”No. No, no, no, no, no. You cannot do this to me, amante, not at the height of my career. Have you no heart, no love? Oh, you beast. You want to see me beg, don't you? You pig. That's the only thing you want from your women: to see them submit themselves to you fully."
Maria Teresa García Ramírez de Arroyo paced back and forth, tears blending into the makeup on her face, her knee-high boots stabbing into the ground with every step and her blood-red wedding dress waving up and down in the wind. She was an utter mess. After spending the last ten minutes tearing into every aspect of the man sitting before her, she hadn't found a single chink in his armor. His slight grin remained — that damn grin. It was all she could think about. She must have looked so terrible at that moment, so embarrassed and frustrated.
The target of her verbal assault was the director of her latest film, a sappy love-drama in which her fiancé dies on her wedding day, sending her life spiraling downwards, culminating in her taking her own life exactly one year later. Maria had only caught glimpses of her script, but she knew it was terrible. That didn't matter, though. What mattered was her performance and, more importantly, the award that would follow.
And it all was being ruined by this one man.
”Damn you! Speak to me,” she said. Her accent caused her to cut the T's and K's sharp like a knife. "Tell me why I should not leave right now and tell your wife everything."
The man tilted his face to the floor, allowing his off-brown hair to hang low for a moment before whipping it back up. It looked as though he might have been defeated. He uncrossed his legs and sat up straight. When he lifted his head, Maria realized that his grin had only grown larger.
”Because, sweetheart, nobody would believe you.” The director took on a deep and muggy voice, like he was drunk on keeping Maria in this state of anxiety. Blood rushed to her cheeks and ears. It was utter fear that filled her mind. She didn't know whether to run, to fight, or to simply stop existing.
She chose the first option. ”You… you bastard!” she roared as she rushed him, her hands outstretched like claws. He shot out of his seat and caught her by the wrist. She tried to tear herself free, but his grip was like cold steel.
"I always thought you were naïve, but never this… upset about losing a lover." His face betrayed nothing. There wasn't a wrinkle on his forehead nor a curve in his lip nor a rumble in his chest.
”Oh, don't you use that dirty word.” Maria sank into his black checkerboard suit. “It's so, so much more than that you stupid man. It was.” Her rage collapsed into tears that ran down her face and dripped onto the floor.
”What is it, then?” He pulled her closer. She wasn't sure if she should push him away or embrace him with all of the forgiveness that was left. He said, "one of the countless names for something not meant to be?"
”Something like this doesn't die with time,” Maria said. “It is only murdered. The only thing you are doing now is dancing on its grave. And you won't do that to mine. I refuse to let my lover kill my love. Not now, not while I'm like this. You can ruin my career, but you can never take back the thing that you have created within me."
”Why, isn't that a poetic little line you've—”

“Why are you here?”
“Huh?”
Huxley was jolted out of his daydream by the old man that was seated next to him. The man's head was turned, but the rest of his body was still. There was dust on the shoulders of his suit. Huxley examined his face. It was strange. There were no signs of disgust or annoyance or anything that would suggest that there was something behind his eyes. Maybe he was feeling something, but his body was refusing to let him express it.
Huxley only maintained eye-contacted for a few seconds. His tiny legs squirmed as he repositioned himself in his wheelchair. The man repeated his question, with the exact same tone. Huxley tilted his head slightly, only keeping the man's shoes in sight.
“I am here to interview you,” Huxley said.
“Are you? Most of the physicians I have seen were much more lively in conversation, and you haven't spoken a word in minutes," the man replied.
“I apologize for not starting the conversation, then.”
“Oh, don't pity yourself. This isn't the time to reflect, it's time to talk. Come on, man. What do you want to know? It's not like I'm going anywhere."
Huxley waited for a few more seconds. In the corner of the room, a record player was softly blaring out early 1900s ballroom music from a vinyl that hadn't been cleaned in weeks. The soft crackles grew into snaps and bangs. It was so loud that it cut into the silence, causing Huxley to lose his train of thought and start over again. He listened for a long time, gathering something.
“Oh good lord, introduce yourself. What do they teach you in those boarding schools? That's where people like you come from, don't you?"
“I'm not from a boarding school. And my name is Williams, Hux—”
“Ah, such an annoying habit you government workers have. Use your first name, man. You were instructed to become friends with me, weren't you?”
“We mostly just use our titles — too many names and faces to keep track of them all. Um, my first name is Huxley, with an ‘X'.”
“Hmm. That's interesting. Robert Chetford.”
Neither man knew how to continue talking. Richard swiveled his head back to the window, his eyes scanning the desert valley and the large mechanical pillars that swayed slowly in the distance. Huxley lowered his head to the small piece of paper in his hand. Without realizing it, he began to fold it into tiny squares. Once he did, he unfolded it, inadvertently tearing some of the edges off.
“What do you have there?” Richard piped up. Huxley unveiled the paper to him. It contained a jumbled mess of sentences, dialogue, thoughts, and a few images that were dotted randomly across the page, some forcing Huxley to turn the paper the paper in order to read them.
“It's a mnemonic poem,” he said.
"A… that's quite an interesting word, isn't it? What is it? It looks like a whole lot of nothing on paper."
"Well, it's like a game. The poet arranges the words and sentences and photos on a page and the reader is meant to look at them in whatever order they'd like. This one is meant to tell a story. Look…" Huxley searched the page with his finger, eventually landing on a small strip of dialogue. "Look at this line, 'you can't take back what you've created.' That could be something a character says or a theme. So you take that and then you add in a sentence or a photo and keep going. It's like a backwards puzzle; you have to create the meaning yourself."
"That sounds like a load of nonsense, doesn't it? You're searching for meaning in something that has none. Is that what you people consider fun these days?" Richard said.
"It's not fun most of the time." Huxley scratched his neck. "But once in a while you come across a poem that just… fits together so perfectly, like all of the pieces were placed there just for you. Then it's nice."
Richard grumbled out something, but Huxley couldn't decipher it. He folded up the poem again and put it in his pocket. The next few minutes crawled by. Huxley began to tap his foot. Well, he raised it before letting it slam down into the footrest. He had lost the ability to point his foot enough to 'tap' it a long time ago. Once he felt like the silence was too unbearable, he searched his mind for the next question. Like a well-oiled machine, it gave it to him on his first request.
"Have you been feeling sad lately?" Huxley asked.
Richard turned towards him, choosing to raise an eyebrow now. "Where did you get that idea from?"
"You didn't say much to the other interviewers, but you've been pretty talkative to me. Depression can cause symptoms like that, having days when you feel like talking and others when you don't."
"Don't try and diagnose me. A man's mind is his own business."
"Okay, so why do you suddenly want to talk?"
Richard leaned back against his chair. Then he closed his eyes. It was like he was growing more human by the second. Huxley's lip curled, his heart beating faster. He had barely said anything, and he had gotten this subtherium to open up more than any other interviewer before. If he could get Richard to do this, what else could he pull off?
"I'm starting to regret that I did, Huxley." Richard's tone was flat, but his words dug deep. "But that's not a fair answer, is it? I apologize. I enjoyed… how different you are from everyone else. Most of the researchers, as you say, they walk up to me and start listing off questions. A few have tried to make themselves known to me, but you're the only one that didn't start the conversation. They get too anxious. They think that they have to take the first step."
"You don't want people to step on your land? That's understandable, given your situation. You know, we can always change the way we—"
"Oh, don't bother. By the time you get around to telling those men how to speak to me, I'll have grown to hate it. Maybe I'll start speaking in rhymes, make them think that I've really gone off the deep end. That'll make things interesting, heh. What is it with you and your procedures? Can't you talk like a normal man?"
"That would be dangerous. If we made a subtherium mad, they could lash out and breach containment."
"Oh, to hell with it."
Richard stared out the window with a newfound determination. There was visible frustration in his gaze. He began to trace the outlines of the rocks, the trees, and the roadways to try and calm himself down. Huxley scratched his leg, mostly just to keep himself from falling back into another daydream. He considered trying to ask another question, but decided to give it a few more minutes. If he were lucky, Richard would still want to see him after this.
When Huxley eventually looked up at Richard again, he noticed that the man was looking at him intently. He didn't want this conversation to end. Huxley's face lit up as his mind fed him another question immediately.
"Um," Huxley stumbled, "do you know why you're still immortal? It's been decades since the Sandaran Incident, but you still haven't aged a day."
Richard kept his eyes on him, but he wasn't exactly looking at Huxley. He was staring through him, at something far away. He answered bleakly, "No, I don't know why. Now leave me to my music, please."
Huxley was taken aback as Richard reverted back to a statue. He could almost see the subtherium's soul fading down into his body for its next bout of hibernation. Huxley knew that all of his chances were used up, and swiveled his wheelchair around to leave. Squeaks echoed across the crumbling white room with reinforced walls.
Huxley expected to enter an empty room when he pushed open the heavy door. Nobody watched these parts of the facility. He wouldn't be surprised if the security camera outside wasn't even turned on. So he felt a jolt of surprised upon seeing a woman lounging in a chair that had remained unused for years. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, he only felt more surprised as he realized that it was the same woman that he had spoken to earlier. She didn't look like she was there to document the lonely interview — assuming that this Site still cared enough to document their interviews. Huxley pushed onward, slightly hoping that she wouldn't notice him.
"Well that was something special, wasn't it?" The woman turned to Huxley, and her gaze alone froze him in place. In the split-second between him turning towards her and realizing he shouldn't, the details of her face cemented themselves in his mind.
She was young, maybe late 40s, with empty eyes and a neck that sagged a little. Her hair had been tied into a messy ponytail and there were small dark stains beneath her eyes. It was like looking at a rusty set of knight's armor, and the longer that the image was in his mind, the more rotten and sickly it became.
"Yes, it was." Huxley was numb and blunt.
"Do you have a special technique to get it to do that?" Emma's tone, meanwhile, was extremely affectionate. It tripped something in Huxley's head that made the hair on the back of his neck rise.
"No. I mostly made it up as I went. From my experience, subtheriums tend to get annoyed when they have to go through the steps of a formal interview. They think it's manipulative, that it's… fake." Huxley smoothly maneuvered himself around the woman, trying to end the conversation prematurely.
She stood, blocking his way. "Hey, I don't think we've been properly introduced."
Huxley kept his head low. "We haven't."
"Well, I'm Emma Sandaran. I'm an interviewer, like you. But that's more of a title nowadays; they don't give me anything to talk to. And before you ask, no, I'm not that Sandaran—"
"She's dead."
"What?"
"I know you're not. Rachael Sandaran died a long time ago. A very long time ago."
Emma's face tightened, red flashes appearing on her face. Huxley sensed something and instinctively craned his neck up to look at her. She towered over him, but he didn't feel threatened. Emma looked defenseless. If she put her fists together, they would be larger than his head, but there was something inside Huxley that knew that she wouldn't, and it was prodding at him to grin. He kept his face straight, though. That was a good face to make. It was neutral, it was indifferent.
"Are you related or do you just have the same name?" Huxley said.
"I'm her daughter."
There was something wrong with Emma's voice, but Huxley couldn't detect what was hiding behind her cheery tone. "Oh…" Huxley scratched the side of his neck. "I'm Williams. I don't have a title like that. My first name is Huxley, in case you want to go by that instead." The words sounded rehearsed, as if every syllable had been placed there beforehand.
"Okay, Williams. Well, you're probably wondering why I'm talking to you, aren't you? I'm sure you've received the proposal from your Director and you know that you're supposed to get a partner. And that partner just so happens to be me, heh. I don't know all of the details yet, but—"
"I'm going."
Emma stuttered once or twice. "Okay. Do you, um, want to get to know each other first before we go off into an anomalous settlement?"
"You can look up my file if you want. Everything you need to know is there. If you're still interested, talk to Director Flynn when you can. He does this a lot, sends me out to a new Site before putting me on an assignment." Huxley was quiet for a beat. His hands were shaking a little. "I guess he wants to see if I can… survive."
"Oh." Emma pulled back, her face returning to a stoic look. She tapped her finger on her leg to count the passing seconds. "Would you be more enthusiastic about it if you got the chance to go somewhere else?"
Huxley's eyes were filled with something that Emma couldn't quite place. "It doesn't matter. I'll complete the assignment."

