— Omicron Rhô’s report has just arrived, Sir. They’ve managed to locate the lost souls. They’re in a dreamlike reality plan… SCP-107-JP, “Absinthe Avenue”. Usually, this plan is under a specific Task Force’s responsibility, the Drunken Rabbits, but they told me they needed more than 24 hours to be operational. They’re not used to act on emergency, it seems.
— Shit, no time to lose. I'll go myself, then.
— Are you sure, Mr Director? To go there, one had to complete the Pernod Procedure, which implies to absorb…
— An absinthe’s shot, I know. I’ve already been there a few times, mind you.
In the heart of the Défense, at the thirty-seventh floor of the Site-Zahav, was the smoky office of the infamous Doctor Borel, a forty-year-old-ish man with thin grey hair and reder-than-brown eyes, former broker and current site’s director. In front of him, behind a massive oak desk, was the special agent CAC40, a tall ginger woman with a magazine’s face but military costume and manners.
Borel shook his head, projecting cigarette’s smoke to his subordinate’s face:
— Dear God, C4, surely, you’re not freaking out for an absinthe’s shot, are you? You know well it’s lemonade, for me.
— Precisely, Sir, with all due respect, with all the substances already in your blood, who knows what kind of reaction it could bring? I can call Dax so he sends us a D-Class…
The toxicologist blew a new grey cloud in zigzag, sentencing the agent to silence.
— Enough, C4. The Veil Protocol itself is in stake, we can’t just send the first pedophile we got.
With precise gestures, he crushed his cigarette, greatly loosened his tie and opened the left drawer of his desk to take a copper cup and a small glass bottle filed with an emerald liquid. Then, solemnly, he fumbled in his thick leather wallet to find three 50 cents coins.
— The Pernod Procedure says to use English Shillings, but we will do as we can. Give me some water, C4.
The agent handed him the gourd she kept on her right thigh. With a preoccupied look, the toxicologist began to chant some old English poetry’s verses as he slowly poured the green liquid in the cup. After a few minutes of this ritual, he stopped and leaned on to consider the liquid.
— Well, seems good to me. And ‘cause we don’t have all day, we’ll do it my way.
He took a sleeping-cigarette, blue from end to end, in his inside pocket and used it to vigorously stir the liquid. Once it was well soaked in, he carried it to his lips and took on his desk a Dupont golden lighter. Understanding his intentions, the agent CAC40 retained a sigh:
— Are you really sure it won’t interfere with the Pernod Procedure, Sir?
— We’ll see, C4. If I don’t emerge in two hours, wake me up, using taser if necessary, understood?
— Affirmative.
— Excellent. To your health!
Once the cigarette lighten, Borel closed the lighter and tucked it in his jacket. An olivaceous thick smoke with aniseed hints quickly filled the room, making the agent stand up in a reflex of retreat. With a damp look, the toxicologist stammered as he was putting the cigarette in the ashtray:
— I’ll find these fucking monkeys, you’ll see.
Then, as a mass, he collapsed on the oak desk and began to snore.
I woke up from a bad dream. In it, I was wearing strange fabrics on my body. I lived in an all-grey place, without trees. I was eating at set times. I was using my forehands to smash squared rocks in front of a big rectangular shiny rock.
Now that I’m awake, I scratched my head and stand on my backhands. I felted a little flea between my fingers and carried it to my mouth. It was crispy under my teethes. By searching, I’ve found another one, and it was as tasty as the first!
Next to me, I’ve seen a lot of comrades also awakening. A friend came to delouse me, I tilted my head to help them. I saw that the sky was covered in grey. Strange, but I didn’t mind. Suddenly my friend stopped to rummage my head. I turned around to appropriately return them the favor, but I saw they had moved away. Had something scared them? I re-turned around and faced a tall individual.
They were standing on their backhands, all their body covered by a large grey fabric. They wore on their head a funny object of the same color, that was projecting a shadow on their face. In one of their front hands, they presented me a big simmering worm. I came closer, gently took it in my fingers and carried it to my mouth. It was really juicy, very tasty! I tried to delouse them in recognition, but I didn’t find any lice.
