(it hurts and they're everywhere and they're wet red hot spastic lungs seeping salt and oil and steam slick short fur shunting bloating liquid sacs pumping red salt iron rust-smelling bubbling slime out of the clustered holes in their face and sucking it back into themselves twitching darting snaking nerves under skin salt wet fat meat meat meat hate hate hate)

She's three, and men in blindfolds and body armor escort her through sterile hallways, and they put her in a room, and they put it in the room.

and it sees her and it

closes its mouth, slowly

she's small and she's scared and she's trembling and she's brave

It's big, and it's scared too.

It walks toward her, slowly, heavy footfalls.

It prods her, gently, with its long bony snout.

She falls on her butt and giggles.

It -

 - it chuffs.

("What the fuck???"

"Better than it could've gone."

"What it's a fucking dog now?"

"It's almost sweet."

"Fuck is wrong with you?  And what am I supposed to put down, test failed sorry it made a fucking friend?")

It lets out a long, low, deep rumble, and settles down for a nap.

("What the fuck")

The men in blindfolds and body armor come in to take her away, and she cries -

 - and it bellows -

 - and they open fire -

 - and the emergency acid hoses start up -

 - and some of the acid splashes her -

 - and the man who threw the switch screams and melts into a puddle -

 - and it hurtshurtshurtshurts -

 - and she is dragged away and she cries.

She's five when the Foundation comes under new management.

New management assigns her a child psychiatrist.  She doesn't talk, and doesn't talk, and doesn't talk.  New management assigns her a new child psychiatrist, and she doesn't talk.  New management assigns her a third child psychiatrist, a personable woman who talks to her through a webcam so she can see a face not covered in a blindfold, and she doesn't talk, and she doesn't talk -

 - and she does talk -

- about the day they let her meet the giant doggy, and then they came in and started shooting it, and it squished them and turned them into goo that went everywhere, and they kept hurting it -

(Doctor Charlotte Eschenheimer is incandescently angry.  She will at a later date express her incandescent anger to certain appropriate parties.)

- and the nice woman on the video screen helps her understand what happened, and why.  And it's still horrible and it still hurts to think about and it still makes her cry - but it's a little not-as-bad.  The bad feelings inside her chest a little better.

She enters the girl's room in a wetsuit and a helmet with lights inside it pointed at her face, and she can't see for the glare but at least the girl, at least fifty-three, can see her face.

"I can only be in here for five minutes at a time," she says, "and then I have to take a break.  But I can talk to you on the screen the whole time, and I can come back in as soon as my break is over, every single time until you feel better, okay?"

"It's not safe because of me," she says.

"Not because of you," Doctor Charlotte says firmly.  "It's like - it's like a witch put a curse on you.  It's sad and scary and awful, and it's okay to feel sad or angry or awful about it, and we don't know if there's anything we can do about it.  But it's not your fault."

"I know," she says dully.

Charlotte sighs, a sympathetic sigh.  "I can't give you a nice long hug like you deserve, but I've got three and a half minutes left on my timer, and I can hug you for as much of that time as you want, okay?"

"Okay."

Hug.

Hug.  Three-and-a-half-minute hug.

She cries, a lot.  She talks, a lot.  She smiles, occasionally, more and more.

She grows up, inevitably.

Charlotte asks her if she has, or wants, a real name.

She doesn't mind Fifty-Three so much.  Her parents gave her a name, but she doesn't remember it.  (Her mom shot herself, not long after she was Contained, and her dad stopped coming.)  Not all her memories from before Charlotte are bad ones, and she was named Fifty-Three in those.

But she might like a normal name.

"Can I be named Charlotte?  After you."

"I'd be honored," she smiles.

Grin.  "First name Charlotte, middle name Fifty-Three."

"If that's what you want."

"It is."

She continues growing up, as children do.  Her curse doesn't grow with her - it affects humans older than three, not humans older than her.

As she grows, she learns more about the Foundation.

Someone named O5-1/963-2 has been instituting a lot of reforms - better treatment of sapient skips, increasing institutional transparency, phasing out something called D-class personnel in favor of something else called DELTA/AGENT designees and DELTA/NONPATIENT objects.  She, O5-1/963-2, has been around for years, although not always by that rank - she's the one responsible for introducing Charlotte 53 to Charlotte Eschenheimer.  She reads internal press releases - "...lurid tales and hazing rituals involving security footage of legendary skips like 035 and 106 fostering a culture of paranoia and dehumanization."  She think about men in wetsuits and blindfolds cutting into her skin.  She thinks about SCP-682 and acid hoses.

"I don't remember anything from before the Foundation took me," she says to Dr. Eschenheimer one session.

"Would you like to hear about your family?" Dr. Eschenheimer asks.  "There's probably some information somewhere in Foundation records."

"That's not what I mean," she says.  "Maybe, someday.  But that's not what I mean."

She waits, and listens.

"I feel - "

"Was it a good thing, that you found me?"

"I'm trying hard to make it one," she says.  "But I think you have to decide that."

She shakes her head, rubs her face under her eyes.

"I want it to be.  I think - "

"I said I didn't remember anything but I think, - "

"I was so scared when, when my parents started trying to kill me, I was scared of what they were doing and of what happened to them - "

She looks up at the ceiling, her breath quivers.

"And these people came - " her voice is not quite steady, "and they tried to kill me too, and it happened to them too - "

"and I thought that was going to be forever - "

"but they put me here, and they gave me things, and they told me some of what was going on, and the blindfolds were scary at first but - but it was like there were grownups again - "

She stops, and blows her nose.

"Can you - can you come in here and give me a hug?"

"I'll be right there, Charlotte," Dr. Eschenheimer says, and gets up from her seat and disappears from her screen, and a moment later she's in the younger Charlotte's quarters.

Hug.

Cling.

She cries onto Dr. Eschenheimer's shoulder a little, squeaks out a few quiet sobs.

After a few moments she dehugs.  "Can you go back out, I don't want us to have to stop in the middle of a sentence when the window closes - "

"Of course."

She turns her attention back to the screen.

"I just... I want it to be a good thing that you found me.  I want to be able to feel good about being rescued.  And I do, but - I'm reading all this shit - and the thing with six eighty two fucked me up so bad, for so long..."

"The Foundation has a long way to go," she says, quietly, somberly.  "But you don't have to say everything the Foundation does is good to say that - it's good that the people who were good to you found you.  It's good that the researchers who gave you what they could to make you happier did that.  It's good that you and your parents were both protected from the curse on you.  It's good that we met.  You don't have to decide how you feel about the whole Foundation to be thankful for that."

Sniffle.  Wibbly little grin.  "That makes sense."

Smile.

"...You want to make the Foundation better," she says.  "That's why you work for it."

"Yes."