Water flew past Huxley's ears like bullets. The high-pitched hum of the shower suppressed his brain just enough for him to think peacefully. Huxley was sitting on the metal shower bench, his face buried in his hands. They shielded him, they kept him safe for a little while. Sometimes he moved one of them to spread soapy bubbles onto his sickly body and legs, but only for a few seconds at a time. In a few minutes, he would have to exercise in front of that woman, Emma Sandaran. He needed to show that he had enough strength to complete the mission. She would be analyzing him, she would be judging him.
He turned one of the shower knobs and the water ceased. He grabbed a tower and began to dry himself off. His legs were completely numb. It wasn't anything new; he couldn't feel anything in his left leg, and his right was just barely hanging on. But he still had to walk, so he slipped on a pair of mechanical leg braces and tightened them almost to the point of breaking.
Huxley clawed at the slick bathroom walls for balance as he stood. It took him a second to get adjusted to the new sensation. He felt like an amputee, walking on these things that he couldn't feel. That wasn't important, though. The pain was gone. For a moment or two, Huxley felt like he was walking normally. Once he realized that he was feeling it, he ignored it, awkwardly jutting his legs forward and exiting the shower.
After Huxley finished dressing, he grabbed his wheelchair almost by instinct. He gave it a cold stare, then let it go. He wouldn't be needing it for this. He wouldn't want it for this. If his legs started aching in the middle of the examination, then he would have to suck it up and keep going. Huxley always did.
He exited the showers and saw Emma stretching on the other side of the gymnasium, looking at her reflection in the wall-sized mirror. She was dressed in a standard-issue exercise outfit for women, tight with all blacks and grays. Half of the floor was covered in foam mats and the other was packed with bench presses and treadmills and machines so large they almost reached the ceiling. Emma turned once she saw Huxley's reflection.
"I thought you couldn't walk." She began towards him like she was expecting him to collapse on the spot.
"I walk when I exercise." Huxley felt something in his foot. He couldn't tell what the sensation was, but he knew he was feeling something.
"So why do you use a wheelchair, then?" she asked.
Blood rushed into Huxley's skull, causing it to heat up a little. He knew he shouldn't have felt insulted by the question, but it still caused the hair on his arms to stand. It was a normal question to ask, and that made Emma a normal person. That was what infuriated Huxley. Emma Sandaran, daughter of Rachael Sandaran, was just a normal person who didn't understand what she was saying.
"I use a wheelchair because my bones are weak. If I walk too long, they'll snap and I'll bleed out and die. So I use a wheelchair." He restrained his voice, only barely managing to keep it at a dull tone.
Two streaks of red appeared on Emma's face. "Oh. That wouldn't be good, would it?"
"No, it's not." Huxley drag himself towards her, dusting off his arms and shoulders. "What are we doing first? Don't worry about wearing out the braces. They'll be fine."
The two worked themselves to near-exhaustion. Occasionally, Huxley would notice Emma shooting a glance at him, thinking that he couldn't see her. He almost always did. It was impossible not to imagine what things were going on in her head. She was most likely detailing every error she could see in Huxley's design. It was something everybody did at one point or another, even subconsciously. It was like there was a mechanism deep within their psyche that forced them to try and recreate him in a better way, to try and push him a little more towards perfection.
It wasn't long before she did it again. While Huxley was lifting ten-pound weights, he watched her turn and take a peek at his head, at his lack of hair. Huxley felt the heat of her eyes. The sides of his mouth curled up and he bared his teeth, but he soon closed it. The last thing he should have done was escalate things further.
"You're messing up your form," he blurted out. Emma set down the steel bar and put her hands on her hips.
"Am I?" she asked. "Sorry, I got… distracted by my thoughts. Sometimes I forget and let myself slip."
Huxley turned away. "Don't do that. You need to keep your, um, knees more spread or else you'll blow one of them out."
Emma laughed to herself. "Yeah, I might. You know a lot about exercising, huh?"
"Mhm," Huxley grunted. It wasn't an insult, he told himself.
Emma slowly rolled out the plan over the course of ten minutes. Huxley tossed it back and forth in his mind when he reentered the showers. It would be a month away from this Site, at least. It was one month where death would be something real, something that could happen to him. He would be able to visit home and sleep in his bed one more time, then it would be uncomfortable sleeping bags in terrible conditions — all of it supervised by Emma.
She still hadn't told Huxley why they were partners. There were others at Huxley's Site that could have accompanied him; there were others at Emma's Site that could have accompanied her. Ideas came to mind, and he shot them all down. None were particularly nice.
Once Huxley exited in his wheelchair, Emma told him that they had both passed the test with flying colors. She hadn't actually tested him on anything practical, but he accepted her decision nonetheless. Both of them knew that they were fit to carry out this mission. Anyone that hadn't been laid off already was fit. Huxley was exhausted, but a dangerous energy was filling his bones and lifting his spirits. Change was coming, and change was good because it forced Huxley to adapt. Adaptation was always good.
She asked, “So what do you think? Do you want to go?”
“Yes. I want to.”

