SCP Tales, Episode 13 - "The Deadname Meme”
An SCP Tale by Queerious [CC BY-SA 3.0].
The voice of the Narrator and the Database was provided by Joshua Alan Lindsay.
The voice of Dr. Heather Garrison was provided by Demily Pyro.
The voice of Dr. Lillian Lillihammer was provided by Circe Jagd.
The voice of Tad Trainor was provided by Martin Taylor.
The voice of Dr. Swallows was provided by Lee Daniel.
The voice of Dr. Harry Blank was provided by Breck Wilhite.
CONTENT WARNING: Sexual references, mentions of gender dysphoria & deadnaming. (No actual deadnaming takes place.)
To: Dr. Heather Garrison
From: Tad Trainor
Subject: Welcome to Site-43!
Hello Dr. Heather Garrison,
This email is to inform you of your transfer, effective immediately, to the Memetics and Countermemetics section at Site-43. You were chosen via random lottery for staff reassignment, to build stronger ties between sites. Site-43 is a beautiful underground facility in Canada, and is sure to be a welcome change.
Transport will be arranged within the next 24 hours. Please use this time to collect any personal belongings, and get ready for a wonderful career change!
Safe travels!
Tad Trainor,
Human Resources
.
To: Tad Trainor
From: Dr. Heather Garrison
Subject: Re:Welcome to Site-43!
Tad,
We've never met and we probably never will. So I don't feel bad about saying this next part; am I to understand that I am being transferred to fucking Canada, and into a completely different department? I was in research, why not just move me to their research department? Don't I get a say in this? Also, what the fuck is a section?
And seriously? Canada?
Dr. Heather Garrison,
Researcher
.
To: Tad Trainor
From: Dr. Heather Garrison
Subject: Re:Re:Welcome to Site-43!
Tad,
Please excuse the former email, I am still adjusting to a new dosage of hormones. The transfer is welcomed, and I am looking forward to new challenges.
Dr. Heather Garrison,
Researcher
.
Heather sighed as she zipped her coat up tighter. She hated the cold——she was cold all the time now, thanks to her unpredictable body chemistry. Canada only made it worse.
"Hey! You must be the new transfer! Welcome to Site-43!" A short man in an ill-fitting lab coat called out, waving her over. "I'm Dr. Swallows, Research and Experimentation, and I've been assigned as your orientation buddy!"
Heather looked down at Dr. Swallows——he was already short, and it didn't help that at 6'2", she towered over him even more. "Thanks. Glad to be here." Heather was terse, failing to hide any of her negative emotions, but Dr. Swallows seemed not to notice.
"So I hear you're going to be in Memetics and Countermemetics! Exciting! Have you done a lot of work in that field then?" He was sincere. Honestly, she felt bad being around him, worried that she'd make him less endlessly optimistic. Ah well.
"Nope."
"Nope?"
"Yep. Haven't really done much work in memetics, I mainly helped out around the lab with experiments for Senior Researchers. Grunt work."
"Huh. Well I'm sure you'll make quick work of it!" Dr. Swallows began to walk down a corridor, having forgotten to tell Heather to follow him. For a second, she thought about not following him, ditching him instead and figuring this out on her own. Her legs were moving before she could stop them, though, and she quickly caught up with the short doctor.
At least he's not that boring. Yet. Heather always found a way to regret her thoughts.
Heather stood in line in the cafeteria, mentally beating herself up. Why did I have to tempt fate? She had just gone through what felt like the most excruciating day of her life, being dragged all over Site-43 by Dr. Swallows, spending the entire time trying not to make a joke about either his height or his name.
She had succeeded in holding her tongue, but not by much. Thankfully, she had slipped away at the end of his tour, and managed to find her way to the cafeteria. Staring down a slab of what she assumed was meatloaf, and a slightly wilted salad, Heather was reminded of one of her least favorite parts of being at a new site, or anywhere really; figuring out what the lunch table rules were.
Sure, it wasn't any different than high school, but then again, that didn't really help her much. High school and her did not get along——her experience with finding a lunch table was 'sit down and hope nobody comes over to harass you.' It was a good technique, Heather thought.
