—ck from our music break, we'll do our weekly segment "Tuesday Update with Researcher James," where we bring everyone's favorite researcher live on-air to discuss the, uh, goings-on around the Foundation. We'll be back with Toone and Ames in the Evening after this special request, straight from…let's see…the janitorial staff at Site 382! Representing the outskirts of Seoul, we'll be back after this on your station, 98.3, WSCP.

Isun ganeul neukkyeobwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight, jigeum buteo michyeo bwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight
Gati gati ttwiyeo bwa ma eum daero jeulgyeo bwa, take it all, take it all, hi-highlight
Magazine tabil myeoneul jang shikhal spotlight, geu torok cham barae wateon 4minute time
On mome jeonyuri jjaritae teon feeling, imi naneun algo iji the fantasy
Naega naega naega naega queen of fashion, naega naega naega naega queen of motion
Ije buteo nareulbwa naege nuneul ttejima, coming, coming, coming geudaero
Isun ganeul neukkyeobwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight, jigeum buteo michyeo bwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight
Gati gati ttwiyeo bwa ma eum daero jeulgyeo bwa, take it all, take it all, hi-highlight
Neol saro jabeul holic, holic, holic, neol yuhokha neun holic, holic, holic
I make you crazy now ( deo nopi ollaga) you make me crazy now, just want it up, up, up, up now
Drawing, drawing sang sang motal neol hyanghan strike, ije buteo shijagiya 4minute time
Tteugeo un nae show time, bultaneun nae soul live, ije modu heundeureo bwa hit to the beat
Naega naega naega naega queen of fashion, naega naega naega naega queen of motion
Ije buteo nareulbwa naege nuneul ttejima, coming, coming, coming geudaero
Isun ganeul neukkyeobwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight, jigeum buteo michyeo bwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight
Gati gati ttwiyeo bwa ma eum daero jeulgyeo bwa, take it all, take it all, hi-highlight
Jigeum buteo naye highlight, dubeon dashi eopneun soul fight
Nae mom jiseun slow, slow nae shim jangeun stop, stop
Pyeong sowa neun dalla now, isun gan keep it right
Cheo eum buteo kkeu kkajida nun ttejima keep your eyes
4, 3, 2, 1, action
Isun ganeul neukkyeobwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight, jigeum buteo michyeo bwa highlight, hi-hi-highlight
Gati gati ttwiyeo bwa ma eum daero jeulgyeo bwa, take it all, take it all, hi-highlight
Neol saro jabeul holic, holic, holic, neol yuhokha neun holic, holic, holic
I make you crazy now (deo nopi ollaga) you make me crazy now, just want it up, up, up, up now

(fade)
Okay okay okay, we're back. Coming off of that hit, "Highlight," by the Korean pop band 4minute, we have our weekly chat with Researcher James. Toone, do we have James on the phone yet? No? Well, I'm sure the little guy's having trouble with his fifth-grade math homework. Heh, heh. In the meantime, we've got the best news the Overseers pay us to allow you to know, only several hours after it hits the intranet: this is Foundation World News Report!
theme song: orchestrals, sound of telegraph
Okay, first off the wire, from Site 55, we have the interesting story of one Researcher Torres, whose recent demotion to Level 1 couldn't have come as much of a shock to her. Seems that Torres was a bit of a prankster and decided that she was going to have a little fun with some fellow Foundation personnel and a couple of instances of SCP-531. Torres sets up two of the little cat statues outside of the Site breakroom on remote-controllable rotating platforms, and held onto the remote for herself. Security footage (which is pretty hilarious, just so we're being honest here) shows four hours of the same people walking up to the breakroom to get coffee, stopping in the doorway, and turning around. The distraction effect from 531 had some interesting side effects; personnel turning around, walking into one another, turning back, trying again, turning back, ad infinitum. Then, when 55 had a Euclid containment breach…and the only way to the Euclid wing was through the breakroom…Needless to say, two Mobile Task Forces were startled from their lunches and Researcher Torres is going to get some good experience with a mop.