A fur coat weighed heavy on Huxley's shoulders. Emma stood beside him as a pristine, all-white private jet landed onto the airstrip. The air shined a metallic blue, tinged by the light from the sun that was setting in the distance. Huxley should have been eating dinner and winding down for the evening, but instead he was here, staring at the fog that hung over the fields.
"Wouldn't it be cheaper to fly on a public airplane?" Huxley turned to Emma. There were still hints of blush on her face, aftershocks of her earlier mistakes. They would probably haunt her for a few weeks, Huxley thought. A dark cloud of guilt appeared above him.
Emma swept a lock of hair away from her eyes. "This is a private assignment, so we don't want to get some teenager or journalist following us across the country." She rested her hand on her cheap metal suitcase.
The plane touched the ground, causing it to rumble. Huxley could feel his wheelchair shaking like it was afraid. He covered his ears, but the sound was still unbearably loud. As the plane rounded the end of the airstrip and began driving towards the two, a morbid side of Huxley's mind thought that he might die right there and then. It would be a stupid death, one that didn't warrant a funeral. He stopped himself from smiling.
Eventually, the plane came to a stop. An outline of a door appeared near the cockpit as it swung down, revealing a small staircase on the interior side. A man with a gray beard appeared in the doorway and waved at the two. Huxley felt himself lurch back into his chair as Emma began to push him. He looked back at her, trying to signal her to let him do it himself, but she didn't return his gaze. Eventually, he just let it happen.
"Is he gonna be alright?" The captain's tongue tapped the top of his mouth as he spoke, creating a quick click with each syllable. Huxley nodded and pulled back the section of his coat that was covering his legs, revealing his leg braces. They felt slightly looser now, though.
He felt Emma's hand on his back, and waved the help away. He trusted that the braces wouldn't fail him. Pressing his hands into the armrests of his wheelchair, Huxley lifted himself into a standing position. He snatched the staircase railings, lifted one leg, and slammed it into the first step. Pain followed, but he kept a straight face and continued. As he took a second step, he suddenly felt his foot give away, causing him to collapse into Emma's waiting arms.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. It's just a small…" Huxley didn't wait to finish his sentence. He tightened his grip on the railings tenfold and forced himself up the steps, his legs screaming at him to stop all the while. "Can you bring up my wheelchair, Emma?" She nodded at him. Huxley entered the plane, and when he stepped into the cabin, he realized firsthand the amount of wealth that the SCP Foundation still possessed.
It was decorated like a first-class hotel. Golden lines had been drawn in intricate patterns on the floor and the ceiling, weaving in and out, twisting, and spinning around each other. Leather chairs, velvet pillows, and designer couches covered the interior. The windows had some kind of television screen built into them, and they were each displaying a different channel: news networks, travel shows, and monotonous dramas. The sight captivated Huxley, almost enough to keep him from noticing the burning stares from the captain. It left a mark on the back of Huxley's scarred neck.
Huxley sat in a chair next to one of the only windows that wasn't displaying anything as Emma lumbered aboard. She balanced her suitcase and Huxley's wheelchair in her arms, dropping them on top of one of the couches. Breathing out a heavy cloud of air, she collapsed into a chair directly across from Huxley. She looked at him with dull eyes, like she could see through his skin at his skeleton.
The captain pulled up the staircase and made his way to the cockpit. Silence chocked up the air as Huxley and Emma tried not to look at each other. Huxley tapped his foot on the ground. Emma pulled out a small bottle of gray-colored tablets from her pocket and deposited two into her hand.
"You want some sleeping pills? We're going to be up here overnight," she said.
Huxley looked out the window at the dreary gray world that was slowly passing by outside. He mumbled, "I'll be fine." There was something bugging him, but he didn't know what.
"You don't want any?"
"No."
"It'll be a long flight. I know from experience, it's really difficult sleeping when you're at this altitude."
"I'm fine sleeping normally."
"Alright." Emma reached under her chair and rustled around before producing a neck pillow and sound-cancelling earmuffs. "There should be some under your chair if you need it as well."
Huxley nodded as Emma relaxed into a relatively comfortable sitting position and clipped on her seatbelt. If the plane had caught fire mid-flight and started crashing, she wouldn't notice. Huxley tried to bury himself into the leather cushions, and wrestled to get his own seatbelt clipped on. Nothing was comfortable. After a few minutes of squirming like an animal, he found a position he thought he could sleep in by jutting his spine into the wall. It ached, but it would survive.
The engines roared and the plane jerked into movement. Huxley's hands gripped his knees until they were white. He couldn't force them off. He repeated to himself that he shouldn't be scared, that he wouldn't be scared. He had better things to worry about than fear. After repeating it dozens and dozens of times, Huxley might have been able to make himself think that he wasn't scared.

It was night, and Huxley should have been asleep hours ago.
He had switched sleeping positions dozens of times. His entire body was sore and relaxed at the same time. It was already tomorrow, but not even a hint of sleep had come upon him. His eyes drifted to Emma's coat, and he imagined the sweet little pills that were inside the pockets, but he smothered that image before it was born. It was a stupid and reckless idea. Only an idiot would think of doing something like that.
He looked out the window, but the only thing he could see was the pale moon and the dark blue clouds. Dry and sterilized oxygen passed through his nostrils. His lungs felt like they were on the verge of collapsing. Lightheadedness and the fear of suffocating loomed over him, causing him to constantly shiver. His back was caked with sweat. Empty minutes passed by, but each one felt like a fight to stay alive.
Emma's breaths were full but calm, deep but silent. Huxley glared at her like a murderer. It was something that people with fully-developed lungs took for granted. The way that they rested, never paying attention to it, infuriated him. It was like they didn't even know they had them. It was pathetic. It was more pathetic that Huxley was whining about it to himself. He often fell into that trap.
Nobody was watching him. Huxley spread his legs out along the couch, allowing himself to relax a little more. He closed his eyes and breathed in as deeply as he could, warm leather on his face, thin air tearing up his esophagus. He could only hold that breath for a few seconds before the pain became too much to handle. Then he recovered as long as he could before sucking in another. It was an endless battle that nobody ever noticed or appreciated. None of that mattered though. He blew out a breath and drew in another one.
Sleep overtook him soon after.

Post-Foundation
<< Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 >>


In the interest of improved documentation on anomalous adjacent media, Site-73 has begun a project to further document media that references known anomalous objects, organizations, and individuals while not being anomalous themselves.
All forms of media are stored within Site-73's Media Archive and can be retrieved with permission. Individuals documenting the media are to use the following format:

Format of Media:
Date of Recovery:
Title of Media:
Other Notes:
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events:

The media below is listed in order of documentation:

Format of Media: Game Boy Color Cartridge
Date of Recovery: 2001-04-17
Title of Media: Wondertainment Mister Master an unlicensed video game made by the Group of Interest "Dr. Wondertainment." Unlike many products produced by Wondertainment, this game possesses no anomalous properties. Analysis of the game's code has determined that the game is an extensive modification of Pokémon Crystal, an RPG published by Nintendo in 2000. As such the base game mechanics are similar. It is a turn-based RPG where the play character acquires party members by fighting and capturing "wild" versions of them.
Other Notes: Copies of the ROM file are available for download from the Site-73 Digital Libraries
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events: The game's plot involves the player becoming a "Mister Master." Given a choice between "Mr. Laugh", "Mr. Headless", and "Mr. Stripes" to start with, the player must then travel across "Wondertainment World" to do battle with Eight different Dr. Wondertainments with their teams of Little Misters to become the "Mister Master." Unlike in Pokemon, there are no evolution mechanics. There are 100 Little Misters available in the game, the majority of which seem to have been created for serving as playable characters as they do not match any records of Anomalous individuals known to the Foundation.

Format of Media: VHS Tape
Date of Recovery: 1999-03-02
Title of Media: Star Trek: The Next Generation A science fiction created by Gene Roddeberry that aired from 1987 to 1994. The series focuses on the USS Enterprise, a starship of the "United Federation of Planets" which explores the galaxy.
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events: The episode seems to have been produced before Season 3 and is titled "Uncontained." The episode starts with the Enterprise discovering a "Foundation Containment Pod." Described as an ancient earth organization that attempted to "control the strange and unusual." It is mentioned that Foundation was destroyed in the "Eugenics Wars."
My Containment Pod is embossed with the Foundation Logo and other iconography consistent with a Euclid class item. As soon as I am brought aboard the Enterprise Captain Picard notices that he is referring to myself in the first person. So he ordered my pod placed within a sealed-off bunker of the Enterprise until "I can safely be disposed of."
However one Ensign who had been introduced at the start of the episode displays symptoms consistent with extended exposure to myself. He broke into my containment pod, revealing that it is I, SCP-426, and attempted to interface myself with the Enterprise to convert the ship, and everyone on board the ship, into a toaster.
The end of the episode has Lt. Data destroy me, at the cost of the ensign's life. When asked by Captain Picard how Data was not affected by my properties, he says that "I was programmed to resist all known Cognitohazards Captain. That goddamn thing was never able to affect me."

Format of Media: Video Game
Date of Recovery: June 2018
Title of Media: Control, a fantasy/science-fiction third-person shooter wherein the player controls Jesse Faden, the newly-appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Control, an organization dedicated to the containment and study of 'altered items'. Faden herself uses 'Objects of Power' that confer abilities such as telekinesis and levitation.
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events: Item was flagged for clear resemblances to several aspects of the Foundation, including containment procedures, contained anomalies, Foundation Sites, personnel, and technology. Originally showcased at E3 2018 by Remedy Entertainment, a Finnish game development studio, previously responsible for the Max Payne and Alan Wake franchises.
While no 1:1 parallels with the Foundation are evident (i.e. no actual anomalous items, individuals, phenomena or locations in containment are shown), several clear similarities are present, including a 'sidequest' featuring a refrigerator with properties similar to SCP-173, in that breaking visual contact results in a fatality. Documents for altered items resemble SCP files, sans object class. The plot of downloadable content developed for Control displays similarities to theorized pataphysical models.
Remedy claims that the game was inspired by works such as the Holders series and the PAC Institute; no details that would constitute a Veil Breach are present in Control, and as such, the Foundation has allowed the game to be published.

