 I'm a researcher at BioSight 66. I've never really been part of the most important stuff, never been one of the big shots. Hell, I don't even know what the most important stuff is. It's not my clearance to know, and that's a comfort, not a curse. I haven't got the faintest inkling, and it's better not to know. We die in the dark so you can live in the light type stuff, but when I die in the dark, I want it to be with a flashlight in hand. So that's really why it doesn't bother me when I get assigned to the small stuff. It's what I'm good at, and the pay is amazing. I also get a fair amount of downtime, too. Now it was between things when they assigned me to skip 13. I was expected the lower numbers to be more important, so when the errand boy slid the little pack of cigarettes in its associated paperwork on my desk, I got a little nervous. But when I read it over, my concerns reused slightly. They were straightforward little things. I played with one or two in my hands and looked them over. Apparently all they did was make the smokers start to think of themselves as a woman, and not just any woman, but a blue woman. A blue hair, a blue lipstick, blue dress, the whole shebang. A simple perception affecting anomaly helps. Basically, a very specific psychedelic, harmless, suspiciously harmless. You get a healthy helping of paranoia working at the foundation, no matter how close to the bottom you are. My first question was, what was I even supposed to do with it? So I looked over the attached memo, and when I finished I laughed, because of course, what else was I going to do with a pack of cigarettes? The SCP-13 research team has concerns about the breadth of their test subjects it read. So to make sure they weren't just testing it on D-class criminals, it looks like they wanted someone with a little bit more going on in the noggin. Of course, no one on their team smoked, so naturally that meant they were mine. The notes said to smoke them at whatever pace I liked, and return a self-evaluation of the SCP-13 research team upon the depletion of my supply. Oh, and to take plenty of notes on the progression of the effects. I mean, of course, my haunt. It was probably an unknowing getting picked any number of unidentified cognitohazards at the site already, so it was about time they made it official and I got a pay bonus for it. You might even enjoy it. So I leaned back in my chair and decided to begin the process promptly. I retrieved my trusty lighter I afflicted on and brought the white paper to my mouth, pulling in a deep drag of the hazy blue smoke that resulted. That's a nice feeling. Smoking on company time in my office. Well, taste wasn't that bad either. I looked at my fingers, I looked at my chest, my legs, my feet. I pulled out my phone, looked at my reflection. I thought, I guess it doesn't work that fast, so I turned on my own and began a note that said, first pull, no effects. That was Friday. After that I packed my things, I said goodbye to the few co-workers who actually mattered, and all along the drive home I played with the new little toys that were in my pocket. I remember being the modest type, so I liked my property to match my income. After stepping out of the car, I was essentially in the middle of nowhere when you're part of the foundation. It kind of pays not to have neighbors to worry about, or connections at all. But I walked past my front yard's fountain, fished the keys out of my pocket, and unlocked the door. When I stepped inside, the temperature dropped several degrees, cause this was it. This is my house. Roomie, two stories, and the foyer has a chandelier I didn't have much to fill it with, mostly bought it just cause I could. I didn't have much other than a couple of cat towers here and there for my pets to play on. There were really the only other residents in my menor. I liked it that way, and dogs are too loving for my liking. But Missy, when my cats came up and started weaving between my legs, had a weekend and a pack of cigarettes, and I was going to have to get through all of them. So I walked through the dining room, passed the kitchen, up a cramped staircase that led me to my room. The room was a little spartan, queen-sized bed, took up nearly a quarter of it, and the rest was graced only with a desk, a closet, and of course the door to my bathroom. I decided to pull my chair over to the window, open the thing, sat down, and I made it my goal to smoke until I noticed something. It should be easy enough, I thought, and then I took a long, drawn-out pull. It took a few minutes of sitting and puffing to go through the whole cigarette. I was slow and methodical with it. And all throughout, I was just repeating the process, looking first at my hands, at my chest, at my legs, just to see if anything had changed. By the end of that first cigarette, I wasn't noticing anything. My hands were still mine, the body was still mine, I remained unchanged. So I pulled out my phone, went to take a note, and that's when I saw it. My reflection on the