She points an accusing finger at Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**Phoebe:** Fuck! No.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've never had anyone negate a hello before. You must be a powerful memeticist.

**Phoebe:** I'm not going back.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Back where?

//<Phoebe's eyes are filling with tears.>//

**Phoebe:** Don't jerk me around. I... I won't let you jerk me around again.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'd say you must have me confused with someone else, but that's another thing that never happens.

//<Phoebe stares at her. Tears are now streaming down her cheeks.>//

**Phoebe:** You're going to pretend you don't know who I am?

//<Dr. Lillihammer sits down on the edge of an empty desk. There is a cheerful poster in bright colours on the desk blotter, advertising// AMERICAN AMERICAN 3: Actually Just Two Hours of Real News Footage//.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If that's the premise that lets us get on with this conversation, then sure. I am pretending not to know who you are. I'm pretending so effectively it's indistinguishable from the truth.

//<She yawns.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** My read is you're some kind of groupie. Maybe you've got the hots for people with ooze coming out of their eyes. I won't judge.

//<Phoebe keeps her distance from Dr. Lillihammer, glowering, not sitting back down but making no move to flee either. The other occupants of the warehouse appear to be ignoring the altercation.>//

**Phoebe:** What are you here for, if you're not taking me in?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I didn't say I'm not taking you in. But if I do, you'll have come willingly.

//<Phoebe attempts to laugh. It manifests as more of a cough.>//

**Phoebe:** Fat fucking chance.

//<Dr. Lillihammer raises a hand.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey, hear me out first.

//<Phoebe glances in the direction of the point where Dr. Lillihammer entered the space.>//

**Phoebe:** How did you even get in here?

//<Dr. Lillihammer scoffs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Are you kidding? I'm Lillian fucking Lillihammer.

//<Phoebe's jaw is now set forward, and her hands, though shaking, are closing into fists.>//

**Phoebe:** I know who you are. Oh, I know who //you// are.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Then it was a stupid question, wasn't it? 

**Phoebe:** Answer the damn question.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Your boyfriend told me where you work.

**Phoebe:** He doesn't know. And he's not my boyfriend. And VKTM[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Pronounced "Victim."[[/span]] doesn't let people just waltz into their operations!

//<Dr. Lillihammer gestures at the warehouse. The macaque gestures back, obscenely. It is smiling.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes, how ever could I have gained access to this fine and airtight establishment?

**Phoebe:** It doesn't matter what it //looks// like. Last week I was working in a snowy field full of deer.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** All the typing didn't scare them off?

**Phoebe:** They were giving notes. You ever been criticized by a deer?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Anyway.

**Phoebe:** Anyway. //How did you get in here?//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I asked nicely.

**Phoebe:** Bullshit.

//<A faint voice is again audible from the receiver. By its tone, it appears to be scolding.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Lady, I have been kidnapped by this company more times than you have sworn at me in this conversation. A fr-- A //colleague// of mine is //[[[/scp-8889 | married]]]// to VKTM, and I'm not talking about his work ethic, because he hasn't got one. Your bosses and I don't have an understanding -- because who could understand //them// -- but they do owe me a solid. And this is what I'm doing with it.

//<Phoebe shakes her head back and forth, emphatically.>//

**Phoebe:** They wouldn't give me up like this. I wouldn't even be free if it wasn't for them.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If the extent of your talents is circular conversation, this might have been a wasted trip. But Mari says you're a quick study.

//<Phoebe's attention snaps back to Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**Phoebe:** I can only think of one reason why they'd let you in here.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Is it the reason I gave you?

**Phoebe:** They're giving me, the opportunity, to tell you to go to hell. To your face.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, job done.

//<Phoebe walks to the windows, and begins pacing in front of them.>//

**Phoebe:** You put me through... you //tortured// me. Was I wrong?  Was it wrong, what I did before? Yes. But I didn't deserve //that.// VKTM showed me what you people are. What you really are. You know what I've spent the last month doing?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Practicing this sp--

[[include component:image-block
  name=Buck.jpg|
  caption=Photograph of uncatalogued PoI in an anomalous location, 2022. |
  width=225px|
  align=left|
]]

**Phoebe:** We put out a feature film today. It's playing in Three Portlands, in every theatre. Anybody hoping to check out that fucking Minions movie is in for a rough ride today. They're going to see //Spectre of the Spectrum// instead.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And that would be...

**Phoebe:** A dramatization in three acts of the Foundation's internal campaign against queer employees, featuring confidential email exchanges, policy documents performed in cabaret, and a soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Why Andrew Lloyd Webber?

//<This time Phoebe succeeds in laughing.>//

**Phoebe:** Because they wanted to fuck with him. Because he's an asshole.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Huh.

**Phoebe:** No reaction?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, he definitely is an asshole. Hack, too. Weird ideas about cats...

**Phoebe:** The movie.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, the play too.

//<Phoebe's voice takes on a dangerous tone.>//

**Phoebe:** //Our// movie. Do you not have anything to say about that?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, it sounds great. I'll buy a ticket. What's your point?

**Phoebe:** My point is, you come at me on your high horse--

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I didn't--

**Phoebe:** You judge me for what I--

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I wasn't--

**Phoebe:** I've come a long way, they've //helped// me--

**Dr. Lillihammer:** HEY!

//<Dr. Lillihammer snaps her fingers.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hello!

//<Phoebe stops pacing, and stares at her.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I don't know who you are! Nobody knows who you are.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Confirmed by both RAISA and HARMA analysis.[[/span]] If you've got, I don't know, a lie detector test administered by a rhino in a business suit that I can take, bring it on in. //I am not here to fuck up your shit.// I am here to stop the general shit-fucking that's going on outside your lovely ambience of decrepitude.

//<Phoebe's look of anger has shifted, for the first time, to one of confusion.>//

**Phoebe:** What?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The world is ending. Your bosses didn't mention that? No trenchant social commentary about my efforts to keep humanity extant that I can read about in a clever pop-up book with illustrations by the ghost of Dr. Seuss, racist caricatures inclusive? No audiobook read by, I don't fucking know, //do you people seriously not have anything to say about the// giftschreiber //and// schriftsteller? Because if not, you're running out of time for the joke to be relevant, and your audience to be //alive.//

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Phoebe:** We did a publicity run for the //schriftsteller// just last month.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What?

**Phoebe:** Yeah. They were promoting candidates--

//<Dr. Lillihammer slips off the desk. Phoebe takes a step back.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Candidates? Like... in an election?

**Phoebe:** Yeah. In Budapest, or Bucharest, or whatever. Lady attached to the campaign office hired us to film commercials for her guy's anti-immigration stance.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And I'm guessing you gave them...

**Phoebe:** The usual treatment. Yeah. Of course. I wonder if they ever found a new candidate?

//<Dr. Lillihammer shakes her head.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's not their MO at all. They don't get people elected. They pull the strings above the system.

//<Phoebe snorts.>//

**Phoebe:** Yeah, you lot must have been separated at birth.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm surprised they didn't know about //you// lot. And what you do.

**Phoebe:** So were we. But hey, never look a gift moose in the mouth.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What about the //giftschreiber?//

//<Phoebe shrugs, though stiffly. Her hands are still balled.>//

**Phoebe:** I dunno, probably. That's, like, some anarchist thing, right? There was a guy last week wanting us to make VHS tapes that convince you some Japanese ghost is chasing you until you have a heart attack.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What did you give him instead?

**Phoebe:** That.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Wait for it.

**Phoebe:** Only //he// gets the heart attacks.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** All of them?

**Phoebe:** All of them.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I thought you guys didn't kill people.

**Phoebe:** Well, of course we don't. How would he get the heart attacks?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I feel like I've lost control of this conversation.

**Phoebe:** Like I said, it's not a conversation. I've done my flirting...

//<She scowls.>//

**Phoebe:** I've done my //experimenting// with people like you. People worse than you. I've had time to examine myself, and understand why I did what I did, believed what I believed. I've met people outside of my little bubble, and I've tried to understand them, instead of looking for ways to make them more like me. Can you say the same?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe if I knew what the hell you were alluding to.

//<Phoebe looks at the ceiling, and makes an angry, wordless exclamation. It is echoed by the voice from the telephone receiver.>//

**Phoebe:** You want me to say it? You want me to admit it out loud? Is that what this is?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** This is a recruitment, Phoebe.

//<Phoebe again looks confused.>//

**Phoebe:** Recruitment for what?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The job of a lifetime. VKTM is content with just spotlighting the problems. I'm not. 

**Phoebe:** I think you and I define the problems very differently.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If the extent of your ambition is to point to the emperor having no clothes, that's your business. Personally? I want to pull his very real and very expensive trousers down, and get HD pics of his fat rotting orange ass. I want to make these people say what's really on their minds, and when they do? I'm going to make them pay for it.

//<The macaque is clapping. It stops when Dr. Lillihammer gives it the middle finger over her shoulder, without turning around.>//

**Phoebe:** I've heard big speeches before. There's an enemy, and we need to be afraid of them, and we need to destroy them, because we've got this grand and glorious plan for the future. People who don't want what we want are broken at best, evil at worst, and we'd all be better off if they would act normal or drop dead. I'm not falling for it again.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Phoebe--

//<Phoebe raises a finger, and brandishes it at Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**Phoebe:** That's right. Phoebe. That's my name. You know what it means?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Pure.

//<Phoebe blinks.>//

**Phoebe:** ...yes. That is what it means. The person I used to be? Not so pure. But she's gone now. She didn't understand the world, and she didn't understand herself. But she figured it out, with a little help. I'm not a follower anymore. I don't need to be saved, and I don't need to be //fixed.// I know what I did wrong, and I know what I need to do to make up for it. I know what I want.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've been to your apartment.

**Phoebe:** Of course you fucking have.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Your boyfriend thinks--

**Phoebe:** I told you, I don't have a boyfriend. I have a friend. A man who shares my bed. He knows what I can give, and what I need in return. If you'd just fucking listen instead of making assumptions all the time, maybe people wouldn't think you're such a...

//<Phoebe wrinkles her nose and bites back the remainder of her words.>//

**Phoebe:** I used to think there was romance in giving yourself up to someone else, to their ideals, their mission in life. I'm sure there is, for other people. I used to think I wanted that too, because that's what everyone told me to want. Because there was never even the slightest suggestion that another way to exist //existed.// If they'd let me figure it out on my own, I never would have ended up here. I never would have made the mistakes I made. But now that I //am// here, I'm going to do the best I can to stop people like B--

//<She bites down, hard. Her lip is bleeding when she resumes speaking.>//

**Phoebe:** To stop people like //you// from turning people like //me// into tools for your own perverse ends. I'm not the bad guy you made me anymore. But you haven't changed.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Sure sounds like you've got some great ideas for how to change the world. Hope the deer don't edit them down too savagely. You know how committees can be with people's dreams, right?

//<She stretches, theatrically.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, guess that puts a neat little bow on it.

//<Phoebe eyes her suspiciously.>//

**Phoebe:** I guess it does.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Might still try to catch that flick, though.

**Phoebe:** You know it's about you, right?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I wouldn't touch anything HR-related with a ten foot pole, unless it was sharp.

**Phoebe:** I mean they're coming for you. For people like you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Gosh, I hope they find some. I'd really love to meet them.

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

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

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

I got more than one request to lend my talents to our crackdown on that film's premiere. Had to go all the way to the Council to get confirmation that this would be a waste of time and ability; went on the record saying we could have thicker skin and a sunnier disposition, since we're trying to make friends in this fight. The response I got went on //my// record, the permanent one, but in the end they let me have my way with myself.

I’m sure there’s a way to feel grateful for that.

The movie was pretty good, in the end, though I don't think I would have cast Mickey Rooney as the Black Queen. Kind of in bad taste.

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

**Context:** Before returning to **##green|the most annoying place in the world##** to continue my training, I checked on how ETTRA was handling the FIREBREAK fallout in my absence. Since nothing was presently smouldering, I used my recess to look into Phoebe's claim about cryptomancers rigging electoral races. Maybe she was screwing with me, or maybe VKTM was screwing with her (they definitely were), but it turns out the B-city she was thinking of was Boston. A campaign runner named Mary-Anne Hart was headlining a Unite the Right rally in support of a politician named Chad Freeman, and the internet was all gaga about the guy. His voting history in the Senate, his picture-perfect marriage of twenty years, his extremely clever and very funny pro-fracking memes. My expectation was that none of this had existed before the week of the rally. I was wrong – except about the fracking memes, but they’re literally never funny, so. Chad was a pre-existing plant, and Hart’s job was to talk him up. Like I told Phoebe, none of this is in the //schriftsteller// playbook.

This was something new, and I needed to find out what.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<There is a large crowd gathered in Boston Common around a tackily-decorated stage. Dr. Lillihammer is watching from the front row, at the barriers, as an elderly man in a baseball cap waves to the crowd and heads backstage.>//

//<An announcer speaks over the PA system.>//

**Announcer:** Mike Love, everybody!

//<The crowd cheers.>//

**Announcer:** It wouldn't be summer without him. But now, Harts and Minds is proud to present the lady you've all been waiting for. The great white hope. The scourge of the woke. The falconer's choice. Miss! Mary-Anne! Hart!

//<The crowd cheers loudly as a young woman in a bright blue blazer takes the stage. She is holding a microphone.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer moves back through the crowd, looking away as Hart begins to speak.>//

**Hart:** How about that Mike Love, everybody? Maybe we'll get Brian Wilson next time.

//<The crowd cheers.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Good luck.

**Hart:** Can I get a shout-out for Chad Freeman?

//<The crowd cheers.>//

**Hart:** He can’t be with us today, but he’ll be so happy to hear about all your smiling faces. I can feel the good vibrations in the audience! You're all feeling fine. Feeling //alive.// You've got a lot of energy, and that's great. You're going to need it.

//<Dr. Lillihammer moves past the portable toilets, cracks her neck, then walks toward a cluster of security guards standing in front of the path to the backstage area.>//

**Hart:** But I need you to bring it down a little right now. I need, if you'll pardon the expression, a little less //love// in the air. I'm not here to bring anyone together today. I'm here to talk about hate.