Comrades came and we surrounded them. They graciously distributed some more worms. A friend climbed on their arm and play with the thing that was covering their head. They laughed a little, as if they were surprised that we so quickly adopted them, then looking at me, they leaned forward. They reached out and scratched my coat. They pulled out a flea and began to take it to their mouth but when they were about to eat it, they changed their mind and handed it to me. I hesitated. Nobody had never done that before. When one delouses someone, one eats their fleas, otherwise what's the point? Eventually I took it and ate it. It was delicious!
A strong detergent and mold odor woke up the toxicologist. Head heavy, Charles Borel opened his eyes to see a greyish ceiling. He sat up to discover a small seedy bedroom, in which the faded olive-green wallpaper was peeling in places. Looking down on his hands, he saw they were, like all his body, made of an emerald thick smoke. He allowed himself a sigh of relief, making some plumes of smoke around him. The Pernod Procedure was a success.
Preciously standing, he went to the window. The street outside was hidden behind a thick greenish fog, in wish the glimmer of some streetlamp that protruding. He wasn’t in Paris anymore. That city was Absinthe Avenue, known of the Foundation’s services under the reference number SCP-107-JP. It wasn’t the first time he came here, but each time he was seized by it’s dreamlike and vaporous mood.
Opening the window, he jumped on the other side. At an abnormally slow speed, his gaseous body felt through the fog, until it gently landed on the worn-out cobblestones. In this street some passerby in coat were strolling, faces covered by thick scarfs and bowler hats. None seemed intrigued my Borel’s cloudy appearance. In fact, no one even seemed to even remark him, each all absorb in their own meditations. From time to time, some stopped by a streetlamp. Taking a cup out of their coat, they filled it out with faucet forged to the pole and drank with avidity the absinthe that has came from it.
Even with his great experience of psychotropics, Borel needed to concentrate so that his mind didn’t wander on the alcoholic vapors of the exhaust of the cars hidden in the fog. Looking up, he saw he was in Gogh Street, named after a former mayor, were one of his contacts lived.
— Good, at least I won’t have to walk much.
To his great dismay, it took him an eternity to find the fifty-nine, the numbers seemingly following no logic and going up and down form a building to the next. Or maybe it was the fog that kept him from concentrating? Finally in front of his informant’s door, he went through the building’s hall and slide on the stairs until the first floor. There, he knocked on a door. After a moment, a pale man, face covered by big brown sideburn, opened the door and stared at him:
— Who do I owe the pleasure?
— Hi, Paul. It’s me, Charles, form the SCP Foundation.
— Ah, Charles, what a pleasant surprise.
The man stepped aside to let him in. The apartment, similar to the one in witch Borel had woken up, was a mess, floor and walls covered by papers blackened with scribblings and schemes. Borel went right to the sofa:
— Is Arthur here?
— No, said the man visibly uncomfortable, handing him an absinthe glass with radioactive sheen, we are a little distant these days. You know what it is, it will pass.
— No doubt about that, smiled Borel while accepting the drink. Well, sorry to be so direct, but I’m kind of in a rush today. I’m on an emergency. Have you seen any monkeys here these days?
— Monkeys?
— Right. We have a floor, in one of our buildings in Paris, were we put monkeys to work. We use them to generate a massive amount of random financial transactions to, via an anormal effect, make our real financial shenanigans opaque, you see?
— Not at all.
— Never mind. Just understand that we really need these beasts for our organization. Without them, we might have huge security breaches. Since two days ago those damned monkeys are falling asleep one after the other and we can’t wake them up. One of our teams has located them in Absinthe Avenue, so I rushed here.
The informant smiled, his eyes fixed on the emerald liquid that he was gently spinning in his glass:
— Your colleagues are right, Charles, your monkeys are here! Everyone only talk about that since two days. The city’s agents didn’t know what to do with them, so they've located them in a warehouse at twenty-one Green Street.
— Great! Twenty-one Green Steet, you’ve said?
— Exactly. Tell me, Charles, what will you do when you find them?