black screen, and it was different. I was able to glare the sun coming through the window, the specifications on what that difference was. They were lost to me, so I stood up, a little bit more excitement, made my way to my bathroom to get a nice look in the mirror. They were not lying, she was so blue. So blue it attacked the senses. Her bright blue lipstick, her hair, her nails, her dress, her eyes too, blue from top to bottom. Except for the hue of her skin, which was like a pale, pale white. Her hair and her dress made me think she wouldn't look out of place in the roaring 20s. That and her posture. The way she favored one foot, she held her cigarette in such a fancy, seductive way. And then I realized, that was me doing that. I quickly corrected myself. This was my reflection, even if it looked different. I held my hand out in front of me. No, in the real world, my nails weren't painted. But in the reflection, my movements were copied exactly by the lady. I let out a laugh. What could I say? It was novel. I took out my phone, opened my notes, chuckling again as I saw her long as your nails whenever the screen turned black. First full sig, I wrote. Reflection looks exactly like her. Her. I paused at the word choice, looking back up at the mirror, leaning over my sink. I got a good look deep into her eyes. Who was she? Did she exist at some point? Maybe not. Skips like these, equally likely that she could be a ghost or some imagined person. These cigarettes were supposed to be some kind of work of art. Who knows? That's not my job to know. My job was to test it out. So it occurred to me, because I was trying to record all of the mental effects, that maybe I should write down that she looked familiar. I walked out of the bathroom, I took the cigarettes with me, and I opened my front door and decided to take a short stroll around my house, just walking through my mismanaged gardens that I let overgrow. And suddenly, for some reason I decided that I didn't want to be cooped up in that place. It was a feeling I was trying to ignore. I thought maybe the change in scenery could make it go away. I took out my phone, I made the note. Woman feels familiar, beginning second cigarette. I lifted it, the thing to my mouth. I took a poll in the blue smoke that came out of my nose, dissipated into the late afternoon sun, which was soon set over the trees, making the shadows long, the air chill. Her. I thought it again. The documentation never specified any emotions that subjects felt towards the blue lady. They slowly began to perceive themselves as, was this an entirely personal experience? It was strange. Of course, the stress was tinting my thoughts. I began to instinctively bring the cigarette closer to my mouth. She was familiar. She was, she seemed intimately familiar, which was odd, because I definitely don't know any blue women, nor am I very well versed in the 20s. So it must have been something else. Something in her face, maybe. I caught myself looking at her face in the reflection of my phone. Yeah, that's it. She faintly resembled someone I used to know. A crush, actually, from high school. I figured out where she took her lunches by asking around, wasn't very hard to find. What I was surprised to find out when I walked behind the gym to take my first peek was that there, on the asphalt of the basketball courts, she smoked. It wasn't peer pressure, not directly, I just wanted to impress her. I wanted to infiltrate her group, and what they all did, they smoked. So I didn't have cigarettes, I figured, hey, that's an easy solution to my issue. When I did eventually ask her out, she said no, of course. Because I was just some weird short kid who she didn't know at all, or maybe she was just mean. I don't really have the energy to reason that out, but that was that. She moved. And then sophomore year and onward, I just kept smoking. I still smoke. Habits die hard, or something like that. Looking at her reflection, it wasn't even uncanny resemblance. They were definitely different people. But wasn't it strange, coincidentally, that the woman who made me smoke looked like the woman I was smoking? Yeah, that bothered me. So I put the phone away, brought the cigarette to my mouth, and puffed. You know, someone more reasonable than me might have been self-conscious about smoking in the first place, but I've never really felt particularly upset at the idea of self-destruction. Now, what bothered me about smoking was that it never quite felt like me. It was always, you know, inevitably, it felt like her. That was the one thing I truly appreciated about working at the foundation, the privacy of it all. Hell, I barely interacted with any other human beings ever. They were nearly cut out of my life. Paperwork, high risk, good pay. Sounds like a deal made in heaven even now. So it began to weigh on me. It was around at the corner of my house. I had just unknowingly committed to a weekend of reminders. I pulled out my phone, second cigarette, no noticeable difference. We'll update when