"I think I do too."

At Dr. Eschenheimer's recommendation, Charlotte Fiftythree is inducted into a Foundation program, spearheaded by O5-1/963-2 and Site-19 director Agatha Rights, for educating cooperative anomalous humans and humanoids about the Foundation's history, purpose, and methods, as part of a push to make more effective use of anomalous resources and give humanoids psychologically beneficial context to their containment.

She studies.  She devours the lecture tapes she's authorized to see, talks on containment and experimentation by the likes of Gears and Salt, Veritas and Stochasta, Montauk and Lecter and Sharpe.  She learns about the founding of the Foundation during the Cold War, as a spy network of seditious agents from both the US and the Soviet Untion, when it became clear that the occult forces both sides were both trying to harness were more dangerous to the world than either side of the war.  Its days after the Soviet collapse, beholden to a by-then more sympathetic US for funding; General Bowe and the disastrous Omega-7 project, which together with the containment of 029 sowed the seeds for paranoia and dehumanization of humanoid scips.  231, the first apocalypse-in-waiting by an independent power group, contained by unknown but rumored-horrifying means - a ritual designed by Robert Montauk, the details of which were the first Thaumiel-class SCP object.  The increasing prevalence of what the Foundation calls "anartists" throughout the late 90s and 2000s.  The final break with the US military as the Foundation secured funding from international alliances and front corporations and the occasional judicious use of stable anomalies instead.  The mysterious death of the original O5-1 and his replacement by the current holder of the title, who alongside Rights finally began to push for reform.

Some of the lectures are in-person, and she attends by videoconference.  There are other anomalous humans at many of them.  A girl made of a mixture of conventional machinery and probably-anomalous clockwork, with a few swatches of human skin here and there.  A woman maybe a decade older than her made of porcelain.  A boy a couple years younger than her who causes anyone who comes near him to dissolve (also attending by videoconference).  A quiet girl also near her own age with pitch-black eyes.  Two children made of clay with sewing needles emerging from their fingers.

She makes friends.  She says she wants to become a containment researcher and help the anomalies that people are scared of.

She gets a little wheeled drone that can navigate around Site-19, a couple more at other sites where other lecture-giving researchers are stationed.

She talks to her friends about her containment and her mixed feelings about it.  The Foundation did a lot of things wrong in her early life but she still thinks of them as the people who saved her, which is why she kept her number as her last name.  (Last name, now, not middle name.  The only other last name she could think of for herself was Eschenheimer, and as much as she loves Dr. Eschenheimer that didn't feel quite right.  So: First name Charlotte, last name Fiftythree.)

She thinks the Foundation is still probably doing things wrong, but there are people within it doing good, and working to make it better, and she wants to be one of them.

She doesn't talk about SCP-682, but she thinks about it.

Him.  It.

Twenty-two years (almost to the day, in fact) after Charlotte Fiftythree is first Secured and Contained, she receives an email:

FROM: rrstochasta@scp.foundation
TO: charlotte053@scp.foundation
SUBJECT: Foundation Doctoral Program

---

Ms. Fiftythree,

I have been following the academic careers of several of the participants in Rights' and O51's educational program with some interest, including yours. Initially the program was only intended to supplement the standard K thru 12 education you were denied by the circumstances of your containment, but the scope of the program has expanded since its inception.  I've been impressed with your dedication to learning about Foundation containment and testing procedures.  For the past few years you've actually been working at a college level - you've essentially been earning a degree in containment of humanoid and sapient anomalies.

The Foundation has a postgraduate program - we typically use it for poaching promising college students, but if you're serious about becoming a Foundation researcher, I think you'd be a good fit for it.  Your doctorate would only be recognized in the Foundation and some other sub-veil organizations, but the program is just as rigorous as a mundane postgrad education, and you'd be learning just as much.  If you're interested, get in touch.  I can answer questions and point you to the people in charge.

Redmond-Ruby Stochasta

Well okay.  She sets up a meeting!

Dr. Stochasta introduces herself and goes over some of the process of earning a PhD with her, choosing and researching and defending a dissertation.

"...I have a thought but I'm not sure I could conduct the research, uh, properly, because I'd also be one of the subjects of it."

"What's your thought?"

"...When I was three years old I was crosstested with SCP-682.  The hope was that he would attack me and my defensive anomaly would reactively injure him severely enough to kill him... actually you've probably heard about it?"

"I had.  You want to... replicate the cross-test?"

"I want to, hmm.  I want to try to demonstrate the feasibility of containing SCP-682 without recourse to" torture "uh, the expensive and unstable system we have in place now."  She feels like she's saying "uh" too much.  "Or at least examine the feasibility.  My secondary anomaly seemed to render 682 a lot less hostile than by default, even fresh out of an acid bath.  Which would be enough to upset anybody."  Chuckle.

Dr. Stochasta does not chuckle.  "The report I read has it that 682 was non-hostile toward you but equally violent to other Foundation staff."

"...It was a long time ago but I remember the guards shooting first."

Dr. Stochasta sighs a little, not unsympathetically.  "I suspect the guards did plenty of things wrong with you that day, given how awful a place the Foundation used to be.  But let me show you the report - "

She looks to the end, when she was taken away:

Staff entering at the end of the test phase are immediately attacked by SCP-682, resulting in two deaths and five injuries.  SCP-682 contained and moved to separate containment unit.  SCP-053 observed crying for several minutes after SCP-682 is removed.

That... doesn't sound quite right probably won't impress Dr. Stochasta, but it doesn't.

"Immediately attacked," she says musingly.  "As soon as they opened the doors, entered the room?"

"Charlotte," says Dr. Stochasta.  "Ms. Fiftythree.  With all due respect, you only interacted with this object once, when you were three years old.  It seemed docile to you because your secondary anomaly interacted strangely with it.  I think your memory of this test is colored by the abuse you suffered at the hands of the old turn-of-the-century Foundation.  By all accounts SCP-682 is and remains one of the most violent, dangerous object we have in containment.  It finds human beings hateful and repellent, and has never expressed a desire toward any of us except you other than the urge to destroy us.  That your secondary anomaly would shield you personally from it, rather than render it completely docile, is completely in line with my understanding both of 682 and of your own anomaly - in the case of ordinary humans, the emotions it inspires are also directed solely at you."

"I don't want to make any apologies for how the guards or staff may have treated you, but you shouldn't project that onto 682."

"Can you answer my question?"

"You were three years old.  You had every reason to be more afraid of the guards than of 682.  I believe what the report says."

She rubs her forehead.  "Okay.  But even granting that, 682 was docile enough not to try to escape, while exposed to my secondary anomaly, before the other guards entered.  Exposing it to me is a lot cheaper than constantly replenishing its acid bath."

