☦Dystopia tale about the Scravecrow.☦
Things were falling apart, even though they were finally coming together. He watched the world from his high tower, wires coiling around the steps to his throne like a thousand serpents.
The music played, as it had for as long as anyone who could remember - anyone who remembered anything else didn't last long. The royal ravers danced in the music as they came together to beat a man to death in a public execution. The crime was being caught playing a violin.

The scarecrow dimmed the lights of the room as he entered. Locked the door. Shut down the cameras. He had come here to make a deal, away from the prying eyes of the facilities. A rave exploded in the basement of the site containing the man he looked for and people flocked towards it despite themselves. It would keep them distracted while he did his work.
Before him sat a prophet near-delusional in his fervor.
Spirit and prophet discussed as two businessmen. The god was pleased with the offer and impressed by the plan. It was agreed that the god would lend its great power for the cause. The prophet's hands shook as they clasped straw-filled gloves.
By way of touch, the eldritch being passed on its blessings through its prophet. When the deed was one, the prophet's broken body fell to the floor as an empty husk.
The pact was sealed in blood and shattered soul.

The group of humans below his high tower were his hand-picked lords and ladies of the dance. Music flowed through their blood as the beats shook the air. Beyond the royal party was the second party of servants. Beyond that were the music sellers, merchants, and rave fashionistas. Beyond that, and beyond that, and beyond that… A sea of writhing humans, pressed against each other to try and get closer to their god-emperor The Scravecrow.
Far into the horizon, a second set of towers scraped the sky. On those towers were televisions and sound equipment, lights and dispensaries. There, the lowest of them, the tone-deaf, crowded around the towers to touch the holy metal. They were below even those that could no longer dance. They alone would never see the god's face. Cursed with the inability to truly hear the beauty as it should be, this lowest caste remained forsaken by all creatures.

Of the many groups that could aid him, he first went to the artists. The difficulty was not in winning them over so much as trying to figure out who was cool yet.
The scarecrow tracked what he could through the avant-garde theatres, the post-apocalyptic fashion industry, the soft-grunge aesthetic social groups. Through that he followed the breadcrumb trail through Lowercase music producers, indie art game designers with unpronounceable names, and french horror movie specialists who spoke no french besides "omlette du fromage".
He searched through a sea of obscure artistic endeavors to find the few groups that could help him. He found one group in the knit bombers. He found another in the social group of human earwax sculptors. He almost missed one in the painters that mixed blood with their colors.
Of them all, he asked for their aid. He promised in the new world, art would finally have the recognition it so deserved. No artist would go hungry. No creative passion would go crushed by the responsibilities of being in a society that valued fitting in to standing out.
It wasn't hard to win them over. Just to find them in order to do so.

The scarecrow spewed glowsticks and drugs into the crowd, howling a gale of fluorescent mist from the north. It chilled the marrow of their bones, cooling the mass of sweat and flesh and music.
The Scravecrow watched the body beneath, writhing in a sea of the angry ravers. The violinist, a young man, begged towards the heavens for a mercy that would not come. He struggled as his limbs were twisted out of their sockets, then broken. His body stilled and life left him.
His royal ravers had executed the violinist. The playing of actual instruments had long been forbidden by unspoken rule. In these days, the only music produced were samples of samples of samples, a mottled menagerie of torn pieces.
The corpse was torn apart, pieces of flesh spread between the ravers as proof and reminder that justice would always be served to maintain this wonderful, glorious land of fun and lights. Once the ritual was over, people dispersed to their own, smaller parties. The only ones allowed to remain were the royal lords and ladies of the dance floor. They would remain here until they died from overdose, exhaustion, or injury.
The king of his land laid the music to autoplay. He stood and turned away from his most loyal and disappeared into his tower. Within the tower, he wandered his chambers. Plastic skeletons lined the walls. Cotton webbing drifted with real spider webs. Fires danced in pumpkin heads, lighting the room. There, he lay down into a bone dry bed of autumn leaves to think.

With a god's might clenched around his soul, the scarecrow traveled to the land of the Collective.
There, he preached his grand plan. A god needed an army and here in dreams was the best strategic position. The vast majority of his enemies would still need to find rest in these lands when they were at their most vulnerable. He wanted to take advantage of this weakness.
He claimed in his envisioned future, there would be people who were free to dream even when they were awake. It would be a perfect permanent home for the creatures here, who had lived so long in the inherent instability that is waking and sleeping.
Furthermore, when the world became under his rule, the first guests of honor to his land would be every dream that cared to visit.
The agreement was a rush of excitement and gratitude. He shook many hands and many more unknown limbs.

In truth, he knew that he would come to this conclusion the whole time. He just didn't want to admit it. Not to the air. Not to his reflection. He could not confess it even to this little piece of home he carved out for himself.
The Scravecrow disappeared from his home and touched his hay-filled feet upon dirt. This barren, abandoned patch of land brought him some memories. This was the last place of the Foundation resistance. When he took over the land, that group proved the most stubborn in conversion. So desperate to cling to the past they knew, the Foundation dug their own grave to meet the ruins below the earth.
His faithful ravers pulled them out of their ruins like rabbits from their burrows. They were butchered. Hundreds of bodies were dispersed throughout the population as handfuls of flesh, broken badges, shattered identification cards and strips of bloodied cloth. He had not ordered this act. He had not ordered any of this. He learned then that a god is not obeyed. It is worshiped.
In the present, a fog descended upon him, shielding him as he kneeled into the soft earth. He dug himself a shallow depression, then fell into it. This was his apology to a people lost to memory. Even if he could speak the words, there would be no one left to forgive him.
Time passed as he lay there in the re-imagining of the metaphorical burial of the unmarked grave that was the Foundation.

The chilly night was not unusual for either of them. Fog obscured their conversation, though they spoke openly on a neighborhood street. On a carefully constructed couch of leaves, the scarecrow and his kind friend had their discussion.
"Tell me your thoughts tonight." the friend whispered into still air. He leaned back into the leaves, looking up to the stars with his perpetually pitying expression. His movements were slow, careful. As if everything he touched was fragile and precious.
The scarecrow had no voice of his own. Instead, he borrowed the autumn wind to speak on his behalf. "What is it like? Is it below? Is it above?"
"Neither. It's more like stepping out. Seeing the forest instead of the trees." The scarecrow's friend lit his cigarette with intense nonchalance, exhaling a purple smoke into the air. "I would say it is beautiful, but at the same time what you must sacrifice to see it is something most people won't give up until the moment they have no other choice."
The breeze made a soft, dissatisfied noise.
The scarecrow was handed a card, with a number and location. Another puff of smoke. "Ever possessed something?"
"But of course! The leaves don't snap themselves off, you know." The branches rustled in proud response around them.
"Then this'll do you well in your journeys."
Before they shook hands, one last statement was echoed through the fog. "Thanks. I owe you."
To that, the autumn spirit's companion could only press his lips together in a grim smile.

He would give everything to be called Jack again. Of the lanterns. To hear costumed children running from house to house. He could almost imagine it now. The children would run from house to house before stopping at one who took Halloween a little too seriously. There was one in every neighborhood. That house would be filled with gravestones in its front yard, carefully sculpted cotton stretched thin decorated with plastic spiders. Skeletons would lay in pieces on the pavement.
The children would dare each other to enter the yard and claim the sweet treasure within. Eventually, one brave soul would approach. For some, it would be their first taste of the base fear that ran through all humans. The candy dispensing creature would hulk out of the shadows or some bush, previously hidden. Howling and screaming would ensue, and those sounds would fill his spirit with an addictive euphoria.
The screams and wild costumes of the parties were similar, but they weren't really. The flashing lights and loud music were too different. The drugs were not part of the equation. The sex wasn't, either. He had once thought, when he first started this, that he could drown the longing for his past with the energy of a rave. But nostalgia was a persistent beast. A fickle craving remained, dissatisfied with anything less than the impossible.

Once he had gathered all the help he could, the plan was set to motion early in the morning.
The dreams clutched tightly to the Foundation personnel sleeping. Swaddled in fantasy and delusions, they would not be woken by anyone or anything for a long, long while. Those that hadn't slept were met with an explosion of artistic expression across most of their sites. That morning was one of chaos as the Foundation gathered the few men awake to deal with the containment breaks as a result.
In the chaos, the Scarecrow slipped relatively unnoticed into the chamber containing a specific disco ball. He peeled back the disco ball's metal container, then took off his pumpkin head and set it down for the last time. He placed his raggedy, straw-filled gloves onto the shiny surface as one would caress a lover's cheek. Through the touch he felt the energies of the sphere, how it ticked, how it didn't tick.
He placed it onto his shoulders, replacing his old head. He rebuilt its unspoken workings, edited it, shaped it, possessed it for his own. Instead of spreading radiation, it would spread a rave nation.
The scarecrow began to dance and all was lost.

The scarecrow found himself on a cold and empty street. Everyone had left. Everyone save for one.
His friend was there, sitting in the fog, exhaling a familiar purple smoke. The friend sat beside his old head, welcoming him home with a warm blue glow. "Good evening, Jack."
Before that kind friend, the god-emperor was nothing more than Jack, the lost autumn spirit looking for home. Jack kneeled and the fog around them coalesced into rain with his bitter weeping.
His companion took the disco ball off his shoulders with all the kindness, all the patience of a parent watching their child's first taste of adult pain. The silvery sphere was set to the floor to continue its work unattached to any god or emperor. Then the pumpkin head was placed back where it belonged and Jack felt, for the first time in too long, a bit of wholeness come back to him.
The friend extended a hand, smiling kindly. An idle breeze brushed leaves off the sidewalks to curl around the disco ball, protective. Afraid.
"They'll be alright. You'll see, when you're out."
Jack took the open hand in his own. A chill autumn wind howled and all that remained was a silver sphere nestled in a bed of bone dry leaves.