something changes. I ended up circling around to this old fountain that was on the property. It was full of water, but it wasn't running because it, like the rest of my house, was left relatively unmaintained since I purchased it. The stagnant water had some little fish in it, and I was always slightly curious how they managed to survive. I nearly raised another cigarette to my left, but no. Tucked it back in the case, and then I pocketed that, usually smoking calms my nerves. But that day, things were different. So I stood up, I went inside, and I went to bed. And I think, in retrospect, at least, that might have been a bad idea because that night I had the worst dream in a long, long time. Mind affecting anomalies plus sleep. The time when your mind is at its most vulnerable. I mean, it seems so obvious looking back, but it's been difficult to sleep ever since that day. In fact, excuse me, but I don't want to talk about that because you're likely more interested in what happened next. I woke up, as a lot of people do from nightmares, screaming. So it was so thick, my clothes were sticking to my body, except I couldn't quite tell where. My body map was so, I couldn't tell where my clothes were or what I was wearing exactly. I could just feel that horrible sticking to my skin, that moisture that it collected from everywhere along my body. And I found myself on all fours, hands straddling my pillow that I was screaming down into, knees behind me. And as I looked down, all I could see was the barely moonlit darkness of my room and the smudges on the pillow. When I came to enough to realize I was actually awake now, that things were better if I'm okay. I reached my hand over, pulled the phone off the nightstand, and I couldn't help but turn the flashlight on and that pillow so smudged. I saw a little bit of ash all around my bed, stains of a blue lipstick. I wiped at my lips instinctively and accidentally, god damn it, I accidentally scratched myself with the nails, right? I, she had these long nails, fucking god, I lived alone because I couldn't handle it. The files said that a full, like a full transformation would take, I don't remember, but this was fast. So it was much faster than the papers had said. So it wasn't thinking straight. And the first thing I do when I'm not thinking straight is I take a smoke because that's just the kind of guy I am. So I grabbed the cigarettes, I scrambled for my lighter, when I flicked the flame one, I flinched and I dropped it because in the reflection, I saw, the face I saw wasn't, well it wasn't her exactly, but it wasn't me either. It wasn't. And it was, you know, no, I don't want to talk about it well and truly it doesn't mean anything to you. It won't mean anything to you except that, you know, that there's a reason, there's a reason that my door is closed and locked and then I take my lunches in my office at the paperwork which is sprawled across my desk. There's a reason my house is big and empty. There's a reason I'm not going to like you and you're not going to like me. I hate, I hate smoking because she made me do it. And every time I bring that thing to my mouth, I'm reminded, reminded that she hadn't smoked, I wouldn't smoke, reminded of my dad hadn't had cigarettes, I wouldn't have had cigarettes. If my mom didn't tell me to wear polos, I never would have if my teacher hadn't told me how to do the math equations, I would know. So what did I do? What part of me is me? And that is what I saw. Looking at the reflection in the lighter, I saw, I saw her in me, but not just her. I saw everyone. And so at first scratch, I guess I kind of worked at it. I mean, she has such long nails, you know, such, such long nails. And I thought if I didn't want to look like her, then I'd rather look like no one, right? But it didn't work. Every time I look in the mirror, she's there pristine. It's just my face, my skin that's gone. I'm still her. You know, there's one good thing to come out of all of this. Smoking is a terrible habit. Well, I can't even look at them. Am I crazy? Just thinking about them makes me nauseous. So that's a good thing, right? Self-improvement or I don't like that. And she's the one that made me smoke, so that can't have been her. I did that, right? I'm not really sure, to be honest with you. I don't know. I kind of hope it was me. Smoking on Company Time was written by Darkstuff on the 23rd of April, 2021. It can be found on the scpwiki at www.scp-wiki.wiki.com forward slash smoking-on-company-time. A link will be in the description. Thought I'd do a little reading today. Hope you enjoyed it. In the meantime, if you want to see more of my content, hit the subscribe button. And then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos. And then head on over to patreon.com forward slash D. Smyrion and pledge at any level like everybody here on this great journey has, including Dr. J Redacted and Synderiki, who have both pledged at $100. It's nice to know that I'm not alone out here. And I will see you all again on Tuesday.