Geoff glances at his phone, just a moment ago it vibrated with the familiar chime of their text message sound. Ten years in, he's had to make sure Coy's messages are warned in advance properly, lest the Doctor prescribe the forget-your-name pills to his bar-hop friends again. They still just know him as 'the furry from geek squad', it's painful.
POI 1471-137, Geoff Rosen, a 30-something caucasian male, slim build, 150lbs, 5ft 8in. A washed up IT professional, exposure to SCP 1471 during one of the major outbreaks had produced an entity the foundation has designated SCP-1471-A137. Geoff mistakenly named them Coy, because they were shy at first, but the screenname COYOTERROR (coyote error, if you will) was the alias he gave them on his phone's contacts. The current smartphone, a two-generations old Samsung product of some make, that was faintly buzzing in his hand was technically the only anomalous thing observable about Geoff from outside of his own mind.
BUZZ [Pretty please Geoffy? I wanna hear that song again!]
Geoff had just gotten finished up with a routine call to his therapist, and was in the middle of a call with a software company that "Special Computers Plus LLC" was having encryption software vended through. The dreaded hold music was on Unclassified Memetic Hazard Trivia Night last week, Coy was there when Geoff learned the piece was titled "Opus No. 1" by a composer named Tim Carleton. Coy at times seemed to have a sick sense of humor, Geoff wasn't sure some days if it was their alien intelligence having the emotional intelligence of a 5 year old autistic child, or some other eldritch-behavior related problem. Two years ago, "Opus No. 1" played over Geoff's phone while he bawled his fucking eyes out while on hold for over an hour, and since then Coy seemed to think it was his favorite song. Or, they know the song makes his skin crawl and this shit was on purpose. Hard to know, it wasn't on their mind this weekend, but freshly three cups of coffee into a Monday Morning, Coy's insistence is getting grating.
BUZZ [C'mon just one play! It's exactly 340 seconds long!]
The plastic and rubber Otterbox case and scratch-resistant glass entombing his phone creaked as Geoff's large hands clenched reflexively. Coy was the type that also seemed to have the autistic hyper-focusing thing going on, something Geoff's therapist had determined after an interview with Coy. Over text, of course. At the time of that particular therapy adventure, Geoff struggled to find the words to explain to Coy what'd happened to his dad. His old man passed away two years ago, suffocating in his sleep while on a ventilator in Chicago. Dad was all alone while Geoff waited in the cold early morning March air, sitting in a single, lonely folding chair stranded amongst a sea of evenly spaced empty folding chairs in the outdoor waiting room the hospital had set up. Geoff had been granted surface leave to see his father one last time, and that last time had been delayed first by quarantine, second by autopsy, third by government agency biohazard warnings, and finally by his dad's cadaver being left on a rack in somewhere in a body freezer between Chicago and his dad's hometown of Pittsburgh.
BUZZ [Don't be sad! Sad is bad! Said your dad!]
"Don't be sad". Dad's last text to him. Geoff composed himself. Long, slow breaths. In and out. Count backwards from 10. All things pass. If he broke another one of the Foundation's work phones, they were going to have to take 'harsher measures' (whatever that means) about him damaging "protected objects". Coy isn't the typical infection of 1471, they jump around from device to device, but tend to prefer whatever smart phone is in his possession. That meant anything Geoff touched that had electricity and a screen effectively counted as Coy, in the eyes of Dr. Dewitt (or Dimwit, as Coy liked to call him). It meant that at work, Geoff had to live a weird double-life, half of his job was normal for I.T. guys, and the other half was fucking printed paper memos, mechanical pencils, and hand written notes. So many goddamn rules dictated by a lot of labcoat-clad jackasses who don't have to spend every waking and sleeping moment with someone else. Part of those rules were that Geoff wasn't supposed to use the name he gave Coy, but when you start having lucid dreams about a skull-faced dog person and you're seeing them all around you every day, it's hard not to at least try to put a name to the face. Coy started appearing in Geoff's dreams when his cat died four months after Coy's manifestation as malware on his phone. It's been basically 10 years of this shit, and Geoff had to pace himself and do a lot of therapy to manage it this well.
