Wilford Warfstache (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cottoncandypink) wrote2016-08-24 11:44 pm
cottoncandypink) wrote2016-08-24 11:44 pm
Entry tags:
SCP-025
Weird isn't so much of a descriptor, as it is just a constant state of being for most people. "Oh no, my walls are bleeding. Time to move again." Or "Gee, there sure are a lot of weird noises that come from that hospital at night." Or "There's another monster in the kids' closet. I should probably call somebody about that."
People have a fairly high tolerance for weird, as it goes. That sort of weird is normal.
What's weird is that Google had dick-all to say about this Milliways thing. The first three results were the typical auto-populated garbage ads, promising cheap prices on Milliways at various auction sites. A few social network pages, all for teenagers trying to seem quirky. A bar in London, which definitely wasn't what Wilford is looking for. Every search term and combination he could think of, and the results were all the same. A heap of absolutely nothing.
He was actually glad when Billy barged into the room, even if he wasn't about to let on.
"Don't you ever knock?" Wilford demanded, not looking up.
"No," Billy said. He walked over, dropping a folder onto Wilford's keyboard. "Kevin thought you might like this."
Without looking at it, Wilford pushed it aside. He was busy doing Other Things at the moment. He'd look at it later.
"What do you know about this Milliways place?" Wilford asked.
"That a new club in town? Good, you need to get laid." Billy leaned over to see the screen on Wilford's laptop, with its same six lonely search results it had been pulling up for the last hour.
"No, it's some kind of glitch," Wilford told him, sneering. He tried searching 'Milliways glitch' and got no results at all.
Billy shifted his dubious gaze between Wilford and Google. "Whose stash have you been getting into this time?" he asked. "And can I have some?"
"Get the fuck out of here!" Wilford snapped, aiming to slug Billy in the arm.
Anticipating exactly that reaction, Billy dodged out of the way, already headed toward the door.
––
Every spare chance he got, Wilford busied himself with trying to find more information on the strange place that kept popping up whenever he opened doors. He checked libraries, news archives; even asked random people to see what they knew about it. But either this place, whatever it was, was the best-kept secret in the world, or nobody else had come across it yet. Wilford wasn't sure which one he liked less.
Without realising it, he'd started keeping notes. And not even very good notes; but he wrote down everything he'd managed to pick up anyway. Most of it was junk – random information he'd picked up about other dimensions or worlds or whatever people had mentioned. Louisiana was under water again, in another reality. Pan-handling hippies were apparently older than hippies themselves. And nobody had saves.
That was the worst of it. Wilford had stopped going down that path pretty damn quickly when he realised he was alone in that aspect. And his lack of saves once he crossed through the door was even more alarming. If he could find out more about that, it could fill an entire episode. But ultimately, Wilford had next to nothing to go on.
Next to nothing, but not quite nothing.
What he did have were three dates to work with: 787, which was so irrelevant, he might as well not have even had it, 2012, and 2016. But the mis-matched nature of the second and third dates brought 787 right back into the relevant camp again. Wilford didn't even try to figure out what a time-travelling hippie and an IT consultant had in common, because the answer was absolutely nothing. But 2016; that one stuck out. That was a year in the future, and apparently, "local" time. But local to what?
And then, Wilford remembered. Jim had given him the dates, but they weren't the key. Not really, anyway. But he knew he had seen this sort of thing before, years ago when his name was just starting to mean something. It was his first tango with the SCP Foundation, when he had got his hands on some leaked reports. The story had gone absolutely nowhere, but he still remembered the detail that had him curious about the Foundation in the first place. The wardrobe. At the time, it was the mysterious deaths and maimings that had caught his eye. He'd forgotten about everything else about the story, until he stared at the written dates for so long his eyes had started to go crossed.
The wardrobe opened to different decades every time it was opened.