(rimshot sound)
All right, settle down, settle down. A few other quick reports. Seismographs reported some earthquakes in Arizona, outside of a predictable seismic area. Transportation snafus have delayed all personnel transfers from Site 40 in Pennsylvania, so if you're on third shift and waiting on relief from Lancaster, you better put on another pot of coffee. The Mennonite cavalry will not be coming to your rescue, I'm afraid.
(opening to "Amish Paradise" begins)
A couple more pieces; food resupply to Site 17 has been delayed by — whoops, getting some blackboxes here. Bust out the emergency rations and say your daily prayer to Saint Bowdler of the Expunged Order of Redaction. A couple of blackouts in New Mexico have cut off communications with Research Site Beta-23; Our Lady of the Overwatch says cell towers are down, higher-ups have access to black comm channels but regular communications out are going to take a little while. In honor of all you beautiful Anabaptists stuck in traffic in Site 40, here's Weird Al.

ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL "WSCP GK-33" ACTIVE
SIGNAL STRENGTH 97%
BEGINNING TRANSMISSION…
FOLLOWING DOCUMENT CLASSIFIED LEVEL GK-09-BLACK:
ACCESS RESTRICTED TO PERSONNEL WITH LEVEL 5, O5-X, OR GK-X CLEARANCE
TO: SELECTED PERSONNEL
FROM: PROJECT GREEN KING COMMAND
SUBJECT: CODEWORD "GREEN KING" BACKGROUND INFORMATION
DR. JONES
PERTINENT EXCERPTS OF GREEN KING BACKGROUND FOLLOW.
MAGNUS
This project's earliest incarnation began in 1894 with the death of a man named Samuel Enfield. Enfield was a field agent working for the American Secure Containment Initiative, a precursor organization to the Foundation. Enfield was found dead on assignment in Boise, Idaho in close proximity to another man, their two bodies positioned in such a manner as to suggest the two were intimately engaged with one another prior to their death. Their deaths were determined by the local coroner to have been caused by gunshot wounds from Agent Enfield's two Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolvers. Enfield's wife, Agnes, was arrested two miles out of town and tried for double murder; she was found dead in her cell three days later from an apparent suicide.
Initiative researchers were able to connect several irregularities with Enfield's death. First, eyewitness testimony from two fellow agents on assignment with Enfield suggested that he had run out of ammunition for his revolvers earlier that day and was told he would not receive further ammunition until a supply wagon came by three days later. Second, even by the limited familiarity with homosexuality present in the late 1890s, no prior indication of a sexual relationship between Enfield or the other man was noted by any of Enfield's associates. Third, while paper records were located after the fact, several Initiative commanders expressed confusion at the identity of Enfield's supposed erstwhile companion, claiming they had never heard of a field operative by his name and insisting that an error had occurred. Fourth, while paper records after the fact again supported the official story, several corroborated reports stated that a woman closely resembling Enfield's wife had been found dead in their home several hours before the agent's murder. The body was lost at some point after Enfield's death, and some (though not all) of the corroborating witnesses changed their story later, claiming not to remember the period of time between the body's recovery and Enfield's murder. Though proper amnestics had not yet been developed, a comparison of interview transcripts before and after the body's disappearance closely resembles before-and-after reports of amnestic application.
Agent Enfield was murdered during an investigation into a being that would now be classified as a "reality bender," though that term did not then exist. The reality bender was a Paiute American Indian religious figure known as Wovoka, an individual who had attempted to start a general uprising against the American government. After a failed attempt at such an uprising, he was pursued by Initiative agents for some time. Enfield had detained Wovoka, interviewed him briefly, and was scheduled to interview him in the morning. He was found dead that night. Wovoka escaped custody and was never subsequently located.