Format of Media: DVD
Date of Recovery: October 31st, 2019
Title of Media: Over The Garden Wall, an animated television series that follows two brothers as they attempt to return home from a fantasy realm known as The Unknown.
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events: In episode 5, titled “Mad Love”, the brothers work with two talking animals to steal two cents from the eccentric Quincy Endicott's haunted manor. Quincy, occupied by the search for the haunting, would normally be accused of murder by one of the animal companions, before launching into a monologue vaguely stating that he obtained his fortune through criminal acts. However, the episode's content deviates wildly following the accusation.
Quincy begins describing how he began his career by participating in auction sales of anomalous artifacts, gradually gaining wealth through the selling of the artifacts present in his father's mansion. When he became dissatisfied with the amount of revenue, he details how he used his remaining items and influence within the auctioning community (Which notably resembles Marshall, Carter, and Dark LTD. in terms of description) to enact several raids on Foundation facilities.
After describing the evidently massive loss of life that occurred after he released various anomalous entities, he states that he was “painfully unaware” that entities capable of harm even existed. As he says that “my personal kill count is probably in the thousands by now,” he pulls various Foundation documents from his frock coat and tosses them into the air.
While the text on these documents is not actually written, the titles are clearly visible, and name various keter-class entities. Quincy begins to weep, and the camera pans towards an outside window, showing a dark sky. Hundreds of animated eyes appear, turn towards Quincy, and the episode ends. Instead of the usual credits, Quincy Endicott's name is listed in place of the individuals credited, with him being attributed as “The Fool” repeatedly.
Investigation into the imagery shown at the end of the episode is ongoing.

Format of Media: Television Broadcast
Date of Recovery: 2011-2-25
Title of Media: Kitchen Nightmares, a reality television show in which chef Gordon Ramsey is invited by the owners to spend a week with their failing restaurant in an attempt to revive the business.
Other Notes: During the premiere of Season 4 Episode 6 "Davide" a different episode titled "Ambrose Boston" played in its place. "Ambrose Boston" has never been played since and reruns of "Davide" follow the normal episode's plot.
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events: Unlike the structure of other Kitchen Nightmares episodes, "Ambrose Boston" only involves Gordon trying different dishes from the restaurant and no improving of the business as after eating, Gordon states "You're already more [Expletive Redacted] incredible than any of my restaurants. Everyone should come and try Ambrose Boston! I think we're done here." During the vanity cards, yellow text on a purple background reads "This episode was funded by Ambrose Restaurants." Gordon then proceeds to leave the restaurant and the episode ends.
Notable dishes tried by Gordon Ramsey are transcribed below.
Revolving Ravioli — The waiter carries out a dish with 9 pieces of ravioli spinning in a circle 1 m above the plate. Gordon is told by the wait staff to bite the ravioli as they float by. Gordon successfully takes a bite out of 3 ravioli before giving up and catching each with a fork.
Attractive Antipasto — After consuming 5 bites of the Antipasto, Gordon's facial features begin to morph1. 5 minutes after his final bite, Gordon's facial features revert to their previous state.
Phoenix Flambe — Two large hot wings are brought to Gordon and lit on fire. Gordon takes a bite from one of the wings while it is on fire but shows no signs of burns2.
Can-can Cannoli — After being set on the table, the cream on both ends of the cannoli extends out allowing the cannoli to stand using the cream as legs. The cannoli proceeds to perform a 5-minute can-can dance before lying back down on the plate to be consumed.

Format of Media: Flash Animation
Date of Recovery: 2002-04-10
Title of Media: Strong Bad Emails or sbemails, a series of Flash animations featuring a luchador-masked figure known as Strong Bad answering fan emails, hosted on the Homestar Runner website
Other Notes: On 10 April 2002, an unscheduled animation was published with the title "sbemail 22: cack." This was quickly flagged by Foundation webcrawlers and pulled, and the website's creators, after being contacted by the Foundation, cleared of wrongdoing, and amnesticized, posted the twenty-third episode on 15 April, uploading a non-anomalous replacement Episode 22 several months later.
Notable Portrayals of Anomalous Events: The following is a transcription of the email recieved by Strong Bad.

Vermost smalutations, m'leige Strong of Badness, with happy times, mimes, cack! Am rephrased coquetishally by Escarpi Teeth Three Eh Steve, and how!
Perchance one may send-saw ye a saw of senting such is me: by which wizardness does yon luchater wordsplap el blinkblox with fivefold claws set for fisticuffs?
Crapfitably, Herr Doktor Spankoflex, becross ye statewide forthwith, CACK!

Upon reading said email, Strong Bad sits for approximately twenty seconds in silence, before responding, "Uhhh, are you asking how I type with boxing gloves on? Because if so, then, DELE-."
Before finishing his characteristic shout of "deleted," Strong Bad's "Tandy" computer explodes with an accompanying "CACK" of a high enough volume to blow out most computer speakers.
When questioned about said email, SCP-2337 responded, "Cack! The Cheath is a million hairs! I shall it nine time! Great jorb, cack! A power crunch!" Translation is forthcoming.

Footnotes
1. Including a more pronounced jaw-line, larger cheekbones, and more symmetrical lips.
2. Normally touching an object of that heat would cause 2nd-degree burns.


Warning: A depiction of suicide is graphically described in this story.

Year 1
It was over.
Lincoln Abrams, Watcher of Alexandria Eternal, was surprisingly disinterested in the details of the cataclysm. He had ordered the archives sealed off two weeks ago when O5 Command had informed them that SCP-2000 had been destroyed. The Library spoke to him, in the strange way that it did, and had made it clear that this was not the sort of apocalypse that the Foundation had prepared for. This was not going to reset and be uncovered as century-old ruins a month later. This was the end.
The true end.
And so he gathered the half-dozen archivists that he had come to know and care for over the years at Base Camp. They were all family, in spirit if not blood, and shared the same purpose: custodianship of Alexandria, the record of every human life that had ever existed. A task that now seemed more important than ever before.
Avon Travers, Liu Xiaoqi, Martin Harrison, Felix Martinez, and Arthur and Melissa Brand all stared at Abrams expectantly. When none of them spoke up, he did so himself.
“It's true,” he said, quieter then he was trying to. “There aren't any humans left up there.” A few of them went pale at the confirmation of their suspicions. “Before we lost contact with Overwatch, they told us they couldn't hail anyone outside of the exclusionary sites or the moon base.” He paused. “We're not extinct. But…”
“The books have stopped appearing.” Liu spoke up, her thick accent making her words no less impactful. “In three days, I saw one new book. One.” Hundreds of thousands of new books appeared - had appeared - on a given day. “There are no new babies being born. There may not be for many years.”
Silence reigned for a few moments. Melissa quietly began sobbing into Arthur's chest, the latter joining his wife shortly after once he realized she was crying for their dead children. The rest of them looked at the floor, lost in their miserable thoughts. The rest except for Lincoln, who took a moment to collect himself and pressed forward with his plan. For the sake of Alexandria, he had to be strong.
“The Preservation Protocol has been activated,” he said. “Our primary objective remains the same: we will catalog and copy every book in this archive. But we no longer do it for benefit of the Foundation.”
Some of them looked up at that, surprised.
“The Foundation is gone,” Felix said, his voice giving the impression that he had kept his composure better than any of them. “It doesn't matter if some remnant of it survived or not. If we try to go up there, we die. And our communicators don't work anymore. For all intents and purposes, the Foundation is gone.”
Again, silence descended upon them. This time, it was broken by the familiar whirring noises of Marvin and Molly. The latter held something made them all gasp: a pen. In the Library, that was like pointing a gun at someone.
“What the hell is that thing doing down here?” Martin demanded.
“Relax, Martin-”
“The hell I will! What kind of Watcher brings a pen down here-”
“It's part of the Protocol, idiot.” To demonstrate his point, he reached towards Molly as if to take the pen. When he attempted to, the robot shocked his finger with a mild electrical pulse - far more mild than the one that would actually shock someone if they attempted to take the pen.
“Molly has the pen, not me.” He turned around towards all of them once again, and their expressions said they were worried, but no longer terrified. “As you might have realized, we don't have any resources down here beyond the few weeks' worth of rations supplied to us. The Foundation anticipated this, and instructed me to equip each of our robotic companions with a single pen.”
“You're going to write in the books?” Melissa spoke up, her voice sounding somewhere between outraged and awed. “You know what Alexandria thinks about that. Do you remember what she wrote about Waylon-”
“We are not Waylon.” Avon interrupted. “We respect Alexandria, and the power She holds over us. We would never abuse her.”
“Which is precisely why none of us will ever touch those pens, myself included,” Lincoln said. “Marvin and Molly will use them to extend our lives and provisions in the manner that Theopoles once did his. They will grant us exactly what we need to survive. No more, no less. Alexandria will understand.”
“How do you know that?” Martin asked.
“Because I spoke with Her.”

