TO: O5-1
FROM: O5-12
RE: the end
URGENCY: HIGH
I hope this gets through. If you're like me, seeing things on the BBC and the New York Times before getting briefed on them by staff is doing a number on you.
It's over. The only thing left is to tell you what I know.
Two is dead. We only know that because she told us herself. Nice of her to leave a note, I guess. I've established contact with Three, Seven and Thirteen. The rest, who knows. There aren't any protocols for something like this.
The best we can tell is that they put on a performance.

THE MAN AT THE THRESHOLD

Act One - Thirty-Five Years

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

0943 hours local time - disturbance in the vicinity of Giza Plateau, Egypt. Egyptian military mobilized in response to apparent mass gathering in front of the Great Sphinx, based on initial intelligence of a Muslim Brotherhood action. Embedded media present. Massive information leak of anomalous phenomena.
0947 hours local time - spontaneous, powerful sandstorm encircling an approximately 100 km radius of the Great Sphinx. A battalion of the Egyptian Army is present to witness the performance. Four humanoids, appearing to be Semitic in appearance and clothed simply in white cloth and sandals, appear spontaneously at the scene as well. Several rounds discharged by soldiers present suggest that the humanoids are non-corporeal. The as-yet unidentified beings take no notice of any actions occurring around them.

PROTEUS
I hope that I'm not being improper when I say that I'm scared.
MELLITA
We're all scared, Proteus. This is the day that our cohort has been preparing for our entire lives.
PROTEUS
Three of us will be chosen. Have we made enough of our time here? Will it comfort us if we are cast outside?
AGUS
Just look at the things we've done together. We've mapped an unknown star system. Wrote a song that made us the heroes of the Summer Convocation. Scaled the Shadow Pass of the Mountain of Ice. I tell you, Proteus, if they cast me out today, I can say that no matter what comes after, it was all worth it.
PROTEUS
I hope to be as brave as you when I enter the chamber.
MONASHIR
All accept what they are given in the Threshold.
MELLITA
How could it be otherwise?
AGUS
How could it be otherwise?

1017 hours local time - sandstorm intensifies briefly, obscuring all vision in the local area, before immediately subsiding. When visibility is reestablished, no anomalous humanoids are present. However, the Great Sphinx has been removed, replaced with a blue-light holographic projection, in the appearance of the Sphinx and of approximately the same size, with no discernible source. Numerous photographic and videographic records are taken and circulated. Existential threat to consensus reality in progress.

ACT ONE

SCENE TWO

1143 hours local time - darkness falls midday in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. No evidence of a solar eclipse, cloud cover or any other possible cause of such conditions is apparent. Nine moons appear to be visible in the night sky. Riots begin almost immediately, and messages proclaiming the end times begin to be broadcast over PA systems attached to several local mosques. Images corresponding to the four humanoids appearing at the Great Sphinx are projected via an unknown source onto the side of the Mogamma building, visible to all within the square. Activity stops as sound begins to accompany the images.

THE MAN
This set of four, born on this day thirty-five years past, are you ready to enter?
MELLITA, AGUS, MONASHIR
We are.
PROTEUS
We are.
THE MAN
Do you see, as it has been intended, how even those cast into exile may have a taste of our beautiful world, and how those that remain have shared the shadow of death with those that must take their leave now?
MELLITA, AGUS, MONASHIR
We do.
PROTEUS
We do.
THE MAN
Look then, out at this world. On this day, this is the Threshold. This is the place where human society is made. It is here that the salvation of the few, so great in its perfection, so sacred in its magnificent beauty, is earned by the fate of the many. It is they who will make the ultimate sacrifice, and they who deserve our love and our honor most of all. Do you choose to pass the Threshold, of your own volition?
MELLITA, AGUS, MONASHIR
We do.
PROTEUS
We do.
THE MAN
Mellita Snowfall of the Shadow Peaks, step forward.
MELLITA
I stand ready.
THE MAN
You shall dwell on the Planet of Eyes.
MELLITA
I…I accept my duty.
THE MAN
Agus Skysail, Third Denizen of the Watch Cliffs, you shall be taken to the Planet of Skin.
AGUS
I accept my duty.
(AGUS appears to stumble slightly, close to fainting)
THE MAN
Monashir Violetlight, the Lady of the Tower.
MONASHIR
I stand ready.
THE MAN
You shall remain. Remember always the great love of your departed sisters and brothers, now and forevermore.
MONASHIR
I shall.
(MONASHIR begins to weep)
THE MAN
Proteus Hammersmith the Wayfinder.
PROTEUS
I stand ready.
(PROTEUS trembles)
THE MAN
You are to come to the Planet of Hands.

1232 hours local time - upon concluding with the above dialogue, daylight returns to Tahrir Square. Of the estimated 10,000 people gathered in the square, several thousand spontaneously lose vision, and several hundred appear to be instantaneously flayed alive through unknown means. All other persons present in the square no longer have hands after the conclusion of the anomalous display, instead having completely healed stumps. Regional news networks, in particular Al Jazeera, begin to run coverage despite attempts at coordinated interference with dissemination of information.

All nations have put their militaries on high alert, and a few look to have already taken the opportunity to settle a few scores in the confusion. That's the only thing that makes sense now, really. What do they think they're mobilizing against? A way to look like they're doing something, anyway.
The churches, mosques, synagogues, etc. are overflowing. The Abrahamic folks are convinced that judgment is at hand. Everyone else just sort of figures that we're all fucked. The first reports of murder-suicides are coming in. Not as many as we might have expected, though. People have options. 001 made sure to let them know that.

Act Two - The Traveler Prepares
ACT TWO
SCENE ONE

1521 hours local time - reports emerge from Beijing of the embalmed corpse of Mao Zedong ambulating under its own power from its mausoleum and into Tiananmen Square. Visual confirmation emerges on Xinhua news service outlets several minutes later. An anomalous humanoid projection, similar to that seen in the part of "Proteus" in the Cairo disturbance, appears in the middle of the square alongside the corpse of Mao, which appears to have assumed the role of The Man.

THE MAN
There's no sense in lingering. We all have our appointed places.
PROTEUS
But there's simply no sense in it! Our world is immense, our use of its resources efficient and wise. Surely none of us must live in exile.
THE MAN
Problems of the far future become the problems of tomorrow for a race that has no end to its days.
PROTEUS
There must be a way to manage it. If all women and men live for as long as they care to, we must have no need for births. What purpose the creation of life if it is to suffer?
THE MAN
I have had this duty for a very long time, my friend. These are not new questions. And my answers are not new. Our kind ascended when we understood the true nature of ourselves. We must always be able to create new life. Our minds, subtly interconnected through the air and through the dreamscape, turn dark and destructive when the act of creation is taken from us.
PROTEUS
What of suffering? What of the cruelty that lives on our nine moons?
THE MAN
Suffering? Yes, there is suffering. It must be so. And we must know of it, taste of it, build our houses upon its foundations. As life preys on life, so does human enterprise need vast inputs of suffering. It binds us together. The knowledge that there are others that cannot have what we have built affects us deeply. It is a cornerstone in our souls. That is something we discovered a very long time ago. It is vital. And it was this discovery that paved the way to Heaven's gate.
THE MAN
But cruelty? No. We do not do these things because we wish to cause pain. We do it for those that remain in the wondrous society that we have built. We have given beauty and truth without end to those that are chosen. If even one person may taste of the infinite good, is that not worth any amount of finite suffering?
PROTEUS
But why must it be I who pays the price?
THE MAN
My friend. Come with me. I shall escort you.

1559 hours local time - upon conclusion of the anomalous occurrence, crowds in Tiananmen Square become highly agitated, tearing apart the corpse of Mao Zedong and resisting an assembled cordon of riot police. Leaders of major world governments have begun issuing statements urging for calm among their populations as scientists struggle to explain the occurrences in Cairo and Beijing. Thousands are reported to have died in civil unrest in population centers throughout the world.

ACT TWO
SCENE TWO

1610 hours local time - the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei Province, China, spontaneously disappears. The immense volume of water being held back by the dam previously does not move. Within minutes, helicopters operated by local emergency authorities are on the scene. Humanoid projections appear on the vast surface of the wall of water.

PROTEUS
What is this place?
THE MAN
Do you see our planet in the sky, that wondrous blue sphere? You are on the Planet of Hands, my companion.
PROTEUS
I don't understand. It looks like it has been on fire. Buildings, rubble.
THE MAN
There was a time when we merely exiled those whose duty was to come here. They built their own societies, in a fashion. They were driven by what they could not have, their slender hope twisted into a sort of vengeance upon their children at the center of this great constellation. They built great structures, vast ships, terrible weapons. The uprisings happened many, many millennia ago. The last conflict our humanity will ever have to face. Now, it's a simple matter to ensure that this never happens again. No perverse hope to tempt anyone into foolish destruction.
PROTEUS
By taking away our hands.
THE MAN
By taking away your hands. The mindset of a planet of those without hands is the proper one, for all of us.
PROTEUS
Where is everyone?
THE MAN
Come.

1632 hours local time - the waters of the Yangtze River are released, causing massive flooding, widespread destruction of homes and property, and thousands of deaths along the area of the river's banks. The destruction further inflames instability in the People's Republic of China, and the country's ruling Communist Party is overthrown in a popular uprising within a matter of hours after this event.

It's all come apart, One. Everything that we've worked for. Crushed in a matter of hours. And the only thing holding them all together, keeping things from being even worse than they are right now, is one idea.
Going home. Wherever home happens to be.

Act Three - To the People of Earth
ACT THREE
SCENE ONE

2301 hours local time - all notable buildings within the Capitol Mall region of Washington D.C. change coloration, from white to red. The Washington Monument emits a bright column of red light, stretching up into the sky and visible from hundreds of miles away. Ten meter-tall holographic projections of several humanoids, similar to those previously depicted, appear directly over the monument's reflecting pool.