//<The crowd cheers.>//

**Hart:** I'm just like you. You know it's true. I'm everything you think you are, and a few things you think you want to be, too. Of course I'm a whole lot smarter, but that's mostly wasted, because it doesn't even matter what I say right now. You'll cheer just as loudly if I quote Shakespeare or make fart noises into my microphone for twenty minutes.

//<The crowd cheers.>//

//<The largest security guard looks Dr. Lillihammer up and down, arms crossed.>//

**Guard:** ID?

//<Dr. Lillihammer raises a small piece of cardstock. The guard's eyes cross.>//

**Hart:** It's really quite incredible. I could call each and every one of you names, and tomorrow you'd only remember that I look the way you wish your wife looked, or I said something hilariously regressive about gender politics that made you feel safe and in control. You’re rewriting my words in your head to match what you expect one of Chad’s platinum blondes to be spouting. But you know what really pisses me off about that?

//<The crowd cheers.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer is now walking back along the barricades, on the side opposite the crowd.>//

**Hart:** I spent a long time making myself into the sort of person who can stand up here and spew bullshit, and have it parse as reflecting your biases. To be able to just straight up lie and not get called on it. To say one thing here, and another thing there, and have both crowds believe the things they heard and refuse to countenance the opposite.

//<The crowd laughs.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer has reached the backstage area. She flashes another piece of cardstock at a woman standing by the steps with a clipboard.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Listen very carefully.

//<She begins whispering in the woman's ear.>//

**Hart:** Then somebody pulled the cork out of some fucking genie bottle somewhere, and now //everybody// is making up bullshit and saying whatever they feel like saying, and they're not getting in trouble for it. You know how that makes me feel?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Hart:** It makes me glad I'm not gonna have to sit through four more years of this.

//<The crowd cheers.>//

**Hart:** You all went insane way ahead of schedule, and it's a goddamn depressing shame. We don’t need to make you believe anything, we just need to find a guy who speaks to all your worst impulses. It was never supposed to be this easy, but I guess we’ll take the win anyway.

//<She raises both hands over her head.>//

**Hart:** Screw all of you. Go punch a minority, or whatever. Vote Freeman, he hates whatever you hate. Burn your sneakers. Thank you!

//<The crowd erupts in applause, whistles and cheers.>//

**Announcer:** Give it up for the belle of Boston, Miss Mary-Anne Hart!

//<The crowd continues to cheer as Hart heads for the stairs to the backstage area.>//

**Announcer:** We'll be hearing from the good folks at the Right Fight podcast in just a few minutes, but now I've got a special treat for you. Live from the snowy peaks of Ontario, Canada, please join me in welcoming to the stage MISS! LILLIAN! LILLIHAMMER!

//<Hart freezes on the stage as Dr. Lillihammer walks up, snatches the microphone from her hand, and pushes her over. Hart crashes against an amplifier, and tumbles over the side of the stage, as a hush falls over the crowd.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** How my persecuted majority doing tonight?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, poor you.

//<She nestles the microphone into a stand, then notices an electric guitar with an American flag motif left behind after Mike Love's exit. She grimaces as she picks it up, unplugs it, and pulls a stool up to the edge of the stage.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I thought about coming out here like Jenny in //Forrest Gump,// give you inbred cocksuckers a show that'd really open your eyes, but you've been pandered to enough lately. I call this song "Hey, But Fuck You Actually."

//<She begins to sing.>//

> Oscar Meyer, and Sweet Baby Ray
> Bubblin' burgers on the charcoal today
> Gather up the kinfolk 'round that old barbecue
> There's meat in every mouth my friends, and friends, //that meat is you//

//<The crowd is restless. The organizers are looking at each other in obvious perplexity. No-one is helping Hart back to her feet; she is tangled in amplifier cables, and shouting, though the sound cannot be heard over Dr. Lillihammer's singing.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer begins strumming the unplugged electric guitar, adding tinny chords as background to her lyrics.>//

> The left falls apart, you know
> They fall down and whimper so
> They can't take the heat, oh no
> The left falls apart!

//<The crowd sings, flatly.>//

**Crowd:** The left falls apart!

> The left falls apart, it's true
> But let's not forget about you
> 'cuz I can't drink to your health
> The left falls apart!

//<Dr. Lillihammer claps three times.>//

> The right eats itself.

//<As one, the crowd turn on each other. Punches are thrown across Boston Commons.>//

> You put the Palestinians through living hell
> But you’ve also fooled ‘em down in Is-ra-el
> ‘cuz once you’ve made the strip safe for casinos and bars
> We both know you’ll be breakin’ out the six-point stars

//<A trio of musicians emerge from the backstage area: two guitarists, an elderly male and an adult woman, with a male keyboardist. They set up their instruments, and begin backing Dr. Lillihammer’s guitar and vocals.>//

> The left falls apart, and that ain't wrong
> It's a story we've been tellin’ for way too long
> But you're a bucket of crabs on the edge of the shelf
> The left falls apart!

//<Dr. Lillihammer claps three times, as do [[[/scp-6965 | her backing musicians]]]. A gunshot is heard.>//

> The right eats itself.

//<A middle-aged woman in front of the stage smashes her placard over the head of the man beside her.>//

> Billionaires, and the bozos they bilk
> Bible thumpers breakin' bread with all of Epstein's ilk
> Ladies standin' by their men who wish they couldn't vote
> Flat Earthers and Elon in one god damn leaky boat...
> 
> The left falls apart, but before it's too late
> You'd better lose the tinfoil and vaccinate
> Before you reach the punchline of a deadly joke
> The left falls apart!

//<The crowd claps along while the riot escalates.>//

> And you're all gonna choke

//<The keyboardist engages in a solo as Dr. Lillihammer recites the bridge.>//

> Now I guess I shouldn’t blame you for the company you keep
> Beggars can't be choosers, and the loser's gonna weep
> But the prize you've got in mind can only feed the chosen few
> So when the libs are finally owned, there’ll be just one more thing to do…

//<She winks as a beer bottle explodes on the stage backing behind her. The elderly guitarist laughs. Dr. Lillihammer resumes playing with extra gusto, and the others join in.>//

> The left falls apart, and let me tell you why
> It's 'cuz it's easier to crumple than to let it fly
> But when the chips are down, you'll never share the wealth
> 'cuz deep down you feel
> And you know that it’s real
> You’re gonna sit down to that meal…

//<She claps again. There are sirens in the distance, and the rally has dissolved fullt into chaos.>//

> You're gonna eat yourselves.

//<Hart has extricated herself from the wires, and walks over to Dr. Lillihammer. She sits down on the stage, cross-legged, and shakes her head.>//

**Hart:** You had all that just ready to go?

//<Dr. Lillihammer smirks.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That was off the cuff. I'll workshop it before the album.

//<She stands, bows to the crowd -- which is entirely ignoring her as the police arrive to break up the riot -- then smashes Love's guitar to splinters on the stage.>//

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

No idea who the band was.

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[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
**__10 October 2022**__
**In which the finale is foreshadowed**

We sat in the shade of **##green|an oak tree carved with a heart containing no names##**, just the spaces where you could feel names once had been. **##ce005c|Curious eyes##** watched --at a distance -- as we reclined in the dappled sunlight.

"Every word in every language," he wheezed, "has parents and grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins and the like. They have generations, and they share DNA."

"Etymology," I supplied.

"That's right. If you can understand how words relate to each other, how they developed, in what order they came into existence and how much they have been altered to their present form, you will grasp the //mittelgrammatik.// You will see how they strengthen or weaken each other, and draw different meanings from the //spiritus mundi// entirely apart from superficial literality."

"//Mittelgrammatik,//" I said. "Middle grammar. Hooray for Germanic languages." Except the whole thing where they all share a virus that can make you catch fire and die, thanks to the old man digesting his cale sandwich beside me. That part's not so praiseworthy. "So the trick is to play on the noöspheric channels made by lexical evolution, while still crafting good, solid sentences."

He inclined his head, and his cap slipped over his eyes. He left it there. "That's the start of it."

"Then what?"

He smiled, and folded his hands in front of his prodigious chest. "It's best not to get ahead of ourselves."

It’s been a few months, so I'm practiced at mentally re-writing my preferred responses before spitting them out. "I'd just like to get a sense of what the next lesson will be, that's all."

"After you've mastered this -- and it will take you some time -- we will move on to the //unter// and //ubergrammatik.//"

"Can I guess what those are?"

He spread those gnarled hands. "Be my guest."

"Underlying grammar. You talked to Izaak Okorie about that, a long time ago."

"I did."

"But you didn't tell him what it was. You were doing work for the Foundation..."

"Briefly."

"You made logos, and a few front companies. Euler broke your work down to particles, and they studied those. Probably nobody's ever really explained that to you before."

I can sense his brows furrowing beneath the hat. "I've gleaned the gist."

"I don't think we discovered anything underlying the cryptomancy, but the particles were clearly applied after the paint. A second layer of meaning applied thaumaturgically, which breaks down into the component parts of communication. So I'd imagine your //ubergrammatik// is a simpler but more powerful means of conveying a message, a strong but more visceral one, piggybacked on the visible words. Like the superstructure on a vessel."

He nodded, so slowly and so long that for a moment I thought he was nodding off. Cale will do that to you. "Correct in several respects, though not all. Any guesses as to the other?"

"//Untergrammatik.// Hmm. I'll have to think about that."

"Yes." He stretched, then clasped his hands behind his neck. "You will. I want you thinking about it every day, until you have an answer."

"Presumably not in a vacuum."

"No. I have a variety of exercises prepared for you, and we can begin whenever you'd like."

"When you say prepared for me, do you mean that? Or am I getting sloppy seconds from the last people you trained?"

He tensed. Just a little, but enough for me to notice. He might be immortal, but however much I flattered him on the topic earlier, he hasn't spent much of that time practicing to deceive. "The principles are the same," he said stiffly. "I can do nothing about that. But given my questionable success rate, no. This course of study will be quite new."
[[/div]]

And quite secret, of course, so the rest of the week passed in activity I'm not allowed to relate. When I popped back into the world that only threatens your identity in mundane, overt ways, I still hadn't figured out the //untergrammatik//... at least not enough that I'd have been comfortable hazarding a guess out loud. But on the topic of Thilo's apprenticeships, I'd learned a great deal.

Enough to shape my extracurriculars when the week rolled over.

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

It's been a rough decade for academics, on both sides of the Veil. For a while, one source of their misfortune was [[[/scp-5734 | a crusader]]] against long beards in panelled offices, and the dusty echo chambers which they operated. This worthy kept one step ahead of me until the climate shifted, and more pressing concerns faced the academy than tenured and blinkered bores. When my quarry started taking potshots at their new targets, there was really no way to hide the fallout. I traced it back to its source, and the chase came to its end.

Probably.

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

//<Dr. Lillihammer is walking down a well-lit city sidewalk at night. There are other pedestrians on both sides, promenading or patronizing bars and shops. A figure in a leather jacket with a dyed blonde mohawk and reflective sunglasses is ahead of her, hands stuffed in their pockets and a sour look on their face. They look behind them, perform a double-take when they see Dr. Lillihammer, and slow their pace so the latter can overtake them.>//

**PoI-5734:** What the hell are you supposed to be? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** There are many opinions. I do not collect them. 

**PoI-5734:** Been nice talking. 

[[include component:image-block
  name=Bradbury.jpg|
  caption=Photograph of PoI-5734 at an undisclosed location, 2022. |
  width=225px|
  align=left|
]]

//<They quicken their pace again. Dr. Lillihammer easily keeps up as PoI-5734 crosses the street, looking up at her in irritation.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're not going anywhere important. All the government offices are closed at this hour, Dorothy.

//<PoI-5734 scowls.>//

**PoI-5734:** Which cult are you with? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Neither. I'm with the Foundation.

**PoI-5734:** Oh. That one. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It was fun ferreting you out.

//<PoI-5734 has reached the sidewalk. They continue walking along its edge, forcing Dr. Lillihammer to tread on the tarmac, dodge around parked vehicles and avoid oncoming traffic.>//

**PoI-5734:** Thilo put you up to this? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, Thilo thinks you're a lost cause. Of course, he loves lost causes, so maybe he was hoping I'd go after you anyway. 

//<PoI-5734 snorts.>//

**PoI-5734:** He loves hoping, too. Me? I prefer to actually do things.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We have that in common. 

**PoI-5734:** Probably the only thing. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Probably not. 

//<PoI-5734 swerves to avoid a light pole, and Dr. Lillihammer steps up onto the sidewalk. She puts her arm around PoI-5734, who tenses.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The way you said hello? I know that tone. People ask you what you're supposed to be all the time, don't they? 

//<PoI-5734 responds through grit teeth.>//

**PoI-5734:** It's a trick question. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What's the trick?

**PoI-5734:** We're not supposed to be anything. We just are. Anybody challenges that, they're projecting insecurities. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The most primal of all human terrors: seeing people who aren't you. 

**PoI-5734:** "If people can be not me, that means it's possible for //me// to be not me!" And they'd rather see the world burn than have that be true. 

//<Dr. Lillihammer pats PoI-5734's shoulder.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Somebody ought to educate them. 

//<PoI-5734 swats her away.>//

**PoI-5734:** Somebody ought to shoot them into the sun. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We could literally do that. I've seen plans drafted up. 

//<PoI-5734 steps into an alley, and crosses their arms.>//

**PoI-5734:** Am I being contained, officer? 

//<Dr. Lillihammer steps into the alley with them.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not responding to that.

**PoI-5734:** So I'm //not// being contained? Then why don't you tell me what it is you want, so we can get this over with while the bars are still open? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm a big fan of your work.

**PoI-5734:** Sure.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm serious. You started out turning verbs into self-replicating acid, deteriorating related concepts at a rapid rate. Out of //spite,// you created one of the most virulent linguohazards I've ever seen. And that was just your opening act.

**PoI-5734:** What makes you think that was me?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The way you're sticking out your jaw proudly instead of angrily, now.