It seemed like Wilford wasn't as done with the Foundation as he had thought. But even if they were kind of crap at the whole 'containment' part, they were good at burying information where the public couldn't get to it. And if there was any database in the world that would have what Wilford was looking for, it would be the Foundation. His skills might not have been anywhere near as refined to go on this data-mining expedition, but this wasn't the first time he'd needed to find information that wasn't there.
People have a fairly high tolerance for weird, as it goes. That sort of weird is normal.
What's weird is that Google had dick-all to say about this Milliways thing. The first three results were the typical auto-populated garbage ads, promising cheap prices on Milliways at various auction sites. A few social network pages, all for teenagers trying to seem quirky. A bar in London, which definitely wasn't what Wilford is looking for. Every search term and combination he could think of, and the results were all the same. A heap of absolutely nothing.
He was actually glad when Billy barged into the room, even if he wasn't about to let on.
"Don't you ever knock?" Wilford demanded, not looking up.
"No," Billy said. He walked over, dropping a folder onto Wilford's keyboard. "Kevin thought you might like this."
Without looking at it, Wilford pushed it aside. He was busy doing Other Things at the moment. He'd look at it later.
"What do you know about this Milliways place?" Wilford asked.
"That a new club in town? Good, you need to get laid." Billy leaned over to see the screen on Wilford's laptop, with its same six lonely search results it had been pulling up for the last hour.
"No, it's some kind of glitch," Wilford told him, sneering. He tried searching 'Milliways glitch' and got no results at all.
Billy shifted his dubious gaze between Wilford and Google. "Whose stash have you been getting into this time?" he asked. "And can I have some?"
"Get the fuck out of here!" Wilford snapped, aiming to slug Billy in the arm.
Anticipating exactly that reaction, Billy dodged out of the way, already headed toward the door.
––
Every spare chance he got, Wilford busied himself with trying to find more information on the strange place that kept popping up whenever he opened doors. He checked libraries, news archives; even asked random people to see what they knew about it. But either this place, whatever it was, was the best-kept secret in the world, or nobody else had come across it yet. Wilford wasn't sure which one he liked less.
Without realising it, he'd started keeping notes. And not even very good notes; but he wrote down everything he'd managed to pick up anyway. Most of it was junk – random information he'd picked up about other dimensions or worlds or whatever people had mentioned. Louisiana was under water again, in another reality. Pan-handling hippies were apparently older than hippies themselves. And nobody had saves.
That was the worst of it. Wilford had stopped going down that path pretty damn quickly when he realised he was alone in that aspect. And his lack of saves once he crossed through the door was even more alarming. If he could find out more about that, it could fill an entire episode. But ultimately, Wilford had next to nothing to go on.
Next to nothing, but not quite nothing.
What he did have were three dates to work with: 787, which was so irrelevant, he might as well not have even had it, 2012, and 2016. But the mis-matched nature of the second and third dates brought 787 right back into the relevant camp again. Wilford didn't even try to figure out what a time-travelling hippie and an IT consultant had in common, because the answer was absolutely nothing. But 2016; that one stuck out. That was a year in the future, and apparently, "local" time. But local to what?
And then, Wilford remembered. Jim had given him the dates, but they weren't the key. Not really, anyway. But he knew he had seen this sort of thing before, years ago when his name was just starting to mean something. It was his first tango with the SCP Foundation, when he had got his hands on some leaked reports. The story had gone absolutely nowhere, but he still remembered the detail that had him curious about the Foundation in the first place. The wardrobe. At the time, it was the mysterious deaths and maimings that had caught his eye. He'd forgotten about everything else about the story, until he stared at the written dates for so long his eyes had started to go crossed.
The wardrobe opened to different decades every time it was opened.
It seemed like Wilford wasn't as done with the Foundation as he had thought. But even if they were kind of crap at the whole 'containment' part, they were good at burying information where the public couldn't get to it. And if there was any database in the world that would have what Wilford was looking for, it would be the Foundation. His skills might not have been anywhere near as refined to go on this data-mining expedition, but this wasn't the first time he'd needed to find information that wasn't there.