PROTEUS
We have traveled many miles.
THE MAN
The Planet of Hands is vast. But look. We have another.
HANDLESS WOMAN
More people? I must be close to the blessed end.
PROTEUS
Who are you?
HANDLESS WOMAN
I no longer have a name. We have no need for such things here.
PROTEUS
Do you remember your home?
HANDLESS WOMAN
This is my home.
PROTEUS
I mean the place you came from, to here.
HANDLESS WOMAN
I remember a time when I wasn't starving. But that was a long time ago. It's difficult to recall.
PROTEUS
Your ribs are showing. Would you like me to find some food for you?
HANDLESS WOMAN
There's nothing to find. This is a place of ash and salt. But the hunger is a blessing. My mind feels clear, my being so light and clean. God speaks to me here. He tells me to lift my stumps to the blue light in the sky, and so I do. And I pray, and I am filled with the knowledge that I am here for a purpose, I am suffused with happiness.
PROTEUS
This place makes you happy?
HANDLESS WOMAN
The last gift of the body before it evaporates is the divine revelation. I live in truth. I live without fear, without doubt. I dwell in the spirit that had made this place. This is a place of ecstasy.
(HANDLESS WOMAN collapses)
THE MAN
And now her time here is at an end. No torments of false hope, no food nor water to sustain her suffering longer than it must. It is but a little sacrifice, when faced with the salvation that it brings.
PROTEUS
How long was she here?
THE MAN
A fortnight.
PROTEUS
She did not seem to be suffering.
THE MAN
The joy of martyrdom obliterates all suffering. It is a secret known only to those of the outer planets, a gift to those who make this sacrifice. No. She is truly transcended.
PROTEUS
I am ready.

2333 hours local time - crowds estimated at approximately 50,000 people have gathered around the Washington Monument to witness the anomalous occurrence. Law enforcement authorities are not present at the scene, having been summoned to contain unrest elsewhere in the Capitol region.

ACT THREE
SCENE TWO

2340 hours local time - a large doorway in the center of the Washington Monument opens. Nothing is visible inside but a faint green light. The holographic projections continue.

THE MAN
Present your hands, Father of Humanity.
(THE MAN holds a ceremonial blade aloft in one hand, a torch in the other)
PROTEUS
I stand ready.
(PROTEUS holds his hands before THE MAN)
THE MAN
Do you accept the gift of sacrifice, for those brethren that shall remain in the light for all of time?
(THE MAN saws at PROTEUS' left wrist)
PROTEUS
I do.
(PROTEUS bleeds profusely)
THE MAN
Do you offer your suffering for the good of the whole, your exile for the benefit of the collective psyche of Humanity?
(THE MAN wrenches PROTEUS' left wrist, snapping bone and tendon, then slicing the remaining ligaments keeping the hand in place)
PROTEUS
I do.
(PROTEUS spurts blood from left wrist)
THE MAN
Do you renounce the unstable reality of the universe outside of this system? Commit yourself to the preservation of sanity within this system of planets?
(THE MAN burns PROTEUS' left stump with the torch, cauterizing the wound)
PROTEUS
I do.
(PROTEUS screams)
THE MAN
With the left hand, you accept your duty. With the right, our duty to you.
(THE MAN cleanly slices off the right hand of PROTEUS in one fluid motion)
PROTEUS
I thank you.
(PROTEUS bleeds profusely)
THE MAN
We, the living, shall keep a society of perfect harmony, perfect justice, perfect beauty. We, the living, shall keep our human natures pure, living in the highest purpose that is possible for our forms. We, the living, shall transform your suffering into the most divine purpose imaginable.
(THE MAN burns PROTEUS' right stump with the torch, cauterizing the wound)
PROTEUS
I am honored beyond measure.
(PROTEUS screams)
THE MAN
In this holy pact, we shall know love without measure or end. Go forth, Father. Complete your journey.
PROTEUS
I accept my duty.

2359 hours local time - the humanoid projection portraying Proteus enters the doorway within the Washington Monument. Other projections vanish upon its entry. The doorway begins to slowly close. Several spectators from the closest ranks of the crowd rush into the doorway, followed by increasing numbers of onlookers, until an estimated three thousand bystanders enter the monument before the gateway closes. No person entering the monument has been contacted or seen since this event.

Thirteen asked me if what we worked to preserve was ever natural. What a stupid question. What does it matter if the world we enabled was unnatural? It was better than what waits for us.
The thing in Washington gave people lots of ideas. People have managed to summon a couple more of these gateways in a few places. They're fleeing into them. It's hard to blame them. We've lost any meaningful ability to control anything. The jig is up. The world knows that science is an illusion and certainty is a cruel joke. Why not take the chance? Better a refugee than a corpse. Or worse.
Me? No. I will not. I won't end my life as one of the cattle.
It was a pleasure to serve, One.
-Twelve


The demiurge who made the world
Screamed with all its might.
It did its very best to make
Its realm devoid of light —
But no one cared, because back then,
There was no wrong or right.
Then MEKHANE, who witnessed this,
It wasn't pleased at all
To see a god so hideous
With humans in its thrall —
And so it gave the humans will,
The will to be appalled.
The sea was wet as wet could be,
And Gyaros, dry as dry.
A dreadful fight was yet to come
In ancient times gone by.
No birds were flying overhead
(They didn't want to die.)
The Karcist and the Mekhanite
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
The pure and virgin sand —
'If this were only plagued with filth!'
The Karcist did demand.
'If seven tons of putrid flesh
Upon the beach were poured,
Do you suppose,' the Karcist said —
The other'd hear no more.
'Machines,' exclaimed the Mekhanite,
'Those would improve the shore!'
'O humans, come and be my slaves!'
The Karcist did beseech.
'A raging fight, a show of might,
Along the bloodstained beach:
We'll do away with Mekhanites
And godhood, you will reach.'
The eldest human heard his voice
And ran and hid in dread,
He sacrificed a goat to Zeus,
And as the creature bled,
'Deliver us from Karcist beasts!'
Unto the sky he pled.
The other humans hurried up —
Their minds were not their own.
They donned their mail of tumor-plates
And sharpened spears of bone,
And on the surface of their skulls,
A thousand eyes were grown.
The Karcist and his new recruits
Marched on a mile or so,
Until they met the Mekhanites,
With robot gods in tow.
The great colossus at their side
Let out an eerie glow.
'The time has come,' the Karcist said,
'Surrender to the flesh,
The blood, the dark contagions,
The claws that slice and thresh,
And horrors none the world has seen
Since ancient Erikesh!'
'But wait a bit,' the servants cried,
'Before the havoc wreaks,
It seems we're not equipped to face
Their mechanized techniques."
The Karcist ate their souls with rage —
He had to cull the weak.
'You killed your fighting force, you oaf,'
The Mekhanite exclaimed.
'It only serves to prove the reason
You'll go down in flames:
Intelligence and reasoning,
To you, are marks of shame.'
But Ion's reinforcements came
From temples underground,
Constructed from unearthly flesh
That wheezed with sickly sound.
The cannons blazed, the venom poured,
'Til not a soul was found.
'O Karcists,' said the Foundation.
'We thought your time was done
When Gyaros fell to MEKHANE!'
But answer there came none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
[REDACTED] everyone.


Document 990-04:
Per advice of her personal physician, O5-2 took several prescriptions in order to induce sleep in the early hours of 7 November 2016. Upon awaking, O5-2 reported a manifestation of SCP-990, the first documented instance in which the anomaly has appeared to an Overseer. Given the nature of the information contained within the dream event, this form is transcribed, and is presented as dictated by O5-2 to ████████████████, her personal assistant.