Though most of the Initiative believed Wovoka to be responsible for any irregularit
— ENCRYPTION SEQUENCE ENTERING DORMANCY
SCRAMBLING TRANSMISSION
ENCRYPTION SEQUENCE FAILING
RECALIBRATING ENCRYPTION SEQUENCE…PLEASE WAIT…
ENCRYPTION REESTABLISHED
DECODING SEQUENCE RESUMING
TRANSMISSION CONTINUES
terview suggested that Wovoka was not a reality bender at all; rather, he had been set up as a reality bender by an unknown entity. Wovoka described a godlike entity that came unto him one day and offered him the power to retake his tribal lands from the American occupiers. Wovoka, naturally, accepted this offer. Wovoka realized later that he had no actual control over his abilities when an attempt to begin such an uprising was defeated, his powers failing him at the critical moment. Shortly thereafter, according to Wovoka, he "felt his god leave him"; he described feeling himself in connection to his unknown entity, felt this being's extremely troubled emotions, and then felt "free"; he was able to escape this entity's attention and surrender himself to Agent Enfield's custody. Of course, his claims could not be specifically confirmed or refuted.
This was the first and, for many decades, the only evidence of entity HL-49. Even this evidence was shaky; all that was actually recorded was two pages of interview notes from Enfield and a handful of witnesses who remembered versions of history that were identical to one another but contradicting the official record, a record that was clearly doctored. There were nine of them, and they formed the core of what would become the Green King project.
The GOC classifies reality benders as "Type Green" entities. Three of the nine original members of the group became members of organizations that later formed the core of the GOC; through careful recruitment, the project investigating the entity first detected in Boise continued through both the GOC and the Foundation. The entity was presumed to be a male reality bender, and possibly the most powerful reality bender known to exist. Additionally, given the entity's penchant for disguising its behavior through others, individuals thought of as subjects, the entity was given the codename "Green King."
You are now a part of the operation to locate, secure, and detain this entity. Next WSCP transmission will contain details regarding the time and location of your orientation meeting; for now, you are advised to purchase tickets to Italy and await further instructions.


Yahweh walked into the Valley, more astonished than He could ever remember feeling. An astonishment beyond words. He had never been at a loss for words.
The Valley — His Valley — was crowded. A massive flood of spirits, of winged things, of crawling things, of monsters, of people, of… of…
Of others.
A spirit whale swooped overhead. A gigantic furred thing lumbered its way over a distant mountain. A cadre of tiny glittering blue humanoids blew past His face, giggling, and were gone. A pure black humanoid figure appeared, blinked at Him, and vanished again. A massive not-centipede skittered by, giving Him a passing glare.
Almost in a stupor, Yahweh made His way down towards the humanoid crowd, feeling, for the first time He could remember, the instinctive need to be near others like Him.
As He approached, a figure detached itself from a crowd. A poised, brown-skinned woman with piercings in her lip, and long dark hair. For a moment Yahweh found Himself oddly attracted—
I am not a man, to wish for carnal knowledge—
"El!" the woman said.
"Who are you?" Yahweh asked, before He could register the impossibility of the question in His Head.
The woman looked at him funny. "I guess it's not surprising you don't remember. We've all forgotten a lot in the past few thousand years. But you especially."
Yahweh could think of absolutely nothing to say.
"Asherah," she said. "It's Asherah. I was your consort for several hundred years."
There were strange stirrings inside his head, alien memories that He could not comprehend—
These were other gods, they were the false idols of the ancient times, He remembered being a god of the wind and a god of storm and a god of the sun, a parochial, jealous deity, He remembered creating the Heavens and the Earth in seven days, He (he) remembered being a completely non-divine yet unspeakably powerful boy born into suffering and pain, He remembered being someone else forced into the shape of an artificial god, He remembered a feeling of exultation upon realizing He was the last god standing, the last god who had not faded away, and the future of Earth was His forever, He remembered having no parents, He (he) remembered his grandmother's smile, He remembered a million impossible contradictory memories, and they were doing it, this cursed human form had let them in, it was them—
"Enough!" He roared.
Yahweh raised His hand, looked at the crowd of creatures trampling through His Valley, and with a wave of His hand wiped all the false gods out of existence.