**PoI-5734:** What if I told you there's a whole army of us out there, and "Dorothy Bradbury" is just a name we pass around to make the legend look bigger?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Honestly? I'd be even more impressed. You'd be taking your example from someone who really made a mark on that pristine, towering mausoleum they call higher learning in this country.

//<PoI-5734 snorts.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The Dorothy Bradbury I'm thinking of forcibly retired the entire English faculty at ██SU. They figured every thought worth articulating was already circulating in the classics, and history was over, so my hero DB made them inarticulate and gave a whole generation of up-and-comers a shot at the tenure track. 

**PoI-5734:** Hoorah, for all the good it did.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** A barfly matching your exact description, on the other hand, made a woman shit herself every time someone said "decolonization" in her presence.

**PoI-5734:** She didn't think it was a real thing. And I was drunk.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You, or yous, conflated the concepts of "textbook" and "theft" at three different state colleges.

**PoI-5734:** If you charge fifty cents per page, you deserve to have the cops called on you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And now you're the shield of the academy.

//<PoI-5734 spits.>//

**PoI-5734:** I'm not trying to prop up those twisted old fucks who treat open minds as receptacles for their gangrenous drool. I'm just trying to prevent a new Dark Age.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The Dark Ages kind of didn't exist, my archivist friend tells me.

**PoI-5734:** They will, though. If things keep up the way they are.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Which is why you made Betsy DeVos resign.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]United States Secretary of Education, 2017-2021.[[/span]]

**PoI-5734:** Technically I just made it so she couldn't tell the difference between "resign" and "privatize," and "I" and "the United States public school system."

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And also so she spoke backwards.

**PoI-5734:** Yeah, grammar's a tricky thing. I hear they spun it as some moral stand, though, which pisses me off.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You've been at this for months. You've knocked over a dozen Republican lawmakers and who knows how many tastemakers in the field of education.

**PoI-5734:** Seventeen. Next month I'm gonna make the Hoover Institute forget what money is. It's gonna be great.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Like I said, big fan. Although honestly, it's not always clear what's you and what's them just being inherently incompetent and moronic. 

**PoI-5734:** You want an itemized list? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I want to talk shop.

//<PoI-5734 scowls, and turns to watch the crowds walking past.>//

**PoI-5734:** Nuh uh. We're not having a moment here, lady. You came to chew me out for sticking my fingers up the man's nose, so get it over with. I'll pretend to listen, and you can pretend to think I've turned over a new leaf, and we can both say we did our due diligence. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not here to chew you out. I'm not running interference for anybody. This is my rodeo.

**PoI-5734:** And I'm the steer?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You'd definitely be a catch. 

//<PoI-5734 turns to look at her again, surprised.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What's the answer? 

**PoI-5734:** To what? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** To the question you asked me earlier. What are you?

**PoI-5734:** You wouldn't know the word.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I live for new words. Give me life.

//<PoI-5734 exhales in frustration.>//

**PoI-5734:** I'm Okitcitakwe. It's an Anishnaabe... are you seriously Googling it.

//<Dr. Lillihammer has taken out her telephone, and is scrolling.>//

**PoI-5734:** You don't even know how it's spelled. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've got a great ear for phonemes. Comes with the job.

//<She pauses.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Google thinks I mean "Kitkat."

**PoI-5734:** Google needs to die. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That'll be //my// next project. What's Okitcitakwe mean? 

**PoI-5734:** Warrior woman. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Apropos.

//<She puts her phone away.>//

**PoI-5734:** Don't patronize me. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not trying to.  What you're doing? It might just be that mythical Good War.

**PoI-5734:** Don't try to flatter me, either. You're only marginally better than the government, and it's a real commentary on the last few years that it shakes out that way. 

//<Dr. Lillihammer sighs in frustration.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Jesus Christ. I get it. You don't like realtalk. Neither do I. We're both too cool for school. But I'm trying to have an honest conversation here, Dottie.

**PoI-5734:** And you were doing a great job until you ended on a diminutive. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** See, this is why I need you. You can say 'diminutive' correctly on the first go. I can't always even spell it. 

**PoI-5734:** If you don't leave me alone, right now, I'll make it so you can't even spell your own name. 

//<They smile an unfriendly smile.>//

**PoI-5734:** Or maybe so nobody can. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You know how many people have that kind of linguistic control? 

//<PoI-5734 answers immediately.>//

**PoI-5734:** Two.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** One. Thilo has to stumble into it, or get a run up. You're the ideal type wordsmith, Dorothy Bradbury, whether that is or isn't your name alone. And words are going to get us out of this. 

**PoI-5734:** 'This' being...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The cycle. The war.

//<PoI-5734 suddenly slumps against the alley wall, and looks up at the sky.>//

**PoI-5734:** That's never going to end. That's forever. You might as well try to change the tides by pushing the moon. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** See? I need more of these metaphors in my life. 

**PoI-5734:** I'm doing the work of a lifetime here. I'm realizing dreams we've had for decades, and I'm preventing damage that would take a generation to fix. I don't have time in that schedule for fascist outreach.

//<A police officer is standing on the sidewalk, eyeing Dr. Lillihammer suspiciously as she towers over PoI-5734.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You don't believe in educating the right? 

**PoI-5734:** I believe in ostracizing them, encouraging them to select out of the reproductive system, teaching their children to be embarrassed of them when that fails, and letting them die and their bad ideas with them when that //succeeds.// 

//<The police officer walks away.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That sounds like it's going to take a few years, even with your little immersion program. 

**PoI-5734:** Well, I'm still young. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But the night is not. 

**PoI-5734:** I take it you're doing the metaphors now. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So you’re a warrior woman. And you’ve got a cause. But is this a one-woman war, do you think?

**PoI-5734:** You live on stolen land. You had your chance to join the good fight. Dozens of chances. You chose to look the other way.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes, we did. We did do that. We’re still doing that. But you’re ignoring something pressing, too.

**PoI-5734:** There’s always a distraction. Always something more important than paying what you owe, or setting the record straight.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** This isn’t about that. You’re not wrong, and I will help the others see that if you help me. But if you don't, the fascists are going to run out the clock. The game is about to end, Dorothy, and right now the bad guys are topping the leaderboard. You want all your hard work, everything people have suffered for, to mean something? 

//<PoI-5734 glares fiercely at Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**PoI-5734:** It has //always// meant something.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You want to win? 

**PoI-5734:** I do want to win. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Then you need to help me play for time. And if you do, like I said, like I //promised,// I'll help you tear down those ivory towers myself. We can turn that dipshit, what's his name? The Muppet?

**PoI-5734:** Jordan Peterson?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. We can turn him back into a pumpkin together, you and me. What do you say?

**PoI-5734:** I say lousy bait is lousy. What could we do to him that's more damning than what he does to himself on a regular basis? How do you top "made himself mortally allergic to cider" or "stupided himself into a coma"?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Truly one of the greatest minds of our generation. 

**PoI-5734:** Your generation. Not mine.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We don't want him either. 

**PoI-5734:** But you're not going to do anything about him. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Right now? Not unless he's anomalous. I'll leave the normies to you.

**PoI-5734:** Thanks. 

//<They pause.>//

**PoI-5734:** Wait, you don't suppose he's actually...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. 

**PoI-5734:** No. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** He might be a native speaker of bafflegab, but he's not an expert in anything. All the //gifts// and //schrifts// are actually knowledgeable in their areas. Peterson's just full of shit. 

**PoI-5734:** Maybe he's a new thing. 

**Both:** [simultaneously] //Griftschreiber.//

//<Both laugh.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** See? We're having a moment after all.

//<PoI-5734 examines Dr. Lillihammer thoughtfully.>//

**PoI-5734:** Moment's passed.

//<They leave the alley, and resume their stroll up the sidewalk.>//

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

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

I would have taken one of Dottie over an army of trained memeticists, because the warrior woman actually stands for something. If there really is an army of them out there, well, I desperately want them on our side.

Naturally as soon as I updated their file, I got a very angry email from the Department of Containment wanting to know why I let a dangerous Person of Interest go free.

They weren't very impressed when I told them said Interesting Person would be a whole lot more dangerous in a cage, or when I told them to Google "Wounded Knee."

[[=]]
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[[/=]]

I was starting to think the word wizards were giving me the week off, as the end of my intermission rapidly approached. That's when I got a call from an old friend.

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

**Context:** I responded to a call for help from the Director of Site-41, on an extremely secure line connecting directly to my office. I arrived in Colorado to find the facility exterior deserted, and some new friends setting up camp. The results were, as shown below, quite memorable.

----

//<Dr. Lillihammer approaches the entrance to Site-41 from the main car lot. She is wearing a version of her usual dazzle coat, but with the colours inverted. There is a man on the roof with a scoped rifle; he is attempting to target her, but wavering badly.>//

//<She raises a long, thin white enamel wand with a cluster of diodes on the tip -- a custom-made optogenetic stimulator -- and presses several buttons on the shaft. A series of flashes follow, and the sniper drops his rifle off the edge of the roof. It clatters onto the entrance awning, alerting two guards stationed in the airlock. The sniper sits down, confused, and makes no effort to further engage.>//

**##C5000B|Object permanence. Boys and their toys.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer adjusts the controls on her device as the two guards emerge from the front door, weapons drawn. One is wearing spiral pattern camouflage, while the other wears an Antimemetics Division labcoat. Dr. Lillihammer winces before pulling a pair of 3-D glasses out of her coat pocket with her free hand and slapping them on.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm Lillian Lillihammer.

//<Both guards turn to face each other, responding as though the other had spoken.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And I'm here to murder you.

//<The lights flash again, and the guards open fire on each other.>// 

**##C5000B|Memories are constructed in the brain. While they reside in short-term memory, they can be reconstructed. Two different uniforms, and poor synchronization; these two didn't know each other very well.##**

//<Once inside Site-41, Dr. Lillihammer moves with extreme caution. Catching a glimpse of an armed figure in the reflection of a laboratory window, she takes a moment to calculate the angle and then fires a series of pulses at the distant glass before removing a fire axe from the wall.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey, I'm setting a trap over here.

//<The guard immediately rounds the corner, then stops as though he has forgotten why. Dr. Lillihammer brains him with the blunt end of the axe.>// 

**##C5000B|Absent-mindedness inhibits memory retrieval.##**

//<She hefts the axe over her shoulder before continuing.>//

//<The next corridor over contains two dead// giftschreiber //in spiral camouflage. Dr. Lillihammer kneels, and presses her finger to a clean spot of tile.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Blood.

//<She rubs her clean forefinger and thumb together thoughtfully.>//

//<She encounters two more live// giftschreiber //as she progresses through the halls, and three additional corpses. She overcomes the first opponent by paralyzing his central executive function, and the second by overriding their procedural memory so that they are incapable of remembering how their firearm functions.>//

//<A final// giftschreiber //is standing outside the door to Chamber 3125, a portable radio in her hand.>//

**//Giftschreiber://** Repeat, I've lost contact with the entire floor. Someone's in here. Over.

//<When her finger is off the microphone trigger, she sees Dr. Lillihammer. The stimulator flashes three times, and Dr. Lillihammer grabs the guard by her lapels.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Did you kill me?

**//Giftschreiber://** What?

//<The radio crackles.>//

**Voice:** Do you have eyes on the target, Gisele?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Did you kill me? DID YOU KILL ME?

**//Giftschreiber://** I...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** DID YOU KILL ME?

//<The guard blinks, then picks up her radio again.>//

**//Giftschreiber://** I killed her.

**##C5000B|You'd be surprised how quickly people remember things that never happened, with enough external stimuli.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer clubs the woman on the back of the neck, where her helmet doesn't quite meet the neck armour.>//

**Voice:** //Vergiss dich.//

**##C5000B|For a moment, I didn't know where I was. The axe fell out of my numb fingers. On reflex, I took a deep breath; Thilo had trained me to re-engage my senses every time I get confused. I smelled my perfume, and the moment was over. If not the danger.##**

//<Dr. Lillihammer raises her stimulator. It emits three sequential pulses of green light.>//

//<The// giftschreiber //lifts his rifle, looks down at it, and frowns. He turns the barrel to point at his own face, his other hand wandering towards the trigger.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer kicks his feet out from under him, and catches the weapon awkwardly. She ejects the magazine after several attempts, looks down at the baffled// giftschreiber, //then shrugs and simply drops the weapon butt-first onto his face.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're welcome, Thilo.

**##C5000B|Most people have no reason to know this, but remembering how something works and knowing how to translate those memories into action are two different mental processes. Bit of an exploit, if you ask me. I'd have designed something better.##**

//<The fallen// giftschreiber's //radio crackles.>//

**Voice:** Gisele's not responding. Let's go to... oh, I dunno. Call it Condition Red? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Army of cats.

//<She picks up the radio, and clears her throat before pressing the transmit button.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Autumn leaves. The Canadian flag. Strawberries. The human heart. Love.

//<Voices respond over the radio.>//

**Second Voice:** Condition Red. Aye aye.

**Third Voice:** Thank god. I thought this was serious.

**Fourth Voice:** I'm gonna see if I can find that pool table.

**First Voice:** Gisele's probably taking a nap. Man, this was almost too easy.

//<Dr. Lillihammer drops the radio. The backing snaps off and the battery pops out as it strikes the floor.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're telling me.

//<A few minutes later, Dr. Lillihammer has arrived at a clean white containment unit with an airlock door. There is an unconscious man in the airlock. Dr. Lillihammer taps at the controls, enters her override code, and the door begins revolving. She hauls the apparent// giftschreiber //out, then cycles herself into the chamber beyond.>//

//<When the airlock door opens, Dr. Lillihammer is facing down the barrel of a small pistol.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Prove it.

//<Dr. Lillihammer examines the SCP-3125 containment chamber. She notices a bottle of slow-acting Class-Z mnestics on the counter, smiles, and picks it up.>//

//<Dir. Wheeler watches in surprise as Dr. Lillihammer pops a single pill into her mouth, and chews it.>//

//<One minute passes.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer hiccoughs, and smiles in mild embarrassment. Dir. Wheeler raises an eyebrow. Dr. Lillihammer sticks her tongue out, revealing that the pill is entirely gone.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Huh.

