The following is an abbreviated version of the Site 201-45 instance's diary, located in a student room at R████. This is one of the few cases where the subject has documented the evolution of her condition, allowing a better understanding of the modification of the subject's identity and consciousness. It is also the only direct evidence from a subject in Stage 3 of SCP-201-FR (see paragraph dated 09/30/87), the subject's right hand having apparently briefly been able to hold a pen at this stage before total mutation.
[irrelevant passages deleted]
05/10/87 - Nice weather. Finally found a decent title. "Proposal for an analytical classification of perspective processes in painting from medieval times to 1789". I can't believe no one's done this before. Good for me, at the same time. On the other hand, P███ laughed at me, like "haha a thesis in Aesthetics and Art Sciences, are you sure, because with that you'll have the choice between being a teacher or being even more of a teacher". Dumbass.
I tested some word sequences as a mnemonic means for the chronology of Flemish painters, but no way to find a good sentence. A████ had one for the antonin dynasty (like I care) but I forgot it. Anyway, when it comes to crappy mnemonic sentences, nothing will beat "My Very Elegant Mother Tracy Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines" for the order of the planets of the solar system. Well, except perhaps the sentence of P███ for the order of geological periods. I'm not going to write it here, because it's really gross, actually.
[irrelevant passages deleted]
05/28/87 - Cloudy. A████ advised me to take a full-time research card given the time I spend at the national library. Of course, the picture they put on the card is really ugly. No surprise. But hey, I'm making good progress. It would be better with a computer than a typewriter, though.
I had a pretty amazing dream last night. I was in a kind of castle that turned slowly on itself, like the one where Gawain was tested in the Tale of the Grail, or at least some versions after Chrétien de Troye's. It seemed a bit like the world was spinning around the castle, actually. Pretty cool.
05/29/87 - Less cloudy than yesterday. Apparently, the card allows you to borrow some books for three months, well, those that are in free consultation. I can't picture myself taking an eighteenth-century folio like "thank you, goodbye" and using it to wedge my table. I'm only saying that because apparently that's what a teacher did with a guy's thesis a few years ago. Well, it's probably a stupid legend. Kind of like the one of the student who is told to "get sacked" and got out of the room using his schoolbag as if he was in a sack race. Have you ever tried to jump around in your bag quick enough to make that joke, without falling? (no, I didn't try)
[irrelevant passages deleted]
06/06/87 - Sunny. I'm taking a break for at least a day. By dint of keeping my nose in these old things, I see horizon lines and missed perspectives even in my bowl of cereal. At least I can remember the chronology perfectly now. A place for everything, and everything in its place.
I'm not sure what it's due to, but I've had some kind of irritation on my left hand for several days. I didn't mention it before because I thought it was going to go away on its own, but it's actually getting worse. It looks like eczema, but I'm no specialist. So I made an appointment with the dermatologist. Something like this was bound to happen eventually with all the bloody product they spray on these books to preserve them.
[irrelevant passages deleted]
06/19/87 - Sunny. Guess what the dermatologist said? "It looks like some kind of eczema." Wow. Are you sure about that? No, because at that rate I could have found it on my own. Really pathetic. Well, at least I have a treatment. It's starting to look alarming, to be honest. There are definitely streaks and hollows now.
Other than that, sixty pages already, which is a miracle on this old machine.
06/20/87 - Overcast, with extra wind. In June. Seriously? Ah, otherwise, seventy-two pages. It knocks you for six, twelve pages in twenty-four hours, doesn't it? PS: it's because there are five of them with illustrations, but don't say it, shhh.
I had a half-awaked dream where I was in these imaginary rooms where I classify Flemish painters chronologically. I pushed the walls so that they had more space to hang their paintings. Then one of them (I think it was Rubens, because of the big black hat, the beard and the spaniel's look) came to see me and told me that things were not going well at all and that I had completely screwed up the palace's perspective. It made me laugh so much that I woke up.
Nota bene, if I have to choose an interior designer, I think I'd ask Bosch to do that, so he could draw herds of bagpipes and demons on wheels all over the walls.
06/21/87 - Overcast. The treatment doesn't work and I'm having a really hard time focusing on the thesis with this ugly thing on my arm. I even put on a coat to go out earlier to make a doctor's appointment.
And when I'm not focused on this crap, I have these Flemish painters, those numbskulls, sorted in the imaginary little rooms of P███, who come back into my head like a super lame song that doesn't want to get out of your brain. Just like a few months ago when I finally got The Final Countdown out of my head and I heard that little bitch on the radio singing T'en va pas1. Nuit tu meeee fais peuuuur, nuit tu n'en finis paaaas2, oh fuck it, I have it in my head again just by writing that. Well done, really. Well at least I no longer think of Flemish painters who redo the decoration of small imaginary rooms. One takes over where the other leaves off, I guess.
[irrelevant passages deleted]
08/26/87 - Nice weather, but outside. I have the impression that the sky is overcast. It doesn't make any sense, does it? Earlier, I was dozing and I had the impression that I was on the road starting from where I classify things. Yes, there's like a road now. It's quite desolate, but the palace is really big.
What am I saying.
