Doctor jack bright (part 6)
15
The Present
Secure instant message log between Dr. Charles Gears, North Eastern Region Research Director, and Dr. Jack Bright, multi-site Director: Beginning Date: 12/24/16
Director Bright | 20:11
Gears
Are you up
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 20:35
Addressing a minor disturbance in the lab, please stand by.
Director Bright | 20:45
Damn it
My plane leaves in 15 min
We'll talk when I get to Omaha
Director Bright | 01:23
Fuck
Okay well
I made it but can't catch my connecting
everythings grounded
snowstorm
nothing like site 19 snowstorms but enough to keep everyone down
Are you there
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:30
Yes.
Holding tank malfunction. Unfortunate damage
Director Bright | 01:30
What do you mean by unfortunate damage
Youre worrying me here
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:30
Major damage. I'll repair it today.
Director Bright | 01:31
Anything out?
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:31
Yes. Momentarily.
Unfortunate severity
Director Bright | 01:31
Gears
What do you mean by unfortunate severity
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:31
Moderately severe
Director Bright | 01:32
Shit
Well
I was hoping to be back next week and if I can catch another flight out tomorrow I might be able to make it
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:33
I would not be optimistic. It's a snowstorm here as well.
Typical Siberian snowstorm, but the cold is also unusually severe
If you were able to fly to London and then into Moscow as planned you wouldn't be able to fly to the site until it warms slightly
We've been having mechanical failures. Nothing with the chambers, but the outer doors are suffering some problems. The latest supply shipment was a close call
Director Bright | 01:35
Damn I was only gone for two months and the place is falling apart
Stop typing it was a joke
Still I was hoping to get back
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:37
You aren't required back for another two weeks
I was expecting you to spend more time at 88, personally
Is there something you need to attend to?
Director Bright | 01:37
Yeah well
Look
On a personal note I'm you know
winding down into an episode again
You know how it is
I'd rather be in a psych ward I know if I have to be out of commission for a little bit
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:38
I see.
Director Bright | 01:38
Yeah sorry
That was weirdly personal
Shit hit the fan at site 27 and I'm fucking exhausted like holy shit you wouldn't believe
Like fuck
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:39
I see no problem with you seeking comfortable aid if you are feeling unwell, Jack.
Where are you? Omaha?
Director Bright | 01:39
Nebraska yeah
Only like
An ocean away
I could try flying up through Canada and take the Alaska route but
If you guys are snowed in than the Barrow port won't be much better
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:40
A reasonable assumption
Director Bright | 01:41
Hopefully it won't be that bad and I'll just need a few days
A few days rest and I can let it blow over
It's not as bad as it used to be but sometimes I miss my meds
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:41
Again, reasonable.
Nebraska
Director Bright | 01:42
Charlie i fucking swear to god dont do it
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:42
Don't you have family there?
Director Bright | 01:43
Fuck you did it
Shit
Yeah
I do
I was avoiding that option
But my brother still lives here
He owns our old house and a ranch
Hometown is like an hour away
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:44
Could you stay there?
Until you can fly.
To be perfectly honest, Jack, I would be more comfortable knowing you were staying in a Foundation connected area
I'm wary of hotels in your situation, considering the amulet and your potential to self terminate in this state of mental health
Director Bright | 01:46
Omg could you imagine
Me
Showing up at his ranch
At 3 am
on christmas
Youre a funny guy Charlie
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:46
You seem hesitant.
Director Bright | 01:47
Okay so like how do I put this
Mikell is one of /those/ people when it comes to mental health
I dont know if hes still like that but he was when we were younger
Maybe I could just not tell him but if something happens
You know how I get Charlie
And plus quite honestly I havent been home since I left when I was like
Fuck
18 I think
it was kinda funny actually like looking back. How I left I mean
if we were adults then I think we could have handled it better but we were both young and kind of in rough patches
tl;dr: there was a lot of frustration and depression and testosterone and also some other stuff that happened
but familys family I guess
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:50
You aren't presenting any evidence not to.
How far away is it?
Director Bright | 01:50
Like an hour out from here I think
I'll take a taxi
Shit this should be fun
I only ever see him at family stuff really
Hey shit that reminds me
How's TJ?
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:51
Alright.
I haven't heard anything to indicate to me otherwise, but there haven't been any tests this winter, so I would not know. That would be more Agatha's realm.