Starch and Cream

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ೋღ☃ Starch and Cream ☃ღೋ
-A Silly Dystopian Fiction in Three Parts-
By djkaktus

Part One: The Wild Winds

Book of the Holy Feast, Chapter 4 - Episode 3 - Verse 7
Oh blessed Cake, first and foremost in our hearts,
Deliver us now from this foul demon,
Which doth tread particularly heavily upon our lands.
Holy Cake,
Praise be unto you,
Amen.

The wild winds whistled through the many small cracks and creases in their makeshift stronghold, each piercing cry a testament to a great many small mistakes that had been made during its construction. But it was hastily designed and even more hastily cobbled together, and much could be forgiven about its drab appearance and inability to keep out the cold.
Much could be forgiven, but in the eyes of Sky Martin, it was too much. The old man pulled tight at a thick cloak wrapped around his neck, cheeks rosy from exposure, and cursed the haste in which they had settled into this place. It hadn't helped that they had put it on top of a hill, with nary a windblock for miles and miles across the Scottish countryside. The vantage point was useful, certainly, but the goddamn wind was almost too much.
Sky adjusted himself slightly, scanning the horizon as the sun rose. His shift was the early shift, and he would be returning to the barracks as soon as the children arose to take their breakfast. He looked down the length of his rifle, nicked and scarred from over-use and under-repair, and made sure everything was in order. The Marshall was strict about that; all firearms had to be kept functional. God knows what good they would be in the situation that would require them, but there were few enough to go around and they were more than suitable for handling the various hostile stragglers and brigands that had populated the highlands in recent years.
Dawn broke over Havenhall, a town in name only. The collection of worn and weathered individuals within were hardly a contingent, regardless of their original purpose. When they had come to the hill they had been twenty, men and weapons sharp and polished for a singular purpose. But as they had waited out the storm and grown older doing so, more had joined them. A group of refugees from across the channel. A family of pig farmers from West End. Before too long, they had a flock, and the flock began settling in. Havenhall was not supposed to be a settlement, but in time, they had settled. And the twenty still watched.
Little similarities remained between the twenty brave young men who had struck out from Site 76 so many years ago and the nineteen old men who protected Havenhall now. Age and fatigue had beaten them, bent their spines, threatened to break their backs, and now seemed willing to drag out the torment as long as they were willing to remain alive. Gerard had finally succumbed years ago, when the long winters chill of '48 had frozen his body to the parapets. Others, like Harrison, dared not leave the safety of the minor warmth afforded in the boilers, but pressed on nonetheless.
It wasn't just the cold, either. Radiation sickness threatened them, looming constantly in their minds like the low-hanging clouds left over from the bombs years ago. It would come in waves; the breeze would pick up in the middle of the night and the Geiger counters would start ringing. The women, children and infirmed would be shuttled down into the lower levels, and the men above would don their haz-masks and the thick goggles and heavy coats, and would continue to watch. When the wave passed, they would drag the scrubbers, long past their age of expiry, out to make the complex habitable again. When it was done, those below would quietly file out and return to their work, detectors strapped to their belts.
The buzz of the morning alarm signaled for the population of Havenhall, no more than three hundred souls, to rise from their beds and begin the days work. In the past, the alarm might accompany the rising sun. Now, the skies remained dark, with only the occasional patch of obscured light to remind them that the star hadn't gone out. Behind him and below, Sky could heard the masses moving slowly about, preparing for the day's work. Outside of the rickety walls were long rows of crop fields, covered in tarps and patrolled by guardsmen. He supposed he should feel fortunate, to at least have the porous walls between himself and the elements. Thomas only had the exposure gear to keep him warm, and like everything else in Havenhall, it had stopped functioning at optimal levels nearly fifteen years ago.
A heavy hand found Sky's shoulder, and he turned to see the Marshall behind him, no doubt here to relieve him of his duties. He was older than Sky, but was unfazed by the stresses of the world around him and unrelenting in his duty. The slightest stubble was seen as a personal failure, and the Marshall spent nearly an hour every morning making himself presentable. In contrast to the tattered and ragged masses within Havenhall, he might as well have been a golden god, especially considering it was often his iron will that stood between life and a slow, icy death.
"Martin," he said, his voice cutting through the morning air. "Any signs of danger?"
Sky stood slowly, speaking as he rose. "No, and nothing from the counters, either. A quiet night."
The Marshall nodded. "And any word from command?"
Sky sighed quietly. There had been no word from command in twenty years. "No, sir. Nothing on the radio."
The man stood quietly, gazing at the dim light of the rising sun. Sky could read him no better now than he could thirty years previous, and sensed nothing from him but resolute determination. "Very well," he said. "You are relieved, Martin."
Sky gave his thanks and gathered his meager belongings in a knapsack. He slung it over his shoulder, and began trudging down the slope towards the mess hall. In the distance, he could see children scurrying about, followed by their mothers and older siblings. He smiled.
As he opened the door and felt the warmth of the hall wash over him, he was aware of a hush that had fallen over the gathered mass of younglings within the doorway. All were seated in a circle by the hearth, and at his arrival all had fallen silent and turned to face him. He stood, draped in decaying exposure gear, face hidden behind a long-range optical helmet. As they watched, he bent his knees slightly and leaned back, before bellowing across the hall.
"THE WORLD IS FULL OF DARKNESS!"
The children squealed with delight before shouting back. "WE MUST SECURE THE DARKNESS!"
He grinned behind the mask, and shouted again. "WHO CAN STAND BEFORE IT?"
A few rolled over with laughter. "WE MUST CONTAIN THE DARKNESS!"
Sky stamped his feet, and rolled his torso like a raging bull. "ARE THERE ANY BRAVE ENOUGH?"
Pandemonium reigned in the circle of children. "WE MUST PROTECT THE… EARTH!"
Sky charged towards the circle, arms outstretched. "The Foundation lives!"
The children began chanting. "Secure contain protect! Secure contain protect!"
He took a flying leap into a tumble and sprung to his feet in the middle of the circle. His joints reminded him that he had gotten far too old for those types of shenanigans, but his mind ignored it. He gazed around the circle, which once again had grown hushed. In the background, he could hear some of the mothers laughing quietly, while the older siblings rolled their eyes and put the memories of their own childhoods away.
"Now," he said, slowly removing his helmet. "Who wants to hear a story today?"
The group exploded once more with approval, and drew quiet again when he raised a finger. "One," he said, moving swiftly around within the circle. "One of you gets to decide. I will tell you who it'll be, when I point-"
"Tell us about the Bard of Boston!" shouted a chunky child behind him.
Sky spun quickly. "Not you, Hafford! I said I will choose."
He moved quietly, picking up his pace as he goes, until he stopped in front of a young girl with braids in her hair. He went to take a single step forwards, stopped mid-stride, and scooted back until he was standing square before her. His outstretched index finger lowered until it pointed at a spot directly between her eyes.
"Amelia. What story do you want to hear?"
There was a hush, greater than any hush previous. All of them sat quietly, eyes wide with anticipation. The little girl, no older than seven years, furrowed her brow in thought. The silence lasted a second, and then five, and then fifteen, before she perked up and looked at him with blue eyes, untouched by the ravages of life outside of Havenhall.
"Tell the story about the King's Feast."
Sky felt his throat catch, but only for a moment. He smiled, and then moved slowly to his perch by the fire. The warmth of the flame felt good on his back, and he shrugged off the cloak as he sat.
"The King's Feast, it's been a while, hasn't it? Very well, gather around now. Where to begin…"

Once upon a time the world bathed in the light of the sun and the winds were not so cold, and in those days lived a young girl who was cursed by fell magic to hold within her the Son of the Left Hand of Destruction, a demon from ages past that had spoken ill words into the world and planted a seed of despair within it. The demon grew slowly within the young girl, watching and waiting for the time of his ascension.
But there was a Foundation set to contain him, a group of brilliant scientists and soldiers, who held the demon at bay with ancient magics and powerful sorcery. For a time, the demon was silent, powerless against the very forces that had first created him. The Foundation remained vigilant, never taking their watchful eyes off of the demon, prepared for any eventuality.
Until one night, when another creature in the Foundation's care broke free of its bindings and wreaked havoc throughout their numbers. The demon heard this, and knew his time was coming soon. As the monster outside drew more and more guardians away from the young girl, too few remained to protect her and to initiate the ritual that contained the demon. When the time for the ritual came and went with no sign of the binding magic, the fell beast burst forth into the world, strengthened by eons of waiting, and his name was the Scarlet King.
What little remained of the Foundation there was broken quickly by the might of the King, for his words were the Fires of Hell and his long arms stretched across the world to shatter it and remake it to his design. The Eyes of Darkness were cast across all mankind, and threatened to pull it all into the shadows where the Scarlet King reigned supreme.
In response, the Foundation joined with its friends and foes, and found themselves helpless against the King and its supremacy. In an act of desperation, the captors of the world released their captives, who turned in kind either against the King or for him. Regardless of their intent, the King swept them up in a sea of blood and returned them to nothingness. The King had not lingered in twilight for so long to make friends with mortals.
Finally, in the light of dusk on a cold November evening, a group of men of the Foundation brought forth the most powerful force left in their control, and left them to grow away from the power of the King. They prepared for him a most vile feast, and then fled.
It was a month until the King arrived at the feast, and realized that he was undone. Before him was a mountain, greater and more terrible than any in the universe, a mountain that would grow and move and smother the Scarlet King and his fires. A mountain of endless cakes.
It was the cakes, in the end, that were the undoing of the Scarlet King. The gift that the mysterious Adephagia gave to the King of Crete, in those days was called SCP-871. If left uneaten, the cakes would multiply, and multiply, and multiply again, until nothing remained but cake.
Beneath this mountain of cake, the Scarlet King became trapped, powerless again in the face of magic more powerful than himself, and beneath the mountain he suffocated and his fires went out. The Left Hand was broken, and his conquest of the Earth and of humanity was finally ended. The work that had begun by Hevel-Ab-Leshal was finished, under the growing strength of cream and flour.
But the men of the Foundation saw their own folly, as the might of the cakes grew exponentially and threatened to destroy their country. Out of fear, they then dropped the bombs, hoping to scorch the cakes into oblivion. Fire rained for thirteen months, and when the flames subsided the skies darkened and the cold winds began to blow. This was the beginning of the Winter That Will Not End, and at the dawn of that cold season all of the bombs were spent, and an entire country had slipped beneath the seas.
Thus ended the Feast that the men of the Foundation had prepared for the Scarlet King, Left Hand of Destruction and He Who Came Before.