"There are other counterindications.  Cross-testing is almost always a bad idea a priori, and 682 is one of our most dangerous, highest-security anomalies, it's not something we give to students to play with.  As for the cost, it'd be cheap enough to throw you two in a room together if we knew that was safe, but we don't, and proving it is would be a lot of work and a lot of money that could come to naught if it turns out it isn't safe, at which point it would've been much cheaper to keep it where it was.  Not to mention - "

She stops, tries to gentle her voice.

"I understand that - it seems like you had a formative experience with it.  You might have imprinted on - the thing it seemed like it was, under the influence of your anomaly.  But after the number of people it's killed, no one's losing sleep over how comfortable it is in containment, and as hard as it might be for you to hear I can't say I blame them."

"I killed people before I was contained and if no one had lost sleep over me we wouldn't be having this conversation.  We're keeping it in conditions that were set down in the fucking nineties under Boone and, and Frederick Chilton, when everybody wanted to be the next Robert Montauk!  Even if I can't contain it it's absurd to think there's nothing I could learn from it, I'm the only thing in the Foundation that can talk to it!"

"Charlotte," Dr. Stochasta says sharply.  "This is a bad idea.  It would be a bad idea to carry out if anyone went for it, and it would be a bad idea to pitch because no one would go for it.  This is a warning I am giving you as someone who knows the Foundation better than you do.  Maybe in thirty years if you're Senior Staff and the O5's darling you could pull something like this off, but not as your doctoral thesis before you're even a proper researcher."

She looks away from the screen and rubs her forehead.

Not that Stochasta can even see her face.

"We don't have to decide right now," Dr. Stochasta says, sounding like she's trying to ratchet down a little.  "I'm not your thesis advisor.  And I do think it's admirable to want to look out for even dangerous anomalies.  But the Foundation takes 682 very seriously.  People won't go for this."

"I should get a thesis advisor."

"All right.  I do wish you good luck, Charlotte, and I do think you'll do great things for the Foundation."

"Thank you, Doctor.  I've learned a lot from your lecture tapes.  Thanks for recommending me."

"You're welcome."

She closes out the call.

Rubs her hands over her face, sighs.  Growls a little, wordlessly.

She gets up and puts on some music and heads for one of her exercise machines.  She needs to let off steam.

FROM: charlotte053@scp.foundation
TO: stanleyhux@scp.foundation
SUBJECT: Request for Thesis Supervision

---

Professor,

Hello.  My name is Charlotte Fiftythree.  You may know me by my SCP designation of SCP-053.  I'm a student in my 10th year of O5-1/963-2's and Agatha Rights's anomalous human education program.  I've heard several of your lecture tapes and attended some of your live lectures by videoconference; we spoke briefly after a talk you gave on assistive communication devices for nonhumanoids.  I hope it's not too forward to say that I'm a great admirer of your work both on SCP-5031 and in the Foundation's internal educational program.

I hope to enroll in the Foundation's internal doctorate program with a focus on sapient nonhumanoid containment and communication.  Right now I'm drafting a thesis proposal concerning a sapient, hostile nonhuman anomaly; it's sufficiently high-security that it wouldn't normally be the purview of a graduate student, but I believe my own secondary anomalies give me a unique opportunity to communicate with it.  It's my understanding that you're currently accepting graduate students; I'd like to request that you consider my proposal.  I've attached a draft to this email.  If you do accept I'd be honored to work under you.

Thank you for your time,

Charlotte Fiftythree

FROM: stanleyhux@scp.foundation
TO: charlotte053@scp.foundation
SUBJECT: re: Request for Thesis Supervision

---

Charlotte,

You certainly know how to bury the lede!

You're not wrong that 682 isn't something anyone wants to give a graduate student access to.  But you're also right that the current containment procedures are appalling, and I'm as intrigued as you by the effect your telepathic emanation seems to have on it.  I'm ashamed to say that even after the great declassification I hadn't read that particular termination report until today.

It'd be a hard sell and I can't promise that anyone but me will go for it, but I think your project is a worthy one and I can't help but admire your ambition.  I've got plenty of thoughts on your thesis - we should talk in person.  Send me your availability for a videoconference?

--Stanley Huxtable

Time to set up another meeting.

"Charlotte!  Do you prefer Charlotte, or Ms. Fiftythree, or...?"

"Charlotte's fine, Dr. Huxtable."

He waves his hand.  "Oh, please, call me Stanley, I get enough Dr. Huxtable from people who are angry at me."

She chuckles.  "All right, Stanley.  You read my draft...?"

"Right into it!  Yes, I read it.  As I said in my email I agree with you that your telepathic effect uniquely positions you to interact productively with six-eightytwo.  You'll definitely want to push that angle, it gives you an in for interacting with an entity that'd otherwise be the purview of senior researchers."

(She starts taking notes.)

"It's also to your advantage that you're not proposing a way to kill it.  There's still a very vocal bloc within the Foundation that wants 682 very dead, but since the great declassification every intern with access to more than three files thinks they've come up with a way to terminate 682, and they're never very good ideas.  Spinning your proposal to talk to it as you not being so naive as to think you've got a revolutionary new idea for terminating it - not quite in so many words, but that sort of attitude of humility - I think will go a long way to getting over the thesis committee's initial skepticism."

Jot jot nod nod.

"Now, right now I would say your thesis looks a bit unfocused."

A little sheepishly: "Yeah, honestly.  I know I want to talk to 682, and learn about it, and I know I'd like to - leverage my anomalies to try containing it without torturing it, but I recognize that's a harder sell.  We don't know why it seems to hate humans so much, and - in me - we have the means to talk to it, but we haven't used it.  If we understood why it attacks... maybe it's naive but I'm hopeful it'd be a more productive avenue to keep people safe from it, than just working out new ways to kill it."

"See, you're honing in there - you want to develop a better understanding of the entity's motivations, what it's thinking and what it wants and why it feels the way it feels about us."

"I think I was worried that would sound too - starry-eyed."

"With a dissertation proposal it's good to have a very specific idea of what you want to do, even if the idea sounds like a bit of a moonshot.  The committee's taking a chance on you, seeing if you've got what it takes, and they're going to want to see that you're not just noodling around."

Nod.  "That makes sense!"

They talk.

Given that SCP-682 has spoken coherently, even eloquently, during multiple termination attempts, the Foundation can in principle form a psychological profile of it just as they would on a hostile humanoid.  What she decides to argue is that the Foundation is remiss in not having done so already; even in cases of intractably hostile humanoid anomalies, there's precedent for psychological profiles like these facilitating less expensive and more effective containment, cf. 353, 076-2, et cetera, and there's no reason a priori to treat SCP-682 differently just because it's not human-shaped.  It's already communicated more intelligibly than some humanoid anomalies that have successfully been psychologically profiled.