08/28/87 - Nice weather. I just reread the previous paragraph and I really don't know what came over me the other day. I do have a headache, though. I try to work but it's almost impossible under these conditions, especially with these silly intrusive thoughts with the rooms that are used to file everything. If I wanted to be an architect, I would have undertook architectural studies, not history of art. To hell with it!
09/02/87 - Overcast, inside. There are people. God, I'm sure there are people. It's on my arm and in my head. There is my palace, on this hill, or this phalanx, and there it is a path and there it is a village. There's a whole landscape, actually. I saw a cairn with cave drawings, a red bird running on the ground, and a shepherd with a herd of- I thought they were geese, except they were violins. Violins, damn it.
The thing reached my left shoulder. I have to go back to the doctor. Earlier, I felt like I was in the room and in the other place at the same time, and I threw up.
[Two pages were torn off]
09/12/87 - Overcast, inside. A tree has grown along the main road. The people of the village rolled up garlands of berries in its branches. No music, though. The chamberlain told me that the violins had not yet completed their growth. They are very young instruments, and using them now would more likely disturb them than anything else - moreover, their shepherd does not really have a musical ear.
09/13/87 - Rainy. Do I really need to continue working on this thesis? This field of research seems to me to be increasingly limited compared to what is happening now. I still don't know how long this coat will suffice to cover the kingdom when I go out, and how long the latter will remain nomadic. I had great difficulty lifting my right hand when I got up this morning.
09/15/87 - Rainy. The caretaker seems willing to drop my groceries off at the front door if I slip her a list and a tip under the door. Fortunately, I had already borrowed all the books, I don't see how the library could have accepted me in such a state. I'll ask the caretaker to bring them back. I don't know how I would survive without her. The doctor refused to come see me in person, again. I'm really scared.
I drank coffee this morning, and the river under the small stone bridge was suddenly tinged with a multitude of impossible colours. I don't understand what's happening to me.
09/17/87 - Nice weather. Inside. The little lord who lives in the moor showed me his garden. The fruits are quite remarkable - if only my thesis supervisor could see them. Beautiful rows in perspective, Renaissance mode. The gardener has built an ingenious honey-based system to prevent the crawlers from climbing up to devour the crop. I'm almost jealous of the view he has from this place. Maybe I should move the palace? It's starting to get very difficult.
As we walked along the boundaries of his land, we saw a pond form. It wasn't here yesterday, I'm sure of that. People from the village immediately came running, and circled around singing the glory of some local deity they thought they had seen in the water. They threw spices into it, and praised the great black fish. Praised be the great black fish.
09/22/87 - Cloudy inside. I think I forgot something important. The chamberlain can't help me with such matters. I know I have to "open the door", but the palace door is open. I really don't know where this sudden obsession comes from.
I spent the evening watching the sun go down on the mountains on the knee side. They break down light like a wonderful prism. Soon after, I counted all the stars that appeared, and decided to name them. I have decreed that the constellation of the viverne will be affixed to the royal coat of arms as of tomorrow.
09/23/87 - Nice weather. Awakened by the song of a strange little red bird that had entered through a broken stained glass window. I spent a lot of time opening and closing the palace door this morning, for no reason. I felt like I had to do it again. Or at least that I absolutely had to open a door somewhere. Someone had to bring me something behind a door, I'm sure. And I had to call a doctor, because I couldn't move anymore - the palace apothecary laughed at my concerns, since I came to his pharmacy without any difficulty. It's as if I had a different life somewhere and it was overflowing with my reality.
I have reread several parts of this diary, but the further back I go in the dates, the less sense they make. Maybe I should dictate them to the scribe instead. The feeling of disconnection between this diary and my life is so strong that it makes me very uncomfortable, to be honest.
09/28/87 - Nice weather. Tomorrow is the big gathering of the annual fair. Caravans came from across the desert to participate, bringing all kinds of extraordinary objects. I saw a bottle of polished bone that purifies the water poured into it, fruits pierced with circular holes that the wind makes sing when it blows through the orchards, and a strange animal that drank the juice of a rare flower. It is said that the baron of the Castle of Metacarpus himself will come to the festivities - his engineers would have made him an incredible mobile metal chair so that he could move around wherever he wanted.
The chamberlain came to reassure me because I was having some sort of strange anxiety attack.
I'm here, writing this diary. I'm somewhere else, and a hand writes this diary. I'm small. I'm tall. I am a voice. I am nothing. I am the world. I don't know who's holding that pen, and I'm holding that pen.
09/30/87 - Nice weather. I received some grievances this morning. Some came to present them to me in person, others wrote them on all kinds of things. I even received an embroidery asking me to enlarge a garden.
I've made room. Lots of space. It is less a conquest than a creation of new lands. The northern woods have become so vast that it is rumoured that there are now places where light no longer passes through the canopy, inhabited by giant animals, like huge deep-sea fish at the bottom of the ocean. Gigantic deers with bright antlers. Wolves whose back sparkles like the Milky Way.
I think I'm going to stop writing this diary-ish and focus my attention on more important things. The peace of this kingdom depends on it.
Tonight, I watch the sun go down. A shoal of stratospheric mantas appears on the horizon and glides peacefully into the heights. The fields are tinged with incredible colours at nightfall. Everything I can see from this window is mine.
What more could you want?
[the log stops on this date.]