Instinct and Ideas

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your new home away from home." Director Wells is being very deliberate about her choice of words, it's a habit, from doing what she does for so long, an instinct she doesn't even think about, much less question. Instinct is very important for what she does. Instinct also tells her that she has the rapt attention of twenty-three people, herself included, a mixed crowd of researchers, field agents, and one old handyman who long ago stopped worrying about these people saying things he wasn't supposed to overhear.

"The vast majority of you have figured out by now, I'm sure, that this is no ordinary conference. If you did a little bit of digging, you quickly came to discover that this facility is directed by the people in charge of the Memetics divison." All seven junior agents in the room discovered that. Wells knows this better than she knows her own name, because you have to think about your name. This is as automatic as breathing. Again, instinct.

"Did any of you find that answer to be just a little too convenient?" The three senior agents are nodding almost in unison, glad that they're still sharp and not just paranoid. They are paranoid, of course, they wouldn't be here if they weren't. "Everything was too clean, wasn't it? Memetics is messy business, people disappear, entire facilities are expunged because even just knowing what's inside them could cause every type of K-class scenario that exists, and several that don't. So you made the next logical step."

"You are all aware of fifty-five, I'm sure." Even the janitor knows about SCP-055, or at least, knows that he doesn't know. The anti-meme, the idea that hides its own existence. It has implications. Four of the junior agents will be unable to grasp this until introduced. Two researchers have already made motions about setting up tests. The janitor picks his nose, and too many people spend too much time focusing on that.

"If there is one anti-meme, there can be more. There could be an entire division, an entire organization, dedicated to dealing with these issues. An organization that, by its very nature, would be impossible to recognize." There are thankless jobs all throughout the Foundation, but anti-memetics is something special. "In fact, it's very possible that if you saved the known universe from unmaking by an anti-meme, that even you wouldn't know that you've done a good job."

It's too high-concept, Wells intuits, feeling the flagging attention of the younger of those present. Too many of them want to save the world, want to do the Right Thing, or be the Necessary Evils. She dares not think about how wrong they are, but of course, she already knows that, too.

"I'll cut to the chase. You are not in orientation for memetics. You are not in orientation for anti-memetics. And neither of those statements I just made aren't not false." Everyone present stumbles over her grammar, except Wells herself, and the janitor. The man's not here by accident. "Some very smart person somewhere along the line realized that if you extended both ideas as far as they went, they meet in the middle, at a singular point. 'Ideas are dangerous'. Knowing the wrong things, or not forgetting the right things, it's splitting hairs. Once they figured that out, our jobs became a lot simpler."

"Welcome to the only place in the Foundation where thinking and not thinking are equally dangerous. Where we speak in the hypotheticals of black-space of theories, refusing to acknowledge either the existence or non-existence of anything we may or may not be capable of acknowledging. Where we fight a guerilla warfare with ideas, against ideas, because of ideas, all without ever having those ideas." Everyone gets a splitting headache trying to think about that. It's to be expected, of course, it's the instinctive answer.

"You are all here to work exclusively within the newly-formed Department of Mimetics. With an I, not an E." The name is a joke, one that no one finds funny. It's known too well by the people who understand it, too obscure for the people who don't. It's a warning, a code of conduct, and a mission statement, all bound up in something you don't know how to forget. "And yes, the person who came up with that name does think they are very clever. Now, let's start with questions."

 *

Twenty-three people heard that speech with one pair of ears. Twenty-three people spoke it, with one set of lips. And in their bones, twenty-three people know that if you're fighting a war of ideas, with weapons made of ideas, you need soldiers made of ideas, too.

Director Wells makes sure to flick the lights off as she leaves, no reason to waste electricity on an empty room. The janitor smiles, and she smiles with him.