In this so cosy sofa, Borel felt as if he was about to begin a nap. He took a sip from his absinthe glass and the liquid took over his gas body, feeling like it was making it even lighter. He forced himself to focus.
— I’ll find a way to wake them up so they go back to their fucking desks.
— That is a sad thing. Why try to humanize such wonderful beings? You have more to learn about them than you think, you know ?
Facing Borel’s puzzled silence, the informant smiled and recited:
— When human losts himself in vain ideas
Monkey eat, sleep, and envoy his dream.
Because his delight is never too extreme.
He is the essence of Hominidaes.
When hungry he eat some passing by mite.
When thirsty he drinks on the river way.
When sleepy he sleeps whatever clockworks say.
When chilly he warms himself on sunlight.
I see clearly today how much we have lost
When we stood up and the mud we tossed
And to admit it I must be sponky.
Come, happy day, when finally free
My soul will cease it’s constant shivaree
Reject humanity, return to monkey
— Really poetical, Borel ironized while standing up, who is it from?
— Nobody, a monkeys’ friend, Paul shrugged. Are you already leaving?
— Yeah, I’ve told you I hadn’t time to chit chat today. Thanks for the tip, I owe you.
— Take Riesling next time.
While Borel went down the stairs, the man gave him a wistful look. After his departure, he stayed a moment staring in emptiness, then closed the apartment’s door, where a yellowed plate read “Paul Verlaine, public writer”.
The special agent CAC40 busted from the elevator into the twenty-first floor:
— Astrid, statuts !
A young woman in black suit instantly stepped forward:
— 247 monkeys asleep on 312, Madam. We’re doing everything we can to maintain awaken the seventy-five last ones, but the sleepiness seems to be expanding. The toxicologistic study has confirmed the presence of a product of unknown provenance in their two days ago’s lunch. It is under further investigation, the first analisis indicates that it’s a variety of Stilton cheese, known to stimulate dreams.
— So it’s indeed a poisoning. Do we know how this cheese came into the monkeys’ meal?
— No Madam. I’ve looked all the videotapes from kitchens, but nobody has touch the meal, safe from the cooks of course.
— Good. In that case, tell Omicron-19’s agents to interrogate all the cooks. Violence clearing level 3.
— Yes Madam.
— Did you contact the Doctor Attali?
— Yes, the young woman answered while staring at her notes; she confirmed that with less than sixty active monkeys, there was a risk that the “random transactions’ background noise” became insufficient, causing an interruption of the “Swiss Bank Effect” and consequently…
— A public revelation of all the Founation’s financial transactions, CAC40 completed with a serious look. Has the Council been informed?
— Yes Madam. They’re following the operation live, the young woman answered with a head movement in direction of the security camera over the elevator.
CAC40 nodded her head. So, if the affair wasn’t quickly managed, her failure would be blatant and Borel and her would directly go to the basement join the D-Class.
— All right, Astrid. Fall out.
While the young woman was going away to transmit the orders via radio, the agent CAC40 advanced in the open space that occupied the whole floor. A heavy silence was weighing on the place. Among the dozens of working desks, only a few were occupied by chimpanzees in tuxedo with exhausted looks. Under normal circumstances, this floor would have been filled with monkeys, in suits and dresses, trained to randomly launch hundreds of microtransactions per minute. A frenetic activity that, combined with the building anormal proprieties, guarantied the total opacity of all the SCP Foundation's financial transactions. Unfortunately, today, almost all the monkeys were snoring on their work desk.
From her inner pocket, the agent CAC40 took her FN Five-seveN, pointed it on the ceiling and emptied the loader, causing 20 detonations and a white cement rain. The few awake monkeys stirred even more frantically on their keyboard, but none of the countless sleeping monkeys react. While automatically reloading her gun, the agent yelled:
— Take out the fire hoses! We’ll wake them up, one way of another.
We were eating the worms that the grey monkey was handing out and delousing each others when something suddenly enter in our space: a big green and white smoke cloud with vaguely the shape of a monkey on its backhands. They came to us screaming:
— Finaly I’ve found you dumb monkeys! Time off’s over, back to work!