Director Bright | 01:52
Yeah I know but shes asleep like all the other normal people on site so I can't annoy her
Look I'm gonna loose connection when I leave the airport here in a few minutes
Thanks for helping
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:53
Yes.
Director Bright | 01:53
You don't need to repair that holding tank today if you don't want to
As long as the thing is moved to one thats okay and its not gonna break a second one
Its christmas like what the hell
Take it easy
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:54
I appreciate the sentiment, but I am not one for festivities.
Although I encourage you not to strain yourself today either, especially considering your health.
Director Bright | 01:54
Yeah
Thanks
Hey keep me updated on the mechanical problems
And you know
Everything else
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:54
As always.
Director Bright | 01:55
Yeah, as always.
Merry Christmas Charlie
Dr.Gears (Шестерни) | 01:55
Ditto, Jack.
Come home soon.
16
When Mikell had his first heart attack two days after the Christmas of 2016, it was Jack- dressed in boxers, unshaven and stumbling through a strange but familiar numb stupor- that found him collapsed on the floor of his office in a fetal position. And it was Jack, too, who started acting like himself again after a couple days of sitting on his laptop in his hospital room, bickering and snarking at him as he wished. Mikell liked it. It felt familiar.
O5-4 came to visit him a short while after he had his stent put in, and Jack, being a man with few barriers, bantered and bickered with her, too, as Mikell slipped in and out of a painkiller-laced sleep. It was a while before he realized, fully, that he had guards- people in nurse costumes with guns in their pant legs, people standing outside in black. Someone important is here. Mikell didn't feel important, but then again he never did- the elusiveness of his Overseer position and the protection it required was never something he quite got used to. Jack explained his snow bound situation to them in casual conversation over coffee-stained classified paperwork and his laptop with the secure connection, and Mikell himself fell asleep again (he doesn't remember ever sleeping this much in his life, and it bothers him greatly). Jack types and occasionally sends over a pointed comment about him being old and having to eat bran muffins, and Mikell sleeps and slurs back a couple swear words to let him know he's not fucking nursing home age yet, fuck off.
It feels comfortable. His brother is lively and snarky and shaven again and Mikell is pleased to note that he wears short sleeves- it wasn't that bad of an episode, not like the ones in the past that had him out for weeks and left him listless and barley functioning. Jack does not kill this body and does not hurt it. He recovers well, because he's a damn strong person as much as he is a damn asshole. It'll leave him numb, it'll leave him angry. He'll fall behind on his paperwork and live in isolation for half a week. He'll sleep and starve himself and feel nothing, but goddamn, he's no pussy when it comes to stalled neurotransmitters. He's proud of his brother; Brights don't go down without a fight.
It's probably one of the better Christmases Mikell's had since his divorce.
But it's funny how delicate these things are.
The thing about the business is always the delicacy of it. It takes so long, so, so long to build up this narrative, to write this story. It takes pages and pages to make a site. Logs, readings, paperwork. Hundreds of people. Daily communication. Cameras and training simulators. Safety procedures and breach doors. Guns and guns and guns of all different kinds. Shift after shift of guards. Fences on fences on fences, titanium feet thick. Dormitories. People. It doesn't matter when it goes to shit. It never does.
On New Years of 2016, Jack and Mikell do not watch the ball drop. They do not partake in celebrations. Jack is pale and trying to process, ten of his little devices showing ten different readings from one site in Siberia are screaming off the hook. They do not speak to each other. There is no need to speak; they have just transitioned from family business to industry business.
It happens so fast. There's nothing to do. You can call and type and try to get a hold of people on the inside to know what's happening, but despite all of Jack's lockdown orders and overrides and the people that Mikell knows that he's picked for this situation, it all comes down to brute force, like a broken dam. It's a painful way to loose everything. Little mistakes snowball into bigger ones. When you're on the outside, and a breach of that caliber happens, there really isn't much to do but watch the casualty count rise and the electricity go out.
And then there really is nothing. Nothing at all.
At 3am on January 1st, 2017, Jack sits down and stares at the floor between his feet. He does not cry, but he trembles. Mikell knows his brother is the Director of three sites, but 19 is the largest, the one that he put his blood, sweat, and tears into, the one he spent the most time at, the one he tried to make sure was pristine and functioning on all calibers, always. During the winter season, when the population of the Site is reduced to a "Skeleton Crew" of 1,400 people instead of the usual 4,000 plus those passing through, there's about one item in containment per person.