FORM 66-Y - STANDARD DREAM REPORT
Personnel: O5-2
Estimated Degree of Recall: 83%
Anomalous Entity Present?: Y
Likelihood of Actionable Intelligence: HIGH
Description: Oh god, this is too big. I've made a horrible mistake. It's just…I have no idea. I didn't know. It's obscene, really. To say these things. I don't know what else to say.
What? I mean, okay, yes. I can get it down. I can think after.
In 1978 I had a child. This is something that's highly discouraged for those in our position for obvious reasons. Who was the father? Don't ever ask me that question again. I'll end your life, I swear it.
I had a child because I needed a bit of the future in my life. Something that would go on. It was a stupid reason to bring life into this world but I am a human. And I do stupid things.
He was three years old. His name was Gabriel. His name was Gabriel and then he died of a terrible, wasting illness that our best doctors could not treat. He died with my name on his lips and convulsions wracking his little body. Someone reading this file knows how that came to pass. I know it was you.
You're afraid to ask now, but I see it on your face. I'm coming to the point. Gabriel came to me last night. No, damn you, not like a dream about a dead relative or some other silly nonsense. He came to me. He brought me to a hill. Atop that hill was 990, crucified, beaten so badly his face wasn't a face at all, his hands missing. His suit was impeccably pressed.
Gabriel smiled up at me, forever three. You think that you'll break down at moments like these, because who hasn't thought about moments like these. No matter how childish. You think that you will weep with joy and gather everything that you've lost in your arms and that things will be okay now. That you didn't make such horrifying mistakes. That you will be forgiven.
When my dead son looked up at me, all that I felt was terror. Terror so great and overwhelming that I thought my heart would stop. I have never known anything like it. I was paralyzed. This was not right. This was not in any way right.
Oh God, and then he spoke.
His voice was a man's voice. Worse than that, it was the voice I had imagined his voice being if he had grown to be a man. The smallest little fancies, shamefully foolish little hopes that were impossible and weak, and they were on display for this thing that is hunting us.
What's that? Oh. Oh yes. It's hunting us.
He said to me…he said to me…oh God he said to me "I've missed you Mommy" and it was like being shot in the chest. I felt as though a great fist had closed around my head, squeezing the tears out of my face, my grief being wrung out against my will, against my screaming fear.
When I came to my senses, he was still looking at me. He talked more.
This part, this was plainly 001 speaking through the figure in my dream. After this, 990 would echo whatever it said, softly, moaning it from his scarecrow cross. None of us can believe in God but this was surely a blasphemy.
I'm going to try and remember what it said, for all of our sakes.
Okay. Here's what it told me.
You're tempted to think of us as your fathers, your Gods. But we are actually your children. We're not quite your children, because we came before you, but we love you like a child loves its parent. You know what I speak of. You have seen a future, a future that is really a past. And a present. It's our world. It's all that humanity is capable of. We live our days in paradise.
Isn't that what you want for your children? Knowing that while you might suffer, while you might die, your children will see the better days, the sunlight without end? Maybe they won't have to die like you will. And so it is. We do not hurt. We will not suffer. You and the others like you have brought us here. We are the perfect children, of the perfect mothers and fathers.
What no child says of his parents, but what every child thinks, is this: I am glad that I will live to bury these people. I am glad that they suffer on my behalf. I am glad that it is not me who is to die. For many many years, these were feelings that brought shame. It wasn't until the latest stages of our perfection that we understood. This is a guide. This is order, demonstrated for us by the oldest of societal units.
I need a glass of water. He giggled, like he did when he was an infant, as he finished that part. Oh Jesus. More history. I was raped as a girl. It was a stranger in an alley, and it was the most horrifying experience of my life until my dead son explained our proper place in the cosmos to me. I cannot begin to describe how violating this was except to compare it. It's okay. You can look horrified. I allow it.
Then he came to the heart of it. Here is the rest of what he said.
Parents sacrifice for their children, don't they? Expend every little bit of flesh, will, intellect, everything they have so that their children may live an extra day in the hope of the sunshine that never ends. That's as it should be. You will remember.
Many, many years ago, your kind left. We didn't figure out how until several centuries after, but somehow you transmitted yourselves far beyond even our reach. Some among you secretly understood the more forbidden aspects of space and time. You fled.
Must I explain to you how your science is so woefully inadequate? How your knowledge was stolen, and how we whittled away the little bits of it until you convinced yourselves that you just appeared on your little planet, spontaneously? I will return some of your knowledge. You'll remember it, because your society, even so far removed from us, is teaching it to you even now. Crawl towards the beautiful undying place that you know exists, and you find that you turn on each other. Dragging each other back, sabotaging hints of hope. You find that to be a failing, when in actuality it is an inescapable part of our species.
A system can be made perfect. The gossamer webs that connect our minds and our spirits and our souls can be made perfect, free from corruption. But it must be done with the knowledge of suffering. It must be done knowing that others are suffering on your behalf. Why that is, we cannot say. It does not matter. It merely is. Our very souls are in harmony with each other because we know that we lie at the center of nine points of privation and death.
There are nine satellites to our realm. Our realm which you cannot deny is a glory. You've seen it yourself, Mother.
God, he called me Mother.
Your kind left the Planet of Hands many thousands of years ago. It has sat empty, a gap in our perfection, reminding us not of what we are missing, but of the joyous return that our prodigal mothers and fathers will soon make.
There are limits to our abilities. We cannot simply travel to where you have chosen to exile yourselves. We must use more subtle means. Oh how we wish we could take you all in our arms. We have feast days for all of you, at home. One for each of the nine. The Feast of the Planet of Hands has become the greatest event of our year.
We cannot embrace you, lead our beloved forebears back to their home. But we love you. And we love you so much, with all of our hearts and our souls, that we will show you how loved you truly are from across impossible distances beyond light.
I make you this promise. All of you, I make this promise to, from the hearts of all of us at the center of the nine points. You will come back of your own free will. We will not need to show you how, for the knowledge already rests within you. We will not need to explain why. You have seen the terrors that lurk outside of our protection. We will merely need to show you who we are. Who you are. Who all of us are.
We will all be so much happier soon. Tomorrow shall be the greatest expression of our love we have ever conducted.
And that was it. This abomination of my flesh explaining the world to me below, the bleeding man on the cross echoing his words above. I awoke screaming thirty minutes ago.
Tell Three I'm sorry.


On 7 November 2016, 0430 Eastern Daylight Time, operatives with Local Mobile Task Force 352-Dalet received reports from Major League Baseball wire services that RHP Ellis Canastota had been assigned to the 40 man roster of the Cincinnati Reds franchise. This event triggered heightened alert notices to be sent to all staff assigned to SCP-2272. At 0445 Eastern Daylight Time, a second notice was sent through official MLB channels that Ellis Canastota had been called up to join the 25 man major league roster of the Cincinnati Reds. All available personnel, including the entirety of LMTF 352-Dalet, were then mobilized.

He lay on his side and continued staring at the bright green digits of the alarm clock on the side table. Every few seconds, at irregular intervals, his work phone would buzz, the flood of emails vibrating the half-empty water glass and moving the phone slightly closer to the edge of the table each time. They had sent him home to sleep, and that's what he was going to pretend to do for the next couple of hours, by God.
The clock blinked suddenly to 4:29 AM. Bzzt bzzt. The phone continued its shuffle to the edge of the table. They probably thought they were doing everyone a favor when they sent the declassified info around. Like they were letting everyone in on a big secret. Who wouldn't enjoy that? Bzzt bzzt bzzt. He certainly hadn't. No one had said anything about mass distribution of cyanide ampules that he had ever heard. There weren't any rumors. He had been blissfully unaware. Before last week, his biggest headache had been the nonstop political advertisements on the car radio. Those were the days.
The clock blinked to 4:30 AM. His phone started a lower, repeated, much more insistent buzzing now. The additional force of the vibrations carried the phone right off the edge, finally completing its journey to the floor with a thud. The buzzing of the waiting phone call persisted, muffled now by the carpet. He leaned down and groped for the phone, dreading what he knew he would see. He picked it up, the light from the screen hurting his eyes as he looked at it.
"Calling: Regional Director Kate McTiriss."
He shielded his eyes from the light of the phone, trying in vain to dull the throbbing in his head.
"Allred-Smith here."
The Director's voice chirped in his ear. He sat all the way up on his bed. So much for pretending to sleep.
"They're going to call up Canastota? Huh. Well, figured we were due to catch a prime by this point. Okay, what're your orders?"
The voice on the other end of the line provided a laundry list of instructions and available personnel. If the Director was more worried than normal, she didn't show it. Some things were the same, he guessed.
"Got it. I'll go ping the clandestine IT guys to scrub all this. Is the office open yet?"
He tried smoothing a deep crease in his shirt with the palm of his hand. The crease paid him no mind. Nor did his hair as he tried to smooth it back down with his fingers. Whatever. Let someone complain about him looking like he'd slept on a park bench and come into work. He could use some comic relief.
"Because I need something out of there. Just in case."
He put on his shoes and straightened his tie. He grabbed a baseball cap from the dresser to cover his hair. He laughed despite himself.
"Hmm, no, nothing. Yeah, that's what I'm getting. You have a-"
The voice cut him off. He listened intently as he surveyed himself in the mirror. The cartoon fish on the front of his cap wrapping itself around a baseball bat looked like he meant business.
"Huh. Decommission? That's a new one. No, no. Don't worry boss, we won't hesitate if things get hairy."
The Director hung up. He looked for his car keys. This was probably going to involve more than the IT guys before this was done.

At 0521 hours, the MLB official scheduler posted a notice online for a game to be played at noon the same day, between the Cincinnati Reds and the Saint Louis Cardinals, at the Great American Ballpark in central Cincinnati. The starting pitchers were listed as Mike Leake for the Saint Louis Cardinals, and Ellis Canastota for the Cincinnati Reds.

"What do you mean they're playing a game today? They just finished the goddamn World Series!" Dr. Hanaka barked loud enough to be heard from the front of the bus-sized mobile command center as it sped north on Interstate 75. "It's probably snowing there or something by now."
"Actually, the weather is pretty nice today." Agent Allred-Smith gazed out the window as he balanced the long black case on his knees. "Which is far worse for keeping people out of the stadium."
"Fuck," sighed Dr. Hanaka. "How many tickets were sold before we took the notice down?"
A young woman sitting across from Allred-Smith at a mobile terminal quickly pecked at a keyboard. "17,397 tickets total, ma'am. It's a good thing we got the ESPN piece before they aired it. Pretty novel, an exhibition game right after the Series."
"Seventeen thousand. This is a goddamn disaster." Dr. Hanaka paced to the rear of the command center. "Enriquez, get into the ballpark contracting system. I want our security folks there, and if we can I want concessions done by us too. Everyone in that park who isn't on the field or in the stands should be one of us."
The young logistics officer looked up at Dr. Hanaka from his terminal. "You want us selling hot dogs?"
Dr. Hanaka's eyes flashed behind her glasses. She loomed over the sitting Enriquez. "Hot dogs, beer, licorice, nachos and fucking churros if we can manage it!" She threw her clipboard to the floor. "We've got a breaching anomaly with a paying audience of seventeen thousand goddamn people. You shut the fuck up and do as you're goddamn told, understand?"
Agent Allred-Smith couldn't help but think back to the last time he heard Dr. Hanaka speak, at a seminar on academic peer review a few months ago. He recalled struggling to hear the soft-spoken doctor from the back of the room. He coughed into his fist a couple times to conceal his laughter as the unfortunate Enriquez scrambled to fulfill his orders.

LMTF 352-Dalet arrived at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati at 1147 hours local time. Given the number of civilians in the vicinity with the specific purpose of attending a baseball game, closing the ballpark was deemed to be unfeasible. By the time doors were opened to spectators, 78% of service personnel within the stadium were comprised of Foundation or Foundation-contracted personnel. Operatives at the scene elected to monitor the ongoing events and determine the next course of action.

Agent Dunbar stepped into the luxury suite, crammed with wires, monitoring equipment and computer terminals, befitting an improvised command center. He looked out the window. The field below was ready for play, the grass freshly mowed, the infield perfectly manicured, a fresh Reds logo outlined in chalk behind home plate.
"They just posted the lineups ma'am. You're not going to like it."
Dr. Hanaka sighed. "How can there even be lineups? We've checked locations on everyone, none of the players from either team are in the area, or aware of the game. What does it matter?"
Agent Dunbar fidgeted slightly. "Canastota is starting at every position."
"Great," said Dr. Hanaka. "More of him."
"For both teams, ma'am."
The room was silent for a moment, all of the members of LMTF 352-Dalet looking to Dr. Hanaka for the next set of orders. She looked down at the game. Cheers went up as what looked like the Cincinnati Reds took the field. She grabbed a set of field binoculars and looked again. Sure enough, every single player was the same smiling, dark-haired young man. Each one's uniform bearing the same number 72 on the back, the name "Canastota" embroidered above.
She looked to the signals technician of the group. "Readings?"
An older man at an especially equipment-laden terminal responded. "Aerial sonar readings are negative. There's no one on the field except the umpires."
"At least he's not officiating his own game. That would be unsporting." Dr. Hanaka put down the binoculars. "Narrative officers! I need disinfo and social media posts out and blanketing the internet within fifteen minutes. This is a publicity stunt. See that it's perceived that way. Be ready to pull it back if things don't go well."
A group of three researchers in the corner of the room immediately pulled out phones and laptops and got to work. Dr. Hanaka moved on.
"Crowd control! Ensure that all of our vendors are fully stocked with Class C's. Don't start distributing unless I give the order."
A man in a police officer's uniform stepped out of the room, already relaying instructions into the walkie-talkie in his hand.
"Memetics! I want every communication coming out of that stadium screened for anomalous influences! Use the new AI we've developed. We don't have time to round up human subjects for observation."
A frazzled-looking woman in the seats by the windows, concern in her eyes, opened her mouth. She looked up at Dr. Hanaka. She closed her mouth and began tapping at a tablet computer.
"And you, Agent Allred-Smith." Dr. Hanaka now loomed over the Agent, reclining in a chair next to the suite refrigerator. "I want you up in the cheap seats with your toy there."
She nodded to the long black case in Agent Allred-Smith's lap. He nodded back. "Your signal?"
"My signal, Agent."

