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"I want you to reflect back on that moment when you realized what was happening. Do you remember that feeling of helplessness? Do you remember what it felt like to realize that reality no longer existed, and you were nothing but toys for a hostile will that controlled EVERYTHING?"
"Remember that. And hold onto it the first time you're about to go up against a Reality Bender. If you ever think that, maybe, you can contain them? Or maybe they can be reasoned with? Remember what it felt like when you were tripping balls and nothing was real."
"Then kill that motherfucker before he knows you're even there."
"You're all certified now. Class Dismissed."
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~ Transcript of Dr. Clef's seminar, "Reality Benders and You: How to Survive When Existence Doesn't."
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You're not a soldier. You're not a hero. You're not even a murderer. You're nothing but a bully… and SCPs are the nerdy kids who you like to beat up to hide the fact that you're nothing but a lonely, empty shell of a man.
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~ Adrian Andrews to Clef in "The 784 Incident: Part 7: Conclusion".
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Dr. Alto Clef is a recurring protagonist in the SCP Foundation series. He is one of the more notable doctors working for the SCP Foundation. He is an infamous member of the SCP Foundation's personnel, being an ex-operative and reality-benders expert of the Global Occult Coalition who after joining the Foundation became a known eccentric liar. Due to his work some of the personnel looked up to him, while others detested him due to his nasty personality, though in truth most of Clef's character was shrouded in mystery. He is frequently depicted as a rival to Dr. Kondraki and the archenemy of SCP-239.
Clef plays an important role in the "Resurrection", "lolFoundation" and "Ship In A Bottle" canons, and is the main antagonist in "The Adventures of Siggy and RoboMonkey" series. "The Death of Alto Clef" was a story prompt for April of 2010's "The Great Short Story Contest Archives".
Appearance[]
Clef was described as an ugly man standing 5’3” tall, weighing 145 pounds, with fair skin, one blue and one green eyes, a big nose, jagged pointed teeth, hay blonde hair, a bulging beer belly and a eye tattoo on the back of his neck. While working for the Foundation he usually wore a Hawaiian shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, and often sported an unusually wide grin on his face. After being abused by SCP-4231-A, his nose was repeatedly broken, and had scars on the back of his head, back of his shoulders and buttocks due to multiple blunt forces he received. It had been reported that Clef also possessed a third eye, but this turned out to be more of a metaphysical eye which allowed reality-benders to see through space and time.
While in the Oneiroi world he appeared as a tall man wearing a black jacket. After becoming an old man, Clef appeared as a big man with grey shaggy hair and beard, wearing a camo baseball cap, a white sleeveless shirt stained with sweat, beer and other fluids, and large denim overalls which hanged past his hips.
Powers and Abilities[]
Clef is one of the few Foundation personnel to be anomalous. He is a reality anchor, that being an individual who is immune to reality-bending or other anomalies, allowing Clef to safely interact with various anomalies without harm coming to him. Clef used this property to combat several anomalous beings, making him one of the best agents that could directly fight with powerful individuals or creatures. He could see through the illusionary disguise of SCP-2480-2, seeing the behemoths how they truly were, and was suspected to be immune to SCP-2075's infection, but SCP-239 proved to be powerful enough to affect him. Clef's face also cannot be photographed or recorded in video no matter what, as his face would always be replaced with that of a random animal. Another property of his is his effects he has on women, who upon seeing him for the first are immediately repulsed by him, and although it could probably be because of his personality it is most likely part his anomalous being. He is also shown to possess extended longevity and apparently some shapeshifting power.
It was later revealed that Clef is actually a reality-bender himself, being shown to manipulate reality around him and manifest objects out of nowhere, but because of the extended abuse he suffered by his lover and fellow reality-bender Lilly Clef regressed his powers, almost never using them in his line of work, except to form the aforementioned anomalous properties. Clef subconsciously turned himself into a reality-sink to fight other reality-benders, manipulated the photos and videos capturing his face as he didn't wish to continually observed without his consent, and induced disgust to the women around him since the last woman he had loved was an uncaring monster. Because of this, he was to take a hybrid of fluorine, oxygen, carbon and selenium antipsychotic and retroviral supplement to counteract and suppress his powers.