//<She nods, and lowers her weapon.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Better get moving. You left a hell of a trail out there.

**Dir. Wheeler:** The bodies?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The blood.

**Dir. Wheeler:** I didn't actually see any blood.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Really?

**Dir. Wheeler:** Yeah. So I assumed they were antimemes masquerading as people. No?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Huh.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, now we know their blood is antimemetic. That could be useful.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Make a note. 

//<Dr. Wheeler moves past Dr. Lillihammer to stand at the airlock door.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** What's it like out there?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The way you left it, only with a lot more unconscious assholes.

**Dir. Wheeler:** You should have killed them.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Might still do. Where's your staff?

**Dir. Wheeler:** Sent them to the basement. Where's your backup?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You and I both know there's only two survivors of this, no matter how many people go in.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Fair enough. They're on the obelisk.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Of course they are. You good to move?

//<Dir. Wheeler cycles the airlock.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Been waiting for hours. 

//<Their path down the perimeter hallways of Site-41 intersects with multiple// giftschreiber //patrols. Dir. Wheeler incapacitates the majority with the butt of the fire axe Dr. Lillihammer discarded earlier, only taking recourse to her service weapon when getting up close is infeasible.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Jesus, let me get a few shots in would you?

**Dir. Wheeler:** My Site's been invaded by //humans.//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Don't beat yourself up over it.

**Dir. Wheeler:** I'm not embarrassed. I'm //insulted.//

//<As they exit the containment wing, Dr. Lillihammer notices two guards standing outside the structure through floor-to-ceiling windows.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Do your knees still sneak? Mine don't.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I got this.

//<Dr. Lillihammer takes careful aim with her optogenetic stimulator, and flashes a pattern of lights on the visor of one// giftschreiber's //helmet. The other raises his weapon and fires into his partner's bulletproof vest until the latter is lying on the pavement, gasping and bleeding.>//

//<The standing// giftschreiber //raises his radio to his mouth.>//

**//Giftschreiber//:** Hostile down.

//<Dr. Lillihammer knocks on the glass. The// giftschreiber //turns to face her; before he can release the radio's transmit button and raise his weapon, a new series of flashes passes between them.>//

**//Giftschreiber//:** Hostile down. Hostile down.

//<He shakes his head violently.>//

**//Giftschreiber//:** Hostile down. Hostile down. Hostile down.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Phonological loop. Where'd you get that thing?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Traded in my phone.

**//Giftschreiber//:** Hostile down. 

**Dir. Wheeler:** They're going to think there's an army attacking.

//<Dr. Lillihammer grins.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Semantics.

//<There is a sudden screech, and Dr. Lillihammer falls to the floor, gasping. A gunshot can be heard, and Dir. Wheeler kneels.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Sorry. Get you bad?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Wiped all my childhood memories.

**Dir. Wheeler:** How do you know?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Because they all came right back. My memory is a self-reinforcing archive with five backups.

//<Dir. Wheeler shakes her head.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** You really are learning magic.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You'd think that, but.

//<The final// giftschreiber //on their path is standing in the entrance foyer. Dr. Lillihammer takes careful aim, and projects a complex image on the glass of the front double doors. Her opponent falls to his knees, then feels around on the floor helplessly.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Sensory processor. Without moment-to-moment memory, your senses don't even work.

//<Dir. Wheeler considers the prone// giftschreiber //with apparent pity.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Would he even know it if he died?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Probably not. So it wouldn't be worth it.

//<The sun is setting behind the obelisk which towers over Site-41. The obelisk, hundreds of metres tall and ridged with narrow stairs, is festooned with barely-discernible moving figures.>//[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]On the camera feed, the sun is setting behind the treeline. There is no obelisk, and there are no figures. The remainder of this transcript automatically takes Dr. Lillihammer's perspective rather than providing a literal transcription of what is visible on film to the unaugmented eye.[[/span]]

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Christ.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Too many, and too dark.

//<Dr. Lillihammer brandishes her optogenetic stimulator.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They can die in the light.

//<The first two sentries, at the base of the tower, are soon locked in a physical struggle as Dr. Lillihammer and Dir. Wheeler creep past.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Too easy.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Now who's insulted?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, I mean that was actually too easy. They shouldn't have forgotten each other that fast.

**Dir. Wheeler:** It's the obelisk.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah?

//<Dir. Wheeler peers upward along the vast, switchbacked stairway. Artificial light is visible on the edge of the obelisk's plateau.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** They must be trying to amplify its antimemetic properties. Or it's happening as a side-effect of whatever else they're doing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So they need to concentrate real hard on who they are, and why they're here.

//<Dr. Lillihammer nods.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, I can definitely work with that. You gonna be alright to hold on to yourself?

**Dir. Wheeler:** If not, I'll be ready for it.

//<Dir. Wheeler produces the bottle of Class-Z mnestics, and smiles grimly.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Last ditch only. I know what the side-effects are.

**Dir. Wheeler:** I should have been dead five years ago. Maybe the timeline's about to catch up.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Don't bet on it. You've got a guardian angel.

//<Dir. Wheeler chuckles quietly.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** You?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, you.

//<At the first narrow landing, the next sentry is looking out over the forest. Dr. Lillihammer removes a bobby pin from her coat, and stabs him in the cheek from behind.>//

**Sentry:** Ow...?

//<His eyes roll, and he wavers in place. Dr. Lillihammer prevents him from falling off the landing, and directs him to the stairs down. He ambles away, muttering to himself.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Pain can interrupt memory… recall...?

//<Dir. Wheeler is already at the next landing. As Dr. Lillihammer looks up at her, she swings at the next sentry, catching him on the jaw beneath his visor. He falls over, and his helmet falls off, tumbling down to the grass below.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Interesting.

//<She shakes her hand out, winces, and begins massaging the tendons.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hope you've been drinking your milk, grandma.

//<They attain two more landings without incident.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Watch, this one is good.

//<Dr. Lillihammer cups her hand around the diodes on her optogenetic stimulator, and focuses a beam into the face of the next sentry. The sentry shakes her head, her mouth falls open, and after approximately one minute she steps backward off the landing to fall a great distance to the surrounding trees.>//

//<Dir. Wheeler shrugs.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Looked about the same to me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I just did a random swap of her long- and short-term memory. She forgot who she is. Or, was.

**Dir. Wheeler:** And it took longer than your other tricks.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, you'll forget that part soon.

//<There are three guards clustered at the next landing. Dr. Lillihammer changes the settings on her stimulator, and emits a faint pulse that bounces off the polished black surface of the obelisk before reaching the little group.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer heads up the stairs toward them, gesturing Dir. Wheeler to follow. They pass the sentries without incident, though two of them appear to notice the pair ascending, and when they are several flights up and out of earshot, Dir. Wheeler claps a hand to Dr. Lillihammer's shoulder.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** I will need that one explained.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Short-term memory is acoustically reinforced. With the right acoustic disruption you can prevent its formation entirely.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Do you not have a catch-all method that works the fastest, or most reliably?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** This is a proving ground, Marion. It won't be my last battlefield.

//<Dir. Wheeler winces.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** You just called up a bad memory for me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Collateral damage.

//<There are few sentries on the last stretch of stairs, and the pair make good progress. With only five flights remaining, however, Dir. Wheeler reaches up to clutch at her temples.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Ugh.

//<Dr. Lillihammer squints into the distance, spots a figure standing at the next landing with arms outstretched, and curses. The figure retreats as Dr. Lillihammer pulls Dir. Wheeler into a weathered niche in the wall.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Talk to me, Marion.

**Dir. Wheeler:** I don't... exactly remember what we're doing here.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Can you feel gaps in your memory?

**Dir. Wheeler:** No. I know what that's like. This feels...

//<She spits.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** I think I have //less memory.//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Okay. They're attacking capacity. I won't feel that for a long time, but you're only a singlet, so. We're going to have to exploit chunking.

**Dir. Wheeler:** What?

//<Dr. Lillihammer sends a series of pulses to Dir. Wheeler's optic nerves, then shines a normal light on each pupil, nodding to herself.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Who are you?

**Dir. Wheeler:** Marion Wheeler.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The unforgettable. You're Marion Wheeler and we're climbing the obelisk to stop the //giftschreiber.//

**Dir. Wheeler:** ...right.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Who am I?

**Dir. Wheeler:** Lillian Lillihammer.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm Lillian Lillihammer, and we're climbing the obelisk to stop the //giftschreiber.//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Okay.

//<Dr. Lillihammer claps her hands to Dir. Wheeler's upper arms, and rubs encouragingly.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They can't have done permanent damage at that range. You'll be fine.

**Dir. Wheeler:** If we can stop them.

//<Dr. Lillihammer snorts.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You are Marion Wheeler, and I am Lillian Lillihammer. Those concepts are inextricable from the fact that we can stop them.

//<At the final landing, Dr. Lillihammer overloads the diodes on her stimulator. This produces a bright series of flashes, overstimulating the visual cortex of the final// giftschreiber //sentry and preventing memory encoding. The man blinks as the two women approach.>//

//<Dir. Wheeler kicks him down the flight of stairs.>//

**Voice:** Now you're just getting petty.

//<Dr. Lillihammer and Dir. Wheeler crest the final set of stairs to reveal the top of the obelisk. A small camp is set up, with worklights and perhaps a dozen unarmed// giftschreiber //etching chalk lines onto the unreflective black stone.>//

//<A pale, emaciated man perhaps forty years of age is standing in the middle of the unfinished ritual, watching them approach.>//

**Unknown:** Quit while you're ahead.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Sure! You're losing, so we should give up!

**Unknown:** I'm about to wipe you clean as a whistle. So if all you want out of the rest of your life is a slightly higher body count--

//<Dir. Wheeler shoots the nearest// giftschreiber. //The others stop working, and stare at her with wide eyes.>//

//<The unknown figure turns to them.>//

**Unknown:** She's not that fast, she hasn't got that many bullets, and she can’t shoot me.

//<The others reluctantly resume work, with many worried glances at Dir. Wheeler. The man she shot lies groaning on the roof of the obelisk, clutching at his bleeding shin. Dr. Wheeler winces at the unknown figure, apparently unable to take aim at him.>//

**Unknown:** We could try to talk this over. That always works out well.

**Dir. Wheeler:** You didn't come here to talk.

**Unknown:** Sure I did. Just not to you.

//<He gestures at the ritual working around him.>//

**Unknown:** We're having a conversation with the past.

**Dir. Wheeler:** It's not your past.

**Unknown:** But it could be. This place, and the others like it, contain a legacy that would outlast humanity.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Would, if you weren't planning on ending it all at once.

**Unknown:** Well, here's the thing. The people who built this obelisk have a chance to live again, beyond their deaths in every world they've ever lived in. In us.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The elect.

**Unknown:** What they knew yesterday could make all the difference tomorrow. Not for you -- we're well past that point -- but for the people of the new world that will rise once you're all dust.

**Dir. Wheeler:**  This isn't a computer. It's a tombstone.

**Unknown:** It's a //memorial.// A memorial so strong, you can stand up here and see through the thickest veil of forgetfulness to ever exist. 

**Dir. Wheeler:**  And you're going to propagate that effect.

**Unknown:** Well, look at you. One step ahead. That's not your usual position, Director. You always used to be late to the party.

//<Dir. Wheeler snaps off another shot, at the foot of a hastily-scribbling// giftschreiber //who raises her hands in a self-defensive posture, and cowers.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:**  In another life, I was the death of your party.

**Unknown:** Well, there's always the after-party. And then nothing at all after that.

//<Dir. Wheeler turns her weapon on the figure.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:**  I'm going to ask you, just once, not to do this.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** For clarity, what you're being asked not to do is...

**Unknown:** Make everyone remember.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Everyone.

**Unknown:** Everywhere. Everything. Everything they've ever forgotten, everything you've ever taken away from them. Everything that //homo oblitus// has been whispering in our ears, but we couldn't hear through the background radiation of their traumatic blotting-out. Our souls remember. And we're going to remove the block between that and our brains. We're going to set memory free.

**Dir. Wheeler:**  Please don't.

**Unknown:** As arguments go, that's not a strong one.

**Dir. Wheeler:**  I know something you don't know. You don't want to complete that ritual.

**Unknown:** So, tell me. Tell me why I shouldn't give us back what you stole.

**Dir. Wheeler:**  It won't work the way you think. You're going to forget who you are. You don't have an anchor to the present, or the future. You'll lose yourself to the empty hole that is the past of this space.

**Unknown:** And that concerns you how, exactly?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You'll be just another bad idea we have to refute. An empty signifier taking up space, sucking meaning into its yawning gap. I honestly do not have time for that today.

//<The figure laughs.>//

**Unknown:** Yeah, I don't find any of this particularly convincing. Particularly as you just murdered about a dozen of my people.

**Dir. Wheeler:**  Have it your way, then.

//<There is a rumbling sound. The// giftschreiber, //unknown figure included, turn to look up at the clouds.>//

**Unknown:** A baptism.

//<There is a sharp, bright flash, as of lightning.>//

//<The unknown figure reaches down, tugs a loose thread on his shirt, then pulls it off and ties it around his left pinky finger.>//

**Unknown:** There. Now I'll remember to remember. Happy?

**Dir. Wheeler:**  This is still a mistake.

**Unknown:** No. This is a correction.

//<The complex symbol has now been drawn on the obelisk roof, and the unknown figure kneels to run his finger through the dust.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I take it you're out of bullets.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Yeah, took my last shot just now.

//<She discards her service weapon, opens the bottle of Class-Z mnestics, and smiles at Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** These used to come in syringes, you know.

//<Dr. Lillihammer nods as Dir. Wheeler takes the mnestic. The other// giftschreiber //take positions around the working, and kneel as well.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Benefits, and drawbacks.

//<There is no visible sign that the ritual has begun, but the// giftschreiber, //save for the unknown figure, all cry out as one.>//

//<Dir. Wheeler takes Dr. Lillihammer's hand.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** I'm Marion Wheeler.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm Lillian Lillihammer.