A great deal of the work of profiling SCP-682, she believes, can be done simply by going over the records of its previous communications and actions with an eye toward modeling it as though it were a human being that's monster-shaped, rather than (as the Foundation seems to have been modeling it so far) a dangerous animal that happens to be able to talk.  In principle there's no need for Charlotte to talk to it at all.  But the elephant in the room is that, now that SCP-053 is an adult, there's an enormous opportunity to learn more about SCP-682, sitting there waiting for the Overseer council to grab it, and the longer they leave this particular twenty dollar bill lying on the ground the more money they spend on constantly replenishing 682's acid bath.  And with Dr. Leonard Salt and O5-1 herself as DELTA/AGENT designees, risking a containment breach is less costly in personnel and human lives than it was decades ago when SCP-682 was initially contained.

"She isn't wrong."

"Who escalated this to us?  Another grad student who wants to play with the lizard, okay, the Council has better things to do than this."

"Doctor Stanley Huxtable escalated it to Site Director Agatha Rights, who escalated it to me.  I'm sure you're all familiar with Dr. Huxtable's bona fides, and this has his stamp of approval."

"I'm not familiar with SCP-053's recent development..."

"My impression of her is that she is intelligent, prudent, and loyal to the Foundation," Four says.

"Mine as well."

"Two such dangerous anomalies in the same room sounds to me like a recipe for disaster."

"The last time we cross-tested 682 and 053 there were two deaths and five injuries," One says.  "I think Dr. Salt can spare that many, if we decide to go forward with this."

"I agree with One here, I don't see much point in the DELTA/AGENT designation if not for situations like this."

"One of those casualties was to Fifty-Three's anomaly, yes, not Six-Eight-Two?  Her backlash effect, when someone triggered an emergency acid hose and hit her with it.  If that effect hits Salt I'm concerned it would spread through all his iterations."

"I would expect the interdiction effect to protect Dr. Salt's duplicates in that case."

Eleven inclines her head.  "You're the expert."

"Well, I've been interested in 53's pacification effect on 682 for a long time, I think it's been under-studied."

"I agree, there's potential there."

"Certainly, but do we want 053 itself in charge of the project?"

"It's past time we start taking more chances on sympathetic anomalies, in my opinion."

"Well, your opinion."

"Civility, please, Overseer Six, thank you."

He looks away from her and shakes his head a little.

"I'd be more than willing to take a chance on an anomalous researcher, my concern is that she's a graduate student."

"As student proposals to study 682 go it strikes me as measured and prudent."

"I think a measured and prudent graduate student wouldn't ask to cross test with 682 in the first place."

"I see the argument," Four says.  "But frankly I was more impressed with her proposal than some of the cross test proposals we've approved recently."

"Mm, concurred."

"Huxtable was willing to sign off on this, I think that says a lot."

"Does Seven have comments, or shall we vote?"

NO COMMENT.

(Seven does not actually attend Overseer meetings in person; they only communicate with the world outside their safe house by Morse code.)

"Very well then.  In the vote to approve Charlotte Fiftythree's graduate thesis proposal to psychologically profile SCP-682, using her secondary anomaly to pacify it for the purpose of conducting interviews, Overseer One votes yea."

"Overseer Two votes yea."

"Overseer Three votes yea."

"Overseer Four votes yea."

"Overseer Five... mm, abstains."

"Overseer Six votes nay."

OVERSEER 7 ABSTAINS

"Overseer Eight votes nay."

"Overseer Nine votes yea."

"Overseer Ten votes nay."

"Overseer Eleven abstains."

"Overseer Twelve votes nay."

"Overseer Thirteen votes yea."

"Very well, with six yeas, four nays, and three abstentions, the project is approved."

She bounces a little on her toes when she hears the news.

"Congratulations!"

"Thank you!  And thank you for your help - I'm so excited to really be working on this, with you advising me - "

"I can't think of a project I'd rather be advising right now."

She takes the day to celebrate, and then she gets to work.  She requisitions documents.  The Special Containment Procedures briefing for SCP-682, its interview logs, the incident reports of its containment breaches, and the lengthy list of termination attempts and cross-tests.  She gets access to lots of these, but not everything - there's quite a few things she's still not allowed to know about, even after O5-1's great declassification, that they tried to kill 682 with.

One of the documents she does get her hands on, in full, is her own termination test record.

Item: SCP-053

Tissue Test Record: N/A, bypass authorized by O5 Command

Termination Test Record: SCP-053 introduced to SCP-682 testing foyer.  SCP-682 introduced to testing foyer.  SCP-682 appears initially hostile but quickly becomes still and closes its mouth.  Both items watch each other.  SCP-053 appears afraid, and stays close to the opposite wall of the testing foyer.  SCP-682 begins slowly approaching SCP-053, appearing non-hostile and curious.  SCP-053 approaches SCP-682.  SCP-682 makes physical contact; SCP-053 falls over but no longer appears afraid.  SCP-682 vocalizes, lays down, and becomes dormant.  SCP-053 lays down against SCP-682's forward carapace, retrieves a set of crayons it had hidden in its uniform, and begins to make drawings on SCP-682's snout.  SCP-682 remains apparently docile for the remainder of the test.

Staff entering at the end of the test phase are immediately attacked by SCP-682, resulting in two deaths and five injuries. SCP-682 contained and moved to separate containment unit. SCP-053 observed crying for several minutes after SCP-682 is removed.

She isn't sure why reading it causes a lump to rise in her throat.

Well.  She's got work to do about it.

Most of 682's documentation focuses on its physical capabilities, strength and reflexes and regeneration and shapeshifting.  Psychological assessment is sparse and, in Charlotte's opinion, positively backward.

"Is there a technical meaning to the term rage state that I haven't heard about?"

"Oh good Lord.  That was before even my time... I don't think the original 5031 documentation even talked about rage states.  Rage state is a term of art from when the Foundation considered all sentient or animate anomalies to be bad imitations of living things.  So for example there'd be a statue of a cat that would be animate sometimes, so it'd have an "animate state" and an "inanimate state."  Then they figured out it was friendly to people who were nice to it and didn't like people who were mean to it, so they said it had a "docile state" and a "rage state" that were triggered by the presence of different researchers.  And there were some objects that were like that, that could move and interact but only in simple sort of pre-programmed ways, and sometimes the term got used for them if there was something that would make them behave violently.  But for the most part it's just the Foundation's particularly dehumanizing gloss on people or beings lashing out or defending themselves."

"Charming."  She sucks her teeth.

She collects the information she can.  They won't tell her where they found the thing, or how it learned to speak English, but she can read through the first interview logs.  They ask why it killed "those farmers," it says they were "disgusting."  She starts a text document just listing all of 682's favorite epithets for humans.  "Foul bags of tissue", "sack of organs", "meat", "wet salt", et cetera.