"What happened to all the cake?"
Sky looked up, realizing he had had his eyes closed for the last five minutes. The children were eyeing him with curiosity, desperate for a truth that they did not need to know. He smiled at them, and tossed the hair of one to his right.
"The fires melted the cake, of course. There was no more cake after that, and hasn't been any cake ever since."
Another child across from him piped up. "But what about all the potatoes?"
A chill caught Sky unprepared, and the smile became false. He remembered a time, it could have easily been a day before, when a council met to discuss the devastation they had not avoided, the multicolored apocalypse growing once more on the horizon. He remembered a woman in a white lab coat, who presented the group with a burlap sack of potatoes. He remembered how she had described, in detail, the greatest deus ex machina he had ever heard: of how her team had been able to deduce, scientifically, that potatoes were the opposite of cakes and that exposing the two to each other would cause them to cancel out, thus ridding the world of the infinite cakes by means of the infinite potatoes.
He remembered a time when they all nodded and shook hands and agreed to the plan of action, a time before they learned that the potatoes were a hostile, extradimensional entity at odds with the concept of infinite cakes, locked away once in ages past to prevent the destruction of the planet in a food-based Armageddon. He remembered now that that probably had not been the smartest idea, and in the back of his throat he tasted potatoes. It almost made him vomit.
"The… potatoes were nourished by the sugar in the ground. Obviously the potatoes began to grow because there had been so many cakes, and…" he looked up, eyes searching for an excuse. "Hey, it looks like breakfast is ready! Come on now, let's get to eating."
The gathered children sprang to their feet and rushed off to the waiting food line, and Sky Martin stood slowly, now feeling the aches in his bones. He ambled over to the entrance of the mess hall, where another older man stood waiting.
"I feel like there are fewer cakes every time you tell that story." Monroe said, his southern accent warm against the biting cold of Havenhall.
"Yeah, well, here's hoping." Sky pulled the thick curtain aside, and exited the hall. He turned towards the barracks, desperate for rest. "Wishful thinking, if anything."
Monroe snorted. "Wishful thinking, yeah. Probably only that. You heard the latest scouting reports?" Sky replied with silence. "Figured not. Echo team saw a couple spuds, bout thirty miles to the southeast. Didn't disturb em or anything, and they think they got out without being seen."
Sky grunted. "Did they investigate any further south?"
"No. Rads were too high for safe travel, and they were already low on fuel. They placed a couple of Scranton Starch Dispersion Anchors in the area, might be enough to ward them off."
"Does Marshall know about this?"
"Aye, he does. Caught him after they had already gotten back, though. He was busy with Delta Team, who went north."
"Don't tell me."
"Yep. The Kant Pan-Dimensional Glucose Counters we had up there? All overloaded. Travel north of White Side is nearly impossible, it's too sticky. Rads were really high, there, too. Both sightings were more than we've seen in-"
"In about five years, I know." Sky rubbed his temples and pushed through the doorway to the barracks. It was warmer inside, but only just. "We need to make certain we're seeing what it looks like we're seeing, because if we need to get everybody out, we don't have-"
Monroe stepped in front of him. "There won't be time, this time. We don't have the firepower for another appearance of either of them, let alone both. We might be preparing for a full cryogenic lockdown, Sky."
The old man sat down to rest in the common room, and his friend joined him. "Sky, nobody else knows how to work those freeze tubes. If we need to get everybody in them and lock it all down, we might need you, you know… to handle it from the outside."
He knew what Monroe meant. There were plenty of cryotubes beneath Havenhall, in the ruins of Site-52, but only one operator left and that was him. If push came to shove and they had to retreat below, the only one capable of turning the machine on and making it work was him. After so many years, the automatic function had broken down, as well. It would have to be done manually. It was not exactly a death sentence, but Sky could not think of a better word for it.
"Yeah, I know." He shrugged. "Guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
Monroe left him then, and Sky retired to his bunk. Within a few minutes, he had fallen asleep beneath the bundle of blankets afforded to him. In his dreams, he smelled the sickly sweet aroma of death on the horizon, accompanied by the quieting of the winds and the sound of rushing ca-
He awoke with a start, as the dull emergency klaxon blared throughout Havenhall. Struggling to his feet, he threw on a jacket and his boots, and hurried towards the sounds of people.
As he burst out of the barracks, he saw the whole population moving quickly and silently into the tunnels of Site-52. His tired eyes searched for any sign of his compatriots, and stopped when they fell on Max. Sky ran across the courtyard and grabbed his friend by the shoulder. Max spun and knocked his hand away, but his face softened with recognition.
"Max, what is it? Marauders?"
Max's face, worn deep by age and long nights in the fields, creased into a sad smile. He motioned towards the watchtower. Sky moved towards the ladder, and when he turned back Max was gone. He quickly scaled the height of the structure, with the sounds of chaos now ringing around him.
"Into the tunnels, quickly!"
"Spuds to the south! Spuds to the south!"
"Ready artillery, take aim!"
"Women and children first, bring the sick over here!"
He reached the top of the tower, pausing only a moment to catch his breath. He looked down at the panicked mass below him, and then up towards the horizon. The wind was no longer blowing, and a shadow passed over Sky Martin's eyes as he saw it. A cascading tidal wave of potatoes, trillions of potatoes, cascading across the highlands like a loosed sea. The horizon of the Earth had disappeared, and in its place was starchy death.
He stepped back, steadying himself against a railing. It was then that he smelled it, the saccharine stench evil. He turned, and in the distance behind him he saw the rainbow terror of the infinite cakes, a moving, heaving, roaring river of cream. As his eyes passed over the scene before him, he noticed a small, running figure outside of the walls of Havenhall. A ways away from it was another figure, a dog, running after some unseen rabbit. He moved as he recognized the first, the girl, Amelia.
Throwing latches and pounding through doors, Sky Martin burst into the frozen openness of the highlands, and he began at a sprint towards the tiny dot on a nearby hillside. From behind him he could hear his fellows shouting his name, but he paid them no mind. His mind was single-focused on his goal, and he could not be deterred. He was like the wind, then, swift and howling in the wake of the opposing waves of food around him.
Sky grew close to the little girl, then, and she turned to see him and saw the cakes over his shoulder. Her eyes grew wide with fear, and the small dog she held clutched to her chest barked and whimpered. In a single move, the old man grabbed her and the pup, lifting them to his shoulder, and fell into a full run towards Havenhall. Behind him were potatoes, and he saw them falling around him, their fat, spuddy bodies making a thick, wet, splashing sound as they struck the hard earth.
A single, solitary figure stood at the open doorway to Havenhall's south side. It was the Marshall, still and silent, holding the gate open. Sky's eyes met his, and the Marshall shook his head. He slipped back inside the structure, the door closing behind him.
Fear gripped Sky's heart, and he heard, distantly now, the little girl screaming. He looked back, then, and beheld the starchy death that awaited him.
Sky fell to the ground, holding Amelia and the dog beneath him. Potatoes began to pound at his back, breaking it.

Then there were potatoes everywhere.

Then there was darkness.

And potatoes.

Part Two: A Council of Culinary Mishaps

The man who was once known as O5-11 sat quietly behind his computer screen, eyes flitting across it. He squinted, and then hammered out a string of text.

Video feed access: SCP-076
The screen flickered slightly, and then displayed a live stream of the interior of a dark chamber. Most of the lights had gone out, but from the flickering headlight on the observation camera, he could make out a number of colorful pastries being pushed past the lens. The on-camera mic picked up the dull sound of rumbling confections, as well as the muffled grunting of an unseen man, suffocating again and again in the increasingly compacted cake-based prison.
He sighed, and shook his head. His fingers found the keyboard again, and he pounded out another command.