//<Dir. Wheeler nods.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Lillian Lillihammer.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Marion Wheeler.

//<The obelisk groans beneath their feet.>//

//<Dir. Wheeler's eyes are now bloodshot. Capillaries are bursting.>//

//<One by one, the// giftschreiber //collapse. The last one upright is the unknown figure, who stands, turns to face the two women, and blinks uncertainly in the artificial light.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, Marion Wheeler.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Lillian Lillihammer. As if I could ever…

//<She turns to face the unknown figure, who is rocking back and forth on the polished black stone, eyes unseeing.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** ...forget //you.//

//<The unknown figure sits down, closes his eyes, and disappears.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer also sits down. Dir. Wheeler joins her, wincing as her knees bend.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** It better not rain. I'll probably get pneumonia.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I doubt even germs remember what they are, up here. What exactly did you do to him?

**Dir. Wheeler:** The Method of Loci. 

//<Dr. Lillihammer laughs, and lies back on the stone.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Of course.

//<Dir. Wheeler leans back on her hands, and looks around at the clouded grey sky.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** He really shouldn’t have tied that string. This isn't just a memorial, it's a signifier of loss. It's a marker marking absence. There's more than one reason people don't see this thing until they've been working on antimemetics for months. The entire obelisk is a visual metaphor for non-existence. I primed him with that, and he couldn't help but let the emptiness in when he stumbled on it. Better minds than his have been lost up here.

//<She frowns.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** I think so, anyway. I can't quite remember. Anyway, that's the moral for today. Truth can be a very good trick.

//<Her eyes widen, and she begins to shake.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer springs to her feet.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Almost forgot.

//<She grabs Dir. Wheeler from behind, and heaves. Dir. Wheeler spasms, and coughs up the undigested mnestic pill.>//

//<Dir. Wheeler coughs again, wheezes, and removes her glasses to wipe her brow.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Thanks.

//<Dr. Lillihammer walks to the edge of the obelisk, and looks down at the forest.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** I take it that flash of lightning...?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. I inverted his retrospective and prospective memory, just in case whatever you were doing didn't take. He wasn't remembering to remember, he was renegotiating in a vacuum. Not holding on to what he was, but what he wanted to be. And that's not nearly enough for some people.

**Dir. Wheeler:** Some people?

//<Dr. Lillihammer looks back at her, smiling wider.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. Some of us live in our aspirations. If you're living in the past, though? 

//<Dir. Wheeler nods, and runs one finger along the cool black stone comtemplatively.>//

**Dir. Wheeler:** Dust to dust.

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

Before you get your hopes up: no, I’m not recruiting Wheeler.

She’s exactly where we need her already.

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

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**4 January 2023**__
**In which we start to figure it out**

The first thing I told him, before we even went up **##teal|the well##**, was "Personal context."

He waited for me to supply the preface; some people like to use the entire conversation, apparently. "//Untergrammatik,//" I said. "The underlying grammar is your own personal connection to concepts, and you can pass them on to others."

He grunted, and it wasn't just the effort of hefting himself over **##teal|the lip of stone##**. "Very good. Do I want to know how you came to this realization?"

"Connecting with others," I said, and I didn't clarify further because it's impolite to talk during a dimensional transit. Not a joke, that's in the rules somewhere.

We started up again once on the **##sienna|you know what##**. Nobody bothered us this time. "Have you been able to put this knowledge into practice?" Zwist asked, with a tone that suggested he was dreading the answer.

"Not as such," I admitted. I kicked a stone into the bushes at the edge of **##sienna|the thing I just described in sienna text##**, just in case **##ce005c|some asshole jackrabbit##** was listening in. When nothing yelped, I kept going. "It's still hard to put what's in my head into the images."

He nodded. "And it will remain that way for some time. There is in fact no guarantee it will ever get any easier."

I stopped walking. He hates it when I do that, so he kept walking a ways before realizing I wasn't going to keep up. "Hey," I said. "Explain what that means."

He turned to face me, still shuffling, now backwards, in the direction of the cabin. "There is a step in the training of a //schriftsteller// which you will find very difficult to take, given present circumstances."

I advanced on him, slowly. My legs are longer anyway. "You haven't mentioned this before."

"Because I am growing to trust you by degrees only. You and I will need to do something very remarkable if we're going to give you unbridled access to the tools of your prospective trade."

"And what's that?"

"We're going to need to raid the //schriftsteller// guild hall.”

"Why?"

"Because you will need to sup from a font of knowledge that has no peer elsewhere on this Earth."

"Cool. How do we get there?"

"I do not know." He sighed. "I don't know where it is, and neither do you; we don't even have a means of finding out, at present."

He turned around again, so he didn't see me grin. If he heard what I said next, he didn't show it.

"Maybe I've got means you don't know about."

It was late when we reached the cabin, so we got settled in for the night instead of talking further. It's a cluster of cozy little rooms; you wouldn't think those slat walls would block much sound, but I never heard Thilo snore, and nobody with a beard like that sleeps silent. Maybe he doesn't sleep at all.

When I woke up in the morning, he was frying bacon. "I thought you were a vegetarian," I yawned.

"I am," he said. "This is for you."

I flopped down at the kitchen table. "So you won't let anyone kill a pig for you, but you'll cook one for me?"

He shrugged, deftly flipping the pan at the same time. "I have lived too long to take pleasure from death. But I understand not everyone has shared my experiences. Empathy is at the core of the skill you claim to have learned."

I thought back to the heads popping and bodies dropping at the obelisk. "I wouldn't say it was a major exercise in empathy."

He brought our breakfast to the table. Bacon for me, oatmeal for him. "I don't expect you to become a pacifist overnight. In fact, I would be very suspicious if you did. But if you have been able to put any part of yourself into the work, and had it affect another living being, you have at the very least moved your soul in sympathy with theirs. There has been an understanding."

This time I took the shot right in front of him. He watched without comment.

"Cool," I said, around a mouthful of finely-roasted animal flesh. "So we're going to talk about feelings this week?"

"Yes." He stirred his oatmeal speculatively. "Hearts, more particularly."

"I know all about breaking hearts."

He nodded. "And mending them? Because that's the real trick." He smiled as he spooned himself up a little pile of gruel. "You will need to learn to connect on the most primal basis with your fellow human beings. And that carries more danger than anything else you have attempted thus far."

"Why?" I asked, as he consumed his joyless portion.

"Because to engage fully is to engage honestly. If you want to affect people on a fundamental level, you will have to see them as they are. And when you do? They will be able to see you, just as well."
[[/div]]

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

I know a very relatable guy.

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

//<Dr. Lillihammer sits down at a table in [[[/scp-5524 | PoI-5524-1]]]'s cell at Site-19. The occupant himself remains seated on his bed, but he does watch her with subdued interest.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Long time, no see. 

**PoI-5524-1:** I don't think we've met. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, you know what, that's probably true. I just feel like I know you really well. Thanks to all the productivity you cost me. 

//<PoI-5524-1 shrugs.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** I haven't done anything but sit in this cell. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, but your reputation precedes and succeeds you. Brury Regevoy.

[[include component:image-block
  name=Brury.jpg|
  caption= Photograph of PoI-5524-1 at Site-19, 2023. |
  width=225px|
  align=right|
]]

**##C5000B|That’s one reason this file is Level 5, and not Level 4. Hopefully you’ve got enough mental fortitude that his name isn’t presently bouncing back and forth inside your brain. If not, it’s your fault for skipping your dosage. Be better.##**

**PoI-5524-1:** Here it goes. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, it doesn't. A lot of that lost productivity was coming up with countermeasures for your bullshit.

**PoI-5524-1:** Like what? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Like every time I hear or read or speak your name, I automatically play "Witch Doctor" by The Cartoons in my head. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Isn't that song kind of racist? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I think it's too stupid to be racist. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

//<PoI-5524-1 shifts on the bed, legs hanging down to the floor so that he is now facing Dr. Lillihammer.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** So, what can I help you with? I don't get many visitors.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've noticed you get a little apologetic sometimes. 

//<PoI-5524-1 shrugs again.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** Well, everybody seems to consider me a bit of a burden, don't they? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Most word wizards couldn't give less of a shit who they inconvenience.

**PoI-5524-1:** What makes you think I'm a cause? Maybe I'm just an effect. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If you weren't complicit in this somehow, you'd be demanding to be set free. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Maybe I don't want to be set free.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Let's explore that possibility for a minute. Why would being in here be better than being out there? 

**PoI-5524-1:** Because everybody knows my name? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not going to sing along with you. We've had enough copyright trouble lately. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Do you know what it's like to have everybody talking about you? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes. Absolutely I do. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Do you like it?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Most of the time. 

**PoI-5524-1:** So do I. Most of the time. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And the rest of the time? 

**PoI-5524-1:** It would be nice, once in a while, to just be left alone. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hmm.

**PoI-5524-1:** Everybody's figure of fun. Funny old Brury Regevoy. The name on everyone's lips. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, speaking of lips. Ninety percent of attraction is thinking about someone. I'll bet you're popular with the ladies. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Not just the ladies.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh yeah?

**PoI-5524-1:** Oh yeah. And everything in between and beyond, too.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Is that a good thing?

**PoI-5524-1:** It would be, if I thought they were into the real me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not even sure what the real you //is.//

**PoI-5524-1:** Right? And I guess you probably won't tell me, if you ever figure it out.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You never know.

//<PoI-5524-1 sighs.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** They never stop thinking about me, once they start. I could be the most boring man on Earth, and it wouldn't matter in the slightest. There's nothing I can do to make them forget me, and nothing I can do to make them remember me //more.// What do you get for the everyone who has man?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You're funnier than I expected. Like, actually.

**PoI-5524-1:** I'd be flattered, if there was any way to know you really meant it.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Do you want me to leave you alone? Is that it?

//<PoI-5524 shakes his head.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** No. God no.

//<He smiles wanly.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** We might as well change the subject. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Why? 

**PoI-5524-1:** You can't be taking my sad story very seriously with a novelty song repeating in your head. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Giving me a lot of credit to suggest I could take it seriously without the song. But sure, we can talk about something else. 

**PoI-5524-1:** I'm an open book. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's the thing. You aren't. We've sent people in here hopped up on concentration drugs, and they've quizzed you about your origins. You've been less than forthcoming. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Yeah, of course I have. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Go on. 

**PoI-5524-1:** As soon as I tell you the whole thing, you'll stop sending people in here to see me at all. So some wild-eyed researcher asks me -- between stifling giggles -- if I could please write down my personal history for later perusal, and then they collapse into hysterics and someone else carries them out, with a big dumb grin on their face too... What exactly am I gaining if I comply? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We might be able to find a way to reverse what's happened to you. 

**PoI-5524-1:** There's a difference between having to accommodate the way you are, and wanting to be somebody else. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But is your name even Brury Regevoy?

**PoI-5524-1:** It's the name I use. That's the only kind that matters. You know?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I suppose I do. But wouldn't it be nice if you could introduce yourself without people breaking down?

**PoI-5524-1:** They're the ones doing it. Why am I the one who needs to change?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Okay, I'm going to pull on that thread a little. Were you sent here to strengthen our resistance to effects like you? We got hit with another during... Oh, you're probably not aware of this. There were some attacks. One of them involved a guy called Brad Smelt.

<//SCP-5524 smirks.//>

**PoI-5524-1:** Brad Smelt.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. 

**PoI-5524-1:** They dealt you Smelt.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Trust me, man, better minds than yours have tried to make that joke work. 

**PoI-5524-1:** I thought you said I was funny.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Just working with inferior materials, there.

**PoI-5524-1:** Were you better equipped to handle... Brad Smelt... because of me? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes. Absolutely. 

//<PoI-5524-1 stops smiling.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** Is he in a box too? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Last I checked, though it’s been a while. Do you want to meet him? 

**PoI-5524-1:** No thank you. I'm trying to keep his name out of my mind. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe you two could make common cause. Commiserate.

**PoI-5524-1:** Maybe.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So, is that the story? You were injected into our lives like an inoculation, ahead of the disease? 

**PoI-5524-1:** That's not very flattering. Maybe I'm here to open your minds. Make you more tolerant. Or maybe this is about visibility. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Visibility of what? 

**PoI-5524-1:** I guess it isn't visible enough to you yet. 

//<PoI-5524 scoots back and leans against the wall.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** Why are you interested in these details, anyway? It sounds like you've got bigger problems to deal with. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I thought you might be able to help me with those problems. 

**PoI-5524-1:** How so?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Let me pose a hypothetical. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Okay. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Say you're a //giftschreiber,// or a //schriftsteller.// You, specifically. Brury Regevoy.

**PoI-5524-1:** Okay.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And let's say your unique properties and perspective can be used to make the world a better place. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Let me stop you there. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'll allow it. 

**PoI-5524-1:** When you say "make the world a better place," do you actually mean squash everyone who disagrees with you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I do not. 

**PoI-5524-1:** Do the people you work for? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They probably do. 

**PoI-5524-1:** So if you're asking me what I think you are, would I not be acting against my own interests? Isn't the Foundation just going to put me in a deep, dark hole once there's nothing more I can tell them and there's nothing else I can help with? Unless I agree to let you 'fix' a fundamental part of who I am? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I wasn't going to suggest a fix. Wouldn't you rather have the power to decide this stuff for yourself?

//<Silence on recording.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** What I would like, is to not have to be just one thing. For everyone. All of the time. What I would //like// is for everyone to stop immediately fixing me in place, and expecting me to stay there. If you can give me that, I'm interested. But I'm sure that's not what you're offering.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You think you'll be better off handling things alone?

**PoI-5524-1:** It's my life to handle.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've been the one to dig a hole and sit in it until the world looks right. I've brushed everyone else aside when they wanted to help, because I wanted to figure it out all on my own.

**PoI-5524-1:** And it didn't work?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It worked for me. It doesn't seem to be working for you.

**PoI-5524-1:** The way I see it, the problem is all on your end. So no, if there's an answer to this, I don't think it comes from you.

