Cunning, liar, enigmatic, and fearsome
are just a few words used to describe a particular member of the SCP Foundation.
While many of the Foundation’s researchers and scientists are a pretty unusual bunch, to say
the least, this one might just take the cake, and then might have said cake “decommissioned”
in the most collaterally damaging way imaginable. Similar to the infamous Doctor Bright always
switching bodies, appearing with all manner of ever-shifting faces, genders, and even species,
this particular Foundation department head is also no stranger to never looking the same way twice.
In his case, he can’t be photographed properly, at least not by any conventional means.
Thanks to some unknown anomalous augmentation, any pictures taken of this researcher will have
the face swapped with that of a random animal. However, these pictures will always feature the
same characteristic grin much like the smile of the Cheshire Cat. A notorious liar not to be
trusted by anyone, Doctor Alto Clef is one of the SCP Foundation’s strangest members of personnel.
For starters, “Doctor Alto Clef” isn’t even technically his real name, more a nickname that
became synonymous with the mysterious scientist, and served as a convenient shorthand
for his alleged real name. You see, according to the entity most commonly known as
Doctor Clef, his real name is actually a sound unpronounceable by human beings. His name is,
apparently, the A major chord played on a ukulele. This explains why the strange doctor always
carries the instrument around with him, should anyone wish to refer to him using
his real name on a strum of those strings. In fact, he used to go by a completely different
name, the “Ukulele Man”, and sometimes “Agent Ukulele”, thanks to his predilection for playing
the string instrument. So, where did the “Alto Clef” nickname come from? Well, that one’s easy,
Doctor Clef received this nickname thanks to his penchant for signing off reports with a hand-drawn
alto clef symbol, a type of musical note. Doctor Clef had long been one of the more
enigmatic and mysterious scientists working at the Foundation. He is perhaps more of an oddity than
the elusive and infamous O5 Council themselves, although that one is probably up for debate.
Alto Clef was formerly an operative for the Global Occult Coalition, although he first
attracted the attention of the SCP Foundation a while before then. A number of research papers
Clef published at a redacted university happened to catch the Foundation’s eye, mostly for
their bizarre and lurid subject matter. Much of the content and even the title of some
of his works are redacted, but what we do know is that one of Clef’s papers described certain
traits that matched an existing SCP they had cataloged in their archive. There was no way this
could have been a coincidence, somehow Alto Clef had knowledge of the anomalous, and had to
be considered a potential risk to security. During a conversation with the agent that was
sent to investigate his strange research papers, Alto Clef was able to convince her to
offer him a job within the Foundation. It seems exceptionally unusual that Clef was
able to pull this off, as most women working for the SCP Foundation have reported that the
man possesses a positively slimy personality. So, why even bother to hire this guy if he seems
to be such a creep? Well, it turned out that the acquisition of Doctor Clef wasn’t without its
advantages, namely the capture and containment of SCP-447. This SCP, for any who might be
unfamiliar, is an anomaly in two parts. The first, SCP-447-1, is a sphere composed entirely of a
green, slime-like substance. It’s warm to the touch, the same sort of heat as an ordinary human
body, and has no adverse or harmful effects on anyone that comes into contact with it. SCP-447-2
is a viscous green slime that is excreted by the main ball. This excretion can be eaten, or can
increase the fuel efficiency of gasoline by one hundred and fifty percent when they are mixed.
The sphere and the substance are only known to be harmful when they come into contact with dead
bodies, although what exactly occurs when this happens has been redacted by the O5 Council.
Nonetheless, Doctor Alto Clef was reportedly instrumental in retrieving SCP-447, and given
the usefulness of its slime to the Foundation, the doctor had, in turn, proved his own worth. The
consensus seems to be that, while his personality might be annoying or even outright repulsive in
some instances, Alto Clef is still able to perform his job with precision and competence, making
the doctor a useful asset to the SCP Foundation. During his time there, Clef became well known
for being somewhat of a gun enthusiast as well. In fact, he earned his own brand of infamy
for his habit of brutally “decommissioning” dangerous SCPs; and you can probably guess what
we mean by that. In other words, Clef established himself as the Foundation’s go-to executioner.
Sometimes, he’s a little too good at his job though. In one instance, Clef brought a chainsaw
to work that he thought possessed supernatural properties. However, this happened to take place
at the Foundation’s annual costume party, causing the doctor to think that a riot was taking place,
thanks to personnel all being dressed as D Class. Chainsaw in hand, Clef murdered half of his
own research staff without a second thought. It also turned out that the chainsaw hadn’t had
any anomalous properties in the first place. Doctor Clef is renowned for having brutal
efficiency, not shying away from causing the deaths of countless civilian lives
during his “decommissioning” of anomalies. As long as he is able to kill or contain an SCP
to further the course of science, or protect the majority of the civilian world, then Clef will
view any possible deaths and collateral damage caused by his actions as acceptable losses.