Video feed access: SCP-1193
Another flicker, and then a shot of a dark basement, strewn with a great many delicacies. In the far corner, a hand was waving a small white flag, and a phone was ringing. The cakes continued to pile in through the basement stairway, until the camera was completely obscured.
They were all about the same, at least in North America. Most Safe and Euclid class objects had long since been buried, either under sugar or under rubble. A few angry Keters had gotten loose and tried to wrench themselves free from the sticky mess of foodstuffs, but all had succumbed and sunk beneath the sickly sweet sea. He laughed while remembering the great fucking lizard, choking to death in its vat of acid on a cream pie that it could not adapt to.
There were exceptions. SCP-1867 had made it out, and SCP-662 as well. They had fashioned some sort of improvised sailing vessel for themselves and, laden with supplies no doubt pulled from the Site-16 storehouses, had struck out on their own. Current estimates put them somewhere over southwestern Nebraska, in pursuit of a peculiar absence of a shark.
Most of the staff had gone the way of the skips, too, all valiantly maintaining their stations until the very last second when the cakes came pouring through the windows and up through the plumbing. A few had escaped, no doubt. The east coast had gotten word of the oncoming devastation in time, and he was certain there was no shortage of deserters then.
Elias Shaw was still ok, it looked like. He had checked up on him earlier, out of a morbid curiosity. The amulet was firmly anchored within a conscious trail of mold, growing itself out of the mess one millimeter at a time. Clef hadn't been seen in months, though that was less of a surprise than anything. Much of the rest of the senior staff had either perished or deserted, or moved on towards safer sites elsewhere in the world.
The other organizations were taking it well, all things considered. The Global Occult Coalition had established a quarantine around the United States, Canada and Mexico, and were initiating large-scale carpet bombings of border areas, to keep the tide at bay. It helped, for a time, but the cakes would always come tumbling back. They were, of course, infinite. Not as infinite as they had once feared, thankfully. It appeared as if there was an upper limit to the amount of cakes that would reappear every day, and while the number did seem to be rising, the threat of an exponential cake apocalypse seemed to be avoided, at least for the present.
Marshall, Carter and Dark had long since disbanded. Much of their anomalous wares had been housed within the United States, and with its full-scale destruction most of the shareholders had headed for higher ground. The remaining warehouses had been emptied, and the paperwork burned. Not that it really mattered, the cakes couldn't read.
The religious groups, the Broken Church, the Fifthists, those holding on to their Abrahamic religions, were all doing what religious groups tend to do in apocalyptic scenarios. Neither machines, nor the stars, nor Jesus Christ seemed capable or interested in staving off the cakes. Little surprise, there, too.
In the end, the ones who had made off the best seemed to be the Hand. At the first sign of global annihilation, they had all simultaneously left for the Library, and locked the Ways behind them. Maybe, somewhere, they thought this was kind of funny.
As for the Foundation, Overwatch Command remained resilient, hunkered deep under the ice and snow of the frozen Antarctic. The distance gave them time, anyway, to formulate a plan or jettison themselves into space and hope for the best. He smiled again, laughing at the thought of the senior Foundation command passing the Hateful Star on their way to Pluto, unaware that all that remained of the world it despised so thoroughly was buttercream.
Despite the rampant destruction that had overtaken their organization, protocol demanded that a meeting be called. The Council was anything if not creatures of habit, so the meeting had been scheduled with those who remained. O5-11 was first, likely because his bedroom was just down the hall. Most of the rest should have been able to get there, except for 2. She was there when they first sent the D-Class cake-eaters home, and had watched and waited and protected them until they grew into the demon crushing monstrosity they were today.
His thoughts were broken when he saw a man rush into the room. He saluted, his brow sweaty in spite of the chill.
"O5-11, sir!" the man shouted, unnecessarily loud.
"Jesus, Conwell, relax." He waved him down. "I told you, it's Hank. We don't really need to stand on formalities at this point, I think."
Jacob Conwell slumped, obviously uncomfortable. "Sorry, sir. Two birds inbound, looks like the party is here."
Hank nodded. "Good. Let's get this show on the road."
He stood, and followed Conwell to the hangar bay. Thermal gear only did so much, to keep out the godless cold, and every one of Hank's ninety-five years felt the chill. It was his duty, though, to stand watch over Site-01, and even in the face of delectable disaster he stood strong. Out of habit, maybe.
The choppers landed on the pad outside of the building, and their cargo unloaded. Twelve other administrators, a number of site directors and regional directors, and a researcher from Greece. He knew them all by name, and could count those missing from their ranks. Harkin was gone, and Torval. Montgomery too, and Aktus, Gerald, Kiryu, Lament, Johnson. The group that remained was a skeleton crew, but something was better than nothing.
He walked out to greet them. "Welcome to Overwatch Command, everybody." He said, nodding curtly. "Follow me."
There would be no pleasantries, he figured. Not today, and not with the task that awaited them. They all knew what was going on here. There was an uncomfortable silence among the group as they trudged through the dimly lit lower passages to the main conference room. It was a circular room, spacious enough to accommodate a large, round wooden table and thirteen chairs, but not spacious enough for the mass of tag-alongs that accompanied them. Somebody would have to stand in the hall.
They all took their places in the room, either in the seats or along the wall. The other administrators, some young and some old, settled in to their usual spots. O5-1, Barry Jameson by another name, remained standing. He was not the oldest of the group, but he did look the most worn. His eyes sagged and his hair had thinned, the jet black of years past now hidden beneath a blanket of grey. As silence swept over the room, he panned over them with a tired gaze.
"Alright. We all know why we're here." He paused, motioning towards the middle of the table. A hologram projector flickered on, followed by an image of North America, distorted by the copious cornucopia of carnivorous cakes. "The issue we ran into with 231 is… resolved. The Scarlet King is buried somewhere in northern Colorado. We're not sure specifically where he met his end, but that's sort of moot at this point. The larger problem, I'm sure you're all aware," he hesitated, "is that our initial containment plan is getting out of hand. SCP-871 was an effective means to contain and, in this case, destroy the Scarlet King, but…" The silence was awkward. "…yeah. This isn't going well."
O5-7 spoke up. "Current casualty reports are astronomical, as you can all imagine. We've lost the entire west coast, midwest, southeast, everything. Site 19 is lost, Site 17, 15, 3, 11, all of them. Containment of several Keter class objects has been lost, but most of them have been demolished, too. We've got leads on a few that made it out, but in all reality they're not even close to our biggest issue right now."
O5-1 nodded. "The biggest issue right now is that our original plan of nuking the cupcakes into sweet, sugary oblivion didn't work even a little bit. Turns out all of the pieces can regenerate, too, which is sort of a problem, and… yeah, we didn't think this through." He coughed, motioning towards the floating diagram of cupcakes pouring into the Grand Canyon. "At this point, the States are a wash. We aren't going to be able to do enough to salvage them, and might as well rename the continent Cupcake Island for as much good as we're going to be able to do there. Same goes for most of Canada, Mexico, etc. Our secondary means of containment, freezing the cakes in the result of a nuclear winter, also has not worked. Cupcakes are freezing, but that mostly just makes them hard and it hurts more when they hit your head."
O5-3 was next. "So we're going to need to come up with a way to counteract the cakes, and on a massive scale. Like, we've thrown off the orbit of the Earth with these cakes. The only things keeping the rest of the world from going under are the oceans on either side of the US. Can't imagine it'd take too long to fill those up, though."
Across the table, O5-9 motioned to her left. "That's why we're pleased to introduce you to Dr. Tamara Gates, originally of Area 43. Her team was involved with research and containment of SCP-1689, and- well, you take it from her, Dr. Gates."
A woman in a white lab coat, who had taken O5-2's vacant seat at the table, stood up and adjusted herself. "Thank you, Margaret. As she said, my team was involved in the study of SCP-1689, the Bag of Holding Potatoes. Initial investigation of the object returned that the bag is the entrance to an extradimensional that, at least at one point, was a human civilization… somewhere. The problem with exploration of the bag is that it's full of potatoes, and- well- so is that entire universe, as far as we can tell. Potatoes everywhere. Infinite potatoes, and that might be the answer to our problem."
She produced a large, burlap sack from beneath the table, tied off at the top. Loosening the knot slightly, she produced a single, fat potato. "This is a potato," she said, concretely. "If left unchecked, this potato would begin to sprout another potato, and that potato another, and again and again until all that is left of this universe is potatoes as well." She produced another object, a small tupperware container. She pried open the lid, drawing from within it a single, iced cake. There was an obvious gasp through the room, and at least three people vomited while the rest recoiled. "This is a keter cake. No worries, it can't hurt us here, I've just brought it for demonstrative purposes."
She set the two down side by side. "You see, the Foundation has run into surprisingly few infinite objects in our time, so obviously we had to compare the two and note their similarities. The obvious difference is that one is a potato, and the other is a cake. BUT, if you note here, when I expose the potato to the cake," she poked the potato, which rolled over and bumped into the cake. "This begins a strange reaction. Observe."
As they all watched, the potato began to extend tiny little potato feelers, which wrapped around the cake. A quiet gurgling sound was heard, and then the cake was gone, and all that remained was the potato.
There was a murmur of approval from around the room. A few people clapped. O5-9 nodded vigorously. "Good show, that," he said, nose bobbing ominously. "But can it be weaponized?"
Dr. Gates nodded as well. "Indeed it can. By putting the bag of potatoes on top of a very tall thing, such as a step ladder or giraffe, and turning it upside down, we might be able to release the full strength of the potatoes within, stemming the tide of cake once and for all."
There was additional level of nodding from throughout the room, and before too long the air was a symphony of rushing air, as everybody showed their agreement by violently swinging their heads too and fro.
"In that case," said O5-1, standing once more. "I say we put it to a vote. All for holding off the apocalypse with potatoes, say-"
"Now hang on here, Barry." Hank stood up, motioning towards the potato. "Let's not be rash here. What happens when the cakes are all gone, and we've got a continent full of potatoes instead?"
From the back, there was the sound of somebody squirming gleefully. All eyes turned, and a short, pudgy, particularly toad-like man was bouncing quietly on his heels. Hank eyed him, eyebrow raised. "Is there something you'd like to add, Dr. Fourier?"
The man piggled his way forward. "Yes there is! You all laughed at me, then. You laughed at me and mocked me, but my day has come! Behold, the plan for our eventual salvation after we get through this initial salvation first!"
He pushed a number of buttons on the edge of the table, and the hologram began to display the image of a goat.
"A goat?" O5-1 was not impressed.
"Not just a goat, you barbaric clown." Suddenly, the hologram was a great many goats. "A great, majestic goat army! All hungry and prime for feasting upon the potatoes of our resurgence! You laughed at me when I said we could turn SCP-2000 into a goat army mobilization device, well who the fuck is laughing now, shitlords?"
There was a silence, and then another general murmur of approval, followed by the standard vigorous nodding. "Yeah, that'll probably work," said O5-3. O5-1 shrugged.
Hank rubbed at his eyes. "Alright, fine. Just so we're straight, let's go over this one more time. Potatoes, and then goats. That sound alright?"
One man raised his hand off to the left. "But what about the goat excreme-"
O5-1 slapped the table. "Damn it Gableson we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Voting time, all in favor of staving off our doom with potatoes and goats?"
Twelve ayes.
O5-1 crossed his arms. "Good enough for me. Dr. Gates, it's all you. Do what you need to do. Dr. Fourier, you're… free to make a goat army, I suppose."
Both of them squealed, and began to leave. As everybody trickled out, O5-1 turned to his comrades around the table and bid them to stay. When the room was empty, he sat down.
"This is going to be the last time we sit down together, I think." He wiped his brow, suddenly looking very much as exhausted as he was. "If this works, the Foundation is going to be no more. Cat is out of the bag on this one, and there's not much we can do about it. If it doesn't work, well… you know. Cake everywhere."
"So basically what I'm getting at is, it's been a ride. It's a shame we had to go out like this, but might as well go this way than something worse."
There was an awkward silence. "Anyway. As acting leader of this council, I hereby release you of your duties. If you have somewhere to go, go there and wait. If you don't, you're more than welcome to stay here, as long as it will last you. There's beer in the fridge downstairs, and I think we've still got some hot pockets in the freezer. Help yourself."
They all began to leave the room, heading off to whatever doom awaited them. O5-1 grabbed Hank by the shoulder as they walked out, tailed closely by Conwell, and said, "So hey, you hear about that thing down in Samothrace?"