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, I had to try.

**PoI-5524-1:** What will you try next? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've got a list. It's a long list. 

**PoI-5524-1:** And if they all reject you? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Unlike you, I don't mind being alone. 

//<Silence on recording.>//

**PoI-5524-1:** You're not really thinking about "Witch Doctor," are you? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. I'm not. 

**PoI-5524-1:** So how are you resisting the effect? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe I just don't think you're funny anymore.

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

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

Attached, without comment, is a series of backend comments on poor Brury's file by myself and the scientist of record.

[[table]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Hey, did you just pop in on 5524?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Yeah, we had a lovely chat.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Nobody alerted me. 
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Nothing to be alerted about.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► I know you opened the file originally, but it's mine now. I've been making good headway with him, and it would have been nice to get a heads up.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Look. I'm a little busy right now, and the thing I'm busy with means I don't have to follow established channels.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► I know. I'm not making a fuss. I just want to hear what you talked about.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► His mixed feelings on the whole "Cheers" phenomenon, and general ambivalence about the meme wars.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► I'm annoyed that I know what you're referencing, on both counts. 
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Did he tell you about his dream?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► I'm not that kind of doctor.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Neither am I. If you got on alright with him, I'm surprised it didn't come up.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Well, spill. If it's so important.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► I think it is.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► He told me he wishes it wasn't his name that's memetic.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► What, then?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► His face.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► He has a very goofy face.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► He wishes people could see him. He thinks there's a blockade around him in noöspace, and every ship is his funny name. He thinks he could connect more meaningfully if anyone could get through to the real person underneath.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► And you think that's important?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► I think it's interesting.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Why?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► His name has 100% uptake. It's irresistible. Everyone calls him the same thing, nobody gets an opinion on the matter. There's no question of authenticity. Because he's got a power some people would kill for. Sacrifice anything.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► And yet he doesn't feel like it's //his// power.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Did he tell you that? That's new.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► I bring out the best in people.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Hmm.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Yeah?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► I wonder if the anomaly is detachable. If you could give someone else that conceptual resilience.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► That's a very good thought. It may in fact have clarified a few things for me.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Like?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► Sorry, you're not cleared for my file.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Your file? You have a file now?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► See? Not cleared.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Well, I'd still like to talk some of this over with you some time. 5524 is a pet project of mine, but I've got others. Some I think you might find useful.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► You provided me with a single good thought today. That's more than most people achieve in a lifetime. I'll consider it.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► Cool. But next time you decide to fuck with me, at least buy me dinner first. Got my contact info?
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► No, but I know where to get it.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #FDF6D7;padding: 3px;"]]
► You're a very frustrating person to work with, Dr. Lillihammer.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border: 1px solid black; background-color: #F6D9E1;padding: 3px;"]]
► We're not working together yet, Dr. Garrison.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[/table]]

I made a single note in my journal as soon as I closed down that terminal:

"They're not running candidates. They're __making__ them."

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

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

**Context:** Think tanks are one of the most popular ways to hide something in the anomalous world. The Foundation has plenty as false fronts; for a completely random example, the Simpson Centre for Policy eventually evolved into Site-43. VKTM used to have one that literally put philosophers in tanks and half-drowned them until they thought of something profound from oxygen deprivation -- this was during that awkward transition between their "terrifying cursed media" and "furious court jester" eras. 

More to the point, the //giftschreiber// used the Geschenk Group to [[[/scp-5054-ex | fix the 1979 Canadian federal election]]]. So, I've had my eye on the Mackenzie Institute for a while now. They snap up popular authors, talk show hosts, retired public servants //et cetera,// all from right of centre. We've conducted a few discreet raids, engaged in a lot of surveillance, and never came up with anything much. But with the resources afforded to BURNOUT, I was finally able to whip up something to get my foot in the door. 

After that, there was only one place that foot could end up.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer is being led through a large, open hall flanked with open-concept workrooms with floor-to-ceiling green glass windows and wood grain wainscoting. Her guide is a middle-aged man in an expensive suit, who is smiling with apparently genuine pleasure at her company.>//

**Guide:** I've got to say, Miss Robertson, we're all very excited to have you here today.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's been a dream of mine as well, Mr...?

**Guide:** Please, call me Bill. What made you decide to approach us?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I was going through my grandfather's papers, and I had a revelation.

**Bill:** He's had that effect on a lot of people. What did you discover?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I knew he had a way with words, of course. 

**Bill:** //Futility// is a classic.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]An 1898 novel by Morgan Robertson believed beyond the Veil of Normalcy to have predicted the 1912 sinking of //Titanic//; it is instead a memetic-ontokinetic catalyst which actually [[[/scp-5238 | caused]]] said event.[[/span]]

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Have you read //Hubris?//[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]The unpublished sequel to //Futility,// which sank and then repeatedly re-floated //Titanic//'s sister ship //Gigantic,// requiring Foundation intervention.[[/span]]

//<Bill's strides briefly falter.>//

**Bill:** We've only heard rumours about that. It's real?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, yes.

**Bill:** You have a copy of the manuscript?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The original.

//<Bill rubs his hands together, then notices and sticks them in his jacket pocket.>//

**Bill:** Forgive me. We invited you here on your own merits, and we're all terribly interested in talking about your work. It's just...

//<Dr. Lillihammer laughs, high and airy.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I totally understand. It's not every day you rediscover a lost literary classic.

**Bill:** Oh, but those works are so much more. I'll admit, when I first saw your name, I was skeptical.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You didn't believe we were related?

**Bill:** All the records checked out. That wasn't a problem. But the idea that a talent like that might skip a generation, only to resurface... well. I thought it was possible you were a very good writer, but...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But not a //true writer.//

**Bill:** Ah. I think we've reached the point where we're going to need to be clear on definitions.

//<Bill leads Dr. Lillihammer through the main hall of the Mackenzie Institute, and through a double door marked "Library and Archives." The hall beyond is utilitarian, though still clean and well-maintained.>//

**Bill:** Your words have left everyone who read them feeling... hot, let's say. The effect was subtle, so subtle I might have thought it was just psychosomatic... except for the matter of your parentage, and the fact that you knew to contact us.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Did I guess right?

**Bill:** Was it a guess?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Let's be straight, Bill. Grampy was a //giftschreiber.//

//<Bill exhales loudly, then laughs.>//

**Bill:** Yes, it's good to have that out of the way.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And you guys are something different. Something he didn't much like. 

**Bill:** Your grandfather was a man of principle. Our principles are different, but we have the same belief in the transformative power of words.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We're being honest here, Bill. He wanted to see everything fall apart. That's not me. I want to bring people together.

**Bill:** That's what we do here. The Mackenzie Institute is dedicated to undoing decades of damage done to the economic and cultural health of this country by unscrupulous, agenda-driven politicians. We're in a battle of words with people who don't care what they say, as long as it hurts someone. As long as it destabilizes some structure. We have to choose //our// words with great care.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And your mouthpieces, too.

**Bill:** Sure.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I hear you've got a lot of politicians on your payroll.

//<Bill clicks his tongue.>//

**Bill:** Now we're getting into dangerous territory. I'm not going to admit to doing anything illegal. We operate entirely above-board.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Of course. You're in the business of convincing. As a starving author--

//<She pokes her own stomach.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** --I sympathize. I'm hoping you'll let me help you with your admirable project.

//<Bill leads Dr. Lillihammer into a small conference room. There is another floor-to-ceiling window on the far side, revealing many metal shelves and cardboard archival boxes.>//

**Bill:** I hope we can find a way to work together. This is where the authenticity examination will take place.

//<He looks embarrassed.>//

**Bill:** You're a little early, and our experts are running late. If you'd like to leave the book here...

//<Dr. Lillihammer draws a sharp breath.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Do you know what I've brought you today?

//<She clutches her bag to her chest.>//

**Bill:** I had assumed it was more work like the first snippet you sent us.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** This is the last novel my grandfather began before he died. I've finished it for him, and not in a way he'd have liked.

//<It is Bill's turn to inhale sharply.>//

**Bill:** What's it called, if I might ask?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** //Inevitable.//

**Bill:** And what's it about?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's a bit involved. I can say it involves cycles, and how they end. Maybe there's instructions involved. Maybe they're //detailed.//

//<Bill glances up and down the hall.>//

**Bill:** I hate to ask you this, and it's a little beyond the bounds of normal protocol, but... do you think I might...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You want a preview?

//<Bill smiles thinly.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Tell you what. I hear you've got some Lisbet Geschenk fonds in there.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]Alias for Elizabeth Crocker, PoI-001: //giftschreiber// and former CIA agent.[[/span]] The genuine article. You let me poke around a bit, and I'll let you read as much as you can before your people get here. How's that sound?

//<Bill is visibly torn, and unable to articulate a response.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer reaches into her bag, and produces the sole existing copy of// Hubris.//>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Just so it's perfectly clear that I'm on the level.

**Bill:** Are you //donating// this?!

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm very much hoping this is about to become my home, Bill. It's more like lending books between friends, in that context. So how about I give you this for safekeeping, and you look over my manuscript, and I take a look at whatever you're willing to give me a moment with? Reciprocal exchange, and all that.

//<Bill bites his lip, and then nods.>//

**Bill:** I can swing that. Sure.

//<He laughs.>//

**Bill:** There's nothing sensitive in those rooms anyway. But lots of interesting stuff. You'll be happy at the trade you made.

//<Dr. Lillihammer passes him the satchel, and the book.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You won't regret it.

//<Bill unlocks the authentication room, and sits down to peruse Dr. Lillihammer's manuscript (while occasionally looking in wonder at// Hubris //on the tabletop). Dr. Lillihammer enters the attached archives and begins to scan the boxes, occasionally stealing a glance at her guide as she does so.>//

//<Bill suddenly laughs, and taps a button underneath the table. His voice comes over the speakers in the archives.>//

**Bill:** Right from the start, this gets me.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What bit?

**Bill:** "They called it rot, but it was glory."

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh, yeah, the good stuff.

**Bill:** "Rot is reversion to base forms. Collapse, retreat, defeat. This was instead a return to power, an escape from endless dreams of decay to a shining past only dimly discernible before waking. This was a restoration."

//<Dr. Lillihammer has already finished examining the boxes, and returns to the authentication room.>//

**Bill:** "They called it hate, but it was simply recognition." Oh, this is good. This is //right.//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hell yeah.

//<She kneels down beside him and pats him down, finding a keycard in his buttoned left breast pocket. She also removes a single page from the book Bill is reading. He does not appear to notice.>//

**Bill:** "Hate is emotion. What they felt was //recognition.// They had seen depths of depravity in the foe's eyes within which all virtue would drown, and they knew it for what it was: a cancer, inexcisable, damning the body entire to--"

//<Back in the archives, Dr. Lillihammer deactivates the audio on her recording.>//

//<She walks to the back of the room, where there is a keycard-locked door. She swipes Bill's card, and continues through.>//

//<The boxes in this room are metal, and there are computer terminals throughout. She spends a minute at each, gathering information, and then begins to meticulously search several dozen of the boxes, removing files and heaping them on the floor.>//

//<When she is finished, she collects her findings and places the page she removed from her satchel between two server racks. She then returns to the low-sensitivity archives, flicking Bill's keycard into the air and letting it fall. He is still speaking when she returns to the authentication room, and she reactivates the recording audio.>//

**Bill:** —it is inevitable it is inevitable it is inevitable it is inevitable—

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

//<She packs// Hubris //and the stolen files away in her satchel, and heads back to the hallway. A faint, flickering light is reflected in the windows to the archives>//

//<On her way back to the entrance, Dr. Lillihammer encounters a dazed-looking young woman in a red business suit.>//

**Woman:** Hey.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yo.

**Woman:** Do you know where the...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The...

**Woman:** Where the... the...

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Authentication room? Is?

//<The woman nods, uncertainly.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer turns and holds open the door to the women's bathroom.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** In here. Pick a stall, and sit down.

//<The woman blinks, then enters the washroom.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You'll want to replace the locks on your apartment, when you get home tonight. After they fire you.

//<The woman is already sitting down on one of the toilets.>//

**Woman:** Okay. Thanks.

//<A man, also wearing a red suit, is blinking rapidly at a security guard as Dr. Lillihammer approaches the front doors. He is babbling incoherently. The guard rolls his eyes at Dr. Lillihammer, and she gives him a sympathetic smile.>//

//<A fire alarm sounds.>//

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

I was right.

Because, I mean, of course. But it was good to have it in writing.

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[[/=]]

[[div class="lillihammer"]]
__**29 March 2023**__
**In which the German gets gratuitous**

Months passed. I'd trained myself not to think about any individual noun connected to Thilo's cabin that wasn't put there by Thilo himself, or me. It's a bit of a strain, but it saves on coloured ink.

The changes started slow at first, but not slow enough for him. Marion might have believed I could do what I did with light alone -- well. She probably saw through it too, but she didn't see the point in commenting. Thilo did, and often. "You are moving too fast," he grunted. "Such things, I could not do in my first year of training."

"You didn't have many years of training," I reminded him, "and I'll be lucky if I get any. We're on a timetable."

Projecting my personal context through light was a kick, I'll admit. A lot of it was memorizing wavelengths and settings, calculating optics, basic physics stuff. But the rest was raw will, and it felt raw, too. I was hardly more than a husk by the time we got down that obelisk, and Marion had to haul me to the infirmary. Heisting the think tank was easy, but writing that book? I really started to understand what people mean when they say they put a lot of themselves into their work.

And my time with Thilo started to feel like an unironic vacation.

Complete with family bickering.

"You're too focused on their little projects." He was whittling on the front porch. He brought his own wood, out of deference to the **##ce005c|for fuck's sake I wasn't going to do this anymore.##** "You need to expand your reach."

"You keep swatting my hand away." I yawned beneath my huge, floppy sun hat. The porch is covered, but I am made from spinel-speckled ivory. "If you expect me to make big changes, I need access to the big guns. //Ubergrammatik.//"

He grunted again. Old men sure do grunt a lot. "You aren't convincing me by comparing our art to an arsenal of firearms."