Or… He tried to, anyway. What He actually did was wave his hand, and then absolutely nothing happened.
"You know," Asherah said with a wry smile, "I may be your ex, but wiping me out of existence is a really rude thing to try to do."
She put her hand on Yahweh's shoulder without His permission, and did not explode into nothingness out of blasphemy.
"I know why you're here," she said. She pointed, directing His gaze towards the center of the Valley.
Yahweh saw it, a tiny object that floated in a rippling core of colorful light that moved like water.
It was a Lock.
"You're here to end the world," Asherah said. "And so are we. Everyone here."
"This is not possible," Yahweh said. He was feeling that vertigo again.
"To be frank," Asherah said. "I'm not actually sure I'm the Asherah, and I'm not actually sure you're the Yahweh."
"What."
"You might have noticed that you remember a whole lot of contradictory things," she said. "So do I. I remember both helping to create the world and being born into it when it was already ancient. That's just for starters. Now maybe this kind of thing is part of being a god, or maybe… Maybe it's just part of being more powerful than a human was ever meant to be." She looked back at the crowd. "Not all these things are gods, I know that for sure. We're just two of the beings that are 'supposed' to end the world. Everyone in this valley is."
Yahweh turned His glare on her. "So you — all of you — are here to make war with Me? To come against Me, to stop My End of Days?"
"Well. Yeah." She looked a little awkward, like she was trying to explain something to someone who was being painfully slow. "It's not really about you… specifically. Really, I don't think half the, uh, world-enders here knew about each other before literally a few minutes ago. They can't fight here, but… Most of them aren't happy to find out that they've got competition. Not just you."
He tried to comprehend this. A thought that He was entirely unused to having. "Do you think you can stand against the might of the one true God? Do you think you can enact your own End of Days?"
Asherah shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe? I'm not going to try."
He blinked, momentarily baffled. "You are not going to try to end the world?"
"Me?" Asherah snorted. "Fuck no."
"You told me… Then why are you here?"
"I may have been called here, but not even that Lock can make me end the world. Have you ever tried the seafood in Singapore? Have you ever used a smartphone? Run through the jungle? Seen Cirque du Soleil? Flown on an airplane? Surfed the Internet? Watched tentacle porn? Seen Star Wars? Explored the Wanderer's Library? Been lost in the concrete mazes of the new human cities? No, I like the world the way it is, thanks. It may be fucked up, but tearing it apart isn't going to improve anything."
He stared at her.
"So no," she said. "I don't plan to end the world. I actually don't plan to let you end the world either, or anyone else." She paused. "Sorry."
Divine rage rose up in Yahweh again, and He opened His mouth, only to be once again interrupted.
"Pardon me," another woman's voice said.
The new woman's voice was not raised, or powerful, but somehow everyone in the Valley heard it. And all turned to look.
She was a dark-skinned woman, African, wearing a gray suit, walking into the Valley. Her body language said she was both unassuming and confident. Yahweh knew immediately she was an ordinary human, not like these alien creatures milling around him, but He did not recognize her.
He did not recognize her.
That should not have been possible, ever, not even in this limited human form. Yahweh knew all, and even if these false gods and "world-enders" were able to stymie Him somehow, no human should—
"I come on behalf of the SCP Foundation," the woman said. "Some of you know who we are. Some of you do not. The Foundation are the protectors of humanity. Some of you we have imprisoned, some of you we have bargained with, all in defense of humanity." She sat on the ground, cross-legged, formality inherent in her movements, some kind of ritual that Yahweh almost recognized… "I have come to talk."
There was a long silence.
"And what are you?" a crimson-skinned creature asked her.
"I am a human," she said. "I am the Administrator of the SCP Foundation."
"Impossible," Yahweh said. "I knew all the Administrators. The last one died years ago, and you are not he. You are none of them."
"I'm protected from—" the woman started.
"You are not human," a panther-shaped entity shouted from the crowd. Yahweh seethed at the interruption. "If you were human, we would be able to touch you."