She found an empty table in a quiet corner of the room, took a seat and started to eat her… slab. As she ate, her eyes wandered the large hall until they settled on something interesting. A couple tables in front of her, a tall woman sat. But Heather barely noticed the woman——she was immediately distracted by her coat.
There were patterns, shapes and symbols all across the coat, crisscrossing and overlapping. Her head started to hurt for a second, so she focused onto the shapes harder. They began to separate in her mind——she started seeing the different patterns, overlaid on each other. There was a flow and rhythm to them, and Heather quickly got lost in breaking them apart and seeing them independently.
She got so lost, in fact, that she didn't notice that the coat's wearer was now standing on the other side of her table.
"What the fuck are you looking at?"
That's when Heather finally noticed the person attached to her object of obsession——a tall, slender woman, with long white hair falling effortlessly around her face. She was pretty. Shit, Heather thought. She didn't want to fall for somebody already. Right. She asked me a question.
"Umm, sorry, I was just looking——"
"Well take a good fucking look, because this is the most you'll ever see. I'm way out of your league."
Oh fuck. Heather realized who she had been staring at; she'd heard about her on SCiPNET before being transferred, and Dr. Swallows wouldn't stop talking about how much he was terrified of her. This was her new boss. Dr. Lillian Lillihammer, living legend and memetics whiz.
"Sorry, I was looking at your coat." Heather, this is your boss. You should probably smooth this over. Heather stood up abruptly, and stuck her hand out to the other woman. "I was just transferred to the site, I'm the new member for the Memetics and Countermemetics section."
There was a moment of silence as both women, towering over everybody else in the room, looked at each other with shared recognition and understanding. For a second, Heather thought that she just might make it through this encounter without any casualties. That was until——
"I didn't hire a new researcher. Find another section to work in." Dr. Lillihammer began to walk away, until a second newcomer stopped her.
"Lil, play nice. She probably didn't want to be transferred here anyways. Now be a good section chair and introduce yourself to your new employee." Lillian's sigh echoed through the cafeteria; it seemed like everybody else had stopped their conversations and were staring, waiting for what would happen next.
"Do I have tooooo?" Lillian whined in a mock-childish voice——the man just stared back at her with a look that said he was used to her.
"Fine." Lillian took a deep breath in, centered herself, and then turned back around to face Heather. "Hello new employee, my name is Dr. Lillian Lillihammer, resident badass, local goddess and chair of Memetics and Countermemetics at Site-43. Who are you and why should I care?"
Heather was used to being condescended to, but most of it came from old, cis, white men. Heather ignored it and tried her best to turn this around without her losing her job.
"Hi! I'm Heather Garrison, I was at site——"
"Oh, I know you! You're the girl who made the deadname meme."
She hated when people called it that.
"Yeah, that was me."
There was a second where Heather thought that Dr. Lillihammer was about to tear apart her research and prove her wrong——but it never came.
"Oh. In that case, you can stay for a bit. I'll see you in my office tomorrow, at 11am. I want to talk to you about how you made that deadname meme."
Dr. Lillihammer started to walk past her, but stopped directly in front of her. Inches apart, they stared at each other. Sizing the other woman up, doing a little consulting of their gaydars. Heather felt Lillian's breath on her cheek and tried not to visibly let the shiver go down her spine.
"I don't like this," Lillian said, continuing to stare her down. "I'm normally taller than everybody else. By a lot." It was almost like Lillian was daring her, seeing just what Heather was made of.
Heather was never one to back down from a challenge. She did love verbal sparring. "Don't like somebody else being compared to you?"
Lillian laughed, and Site-43's cafeteria released a collective sigh of relief. They wouldn't need to talk to HR about another staff incident with Dr. Lillihammer.
Instead of firing back though, Lillian started staring blankly at Heather before wandering off, in the vague direction of her closet.
"Sorry about Lil, she's a lot to take in all at once." The man who smoothed things over earlier approached her with an outstretched hand. "Dr. Harry Blank, Chair of Archives and Revisions. I'm just your friendly local archivist."
"Dr. Heather Garrison, I guess I'm part of the Memetics and Countermemetics section now? Not that I've had much experience with memetics before but…"
"What was that about the uhh… your deadname meme that Lil was talking about? That sounds like Memetics…"
Heather didn't reply. She hated it when it was called the deadname meme.
