The girl led me around for a few minutes. I wasn’t sure if this was a prison, a hospital, or even a research facility, but whatever it was, the building seemed massive. It was impossible to count all of the doors dispersed across the plain, nearly identical corridors. They broke off into a seemingly infinite number of branches. Many of the doors had the letters “SCP” written on them. I had absolutely no idea what that meant.
After walking to the point my feet were starting to grow a bit sore, the Girl in the Photos came to a stop. There was a randomly placed door in the corridor with a device that resembled an interphone built into the wall next to it. Standing on tiptoe, the Girl in the Photos held something like a cardkey up to the device. It must have served as some form of verification, for the door slid open with an electric buzz.
“Come in,” she said, again in English simple enough for me to understand. She curled her fingers toward the palm of her extended hand in a beckoning gesture.
With her urging me along, I entered the room a few steps behind her. I could only assume she did something, because the lights popped right on. As a result, I was able to get a full view of the room.
From the looks of it, this was a cafeteria of sorts. The place was saturated with the smell of food. Multiple sets of tables and chairs claimed a space roughly the size of a high school classroom. A wall-mounted exhaust fan spun round and round. Someone apparently forgot to clean up after himself, leaving a plate, fork, and coffee cup abandoned on one of the tables.
Seeing as the room was desolate aside from the two of us, it was safe to assume this wasn’t mealtime. The girl trudged over to the nearest chair, pulled it out, and plunked right down. She motioned me over with her eyes, so I took a seat directly across from her.
The girl seemed antsy, swinging her legs back and forth as she studied me. “███,” she said, but I couldn’t understand her for the life of me. Man, if I knew this was going to happen, I would have taken my English classes more seriously.
She must have found our inability to communicate just as aggravating, because she scrunched the bridge of her nose in annoyance as she repeated the beckoning motion, flicking her fingers toward herself. I got the feeling she was saying, “Lean toward me,” so I did just that.
The way I leaned in could easily be confused with the gesture for requesting a kiss, so I was a bit nervous. But rather than indulge in any amorous pursuits, the girl pulled out a collar of sorts from somewhere and attached it to my neck! Taken by surprise, I was like a deer caught in headlights.
The ring hung loosely around my neck. It seemed like a cheap, rubber collar. I was flabbergasted, unable to discern what would compel her to do such a thing. But I was in for an even greater shock mere moments later.
“Are you able to understand me now? Do you comprehend what I am saying? A response would be most appreciated!” Although somewhat stilted, she was speaking in Japanese. Actually, it sounded like she was still talking in English, which was converted to Japanese for me to understand without any time lag, I think… Bluntly put, it was really weird, and hard to describe. Had putting on this strange collar made me suddenly proficient in English? It was a bizarre—almost magical—experience.
“Huh? Was it no good after all? I didn’t want to use The Clockworks if I could avoid it, since the results are so unpredictable, but none of our Japanese-speaking personnel are present and we don’t have any translation devices on hand.” The Girl in the Photos kept going on about stuff that went over my head.
So I cut in, responding to her in Japanese. Although it came out faltering, I tried to tell her not to worry; that for some odd reason, I could understand the meaning of the words coming from her mouth.
She broke into a broad smile and gave an overexaggerated sigh of relief. “Thank goodness! It would be inconvenient if we couldn’t ascertain mutual understanding. It makes anyone—even a humanoid SCP object—substantially easier to deal with if you can hold a conversation,” she explained, throwing in a few terms I didn’t recognize.
Once finished, the girl pulled out of her chair. She went to the other side of the counter along the wall and began making a ruckus, shuffling things around.
“Do you like coffee? I have to load mine with gobs of sugar and milk. Oh, are you hungry? At the very least, I could warm up a frozen dinner for you,” she offered, holding a siphon in one hand.
Not thinking, I instinctively told her that I was good.
“It is hard to pick up little nuances with this. There is no need to hold back, inhabitant of Japan,” she said. Not exactly what you’d call a perfect translation. She took her time preparing the coffee.
As if an afterthought, a way to kill time, she finally got around to sharing her name. “I guess we should start with introductions. I am Iris Thompson, although I am also called SCP-105. If possible, please just call me Iris.”
The Girl in the Photos offered a moment’s silence to indicate it was my turn now. I hastily told her who I was.
“███? You’re called ███ , right? In Japan, is that a common name? It sounds so mysterious…! Sorry, but you are Japanese, aren’t you? It certainly sounds like that’s what you’re speaking, anyway.”
I acknowledged that she was right. And then I proceeded to tell her briefly about myself.
“Uh-huh, I see. So you attend ███ Senior High School in ██████ Prefecture, Japan. One moment, please. I want to jot this down… Hmmm, due to hearing ‘translations’ of what you said, I’m not sure I heard the names correctly. If I could locate them, I might be able to discern where you came from.”
Apparently, the pot of coffee came out a success, because Iris came back with a cup in each hand. She walked over carefully, trying not spill any. “Here you go.” She handed me a cup, holding onto her own as she hunkered back down in her chair.
“By the way, this place is located in ███ , ███ in the United States of America—not that you’d know where that is. It isn’t marked on the map, after all. This is a covert facility working under the cover story that it belongs to the government. In fact,” Iris said, “This is a stock-standard research facility for the SCP Foundation.”
It seemed like she was observing my reactions as she spoke. She probably thought she was stealthily analyzing me, but her inexperience was showing through. It was so obvious what she was doing, it was actually somewhat cute. Our eyes happened to lock, and she quickly turned away.
“Speaking of which,” Iris wondered, “Have you ever heard of the SCP Foundation?”
I’d been wondering about that sequence of three alphabet letters ever since I first saw them earlier. They seemed like initials for something, but I was unfortunately ignorant as to what.
“Oh… So you don’t know? Really? Well, if push comes to shove,” she whispered to herself, “We can always administer amnestics and implant false memories.” What a blood-curdling notion. “I suppose there’s no harm in going over it.”
She shifted to face me head on. “Okay, so to keep this brief, I’ll just give you a quick outline…about the SCP Foundation.”