"I am protected," the Administrator said again. "But outside of my protection, I really am nothing more than a human. Like all the humans you plan to kill in your quest to end the world."
"Then what do you want, Human?" another world-ender asked.
"We can open the way to worlds free of sentient life. Many worlds. Enough room for all of you. You won't have to end this world. No humans will have to die. You will have a hundred others." She paused. "I want you to let this world live out the rest of its history in peace."
A clamor of voices broke out. Not all of it was verbal - much was broadcast by thought.
What are you saying—
Is this supposed to be an insult—
I come to save the world, I must end it to save it—
This is not a human's place—
This is the end of days—
How did you come here, how did any of you—
All will burn—
This age is over, as the ages before it also had an end—
Who will deny me, certainly not a tiny thing like—
"What do you offer in exchange, Human?" a massive, fox-furred being asked, once the voices started to quiet down.
"In exchange…" The Administrator hesitated. Though He could not read her mind, Yahweh could tell that she was unsure about what she was about to say. Uncertain, even afraid.
"In exchange, we will not destroy you."
Silence. A few of the entities laughed. Most looked uncaring or simply baffled. Many began to move on, apparently losing interest.
"Will none of you consider my offer?" the Administrator asked.
No one answered.
"Very well." The Administrator drew herself up.
"Why do you not join us, Human?" an amorphous blue form called out from the crowd. "Take your Foundation and come end the world with us. In the new world, you will have anything you could wish for. Anything you could imagine."
"We are the Foundation," the Administrator said. "We will not worship you. We will not join you. We will not go back to hiding in fear of you. I hope you will change your minds, but we will stand against you, and alone, if we have to."
She looked at Yahweh, directly, and for a fleeting instant, Yahweh thought of Himself as SCP-343.
"All of you," the Administrator said.
Her form flickered, and she vanished from the Valley, leaving no trace behind.

« The Gate Opens (Part 2 of 3) | Canon Hub | Storm Front »


Yahweh awoke in His human form in His room at Site 17, knowing that the hour had arrived.
In an instant, He was at Site 0. The personnel in the control room, some half asleep, leapt to their feet as He appeared. He took a moment to watch the dawning look of comprehension on their faces. O5-14 staggered to his feet.
"The Time has come," Yahweh intoned.
In another eye-blink, He was at the Gate. The being that the Foundation called SCP-001-Gamma bowed in front of Him, lowering its burning sword, its four flaming wings spread in reverence.
"Uriel," Yahweh said. "It is Time. Open the Gate. Lead My armies across the Earth."
"I HEAR AND OBEY, MY LORD AND MY GOD," Uriel said.
The Gate began to creak open. Behind it was an army of angels, thousands of bright creatures, many-eyed, burning with pure red light. They raised their white swords, singing a chant of war, and the rustling of countless brilliant wings filled the air.

The thing inside Site 10, the singularity that was, was not, had always been, and had never been a part of the Lock, unfurled itself like a flower.
Site 10 was demolished in an instant. No one inside had any moment for last thoughts before their deaths.
Then they were all alive again, shaken, deposited somewhere in New Hampshire. Along with Site 10, intact, aside from the destruction the Harbinger had dealt to it.
Meanwhile, the ruins of Site 10 and the corpses of everyone in it were buried deep within the vast valley that had never existed before on the planet Earth, and yet, now, had always existed, displacing a few thousand miles of desert in the Middle East. It was still both there, and not. Either way, it was.
Waves of blue and green energy washed about, and the valley filled with plants and animals the likes of which had never been seen before.
In the very center, orbiting in a wash of iridescent rainbow color, the Lock hovered in the center of a tiny singularity. Open, at long last. Sending out its signal.

Dr. Everett Mann was in the middle of dissecting a recently dead instance of SCP-098 when its legs started to twitch.
Everett paused his scalpel in mid-cut and watched with curiosity. This had never happened before.