Trying to break the awkward silence, Harry continued. "You know, I'd love to ask you a few questions about that and yourself. I maintain a small file of employee bios, which I'd love to keep up to date. When would you be free to do that? It should only take an hour, maybe two."
He looked far too excited at the prospect of a lengthy deconstruction of her personal and work history——she much preferred to not think about her history, thank you very much!
"The first thing to know is that it's not a deadname meme, everybody just says that. It's so much more." Heather rolled her eyes, tired of having to deal with this every time she met somebody who'd read her dissertation. All that anybody remembered from her paper was the vast oversimplification that the Foundation thought would be more 'eye-catching' for their internal journals. Maybe that's the real memetic effect?
Of course, that nickname was all they remembered. Not any of the actual work that she did, no, of course not. Not the fact that while it used some basic memetics, the real work was identifying how to apply it to a noospheric idea, and then choosing which idea to target?
She had to remind herself; that wasn't the part that got fully published. The Foundation's internal journals made a lot of cuts to her dissertation before publication, the editor claiming that he knew better about what other scientists would care about. He thought it was more interesting how she had described the act of being deadnamed as containing a potential memetic load, through auditory delivery——the actual 'deadname meme' she'd created was practically a footnote, moved into the 'further research' section. And she had to fight hard for that.
But her interests or actually groundbreaking research didn't matter. It was all about what would look good for the Foundation, and the journal editor.
Between that and her advisor who kept telling her that nobody would care about her research, since it was only about trans people——she was pretty sick and tired of having to do so much work to just even get a glimmer of recognition.
Fucking old white men.
It was at that moment Harry realized that he was being ignored by a memetic prodigy for the second time today. He sighed. It wasn't that big a deal. He was used to being ignored.
When Heather walked away from him without saying another word, Harry realized something. He was going to have to get used to there being two of them now.
"Great. Let's go eat lunch," he said to nobody in particular.
Harry saw Wettle start to laugh at him from beside the cafeteria doorway. That was, until Heather opened it, slamming it into Wettle's face, walking by, not having noticed what just happened. "At least some things won't change."
"So how did you do it?" Heather looked around the modified janitor's closet that Lillian used as her office. It wasn't cramped for space, but it felt more full than it was. Something with a memetic effect, probably, she mused to herself.
Every inch of the walls was decorated in various diagrams, outlines, sketches; except for this one section that looked suspiciously like a conspiracy theory board. On second inspection, it WAS a conspiracy board. Fun.
But right, Lillian had asked her a question. Oh yeah, it was about how I did 'it'. Whatever 'it' means… probably my meme? Don't make a transition joke.
"How did I do what?"
Lillian stared at Heather——she thought she had a pretty good idea of what Heather could do, and how she had made her memeplex, but there was something that she wasn't sure about. And it was that missing piece that kept her up last night.
She didn't like not knowing something, especially when it came to her specialty.
As she watched Heather pace around the room, inspecting her decorations, she was slightly annoyed that she hadn't answered her question yet. Is this what it's like? Her office was full of interesting diversions, not for her with her eidetic memory, but for visitors, so she could analyze what they were getting distracted by. By her interpretation, Heather was… honestly? Heather seemed boring.
"How did you make your deadname meme work on me?" Lillian grimaced as she admitted that. Even with her absurdly high CRV and her extensive experience with memetics, this random researcher had managed to beat her at her own game. It's not even that Lillian cared about Heather's deadname, she only cared about finding out how it worked.
"It's not a deadname meme," Heather tersely replied. Interesting, Lillian thought, filing that emotional response away for later.
"Sure. I can tell that your dissertation was missing a bit of… you know. Interesting work that the Foundation journal didn't want?"
"Was it that obvious?"
"No. I'm just really smart."
The two women exchanged a look——Lillian couldn't tell if Heather was amused or irritated. Maybe both. Yeah, on second thought, definitely both.
"Okay, so I'm going to skip the details behind the visual meme as it relates to memetics, I'm sure you understood that completely."
"I did, but walk me through it from the start. Humor me."
Heather sat down in a chair across from Lillian's makeshift desk. Neither sat straight, a fact that escaped neither of the women.