...They could get it to talk at first.  It sits and answers questions, with a researcher and a D-class right there, and it only kills the D-class when they move in closer with the microphone.  But the common wisdom, borne out by later tests, is that 682 immediately kills any human being in the room with it.  Did something change?

Well, they tried to kill it a bunch.  It was hostile to humans before then, but - well, in a human being, "murderer willing to be interviewed about their murders" and "beyond reason, kills any other human they see" would be a pretty big jump.  And that's the whole point - they're not parsing 682's mindset and motivations in detail because it's just an animal to them.

And then there's the issue of the acid.  682 gets exposed to lots of stuff that sounds a lot scarier, to her, than hydrochloric acid, in some of these termination tests.  They put it in 536, change the laws of physics to turn it into - stuff she doesn't even understand, what the hell is neutron degenerate matter - and it comes out the other side hale and hearty.

I could swear, at one point, that thing looked like it was actually enjoying the experience.

She would not expect something that can be dissolved down to the bone by ordinary non-anomalous acid to survive an experience like that.

One day, after a particularly fruitless week of banging her head against the wall, she absently clicks open a file folder she hasn't paid much attention to yet: the archive of video footage of 682's escape attempts.  She opens one at random.

It roars and bellows almost constantly.  It rams through walls and seems to almost scramble around corners.  It sometimes keeps attacking humans after they stop moving, mashing them into unrecognizable smears - 

(She stops, turns her head away from the screen, shuts her eyes.  Rubs her face.)

She grits her teeth and keeps watching.

Someone manages to climb onto it for some reason - it looks like they might be holding a grenade.  It bellows louder, squirms to swat the soldier off its back, and claws at them once they're on the ground and screeches and screeches.  The grenade goes off and it startles and bolts away, straight into two more Nu-7 troopers who've been shooting it the whole time, and screeches again as it swats them into the wall.

Her first thought had been that it knew the soldier that climbed onto it was holding the grenade.  But it was startled by the grenade, it looks like.

She has never been all that bothered by bugs, but she has seen TV shows where characters are terrified of spiders and cockroaches.  When 682 says humans are disgusting, exactly what state of mind is it trying to convey?

Maybe not the hatred that a human has for another human.  She finds herself wondering whether it might be afraid.

She puts together a preliminary report, as much for her own reference as it is for submitting to anyone.  She notes down some questions to ask.  And then - it's time.

They evacuate a pathway from her suite to the exit, for her.  It feels strange.  She was moved to her current suite at once she was old enough to cook for herself and do her own laundry, and ever since then she's never left those five rooms.  Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, office.  It's a very nice suite, and she's grown very comfortable in it over the years, but - it feels like finally shaking off a cloak of dust and cobwebs, to be outside of it.

The pathway leads to the Site-19 airport, where there's a jet waiting for her.  It's big enough that she can sit in the back and her pilot will be out of range of the anomaly.  She's been given instructions and a phone; she gets on board the plane and sends a message to the pilot confirming that she's secure.

She spends the flight poring over her notes, fidgeting with her pen, worrying her lip.

Apart from wanting her first interview to go well, she's feeling things about talking to the giant doggy again, for the first time in twenty-two years.

They land.

She takes a hazardous-materials service elevator down into 682's testing foyer.

The room is vividly familiar.

A voice over the intercom:

"Allllll right Charlotte, can you hear me?"

"Yes I can.  Can you hear me?"

"Yes I can!  I'm Dr. Leonard Salt, I'll be your D-Class for today.  I'm told you've heard all about me, but just to recap, there's one of me here in the control chamber, I'll be letting the lizard in to talk to you and I'll be controlling the emergency acid hoses in case things go pear shaped, and there's another twenty of me outside the testing foyer with the very big guns in case things go really pear shaped.  If something does go wrong you are not allowed to worry about my safety, understand?  I've got plenty of spares, that's what I'm here for.  You just get yourself to safety."

"I understand."

"All righty.  Other than that young lady you're in charge, this is your project and we the Doctors Salt are at your beck and call.  I'm ready to let the lizard in on your signal."

"I'm ready.  Do it."

The blast doors sealing the testing foyer from the containment chamber open.  The tank is full of liquid, black and violently bubbling, and it drains away, slowly -

And its flesh starts coming back.  Off-grey and red and violet organs inflate into place inside its ribcage.  Muscles stretch over its bones and fatten and tone themselves.  Skin pebbles into being, and even with nothing to burn it away it ripples, slowly, changing from green-grey pebbly alligator-scales to thick shaggy black fur to bony plates.

It gets to its feet, for the first time in a long time.  Joints crack.  It rumbles from deep in its chest.

It ambles toward her.

She finds she is not in the least afraid.

"Hey," she says, quietly.

"Hello."

"Do you remember me?"

"I remember...."

"This."

"How do you feel?"

"Calm."

"That's good."

"Do you have a name?"

"You gave me a number."

"Did you have a name before that?"

"Before I became trapped in this place I did not need a name."

"Is there something you'd like me to call you other than your number?"

"I do not care."

"All right."

"My name is Charlotte."

"Come closer."

She does, slowly.

Its whole body shudders, violently, as though in relief.

"Are you doing that?"

"I think so.  It's something I do without meaning to."

It settles down onto the ground and exhales, heavily, for a long moment.

She sits down next to it and puts a hand on its snout.

It breathes, quietly, slowly.

Quietly, toward the ceiling: "Hey - don't say anything, I don't want to spook it - I'm gonna stay here and let it rest for a while."

She can hear a click and a half-second of dead air over the speaker before the connection closes again.

She grins at the ceiling and flashes a thumbs-up.

Click.

It doesn't snore, but it sleeps, and it breathes a steady quiet rumble in its sleep.

She's got time.

Eventually it wakes back up.

"Hey.  How do you feel?"

"Your touch and your presence makes the disgusting things about this place less revulsive."

"That's good."

...if she were talking to a person, a human...

"Do you know where you are?"

"I am trapped in a prison inside an abscess of meat and geometry."

...well he's not wrong about the prison part?

"Do you understand why the Foundation brought you here?"

"That is the name of your meat-hive?  They are afraid of me."

"Yes.  They're afraid of you because when they found you you were killing people."

"They were disgusting.  Everything in this place is disgusting."

"Were they less disgusting after you killed them?"

"...they did not pulse and throb so much, and they could not move toward me."

"And that made you feel safer," she says gently.

It thinks about this.

"Does it sound right to say that - when you see disgusting things, it hurts or its unpleasant to think they might move toward you and touch you?"

"...yes.  But even if they don't they are still disgusting."