He looked over at the cage of live SCP-098 specimens. They were also acting oddly. They were stock still. Not a single red-orange limb was making so much as a twitch. SCP-098 were not exactly the calmest species of anomalous crustacean, and Everett had never seen them behave this way.
They appeared to be… watching. Waiting for something.
The dead 098 instance kept twitching.
"Hmmm," Everett said.
His cell phone vibrated in his lab coat. This was the secure cell, the one that only rang in serious emergencies. Everett put down the scalpel and picked up the call.
"Everett Mann, Site 2036, status five," he said.
"The sword falls and rises," the voice on the other line said.
"But it kills in one stroke," Everett replied.
"Emergency Order Patmos is now in effect," the voice said. "995 has breached containment. 616 has opened. We are awaiting report from 001-Gamma. We are securing 073 and 076…"
"And you want to know about 098," Everett said.
"Have SCP-098 activated?" the voice asked.
"I am sorry to disappoint you. They are acting a bit odd, but I cannot say…"
The dead 098 instance froze, then burst into pale orange flame.
After another moment passed, the other 098 specimens burst into flame, all at the same time. Little slots in their shells opened, and delicate, vibrating, dragonfly-like wings sprang out. As far as Everett could tell, each 098 instance sprouted as many wings as they had limbs. Even the dead instance. Which was now looking significantly less dead.
They breached the sides of their cage in an instant, all chittering at once in some alien language. They ripped through the plate glass window of the sealed experiment chamber and swarmed away through the site, demolishing the walls that got in their way. Everett stared after them.
"Never mind," Everett said to the voice waiting on the other line. "I'd say that probably counts."

Yahweh appeared to the entire remaining thirteen O5 Council members at once in thirteen different locations. He did not appear, of course, to the Administrator, because the last Administrator had died years ago and had not been replaced. O5-14 no longer voted on Council matters, and therefore the Council no longer need a tiebreaker vote. But to all the rest, He appeared. They were all His, and had always been His. Even the non-believers, who thought of him as nothing more than a reality bender with a god complex, would have no choice but to go along. They were all His, as sure as the hands attached to His Body.
Thirteen people leaped from their seats, from their beds, fell to their knees, tripped and fell to the ground.
"Uriel, my servant, once told your Founder to prepare for the great and terrible day of the Lord," Yahweh said in thirteen voices at once. "This day now approaches. Make your final preparations. There is nothing else you will need to do but wait. My armies ride across the Earth. Soon I will call the Four Horsemen. Once the last judgment has been unsealed, then shall the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And then all will have Paradise."
He returned to a single human body, without waiting for a reply, returned to a slight feeling of vertigo. He might have been an omnipotent super-being, but it would not have done to cram everything into this tiny human body that He'd elected to stay in until the End of Days was over. Because of that, He hadn't recently made a practice of existing in several places at once. It came naturally, like breathing, but still felt unusual, like breathing for the first time after spending long minutes underwater.
Actually, there was something odd… some little twinge of memory, triggered by what He had just done…
The thought slipped from His grasp. That was the downside of human frailty. This was a perfected human body, but even a perfected human body was still flawed compared to true omniscience.
He knew the next step, as he always knew. He would return to the ancient Valley with no name. The first place He had ever created, the precursor to Eden. The Valley where none had ever set foot but Him, and never would, not even after the End of Days.
He took a step, and was there.
And…
He wasn't alone.

Klaxons blared in Site 2036. Everett Mann listened, bemused. Emergency Order Patmos or no, there was no need for all that racket.
He stepped out of the former auxiliary research and containment chambers for SCP-098, into a mob of personnel. No one stopped to give him the time. Fairly rude, Everett thought. 098 wasn't even killing anyone. Just… leaving. The holes in the walls and ceiling could be rebuilt.
He spotted Gears in the crowd and made his way over. Another person who could be trusted to deal with situations in a reasonable fashion.
"It seems we have a massive containment breach," Gears said.