"Okay. Firstly, I call the memetic effect the Name Changer, not the deadname meme. The Name Changer is built from three components. The first payload contains the information surrounding the deadname. In this case, it's encoded directly to mine. The second payload contains the replacement information, again, for the study, it was my chosen name."
"I got that——but how does it interpret the difference between your deadname and somebody else who has the same name? From what I can see in the memetic image, it should just make that name no longer exist to anybody who is exposed to the cognitohazard." Lillian was clearly getting annoyed——she knew all the basic information from skimming the dissertation last night. Heather's explanation hadn't told her anything new.
"Right! And at first, it did!" Heather leaned in, having taken a renewed interest in their discussion. "So that's why it's not just the deadname."
"Oh my god it's——"
"Yeah. It's the ontological concept of my deadname as it relates to me."
Lillian was stunned——stunned that she hadn't thought of that answer. It was all falling into place now.
"So you weren't just targeting the name, you were targeting the name only in relation to you."
"Yes! And the second payload was the idea of my new name in relation to me."
Thinking back to the memetic image, Lillian could just barely see it now. Visualizing it, she started to pick apart the image. And then——there it was. Hidden underneath the information tied to the deadname, and the chosen name were just enough patterns to tie them to their ontological concepts.
Even though you couldn't see it fully, your brain recognized the pattern and filled in the blanks. Clever.
Lillian returned to the real world and continued her investigation. "What about the third payload? You mentioned three parts."
"Right, sorry. The third part is what makes it special. So I had the first two parts of the meme working, but I was struggling with showing everybody I knew a cognitohazard, due to 'ethics'. It was benign though, so I don't know why everybody was so upset about it. Anyways, I had to add an extra part, which honestly is a lot of different parts. But they're all about spread." Heather looked excited to be going deep into her topic with somebody who could keep up. Lillian was starting to like her more.
"First step, change the association of my deadname to be replaced with my new name. The second step was to make my chosen name an audible trigger that carried the entire memetic effect to anybody who heard my chosen name from an 'infected' individual."
"Oh my god, you made your chosen name a cognitohazard." Lillian had thought about doing that once, years ago, just to fuck with people. In the end, she couldn't figure out a punch-line, so she had just moved on to another idea.
"Yep! The last step was what I loved working on the most, and the part that I'm still pissed about it being cut from my dissertation. It was way more interesting than anything else in ther—— sorry, I'm ranting again." Heather stopped to catch a breath. A blush formed on her cheeks. Lillian thought about making a suggestive remark, but decided to hold her tongue. For now.
"No, I get it. Go on."
"So. The final piece of the puzzle was this: after a long enough time, the memetic effect would fade away, and my deadname would return to their minds. If I wasn't constantly exposing somebody to either the visual or audio memes, they would slowly regain memory of my deadname as it relates to me——and once they had one memory back, the others would all cascade."
"Right——unless they were constantly being dosed, the idea would slide back into their minds."
"So I stopped it."
"Stopped the memetic effect from fading?"
"No. I stopped my deadname from coming back."
Lillian paused. She stopped her deadname from coming back? That sounded like any trans person's dream come true——she knew even she had moments of dysphoria when she heard her deadname, even now, kickass as she was.
"How did you make the meme permanent?" That had to be the answer. Maybe some magic way of forcing the meme to stay put? Heather didn't seem like a witch… well, not one that the Foundation cared about anyways. Maybe a thaumic array she set up so that it was constantly being reapplied to any carrier of the idea? But there's no way that she could keep it running for longer than… Lillian had done some quick math in her head, and concluded, yeah. There's no way the Foundation would have given a junior researcher that many resources.
So how did she do it? Lillian thought, having fallen back into the puzzle that kept her up last night.
Heather watched as Lillian's eyes seemed to glaze over, as she stared directly at her. Well, not at her. Past her.
Was it something I had said? Heather thought. She had gotten excited talking with Dr. Lillihammer about her research, but realized that maybe she had been behaving unprofessionally with her boss. She definitely should have been more respectful, now that she thought about it.
Crap.
What should she do? Should she apologize? Heather looked at Lillian, who was still staring——what was she waiting for? Heather took a second to stare back. She hadn't really looked at the woman before——the silver hair, delicate nose, pursed lips. Well, she's definitely pretty. Wait! Crap! That's your boss, it's definitely a no-fly zone.
