SCP-914 was also known as The Clockworks. Ignorant of the nature of this SCP object, Iris offered me a brief explanation. According to her, The Clockworks was a device capable of altering or “refining” the state of an object.
I was struggling to imagine what exactly she meant by that, so we received permission from Dr. Selkie to conduct a simple test. That might seem awfully carefree with this Dr. Goldman guy missing (?) at the moment, but Dr. Selkie flew into a fit of tears after explaining what transpired. We needed to give her time to calm down anyway.
“Watch this, ███,” Iris said as she pulled out a ballpoint pen from somewhere and approached The Clockworks with it in hand.
“From our perspective, the booth to the right is the ‘Intake’ booth and the one to the left is the ‘Output’ booth. As you can see, both are connected to the main body of The Clockworks,” Iris explained.
Intake? Output? I wondered what that meant, quietly listening to Iris’s explanation. She gave me a satisfied smirk before continuing. “When using The Clockworks, first an object of some kind is put into the Intake booth. I’m going to use this pen for our test.”
Iris casually approached the Intake booth, opened the door located in front, and somewhat cautiously tossed the pen inside. Then she simply shut the door. Once it was closed, a small bell suddenly went off.
The booth walls appeared to be made of thick metal, so we couldn’t peer in from the outside to see what was going on.
“Okay, so as you can see, I’ve placed the ballpoint pen inside. I’ve already had you inspect the pen to see for yourself, but that was your typical, cheap disposable pen that you could get anywhere,” she said.
This was starting to feel like a magic trick. As if reading my mind, or perhaps out of sheer coincidence, Iris channeled the style of a stage magician. “I’ve got nothing up my sleeve! ♪”
With a few steps, the two of us moved in front of the Output booth.
“Now we’ll have to wait a bit. The process generally takes between five to ten minutes, during which time you must never, ever open the doors,” she warned.
Eagerly waiting for it to finish, Iris turned back to face me and added, “The Clockworks uses this time to refine the object placed in the Intake booth. How it works is a mystery still being researched, but SCP-914’s operators can arbitrarily manipulate what degree the object is refined.”
Uh… What was that supposed to mean…? Refined? I hated how slow I was on the uptake, but Iris didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she looked at me as if I were the cutest little thing. I knew she was older than me, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling she was going overboard treating me like a kid… Despite feeling mildly offended, I was a good boy and listened to her explanation.
“There is a control panel here referred to as the ‘Selection Panel,’” Iris said as she anxiously took another few steps, bringing her to the middle of the two booths in front of the main body. There was a panel there that definitely fit the bill.
A large knob was attached to it, holding a metallic sheen, as if made from copper. Turning the knob moved a small, adjoining arrow on top. Since it was currently in operation, Iris only pointed at the Selection Panel with her finger rather than outright touching it. “Can you see this? It says, ‘Rough,’ ‘Coarse,’ ‘1:1,’ ‘Fine,’ and ‘Very Fine.’ Do you know what they mean?”
Well, after countless rounds of studying English (as a cover for goofing off) with The Coffee Machine, my English word bank was a bit richer… But the translation collar wrapped around my neck couldn’t help me figure out written words, and there was one I didn’t instantly recognize. What did “Coarse” mean?
“Well, you should be able to get the overall gist if you think of ‘Rough’ as the worst setting and ‘Very Fine’ as the best… That’s all it means. By turning this knob to point the arrow at the various settings, you can increase or decrease the output quality,” Iris explained.
Huh. Yeah, that made enough sense. So SCP-914 here was a device that modified stuff, and this Selection Panel controlled the output refinement quality… With only five options, we were given a really broad range from “very bad” to “very good” to choose from.
The arrow was currently pointing at “Fine” (Come to think of it, I thought Iris had fiddled some with The Clockworks before activating it), so we should get something fairly decent. As such thoughts were running through my head, the bell sounded again, and Iris headed back toward the Output booth.
Bursting with excitement, she opened the booth door and pulled something out. A cylindrical, shining silver object came out of the Output booth.
“Hmmm. It would appear the cheap disposable pen was refined into a relatively valuable silver ballpoint pen. Go ahead and hold it. Isn’t it nice and heavy? That’s real silver,” Iris said, offering the ballpoint pen, though it looked more like a fountain pen to me. Without thinking, I accepted it.
Sure enough, there was weight to it. I looked at it up close, but aside from the fact it was somewhat unusual to see a silver ballpoint pen, it seemed perfectly normal. I bet it would write just fine if it had ink.