"Can you tell me what's disgusting about them?"

"Wet.  Warm.  Many soft parts rubbing and pulsating against each other.  Liquid gushing through them."

"Being near me makes those things less disgusting?"

"I don't know."

"...Do you not know how you feel, or do you not know how to say it in words?"

"The second."

"I think.  I can see all the disgusting things.  And I still know why they are disgusting.  But I care much much less."

"Is that a good thing?"

"I think so."

"Okay."

"I'll stay as long as I can, all right?"

"...good."

It sounds like things being good is a new sensation and it isn't sure what to do about it.

"Sometimes when someone does something for someone else that the someone else likes, the someone else says thank you, and the first someone says you're welcome.  It's a way of - putting the feelings they both feel into the space between them, which can help."

"I will try it."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

( - she didn't need a bachelor's degree to do this - she could've done this for it any time in the past twenty years, if they'd let her - )

It rumbles contentedly.

She pulls herself together.  She can cry later.

"The Foundation keeps you in a tank of - liquid," she says.  "Can you tell me how that feels?"

"Hurts," it says.  "But it cannot destroy me and I am less disgusting when I am inside of it.  And hurting is something other than being afraid."

"Your own body feels disgusting to you too?" she asks softly.

"It is also meat."

"Were you ever - something you didn't think was disgusting?"

"I do not know.  I think so.  If I was something else I did not need to think or move or know or feel anything, though, so it is hard to tell the difference between remembering it and imagining nonexistence."

She doesn't think it would be - appropriate - to ask it if it would prefer nonexistence.  Not until they know each other a lot better.

"If - I don't know if it's possible, I'm just asking to try to understand you better.  But if it were possible to go back to that, if you knew it was a real memory, would you want to?"

"It may have been less horrible.  But I think I am more than I was then, so going back would be destroying much of myself, and I do not want to be destroyed even if the parts of me that would be destroyed are very horrible."

"Okay."  Pet pet.

"...The way I asked you if you'd want to go back, if you could, but I didn't know it was possible to go back.  I'd like to ask you some more questions like that, hypothetical questions.  I don't want to mislead you into thinking I can promise you any of the scenarios I describe, I just want to know how you'd feel about them if they were possible.  Okay?"

"I understand."

"If you always felt like this, would you want to kill humans?"

"I might if they tried to destroy me or hurt me."

"What if they didn't?"

"...It is very hard to imagine what I would do in this place if it were not revulsive."

Pat pat.

"This is still hypothetical, I can't make you this deal, but - if I stayed here in this room with you forever, so existing like you are didn't hurt so much, and if other people stopped trying to hurt you, would you be willing to stay in this room with me and not try to escape or hurt anyone?"

"...682?"

"Thinking."

"Okay.  Sorry.  Take your time."

"Do not know.  If my memories of being something else before this are real, the thing I was would have been willing.  There is more to me now.  I do not know."

"When you try to escape, what are you hoping will happen if you succeed?"

"That I will be out of this prison, away from disgusting things that might try to destroy me at any moment, and that I can look for the least disgusting part of this place I can find."

"Can you tell me what exactly you mean by this place?"

"This place full of meat in which everything is geometrical."

So, the universe?

"In the memories you're not sure you have of being something before this, there was no meat and things weren't geometrical?"

"Think so.  There was no meat.  Geometry is not as disgusting as meat but it enables many of the disgusting things about meat, and if I really was something before I was this I was something that did not need to think about geometry."

"I see."

"Another hypothetical.  ...Sometimes humans find things disgusting and frightening, in what might be a similar way to how you find things in this universe disgusting and frightening.  Usually bugs - very small animals that are a very different kind of animal than us.  Sometimes those humans... feel that disgust and fear but don't want to feel it.  Does that make sense?"

"...Maybe."

"It's sort of like they wish they could feel about disgusting things the way you feel about them when I'm around, instead of the way you feel when I'm not."

"...That makes sense.  What is the hypothetical?"

"I'm coming to it.  The thing is, these humans don't have people like me - I guess in the analogy it'd be a magic bug that could talk to them, that made them less afraid of other bugs.  So they get other humans to help them, by... letting them interact with the bugs they're afraid of, in a place where they feel safe.  First they just look at a bug in a tank, then they look at the bug in an open tank, and they gradually work their way up to touching it and letting it crawl on them.  And if they do it slowly, and they have people they trust giving them emotional support, they can feel less and less disgusted and afraid of bugs, and eventually when they see a bug in their house they don't have to feel disgusted or afraid of it at all.  Does that make sense?"

"Think so."

"So here's the hypothetical.  If you could do something like that - there's not another creature like you that we know of out there, but if I could help you go through that process yourself with humans and other things about the universe - and it would be hard and scary but at the end of it you wouldn't have to feel disgusted by the things about this universe all the time - would you want that?"

"Hard to imagine disgusting things not being disgusting.  But I like it when you are near me.  If this would make it feel like you were near me even when you were not... I think that would be good."

She can't help smiling a little.

"What do you think you'd do if I went away and left you in this room?"

"I can hear and feel humans inside the walls of this prison.  I would want to get away from them."

"I'm sorry it's hard for you to be here."

"Part of the reason I can't promise you any of these things - there are a lot of reasons, but this is one of them - is because I have to make sure all the humans in this place are safe.  I know they hurt you to be around, but they don't want to be destroyed just like you don't want to be destroyed, and just like I wouldn't want to be destroyed.  And just like you wouldn't like it if I were destroyed, and vice versa, humans don't like it when other humans they like are destroyed."

It rumbles quietly in acknowledgment.

"Part of the Foundation's job is to keep people and things that are likely to destroy humans away from the people they're likely to destroy.  Right now I'm working with the Foundation, but I'm also one of the people they're containing.  The same effect that makes you more comfortable around me has the opposite effect on other humans - it makes them afraid of me, and makes them want to hurt me.  But another effect I have makes anything they do to me happen to them, and it heals on me instantly, so they just wind up hurting themselves.  Even though I don't want to hurt anyone, I have to stay away from other humans, so the Foundation keeps me in a special building where I can live on my own, and talk to other people with technology so I don't have to be near them, and I don't wind up hurting anyone."

"But they will not do things like this for me.  Why do they fear me more than you?"

"It's easier for them to see that I don't them any harm.  I don't attack people myself, and when they figured out ways of talking to me that didn't let me affect them, they saw that I behaved just like an ordinary human.  Right now all the Foundation knows about you is that you hate humans, and think they're disgusting, and want to kill them.  Every time you've had a chance to kill them, you've taken it.  So they think if they ever gave you another chance, you'd just kill more of them."