Due to ongoing containment efforts coordinated at the scene by LMTF 352-Dalet, spectators at Great American Ballpark were documented to be under the impression that they were watching a non-anomalous game of baseball until approximately 1452 hours local time, coinciding with the middle of the game's seventh inning. At that time, an individual matching all known biometric data of the baseball player Pedro Borbón1 and identifying themselves as such took the field and was handed a microphone, presumably as part of the traditional singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning of baseball games. Notable discomfort among assembled spectators was audible as the identity of the speaker became apparent.

Agent Allred-Smith surveyed the infield through his high-powered scope. Part of SCP-2272 duty was being familiar with baseball, and he knew a dead player when he saw one. He touched his earpiece.
"This is way beyond documented behavior, Doctor. Do I have authorization?"
Dr. Hanaka barked within his ear. "No, god damn it! You have authorization when I say you do!"
"You going to wait until a dead man starts doing…whatever the hell it is dead people do, here?"
"Your apparatus is set up?"
Agent Allred-Smith touched the tripod directly in front of him. "Affirmative, doctor."
"Then you'll be able to react in under five seconds when I give the word. I'd explain how we need to learn all we can, but then I don't need to explain jack shit to you, Agent. You wait for my signal."
"Roger that, Doctor." He leaned back in his seat. The dead man was speaking now, the crowd on their feet in anticipation.
Pedro Borbón, noted multi-inning relief pitcher and deceased member of the Big Red Machine teams of the 1970s, looked skyward as he held the microphone.
"Sport is a wonderful symbol of the human condition. You will be relieved to hear that, much the same way it is in this place, in our perfect society, sport is a sacred pastime."
The crowd was silent.
"Sport is more than competition. Sport creates victors and vanquished. The feeling of triumph cannot exist without the sacrifice of the defeated. You will understand more after we have truly spoken." The dead pitcher, looking every bit the spry athlete of generations ago, spoke with an impassive face. "This place, this game, this creation. This is a fine place for us to speak plainly."
Agent Allred-Smith scanned the crowd for any unusual activity. All in the stadium were still, and perfectly silent. For the first time, the pitcher smiled.
"We have heard a story from your people, many times, I'm sure you're familiar. Of a man asking his friend, returned from the grave, if there is baseball in heaven. Let me tell you, my brothers and sisters, there is baseball in heaven."
The speaker laughed, a high-pitched, screeching thing, not at all matching the expression on his face. Allred-Smith trained the scope on the pitcher's face.
"And today, we can all see together, they have baseball in hell, too."
As he stopped speaking, the house organ came up, the familiar notes of the traditional song of seventh-inning stretches across the country ringing out. Pedro Borbón doffed his cap for the silent audience, and faded away into nothing. The organ continued. No one sang.

Communications via social media and personal messages from civilians in attendance of the game increased greatly following the remarks of the unknown entity during the seventh inning. The number of messages, combined with the content indicating what had occurred, necessitated elevated containment protocols. At 1459 hours local time, Doctor Akane Hanaka authorized decommissioning of SCP-2272' and mass deployment of amnestics.

The precursor agents had been authorized for distribution at the end of the third inning. Every refreshment item served in the ballpark had Part A of a Class C two-part amnestic. Based on field studies and their own observations of the game, the task force chemist assured Dr. Hanaka that the penetration rate was in excess of 90%. More than enough to ensure memory alteration and suggestibility among the "critical mass" threshold of the crowd. Dr. Hanaka nodded, and barked some words into a nearby handset.
A small prop plane, carrying a banner behind it reading "2016 Winter Exhibition" and previously circling the stadium throughout the day, now swooped low over the Great American Ballpark, looking to have just enough altitude to avoid hitting the lights. A great plume of scarlet smoke billowed from the rear of the plane. Part B was being released. The reaction would be powerful enough to allow the narrative team to construct a plausible mass delusion that would hopefully obscure all details of what the crowd had watched here today.
As the plane flew overhead, Agent Allred-Smith adjusted his gas mask and lined up his shot. The camera mounted on the tripod was a delicate, finicky instrument, and the satellite link was proving tricky. Three different observation modalities, including a converted form of the sonar feed, were needed to achieve the necessary viewpoint in which SCP-2272 would be obliterated. The research seemed to indicate that capturing the image of SCP-2272 in a format which would allow it to be both observed and unobserved would render it unstable as a coherent memeplex. Or something. The reasoning was above his paygrade.
The green indicator light flashed on. He trained the camera on the field, making sure to capture the players on the field, the man waiting on deck, and both dugouts, all the smiling likeness of Ellis Canastota, number 72, right hand pitcher. All visual feeds were in tandem and functioning. He took the shot.
At that moment, the billowing red cloud of smoke descended on him, obscuring the field, the seats, and all of his surroundings. He held the mask tight in place against his face, ensuring that none of the air around him leaked in. The amnestics officer would be pissed if they had to reconstruct his memory.
A wind kicked up from the north, blowing out over the Ohio River and carrying the smoke out over the right field bleachers, like so many fly balls hit before. The view began to return as the smoke dissipated and retreated. Agent Allred-Smith dared a glance down at the field.
Empty. Four dumbstruck umpires were congregated around the pitcher's mound, doubtless discussing whether to call the game before their minds were temporarily thrown into a suggestible torpor. No players on the field, in foul territory, or in the dugouts. Not an Ellis Canastota to be seen.
An image appeared on the camera's viewfinder. Allred-Smith looked closely. The image he had taken, the image that had apparently neutralized this long-running anomalous phenomenon, was not of the playing field of Great American Ball Park. In its place, a black and white team photo showed on the camera's screen, 25 men arranged neatly in rows, wearing uniforms that he recognized as those of the first Cincinnati Redlegs teams. All 25 men bore the exact same smile that he had come to recognize as that of Ellis Canastota.
Unlike a typical team photo, this photo was taken at night, under the stars. Nine moons could be seen in the sky. A sign propped in front of the smiling squadron read "The Past, the Future." All 25 men were holding their arms out in front of them. All 25 men were missing their hands.

Footnotes
1. Pedro Borbón was confirmed deceased in 2012.