In short, he is a necessary evil. But perhaps Clef’s best-known attempt at decommissioning
an anomaly was during the SCP-239 Incident. Also known by the nickname of “The Witch
Child”, SCP-239 might appear to be a harmless eight-year-old child, but she’s actually a
powerful reality-bending anomaly, with impervious, indestructible skin. Her capabilities are almost
limitless, and she can influence the world and people around her in virtually any way that she
can imagine. As long as she is conscious and can see her surroundings, SCP-239 can create living
matter, or make it disappear, wishing things into or out of existence with as little as a simple
thought. Or, as her file in the SCP Archive puts it, “If she can see it, she can change it.”
Although SCP-239 was being contained by the Foundation, given a pre-approved list of “spells”
that she was allowed to perform and kept calm at all times so she wouldn’t think to cause harm to
herself or anyone around her, Doctor Clef didn’t think this was adequate enough. In a report, he
claimed that the Witch Child’s containment wasn’t suitable and that she posed a major security risk
to the SCP Foundation and its personnel. You see, given his time with the Global Occult Coalition,
Doctor Clef had become somewhat of an expert in anomalies with the ability to reshape reality,
making him particularly wary of SCP-239. It was his proposal that the Foundation
should not overestimate its own ability to contain these reality benders, and
that they should instead strike first. Doctor Clef’s idea was simple: Use some form
of sharp implement to kill SCP-239. Of course, given the Witch Child’s impenetrable skin, this
is a lot easier said than done. But Clef had a few solutions handy to work around this. Firstly,
his plan was that this decommissioning would be carried out at night when SCP-239 was asleep,
and as a result, her reality-altering powers would be neutralized. Second, the implement
used to kill her would be made out of SCP-148, the “Telekill” Alloy. This anomaly is a metal
that the Foundation keeps stored in blocks, that has the unique property of being able
to block telepathic and memetic effects. Now, that plan on its own might sound fine
on paper - that is, if you’re on board with murdering an eight-year-old SCP while she’s
asleep - But there were a number of risks for Clef to consider. SCP-239 could wake up during
her termination, and would then be able to resist being killed. But another far more complicated
risk was that SCP-239 could wake up, perceive the person carrying out her termination as a
friend, as someone who wouldn’t harm her, and her abilities would then alter the world around her
to make this the case, changing reality to match. To try and avoid this outcome, Doctor Clef
volunteered himself as the one who would carry out the procedure. With his mysterious past, dealing
with reality-changing anomalies as a member of the Global Occult Coalition, he overzealously thought
he was the only man cut out for the job. However, in his arrogance, Clef made the fatal mistake
of transmitting his plan openly to Foundation personnel, instead of using secure, encrypted
channels. You see, over time, SCP-239 had formed bonds with a number of the Site 17 staff that
had been assigned to her. Regardless of whether staff members had sympathy towards the girl,
or because her perception of them had altered reality and bent their intentions, Dr. Kondraki
had to step in and intervene. And of course, this led to an altercation between the two.
Thanks to Kondraki’s efforts, Doctor Clef’s proposed plan of decommissioning SCP-239, a
defenseless, anomalous child, was thwarted. Even so, during the incident,
Clef showed how remarkably, and worryingly, easy he found it to outwit
the Foundation’s defenses and security forces. Though he walked away from his attempted murder
of SCP-239 with a few severe injuries, Clef’s career wasn’t impeded upon in the slightest. In
fact, the O5 Council promoted him to the position of Department Head for the SCP Foundation’s
Division of Training and Development, thanks to his reputation for swift, relentless, and
surgically precise methods of terminating SCPs. However, Doctor Clef’s actions during the SCP-239
Incident prompted some within the Foundation to take a closer look at his past. A tricky thing
to do, especially seeing as Clef is known to be a liar and not someone to be trusted, and that this
has been a long-time habit of his that is unlikely to change. However, there does exist a service
record for a Global Occult Coalition operative who used to go by the code name of ‘Ukulele’.
First recruited into the Coalition in 1981, Ukulele was reported to have killed a
number of Known Threat Entities (or KTEs), but these usually came with the result of
heavy casualties, including the deaths of other GOC operatives. One Colonel Richard Adams
is quoted in Ukulele’s service record as saying “Does anyone know who this guy is or where
he came from? He's good at what he does, right, but every time I ask him about his
past, I get a completely different answer.” Eventually, after ninety-nine confirmed kills of
anomalous entities, the operative known as Ukulele expressed a desire to retire from active service
within the Coalition. This request was granted, and sometime later, he resurfaced working for the
SCP Foundation under a new name: Doctor Alto Clef. Naturally, Doctor Clef has never confirmed nor
denied that he is, in fact, Ukulele, although his habit of playing the instrument does seem to
imply that there’s some sort of connection there. After all, that’s not as strange as some of the
other rumors floating around about our old friend Alto Clef. Some think he’s an incarnation of
the Devil himself, or that he even married a goddess and had several children with her.
Others claim Clef is the biological father of SCP-166, a girl with deer horns and the ability to
make anything man-made corrode. Then again, you’d be better off coming up with your own answer than
asking Doctor Clef about his past. He’s hardly likely to give you a straight answer, providing
he doesn’t ‘accidentally’ kill you on the spot. Now go check out “SCP Foundation Boss - The
Administrator Explained” and “SCP Immortal Dr. Bright Explained” for more of the inside scoop on
the mysterious figures behind the SCP Foundation!