But why was Lillian still staring?
Oh. That's right. She had asked Heather a question. Again. Oops.
"I didn't make the meme permanent." Heather jumped right back into it, as if neither of the women had been lost in their own minds. Thankfully, Lillian didn't say anything about it, if she had even noticed Heather drifting away too. "I just… reassociated my deadname. Permanently."
"To your chosen name?"
"I thought about that at first, but it had the same issue of correlation causing the memetic complex to degrade over time. Too many overlaps and small inconsistencies it had to fight to have much staying power."
"Right."
"So instead I associated my deadname with nothing."
"Nothing."
"The noospheric concept of nothingness, of void, of absence."
Both women sat back in their chairs as Lillian took in what Heather had just said.
"So you grabbed your deadname, and replaced it with your chosen name. And then you took your deadname again, and tied it to the conceptual idea of nothingness?" Lillian looked, for the first time in the conversation, truly, completely interested.
Heather continued on, more confident than ever. "Yeah. It's a large enough non-concept that the association had a significantly stronger relation, so it stayed for even longer. And the best part was if the idea of my deadname ever came back to somebody, they associated it with 'nothing' and dismissed the concept entirely."
"So you severed your deadname from the noosphere."
"Exactly. As far as it relates to me, my deadname no longer exists as a concept. At all." Heather grinned wide. She was proud of that, really proud.
"But how did it work on me? I should have been able to remember the deadname as separate information from your chosen name if the meme works the way you say it does."
"I'm not targeting your memories though. I'm targeting recall. I'm replacing the idea as you're remembering it." Was she getting too smug? Probably not.
"Fuck!"
Heather froze. Had she said something wrong? Gotten too smug? Panicking, she started——"I'm sorry, did I——"
"Fuck! It's makes so much sense now! It wasn't about memories, it was processing and interpre… why didn't I realize… of course it was ontological… the fucking noosphere, it's always the fucking noosphere… that's brilliant though."
That wasn't a sentence, that was a lot of sentences, squished into one.
Dr. Lillian Lillihamer fixed her gaze directly at Heather.
"Seriously. That was a brilliant solution. You should be proud of that."
Heather let go an internal sigh, the panic having faded. "I am proud."
The dust having settled from their chaotic conversation, both women took a second to breathe and think. Heather tried to figure out what to say next, but Lillian took care of that for her.
"So. Can you make me one?"
The two woman had spent a few hours longer than either had planned, going over the entire process of creating and infusing a visual meme with both a memetic and ontological payload, after which, Dr. Lillihammer had invited her out for drinks off-site. It's my boss, right? I should probably go. Heather didn't love being in crowds, but those were memories from a different time. She should be fine.
Anywhere that Lillian would go to would probably be safe enough. Right?
Heather looked at herself in the mirror——she had changed out of her lab clothes, and into something more casual. Dark, high-waisted jeans hugged her hips, with a deep green crossover top that gave her more curves than she really had. Ugh, sometimes hormones are too slow.
She moved on from her top——she had just finished doing her make-up, a subtle smoky eye look. Her massive waves of black hair cascaded around her face, flowing fluidly down into her outfit.
Now to pick some shoes… Heather looked at the options that she had brought, and considered what would be best for the snow.
She decided to wear the ones with the highest heels she had.
"Heather! Over here!" Lillian was sat at the bar, still wearing her dazzlecoat, hair sweeping around her as she turned and waved. Heather made her way over to the bar, and Lillian got up to greet the woman.
Fuck, Lillian thought. She understood what other people felt about taller women now. It was a rarity, that's for sure, few people were taller than her Amazon-like stature. She looked down at Heather's shoes——4-inch-heeled boots. Of course. Her boots were relatively flat in comparison. Lillian quickly realized that it looked like she was staring at Heather's…
"Heels like that? In the snow?" She quipped, brushing it off.
"I… well I wanted to be taller than you Lillia—— sorry, I mean Dr. Lillihammer."
"Hey, don't get stuck on formalities. I'm informal in every way. Just call me Lillian."
"Right. Lillian." Heather took the seat next to her, and once again Lillian felt herself staring. Stop it! She. Is. Your. Employee. Sure, you didn't hire her, but still! Keep it in your pants for once.