During his time working for both the GOC and the Foundation, Clef became an expert in combating a myriad of dangerous anomalies, along with being skilled in demolition. Thanks to his past experiences with the GOC, Clef was of great help to the Foundation when it came to contain anomalies, and if it was necessary to destroy them, even being assigned as director of the MTF training school. While in the GOC, Clef formed intricate and elaborative plans to take down anomalies that couldn't be liquidated easily. At his disposal Clef had various armaments which included pistols, shotguns, scoped and unscoped rifles, submachineguns, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers and silver tipped beryllium-bronze bullets layered with SCP-148 and iron cores, and engraved with warding microgrids. After joining the Foundation, Clef could access some of the contained anomalies such as SCP-668, SCP-776-ARC which is dice that manifests natural occurrences, and SCP-1023-ARC which was a blade made of 148. During his last confrontation with SCP-239, Clef was given the Atomic Revolver which releases a radiation blast that causes the target to be afflicted with an incurable cancer. While stuck in Site-118 Clef was equipped with a crimson Scrantonum blade which he used to kill several anomalous beings.
Clef was shown to be able to access the Oneiroi's dreamworld by projecting his consciousness into the subconscious hive mind while dreaming. He apparently could achieve this by shutting off his prefrontal cortex, which was like lucid dreaming, but lacked proper training causing him to get disoriented.
Personality[]
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As one might imagine, I’ve butted heads with the Ethics Committee a few times over my practice of secretly drugging trainees with designer hallucinogens to simulate a reality bender attack. The Memetics and Infohazards guys do something similar, but apparently, that’s okay because they tell people beforehand and get ‘consent’ or some hippy bullshit.
My training program only works because people think it’s real, that’s the whole point! Have some people harmed or killed themselves or others during my training sessions? Yes. Have people committed suicide or otherwise suffered long-term psychological damage due to the guilt or the psychological trauma inflicted during their bad trip? Yes. Wouldn’t it make more sense to gradually acclimatized trainees to the stresses of reality-bending attacks instead of subjecting them to a full-blown simulated attack all at once and losing valuable personnel to death and madness? Yes.
I mean… goddamnit!
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~ Excerpts From "How To Survive When Reality Doesn't", by Alto Clef.
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Alto Clef has shown himself to be an extravagant, disrespectful and violent individual who almost always acted as a jerk towards others, enjoying teasing and tormenting his co-workers, taking nothing seriously most of the time, not caring much for the damage he caused, and always lying about everything about himself. He didn't respect women, causing him to be referred as a misogynist, and every female around him were always repulsed by him. Clef was quite of a gun enthusiast, being an expert in handling a variety of fire weapons, and always held by his side a shotgun. Despite his poor demeanor, Clef had formed complicated friendships with his fellow personnel which included Gears, Strelnikov, Kondraki, Rights, Glass, Mann and Shaw, developing a proper friendship with Strelnikov while having a love-hate relationship with Kondraki. Being an expert in reality-benders, Clef held a deep hatred towards them, seeing them all as monsters that abused their powers for their own satisfaction. Because of this, Clef became extremely paranoid and fearful of SCP-239 as despite being an innocent child who could barely control her powers, he saw her as a dangerous entity which needed to be destroyed for the good of the world. He became so wary of her, that he attacked Site-17 and took out several people in order to get to 239, though it is heavily implied that his hatred of her intensified due to 239 fearing him and subconsciously altering reality to make her fear true. Beneath his nasty personality, Clef proved to be a caring and honorable man, having deep respect for his co-workers who risked their lives to protect the world from the anomalous. He dearly loved his daughter SCP-166, trying his best to keep her safely hidden from the GOC and the Foundation, and after she was taken under the latter's custody made sure to make her stay as safe and comfortable as it could, and was apologetic for having failed to be a proper father to her.