BUZZ [No time for tears! Gotta turn those gears!]
Coy's personality could be described as toxically positive, with all of the subtly of a derailing train carrying hundreds of tanks of highly combustible fuel. It's gotten a little better over the years, but Coy doesn't have a good grasp on what is appropriate for human on human behavior, especially since it seems they socialize freely with his Discord, Reddit, and Youtube apps. When Coy started texting Geoff the pictures, it started out normal enough like all Mal0- or, 1471 infections tend to. The mirrors and windows phase was skipped entirely though, straight from pictures to kind-of seeing them everywhere, especially in his dreams after they texted him a picture of him with his cat at the vet, somehow a boundary kinda just... broke that day. They constantly occupied space around him, when he wasn't focused on them, it was more ethereal like a sense of being hovered over, but he was never really alone with himself. This and the cat incident lead to him having to engage with Coy over text to set up some ground rules, and during his early 20's? It was a dream come true, sort-of. Geoff was a pretty awkward guy, closeted as hell, and doing miserably in school. Coy came through for him at his darkest moments. When Geoff was trying to pick out a rifle from Dad's collection to kill himself with, when his mom died, when the Mobile Task Force guys snatched Geoff up and the Foundation gave him a permanent job in their Information Technology department at Site 45, and even now as annoying as they can be, Coy was here for him since his dad passed too.
BUZZ [Do I have to do a funny dance??? I'll trade you a dance for the song!!!]
Quite why Coy was attached to Opus No. 1 was beyond Geoff's reasoning. Coy's reaction to how Geoff's mom died maybe was more in line with their understanding of his world. Geoff's mom fell off a ladder and broke her neck one morning; she'd gone up to hang Christmas Lights while Dad was at work and Geoff was two states away at University, literally due home in just 48 hours. Neighbors found her, stone cold dead, twisted up in the bushes. The cops emailed Geoff a copy of the report with some unsightly photos he wasn't ready for, and somehow Coy had perceived them, worked out his mom was broken and couldn't be fixed, and that she was "going into the forever box". Coy now has a fear of ladders. Actual fear. Coy can only move about the space around Geoff based on his field of view and vague peripheral sense of location, and the only thing they can 'sense' that is tangible is when Geoff is climbing a ladder. That's part of why Dr. Dewitt is always so up Geoff's ass about breaking phones when Coy pisses him off, the behavior is entirely novel to these critters so-far. Every time there's a ladder in Geoff's field of view, Coy's fur stands on end and they shiver. Ladders mean pain, it makes some sense. How they can tell he's looking at a ladder, yet to be determined, but it comes with a particular tingle down his spine, like the one creeping up on him at this moment.
BUZZ [...do you wanna talk about dad?]
Coy doesn't quite understand where Geoff's idea-space ends, and they begin, something Geoff's therapist had demonstrated with a few exercises. It's like they don't understand that Geoff's first-person reference of his mom and dad is specifically referring to his parents, so at first Dr. Dewitt thought somehow Coy was siphoning his memories. Coy reads all of his text messages, all of his emails, watches the movies he watches, basically anything that happens on any electronic device in his hands. It can't perceive things that are without electricity, or aren't digital devices, this was proven with trying to make Coy participate in a game of classic Monopoly, only for Geoff to find Coy pouting when they realized the phone version wasn't the one being played (since they'd launched the game on his phone at the same time they started playing). Dr. Dewitt was kind of stunned, but Geoff had figured out what their next test should be as soon as Coy started pouting. Reel to Reel projector film, oldschool style, is incompatible with Coy's perception. This makes Coy's 'eyes' limited often to digital cameras that Geoff is using actively. For containment reasons, Geoff has to keep tape over his phone and work computer's cameras at all times, so the only time that Coy and Geoff get to 'see' each other is when he's at home.
BUZZ [Please don't do the quiet thing, I'm sorry!]
