Abdul Muhaimin -- Week 13-- [Classified for B-Class and above]
One book that I really want to read is "There is no Antimemetics Division" by qtnm. This novel was the brainchild of the SCP Foundation ; for all of my enlightened readers, the SCP Foundation is a hypothetical organization that helps catalog monsters and hellspawns from their universe. Then they try to “contain” these monsters, which may or may not lead to an untimely amount of deaths. I have not really read the genre of horror, so I will enjoy the book, but the main problem is that this will be released to the wider public in November. The premise of the book spawned from the concept of Antimemes, which in the author’s words are “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.”
My favorite subsection would be a modified version of “Your Last First Day.” It begins with Marion Wheeler working on her first day at the Site-41 she is quite stressed and after a tough period of paperwork she finally survives till her lunch break. She tries to find an empty seat, when eventually she encounters a man in a dark cloak with an empty chair next to him. She decides to sit next to him introducing herself as “Hi, I’m Marion Wheeler, mind if I sit here ?”
He seems cheerful and they start to talk, he starts of with small question about her life “What school did you go to”
“Je suis allé(e) à l'Institut Beaulieu.” she answers
“That where I learned French”
Eventually his questions get larger and more personal, eventually he asks her “Hello, I am Alistor Gray, What's your name?” For some reason, she can’t think of her name as if it disappeared from her mind. He speaks up again “You knew 5 languages, now you only remember one, soon you will remember none.” She seems confused, she never knew any other languages, she grew – where did she grow up? She doesn’t remember. She gets up and she starts to run away, scared this must be being attacked by an SCP, she runs and runs, but he follows, she gets in an elevator, but he slowly walks closer to the doors, WHY AREN'T THEY CLOSING? She starts to throw stuff at him to stop him. She throws a knife, he doesn’t stop. She throws a book, he winces, the door closes.
Heart pounding, she grabs her phone to log the incident. The report is worth more than your life. No was it the other way around–The elevator slows. She tries to think, but her thoughts slip away.
She can’t remember anything.
The book hindered him. Too much information at once. She needs another. Where will she FIND A BOOK. She looks at her phone.
The elevator doors open.
He lunges at her.
she throws her phone.
It lands square on his chest, and--
Hi Abdul! I really like the suspense you built towards the end of this blog with short one-sentence paragraphs and the final sentence’s cutoff. I’ve heard of the SCP Foundation before (my friend from a few years ago was obsessed with it), but not the intriguing idea of an antimeme. The story you described about a woman’s encounter with an SCP entity really tied in with this quarter’s theme of memory and establishes just how important memory is. It’s scary to think how dangerous our lives would be if we forgot crucial information about ourselves or our priorities, like whether an SCP report or an individual’s life comes first.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that this is a work of fiction under the horror genre, which I found interesting. Horror is frequently used as not just entertainment but also a social critique. I think viewing the SCP foundation through this lens would raise a lot of great questions—for example, what would be Alistor’s societal parallel, as someone (or something) that can debilitate us by erasing a community’s collective memory?