"Shots?" Lillian sat down with a daring look on her face.
"Shots it is." Heather fired back. This was going to be an interesting night.
"So wait. Why not use the rock?"
"The rock? No, fuck the rock!"
"What? Fuck the rock? People I care about used the rock! The rock fucking slaps!"
"Oh shit. Did you use the rock?"
"No, but——"
"Well then! Fuck the rock!"
Lillian leaned forward.
"Why didn't you want to use it then?"
Heather leaned forward too.
"The rock swaps everything. I… well, my gender identity falls somewhere in between, and a complete switch wouldn't have worked out."
"So you kept——"
"Yeah. I kept it."
"Does it still… uhh, does it still work?"
"Yes. It still works."
An awkward moment passed. And then another. The two women blushed and took their next shots.
"Heather, listen. Honestly? I didn't want you on my team yesterday."
"Yeah. I mean that was kind of obvious."
"Okay looook, I'm surrounded by idiots who don't know the first thing about what I do. I just… assumed that you would be one too."
"Good thing I'm not then." Heather wiggled her eyebrows, giggling to herself. It was cuter than it had any right to be.
"You're not! Which is exciting! You're fascinating."
Lillian was staring again. This time, she wasn't lost in her thoughts.
"So is the sex nexus real?"
"Oh my god, the sexus? Yeah. It's real."
Heather blushed deep at where her mind went.
"Did you read the——"
"Yeah, I've read the file."
"There's just something about being a tall woman at Site-43." Lillian mused. She looked back over at Heather. "Though, from this perspective? I can definitely see the appeal." Lillian smirked, as Heather's blush grew deeper.
"Can I be honest?"
"I'd expect nothing less from an employee of mine."
"You're really pretty." Lillian grinned. It seems like Heather is pretty drunk to admit that so openly. She thought to herself in pride.
"I know. You were staring at me on your first day, of course you thought I was pretty."
"I wasn't looking at you."
"Excuse me? You weren't looking at me? Who the hell were you looking at then? Harry? Fucking Wettle?"
"I was looking at your coat."
"Oh." Lillian realized that she was probably pretty drunk too.
"It's a really cool coat."
"I know! It has pockets!"
As the bar closed, the two women stumbled outside and started making their way back to the site via the train system. They leaned on each other for support as they walked through the fresh snow. For support. Right.
Neither of them had any ulterior motives whatsoever.
Heather was at her door, Lillian having walked her back to her quarters. It was late, and they were the only two around.
"Thanks for tonight. I don't… well I don't really have a lot of friends that are like me, you know? Somebody who really gets what it was like. It's nice." Heather spoke honestly, the booze still coursing through her system and giving her unfounded confidence.
"It was special." Lillian got it. Heather knew that she did. "So… since neither of us used the rock… care to compare?"
Heather was tempted——oh god, was she tempted. Lillian started drifting closer to her, leaning in. Heather bit her lip, unsure of what to do——before she knew it, their faces were only inches apart. Again.
"So?" Lillian's hot breath hit her lips, and a shiver ran down her spine. Heather panicked.
"I guess we'll just have to find out another time. Goodnight Lil, I'll see you tomorrow." Heather quickly backed into her dormitory, the door closing behind her. She was breathing hard, her heart beating faster than it had in years. Shit girl, really? It's just a crush. It's okay. Let's just sleep this off and figure it out in the morning.
Heather barely made it into her bed before passing out and lapsing into a tense, but gratifying dream.
Lillian stood in the hallway, still staring at Heather's door.
Did——did I just get rejected? Lillian was stunned. When she went for something she wanted, or somebody, she got it. Is this what it feels like? God, you meet one other trans girl and you turn into a teenager, Lils.
She was fascinated by Heather Garrison. And frustrated. Very, very, frustrated.
Resolving to deal with that, Lillian began making her way back to her dormitory. As she walked on autopilot, her mind wandered. The deadname meme… no, the Name Changer. It was shockingly simple, and a completely different way of solving the problem than Lillian had considered. I know that I'm still smarter than she is but… somehow, I still don't fully get her.
And if there was something that bothered Lillian more than anything else, it was a puzzle she couldn't solve. Her other frustration didn't help much either.