The most of us had stepped back to stay away from this gas monkey. Ur friend, the grey monkey, came to them with similar screams:
— What a strange way to talk to your employee, Doctor Borel!
The gas monkey froze and looked all around, seemingly searching the screams’ origin.
— Who’s there ?
— Nobody, Doctor. You’re alone with your consciousness.
— Fuck off with my consciousness… Wait, you’ve said Nobody ? So you’re behind this mess. I should’ve guess. Get off this antimemetic hiding and talk to me face-to-face like a man.
— Why do you always think Nobody is a man?
The grey monkey wasn't moving and stayed with us on his backhand. Suddenly, the gas monkey faced him as if they’ve just finally noticed them:
— Good, thanks! You haven’t change since ur last meeting.
— If you say so.
— Why abducting these monkeys, Nobody? To mess with the Foundation’s cover-up? You’ve finally decided to openly declare war to us?
Some of us had climbed on the grey monkey, to support them. Absentmindedly, they were delousing one of us, eating their lice while talking:
— Don’t be ridiculous, Doctor Borel. You very well know that if Nobody wanted to harm your organization, we woudn’t be here talking. Nobody’s got access to all nuclear launch codes, to all accreditations, to all secrets… Nobody could cause the end of the world if Nobody wanted it. It was the monkeys that Nobody was interested in. Nobody wanted some time with them.
— You wanted compagny? Nobody felt lonely?
The grey monkey shook their head back and forth:
— Hou hou, I feel a unique connection with these creatures, Doctor Borel. They’re so close yet so far from you humans. You know, for so long Nobody has searched for a personality in you, but today I think… that the answer was in them from the beginning. Nobody understood it two days ago, when I’ve seen them.
— So you’ve decided to kidnap them to this greenish world, just to see if it would help you to understand who you are? That’s it? You’ve jeopardized the whole world's security just for the sake of your little personal quest for identity? You realize that a new occult war could break out at any moment because of your bullshits? Couldn’t you take the Jardin des plantes’ monkeys instead?
The grey monkey had a little laugh, we laughed with them.
— Yes, I could have, ha ha, but that day it’s them who’ve appended to catch my attention and I feel that their contact did me a lot of good. I can give you them back now. I’ve found what I was looking for.
They shook themself a little to make us get off their arm, then they took off their grey skin, as well as the object that covered their head. Without it, they had a head just like ours! We jumped on them and began to delouse eatchother.
— No, wait! Shit! Where are you? Nobody? Fuck.
A brutal ringing suddenly rang against our ears. We’ve all covered them with our forehands, but it didn’t change anything. The world decomposed itself around us, a sharp glow flooded our eyes, so we’ve closed them. When the ringing stopped, we’ve opened our eyes and recognized our old home, with its grey rectangular stones and the black fabric on our skin. The dream was over.
— Welcome back, Sir.
Eyes exceedingly squinted, Borel declined with a gesture the coffee the CAC40 agent was handing him and took in his pocket a cigarette that, once lighten, perfumed the office with a strong sent of caffein and grapefruit. After three long puff, looking a little more lively, he finally declared:
— The monkeys have awaken?
— Yes Sir. We've tried to spray them, to pinch them, to make them sniff food, but nothing worked. And then I've asked to turn the invasion alarm at maximum strength and that, that’s what awoke them. It seems that we just weren’t doing enough noise. I’m sorry you made that trip for nothing.
The toxicologist winced.
— Nevermind. How are they doing?
— Same as before, Sir. It seems that the experience has not affected their training. They're back to work. The “Suiss Bank” effect is still effective, the Foundation’s accounts are secured.
— Great.
The agent hesitated a moment twisting her mouth then she inhaled:
— There is just one strange thing. The veteritarian team has informed me that a new monkey was here. We don’t know where it came from. It has no chip and blend very well with the others. The Doctor Attali suggests to include it in the Monkey Business Project. She will call you soon, to have your approbation.
Borel nodded in an orange smoke cloud, with a smirk:
— No problem. After all, the more monkeys, the merrier, right?