As it turned out, the reason why Clef is this type of individual was because of the terrible abuse Lilly put him through. At first the two loved each other, but as Lilly grew to become increasingly more cruel and aggressive, she slowly began torturing Clef, insulting, beating and raping him, while telling him he should consider himself lucky for having her, gaslighting him into staying with her. Because he had no friends at that point in time, Clef didn't open to anyone and was unable to realize Lilly's torture. From this abuse, Clef developed self-hatred because of his appearance, and thought the pain he was receiving from Lilly was his own fault and he deserved it. He would join the GOC to help in fighting anomalous threats, especially fellow reality-benders. He hunted every reality-bender he and his team encountered as a way of taking out his anger towards Lilly, having developed a deep-seated hatred towards his own kind because of her, believing they were all selfish monstrosities. Having become suspicious of his job, Lilly attempted to beat the truth out of him, demanding Clef to tell her the truth, but he managed to endure and lie to her. Since in the GOC he could freely express himself, Clef's Agent Ukulele persona became distinct from his former self, causing him to suffer from dissociative identity disorder probably as a coping mechanism, with the original Clef being a kindhearted man who just wanted peace and Ukulele being an uncaring individual who enjoyed killing those he perceived as monsters. After the birth of their daughter, Clef had enough of Lilly's torture and not wanting to leave 166 at her mercy allowed Ukulele to finally kill her. Following his capture by the Foundation, Ukulele became his main personality, burying his old persona and becoming the eccentric and savvy man he is more well known for.
In Other Media[]
Foundation After Midnight Radio[]
In the Foundation After Midnight Radio podcast series, which takes place in-universe, Clef is mentioned several times throughout the episodes before speaking directly to the real-life listeners at the end of Episode 12 alongside a female member of the O5 Council, threatening them that he and the Foundation would get to them soon enough.
Quotes[]
Trivia[]
- Like most of the notable Foundation employees, Clef is the author avatar of user DrClef.
- Alto Clef refers to a musical symbol (𝄡) used to precise the location of musical notes in staff.
- His real last name, "Wojciechowski", is a Polish last name derived from the name "Wojciech", which means "joyous warrior".
- The surveillance camera footage of Clef's and Kondraki's swordfight was taken by an employee who uploaded it to the company intraweb, accompanied by the theme song "Highlander" and titled "There Can Be Only One". This video was later shown to SCP-076-2.
- Clef is apparently a fan of the Sleeping Beauty and Gargoyles.
- SCP-496-J, Senior Researcher Dr. Margaret Sawyer-Sheen, was in a romantic relationship with Clef. SCP-777-J, an "awesome" bladed warrior who "always" wins, gave Clef the name "Death Metal, the Son of Satan, Wielder of the Guitar of Weeping Souls, Half-Saiyan heir to Son Goku".
- In "The Leak" forum thread the author of Dr. Clef, DrClef, explained that Clef wasn't the Devil but the biblical Adam who cast out humanity from Eden.
- However, besides a few implications in some articles like SCP-001 (DrClef's Proposal) and SCP-2783, this backstory has yet to become official as it is often assumed that this was an elaborate lie by Clef, and in SCP-6666 Clef is shown to be a distinct character from Adam El Asem.
- In author DrClef's headcanon, most of the tale "Clef And Dimitri Hit The Road" was made up by Clef and Dmitri to hide the fact that they had in fact spent their vacation beyond the scheduled plan and just so happened to meet with Yoric, while the newspaper headlines were about unrelated events.
- In "Origin of Clef", Clef implied he was actually Dr. Jack Bright who had his consciousness copied in a different body, but this could be chalked up to him lying again.
- In "Tradition" which took place in Halloween, Clef wore a sharp tuxedo, devil horns and Guy Fawkes mask, making him appear like a stereotypical devil. He then creeped out the lower staff members by simply staring at them from a distance.
- In "How Dr. Clef Saved Christmas", Clef in his identity of Chowderclef rescued Santa from the villain Manhattanite. In "How Dr. Clef Contained Christmas!" which is a parody of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Clef prevented the sentient anomalies from celebrating Christmas simply because he hated it, but as his heart was about to change Site-19 blew up.
- When the Foundation used SCP-978 to take a photo of Dr. Clef, the picture showed him with his head replaced with a hand raising the middle finger, due to having argued with a fellow doctor, and in company of his freed daughter.
- When Clef was confronted by SCP-1848, an entity which shapeshifts into a subject that correlated to the observer's past, it transformed into an Arby's Roast Beef Sandwich which left a sauce stain on Clef's shirt, leaving him confused.
- In "Little SCP-507 Lost", SCP-507 visited a universe where the SCP Foundation was the imaginary world of a man named Robert who believed himself to be Dr. Alto Clef.
- Clef was depicted in Dr. Edison's "SCP Foundation: The Movie" by Samuel L. Jackson, and unlike the rest of the personnel who were also depicted in it he thought the portrayal of him was mostly accurate but was still mad at Edison as the latter owed him royalties.
