“This is hard to explain, but you are still there. You’re still going about life like normal in the city where you lived in Japan, ███. You seemed to be enjoying an overall happy youth in your own right as you bounced between home and school day after day.” Dr. Bright looked me square in the eye as they continued spouting nonsense. “I was there—in the city where you lived—until just this morning. I flew over and met ‘you’ myself. I made it seem like a chance encounter and spoke with you, if only briefly. I simply couldn’t believe someone else’s findings, so I went all the way to Japan to check a few things personally.”
Oh, so that was why Dr. Bright was gone for so long. They were actually conducting a legit investigation. Going by that stack of souvenirs, they made several stops across the world along the way. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it on the side while tackling one of their bazillion other projects.
“Not only do I interact with you personally, I’ve possessed a large, diverse pool of people. I have more life experience than anyone else out there. I believe I have a good eye at recognizing people, believe it or not,” Dr. Bright stated, forthright and solemn. “From what I saw, the ███ in that city in Japan was the same person as ███ here before me. Just to make sure, I pretended to trip in order to touch the one I saw in Japan and get a skin sample. I’ve run DNA tests, but they give the exact same results.”
“Huh? Wh-what does that mean?” Iris asked. She looked completely bewildered, like it didn’t make any sense to her. “Is an identical impostor of ███ stealthily taking ███’s place to steal his identity and become him?”
“While that is a possibility, I think it’s safe to reject that hypothesis. No science in the world could create a clone that is completely identical. Even if it was possible, there is no point. Who would benefit from stealing the identity of a normal Japanese senior high boy?” Dr. Bright pointed out.
Hmph! I felt like they were belittling me, but in reality, it was just as Dr. Bright said. Of course, the life I considered normal would probably look like Heaven on Earth in the eyes of someone like a war orphan… Nevertheless, the number of people leading far more luxurious lives than I rivaled the number of stars in the sky. It’d still leave the question: Why would someone choose to steal my identity?
“This has nothing to do with clones or impostors. I analyzed his psyche and movement pattern, and not even the greatest of actors could recreate ███ to such perfection,” Dr. Bright said, presenting their argument like a master detective. “It’s hypothetically possible to make a body identical to yours with the aid of any number of SCP objects, but it wouldn’t have your mind. At the very least, people would notice minor discrepancies. But the boy I spoke with when I flew over to Japan was you through and through, ███.”
“So, um, seriously what does that mean? You said you weren’t going to be enigmatic, so stop putting off the conclusion like it’s so profound, Dr. Bright!” Iris snapped harshly at the end, growing impatient.
With a wry smile, Dr. Bright nodded and said, “In short, the ███ here before us is a guest visiting from a parallel world. If you look at it that way, all of the dots connect, so I’d like to favor that hypothesis.”
A parallel world… I’ve heard those words several times throughout my time participating in Dr. Bright’s experiments here at this SCP Foundation research site. There wasn’t just one world, but countless worlds simultaneously existing at once… Most were overall extremely similar, but various circumstances could bring about innumerable discrepancies, small and large.
The parallel worlds were usually independent of each other, not interacting at all. But there were instances where a variety of things collided together to connect worlds…maybe? At least, that was how I remembered Iris explained it to me when I asked her about the unfamiliar words.
Those words came up when we discussed my unique ability to enter photos as well. It wasn’t as though I was going to the point in time the photo was taken. In other words, I wasn’t traveling to the past, but to a parallel world of the past, or something like that.
Since I was going to parallel worlds, nothing I did in the photos had any effect on our current world. So I couldn’t go back and prevent a horrible tragedy from occurring.
“Uh-huh. ███, your abilities also support this hypothesis. You possess the ability to enter parallel worlds though photos,” Dr. Bright aptly added, as if they were reading my mind. “Upon figuring that out, the rest was easy. The world you’re originally from isn’t the one we’re currently on. From our perspective, it’s a parallel world inside a photo.”
“Oh, I get it… That’s why you said ███ isn’t a resident of our world, isn’t it?” Iris said. Quicker on the uptake than me, she sounded convinced, nodding.
A moment later, it sort of sunk in. This was a parallel world and there was another version of me who existed here. That other me was still carrying out a normal life typical of a senior high school boy—the normal life I resigned myself to before I wound up in this world.
And that would explain the message in A Gift from Dad. It was meant for the me of this world, not the me here thinking about all of this stuff. Here in this world, I was probably attending school every day like usual. That was why my parents offered those words of praise. To be fair, the bowl had no way of knowing I was a different person visiting from another world…
In order to strengthen their hypothesis, Dr. Bright went out of their way to have me eat from A Gift from Dad. Plus, it comforted us while we were feeling down, effectively killing two birds with one stone. Though in reality, there was still a good chance they were merely toying with us. Dr. Bright was that type of person.