Well, I guess that's everyone. Let's get started.
As you hopefully know at this point, the 'P' in our motto stands for 'protect'. There are two kinds of protection that entails - protecting the world at large from the effects of anomalies, and protecting the world at large from knowledge of those anomalies. Security handles the first. We deal with the second kind.
Let me give you a little background.
Right now, at Site-44, a bunch of folks in an identical auditorium are currently listening to a similar orientation for the Security division, the other half of 'protect'. Security deals with the physical protection of society and the Foundation. Reality bender running around a major metro area? Security. Keter-level containment breach? Security. Hostile GoI attempting to eliminate vital personnel or acquire a valuable skip? Security. Any wars the Foundation fights, they man the front lines. The threats they face are the stuff of nightmares. They have high mortality rates, and the only obituaries frequently covered in black ink.
But talk to any of them, and they'll swear up and down that they prefer their own job to yours every day of the week.
Back to my - now your - job.
The Disinformation Bureau covers the second half of 'protect' - we protect the public from knowledge of the anomalous. The threats we face are our friends, neighbors, relatives, and every last person on this planet that's living their life as normally as possible. Everyone you know remains what they are - please, keep your normal friends, take care of your parents. Better for the mental health. But, from this point forward, in addition to being your best friend - they are now also a possible leak. That goes for everyone you know, and everyone you will ever meet.
Developing paranoia is a job requirement.
There will be times where you will have to do horrible, inexcusable things to others. In the course of your job, you may - almost certainly will - be required to lie to, embarrass, cheat, steal from, coerce, blackmail, discredit, threaten, fight, torture, cripple, and possibly kill your fellow man in defense of the secrecy of the anomalous.
Whatever must be done, you will do. I would use the old cliche 'failure is not an option', but that would be an incorrect statement. That other option is mass panic and the end of the world, if not reality itself, because someone couldn't be arsed to break a few eggs to prevent that from occurring.
Security may have to give their lives for the cause, but you will lose at least part of your humanity.
Many, if not all of you, come from somewhere else within the Foundation. You probably feel used to seeing and dealing with horrible things. Show of hands. Anyone from Ethics Committee? Nobody? That's not really unusual. But, they're the best equipped to deal with this sort of thing. If you get the chance, go to their orientation. Really thought-provoking stuff.
The Foundation as a whole does bad things because it has to - some might think of it as our hand being forced, others as sacrifices for the greater good. But at the end of the day, the Foundation is composed of a collection of actions done by individual people. One of those people is you.
Up until now, you have been a bystander. There's been a layer of separation between you and the horrible things. You observed in the course of study. Defended others from the anomalous. Maybe sometimes even requested something that you knew would end poorly, but had to be tested to be sure. That's enough to give any normal person nightmares, maybe some mental trauma.
Disinformation Bureau takes you a level further. You will get your hands dirty, and it will get to you.
If you're on the field detail, you're burning down a house with a family inside of it because Mr. Simmons has put two and two together about what really happened to his brother. He's accumulated three years worth of knowledge and contacts. A straight up hit would be suspicious - amnestics even more so. As part of the Disinformation Bureau under External Affairs - it's your job to deal with it quickly and quietly. It won't always be a house fire. It might be a landslide, a car accident, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You're not watching the house, or telling someone else to do it. You're carrying the kerosene and lighting the match. Locking the doors and barring the windows. Smelling the smoke and hearing the screams of agony. Digging through the rubble and checking the bodies. Finishing what the fire didn't if required.
If you're dealing with information control, it's less gritty and a lot more psychological. This gets divided again into two halves.
First half is all about coverup narratives. That's what I do, actually. Take a situation caused by an anomaly, craft a plausible story about what actually happened, disseminate. You'll get really good at lying. In today's world, you can usually cover things up with lone-wolf terrorism, cults, that sort of deal. "That doesn't sound so bad, Jane." Maybe it isn't. All I do is lie for a living. But it sure as hell gets to me.
Second half is reinforcing that narrative and erasing others. That means cleaning up the scene and making it forensically match, and then dealing with witnesses. Making up lies is easy, but making them the truth is hard. Cleaning up the scene is pretty-self explanatory, but nontrivial and extremely time sensitive. The faster it gets cleaned up, the less media exposure of genuine anomalies we have to deal with.
Witnesses. Normally, amnestics can be applied. If we catch it soon enough. Couple hours is best case, they'll work passably within a few days. After that, amnestics create more problems rather than solve them. They've probably written about it, or told someone else. Radical changes in behavior or removal of those memories would draw attention to the Foundation rather than away.
People like that either need to be disposed of - which we try to avoid, it's pretty suspicious looking - or discredited. There's several different methods of doing so. In the modern era, it usually involves frame-ups. First path is public detraction/embarassment. Lots of different methods there. Whole lecture, actually. Second path is government intervention - plant something linking them with terrorism, or espionage, and whatever government is out there will quietly scoop them up and send them to prison for a very long time.
For actual, physical evidence, we have to explain that away as digital manipulation. The problem comes in when evidence that's difficult to tamper with comes up. Sometimes genuine Foundation documents are leaked, sometimes it's analog recordings or images. Worst cases, someone uploads a cognitohazard. Those are nigh impossible to deal with directly.
The Bureau also has a branch actively generating and disseminating bogus information around the clock, but occasionally the public will latch onto the one real anomaly in the hundreds of fakes.
Some of you may go on to work with totalitarian governments. They'll be glad to have you - a lot of their weapons research comes from us. The Foundation does a lot of testing in backwater countries. Less prying eyes, suppressed media, easily manipulated corruption, less concern for human rights. Your job is information control in that particular country. Some countries like to put you in the cabinet, some like to keep you in the shadows. Either way, you will be helping to enforce the will of a crackpot dictator. Foundation personnel also have a nasty habit of being placed on CIA and other intelligence agency hit lists. Don't worry, there's training for that.
Some of you will liaison with the Internal Security Bureau or the Ethics Committee. You'll have another orientation with them, but you'll be doing basically the same thing you would be otherwise, except internally rather than externally. That's one of the few places where even I don't have all of the pieces, so I can't really say too much there.
And there's hundreds of other positions, all with vastly different job descriptions. The only thing that they have in common is that all of them, more or less directly, fuck with people's lives and how they live them.
It's a lot to deal with. You were all selected for these positions due to your aptitude for the tasks, mental resilience, and a previous willingness to do whatever is necessary. The training courses deal as much with coping with your job and what it entails almost more than actual skills. This presentation is a sort of high level overview of what you'll learn in the next couple of months, and what you'll be doing after that. You'll start learning specifics later on.
I will now take questions.
You, with the purple tie. Who am I and why am I here? My name is Jane Mossbury, I'm the department head for mass disappearance coverups. I'm here because I drew the short straw.
Navy pantsuit. Is it as bad as I make it out to be? That's really for you to determine for yourself. The hours are fortunately pretty merciful, and the benefits are pretty nice, but the stress will mount over time. I'm not sure I would call it 'job satisfaction', but there is some small tingly feeling from being an integral part of a conspiracy that the theorists could hardly imagine. That's also discounting how well you put up with the tasks required of you. And the paperwork.
Black polo. Psychiatric counseling? It's available. Strongly recommended. Support groups meet on Tuesdays, information's on the bulletin board. Next question.
Black trenchcoat. Sorry, my apologies, other black trenchcoat. Travel? Varies, depending on your position. Off the top of my head, field cleaners - agents that go in and clean up anomalous incidents before anyone can get to them - travel frequently. Contingency planners require less. A lot of the digital folks never travel at all.
Original black trenchcoat. My personal actions? Unfortunately, I can't really discuss those. We have an extensive archive of past actions and responses, but a lot of it is classified, some expunged. I can't recall which is which right now, but if you really want to know, you can look me up in the archive.
Is that all? Well, if you have any others, feel free to find me in my office or at the canteen.
Nearly forgot. In one of the few upsides of being in the Disinformation Bureau, our canteen is a full-fledged bar, [REDRAFTED]. In the tradition of orientation sessions finishing with some kind of refreshment, I've arranged for an open bar. Whether you nurse a drink or down it, is your decision.


Document 990-03:
Dr. ██████████ reported a manifestation of SCP-990 during a dream occurring seventeen hours ago. Per emergency orders distributed to all personnel regarding possible data on SCP-001, Dr. ██████████ filed the following report and forwarded it on to the Director of Site-17. The report was subsequently transmitted to Overwatch Command.

FORM 66-Y - STANDARD DREAM REPORT
Personnel: Dr. ██████████
Estimated Degree of Recall: 60%
Anomalous Entity Present?: Y
Likelihood of Actionable Intelligence: HIGH
Description: SCP-990 is dressed in the same suit, looking the same as ever. I recognize him immediately. He's the clearest element in any dream he visits. His face changes a lot from dream to dream, but this time it's changing from one moment to the next. I attribute it to the high stress of the past couple days.
He tells me he's going to show me some things. I feel apprehension, and I wonder what burnt out ruin he's going to show me, because that has to be what this is about, right? Our time has come and this is going to be what awaits us. I try to wake up, but I can't do it. And it feels like I'm sitting at the bottom of a pool, and I can't will myself to go to the surface. I don't think I've felt panic like that in a dream before.
990 shakes his head. I can't tell if it's him keeping me here or if it's the dream itself. We've never been able to figure out what kind of control he has. He says, I'm going to guide you, ██████. But I need something of you first. And he points at my left hand.
It's a dream, right? Even with all of the things we've encountered in this field, I've never seen anyone harmed in that way. I hold out my hand. 990 nods at me, and he takes something out of his coat. It looks like a blade of some kind, it's got a sharp edge at least. Not a knife. More like something from a lawn mower, or some piece of industrial machinery. Before I have time to ask what's going on, he's brought the blade down through my wrist, lightning fast. I look at my hand, terrified, and I'm sure that it's going to fall off, and blood is going to start spraying any second.
But nothing happens.
I stare in shock for a few seconds. The pain is real, but I'm afraid to move my arm because my hand is going to fall off if I do. 990 looks sympathetic, and he tells me that I can move my hand, it's fine. Then he says that we're out of reach of 001 now, and we can talk.
I wiggle my fingers, and they work like they should, but my hand is numb. The feeling is disconcerting. Yet the sensation of panic from earlier is gone. Things feel more like normal now. Except for my hand.
He looks at me. He's got my face now. I get the impression that I am someone else now. Feels like a woman, but I'm not certain. Identity shifts a little as we talk. He tells me that he can give me three revelations before 001 finds him again.
Suddenly we're sitting outside, in the night air, under the stars. There are nine moons in the sky. Varying sizes and phases. I'm in a child's body. He's still me.
He speaks. Holding up one finger. You are not in your proper place, he says. I ask him what that means. Me, personally? The Foundation? Mankind? He ignores me.
He raises a second finger. O5-2 is absolutely correct, and she is disastrously wrong. The reference to specific Foundation personnel is unnerving. I start to speak, but I can tell he's not going to listen.
The third finger, the third revelation. He leans in close to me. This is the trickiest one, he tells me. He asks me to commit this one to memory above all others, and so I have for this report. This is the last thing he said to me before I woke up.
The primary mover behind what you know as SCP-001, above all other things, is love.
That was when I awoke at my work station.


TO: O5-7
FROM: Pendergast, William
RE: Planetary Survey Data - Relevant
URGENCY: HIGH
Sir,
The latest data from Khevtuul 5 is in. We have two possible exoplanets that are theoretically suited for human life. In addition to being candidates for an eventual colonization effort, the preponderance of Goldilocks Zone planets points to an increased likelihood that an alternative site for human civilization can at some point in the future be established.
It is also worth noting that our probes continue to find no sign of HEs, or any extraterrestrial life for that matter. If I may express a personal opinion, I find this surprising. Nevertheless, the longer we go without contact, frankly, the better.
This seems to lend further credence to the human survival hypothesis. Consider releasing some of this information to help build morale among the operatives. They could use it.
SIGNED
General William Pendergast
Lead, Project Heimdall