It's funny how things fall apart like that.
Jack is not afraid for himself, although he should be. Because it's funny how things fall apart like that, see, breaches never work out as they should. Not breaches like this, not Tempest Nights. Not the ones where the walls themselves smash open and leave the Siberian winter to form drifts over abandoned lab equipment and cold bodies. Not the ones where lone lightposts throw long shadows over people whispering and hacking off clammy limbs for bait. Not the ones where people spend months isolated 23 floors down because the rescue teams just can't clear the rubble that fast.
Never like the safety videos. Never like procedure. All the words and time and effort, all the carefully planned and submitted containment logs and carefully crafted chambers. It doesn't matter when the levee breaks. Maybe it never mattered at all.
So six months and several disciplinary hearings later, Mikell Bright watches the containment teams at Site-17 use long, metal tongs to grasp his brother's life in their hands. It slides off easily, over his surrogate's limp neck on a medical examining table. They lift his head with a gloved hand to slide the chain over. They place it in a foam case labeled with 4 different locks and 3 different identification tags- standard procedure- and put it on a plane to a small safe-class site in Thailand, where the case itself slides perfectly into a dark little locker with its number stamped on it. It locks behind him.
Mikell does not cry, but he trembles.
For the first time in Foundation history, there were no survivors. Not a single one of 1,400 people lived. Some lived to board a helicopter to another site, once the rescue teams could access the carcass of 19, and some even lived to see a Foundation hospital and give an interview of what it was like to chop off their own arm to free it from a locked door, or to be poisoned by a contagious memory, or to see containment wing G explode into tongues of flame with something roaring inside, or to not sleep for days, to live in little camps with other people and survive by lighting files on fire to keep warm, to see the face of the people who started the raid, dead on the ground, to see the carcasses of GOC tanks in predictable hallways.
So Mikell likes to imagine that it's like sleeping, or a deep meditation. That was what it was like to be dead in the way that Jack was. He likes to imagine that his brother is INERT, as his logs put it, because he was the only survivor, because he wasn't on site at all, and that's why the blame fell on him. Was it fair? No. Was it for the best?
Maybe.
His brother did not function well after the 4th month of the 19 fiasco. He did not do well in a humanoid containment cell, and Mikell knew this was because he was a child with olive skin and curly black hair that belonged back in Nebraska under clear skies and open cornfields. They tried to paint him as INCOMPETENT, and maybe he was, by the end; tired and frustrated as he was. And that was why Mikell had voted 'Aye' when the "formal containment of the Site-19 director" vote came up. Because after all that, it really was for the best. If they were trying to be humane, and Jack was no longer eating, no longer thriving, no longer living in a profound way that Mikell hadn't seen his brother before in all the years he'd known him— then why force him to try?
(Do you have any family history of depression? The doctor in the ER asked Jack Bright as his older brother lay sprawled on a gurney)
So a few years later, when Mikell Bright had his second heart attack, he was alone, and not so lucky. Because karma's a bitch. Because these things build up so slowly and then crash down so quickly. Because the universe gives Brights when it needs them and takes them as it pleases.
And that was the story of how Jack Bright survived.
Because some people are just meant to.
Item #: SCP-963
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-963-1 is to be contained in a Safe-class containment locker. Flesh-to-artifact contact is not permitted. Further testing is not permitted.
Description: SCP-963-1 is an ornate amulet approximately 15 centimeters in circumference made from white gold, with thirteen (13) ██k brilliant-cut diamonds surrounding a ███k oval-cut ruby in a starburst pattern. It was discovered in the personal effects of ██████ ███ who had been found dead by apparent suicide, surrounded by a number of supernaturally-related books. Our Agent in the area found that 963-1 was incapable of being damaged and brought it in according to protocol XLR-8R-██.
Dr. Jack Bright is a possessive entity bound to SCP-963-1. Dr. Bright was bound to the amulet following its death in a Keter breach, see file B-963-4. The consciousness of the late Dr. Bright is projected onto any living anthropoid that comes into direct skin contact with SCP-963-1. It is known that memories native to it transfer from host to host. For more information regarding Dr. Bright, see archived medical file for complete psychiatric admittance history and medication lists.