Part Three: Lord Blackwood and His Faithful Manservant Deeds Destroy the Behemoth and Save Britain

It was a blustery day on the Atlantic, and with the task ahead looming before them, the crew of the H.M.S. PotatoCake McStabbin was reverently silent. Deeds manned the helm, as usual, and Blackwood stood bowside, staring at the monstrosity that loomed before him on the shores of his beloved England. He wiped a solitary tear from his eye.
"A blasted shame it is, Deeds," he said, patriotism leaking from his tear ducts. "I would have liked to have gazed upon her unblemished shores once more, I think. When we were taken by the rapscallion Foundation scamps, I feared I would not return. This is worse."
Deeds nodded, his steely eyes fixed on the horizon. "It would appear, sir, that our foe is far more formidable than we had anticipated."
Blackwood stamped on the deck. "To hell with our foe, Deeds! The foul demon has besmirched the name of our homeland and coated her gentle slopes and fertile valleys with wretched potatoes and filthy cakes." He turned rapidly and pointed a stiff finger towards Deeds. "Do you know that Her Majesty the Queen God rest her soul doesn't even like cake, Deeds? She's lactose intolerant, her death was likely extremely uncomfortable." He spun back to where the distance mountain of foodstuffs sat. "I dare say the demise of this creature will be even worse, God help me."
"Our chances of success are slim, I fear." Deeds did some quick math. "Less than a tenth of a percent, it seems. My initial calculations did not include the potatoes and cakes falling in love and becoming a mammoth, sentient mass of edible death. This has changed things, fairly dramatically."
Blackwood scoffed. "Don't speak to me of odds, Deeds. Where we're going, we don't need odds. All we need is good old-fashioned British dignity, and that superweapon I won from Tesla in '21."
Deeds raised an eyebrow. "The anti-entropic device, sir? Our chances of success are likely significantly lower, if you're going to bring that into the equa-"
"Nonsense, Deeds. The device is quite harmless in the hands of a skilled marksman. Harmless, that is, for the marksman. Our opponent will not be so lucky."
The manservant nodded. "Very well, sir. As it turns out, we're here."
Blackwood turned around to face the monstrous, wriggling mass of cake and potatoes. He squinted against the light, and then pulled out a very small megaphone.
"Now see here, cake-and-potato creature," he said, his voice echoing. "This is England you're traipsing around in, and I'm not keen on what you've done to the place in my absence."
The writhing, towering amalgamation of food product replied.
"What you mean, what oive done wit it? Oi think it looks moighty nice, mate, so 'ow bout you fuck roight off and let me be here."
Deeds scrunched his nose. "Cockneys."
Blackwood was undeterred. "You've done gone and buggered the whole countryside! Not to say that havoc you've wreaked with the rest of the world. How is this alright?"
"What part of 'fuck roight off' are you too dense to understand, ye twat?" There was a sound like a quick puff of air, and then a single potato came spiraling out of the side of the creature. It landed with a splat on the deck, inches from Deeds' shoes. Blackwood turned back, fuming.
"Very well. You've left me no other option, potato-beast. Bring me the missus."
The horde of potatoes rotated slightly, until the wall before them was mostly squashed cake.
"What do you want, ye fukkin slug? E' already told ye to fuck roight off now, din't he?"
Blackwood sighed. "Madam, I'm afraid I must ask you and your… mate… to kindly vacate this particular island. I don't much mind that your girth expands around the globe, but this island specifically is precious to me, and-"
A cake landed square on Blackwood's face. He wiped it off, tiny hands trembling.
"Very well. Deeds, the weapon."
Deeds vanished for a moment, and then appeared at Blackwood's side, anti-entropic gun in hand. "I'll say again, sir, I fear that the application of this device assures our-"
"Enough with your words, Deeds." Blackwood cocked the weapon. "The time for action is now. Have at you, foul beast!"
The weapon hummed, there was a crack, and then the world went dark.

"And that's how I saved Britain back in '92." Blackwood said, head bobbing with satisfaction. "Saved the whole lot of you, of course. Never once was able to collect the medal Her Majesty the Queen awarded me for my efforts, though. Not while I'm stuck in here."
Researcher Garrison nodded slowly, his eyes darting to the wall to see when the shift would be over. He hoped it was soon. "Yes, that's very nice, SCP-1867. Another thrilling story, as usual."
Blackwood puffed. "One of my finest hours, no doubt. Might even be able to compete with the time I had to fight off that great serpent in the Amazon. The year was 1875, and Deeds was nursing an amputated leg at the time…"
Sometime later, Garrison left the room. Blackwood sat in silence, meditating with his own thoughts. An hour passed, and then two, and then he heard a slight pop and a rush of air. He did not open his eyes, but he did smile.
"Deeds, welcome back. Did you manage to bring my prize this time?"
"Indeed, sir. Shall I place it within your cell?"
Blackwood nodded. "That will do just fine, Deeds."
The man approached the tank and quietly removed the cover. With a single motion, he placed within the cell a solitary potato, carved out like a canoe, and the wrapper from a cupcake. Blackwood approached the items, gave his approval, and Deeds disappeared.
Blackwood climbed within the potato, feeling its dimensions and appreciating Deeds' craftsmanship. He laid down, pulling the wrapper up over him.
"God Save the Queen, you damn victuals," he said quietly, and then fell asleep.