TO: Pendergast, William
FROM: O5-7
RE: re: Planetary Survey Data - Relevant
URGENCY: HIGH
General,
Appreciate your latest message. It looks like Two may be right after all. That's something, at least, while we're dealing with 001.
Couple of things to remember as you look out there. We're beginning to believe that 001 resides somewhere out in physical space. Not like you needed any reminders, but look out for anything that might fit the description. That includes communications. It might try to talk to us again.
The other thing you should know is that I was the one back in '54 that got the message from it. That message hasn't been declassified yet but you're likely to be the first that gets any other messages. So you should know.
Some stuff that isn't in the file. Whatever it is, knows about the Foundation, because the message came straight to me. And that's because I was the man in charge of finding out what was behind the spike in anomalous activity. It's very familiar with us, General. And it knew enough about me to know I was a movie buff.
It left me directions to some place out in the desert. Not so far that I couldn't get there in a few hours. So it knew where I lived. I drove out with a team in some jeeps, and in the middle of nowhere, there was a movie house. And I mean the middle of nowhere. No roads, no human habitation. There in a washed out gully was the movie house I'd gone to as a little boy. We were a little more wild in those days, and so I told my boys to wait while I went inside.
It speaks to us in performance. It likes it better that way. It could just tell us whatever it wants, really. But this is one more way to mind fuck us, I think. Anyway. Nice and air conditioned inside. Colder than hell. Soon as I sat down, the lights dimmed, and it showed me a movie. Not like any movie I'd ever seen, but it was most certainly a movie.
The title was "Planet of Hands," in English. It didn't make a whole lot of sense. There wasn't a story, as such. More like a disjointed series of images. Some stuff was real famous and I recognized it immediately. A lot of military footage, scenes of large battles, aftermaths of bombing campaigns, stuff like that. I recognized Stalingrad from the news reels, and there were some scenes of what I assume was the Battle of Passchendaele. I didn't realize there were movies of that.
Mixed in with that, though, were other things. Some were filmed scenes, same quality as the other stuff, of what had to have been other events from history. Mass starvations, a volcano eruption or two, villages of Indians being run through by Spanish conquistadors. Not very subtle.
Then the scenes of the Sites started. Still shots of buildings and facilities, all of which I knew to be ours. Pretty clear message for us there. Are you with me so far? Strange stuff, but nothing we hadn't encountered before. That's when it got bad.
At the next instant, I was no longer in the theater. I was in my seat, but everything around me had changed. Vibrant colors, oversaturated hues like a mad painter had conjured them, they were everywhere. People, things, places, swirling around me, all of it lit up like neon, so that I could see things after I closed my eyes. And it was just a mass of unspeakable acts. All of the rape, murder and pillage from thousands of years had been forced into the room, each act phasing into and out of others, moment to moment. I can't recall any image staying in the room more than a few seconds, except the scene directly in front of me. It was a Turk, I think, clothed in a resplendent robe the color of Technicolor blood, his face barely visible behind an electric blue beard. He was casually forcing people down onto a sharpened stake embedded in the ground, impaling them, over and over, the victim coming into and out of focus. First an old woman, then a soldier, then a child, back to another woman, each one after the other, bang bang bang. The blood would splash on his robe and he would glow brighter each time. He didn't look angry, or hateful. He looked like this was the most natural thing in the world, pushing someone down onto a stake until it forced its way up through their guts as they screamed until they bled out. If I had focused on another part of the room for any length of time, I think I would have seen similar things.
How long this went on, I can't say. I was a younger man then, and I'm not ashamed to say that at a certain point I just covered my eyes and waited for it to stop. I would probably do the same today. When I finally looked up again, the theater was back around me, the movie still being screened.
What I saw up there was myself, now a part of the movie. I looked obscenely happy. At my age I don't look into a lot of mirrors, but I tell you I have never seen a smile like that on myself, then or now. That, more than anything else, has stayed with me. You should never be surprised by an expression on your own face, it's awful. In the movie, I was boarding something; like a big wooden ark, I suppose. Something out of a kid's book about Noah and Flood, purely symbolic. I watched myself onscreen as I stepped into the ark. Some other people were getting on with me. A woman, a black man, some children, an old Chinaman, all walks of life I guess, no one I recognized. When we were all aboard, the ark lifted into the heavens, sailing through the cosmos. It even had the Buck Rodgers music in the background as the stars whizzed by. The ark came to what I assumed was a planetary system of some kind. A planet, looking a lot like Earth, blue and white and brown and green, at the center of a wild system of moons. I thought of an atom. The ark moved closer and closer to one of the moons, until it came into view. This wasn't like Earth. This was a darkened nightscape, illuminated by fires dotting the land. All that was visible was soot, smoke, fire, a few rusty scraps of metal twisted into big, man-sized shapes.
You know how the music swells when the movie ends? That was happening as we all disembarked as the ship touched down on the night moon, all of the characters on the screen looking just ecstatic with joy. As I said, disconcerting when you see something like that on your own face. The movie was fading out now, but rather than the "The End" placard appearing like it does, some other text appeared, this time in Russian. "вместо того, чтобы вернуться домой," which we think was intended to be something like "come home instead." Why it started in English and finished in Russian, I have no idea. Maybe some smart-ass commentary on the Cold War. Which would be a point of hope in dealing with this thing. Fallibility.
I have my suspicions as to why this doesn't show up in the main file. That doesn't matter, though. You need context for any future attempts at communication from 001. Now you have it.
Watch yourself.
-7


O5-2 let the e-mail alert fade from her terminal screen without opening it. She already knew that the Foundation had suffered more casualties in the past twenty-four hours than all of the last five years put together. The only thing reading the details would accomplish would be the sapping of her resolve. The path forward was clear. Ensuring a future was worth any price. She wished she could tell each field commander personally, we're certain about this, just hold the line. Then again, desperation was on her side. People had a remarkable tenacity in the face of death. Nobody needed to remind anyone of what the consequences of failure were.
The large video monitor on the wall beside her chimed with an incoming videoconference notification. O5-3. She buried her face in her hands. Did she not get her fill of vitriol during the Council vote? Knowing O5-3, it was quite likely. She sat up. Internecine warfare was one of the few ways the Council had to amuse itself in this world. Even now, those habits died hard. Maybe especially now. She motioned at the screen, and O5-3's dark, lined face was on her wall.
"Vote's over, Three. You lost. Does that still make you mad?"
The woman on the screen sighed. "What I am is scared, Two."
It had not yet been a full two days since SCP-2798 had gone down, and the toll had been horrific. There was no way that current operations were sustainable for more than a week. Fear was probably the only reasonable response.
"Telling someone else that you're frightened isn't very therapeutic in our line of work, Three. Fear is contagious. Can I do something for you?"
O5-3 leaned a little closer to the monitor. "You blocked the vote. You cut off our exit."
"Oh, bullshit, there were plenty of us with doubts."
"But none with the certainty of yours. Five and Thirteen were never going to vote for it anyway, but Six and Twelve would have. I talked to them before. I know that you talked them out of it."
"That's still not enough. One was the difference, and even you can't tell me that I can make One bend to anything."
O5-3 sighed again. "Look. That doesn't matter, I guess. It's done, and that's that. But you owe me something, Two."
"Do I?" O5-2 moved closer herself now. "I owe you something for not letting you kill everyone? You're beyond absurd. I'm done with this now."
"Wait. Please. I need to know." O5-3 paused a moment while she forced out the question. "I need to know what you know. I need you to tell me why we didn't just make the worst mistake in the history of the world. The real reason, Two."
O5-2's hand hovered over the red button to end the call. She pulled it back. "I went to the precog items. I peeked."
The revelation washed over O5-3's hard features, her determined upper lip and furrowed brow softening as her face betrayed shock. It was the first time O5-2 had seen her face like that. "You didn't. That can't possibly be-"
"Is it really that hard to believe? With the gun in your own mouth, you're not the least bit curious about how things might turn out if you don't pull the trigger? Yes, I'm aware of the prohibitions. Who cares about that now? Are you going to report me? Requisition a detail to come and detain me in the middle of all of this?"
O5-3 sat in silence. There was no arguing the point. "So what did you see?"
"You know what it's like, Three. Being old. Ideally, you learn to not delude yourself with false hope. Resign yourself. You remember the old Eleven? His obsession with uploading his consciousness, like he could cheat Death? Ridiculous. He was ridiculous…" Two trailed off, the wild eyes of the former O5-11 haunting her for a moment. "But this…we've always fought to preserve what is, Three. We've never thought about what could be."
"What do you mean by that?"
"All of the precog items point to a future. I haven't seen how we get to it, but it's not just survival. I saw great spires of glass that pierced the clouds, unspoiled landscapes, great flocks of birds passing through cityscapes built into mountaintops. I've seen people who don't fear sickness and death. No wars, no poverty." She grew more animated. "All of the anomalies under our control that can tell us anything have all showed me this place. That it exists. Someone survives to make it there."
O5-3 looked skeptical. "That's a very different place than the one we're seeing now."
"It's a different planet. We know that much."
"Do you think that we're going to be able to mount a space colonization mission when we can't even keep ourselves alive right now?"
"No. Probably not," said O5-2. "But at some point, someone does. And I want to give whoever that is the chance to do that. Don't you see? There is a point to all of this, now. There is an end goal for humanity, more than just living another night. Our children will have a chance not just to live, but to live in peace. Isn't that worth continuing on?"
"That seems very ideal, doesn't it," said O5-3. "Almost like it's designed to stay our hand."
"What reason do I have to make this up? And it was useless as a tool to influence the Council. If I had brought this up during the vote, I very well would have been detained, then."
"Hm. You do seem to believe it." O5-3 frowned. "You know that these…things, they can be very untrustworthy."
"One or two, maybe they come up with the same deception," said O5-2. "All of them? Vanishingly unlikely. Some of these things are kept in separate realities. No, this is all pointing to something, and I believe it is true. Or rather, I believe in it enough to keep going for the chance to make it real."
O5-3 was silent for a moment. She swallowed. "You know that we've already had two activations of SCP-089? In two days?"
O5-2 took a moment. "No. I did not know that. And really, I would prefer not to know things like that." She went on. "Nothing we're doing now is anything that we haven't been called upon to do before. It's harder. But it's the same thing. We've always tried to preserve some sort of future. And now that we've got proof of it, we can't stop now."
"Proof," said O5-3 quietly. "God, I hope you know what you're doing, Two."
"Just help me hold things together. Until we can't do it anymore, so that whoever it is that gets us out of here and away from whatever the hell it is that's hunting us can do their duty." O5-2 fought hard, and the tears stayed in her eyes; she would not let them flow.
O5-3, impossibly weary, looking sick and unwell, every one of her sixty-eight years on display, nodded barely. She ended the call, and O5-2 was left looking at her own reflection in the dark glass of the monitor. She studied her own face for a moment. She had more hope than Three did, but for all of that, she looked just as heartsick. Just as scared.
I hope I know what I'm doing too.
O5-2 opened the message from Asian Subcommand, and read the latest developments. More of the same.


