Doctor Loanyard stared at Ian blankly for a second, his lips ever so slightly parted, showing his underbite. The glasses perched on his nose slid slowly downward. He said nothing.
"…uh…. Doctor?" Ian tried, tentative, concerned that this was some kind of intentional silence. The unwavering stare he was fixed with wasn't helping him to figure it out. With all this talk of memetic effects, Ian felt a lukewarm paranoia crawling around inside his chest. Had he hypnotised him? Was he having a stroke? Would he get in trouble if this guy died or a heart attack in front of him?
"…S-S-Say that again…" Loanyard slurred at last, not quiet crossing out the possibility that he was actively dying. Ian swallowed the sudden knot in his throat. Was that a memetic effect too?
"…..u-uhhh…. Doctor…?" He clumsily repeated, feeling that the situation had some strange severity, but that he was rather lagging behind it.
Said Doctor spluttered, face going red. His glasses slipped of his nose and he only barley caught them before they fell right off his face. "No no! Before that!" He barked hoarsely.
What had he said again? it felt like it had been months since he had last spoken.
"…it's….. a toaster?"
The Doctor lapsed back into silence. His eyes slid downward. He wouldn't look Ian in the eye, but instead stared somewhere around his chest, right through him, and possibly though the wall behind him too. Now Ian was starting to get extremely uncomfortable.
"…Sh-should I go…? … Sir?" He asked, pointing roughly over one shoulder with both thumbs. He was starting to think he'd rather take his chances at chatting with the guards outside…
The Doctor quickly pushed his glasses up his nose and cleared his throat. "No, no that won't be necessary…" He adjusted his glasses, straightened both himself and a random paper on his desk, then adjusted his glasses again. "Do you even realise what you've done?"
He fidgeted with a tag under the arm of his chair, then thought back over the conversation. Not just a toaster. "Oh. Oh, I see. I get it." He attempted to mask how surprised he was at himself with a vaguely intellectual raise of the eyebrows.
Doctor Loanyard mimic him in this regard, very sceptically. "Really. You do?" Ian frowned a little at the smugness in the man's monotone voice, but then his lips turned up slightly as a reply formed in his mind. He confidently cleared his throat. All this talking was making it a little dry.
"I said it's just a toaster, but of course I shouldn't be able to say it's a toaster, because saying that it's a toaster means I'm not fazed by its memetic effects. The memetic effect being that I shouldn't be able to say that it's a toaster without sounding like a…" Ian wanted to laugh out loud before finishing when the doctor's face dropped like a lead balloon and settled into a dark deep-set frown. "… Lunatic?" Ian couldn't push back down the tiniest grin that found its way onto his face. Once more the doctor was silent. This time Ian savoured it a little more.
Seemingly desperate to gain his face back, the Doctor responded. He sat up quickly and pulled some forms out of the pile to his left with well-practiced skill. He coughed to unconvincingly clear his throat. "Now, as I was saying earlier, before I was distracted, you will be performing a test involving me, SCP-426…" He stalled a moment, closing his eyes tightly, as if in the sudden throws of a headache. The cause of said headache, sat across from him, assumed it was so he didn't have to look at the smug look on his face. After a moment, he continued. "You will enter my containment, and attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct me. You will then use me for my normal function."
Ian nodded, trying not to laugh at the euphemistic effect SCP-426 was having on the stoic, proud man. "So, you want me to… take the toaster apart, put it back together again, and then use it… to make some toast?"
"Correct." The doctor handed him some of the paperwork he had pulled from the pile. "This paperwork needs to be signed before any testing can commence." Ian hadly had a moment to revel in the wonders of bureaucracy before he was handed a second folder of paperwork, and the doctor seemed rather bitter about handing it over. "and…" he let out a deep irritated and contemptuous sigh, which didn't seem aimed at Ian, for once. "Doctor Regent wants you to sign these."
Ian opened the file, pulled out the first page and looked at the title. Then he put it back into the file and closed it. Then he opened the file again, and once more read the title. He gave Loanyard a wide-eyed look, then he went back to staring at the paper. The title of the paper was 'Application For Doctoral Status And Level 3 Clearance: Site 19'.
His mouth opened and closed, rather like a fish. To his credit, Loanyard made no comment. His previously malcontentedly expression was now still as stone, and perfectly serious. "It appeared that doctor Regent has taken a liking to you, as if you were the titular wizard of your own book, and he was a rabid fan, waiting for the next instalment. He wishes to oversee the experiment personally. After it is complete, if you have done everything the doctor asks, then these accreditations will be cleared." Ian gapped for a few seconds more, then looked back to the doctor.
"When do I start!?"
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Oh look, a chapter. It is short yes, but it also exists on the internet now! thanks to everyone who commented for reminding me that this exists and actually... needs a conclusion. Cheers!