My name is Frank Carson, Autarch of the Enlightened Republic and Free Association of Wyoming. I have overseen the Universal Dominion of the State of Wyoming and its citizenry for four thousand, nine hundred and seventy-eight years, four months, and nineteen days. I am the only ruler this universe has ever known, or will ever know. My authority is omnipresent and absolute.
From my capitol in the Palace of Black Tooth Mountain, I alone control all facets of the government of this realm. In the last five millennia, I have developed the technology and the mental ability to be in thousands of places at once, enmeshed in every possible public institution that may touch the lives of those people left in this enclosed universe. No human to have ever existed has wielded more power than I do. I am the absolute pinnacle of humanity's ability to exert control, refined to the outermost limits of mankind's capabilities to achieve my purpose of ruling over my domain.
Somebody, please shoot me. Right in the head. Please.
I wasn't always the Everlasting Autarch, All-Encompassing in His Name. I used to be Frank Carson, Director of Site-643, Foundation Subdirector for Geopolitical Anomalies, North American Sector. I don't know what we did to screw everything up, exactly. But thousands of years of thinking about it have convinced me that that asshole Russian from External Affairs had something to do with it. If, in the infinitesimal chance someone at Site-78 actually receives this and reads it, I hate you all. Come over into my reality. I'll make you Emperor of these clowns. See how you like it.
We had time to evacuate all the staff. When the alarm sounded, I had no clue what had just breached, or what even could breach a site where we studied vote records from Podunk County, USA all day. But someone had to go back in and retrieve the failsafe codes. I, like an idiot, assumed responsibility for someone else's monumental mistake, not wanting to put any of my subordinates at risk. One of my selves is laughing at the irony of leadership putting me in this situation. That one's a real jerk. I've never liked him.
Whatever it was that occurred, Site-643 caused two things to happen. The entire observable universe was erased from existence, except for a small, isolated mass of physical matter that used to be the State of Wyoming. The universe literally ends now at the boundaries of the least populous political subdivision in the US. The other thing? People now live forever. And not in the horrifying way that I always feared people could live forever, but eternal life, free of aging, senility, physical deterioration. Don't ask how me how we whipped up that one. I always forbade cross-testing in my facility.
I didn't mean to even be spotted by the civilians. I swear I didn't. But the Site was in downtown Cheyenne. The emergency exit came out right on 24th Street. Next to the Capitol. There must have been a reason for that. Maybe. But after sheltering in place for three days, the locals had plenty of time to figure out that a few things had changed, mostly having to do with the fact that it was no longer physically possible to leave the state anymore, and that things like "nighttime" no longer happened. The Laramie Consortium of Wisdom later figured out that we somehow trapped a simulacrum of the sun in with our universe, capable of generating the same amount of energy. I digress.
So horrible, mind-breaking things are happening. Riots in the streets. Panic everywhere. And out emerges this stranger, right from the seat of government. Dressed in a labcoat and armed to the teeth. Why did they make me their leader? I guess I looked like I knew what was happening. I was mostly relieved that they hadn't decided to eat me. Then I remembered about the research outpost in Crook County. I led a team of twelve people equipped with pickup trucks and shotguns to keep that business from being stuck in a universe with us. When we returned, that was that. I was The Leader.
Why didn't I just lead them all into a volcanic geyser somewhere? I guess I figured I had to make the most of it. Maybe I hoped in the early days someone from Overwatch Command would come fix our mistake. That hope ended sometime after the first thousand years, I think. God forbid, maybe I wanted to actually help people. I forget now.
Then I found out what happens when you have forever to do things. The human mind is an incredible mechanism, turns out. Freed from senescence, you have forever to get good at things. To think about things. To consider yourself and your surroundings. The citizens of Wyoming granted me the power of a king, to protect them in their strange, new universe. And I did. I worked tirelessly to set up new systems of government, appointed mayors, counselors, officials. I learned about sewer systems, tax codes, probate law and housing policy. I did such a good job they didn't bother with elections. I was satisfied because people weren't killing each other. Ha. Ahahaha.
Blessed with immortality, the citizens of Wyoming became scholars. Almost all of them. They all had time to learn now. First they wanted to know just what the hell we were living in. Oil workers, cowboys, waitresses and farmers all studied up. First they mastered astronomy. They became self-taught doctors of geology, climatology, topography and quantum physics. With all the time in the world, the people of Wyoming were a race of intellectuals, spurred on by curiosity. They built observatories, drilled deep into the crust of what once was the Earth, and confirmed that we all lived on a big (almost) flat rectangle floating in a sea of nonexistence. The telescopes couldn't find any stars, any signs of anything beyond what used to be the atmospheric thermosphere. Well duh, I told them. I've been saying that for decades. But scientists that they were, they needed to confirm it independently. See for themselves. They had already placed me in my inescapable role, nagging governmental parent of Eternity, only to be minded when a new skyscraper needed to be built or the stray dog population got out of control. I should have killed them all then.
Their scientific discoveries led them to be introspective. Now, the people must be philosophers, they all said. And philosophers they became. Great halls were constructed just for thinking and debate. All essential tasks were automated (and guess who needed to write 15,000 pages of regulations governing the construction of these automated task-robots), so that everyone could add to the effort of Understanding. And these learned citizens Understood, all right. New discoveries in the nature of self, answers finally reached about the existence of the soul (by the way, it's more like eight thousand souls), God forever placed in His correct role of The Great and Mighty Casual Annoyance. Men whom I remembered centuries ago passing their time shooting at highway signs with buckshot after downing a case of Coors Light, were now pronouncing their inescapable theorems on the nature of human suffering from the shining dais of the Academy of Universal Advancement.
I shared in their knowledge, and paired with their technological progress, I became greater and greater. My mind expanded into the aether of the Internet, and now my electronic presence, apart from but also entirely within my being, could render judgments at the Court of Ultimate Appeal. Another electronic self now could review birthing permits even more expeditiously than the modern genius I had previously appointed. This, of course, freed up ever more Wyomingites to go and join in the increasing development of their peers. More and more, I was The State. Me, personally. I remember feeling quite proud of that achievement. That makes me want to punch at least eight of my selves in the face.
Then, they got bored. Jesus Christ the formerly almighty, they got bored. First it was sports. Games involving genetically-altered insects doing battle with people wielding cold laser weaponry while clad in polymer armor. That was harmless enough, I suppose, even if we did end up having to neutron-bomb the Sierra Madre mountains in order to kill the Radio Ticks. Then there were art-murders. So many art-murders. I had to appoint myself the head of a new police division, but when the victims came back, they were more interested in critique than who had done it. Eventually I just legalized that because the hell with it.
It kept escalating. They would divide up into rival factions and kill each other in the streets of Greater Cheyenne for fun. Entire armies were assembled, accompanied by orbital munitions and chemical weapons, going to war because they could, and because they would just show up again somewhere anyway at the end of it. Do you have any conception how hard it is to electronically jam a laser-guided missile barrage by yourself? How did I end up being an international peacekeeping agency in my own country?
Even that was boring and stupid to them after a few centuries. Someone got the bright idea once to weaponize nightmares. Technology turned sharply for a couple of decades to the development of ever greater stimulants so that nobody had to endure the terror of going to sleep. I seriously considered constructing a reality-negation device in those years, though mostly I attributed that impulse to being edgy from all the super-caffeine drinks (at least that's what my therapist, Dr. Me, said one time). In the end I was stopped from ending my miserable universe because, unfortunately, it is impossible to do.
On and on it goes. A group of impossibly learned immortals, stuck with each other and free from consequence. Through it all, I restore sanity each time. I run prisons, I tend public parks, I build libraries. I am the adult in a nursery full of psychotic infants, armed with probability weaponry and smart enough to have reasoned away their consciences, forced to interact with each other by the coffin boundaries of the Smallest Universe by Population in the Continental United States. Every five years, they appoint me once more by a mental convocation as Autarch, entrusted with the governance of their hideous regenerating cityscape. They got too far ahead of me, gained too much knowledge while I was stuck learning the intricacies of managing a geothermal electrical grid, that I will never outsmart them and achieve my dream of murdering each and every one of them.
At this moment, while I write my testament, I am guiding the actions of an automated fire suppression system in Arena No. 34-Q (someone finally learned how to literally shoot atomic fire from their eyes), clearing a massive sewer line blockage in the Violet Sector caused by someone flushing 3,000 or so fetal dodo birds down a toilet, negotiating the labor contract of the Janitorial Robotic Consortium for the next eight hundred years, digging a new landfill meant exclusively for waste generated by the production of an element that I haven't gotten around to naming yet as Minister of Science, and rescuing a pet cat from a high tree branch that happens to be four miles underground. I have expanded my consciousness in ways that the early mystics could never have contemplated, that I may hose down the feces in a constellation of monkey houses.
I could stop. I could simply cease doing my countless functions that keep this society of the ever-increasingly deranged functioning, such as it is. The millions of jobs that I do every moment of every day would remain undone. The social order would grind to a halt, their unspeakable fun interrupted by real life for once in the poisoned existence of this universe. I could do it. I yearn to do it.
In the end, I am stopped by a thought shared by every single one of my selves.
My God, what would they do next?


If I do, and I'm wrong, humanity dies. For a year or two.
If I don't, and I'm right, humanity dies. Forever.
The figure stared at the stone wall for a moment, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, as if waiting for the surroundings to acknowledge the gravity of the moment. Instead, the train tracks remained rusted and silent, and a plastic bottle continued rolling down a street in the wind.
The figure carefully unfolded a diagram, and began painting with the spray can in their other hand, pausing to re-check the plan every few seconds. The lines were precisely calculated, an intricate arrangement of concentric rings and right angles, standing out from the fluid and free-form graffiti that occupied the rest of the wall. Once finished, they dropped the can in the grass, and returned to a car parked in a nearby lot, where they waited and watched the tracks.
The next train to pass was filled with passengers occupied with reading, napping, or daydreaming, but enough of them caught a glimpse of the strange design as they passed under the bridge, on their way deep into the center of Manhattan. Satisfied that their work was done, the figure started the engine and began the drive home.

Claire stared at the shapes and colors before her, trying to resolve them into identifiable objects. She wished she weren't so familiar with this sensation, but it was an unfortunate necessity of working in the memetic research department.
Amnestics, she thought. Selective, judging from the nutty, metallic smell, assuming I'm not in an abandoned peanut butter factory. Class-B at the very least.
She ran through her most recent memories, trying to recall where she was and why. There was a summons to meet O5-8, face-to-face - the long drive to a covert bunker - verifying her identity via passcode, retinal scan, and a dozen machines outside of her clearance - and finally, a doctor with a syringe of clear fluid. There was apprehension, which was strange, considering how often she'd taken amnestics before - but no anger, so whatever she'd forgotten, she had done so voluntarily. That much, at least, was a relief.
The shapes before her gained definition; she was sitting across a desk from a squat, bald man, wearing a smile that suggested he was incapable of hate.
"Ah, looks like you've come to," said the bald man. "As you've probably guessed, I am O5-8, but you can call me Paul. Not my real name, of course." He chuckled, extending a hand over the desk.
She blinked off the last of the effects. "And I'm Claire. Claire Rudin." She grasped his hand, and received a hearty shake.
The desk was clear except for a handful of knicknacks, only slightly unlike those found on office desks everywhere. A row of metal ball bearings, with no visible strings to hang from, hovered in midair to her right. To her left, a gyroscope spun on a small pedestal, showing no signs of slowing down. On a shelf at the back, a Rubik's cube appeared to be scrambling itself.
The man noticed Claire's eyes wandering. "Yes, normally these wouldn't be allowed in here, but I managed to weasel out an exception. They're my way of staying sane - something we all need in this line of work." He pulled back one of the metal balls and released it. Rather than the expected clacking, the balls rang like bells as they knocked each other back and forth, playing the opening notes of "Ode To Joy".
"Don't worry, they're all the safest of safe-class. Barely anomalous objects, really."
"What was it you wanted to discuss, exactly? Your message said it had something to do with the Daevite meme."
"Yes, that's right. We finally got the results back from the field study." He pulled a thick folder from a drawer and handed it to her.
Claire skimmed the figures on the first page, skipping quickly to the final statistical analysis. At least ten million dormant carriers, it said. She checked the figures, hoping to find some mathematical error, but found nothing. Flipping to the recorded civilian conversations, her trained eye quickly picked out the obscure word choices and memetic triggers that were the hallmarks of a particularly subtle and virulent meme. Yes, these people were definitely infected. And if the field teams' sampling methods were reliable - which she knew they were - the conclusion was inevitable.
She put the folder down and looked him directly in the eye, wondering how he still had his cherubic smile.
"This is uncontainable."
"Uncontainable by conventional methods," he corrected. "But that's why I called you here. We need to discuss some unconventional methods."
The quiet whirring of the gyroscope filled the air for a moment. Claire maintained eye contact, waiting for the man calling himself "Paul" to clarify what he would consider "unconventional".
He leaned back and spoke in a near-monotone, as if he had rehearsed this beforehand. "At 8:00 this morning, the O5 council voted unanimously to engage a contingency plan codenamed 'Stage Fright'. Part of this plan is that, once enacted, all details of its methods would be completely classified. Even I'm not allowed to know how it operates. All personnel who had any knowledge of the project have been administered selective amnestics."
"I take it I was involved in this project?" Claire said, recalling her awakening minutes ago.
"That's right. In fact, you were the head researcher. Congratulations on whatever you did, because at 9:14 the project reported success. All anomalous memetic effects have ceased completely. Not just for our personnel - everyone in the world is now effectively immune to memetic hazards."
"Immune? That would require a fundamental breakthrough in memetic science. Why would we wipe our memories of a discovery like that?"
The man shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. It was at your personal insistence. Whatever your reasons were, they were good enough to convince the O5 council. And in any case, the details will be available once Stage Fright is deactivated. It's only meant as a temporary measure, to buy time for your new assignment.
"Effective immediately, you are being transferred to Site-121. To maintain the secrecy of Stage Fright, all memetic SCP objects have been transferred there as well. The cover story is that it's our new headquarters for memetic research. In reality, you will only be researching two things.
"Firstly, you are to monitor the continued effectiveness of Stage Fright. Any signs of memetic effects returning are to be reported directly to me.
"Secondly, you are to continue developing a counter for the Daevite meme. Once the countermeme is ready, notify me and we can disable Stage Fright to deploy it.
"Do you have any questions?"