Bethany opened herself from its place, trudged over groggily, but more awake than she'd ever been, to the wall of the mobile home, and with a bloated forefinger pushed down a plastic shutter to peer outside. The small gravel driveway outside the door was empty. It was in the interim from dusk to darkness, and the barren, stunted trees looked angry, upset that she had roused them from their sleep.
She let her finger slide from the shutter, leaving an absence in the dust-covered plastic the shape of the water tower she saw silhouetted in the autumn sky. A wave of some disgust-adjacent emotion took a slow roll through her stomach, and she turned on the linoleum floor, facing the unlit beige interior of the mobile home. She closed her eyes and let the familiar smells in; the warm smell that her dildo gave off every time it was washed, the smell of the pile of filthy clothing laying damp next to the sink. And the new smells were there too; that implacably comforting smell, the smell of the blood-soaked…
They had come early, early in the afternoon - but of course they had. The early afternoon is benevolent. No one wants to hurt you at two in the afternoon. No one wants to kill you, or tear you to pieces, when the sun is high in the sky.
They came in a rusted 1989 four-door Ford Escort, how perfect. No slight anachronisms, everything in its right place, everything as it should be. But she knew them: who they were, what they were, though they did not know what she was, no, they did not know her, they did not.
A blue tag emblazoned with an emblem of a wheelchair-bound man swung leisurely from the rear-view mirror as the car pulled to a stop with a crunch, and a woman swung out, pivoted smartly on her left leg, pulled open the back door, took out a crutch, slammed the door closed with an unhealthy thud (perfect, oh so perfect), and hobbled toward Bethany's door. Bethany opened the door before the woman had a chance to begin her labored ascent of the stairs; she stopped and looked up, not the least bit startled, and making a show of it. A young woman, brown hair, brown eyes, pale. A battered blue plaid shirt, three sizes too big, and pale pale blue, tight jeans.
"Whadayawant?"
A guttural cough from the woman; a chain-smoker's cough. Fake, false. (They try, try, try, to keep it all, don't they? Selfish is what it is.)
"Was just wonderin' what the hell's been goin' on lately. Fuggin'…" - Another cough - "Fuggin' lights at night…you know whasbengoinon?" Another cough. Phony. The syntax, the inflection, the vocabulary, all so perfect. Bethany felt like throwing up, though she'd always had an iron stomach, and hadn't eaten anything physical in months.
"Don't know what the fuck's goin' on. Heard about it but ain't seen nothin'.” A short pause, a fleeting look of deep boredom on the young woman's face. “You got anything else you need to wake me up to fuckin' know?" The woman didn't seem to take notice that Bethany had opened the metal door herself. A grunt, a turn, and the woman began her slow hobble back to the four-door. Bethany slammed the door. Foundation.
* * *
Bethany hated. She hated at the roots of things, and at every single root, and the seed that sowed the root, and whoever had planted the seed. Interaction between person and world - knowing, knowing, knowing, everybody wishing to know, to be, growing themselves like a homogenous, toxic fungi over existence and perceiving greedily, raping existence. She hated people for knowing themselves, for knowing each other, and for knowing these things, for being. Existing in the conscious world - what a sinful realm.
So when it had shown itself, she accepted it like a father, she did, this thing beyond absence and beyond form, which lived within her self. In fact, until the four-door, she had thought that it may be some natural piece of herself, and perhaps of everyone. Some dormant trait that, through her 52 years of radiant and recursive hatred, had become finally focused to a burning point within her mind.
And she knew, sheknewsheknewsheknew, that that young woman with the tight jeans and fake accent was driving 70 miles per hour down Highway 57 in that rusted four-door, muttering to herself these words: “Goddamn -04 thrusting useless prototype shit-tech at me. ‘Type-B Anomalous Detection! It'll help you in the field!' Bullshit. Seeing lights at night in a trailer park - buncha hicks.” She threw something that looked like an early cell phone on the floor in front of the passenger's seat.
Oh, how the search for knowledge fell at the feet of vanity; if Bethany were someone else, she would have laughed.
* * *
It made her know things which would keep it. Keep it here. Hypocrisy? She didn't care. The Foundation, that macro-life-force - threat. She knew the metallic ring that would sound in each of those learners, those be-ers, heads when the time came. It told her these things in whispers that were naught: key-ter. Key Ter. How wonderful the sound, and the horror it would make, and then readily destroy.
And she knew that thing: the thing which it carried within itself like the DNA that bacteria absorb in their slow campaign against life. (Maybe that is what she could call it; where bacteria had failed, in giving only death and not a permanent solution, it gave the solution, it did. It ended truly and earnestly. The great bacteria. It. It. These things, the KNOWINGknowingknowingKNOWING of people. Done forever, forever nothing, forever ended. The beginning point of an abominable ray pointing backward in time, the ray of light, the ray of life, blood red. The Parasite of Perception.)
Absence of the night. A slow crumble, severance of the mind from the world. Closure.
The shutter closed. Again. The sound of the wind against the wall of her mobile home was not heard. The bottoms of her feet cold, freezing, on the linoleum floor, the consciousness of Bethany Karen Bowlen imploded. And as this atomic spasmodicum danced with light in the non-air of a rural Wisconsin trailer park, the November night, and all who lived within it, moved toward a greater darkness.


O5-2 carefully arranged the surgical mask over her face, tugging the disposable fabric this way and that, ensuring that her mouth and nose were covered properly. She bent down and eased off her black pumps, exchanging them for a pair of sterile slippers. A set of gloves and a disposable cap were on the table next to her.
"Is this really the extent of protocol for interacting with a four-hundred-year-old-man?" said the Overseer as she looked down at her new shoes with disgust.
"You're worried about protocol at a time like this?" Dr. Zhang adjusted his glasses as he examined the tablet in his hand.
"A time like this. What could you possibly know about that? You live in a separate world from us. That's exactly what Existential Isolation Facility Beta was designed for." O5-2 tucked her long silver hair under the cap, pushing individual strands away from her forehead and up underneath the protective garment.
"Overseers aren't supposed to be here. Should I even ask why that rule is being waived today?"
"No. You shouldn't." She pulled the latex gloves onto her hands, accentuating the end of her sentence with a tight snap. "And don't."
The Overseer and the Site Director passed the rest of their time preparing in silence. A soft chime and a green icon flashing on the Director's tablet indicated that the subject was ready. Dr. Zhang began to speak. O5-2 spoke instead.
"No recording devices. No one else." O5-2 held her security pass up to the reader on the hermetically sealed door. Latches clicked open as her card was acknowledged, air rushing past them from the positive pressurized antechamber.
She looked one last time at Dr. Zhang. "I was never here. Do you understand?"
The Site Director nodded. O5-2 didn't bother to wait for acknowledgment as she proceeded into the main chamber.
The second door sealed behind her automatically. Before her was a man in a hospital bed, at the center of a mass of tubes, wires and specialized lifts designed to enable movement with the least possible effort. She only knew that this was a man because she had read the file; the person before her was a shriveled husk of cobweb-thin strands of hair and translucent, spotted skin. Machines registered respiration and heartbeat, assuring anyone who cared to listen that this was a living creature.
She sat in the chair placed at the ancient man's side by the research staff. A speaker was wired to the bedside railing next to the man.
"Goodbye, SCP-411."
The wasted old man moved his lips, faint noises wheezing out of him, captured by the small microphone next to his mouth, held in place with surgical tape. Several seconds elapsed before a monotone voice emerged from the speaker, reconstructing and interpreting his barely perceptible words.
"You are the first of the quiet times. Some peace and quiet, finally."
O5-2 parsed the response. Not an answer to any questions she might ask. No causality issues yet.
The monotone voice resumed. "Suffering. Cruelty. The currency by which the world is purchased. Everything that you are is a reflection of this. You will remember the true nature of cruelty in time."
She had to be careful now. This sounded like something. She went through the checklist of questions she had prepared, mentally forbidding herself from any desire to deviate from the script. She read aloud the question that she thought fit the answer best.
"What is the price that we will need to pay for this?"
She didn't like the stilted manner of this conversation. O5-2 watched a thin stream of spittle trickle out of the corner of 411's mouth as his lips moved. She waited for the transcription.
"Your kind did not just appear in my path. I recognize your faces. All of my life I have seen faces like yours. Not full of fear, and desperation and hate like the faces of my recent years. But joy. The happiness of untroubled days, illumined by a different star. Your future is clear in my past. You have been, and you will continue to be."
A different star. This was consistent with the data from the newest Determinative Set that had been examined. The nature of how it would occur was murky, as all data from SCP-2003 were, but the possibility that escape from 001 was an option had been tantalizingly coming into focus for the past several weeks.
There was a future after all.
She started to speak the question to the answer. She was cut off by monotone, clipped laughter from the speaker. Something about it chilled her. She started again.
"411, does humanity exist in your past?" Her feelings of relief collided with the unnatural flow of the conversation. Her elation at being able to believe in another path forward was cut with something that felt like poison inside her. Nothing about this interaction felt right. Many items provided glimpses of the future. All of them distorted those events through the madman lenses of their creators, human and otherwise. The future was forbidden from the central planning process, but O5-2 felt the need to make an exception, given the vote that was before them tomorrow.
The speaker crackled once more, breaking her thoughts. "A barren rock. Home to terrors beyond imagining. It is well that life has fled. It is even better that life for others continues far away from this place."
Well. The next response was an easy one, then. She sighed, annoyed with the rules of this game despite the awful gravity of the situation.
"Is there a future for humanity on Earth?"
That was the last non-pleasantry she had been planning on asking of the decrepit humanoid. Precious little material, but apparently an extended conversation would kill someone of this advanced age. Then they'd all be truly screwed. She decided to wait a few more moments while the time-wasted man gasped words inaudibly in his own slow time. Her vote tomorrow was decided now. She began to formulate the beginnings of the argument she would make to her peers. How would she reconcile-
"The Planet of Hands. This is what we are to speak of. I am from there, you know. As are you, child. You shall know more of it in time. I am glad to be here now instead."
O5-2 sighed. Senility hadn't been mentioned in the file, but it was certainly to be expected from someone who had racked up multiple centuries of life. A brief thought occurred that perhaps 411's other answers should be reconsidered. She banished it quickly. Any chance, no matter how slight, was better than tomorrow's proposal. She focused herself on convincing the others.
"Greetings, prodigal daughter. Unlike me, you'll be home soon." The ancient face on the bed twisted into something resembling a polite smile. Like she had just walked in the room. That was her cue, thankfully.
"Greetings, SCP-411." O5-2 promptly stood up, turned around, and left the chamber.


This is the start of what will probably become a series involving the intersection of MC&D and Organized Crime. Happy Halloween!

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F.A.Q.

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Listen to the Audio Adaptation?