I considered going for a walk. Sometimes I make a lot of progress on the work when I'm not looking right at it. Of course, it gives the old man conniptions to think of me wandering the **##green| green text generator##**. I don't want to be the one to prove that immortals can still have heart attacks -- assuming VKTM didn't beat me to it already.

He set down whatever he was carving, and clomped his old man boots on the boards as a signal that play time and nap time were over for the afternoon. "We are working to reverse corruption, Lillian," he said. "We are to be a //cleansing.// How does one sweep out a hotbed of fraud and malfeasance?"

I thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. "Put in a word with the custodians?"
[[/div]]

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

I'd thought for a while about doing a victory lap after FIREBREAK, thanking all the folks who got me on that podium. Somehow I never managed to make the time.

Okay, I know the how. The how was me not trying hard enough. I had a good inkling of where to start correcting that oversight, though.

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

//<Dr. Lillihammer is walking through a series of cubicles at Site-CN-02. All save one are unoccupied. Dr. Shu Hsieh is the only member of personnel still working; tā looks up in surprise as Dr. Lillihammer approaches.>//

[[include component:image-block
  name=Hsieh.jpg|
  caption=Photograph of Dr. Hsieh at Site-CN-02, 2022. |
  width=225px|
  align=left|
]]

**Dr. Hsieh:** Oh, shit.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh shit was my father's name. You can call me Lillian.

//<She attempts to lean on one of the adjacent cubicles, before discovering it will not bear her weight.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I like to avoid preconceptions.

//<Dr. Hsieh narrows tā eyes.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** I mean, I still have them. Everyone knows who you are.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah, but since I sprang this on you, you haven't had a chance to call them all up yet. I'm going to keep talking, so you never do.

//<Dr. Hsieh pushes back from tā desk, and examines Dr. Lillihammer closely.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** What, uh, brings you here? Has there been another attack?

//<Dr. Lillihammer shrugs, and glances around the abandoned room. One of the ceiling's fluorescent bulbs gutters briefly before returning to a steady pulse.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** There's always another attack. But not here, no. Not yet.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Then what...?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You and I didn't actually meet last time. You solved the problem yourself.

//<Dr. Hsieh's jaw sets.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** Yeah.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I like that in a colleague. I'd much rather be jealous than disappointed. How did you figure it out?

//<Dr. Hsieh rolls tā eyes.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** It was just so self-serious, you know? White boy rap about fascism.

//<Dr. Lillihammer crosses her arms.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** The singer sounded black.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Embarrassed too, to my ear. So I just took that note, and amplified it.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** With clown music.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Yeah.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Why did you even have clown music?

//<Dr. Hsieh's lip curls.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** We play it as fanfare whenever somebody visits from the English-speaking branches.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm starting to sense a theme in our interactions.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Sorry. Just haven't had my coffee yet.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's past evening.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Well, there you go.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Any progress on tracking down the source of that music?

**Dr. Hsieh:** Been ages, but I've still had time to check in on it. Not like I'm doing anything more important. Most likely the singer isn't anomalous; it's in the interplay of music and lyrics. The vocals have been laundered through a lot of post-processing, and we can't get a match.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Surely you weren't defeated by post-processing.

**Dr. Hsieh:** No. The reason we can't get a match is that the voice is nowhere on record.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Makes it more likely the singer was a //giftschreiber// himself.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Does. Though I've got my doubts about that as well.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Oh?

**Dr. Hsieh:** I'm wondering how many of the attacks we've handled during FIREBREAK have been false flags.

//<Dr. Lillihammer nods.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Because the //schriftsteller// were trying to train us to fight their enemies.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Right. What if this was simulated? Made to look anti-fascist, but really just a pale imitation?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It certainly caused enough chaos.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Did it? 

//<Dr. Hsieh pushes away from tā desk, and turns tā chair to face her directly.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** Dr. Lillihammer, it should not be very difficult to exploit our insecurities. Everybody who works for the Foundation knows that we're the ultimate antidemocratic intervention in everyday life. A properly-formulated musical barb should have cut much deeper. Right to the quick. We should still be bleeding personnel.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. So you figure they were just trying to make the poison-writers look bad?

**Dr. Hsieh:** Yes. I think they co-opted someone else's identity, and maybe their work as well, for diametrically-opposed goals. And I feel sick about it.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Why? Whatever the provenance, you stopped a riot.

**Dr. Hsieh:** I enabled a scapegoating. I let them strawman an ideology so we could beat it up. When I play that music back, you know what I hear?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Rap with clowns in?

**Dr. Hsieh:** I hear someone doing work for an organization that despises them. I hear them being used to advance goals that will end with their own eradication. I hear a sick joke about bigotry, told by bigots.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** So in a way, you did what they did. Recontextualized.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Yes. What I did was almost as bad.

//<Dr. Lillihammer pulls a chair from the nearest cubicle, and sits down on it. It creaks noticeably under her weight, thin and narrow-framed as she is.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's going too far again. You saved lives. They played "Born In The USA" at a right-wing rally about patriotism. Not the same in context, no matter the similarities.

**Dr. Hsieh:** It //is// the same. What I did, and what you're doing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** What am I doing?

**Dr. Hsieh:** Globetrotting on the company dime, putting out fires. Are you familiar with forest management?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You think we need to let it all burn? To clear out the deadwood?

**Dr. Hsieh:** I think we need to accept that some things need to change. And the easiest way to do that is to start from first principles. If something is vulnerable to attack, maybe it's flawed. Maybe the best course isn't to protect it, but rebuild it better.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm not doing this to prolong the inevitable. This is a fight I'm going to win.

**Dr. Hsieh:** And then what?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Eh?

**Dr. Hsieh:** Are you going to win the fight after that?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I don't even know what that fight is, yet.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Sure you do. I'll bet you've always known.

//<Dr. Hsieh gestures at tā desk.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** You see that award you put me in for?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No.

**Dr. Hsieh:** No. Because that recommendation you made by form email went right in the bin. Instead I got a visit from the FSD.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Christ.

**Dr. Hsieh:** They check on me every few months. This time they said they were worried that exposure to "reactionary elements" in memetic form might have worsened my "latent mistrust of authority." I've been cited for the latter three times. If I hadn't had this break, they would have drummed me out by now.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've seen your file. You do incredible work.

**Dr. Hsieh:** You've seen one of my files. The other one is full of citations for conversations like this one. When you publish this log, it's going to go right in there too. I've got no future here.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You could, if you want.

**Dr. Hsieh:** You here to whisk me away?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Maybe.

**Dr. Hsieh:** We can jet around and do feel-good stuff, mind-fuck a few fascists and be home by dinner?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Something like that.

//<Dr. Hsieh exhales heavily through tā nose.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** Do you understand why they let you do this, Dr. Lillihammer?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Because they have no other choice.

**Dr. Hsieh:** That's right. You just happen to be someone they know they can rely on, and they //need// to rely on you. If there was anyone else who could do it, they'd get the nod. You're a necessary evil. You're the poster girl us degenerates are meant to aspire to be.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** You're one of the good ones.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I've never been rejected before making an offer.

**Dr. Hsieh:** Maybe I'll catch the next war, after you win this one. We'll definitely be on the same side, then.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You think so?

**Dr. Hsieh:** Yeah. And I'll bet if you see the file the FSD has on you, you'll agree.

//<Dr. Lillihammer folds her hands in her lap.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Well, keep me in mind anyway.

**Dr. Hsieh:** I'm sure I will, unfortunately.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I hope you'll eventually decide to help.

//<Dr. Hsieh gestures at the dimly-lit cluster of portable offices.>//

**Dr. Hsieh:** You see what I've gotten for trying to help? And it's only going to get worse, until I either get fed up and quit or they "have to" remove me. That's what nobody understands about the Foundation. It isn't better than the rest of the race. It's got more information, a wider scope of knowledge, but all the same biases.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** If you challenge those biases enough--

**Dr. Hsieh:** Then the biased will put you down. That's how it's always been, and probably always will be. Ignorance is a mind virus, doctor. And it's latent in humanity.

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

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

That was the visit that required me to start a whole scrapbook for my Fire Suppression Department notices. I even had to intercept a few more headed for Hsieh.

Maybe we shouldn't have called our operations FIREBREAK and BURNOUT. Gave them the wrong idea.

As if they didn't have the wrong idea already.

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

Hsieh definitely got me thinking about the transformative power of audio, among other things. A few decades on the VKTM file has taught me a lot about radio, more than seems useful to know in the streaming era.

Still. Everyone knows new media is evil, but old media is entrenched. And I was on a digging spree...

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

**Context:** Pirate radio station XXXX (that isn't a placeholder) had been broadcasting from a secure location for decades without our ever being able to pin it down. When I put myself back on the case, I found them in half an hour. A derelict in the middle of the Port of Shenzhen, completely invisible but exerting some weird kind of noetic gravity that causes all those massive MAERSK boats full of trash for Wal-Mart to swerve around it, brushing rust off in sheets with their massive wakes. I had to take an inflatable dinghy out, and when I got there, there were half a dozen others to tie up on.

It took some work to get on the guest list.

----

//<Transcript begins.>//

//<Dr. Lillihammer is sitting on the bridge of a badly rusted freighter from approximately the mid-twentieth century. Two nondescript individuals are facing her across a table festooned with expensive audio equipment, much of it wet and rusting as well.>//

**Noopy:** Welcome back folks to //The Destructive Commons,// with Noopy and the Gerund!

**The Gerund:** Exciting!

//<A gust of wind causes the freighter's antenna to vibrate violently through the bridge's ceiling.>//

**Noopy:** It //is// exciting. With us tonight in the studio is the lovely miss Gilly Gladstone!

**Dr. Lillihammer:** 'sup?

**Noopy:** That's a deep and loaded question. Before we can answer, we'll need to conduct... The Ritual.

**The Gerund:** Frightening! 

**Noopy:** But essential. Link hands with us, Gilly, and we'll get started. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hell yeah. 

//<She and The Gerund take Noopy's hands. They dangle their free hands at their sides.>//

**Noopy and Dr. Lillihammer:** This circle is not broken but the centre of a spiral in a helix in a gyre spinning down and 'round and 'round. 

**The Gerund:** Spinning. 

**Noopy and Dr. Lillihammer:** Spinning 'round and 'round and down into a gyre in a helix in a spiral with the centre as our circle, never broken. 

//<Noopy releases their hands.>//

//<The Gerund makes a sound like a gong being struck.>//

**Noopy:** We're connected. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You love to hear it. 

**Noopy:** Hear and feel, //freres et seurs et cetera.// Gilly Gladstone, welcome to our noöhedron. Say hello to every single one of our listeners. Ever.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** 'sup?

**Noopy:** We'll give them a chance to respond to that outrageously philosophical prompt later on. First off, though, the ground rules. 

**The Gerund:** Freeing.

**Noopy:** Bit of a paradox there, isn't it? But The Gerund isn't wrong. Our rules make the fascinating conversations we have on //The Destructive Commons// possible. Gilly! 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** 'sup?

**Noopy:** We will give you no ground you haven't fought for. You'll have to argue every point you make. Anything you successfully argue will become permanently true to the members of the noöhedron, including you, until such time as a better argument is accepted by them. You don't have to play fair. If you play too fair, we can kick you out. If we kick you out, you can't ever come back on the show again, or even listen to it. No bores and spoilsports on this program. 

**The Gerund:** Stimulating. 

**Noopy:** Couldn't have said it better myself. Do you agree to these rules, Gilly?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hell yeah. 

**Noopy:** Hell yeah. Well, let's shoot the shit a little before the real shooting starts. 

//<The Gerund makes a reasonable approximation of the sound of a gunshot.>//

**Noopy:** How'd you get in here? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I would describe it as a scrum. 

**Noopy:** Good word. Scrum. Say it with me. Scrum. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Scrum. 

**The Gerund:** Scrumming.

**Noopy:** Scrum. Could mean anything. Practically gibberish. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You think you're going to get me with semantic satiation? I made one of the guys in your queue forget his own name.

//<The Gerund makes a series of sounds reminiscent of a drum rimshot.>//

**Noopy:** We got a tape of your "audition" out there, didn't we? Play the tape, The Gerund. 

//<The Gerund sets up an antique film projector, and begins playing badly-degraded footage of a makeshift waiting room in a vast cargo hold.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Won't it just be audio for the listeners? 

**Noopy:** If your ears are just ears, sure. 

//<Dr. Lillihammer watches the footage.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That was a woman calling me names. 

**Noopy:** What language was she speaking? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Daevite. They were very bad names. 

**Noopy:** And what was that? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Me making her take it back. 

**Noopy:** As in? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** As in retrace her every action today, up to and including getting back into bed. 

**Noopy:** Assuming she was able to safely cross the street backward. 

//<The Gerund makes sounds approximating a car horn and crash.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Shouldn't speak Daevite if you're not comfortable with sacrifice.

//<Noopy recoils from the footage.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That was a guy trying to sicc Euler's Chimaera on me.

**Noopy:** For the audience at home? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** It's a Frankenmeme. Typically three unrelated viral concepts glued together grammatically. 

**Noopy:** How do you handle that? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You kill a chimaera with a pegasus. You go above. Write a second layer that recontextualizes what's below. 

**Noopy:** He didn't take that well. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And that was me disproving God.

//<The Gerund makes a low sound in his throat, reminiscent of a very large beast growling hungrily.>//

**Noopy:** You're a bit of a terror, aren't you?

**The Gerund:** Troubling.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Troubling is a good word. I like to trouble.

**Noopy:** Well, then, trouble me this:  why can you breathe, Gilly?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Starting early, huh?

**Noopy:** Time is a tide, and you are my beach today. //Why can you breathe?//

**Lillihammer:** You just proved that I do, yourself. 

**Noopy:** Did I?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yes. And you proved that you breathe, too. You called me by my name, and you stated a pronoun for yourself. All individuals are organisms. All organisms respire. 