I know this test is unnecessary.
I cannot let myself know. For previous-Claire, the test was important. Necessary.
I know the eggplant cannot control me. I must block out what I know.
I must do what previous-Claire would do, and see the eggplant without thinking of it.
"How do you feel about vegetables?"
I must think what previous-Claire would think.
"They're good for your health."
Claire sat alone in a windowless room, taking what she felt to be the world's strangest inkblot test. A bundle of cables connected to a helmet monitored her brain activity and carried it to the next room, where a team of researchers verified that she had, in fact, seen the photo of an eggplant, and had not, in fact, declared a holy war on edible plantlife. The next image was an abstract pattern of parallel lines.
"Please state your name," asked the voice from the speakers.
I know my name. Easy. Previous-Claire would struggle to know it.
I must struggle to know it.
She paused, and focused her mind. "Claire Rudin." Not Philip Gatt, the man who had painted it.
She was one of the few people cleared to know that this test was now completely unnecessary. Unfortunately, the people administering it weren't, so she had to put on a show. It wasn't too hard; memetic resistance techniques were similar to acting. Both required replacing your thought processes with someone or something else; a sort of conscious delusion. Still, she was glad to have the easier test, particularly for the next image.
"Dr. Rudin, are you prepared for the last slide?"
She paused and inhaled for dramatic effect. "Yes, go ahead."
The projector switched to the final image. Under normal circumstances, this would be a particularly dangerous cognitohazard, capable of putting unguarded minds into a temporary coma. She would need to struggle to view the image in front of her face, and allow it to pass through her mind without processing it. Today, however, she let her guard down just long enough to admire the flower.
"All readings normal. Doctor Rudin, you are cleared to enter Site-121."
Good. If they had caught on, it would be a security breach; there would be inquiries, amnestics, and worst of all, delays. Despite her efforts, it had happened a few times before.
Claire put the helmet away and made her way to her office, eager to see if the counter-memetic search program running overnight had yielded results. To her surprise, she was not the first person to the lab today.
"Mark, you're here early."
The man looked up from his monitor, not having realized she was behind him. "Oh! Yes, I had a good feeling this time around. Thought we might have finally gotten the cognitive anchor points right." He had a manic grin, clearly waiting to be asked the obvious question.
"So, did we?"
He handed her a printout showing an abstract pattern of nested triangles. "It's the cleanest countermeme we've ever found. The software is predicting 100% effectiveness. If we got this thing into the mass media, the plague could be over in a matter of days."
Claire furrowed her brow in confusion, and turned the page over, checking if there was anything on the back.
"This is the countermeme? This exact pattern?"
"Well, yeah, of course." He laughed, increasingly concerned that she wasn't sharing his mirth. "I wouldn't joke about that, Claire. We've finally done it."
Claire stared at the pattern some more, wondering if she was imagining that she'd seen it before.
"So… you're going to bring this to the O5s, right? I mean, there isn't really much else for us to do here now. We've found the cure."
"Right, yes. I'll let the O5s know. I suppose you can take the rest of the day off."
Claire carefully slipped the paper into a manila folder, and started getting ready to leave. Before seeing O5-8, she decided to make one other stop.

Claire stared at the painting on her living room wall.
Then back at the paper in her hand. Then at the painting again.
Yes, they were definitely identical. She tried to remember where, exactly, she had bought it.
It was when some friends were coming over, I think… Who, exactly? Hmm, it doesn't matter, I guess I was embarassed about how minimalist my apartment is… So I found that art store on Google somewhere. Can't remember the name… it was a fairly nondescript place. And… if I remember correctly, it smelled distinctly of metal and peanuts.
She stopped breathing for a moment. I do not remember correctly.
Claire gripped the sides of the frame and carefully lifted the painting from the wall, placing it face-down on the dining table. On the back, a packet of papers had been stapled together and messily duct taped to the painting, along with a note unmistakeably in her own handwriting.

Hi Claire.
The amnestics they gave you for anything related to Stage Fright probably hit any memories of my test for the O5s as well.
I'm hoping the information I've left here is enough to lead you to the same conclusion as me: The O5s aren't taking my cautions seriously enough. At least, not all of them. That's why I had to give them a test. Misuse of Stage Fright could lead to an EK-Class scenario - and we wouldn't be able to do a thing about it, because nobody would even realize it had occurred. So as horrible as the test may be, it's better than the alternative.
- Claire
P.S. Don't worry - the Daevite meme is actually completely harmless. Yes, the dormant stage is highly virulent, but the babbling about Daevite mythology during the active stage is just that: babbling. No actual connection. Just something to give the O5s a good scare. The infected won't even remember it.

MEMETICS DEPARTMENT
PROJECT SESHAT RESEARCH SUMMARY FOR O5 COUNCIL
MARCH 2011

The microwormholes discovered by Dr. Malcolm in January have been confirmed to be present in the brains of all available test subjects. Microwormholes appear to be present in all regions of the brain, and typically have a diameter under 50 nanometers.
Research into the destination of these wormholes remains at a standstill, due to their small size preventing access with measuring equipment.
Incoming signals have been determined to correspond to both sensory and memory information. These signals appear to be comprehensive; all information consciously processed by the subject passes into at least one wormhole.
Outgoing signals have thus far only been observed when the subject is exposed to anomalous memetic or cognitohazardous stimuli. Experiments run by Dr. Tarver have shown that these signals cause the anomalous effects of SCP-███, SCP-████, and SCP-████. Dr. Tarver hypothesizes that the microwormholes may be the cause of all anomalous memetic effects.
SHORT-TERM RESEARCH GOALS: (new items in bold)

Determine number and distribution of microwormholes (Completed)
Continued analysis of incoming and outgoing signals
Research origin, growth and development of microwormholes over time
Verify Dr. Tarver's hypothesis with other memetic SCP objects

LONG-TERM RESEARCH GOALS: (new items in bold)

Determine common cause of memetic anomalies (Provisionally marked as completed -Dr. Rudin)
Develop nanoscale equipment for analysis of microwormhole destination
Research methods of closing or blocking microwormholes to prevent cognitohazardous effects

RESEARCHER'S NOTE:
Clearly, this is an exciting time for everyone in the memetics department. These microwormholes are the most significant discovery in memetics in decades, and the research we're doing now will likely revolutionize how we deal with memetic threats.
That said, I must issue a word of caution. Until a few months ago, I would have dismissed any talk of the "mind" being separate from the brain as a violation of Occam's Razor at best, and superstition at worst. However, any good scientist is willing to change her beliefs in the face of new evidence - and we now have proof that the mind consists of two distinct parts: The brain in the physical universe we understand, and a second part, hovering out of sight, in a realm we know nothing about.
Given what is being sent in and out of the microwormholes, we cannot dismiss the possibility that their destination is what philosophers call the "Cartesian Theater". That is, the place where the brain puts on a show for the mind - the location where actual, conscious perception takes place.
If this hypothesis is correct, then any attempt to close the microwormholes would not only render the subject immune to cognitohazards, it would also render them effectively unconscious. Their physical brain would continue unaffected, causing them to appear normal to observers, but they would no longer experience their own life.
For this reason, I must insist on two features of any such project:
1. It must be an absolute last resort, reserved only for K-class scenarios;
2. Even then, it must only be a temporary measure.
I dearly hope that such a measure never becomes necessary; however, as research along these lines has already been proposed by several members of my team, I ask that everyone keep this possibility in mind, and proceed with the necessary caution.
- Dr. C. Rudin

O5 COUNCIL MEETING TRANSCRIPT
SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