Joe's head bounced off the metal table with a clang. The Man in the Suit behind him cracked his knuckles and walked around the table.
Joe shook his head, the initial hit was still ringing in his ears. "Look. I'm still entertaining buyers. I swear you'll get your cut soon."
"See, here's the thing." The Man in the Suit reached across the table and slapped Joe in the side of the head with his open palm. The force of the blow lifted Joe out of the chair and sent him flying into the floor. The Man in the Suit straightened his tie. "Carter and his associates handed you that truck on a silver platter. You left us holding our dicks for 3 weeks while you 'entertained buyers'."
Joe cradled his head as he felt a boot kick him in the stomach. He wretched slightly and curled into a fetal position. The Man in the Suit crouched in front of Joe and continued. "I vouched for you. You understand what that means right? You fuck up and it's my balls on the line."
Joe tried to answer through the pain. "I swear I'll get you your cut before the end of the week."
The Man in the Suit patted Joe on the side of the face. "I don't got that kind of time Joe. My boss is breathing down my neck about this. I had to tell him something. He's taking a personal interest."
The Man in the Suit stood up and walked over to the only door in the grey room, knocked three times before opening it and moved to the corner of the room opposite Joe. The door swung open on its own, and Joe could see a bright light in the warehouse outside before it was eclipsed by something massive.
Whatever it was had the rough shape of a man, but was far too tall. It ducked under the doorway and entered the room. Joe's eyes went wide as the lamp in the center of the room illuminated the creature.
The creature's fingers reached all the way to the floor, terminating in sharp nails. From Joe's perspective it was difficult to tell where the fingers ended and the nails began, but they scraped the ground as the thing crept with staccato steps, leaning forward on backwards facing knees.
The gray wrinkled skin covering the creature pulsed and throbbed under the light, with bulbous pustules rupturing and healing repeatedly. The thing's face was all smiles, with a grin that reached up and out of sight around the back of its head. As it stopped in front of Joe, it focused its single yellow eye on the man and opened an impossibly wide mouth.
"Where," it began with a shallow and breathless voice, "are the fucking artifacts?"
Joe shat his pants. It wasn't a subtle affair. The creature twisted its head to an impossible degree but continued to stare at Joe.
Joe, for his part, couldn't have formed words if he'd wanted to. He had lost all control of his faculties. All he could see or hear or think about was the creature's eye. The creature finally looked up from Joe's paralyzed form at the Man in the Suit across the room. It opened its mouth again. "He's got a warehouse in Fulton River." It stopped and wheezed. "I've got the address. We'll go there after I'm done."
For Joe the physical pain was gone. All he could focus on was the yellow eye. Probing.
The creature's neck twisted grotesquely as it returned to staring at Joe. Joe's eyes filled with tears, but he didn't move. Then the creature moved back slightly and Joe began to gasp. Joe hadn't even noticed but he'd stopped breathing, and suddenly his lungs were screaming for air.
"What," the creature gasped out as it looked up at the Man in the Suit, "do you think we should do with him?"
The Man in the Suit stepped out of the shadow of the corner and shrugged. "He's a good earner. But I'm not inside his head. Is he loyal?"
Joe saw the back of the creature's head as it smiled. The teeth did in fact go all the way around. "He is now."
The Man in the Suit smiled back. "Good. I'll call Darke and let him know we'll have the artifacts by the end of the day."
"Yes." The creature said, before standing up and moving towards the door.
The Man in the Suit nodded. "Thanks, boss. Sometimes these kids are more trouble than they're worth."
The creature didn't say anything else as both it and the Man in the Suit walked out of the room.
Joe shivered on the floor for several more minutes before finally getting the courage to stand and leave.


Love's real, not fade away

Other works by S D Locke!

SCPs

S. D. Locke's Proposal

SCP-5999

SCP-3280

SCP-783

SCP-2193

SCP-3980

SCP-1661

SCP-2923

SCP-2385

SCP-3963

SCP-4910

SCP-3246

SCPs

Ihp/Locke Proposal

SCP-7676

SCP-012-EX

SCP-5311

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SCP-6110

Tales

Not Fade Away

Reap What You Sew

Paradigm Shift

A Reason To Die

And Then I Died IV - Series 2

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Heart and Sol

From Above

GOI Formats

SPC-173

SPC-2935

LTE-2712-Bosch

P'rantortiz the Vile

GOI Formats

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F.A.Q.

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The old water tower on the outskirts of this shit-heel town has been derelict for ages. It's amazing they haven't torn the damn thing down yet.
I reach up for the next rung, which groans in response to the unexpected weight, before snapping off entirely. I manage to catch myself at the last second, but my Go-Pro isn't so lucky. It makes a soft plop in the snow below.
"There goes my perfect fucking selfie."
It was a close call though. I take a second to catch my breath, before I steel my nerves and continue my ascent.

Can't turn back now. Stick to the plan.
You're going to be remembered for this.
I clamber onto the platform, and I'm greeted with an oversized grin- the rival school's idiotic mascot. Its face is weathered and peeling. Good thing he's about to get a brand-new paint job. Now all I need to do is decide exactly how many dicks I should add. Time to get to work.
Just one more over here…
Oh! Let's have one splooging all over it…
…pink? The fuck did I think I was going to do with pink paint?
…give 'em some missing teeth; he'll look just like these inbred jack-offs!
…little bit more and…done!
I stand back and admire my creation in all its glory. In just a few hours, people will wake up to their beloved avatar being assaulted by a group of floating penises; as if it were the star of a haunted bukakke. Now all I need to do is snap some pics for the guys to prove that yes, I am that Fucking Badass. I whip out my cell and get to work-lamenting the fact that I can't post these online (if only so I can #dickasso).
It's as good a time as any for a smoke. I spark one, and look out over the woods that surround the town. Last night's snowfall blanketed the landscape, leaving a pristine coat of white that went on for miles. I could see the lake off in the distance. From my vantage point, I could clearly see over the privacy fence that encircles it. As the early-morning fog began to dissipate, I could even see the water's surface and…what the fuck is that? Can you see them out there?
I cup my hands around my eyes — as if make-believe binoculars could somehow improve my vision — and lean out over the railing. There's definitely something bobbing about the surface. It…fuck. It looks like there's someone out there?
That can't be right. It is They closed the lake off ages ago. To keep it hidden. Something about an undertow? Lies. Fuck. Well it's not my problem if some random nobody gets themselves killed. They're closer to you than you'd think.
As much as I want to turn away, I can't. Because you want to know the truth. I'm frozen to the spot, precariously hanging over the railing. There's something about them. Something familiar? Don't you remember? The redhead…
Katie Lawson
We met in Home Ec class. She was always so patient and caring. She still cares. Took a trip with me and several of my classmates over the summer to check out the new Space Mountain. We shared our first kiss during the fireworks display on the third night. I…made some dumb promises I knew I couldn't keep…There's still time.
Doug Garner
A total blast to have around. Always wanted me to tag along on his misadventures. He didn't want to be all alone. We got caught sneaking in to see Jaws; I managed to get away before the cops showed up, he wasn't so lucky. Never sold me out, either. And risk losing you? He always had my back. Don't let him down.
Ben Ward
Lived across the street from me our entire lives. He's been there the whole time. I could never ask for a better friend. And he, you. We began drifting apart once he started getting pretty deep into his schoolwork. He was scared of what you might think. Every once in awhile he'd stop by, just to chill. Because he missed you. Don't you miss him too? Last time we talked was when he treated me to Queen's show at the Paramount back in April.
I fall backwards, reeling from a mix of vertigo from the height; light-headedness from the cigarette, and a sudden, splitting migraine. I press my palms into my eyes, trying to get my head straight. I can't even focus on myself now though. There's people down there. They need my help. Without even bothering to clean my evidence (I'll be back for it), I drop to the ladder and begin climbing down.

It's a quiet ride on my bike up to the path that leads to the lake, and a crunchy one for the last mile or so. The only sound other than me plodding through the snow are the occasional gusts of wind screaming through the trees. No. Not the wind.

Can you hear us?

Can you hear us?

Can you hear us?

Danger: Drowning Hazard. Area is off limits.

Little signs like this were posted everywhere. It's to keep you out. It's to keep the truth hidden. I disregard them, and trek on. I can't abandon my friends now.
It's funny, even though the sun is coming up, it seems to be getting colder. It's always cold. That's why they need you.
Barbed wire. Fuck, that's right. How the hell am I supposed to get over this? Over there. Wait a minute…that bush…Almost. Looks like there's a hole behind it, going right under the fence. Please. On my hands and knees, I crawl through.
I can see it now…
Can you see them?
Can you see them?
Can you see us?
Can you see them?
They can see you.

We

can

We can

See

See

See

You

It's…dear God…

Will you help us?

Do you remember us?

Do you remember me?

Me?

Us?

How could you forget

after everything?

Don't you remember us?

It's everyone I know. Every one of you. All my friends. My family. Still others I don't recall in full. You shouldn't be here. Why? How can this be? I have to get you out of here! I won't let this go on.
The freezing water is around my ankles now. With each step I can feel the ground below getting further away…up to my thighs, and I'm already shivering. My heart begins to drop. Something is wrong.

Help us, please.

Only you.

What about all those years?

Was it all for nothing?

You promised.

Always looked out for you.

We need you.

Remember us?

You promised!

I'm slowly moving out towards them…I can help. It doesn't have to be this way. We can all make it out of here.
Up to my chest.
I can't shake the creeping dread from being in such deep water. When I was a child, an ill-advised cannonball sent me plummeting to the bottom of my uncle's pool. I freaked. I couldn't move. I flailed about in a panic, trying desperately to gain vertical ground to no avail. I thought I was going to die. Someone got down in time to fish me out, but ever since then, I've had a horrible phobia of water. In fact, I've never actually learned how to swim.

It's all right.

It's all right.

It's all right.

There's always time.

Don't turn back.

Don't leave us here.

Please.

You promised.

Up to my neck.
It's too late now. I can't find the bottom, I can't gain a footing. I'm choking on the water, I'm starting to flail again.

It's alright.

We've waited so long.

You won't turn your back on us.

We could have been so much.

Done so much.

All gone.

Wasted.

In their arms now.

I can see their faces.

I recognize all of them.

I know all of them.

We're finally together.

They've been waiting for me for so long.

How could I have forgotten?

Forgotten?

Why would they do that to us?

How could they?

They can't do that.

They can't leave us here.

You can't leave me here.

Don't forget me.