In the darkness, he heard a voice speak: 'You are not the last. But you have no way to reach those that survived.'

Lincoln closed the book for a moment and breathed in deeply. He knew that this day might come eventually, but he still felt somewhat overwhelmed at what was now demanded of him. He had to ask if there was a way out.
“Can we undo this?” he asked into the darkness.
The normally gentle breeze briefly became a gust of wind. The whisper of Alexandria was almost - almost - audible for a moment. And for the first time ever, he had heard her without having to read the book. The single word was clear, and vehement.
“NO.”
He opened his book again.

In the darkness, he heard a voice scream: ‘NO.' Then the voice spoke: ‘I did it once. I will not do it again. Not when your kind can rise once more.'

That last line made him raise his eyebrow. Rise once more? Before he could contemplate what that meant, he heard the customary breeze and looked down.

In the darkness, he heard a voice speak: ‘Watcher, humanity has suffered its greatest ever blow. But through the Foundation, it will live on. Your task is to document what comes next, and wait for those who will one day replace you. Marvin and Molly will extend your lives as necessary - a practice I am not fond of, but I see that it is needed in this case. Do you understand what I ask of you?'

At that, he put his book back in the nearby shelf and walked back to the nearest Camp, his mind racing. The implications of what Alexandria had just told him were…stark. The Foundation - the Foundation - was going to restart civilization, using the few thousand souls that had survived the apocalypse outside of Earth to do so. It would not be a pleasant civilization. But more than that, it would take them a very, very long time to discover a way back to Alexandria. They might never find it at all.
We will be down here for…millennia. Theopoles will seem an infant to us when we are finally relieved. If we are finally relieved.
Still, the choice was clear. He had made a commitment to this place, and would not break it. “I will do as you ask, Alexandria. We will watch You until those that come after can find their way here.”
As he walked, he heard a gust of wind, and knew She was pleased.

Year 3
The sight that greeted Lincoln was one that was as tragic as it was predictable. Arthur and Melissa Brand, archivists of Alexandria Eternal, lay dead. They were beside the human and horse skeletons that had been discovered by Marvin and Molly so long ago, and had sharpened one of the ancient, brittle bones enough to slit each others' throats. They were holding hands, and would have seemed peaceful were it not for the blood pouring out of them.
“Marvin came and told me about this,” Avon said, carefully looking away from the gruesome sight. “They knew you had everyone's books confiscated right after the end of the world. They wanted to die, but they didn't have a way to because they couldn't write their deaths. So…”
“I should have seen this coming,” Lincoln said quietly, the regret in his voice obvious. “All they ever talked about was how much they missed their children, and how painful the end must have been for them.”
“Why didn't they…you know?” Avon couldn't bring himself to say the blasphemous words.
Lincoln could. “Because we love Alexandria, and we know never to abuse Her for personal gain,” he replied. “They loved their kids, but they also know She is the closest thing we have to God. So they found a way out that would sadden Her, but not anger Her.”
“What do we tell the others?”
“The truth,” he replied. “We hold a ceremony, and designate this area the Corner of Death. From this day forward, any archivist who wishes to die will ask Marvin and Molly to write their fates, and that request will be granted. Their bodies will then be laid to rest here.”
Avon's eyes widened. “But…we made a promise to Her.”
“I made a promise to Her,” Lincoln corrected. “I will stay here as long as I must, even if that means I must stay until the heat death of the universe. You may go, and I will not judge you. But I will be Alexandria's constant, as She has been mine.”

Year 13
Liu Xiaoqi was smiling again.
Molly had work to do once more, and so did she. New books were being added to the shelves. Yes, it was at a fraction of the rate that they had come at before the end. But the sounds of new shelves and books being created was indescribably wonderful after over a decade of empty silence. Now she, Martin and Felix had begun making a record of the next chapter of human history. Marvin and Molly used the Pens (they thought of them in capital letters now) to give their computers an infinite source of power, just as they kept their provisions continuously replenished.
They worked in shifts, and when they were not working they read of the new world that was being created. Alexandria spoke of Site 23, a nexus for survivors that the Foundation was using to rebuild in what had once been Australia. The books of Clef, Rights, and many other high-ranking staff had been permanently taken from their shelves and kept at Base Camp, as it was clear they were playing a very important role in the resurrection of humanity.
As Lincoln had predicted, it was far from pleasant. Alexandria's disgust with the treatment of the D-Class personnel was evident in every book they had read, and truthfully Liu shared that disgust as well. So much time in the Library had made it clear to her that every life was important. But just as their benefactor tolerated their life extensions for the sake of Her occupancy, they had to accept that this was the way things would be with the Foundation in control.
But despite all of that, she still smiled. Because although She never said it, Alexandria was happier when new lives were being added to Her. And what made Her happy made them happy.

Year 37
“What was it Einstein said about insanity?” Martin Harrison asked rhetorically.
“You know he didn't really say that,” Felix replied.
“Whatever, the quote still fits.” He shook his head and sighed, as they continued reading through the biographies of the former Site 23's leaders.

Doctor Mann took his SCP objects away from Site 23, venturing into the southern lands with the intent to continue his research.

Site 23 was destroyed, and its former inhabitants scattered and searched desperately for a new place to take shelter from the harsh desert in.

“Humanity's fucked yet again,” Martin said, the disdain in his voice clear. “And it's the Foundation's fault. Yet again.“
Silence reigned for a few moments before Felix took a deep breath and said what he'd been wanting to say for 15 years.
“I can't go on anymore.”
Martin was both saddened and relieved by the words, the latter emotion coming from not being the first one to have to say it. “Neither can I. I have given decades to Alexandria, and I have accepted her verdict on humanity's fate. But…”
But the years that lay ahead would be more of what they had endured for decades now. The endless routine of reading the books, cataloging them, and keeping a comprehensive record of the civilization that was rising from the ashes. They could do that while Site 23 seemed to be a beacon of hope, even if it was a very brutal and unpleasant place.
Now, though…
“I want to see the sun,” Felix said. “We both know the air is no longer toxic, even if there is little useful shelter or sustenance. We will not survive long, but I think I have gone on long enough.”
Martin nodded his agreement. That night, Lincoln reluctantly opened the door to the Library for a few seconds before immediately shutting it again afterwards. It would be a long, long time before such a sequence of events would be repeated.

Year 674
“Watcher, I must go to the Corner of Death.”
The Watcher known as Lincon heard the words as he was hunched over a book chronicling the life of the founder of Kalefheit. They surprised him - not the request itself, but that the Man known as Avon would remember his declaration of the Corner of Death, in the time when the End had been in living memory of a normal human.
“May I ask why?” He felt it polite.
Avon sighed and looked off into the distance for a moment. “Watcher, I am bored.”
The Watcher nodded with understanding. Over the centuries, they had learned that boredom was their greatest enemy. The human mind was not meant to comprehend the lifetime after lifetime they had spent down here in the dimly lit shelves. They had watched and read as what had once been called Australia slowly clawed its way back from the disaster that had befallen the planet. But that was so very far away from what had once been called Egypt.
So far away that they knew their watch would continue. And continue, and continue. Nothing, not even the indescribable monotony of his duty as Watcher, would ever make him abandon the pledge he had made to Alexandria. But he still did not cast aspersions on others for reaching the end of their Watch and wishing to move on. As now it seems Avon had.
“I understand,” the Watcher replied. “Marvin?”
Marvin's original purpose as an assistant to the archivists had fallen into obsolescence after Avon had decided to spend a hundred years wandering through the Library in an attempt to memorize its entire layout. He had not done so, but he had still managed to traverse a sizable chunk of it. Lu (their names having long become phonetic) did not need Marvin either, for she and Molly spent all their time chronicling the lives of the newborn, now coming in at dozens a day.
And so Marvin accompanied the Watcher. As the latter spoke, Marvin produced a Pen and made for the location where their books were kept that only the robots were aware of. Even after all this time, they did not trust each other with the Pens.
“I am sorry to see you go, but I will honor your memory as I have all those archivists who have passed on,” the Watcher said.
Later that night, Avon was laid to rest next to the skeletons of the Ancient Travelers, and of Arthur and Melissa Brand. Thus Alexandria had four left to tend to Her (including Marvin and Molly, which She always did), and She knew they would stay until the next cycle began.