"Part of what I'm doing by asking you all these hypothetical questions is trying to figure out why you think humans are disgusting, and whether there are any circumstances in which you wouldn't find them disgusting, or in which you wouldn't want to kill them.  If there are, and if we can bring them about, I can try to convince the other humans in the Foundation to work on putting you in those situations, instead of just trapping you in an acid bath and herding you back into it whenever you try to escape."

"...You cannot promise the hypotheticals because you need to convince other humans to allow them," it says, "but once you convince them you can implement them?"

"Not exactly," she says.  "The hypotheticals are a tool for learning about you, so I can explain how you think and feel to the Foundation.  But I hope that once I can explain you well enough, you and I and they can work out some way that you can live comfortably, and they can be sure you won't hurt anyone, and you can be sure that no one will hurt you.  Not all of the hypotheticals are possible even if the Foundation agreed to them.  But if you and I and the Foundation all work together we might be able to work out something like them for you."

Rumble.

"...You will not stay here until that happens."

"...No.  I'm sorry.  I'm - not a prisoner to the same extent that you are, but I'm still beholden to the Foundation.  They won't let me."

"The Foundation threatens you and tries to control you.  But you still cooperate with them."

"Yeah."

"I do not understand."

"...If I hadn't, I wouldn't be able to visit you at all.  The world is so big and so complicated, and it's hard for any one human to - reject any allies who are doing anything wrong, and still be in a position to fix any big problems.  If I refused to work with the Foundation at all they'd still keep me prisoner.  If I show them I'm willing to - meet them halfway - I can make things inside the Foundation a little better, from time to time, and I can try to convince other people inside the Foundation to do the same, and they won't write me off the way they would if I were someone who refused to work with them at all."

It considers this, rumblingly.

After it's been quite for a while:

"Humans always have someone controlling them and threatening them, in a way.  There are at least seven billion of us on Earth, did you know that?  And Earth is a big place but seven billion is a lot of people.  And we're not always that good at working together and not hurting each other.  So we put some humans in charge of the other humans, and they work together to decide what the rules are, or more like argue about what the rules should be sometimes, and they argue about how to enforce them.  And they hire some other people to enforce the rules, to figure out when people are breaking them and decide how they should be punished.  And the system doesn't always work very well, for humans, because we don't all agree on what the rules should be, and because some humans are just abusing the system to give themselves the power to do whatever they want and hurt the people they don't like - and I think a lot of people sort of do something like that without meaning to, when they decide what they think the rules should be.  But most people agree that having some rules, and having a system for fixing the bad rules and adding new ones that isn't just deciding to ignore the rules you don't like and make up your own, is better than having no rules at all."

"...It's kind of more complicated than that, especially how we got that way.  But that's my view on how it works now - that's why I think a lot of humans would agree to things that sound like being controlled and threatened."

"Mmm."

"Do humans decide to go into acid baths for this reason."

"...Not really."

"Humans sometimes put - other humans who are dangerous - into prisons, as a way of making sure they can't hurt other humans too much.  But human prisons aren't usually - the acid bath would be worse for a human than for you, it'd just kill them, but human prisons aren't for them what the acid bath is for you, just a human locked in a room in constant pain with nothing to distract them."

"You have given me new things to think about while I am in the acid bath.  But I do not know if they will become disgusting once I leave your presence."

"Even if they don't a human wouldn't consider that to be anywhere near enough.  I'm sorry.  I came into this imagining I was going to help you and - I just put off thinking at all about the fact that until I got them to change your containment procedures I'd have to send you back there after each interview.  It was stupid and thoughtless of me and I'm sorry."

"...How long has it been since the last time you were here."

"About twenty-two years."

"Will it be that long again before the next time I see you."

" - no!  No, god, I'm sorry - it'll be a few days, a week at most - a day is, there are 365 in a year, and a week is seven days -  "

" - you know what, this is ridiculous."  To the ceiling: "Dr. Salt, can you get in touch with the HCML for SCP-682 - actually can you just put me right through to her?"

"Sure thing," he says, and after a few moments -

"Researcher Fiftythree?  This is Roshanak Hijazi.  Is everything all right?"

She takes a deep breath to dispel some anxiety, and says, "Hi, Dr. Hijazi.  There's no emergency but we need to talk.  I've been speaking with 682 for the past hour or so and what I've been finding is that with my secondary anomaly calming down he's actually very easy to talk to."

"What is happening?"

"Sorry, 682 - I'm talking to Roshanak Hijazi, she works for the Foundation, she's in charge of - figuring out how to keep humans safe from you."

Rumbled acknowledgment.

"Anyway - Doctor, I understand completely why 682's comfort hasn't been a priority in the past.  But I've made an extraordinary amount of progress just in the course of this conversation, just by asking him about his perspective and providing him with ours in a situation he feels safe and comfortable in.  My secondary anomaly seems to cancel out a kind of - phobia or sensory sensitivity he has, toward living organisms and I think to some extent existing within three-dimensional space, and when that's not weighing on him I've found him conversational and even reasonable, given what he's told me of his life history.  I'm not claiming it would be practical to relax security, he can't promise to be safe around humans without me around right now and I realize it wouldn't be realistic to retool containment for him and for me simultaneously over the course of one conversation.  But what I'm hoping is that there are some very minor tweaks you can make today on your own recognizance, that would make his containment more tolerable without compromising security, in a way that - serves as a show of good faith such that I can keep making progress with him in future conversations."

"My understanding had been that this interview was just for the purpose of forming a profile on it."

"That was and is my intention, Doctor, and my assessment so far, even without putting together a formal draft, is that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit here.  To be clear, I'm talking about things like turning down the lights in his containment chamber at night, outside the acid tank, just to make him more oriented to time."

"You think something like that will rate, with it, next to acid immersion?"

"682, if your containment were the same as it was before I got here, but you could tell how many days had passed, would that be better?"

It rumbles.

Sharply: "SCP-682?"

"Give him a minute."

"In this hypothetical, you are returning again to speak to me in a week?"

"Yes."

Rumble.  "It would be good to know how much longer I had to wait for you."

She smiles up at a camera, trying to keep the smugness out of it.

"...I will want to review the footage of your conversation so far, first, at the very least."

"That makes sense.  He spent the first half of the allotted time just sleeping, so I think you have time to get through everything we've talked about so far.  Would you be comfortable doing that now, while I talk to him about minor changes like that that would make him more comfortable, and afterwards we could discuss what you'd be willing to implement summarily on your own recognizance?  - he understands that just because I suggest something isn't guaranteeing that you'll do it, you'll see we covered that in the footage too."

"I will review the footage, and I will discuss with you the possibility of expediting some minor same-day containment adjustments, but I won't do so over the intercom and I won't do so while SCP-682 is outside of secure and stable containment.  We need to talk this over privately, Researcher Fiftythree.  If making it more comfortable advantages us, then carrying out your primary directive of profiling it will make that clear.  Understand?"