- "Chowderclef" is a chef-themed superhero version of Clef, appearing in his titular joke tale, "Issue 100" and "Tales of the Foundation Force Five" alongside his fellow coworkers who are also superheroes.
- In the "Classical Revival" continuity, Francis Wojciechoski, who is the storyline's main character, was a unlucky reality-bender born in 1967 who after graduating school alongside Dr. Rights, went to work for the GOC before joining the newly formed Foundation. Later on, Francis would develop two personalities: Agent Ukulele who used or limited Francis' power over reality and fought against powerful anomalies; and Alto H. Clef who allowed Francis to integrate into human society. SCP-166 also isn't his actual daughter, but instead is a spawn of SCP-597 named Epon whom Francis kidnapped and took under his care.
- In the tale "Yesterday", which took place in a previous iteration of reality, as an XK-Class "End of the World" Scenario began occurring Clef was tasked by O5-12 to kill specific Foundation personnel. These included Prof. Bjornsen, Dir. Aktus, Dir. McTiriss, Dr. Kiryu, Dr. Roget, Dr. Solace, Res. Labelle, Dr. Halifax, Dir. Jones, Dr. Elliott, Dr. Glass, Dr. Bridge, Dr. Mann, Dr. Bright, Agent Strelnikov, Dr. Gears, Prof. Crow, Dr. Roth, Dir. Moose, Dr. Kondraki and lastly O5-12 himself, Agent Lament in SCP-2000. After killing Lament near the Bloom, an ancient artifact that could reset reality, Clef was soon killed by Dr. Light which activated the Bloom and reset reality to the current iteration.
- This version of Clef is probably the deceased body who left a note in Sector 3382 of SCP-2000 questioning the machine's origins and how long they'd been using it.
- In "Technical Issues", after someone tried to log into Clef's computer, they set off his "customized positive action locks", leading to their death. Clef then asked System Analyst Patrick Gephart to provide him a new computer and call housekeeping to remove the body, but the latter refused to help. This infuriated Clef who attempted to complain to him, only for his call to be ignored. In "New Technical Issues Archive", as Clef's SCiPNET kept crashing down on him, he asked Researcher Rosen's temporarily replacement A. Courpse for help, and as the latter replied back to him their computer got infected by the virus that had plagued Clef's. Later, Dr. E. Alameida complained to Rosen that the SCP photos in their computer had all been replaced with photos of a naked Clef with his head replaced with that of a Husky/Corgi mix, though Rosen found nothing problematic about this.
- In the "Unfounded" canon, a universe in which the SCP Foundation never formed, Clef continued working for the GOC, becoming a director and overseeing the liquidation and recruitment of several anomalies.
- In "Mile High Club" that takes place during the Cold War, Clef fought against the Soviets and the mujahideen in Afghanistan alongside Mann, Kondraki, Harriet and Gears before dying.
- Clef was shown to love waffles with syrup.
- According to "Second Date", Clef is asexual, though he still dated Kondraki. In "Okay, That's Enough, Let's Get You Home" and the following tales all set in the setting of "Yesterday", after Kondraki was taken out of the picture Clef entered a relationship with Gears. The tale "The Clefnikov Experience™" depicted a possible relationship between Clef and Strelnikov, but it didn't work out.
- Clef's unpublished book titled "A Field Guide to Snake Hunting by Agent U" which detailed means to combat anomalous individuals, is part of the "Ego" shelf of SCP-4982, a modified bookcase which contains anomalous books casted out of the Wanderer's Library.
- Buckchamp McFuckmeup, or just Buck, an anthropomorphic goose assassin who is more famously known as "Alto Clef Jr.", doesn't have any connection to Dr. Clef apart that they're both skilled assassins who worked for the Foundation.
- In MLZ-1730 in which the contained anomalies and Foundation personnel switched places, with the anomalies taking the role of Foundation personnel known as the "Man Zoo League" and containing normal people in their "Man Zoo", Clef wasn't contained by the League unlike the majority of the humans but was surgically tortured by SCP-106.