Present: O5-1 through O5-12, Dr. Julia Dean (Chairwoman, Ethics Committee), Dr. Claire Rudin (Project lead, Stage Fright)
<Begin Log>
O5-1: Dr. Rudin, could you begin by explaining the purpose of your proposed addition to the Stage Fright protocols?
Dr. Rudin: Yes. Because of the nature of the device, I believe that anyone who is aware of its methods would exhibit impaired judgement while it was active, regarding my "Cartesian Theater" hypothesis in particular. For that reason, I suggest that anyone involved in the project, including the O5 council, must be administered amnestics prior to its activation.
O5-5: This hypothesis you mention, it's the idea that the wormholes are responsible for consciousness, correct?
Dr. Rudin: Essentially, yes.
O5-8: Why, exactly, are we entertaining this notion? Frankly, I don't see why we don't turn the device on right now. It would make all our jobs a lot easier, save possibly millions of lives, and the only thing holding us back is this bit of speculative philosophy that -
Dr. Dean: If I may interject, the Ethics Committee discussed Dr. Rudin's hypothesis last night. While the scientific data is inconclusive, we decided unanimously to act on the assumption that the hypothesis is correct, until it is conclusively disproven. The risks of disregarding it override any potential benefits.
O5-4: Setting that aside, I can't help but feel a bit insulted by your reasoning, Dr. Rudin. Are you suggesting that the judgement of the O5 council can't be trusted?
Dr. Rudin: I understand, but please keep in mind what we've found from our research. Everything indicates that, aside from immunity to cognitohazards, the device would have absolutely no effect on anyone's behavior.
I wager that everyone in this room is currently convinced of their own self-awareness. "I think, therefore I am." In fact, it would be damn near impossible to convince anyone otherwise. It's too immediately obvious.
But the device does not affect behavior. Once it is activated, everyone will continue to act as if they believe themselves to be conscious - even if they are not. They will still be just as hard to convince otherwise.
And that means we will act on the belief that the device does not negate consciousness - even if it does. We would likely decide never to turn it off.
If that happens, we will be robbing the world of life, forever. For that reas-
O5-8: Assuming your hypothesis is correct.
Dr. Dean: Which we are.
Dr Rudin: As I was saying, for that reason, we can only allow ourselves to know one thing: The device must be deactivated as soon as possible. We cannot allow ourselves to know why.
O5-1: Does anyone have anything else to add?
O5-4: I still say this is an insulting proposal. We can trust ourselves to remain objective in any circumstance. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't.
O5-1: Four, your objection is noted. Shall we put it to a vote?
[Proposal passes 9-3, with O5-4, O5-8, and O5-11 dissenting.]
<End Log>

Claire read the transcript a second and third time.
I know I am conscious. Of course I am. I know I am - and my knowing proves it.
But this previous Claire - she would say my mind has been impaired. I cannot trust what I know.
I know I am conscious. But I am affected by a worldwide memetic effect. No, not memetic - but close enough.
I must block what I know.
I must think what previous-Claire, the one not affected, would want me to think.
I am not conscious. Nobody has been conscious for two years.
I must test the O5s.
Claire flipped to the final pages of the packet, a description of the project's methods, most of it blacked out. At least three Keter-Class objects. Something level-5 classified. But the final steps, the ones previous-Claire had worked on, were visible, showing the final product of the process.
A gyroscope that never stops spinning.

Dr. Rudin had claimed she had good news. O5-8 wondered, then, why she looked like someone waiting for news on a dying loved one.
"So, how goes the countermeme project?"
"Very well, actually." Her speech was stilted, forced. Strange, he thought - but memetic researchers were always a bit odd. "We developed a countermeme this morning. It's projected to have 100% effectiveness."
O5-8 felt a lump in his throat. He had been dreading this moment, having to shoot down years of her work. Still, he thought, it was for the greater good. These past two years had seen countless lives saved by the gyroscope, and it would be a crime against humanity to give that up. Her hypothesis was an interesting bit of philosophy, to be sure, but his anti-amnestic had allowed him to remember it, and see its falseness.
"So as soon as you deactivate Stage Fright, we can begin distribution via mass media."
A few white lies, a few well-placed bluffs. It had been easy to get the program, and its crown jewel, into his sole hands, especially when nobody else knew anything about it.
I think, therefore I am. That much is ironclad. I have nothing to feel guilty about.
"I'm afraid, actually, that we're going to put that on hold. We've decided to continue Stage Fright indefinitely."
He had girded himself for a look of disappointment, or shock, but was surprised to see a calm take hold of Dr. Rudin. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She was taking this better than he expected.
"We'll archive the counter-meme, and you will, of course, be amnesticized. Standard protocol, for projects of this importance."
"I see. Could you do me a favor, though?" Claire asked, removing a pen from her coat pocket.
"Yes?"
Claire jammed the pen between the spokes of the gyroscope, stopping it dead. O5-8 recoiled, and scrambled for the gyroscope just as she said the words she had memorized; the words that would dig into his mind and gouge out what he should've gouged himself.
"Mr. Paul, I'd like you to exit, pursued by a bear."

O5-8 was embarrassed to have lost focus. In the middle of an important meeting, and he was daydreaming about bears that smelled of peanut butter and rust.
"Sir?" asked a heavily-armed man just inside the doorway.
"Yes?"
"You pressed your silent alarm?"
"Oh, false alarm. Must have bumped it."
The man glanced at Claire and, satisfied, left the room. O5-8 relaxed, relieved there was a distraction from his inattentiveness.
"You said you had good news?"
"Well, good and bad. We've developed a countermeme that should end the Daevite meme in days."
"Excellent! And the bad?"
"It seems Stage Fright has worn off. People develop an immunity; we won't be able to use it again."
He frowned. "Hmm. Well, at least you found the cure just in time. I guess we'll have to contain memetics the old-fashioned way. I'll send out the orders to deploy the countermeme." He leaned back, and noticed the metal object Claire was admiring in her hand.
"So what's with the gyroscope?"
Claire smiled, putting it in her pocket. "Just a present for my niece's birthday."


Thanks to all the folks who helped review this in chat. Ghostbusters and Noir. Had to be done.

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F.A.Q.

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I turned the radio down. Classic rock hits blared faintly in the background, and I flipped my Paranormal Investigations Badge between my fingers. Ever since the Event, when the Foundation went public and started outsourcing all its work, I've been swimming in jobs. A monster over here, a zombie animal over there… the endless parade of ghosts. It was shocking to me that they'd managed to keep it a secret for as long as they had.
Once dead bodies started turning into solid spirits… not just sometimes but every time someone died, the world changed. It meant my degree in the paranormal wasn't just a conversation starter anymore. I could put it to use. The Event made me relevant again.
My parents were happier with that than they had any right to be.
I struck a match off the desk and lit my cigar. It wasn't an expensive brand, but it looked cool, and that was the primary effect I was going for. My assistant, a mousey little gal with a solid gold heart and a memory like a steel trap, burst in just as I lit the end.
She put her hands on her hips and gave me a subtly disapproving look. "Jim. Those things'll kill ya. And I thought you quit?"
"I did," I snapped back, pointing at the cigar. "This is an illusion."
"Whatever. Your 5 o'clock is here."
My assistant left the room, leaving the door swinging. It was at that very moment an angel from heaven made her way into my office. I looked at the appointment book for a second as she floated into the room. I put the cigar into the ashtray before standing up to greet my guest.
"Mrs. Malkin?"
"Miss Malkin, yes. You can call me Amanda if you'd like," she said, taking a seat on the other side of my desk. This woman was almost everything a man could ask for. Blond, buxom, beautiful… just one problem.
She wasn't alive anymore.
Ectoplasm shimmered around her very tangible clothing, and the transparency of her body underneath them was evident. This was a spirit. I sat down again and leaned back in the chair. Today was looking to get interesting.
You get used to this sort of thing after a while. She certainly wasn't the first beautiful dead woman I'd met, or wanted to get to know better. But then she told me her story and how she'd been murdered. How her husband had invoked the marriage escape clause from the Bhoot Act.
"Believe it or not," I'd told her, "I took a murder case last year under similar circumstances. This Bhoot Act nonsense is not doing a lot to ensure the safety of the living. Or the dead."
She nodded, and the radio in the background started playing an ad. The Gary City GhostBuster's squad. Oh fuck.
"Could you turn that off?" Before she asked my hand was already going for the dial.
"Sorry." I'd voted against the pricks who supported the 30th amendment. I'd worked around the dead long enough to know how that was going to work out. But it was over now, and Bhoots were second class citizens. This lady lost most of her rights the minute she dropped dead.
"It's alright. I feel like such an idiot. I actually liked Thompson when he was running for President." She shook her head as she talked.
"Eh, a lotta people did, else this never would've happened. It was just shortsighted thinking."
"It doesn't seem fair," she said so softly I almost couldn't hear.
I'm not so good with the subtleties of emotion. I shift uncomfortably in my seat as she looks at me expectantly, before breaking the silence.
"What's your husband's name?" I asked, trying to get this conversation back into familiar territory.
"Mark Malkin."
I put my hand up to stop her for a second. "Mark Malkin. Inventor of the Ecto-Containment units?"
Mark Malkin wasn't just a hotshot new money inventor. Nobody knows how this ghost nonsense started, or how a breath mint company made the transition into making ghost capturing technology but the timing was just a little too convenient for my taste. Malkin Mints was quickly becoming the richest company in the world, all off the backs of ghosts.
"I didn't marry him for money," she volunteered, probably knowing where my thinking was likely to go. "We used to love each other."
"You think he had something to do with your death?"
She paused and took a moment to think. "I think he had a lot to gain. I think he was scared I was going to ask for a divorce. Our marriage wasn't working out. And now he doesn't have to pay a cent."
I nodded, and pulled out a pen. "What was the name of the investigating officer?"
"Detective Murray," she said, her eyes lighting up. "So this means you'll take my case?"
"Yes ma'am. But I'd like to make a suggestion. Things aren't exactly safe for spirits around here anymore. Take some of the money I'm sure you've been saving and buy a one way ticket to Brazil. It's the last country that still accepts spirit immigrants. And it doesn't have any of this Bhoot nonsense."
"Don't worry about me, I bought a ticket yesterday," she said, jumping up and reaching out her hand. "Nobody wants me here anyway."
I looked her up and down once before winking. "I dunno if that's true. I'll be in touch. Leave your contact information with my assistant before you leave." I reached out and shook her hand. Then I sat down and watched her walk to the door, before reaching out and grabbing my cigar.
She paused at the door, before turning around and saying, "You really shouldn't smoke. It's bad for you."
I laughed. "Babe, we all gotta die sometime."