Year 4025
Kallin stared at the towering vestiges of the Old World. Alexandria did not disappoint.
I knew what they built was magnificent, but this city tells me so much with just the remnants of its outline…
Great ruins of metal and stone jutted out from the crumbling edifice of a city that had obviously been much larger than Kalefheit. Unlike the ancient buildings in his home land, which had long been plucked clean a thousand times over, as he got closer to the coastline it became clear that this city was untouched by humans. Indeed, he may have been the first soul to visit it since the dawn of the new age.
It had been a month since he had met the magician in Abirtleit, and a week since he had sailed from the coast towards the supposed direction of the Portal. The magician claimed he had used an ancient spell to summon a gateway to something called “Alexandria Eternal”, and had all but demanded Kallin go. Alexandria needs a new Watcher, and I am too old to make the journey. He had no idea what a “Watcher” was or why this old man knew about this place, but he had taken the journey to humor himself. It had been a decade since Meilar had vanished, and he was prepared to face his end.
He had been shocked when the Portal had been there, some distance out from the coastline, exactly as the old man had said. And he had been even more shocked when his rickety sailing vessel seemed to be pulled to it, as if under the compulsion of a Wonder. Then he had emerged on the other side of the Portal, Alexandria in the distance.
Perhaps I am not to die just yet.

“We are near our end,” the Watcher known as Lu said.
“Indeed,” the Watcher known as Lincon returned. “Do you believe Kallin is ready?”
“Were we? Alexandria cares for all who are destined to Watch over her. He will be no different.”
The point could not be argued, but there was still much that needed to be taught. The Watchers of Alexandria waited, but not for long.

Kallin had felt compelled to walk through the city almost immediately after stepping foot on shore. He was not sure if the compulsion was the work of the gods, or simply his own curiosity. Whatever the case, he somehow felt as if he knew where he was going as he surveyed the decayed ruin of the Old World.
Though it was still an impressive sight up close, it felt less imposing. Time had long since buried much of the streets in sand, but there was still enough for him to see what he recognized as pedestrian artifacts of the Old World. The strange, rusted husks of the metal containers that Meilar claimed had been used for transportation. The entrances to what must have been homes and merchant stores. It felt normal, which unnerved him.
At length he found himself next to a building with a feature that immediately caught his eye: a glistening metallic door. Stepping inside, he looked carefully at the entrance. It had a symbol that he did not recognize, and as he laid his hand on it, he jerked back when he found it was cold to the touch.
Before he could contemplate it further, the door opened. The cold air of the tunnel rushed towards him, but he hardly noticed. The tunnel led into a small room, and even from this distance he could see stairs at the end of it.
This is what I am here for.
He walked slowly through the tunnel. As he reached the end, he heard footsteps. Tensing and grabbing his knife, he waited as a figure came into view at the top of the stairs.
He was…the same age as Kallin, at least in appearance. But something about his posture told him the man was far older than his appearance suggested. Most strikingly, his skin was pale, the palest he had ever seen. At Kallin's presence, he grinned.
“Welcome,” he said. The word was thick with a strange accent Kallin did not recognize. “We have been waiting for you.”

Kallin's mouth fell open in shock as he stared in wonder. There were books. Endless, uncountable shelves of books.
“What…what is this place?” He managed to get the words out.
“Alexandria Eternal,” the pale man called Lincon replied. “She is the most important thing in the world.”
Before he could say anything further, the pale woman called Lu placed a book in his hand.
“This is your story,” she said. “If you are to be a Watcher, you must learn your own life before any others.”
And so he did.

Year 4027
“You are ready, Kallin.”
He had been expecting the words, but they still humbled him. “Does that mean…?” He couldn't quite finish the sentence.
“Yes, Kallin, it does. Our Watch is at an end.”
For two years the Watchers of Alexandria had taken him under their wing and told him of the eternal Library, of its importance to humanity, and of the Old World. It had been both enlightening and shocking. Enlightening to hear of the time that had come before his, and shocking to learn the truth of what they called “Australia.” To think that the ‘Gods' were once as human as myself…
“The Cycle of Alexandria continues,” Lu said. “We have stayed long, longer than any other Watcher who came before us. But we are ready. Marvin and Molly will guide you when you need them, and Alexandria will care for you.”
“Before we go, Kallin, we have one final request,” Lincon said.
“Request?” He asked, surprised.
They looked at one another, and Lincon did something he had not done in two years - smiled, warmly and genuinely.
“We would like to see the sky again,” Lu replied. “It has been thousands of years since we have left this place. Thousands of years since we have felt the glow of the sun.”
“Kallin.” Lincon walked towards him. “Do you remember the place where you said those two skeletons were? The ones on the surface?”
“Yes,” he replied, already knowing the significance.
“Alexandria has told us that they are the remains of our fellow librarians, whom we once knew as Felix and Martin. As our Watch ends, we feel it appropriate to pay them one last visit.”
“So that we may return to the earth together,” Lu added.
The words carried enormous weight, but Kallin simply nodded and walked towards the entrance. They followed, silently.

Later that day the sun rose on the remnants of the city as the Watch of Lincon and Lu came to an end and the Watch of Kallin began. The Cycle of Alexandria continued, as it always had and always would.


The anomalous were vanquished. The Veil was abandoned.
The words shocked the world as government after government announced their involvement in the global conspiracy. The SCP Foundation was thrust into the light, and great men were born in hours. Most had the foresight to prepare some kind of strategy beforehand, but an unlucky few didn't. They became food for the media as heroes and villains were constructed and then destroyed and then reconstructed then ignored in a palpitating monster of truth and entertainment.
Holidays were created celebrating the day the anomalies died. It passed with universal support. Schoolchildren were sent home early, families posted up signs declaring their favorite researchers, and songs about those researchers were played on repeat, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on every radio station. Every continent, every culture, every man and every woman, every young person and every old person. Every living soul expected to recognize the great human triumph over the anomalous.
For decades, children ran to their schools to share the latest development about the man who couldn't die or the man who was half-human-half-robot. Those children eventually grew up and became journalists and novelists and pastors, where they would condense those childhood stories into short, five-minute slices. Social media sliced those stories in half and the masses chipped away at the rest. No matter how much the story changed, no matter how many times people tried to disprove it, the excitement never died. Humanity never seemed to be able to move on from those five words: the SCP Foundation had won.
The organization itself had been retired; it was no longer needed. Every anomaly that it had contained disappeared or became normal overnight. Sites that had spanned mountain ranges eroded into corpses, filled to the brim with death. A few were turned into museums, one or two were made into prisons, and the rest were left to rot. They would stand as unofficial monuments until the day history decided to forget, as it did.
So why was Site-53 still in operation?
It was a question that passed through the lips of every one of the weary-eyed postgraduates who were just taken on a two-hour drive through a desert canyon in an armored school bus. It was a question that was on everybody's mind but on nobody's lips. When the driver stopped next to a vault door that was built into the side of a towering mountain, nobody moved. It took them minutes just to get out of their seats and exit, watching the bus slowly drive away.
Damanjeet found himself near the back of the group. It was a fitting place for a person like him, with his rat-like appearance. Rats were meant to stay hidden. They burrowed beneath houses, creating their homes in the holes of walls. So he made his face his house and his thick-rimmed glasses and dull eyes his walls.
Almost none of the student spoke, either out of fear or tiredness. The only people lucid enough to hold a conversation were two girls in the back. In any other situation, Damanjeet would have gritted his teeth upon hearing their annoying voices, but now he was thankful to have them break up the sound of the winter wind blowing against his ears.
There was a deafening roar like a steam-powered bullet shooting right past him. The students covered their ears with their hands. Damanjeet was the last to do so — the sound reminded him of the colossal machines his father used to operate in the construction yard he worked at. Steel bars popped open, steam shot out into the air, and the vault door unlocked. It slowly lurched open, kicking up a wave of dust that covered Damanjeet's glasses.
When the air settled down, he could barely make out a figure standing in the doorway. It was a woman. A cloudy head of hair, an off-white suit jacket, and a pair of black sunglasses adorned her frame. She slowly raised her hand and took off the glasses, which held a thick layer of sand and dust.
"How're you all doing today?" She flashed a toothy smile. Her answer was met by a few mumbles, a 'fine' here and there. Damanjeet stayed silent and tried to stop himself from shivering. The woman said, "My name is Emma Sandaran and I will be your tour guide for—"
Somebody from the crowd asked. "Really? Like, are you that Sandaran?"
"There will be designated question periods," Emma said. She turned and waved as the students to follow. "But no. If you're talking about the Sandaran who eliminated the anomalous, then you would be thinking of my mother, Rachael."
She led them through a metal platform lined with windows that allowed the students to view dozens of scientists methodically prodding ancient artifacts and alien body parts. She sped through the things she had to say: what to do in case of an emergency, what was and wasn't off-limits, where they would eat lunch. Damanjeet treated each word like it was a line of holy scripture. Before he realized it, the group had been led onto a large platform that let out a gust of steam and began to descend down a steep incline.
Red lights whirled on a track below them, marking the path that the platform would take. The students became more lively, forming groups near the edge to get a closer look at their surroundings. There were safety lines on the floor indicating where the students could and could not stand, but they were ignored. More than once, Emma had to snap at a careless group.
Once the platform reached the bottom of the incline, Damanjeet got his first glimpse of where he would be working for the rest of his life.
The inside of the mountain had been hollowed out into the shape of a giant drum. Metallic plating covered the walls with many holes in the walls to allow for similar platforms to travel through. Herds of scientists, engineers, and security guards weaved above and under each other along an intricate series of rails. It was impossible not to inhale smoke. Damanjeet made sure Emma wasn't looking, then peeked down. There wasn't a bottom. The walls just went down and down and down and down endlessly. He shuddered.
"Well, now that we have all of that out of the way, we have a few extra minutes. Does anyone have any questions?" Emma asked. A flurry of hands and voices rose from the group. "One at a time, everyone. There's only one of me to go around."
There was a loud clang as the platform switched tracks. It veered to the left towards a distant entrance that was enveloped by red lights. A placard above it read 'RESEARCH AREA - LEVEL 0'. That must have been the only place where the SCP Foundation let postgraduates roam.
"Ms. Sandaran?" A student asked. She turned. "What's the purpose of this structure in the middle here?"
Damanjeet looked over his shoulder and was amazed with how he could have missed such a massive feature. He had been enraptured so much by the bottomless pit below him that he failed to notice the massive mechanical structure shaped like the limb of a colossal automaton in the center of the room. It was orbited by technicians and researchers standing on bright yellow scaffolding.
Gears and pulleys the size of buildings and cranes made up the object, some still slowly clicking. The rest, the almost-iron-almost-steel metal that made up the rest of it was slowly being harvested. Large sections were broken off and dropped on a conveyor belt of platforms that brought it out of sight. There was something about it that stung Damanjeet's eyes, like it was trying to get him to look away. Peering closer, he noticed that none of the workers were looking directly at it, always keeping their heads down or turned away.
He wanted to stir this thought in his head, but he didn't have time to fully process it when somebody else asked, "Hey, what's the point of this place? You said that your mom destroyed all of the anomalous, so why not just convert this place to a research center or an archive?"
Emma looked at the student for a few seconds. Then she smiled a full-lipped, no-teeth smile. A siren blared, signaling that the platform was prepared to begin ascending.
She said, "Hold on to the safety rails. You wouldn't want to fall here. We won't be able to recover you."