- The title "Clef the Killer" from "The 784 Incident: Part 3: Escalation" is probably derived off Jeff the Killer. The tale "Yesterday" which is alternatively called "Clef Kills the SCP Foundation Universe" is likely a reference to "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe" storyline. Clef's portrayal in "Us and Them" was largely inspired by Logan. Varis once compared Clef to Elmer Fudd due to always carrying a shotgun with himself.
- While writing the article the author thefriendlyvandal had based the abusive relationship between Clef and Lilly on the experiences of real life victims of abuse whom he had interviewed.
- When Bright looked into SCP-4491, a 99 minute long video which despite displaying only a black screen humans are able to see certain scenes, he saw Clef taunting with a shotgun SCP-1233 and SCP-527 who had been gagged and bound to chairs inside a basement home, and occasionally talked to someone offscreen suspected to be dado.
- According to 'Excerpts From "How To Survive When Reality Doesn't", by Alto Clef', Clef was older than Adam Savage. In the same tale, Clef expressed his hatred towards the metric system, always using the imperial system when writing files, knowing well that the Foundation would be wasting time and resources correcting his files.
- When the Foundation's Department of Multiverse Analysis began pulling webpages from alternate universes, they came across a Wikipedia article about a critically acclaimed but cursed theatrical musical called "Clef Eats Ass: The Musical" in which Clef was played by actor Mikey McBasir and later Cutell Geer. Clef is also present in Gabriel Jade's play "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" though only his voice is present.
- It is possible that Clef was the doctor responsible for capturing and then neutralizing SCP-818, a powerful autistic reality-bender, as the doctor's redacted name matches that of Clef. SCP-0166 also hints that Kondraki again confronted Clef over killing an innocent child with no control over their powers, resulting in another notable incident.
- The in-universe article "What We Know So Far: Answering the Question of What, How, and Why; Green-Types" considered Clef's research on reality-benders as outdated.
- In "Many Last Words", Clef requested to use SCP-5109, a password that can be remembered by only one person in all of reality and if the holder tells the it to another person, they would completely forget it while the one who heard it will become the new holder of the password, for sex, but his request was denied due to he and Site-19 being considered boring. Clef later admitted to Gears that the real reason he requested SCP-5109 was to give it to Mann for his science project in exchange for information on the culprit responsible for stealing his sandwiches.
- In the universe of the tale "Ecce Insurgo" in which the GOC is unrelated to the UN and the Foundation doesn't exist, Clef was mentioned to be forced to work for the GOC and was essentially trapped, prompting his daughter to try to rescue him with the assistance of the Circus of the Disquieting.
- In the "NIGHTFALL: Qui Lactis" series, Friar Alto Clef was renegade who professed to the forbidden religion of Christianity and raised the series' main protagonist James No-Name as his own son.
- In SCP-7001, the nonexistent Site-19 that temporarily replaced an established Foundation facility, Clef was a nonexistent Foundation employee designated SCP-7001-1B who displayed bombastic, unprofessional and rule breaking behavior along with thaumaturgical powers.
- In "Cowboys from Hell" part of the "Aces and Eights" canon, a universe in which the SCP Foundation is set in the Old Wild West, Alto Clef was Ace Cliff who was the seventh son of an inbred cannibalistic hillbilly family known as the Flynns. He escaped from his evil family but would be pursued by his brothers since their father required his blood.
- Over on Tumblr DrClef the author has said that Clef had anosmia, or smell blindness, which was how he could tolerate Kondraki's smell.
- In the universe of SCP-6001 where the Compendium, a benevolent amalgam organization of different GoIs, took over the world and declared worldwide peace with all anomalies, Clef was a researcher working for the Compendium who once traveled to Australia where he encountered 682's species. To everyone's surprise, the monsters didn't devour him as they usually did with every trespasser, due to humanity "no longer being disgusting", and as a result he stayed with them for a while.
- In SCP-8008, 18 versions of Clef became trapped in the altered reality of Eluthertopia created by degenerate reality-bender SCP-8008-B. These versions of Clef joined ΔT, a group of fellow trapped time travelers who wished to kill SCP-8008-B in order to return everything to normal, but once they accomplished their mission all of them died as a result of the battle.
- In SPC-166, Clef was a former operative of the Global Organization of Countries who joined the Shark Punching Center. Just like his prime version he had conceived his daughter, Meri Epon Clef who was identical to her primary version, and when she began using her powers to annihilate Sharkicism, Clef was assigned as her liaison.
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