"Yes, SCP-098," Everett said. "I hear 995 and 616 have breached containment as well. 001-Gamma, soon, I'm sure. But I don't see what the fuss is about. We've stopped XK-class scenarios before, we can do it again. The only difference in this case is that we might have to deal with O5-14 putting up a fuss—"
Gears held up a hand. Interruption was not his style, Everett knew, which is partly why he could stop anyone in their tracks with that gesture. "I'm not speaking of Patmos," Gears said. "Nor 001-Gamma."
"Oh?" Everett raised an eyebrow. "What else has gotten out?"
"A whole damn lot," Gears said, perfectly calmly, swearing for the first time that Everett had ever heard.

« "Apakht" (Part 1 of 3) | Canon Hub | Revelation (Part 3 of 3) »


In the sublevels of Site 10, Dr. Yara Mirski raised the gemstone to the light with a gloved hand, in a gesture she'd repeated a hundred times before. She admired its black contours, broken up by the mottled white pattern and the golden filigree that wrapped around its exterior.
SCP-001-Delta. The fourth SCP item considered a 'prime', or '001', item. One of several that had a hand in the creation of the Foundation. And, in Yara's opinion, by far the most frustrating.
For one, there wasn't much else to know about Delta at Level 5 clearance.
Most of the other 001 items had a great deal of falsified information attached to them, the better to confuse ever-curious researchers. Some versions were altered beyond recognition. Like Iota, Yara's favorite. Some meta-humor to give snoopers an existential crisis. Some were fabricated entirely — notably, Beta, which was a little surprising, since it was just an ordinary monster. What was so unusual or startling about that, compared to Keter cakes or Project Rho? But Beta was an invention from whole cloth; everything about it was fiction besides its ancient classification system.
Not so with Delta. Delta was strange enough on its own that people always assumed the files they had unearthed were altered. They were wrong. Delta was the most straightforward 001. A lock that appeared to literally "contain" our universe, and also something called "Apakht." It seemed like a joke from several cartoon shows, a joke made worse by the fact that it was true.
And Delta, the Lock, was still missing its Key. Not that the O5s hadn't tried to crack it open, especially the skittish ones who didn't like the idea of anyone containing anything but them. One of them had it in her head that Delta unlocked Heaven. Kept rambling on about something called the Thaumiel Initiative. It didn't matter. Not even SCP-005 could pry that lock open, and no megaton bomb could crack Delta's shell.
Yara felt the warmth of the Delta stone through her gloves, and reflected that it was perhaps fortunate that every attempt to unlock Delta had failed.
She was still reflecting on this when the first klaxon blared.

The Harbinger hated its code name.
"The Harbinger." Really. So fucking over-dramatic. They wouldn't stop using it, either. For security, they said. Harbinger. Harbinger. Harbinger? Harbinger, Harbinger, Harbinger. It wanted to kill the son of a bitch who came up with that.
Yet… as long as it was on the premises of Site 10, it was not going to think of itself by any other identity but Harbinger. Not its name, definitely not gender. The Harbinger was an it, now, and would stay that way until this was over.
Sure, the Foundation's ability to read minds was not precisely A-grade, but considering the stakes, it wasn't planning on taking extra risk. Especially not with an 001. Especially not with Delta. The Harbinger was familiar with Delta's containment procedures, listed and unlisted, maybe too familiar… no, better not to think about that either.
The Harbinger tore through the outer containment shell around the Primary Archival Vault, wincing slightly at the ease with which the steel alloy peeled apart. The auto-defense turrets came next, followed by the chemical bath. The Harbinger's glowing white form withstood the punishment and it destroyed the turrets with a wave of its hand.
A battalion of carefully crafted containment procedures, made useless in moments. The Harbinger carefully pushed back the memories sifting up in its brain.
The Harbinger reached the Vault, the massive, aptly named octagonal prism-shaped containment chamber, custom-designed precisely for the purpose of containing SCP-001-Delta. Until now, it had done a very good job.
It was made of reinforced concrete and steel, with a time-locked access portal in the ceiling. Pretty much nothing could get through that portal.