"So could a subtherium still breach containment?"
"What about subtheriums that mimic diseases? Can they still spread? Do they even have the capacity to reproduce now?"
"What about metaphysical subtheriums, Ms. Sandaran?"
A barrage of questions were shot at Emma. By the seventh evasive answer, she hoped that they would have stopped asking, but they continued all throughout lunch. Emma tried to sit far away from the main group, but that just drew them closer. She should have expected that; the more she made it seem like there was more below the surface, the more they would try to dig it up. She made a mental note and, like a dutiful employee, took a deep breath and answered each question.
“Yes, a subtherium can breach containment, but I don't imagine it will get very far in this place. Their forms are still alien to us, but we're at the point where we can control them easily. As far as I know, subtheriums that disguise themselves as diseases were all obliterated. And every metaphysical being we know of lost the ability to interact with this universe or were, again, obliterated."
Emma's response only sparked more questions. She gritted her teeth as the students poked and prodded her. All of their voices combined into a single mass of sound, beating down on her. She just wanted to eat alone for a few minutes, but like moths, they kept flying around her, hitting her in the face over and over again. She felt her smile slipping.
There was a buzzing in her pocket, and her spirits were raised instantly.
“Okay!” Emma's cheesy smile increased twofold. "I have to take a phone call, so talk amongst yourselves for a few minutes." The students pulled back, disappointment in their eyes as they realized that they wouldn't be able to listen in. Confidentiality saved her.
As soon as Emma stood up from the table, they turned on each other with the same ravenous curiosity. Theories for their questions were proposed, then shot down, then reintroduced in a new form. Emma chuckled. It was like watching child philosophers bicker with one another.
She pushed open the cafeteria door and entered a barely-lit hallway. A bright blue and green vending machine buzzed a few feet away. She leaned against it as she checked her work phone. The buzz erased the thoughts that were starting to form in her head. She entered the passcode and gazed past the solid gray background.
There was no caller ID. That was strange. Every time somebody had called her before, there was always a name and an employee ID. Calls were recorded and analyzed, so everybody knew who was talking to whom. Only Directors had access to anonymity. Emma felt something in her stomach recoil as she tried to force herself to breathe. Fuck. It would probably only last for a few minutes.
A man with a gruff voice light enough to be bearable but low enough to be respectable was on the other end. "Is this Emma Sandaran of Site-53?" it asked. A few moments passed before Emma chose to reply.
"Yeah — yes, this is she. Who is asking, if I may ask?" A feeling of excitement started to enter her arms. But she knew that it would be unrequited; people never asked just for her, they would always find some way to link it back to her mother.
"David Emmerson, assistant to Director Flynn of Site-49 down in Texas. I recall you were the liaison for a subtherium colony near here in the past. Which one was that?"
Suspicion stirred in Emma's mind. Her past missions were readily available, especially to someone within arm's reach of a Site Director. She was silent for a beat. She knew the man heard her breathing, so why wasn't he responding? Was he testing her? He spoke with the tone of a person that assumed that Emma couldn't remember her own achievements. Emma knew this, and still chose to bite.
"If you're referring to the Republic of New Sardonia, then yes. I was the middle-man for that operation. Or rather, middle-woman." Emma threw in a laugh that held a tinge of obnoxiousness. "May I ask why you're calling me?" She pushed off of the vending machine and began to pace back and forth across the hallway, sweat weighing heavy on her forehead.
"Director Flynn was a fan of your mother's work," the man said. Emma's expression fell at the mention; it was almost always followed by a question that she had no way of knowing. They were linked by blood, so Emma must know most about the woman, shouldn't she? "You know about her significance to the SCP Foundation, correct? The Sandaran Incident?"
"Yes, I do in fact live in the 21st century." Emma's joke was met by a brick wall of silence, but she wasn't expecting a laugh anyway. "What do you want to know about it?"
"My Director has a proposal for you. It's similar to the work you did with New Sardonia. We've assigned another interviewer to help you. His name is Jonathon, but he usually goes by 'Joe'. He's being transferred to your Site as we speak. Don't worry. You'll know him when you see him," he said. "A little piece of advice, help him out a little. He's in a new environment, and he has a little trouble getting familiar with people. He's shy when it comes to new people, so show him around the place."
Emma tapped her foot on the ground. She hadn't fully processed the words by the time she said, "Yep. I'll take a look at that. Mhm, thanks."
"Oh, and before I go." The man cleared his throat. "My time is Director Flynn's time. And I know that you don't have a job that requires too much of your attention. That means that when he calls you, don't waste thirty seconds of my time and pick up the phone."
The phone beeped and the call ended. Emma swore under her breath while slipping the phone back into her pocket. It was a trap she had fallen into too often: saying something snarky and being burned by it. She kept forgetting her place in the system. She was the disappointment, the one that wasn't spoken of, the other Sandaran. Her mind was the anti-Pavlov. No matter how much it hurt, it just kept wanting to retaliate.
But that didn't matter. It was all in the past now, and she needed to focus on the future. She dusted off her clothes, straightened a few rebellious strands of hair, and headed for the doorway when suddenly, a voice called out from behind her.
"Hey, do you have level-two clearance?"
It tore into Emma's ears. She couldn't tell if the words came from a person or from an animal that had just gained the ability to vocalize. She turned to see a hunched-over figure stalking her from the shadows. They emerged into the light of the vending machine, allowing Emma to fully comprehend its form.
It was a monster.
If she squinted her eyes, she might have been able to say it looked human. Its pale skin was hairless and its beady black eyes squinted at her, trying desperately to form a glare. Its face was dented and deformed, as if it had been smashed into a cement wall half a dozen times. There were two holes on the sides of its head for ears and two crooked sticks on its torso for arms. Its uniform — a brown overcoat on top of a standard SCP Foundation uniform and military-style boots — was ever-so-slightly too large for it, making it look like a small boy disguising itself as an adult. It was seated in a bulky, unstable wheelchair that appeared to be seconds away from collapsing from its own weight.
"Hello? Did you hear what I said?" The beast snarled, revealing an oddly normal-looking set of teeth. Its voice was simultaneously grim and whiny. Emma subconsciously began to kneel down, to bring herself down to its level to sympathize, but soon realized how rude that looked.
"So are you deaf or—"
"Oh. Hi. Sorry, I was… You know how sometimes when you're in the middle of a thought and another thought comes while you're trying to think and suddenly that first thought goes away? That's what happened. Sorry about that. Err, no, I'm not. I have to, um, go lead a tour group now, so I have to go." Emma's face turned boiling red. She turned and tried to exit when she felt a tug on her uniform.
"Wait, you still haven't answered my question. Do you have level-two clearance or not because I need to get somewhere soon," said the beast — the man. Emma slapped herself mentally.
"Yes I do actually. But I'm not allowed to give out that information without a specific—"
"Thank you. Could you just show me where the Euclid wing is? This place is a maze, I don't know where to go," the man said. "Nobody else will talk to me."
"Well, there's signs and you can always… Wait, nobody? How many people have you asked?"
"Four. I was supposed to be conducting an interview twenty minutes ago."
Emma's face shifted to a deep blue as guilt filled her heart. She pictured her coworkers, her colleagues, the people that she worked alongside every day, shunning this person. But before pity could overtake her, she killed it. Why should she feel sorry for this man? He's an employee of the SCP Foundation, he should have figured out where to go beforehand. The fact that he is even asking other people is a problem. Although, that still didn't fully quell that feeling that she was letting him down.
She sighed. "Where do you need to go? I'd show you, but I'm on a tight schedule right now." She checked the time on her phone. The group should have gotten moving five minutes ago.
"The Euclid wing. Humanoids. #SBT014 is its classification, I think."
Emma felt a strange obligation to help the man. It wasn't out of pity, but more out of a sense of duty. It was the same feeling she got whenever she found the correct sequence of moves in a game of Chess that would force her opponent to concede. Even if she had won fairly, she could at least give the opponent the satisfaction of a quick and easy defeat.
"It's on the top floor, the 14th. If you turn around, take the first left, then go all the way down the hallway, there'll be an elevator there." It was in a secluded spot, so not a lot of people would be there. "It looks broken, but it works. It'll take you up there."
The man nodded and smoothly wheeled himself around. Without another word, he disappeared around the corner, the squeaks of his wheelchair slowly fading into silence. Emma stood alone in the hallway, the vending machine light buzzing beside her like a swarm of flies. She looked at the ground. It was black concrete. She stared at it for a little while longer, until she remembered that she should have begun the next section of the tour ten minutes ago. She uttered a quiet profanity and ducked back into the cafeteria.