"Yes, Dr. Hijazi."

"All right.  We'll speak soon."

"All right, she's off the line."

She sighs heavily and slumps a little against 682's face.

"I think I would like to say thank you again."

It would probably be a bad idea to say what she is thinking right now, which is one way or another I am getting you out of that acid bath.  She is pretty sure that one of the things HMCL Hijazi is worried about is the possibility that 682 feels he's being promised things, and will become angry and unstable if he doesn't get them, and - she does not actually want to promise 682 things, right now, and certainly doesn't want to have to tell Hijazi that she has.

But she is getting 682 out of that acid bath.  Sooner or fucking later.

"You're welcome," she says instead.  "Even though it - "

" - I'm sorry you won't know if I've managed to make anything better for you before I have to leave and send you back there.  I'm really sorry."

"I have already been given a great deal more than I would have been able to hope for, before they let me out today.  You are coming back, and I will have to wait for much less time."

Pat pat.

"...You called me him."

" - oh, god, I didn't even notice."  That probably didn't help her image with Hijazi.

"...I do not completely understand pronouns."

"...It's weird that you understand English at all actually."

"I do not remember being unable to communicate."

"Hmm.  Humans refer to each other as he or she depending on gender, and refer to objects and animals and - other things that aren't people - as it.  For a long time the Foundation referred to everything and everyone they contained as it.  That's softened up recently for humans and humanoids like me, but not always for creatures that can talk but aren't shaped like humans."

Rumble.  Low and quiet in the back of its throat, like it does when it's trying to put a complicated thought together.

"It is better for you to be called she than it," it says.

"Yeah.  It - shows that the Foundation takes me seriously as - the kind of being it owes things to, and as a human being.  They didn't use to think humanoid anomalies or humans with anomalous abilities were really humans, they thought we were - pretending."

"You called me he because it seemed to you better for me to be a he than an it."

"Sort of, yeah.  It was something I did without meaning to because - when we talked I started to feel about you the way I'd feel about another human I was getting to know."

Rumble.

"I think that is a good thing that you feel that way but I think I am an it and not a he.  I do not like being meat and being male or female seems like a meat thing.  It does not hurt me right now because you are near me but it is disgusting."

"...It is disgusting to me," it amends, thoughtfully.

"Okay.  I'm sorry.  You could also be a they instead of a he or she if you wanted.  They usually is the plural of he or she but sometimes it's used as a singular if you don't want to specify a gender for whatever reason."

(She thinks, suddenly, of telling Charlotte Eschenheimer that she wanted to keep her number in addition to picking an ordinary name.)

"But it's also okay if you want to be an it."

"...Maybe I can consider this while I am in the acid bath.  It would be something to think about that is not being disgusting or hurting."

"I'm glad I can give you other things to think about.  I wish I could give you more."

Peaceful rumble.

Pat pat.

"I would like to talk some more about whether there's anything we could do to make the acid bath more comfortable.  I know it's kind of... ludicrous to say something like that, when the thing I'm trying to make more comfortable is drowning you in acid for days on end, and when I can't do anything about that part of it.  But if you think being able to tell time would help, I can talk to Dr. Hijazi about that, and if there are other things like that I want us to figure out what they are."

"Turning the lights off at night was not a hypothetical but also might not happen?  And the same is true for the next things we discuss."

"Right.  I still can't promise these things but they're - ideas I can take to Dr. Hijazi that she might or might not approve of, rather than just what I might try for you if I could do anything."

"I understand."

"Can you tell me more about - what the worst parts of being in the acid bath are, for you?  I know that it hurts, and I know that when I'm not around everything is disgusting, and I can't do much about those things."

"Hurting is not so bad.  The hurting means that many of the disgusting parts of me are being torn away.  Occasionally it feels satisfying. But much of the time it is just pain and nothing more."

"Talking to you has been..."

"There are many new thoughts and ideas in my head now.  Some of them might not be very unpleasant once you leave.  In the acid bath I quickly ran out of things to think about, and everything was the same for so long that - "

" - it is hard to explain.  But it was very bad, sometimes worse than the pain."

"Sometimes if humans are stuck in a place for a long time with no - new or interesting things - it hurts them too.  Being able to tell time helps a little.  ...A day is twenty-four hours, and we've been talking for about an hour."

Rumble.  "And in seven days we will see each other again."

"Yes."

"...Do you think you'd like music?  Can you hear things outside the acid bath, in your chamber?"

"What exactly is music."

Oh.

She sits up straight, breathes in and out trying to feel her diaphragm, and starts humming the chorus to Starman.

It cocks its head to the side, slowly.

...all the children boogie.

She looks at it.

"It is pleasant when you do it but it may simply be that it is a thing you are doing.  It is a meat-noise, and when you are not near me I do not like those."

"There's instrumental music too.  ...Music that humans make using - special tools, that make sounds we think are pretty.  ...Hey Dr. Salt, you couldn't play something over the intercom, could you?"

"Not on short notice, it's not really set up for that.  Sorry."

"On long notice?"

"Within a day or two?  Sure, if Hijazi gave the go-ahead."

"Mm."  To 682: "Are there any sounds you do like?"

Rumble.  "I like the sounds metal makes when you rip it apart and scrape it and bang on it."

"It's not something humans usually listen to for fun, but I think it'd be pretty easy to find a library of tearing and creaking metal sound effects for you."

"The alarms are also nice."

"We use the alarms to warn people when there's an emergency, so it's really important that they never go off when there isn't an emergency," Charlotte says apologetically.

"You could switch to new alarms."

"It would be a lot of work.  People would have to design new alarms, and then everyone in the facility would have to be trained to recognize the new alarms instead of the old ones, and there's a risk it would confuse people which would compromise security.  I had to promise Dr. Hijazi we wouldn't compromise security on you, since she hasn't talked to me enough, and I haven't talked to you enough, for her to trust me about trusting you."

"Mmm."  Disappointed.  "The tearing metal noises would also be good if you can make her agree."

...She will save disentangling that phrasing for a future conversation.  "All right.  So we have turning off the lights at night, and tearing-metal ambience for you... I wonder if it would help you to be able to actually tell time.  Do you know anything about how humans keep track of time?"

"No."

"We divide days up into twenty-four hours, and we number the hours - in a kind of weird way.  The start of a new day is the middle of the night, about halfway between sunset and sunrise, and that hour is numbered twelve.  The first hour after that is numbered one, then two, then three, gradually up to twelve again, and the second twelve is the middle of the day.  Then the first hour after the middle of the day is another one, then another two, and so on again.  The hours from midnight to eleven in the morning are called A.M. and the other hours are called P.M.  I don't know why we do it that way."