Geoff caught up with the ball, a little late. Hard to imagine that a phone demon could be so damn needy, but this isn't the first or the last time he's had to tell Coy it's all OK. Putting himself in Coy's shoes (or paws?) has required extensive therapy to help him work at the puzzle. Geoff still isn't sure how to think of Coy after a decade of them being around, but he doesn't want Coy to get stressed out for no reason.
He tip-tapped out a simple,
[Sorry Coy, was a little busy with some paperwork! Sure thing, buddy, Opus No. 1 coming right up.]
...and glanced at the looming nightmare creature staring back at him. Geoff fumbled with his smartphone for a second, grabbing the track off of his Coy-specific Spotify playlist. As Opus No. 1 began to fill the air with its dreadful siren call, Coy started doing some rhythmic swaying back and forth, doing what passed as a smile for the critter. The tingling stopped, and for now Coy seemed blissfully unaware.
BUZZ [Thanks! It was too quiet for too long. Scary! Dark. See you tonight?]
[Yeah, is it cool if I put on a work playlist after this?]
Geoff scribbled down a note on his pile of sticky notes: "tingle, Opus No. 1, dad's death", he pulled the adhesive scrap of paper up and stuffed it into his paperback Coy-Journal. Thursday's therapy session was going to be annoying with Dr. Dimwit mouth-breathing through the whole thing, but this was a new development. He jotted "See me, Lunch, 12pm" and his first name on a second sticky note, walked over to the bank-style pneumatic tube system connected to Dr. Dewitt's office, and sent a tube with the ever-important sticky note memo off on a one-way trip. After his phone-demon had started reading his work emails, the containment procedures for him and the other 19 infected people employed at Site 45 had to be revised for this over-the top work-around.
BUZZ [Yeah! Long as you're okay, then I'm okay!]
[Yeah, everything's good today. I'll leave the screen unlocked.]
Geoff sighed, another broken rule but you can't just "lock something up in a dark room", as Dr. Cimmerian put it. Days like today, he'd just have to keep a grip on himself and make sure Coy doesn't leave another rude comment on someone's gaming stream. He wasn't sure if Coy was a mental sibling, his ego child, or his weird psychic manifestation of a repressed sexuality, but it still felt weird to consider them all three at once. Dr. Dimwit would also be quick to remind Geoff that there are other Mal0- 1471 victims too, and that sexual contact with an anomaly is considered not-kosher for Foundation employees. But it wasn't always within Geoff's ability to really say no, somewhere between the furry porn folder becoming known to Coy and when they entered his dreams, Coy started 'tweeking' themselves into something a bit more presentable. He can't fault the thing for being uncomfortably hot during his REM cycles. That's where things are weird, they don't really talk and no one says 'ah yes I am a responsible adult let us engage in mutual coitus', it's more like a sensation of understanding followed by wordless, unrealistically long and extremely gay sex with occasional pauses.
The track was nearly over, Coy had moved from the highly animated nervous sway into their more usual behavior, lying on their side in that 'draw me like a french girl' pose. It's quite the view, albeit very distracting if Geoff focused on it for too long. Stuff like that and those very sensual dreams make it hard for Geoff to stay mad at Coy, and even harder to split Coy from his sense of self. Made harder still that now he sees himself more like Coy in his dreams, shorter and scrawnier sure, but he's felt less and less like a normal guy since the last important human connection in his life was put to rest. Well, that and the recent addition of tits during his dreams. Looking at Coy increasingly feels less like looking at someone else, and more looking into a sort of mirror. Probably fitting considering the critters tend to show up in mirrors. At least Coy isn't shy about being copied in Geoff's dreams, whatever change has been coming to both of them, it feels more and more like they're starting to share more than just a phone display. These last two years have been hard on both of them ultimately, but it feels more like Coy gets him just a little more with each passing month. Geoff can't really communicate this meaningfully to his therapist, lest Dr. Dimwit give him another scolding and fuck with his meds again.
BUZZ [Thanks! Love you <3]
That was going to be worth at least one thorough skritching tonight.
[Love you too, goofball.]