Emma panted, her hands falling to her knees. She had just finished leading the students through the medical and research wing, which was all she could manage due to the hundreds of questions that were being piled onto her. It had worn down her appearance heavily; her hair was sagging like a net on the back of her scalp. She was dying of thirst, mouth half-open like a dog. The hallways seemed to twist slightly whenever she walked, so she kept one hand to the wall for balance.
She stepped over a piece of trash on the floor and trekked over to the elevators. Smoke filled her lungs as she took in a long breath. It wasn't an uncommon scent, but one that always overpowered her lungs. The light above gave off a brutish glow like they were secretly taunting her. It was probably another electrical problem that would never get solved. There was always something going wrong. There were always dead rats bursting out of the walls.
Emma rounded the final corner and her eyes strained as she walked into the pocket world that was the elevator lobby. The concrete floor was replaced with a worn-out Persian carpet that hadn't been cleaned in weeks. An overhead chandelier stole the role of the light panels and the elevator doors had large dents in them. Nobody really remembered who designed this part of the building or who built it or who maintained it. Whenever Emma had thought about it, the smoke or the dingy lights would snap her out of it and remind her that she had somewhere to be. And today, she had somewhere to be.
She pressed the call button. The elevator screeched and rattled as it sank down the shaft. The sound was enough to drive off most people, but she was numb to the fear. Sometimes, she even enjoyed the fear of putting her life into the hands of a single elevator cable. It forced her to remember that she was alive, that if she were to die, it would mean something to somebody, even if it was just the Site janitor for a few minutes.
The doors flung open and Emma stepped inside, careful to not touch any of the walls. Even when she had entered, she considered stepping away and taking the stairs instead, jumping out of the way of whatever tragedy was about to befall her. But after a few seconds of debating, she dismissed those thoughts with a shake of her head, slapping the button labeled '14' and allowing the doors to close in front of her. She needed a reminder today.
The elevator rumbled to life and slowly began to rise. Distorted music played softly over the speakers. She tried to immerse herself into her surroundings, but every time she was about to enter that meditative state, there would be an obnoxiously loud ding, dragging her back into reality whenever the elevator had passed another floor. She pulled out her phone and tapped on the app with the blue envelope icon: her emails. There was one new notification. She didn't need to read the subject line to know what it was for.
She licked her lips.

FROM: Site Director Assistant David Emmerson <ten.pics|3724EdivaD#ten.pics|3724EdivaD>
TO: Interviewer Emma Sandaran <ten.pics|1914SammE#ten.pics|1914SammE>
Ms. Sandaran,
Through a unanimous vote by the O5 Council and the Ethics Committee, the SANDARAN Project has been reopened. You have been selected as a candidate for this Project. Should you accept this position, you will be expected to support and carry out the two foundational goals of the Project: to reduce the harm done to humans by the anomalous and to peacefully integrate the subtherium population into humanity.
We understand that you may not be interested in this new position. This is not an opportunity for those that desire an easier path in their career. It will require immediate reassignment and relocation, potentially to a foreign country, for long periods of time. If you think that you will be unable to fulfill your duties to the SCP Foundation for any reason, inform your Site Director and you will be removed from the candidate pool. If you possess any moral objections to the SANDARAN Project, file a complaint with your Site's Ethics Committee liaison.
But if you are ready and willing to uphold the core tenets of the SCP Foundation — ensuring a safe future for humanity's children — then call the number listed below. More information may be provided to you then.

It took Emma a few seconds to realize that the elevator had stopped. She had been so engrossed by the email that she hadn't heard the ding until the doors opened. She shook her head to get her blood pumping and slipped her phone back into her pocket. Her breathing felt fuller now. The email provided nothing but the bare essentials, but those alone were enough to get her grinning from ear to ear like a lunatic.
The chance to be part of something important, to step out of her mother's shadow, was sitting there right in front of her.
The upper floors were far cleaner. They were inhabited by people that both cared about the cleanliness of their workplace enough to complain and were powerful enough to have their complaints be heard. It was one of the few powers the subtheriums still had — they were dangerous enough that the people that contained them were given an unspoken kind of authority.
Emma's shoes clacked against the tiled flooring. Sunlight flooded through the overhead windows and splashed onto her. It was a kind of warmth that one could fall asleep to: colder than the mining zone but warmer than the cubicles. Usually, everyone was too busy eating, sleeping, or mindlessly sending emails to one another to notice their hope slowly fading away, so it was good to have it brought back every once in a while. At least until Emma had to return back to lead the next group of students on the next tour.
She passed empty room after empty room. The containment wings of the Site never failed to confuse her. It was as if they were designed to frustrate whoever was trying to reach them. The hallways were all virtually identical, and there were no markings on the doors or the walls to indicate where one was within the layout. The only way Emma was able to make it through was by looking at the partially scratched out numbers on the plaques that were placed beside each room. Emma stared at the markings. Each one used to contain an anomalous deadly individual or a large monster or something completely alien, but now they all contained dust and rust. It took her a few minutes to find one that hadn't been etched out.
It was the last door at the end of a very, very long hallway. The words 'SUBTHE-014' were written in tiny, robotic lettering. A security card scanner was built into the wall below it. She swiped her card and pushed open the door.
Emma entered a small side room that contained only a table, a few chairs, and an unpowered computer. A two-way mirror was build into one of the walls, allowing anyone to view into the containment chamber. She stepped forward and saw two men inside. It was the subtherium and the man she had encountered earlier. They sat side-by-side looking out a window, the man being dwarfed by every piece of furniture in the room. He was conducting an interview.
She took a seat by the desk and propped her head up on her hands, studying the man. He was following every rule taught to interviewers to the T: make casual conversation first, get close, but not too close; find a point of connection and wrench it as far as it will go, and always start with the easy questions. The man was obviously a natural; Emma didn't even have to hear him speak. The way that he mimicked the subtherium's movement, the way that he made tiny, nonthreatening gestures, it was all masterfully thought out. He was tiny, but whenever he moved, Emma couldn't help but feel like he was telling the truth.
She looked through the window again, at the world below. Everything looked small and insignificant. If the cities and the mountains were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, she had a feeling that very few people would notice. Definitely not the subtherium. It hadn't noticed anything since it was first contained, not even when it was relocated to the top of the building. Emma remembered the uproar at this decision, hundreds of subtheriums saying that it was unfair, that it was cruel, but Emma had never really understood why.
An idea formed in her mind then.
Even if a subtherium managed to escape their chamber, even if it managed to get past the guard and the security cameras and the tesla gates, it still had to escape the facility itself. All of the subtheriums contained here were low-level: somewhere barely above a very dangerous human. They wouldn't be able to fly or climb down from the roof. They would need to descend somehow. And that was where the response team would wait, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days — never advancing.
It was a devilish trap. The entity's only choice would be to submit themselves to the officers or try and survive the fall. None ever did, but many, many tried. Emma let out a satisfied hmph. So that was why the Director never installed anti-jumping nets.
Emma returned her attention to the two men, waiting for one of them to really make the first move. They were still going through their formalities, but she could tell that it wouldn't last much longer. It wouldn't be long before she had gotten her wish.

Post-Foundation
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