**The Gerund:** Cunning. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's not a gerund. 

**The Gerund:** Nitpicking.

**Noopy:** Maybe there's no oxygen in the room, though. Maybe The Gerund and I respirate anaerobically.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Are you making that argument? 

**Noopy:** No, I don't think I will. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Good thinking.

**Noopy:** Why are you here today, Gilly?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'm just a huge fan of what you guys are doing. This show is what radio is all about.

**The Gerund:** Concurring.

**Noopy:** God dammit, The Gerund. You just let her make an unchallenged statement!

**The Gerund:** Apologizing.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey, we're all friends here. People coming together across great distances, arguing. That's the spirit of radio.

**Noopy:** That, I can't argue with. What, am I gonna say we're preaching to the void? But you're going to have to start making some more contentious statements soon, Gilly, because like I said: this isn't a love-in. Scratch and scrabble.

//<The Gerund makes an unidentifiable sound.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Remember that time you caused a West Coast blackout by convincing all your listeners their power was out? 

**Noopy:** Good times. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Yeah. I want us to achieve something like that today.

**Noopy:** Well, you've got to build to it. Winning one argument makes the next one stronger, while being wrong hurts your future claims on truth. So, come on. Start pitching.

//<The Gerund makes a strangled sound of protest.>//

**Noopy:** Sorry, The Gerund. Didn't mean to steal your shtick.

**The Gerund:** Seething.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Okay. Try this old chestnut on for size: the medium is //not// the message.

**Noopy:** Going up against Marshall McLuhan, huh? Did you know he was a //schriftsteller?//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, he wasn't.

**Noopy:** Sure he was. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, he still is. He went to Corbenic when he died. //Ipso facto,// he's still active. 

//<The Gerund makes a reasonable approximation of the sound produced by a theremin.>//

**Noopy:** Got me there. As for your first argument, though, come on. Everything is filtered through its environment. Your words float in a solution which both carries and surrounds them. Every message is mediated by its medium. 

**The Gerund:** Convincing. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But they aren't one-to-one. They aren't the same thing, and the phrasing implies they are. The medium //is// the message. Is means equals.

**Noopy:** Does it? I think the philosopher Clinton would have something to say about that.

//<The Gerund neighs like a horse.>//

**Noopy:** "Is" just means the present tense. It implies that right now, these two things are linked. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No. It's the present tense singular form of "be." Meaning, again, equivalence. 

**Noopy:** The archaic definition is "belongs to." 

//<A ship passes very close by. The studio rocks back and forth. Neither Noopy nor The Gerund appear to notice.>//

**Noopy:** That fits with what McLuhan meant.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's not still in use. 

**Noopy:** It is. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** By who? 

**Noopy:** All of us, by having this conversation. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** That's circular logic. 

**Noopy:** No it's not. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** How? 

**Noopy:** It's spiral logic. It's spiralling though the noöhedron. Am I right, folks?

**The Gerund:** Clapping.

//<Dr. Lillihammer sits back.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Guess that's that, then. The medium is the message. 

**Noopy:** That's right. 

//<Noopy slaps himself on the forehead.>//

**Noopy:** Shit! You're too good at this. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** No, I'm not. I'm just good enough. 

**Noopy:** Good enough for what? Everyone who comes on this show has a specific aim in mind. What do you want us all to believe, Gilly?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'll tell you. 

**Noopy:** Okay. 

//<Noopy wrinkles his nose.>//

**Noopy:** Oh, come on. 

**The Gerund:** Embarrassing.

**Noopy:** We're gonna claw this one back. Not an argument, just a promise. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I'll grant you that one for free.

//<Noopy reaches for an antique rotary phone.>//

**Noopy:** Let's go to the lines. Maybe our listeners can give you a harder run for our money. 

//<He does not pick up the receiver, but waves his hand over it.>//

**Noopy:** Hello, Caller! If that is your real name. You're on //The Destructive Commons.//

//<A voice plays over the bridge speaker, distorted and crackling.>//

**Caller:** Hey. Hey, Gilly.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** 'sup?

**Caller:** My partner and I just detonated ten packets of plastique explosive on the repeaters sending your broadcast out. Nobody beyond the noöhedron is hearing you. 

**The Gerund:** Electrifying!

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hell yeah.

**Noopy:** Hell yeah indeed, Caller! That's exactly the kind of listener engagement we love here in the studio. Did it kill anyone? 

**Caller:** No. 

**Noopy:** Are you sure? 

**Caller:** Yes. 

**Noopy:** Are you //sure// you're sure? 

**Caller:** No. 

**Noopy:** You're at a serious deficit now, Caller. You've lost a lot of arguments all in a row. 

//<A loud report is heard on the speaker.>//

**Noopy:** What was that? 

**Caller:** It did kill someone. 

**Noopy:** Who? 

**Caller:** My partner. I just shot him. I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't needed to win this argument. 

//<The Gerund makes a sound like a siren. Not an ambulance, but a fire truck.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You could have just fired that gun at nothing.

**Caller:** I'm going to turn myself in to the police after I hang up. 

**Noopy:** Outside adjudication! A bold move. We'll see you in court, Caller!

**Caller:** Love the show!

//<Noopy mimes hanging up, and the speaker blows out.>//

**The Gerund:** Scintillating.

**Noopy:** What do you think about that, Gilly?

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I think you guys do a lot of damage.

**Noopy:** I also think this. That's not a point of contention.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Remember how you broke the word "iconic" so bad, it bled into the noösphere and now everyone thinks it just means "famous"?

**Noopy:** Yeah, that was a sponsored deal with the //schriftsteller.// They love controlling meaning.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You make deals with the enemy? 

**Noopy:** What could be more chaotic than that? 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** We love chaos here on the show, don't we?

//<Another ship passes by. Spray covers the bridge windows.>//

**Noopy:** Again, not a point in contention. 

**The Gerund:** Repeating. 

**Noopy:** Exactly. 

//<Dr. Lillihammer takes a shallow breath.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Deals are inherently not chaotic. Following the schema of a two-host talk show is not chaotic. Gerunds are not chaotic. Mediation by technology distorts a message. Ten shows ago you said that the moon is the Earth's only natural satellite, but twenty-three shows ago you proved the Ptolemaic System, so //everything// is the Earth's natural satellite. Nine shows ago you sneezed too many times. There won't be a show next week. I can hold my breath almost indefinitely. Eight shows ago your broadcast was interrupted by a generator failure for three seconds. The resumption was a new show, and it also wasn't. You have to address every argument I make about shows after eight shows ago twice, once for each numbering system. Seven shows ago all the gerunds were just adjectives. There is a lag between creation and perception. Six shows ago you repeated points from seventy-nine shows ago without realizing it. Time is linear. Discourse shapes reality. Five shows ago you talked about //Wheel of Fortune// and you said you'd made all your listeners more frugal with their vowels but you forgot to account for conspicuous consumption. This is a consensus reality. Radio doesn't exist. 

**The Gerund:** Galloping.

**Noopy:** It's an unacceptable technique in any polite debate. We love it here on the show, folks. That's probably the best example I've ever heard. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Can you remember all the arguments? 

**Noopy:** I'll allow almost all of them, because the only one that matters is the last one. Radio obviously exists.

//<The Gerund makes a sound resembling the buzzing of electricity.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You allowed that there is a gap between creation and perception. That means a radio transmission, which mediates between speech and that speech being heard, represents an interval of non-existence. 

**Noopy:** The information is still being carried on a wave. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** But if it isn't being heard, it doesn't exist. This is a consensus reality. You allowed that argument. 

**Noopy:** Our audience doesn't believe that something ceases to exist just because they can't hear it. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** They will if I convince them. Discourse shapes reality. 

//<Noopy frowns, but does not interrupt.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** You proved that the medium is the message. That caller says that the message isn't getting out to anyone outside of the noöhedron. A closed loop is not a message. Nobody outside of us and your audience knows that this show exists right now. Consensus reality therefore dictates it does not. 

**Noopy:** You haven't made the argument that the show doesn't exist. You've made the argument that radio doesn't exist.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And at the start of the show, I made the argument that this show was radio. Did I not? 

//<The Gerund whistles.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And did you not accept it? 

//<Noopy blinks, then reaches out. The Gerund takes his hand. They share a long look, then draw their fingers apart.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Radio doesn't exist, and the medium is the message. You have no message. You have no show.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**The Gerund:** Well, this sucks. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Hey, you tried. You didn't try well, but.

//<Noopy leans forward in his chair, eyes narrowed.>//

**Noopy:** //Gilly Gladstone// doesn't exist. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Sore loser. Good effort, but that's actually already true. You think I'd give you my real name? 

**Noopy:** Fine. //You// don't exist. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** I exist six times more than you do. 

//<Noopy stares at her, eyes slowly widening.>//

**Noopy:** You're... Lillian Lillihammer.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And I'm my own argument. 

//<Noopy smiles nastily.>//

**Noopy:** And you're still linked to the noöhedron. Radio is a fundamental property of the universe. If it isn't real, nothing is.

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Nothing is? 

**Noopy:** Nothing. 

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Huh. 

//<As one, both hosts slump forward on the table, scattering their useless equipment.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Guess I've got to give you that one. 

//<She stretches, and stands up.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Luckily, I’ve been in my own separate shared brainspace for over two decades. And I only linked one of my six selves to the noöhedron, anyway.

//<At the sound of a deep, bellowing horn, she turns back to the table. When she sees another cargo ship approaching, she smiles sheepishly.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** And it's one from a world where nothing exists already. Except, ironically, radio.

//<Silence on recording.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Anything to say about that, boys?

//<The Gerund snores.>//

**Dr. Lillihammer:** Stimulating.

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

As far as the wider world is concerned, the only effect of the above is that everyone who used to listen to Noopy and The Gerund doesn't listen to radio at all anymore.

In other words, no effect.

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<< **[[[SCP-8273]]]** | **[/on-guard-43-hub Words of Power and Poison]** | **[[[Unexpected Ramifications]]]** >>
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[[div class="footer-wikiwalk-nav"]]
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<< [[[SCP-8381]]] | SCP-8382 | [[[SCP-8383]]] >>
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[[<]]

This article references the contents of, and partially samples language from, the Congressional Record, Plenary Proceedings of the 19th Congress, First Regular Session, House of Representatives of the Philippines. Source: [https://docs.congress.hrep.online/legisdocs/congrec/19th/1st/19C1RS-VOL6REC80-20230531.pdf here].

Most images are, incorporate, or are based on renders created by the author using owned assets in DAZ Studio and/or models created in Blender and rendered in DAZ Studio with owned shaders/textures. Said renders and their derivatives may be, and here are, released under a Creative Commons license without crediting individual assets. Assets not included in the preceding are credited as per their individual requirements. Characters created using photographic references are not intended to be likenesses.

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> **Filename:** 8382_Main.jpg/Lillihammer_Preview.png
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Blue Lagoon Night
> **Author:** Greg Zaal
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/blue_lagoon_night Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Alis.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Snowy Field
> **Author:** Andreas Mischok
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/snowy_field Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Avys.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Shanghai Bund
> **Author:** Greg Zaal
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/shanghai_bund Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Boswell.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Billiard Hall
> **Author:** Greg Zaal and Jarod Guest
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/billiard_hall Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Bradbury.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

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> **Filename:** Brury.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** UK Visa Mugshot
> **Author:** pandrew.hk
> **License:** CC BY 2.0
> **Source:** [https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/d0357cce-c666-463a-892c-2dc7756e834e flickr]

> **Name:** Provence Studio
> **Author:** Sergej Majboroda
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/provence_studio Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Buck.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Abandoned Bakery
> **Author:** Sergej Majboroda
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/abandoned_bakery Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Cimarosa.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Hospital Room 2
> **Author:** Dimitrios Savva and Jarod Guest
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/hospital_room_2 Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** deicidium-icon.svg
> **Author:** [[*user GreenGolem]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

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> **Filename:** Hsieh.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Unfinished Office Night
> **Author:** Sergej Majboroda
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/unfinished_office_night Poly Haven]

> **Name:** Intersex flag, using colors that are non-derivative of endosex-associated colours pink and blue. The circle symbolises wholeness.
> **Author:** Morgan Carpenter, SVG file simplification by AnonMoos
> **License:** Public Domain
> **Source:** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_flag#/media/File:Intersex_Pride_Flag.svg Wikimedia Commons]

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> **Filename:** Krzysztof.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Unfinished Office Night
> **Author:** Sergej Majboroda
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/unfinished_office_night Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Lillihammer_Aura.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

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> **Filename:** Lillihammer_Staff.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Combination Room
> **Author:** Sergej Majboroda
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/combination_room Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Mallet.png
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]] and [[*user Osobist]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0
> **Source:** Imagery created for "Внутренние службы" on http://scp-ru.wikidot.com, by Osobist, released CC BY-SA 3.0: http://scp-ru.wikidot.com/list-of-foundation-s-internal-departments.

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> **Filename:** Oberoi.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Mirrored Hall
> **Author:** Grzegorz Wronkowski
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/mirrored_hall Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** SAFEGUARDS_ENGAGED.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Rostock-Laage Airport
> **Author:** Greg Zaal
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/rostock_laage_airport Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Sinclair.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** alstroemeria
> **Author:** Anathea Utley, and alterations by ihp from [[[SCP-8787]]]
> **License:** CC BY 2.0
> **Source:** https://www.flickr.com/photos/anathea/3547470714//

> **Name:** Hospital Room 2
> **Author:** Dimitrios Savva and Jarod Guest
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/hospital_room_2 Poly Haven]

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> **Filename:** Zikry.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Name:** Old Hall
> **Author:** Sergej Majboroda
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/old_hall Poly Haven]

----

> **Filename:** Zwist.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user HarryBlank]]
> **License:** CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources:

> **Title:** Image
> **Author:** Thomas Leuthard
> **License:** CC BY 2.0
> **Source:** [https://www.flickr.com/photos/41346951@N05/12544389645 flickr]

> **Name:** Old Hall
> **Author:** Greg Zaal
> **License:** CC0
> **Source:** [https://polyhaven.com/a/sunny_vondelpark Poly Haven]

[[/<]]
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SCP-8382

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