The Harbinger grimaced. The Foundation just did not reckon with power on the right scale. That would have to change—quickly.
The Harbinger left the portal alone and ripped off the entire front side of the vault.
It walked forward two steps and stopped.
The Vault was supposed to be empty… It wasn't.
In point of fact, there was a woman sitting in it. The Harbinger recognized her. Dr. Yara Mirski. Research lead on 001-Delta.
A dangerous thought, the thought of her, bubbled up into the Harbinger's head — quickly suppressed — but it was a distraction for a key second.
Mirski was holding what appeared to be a harpoon gun on steroids, aiming it forward. She did not appear surprised to see the Harbinger, not at all—
She pulled the trigger.
God damn it, the Harbinger thought, as the bolt impaled it through the chest.

Yara Mirski hadn't known what to expect the invader, the "Harbinger", to look like, and she wasn't going to let it faze her now that she was seeing it.
But it really did look very startling.
It was shaped like a person, glowing entirely, uniformly white. She couldn't make out any features on its face. Couldn't tell whether it was male or female.
And there was something else about it — some sense about it — that felt purely otherworldly, made it hard to look at. It wasn't just the hundred wings sprouting from its back. She was reminded of the Bible stories that she'd heard in church growing up, the ones involving angels. How unwitting mortals would fall to their knees in worship, only for the angel to stop them, pull them to their feet, and rebuke them, because you should only be directing your worship to the one true living God.
There was also, of course, the harpoon in its chest, but she'd put that there. She'd almost forgotten, staring at the Harbinger's visage, until its glow started to dim and some of that intense white energy started spiraling into the harpoon.
Thank God, she thought, it's working. Then she laughed at the irony.
The Harbinger never moved its gaze from her. Only its hands moved, rising to the harpoon. She knew it couldn't remove the fully powered harpoon bolt, not while it was leeching away the being's essence. But the Harbinger didn't try.
Instead, it dismantled it. Tore open the casing, unwrapped the internal wiring, got to the power source and cracked it open with a pinch of its fingers. Immediately its light returned to full strength.
The Harbinger tossed the remnants of the now-useless harpoon aside and walked towards her. It lifted the Lock from her nerveless fingers.
Yara Mirski fell to her knees.
"Oh, cut that out," the Harbinger said. "I'm not going to kill you."
Its voice startled her back to her senses. It was mellifluous and otherworldly, still without discernible gender, but casual, undramatic. And… weary.
"Don't be too hard on yourself," it said. "Really."
She sized up the Harbinger again. No wound was visible from where the harpoon had pierced its chest. There should have been a gaping hole. There was nothing.
It didn't look at her. It was examining the Lock.
"That was very clever," it said. "It almost worked. Another time, another place… maybe it would have."
"Why didn't it?" she asked.
"If I told you that," the Harbinger said, "… well, then you'd know."
She couldn't think of a response to that.
The Harbinger reached into its form and drew from its… robes? … the item that, somehow, Yara knew it would have. A small ornate object, resembling a key. Exactly as it had looked in the recovered sketches.
It looked so tiny. So ordinary.
"Stop," Yara said. "Wait. Please. I know you've … You obviously want to do this. But think about it, please. Do you have any idea what could be in there? Do you know—"
"Actually…" The Harbinger seemed to chuckle a little. "I know exactly what's in there."
Yara felt a little cold. Spell of containment… "Apakht," she said.
"Apakht," the Harbinger agreed. It inserted the Key into the Lock, and turned the Key.
There was a small flash, and something about the world was irrevocably changed.
For a brief moment, the Harbinger wasn't a glowing hundred-winged angelic being. It was nothing more than an ordinary human.
Their eyes met.
"I know you," Yara said, without thinking. "You're—"
She couldn't finish the words. She couldn't even think the thought in her head. It — it — the Harbinger was doing something to stop her.
"Sorry," the Harbinger said. Its glowing radiance had returned in full. "Nothing personal." It looked at the Lock, as if watching. Or listening.
"What did you do? What is it? What did you unlock?" She could feel something vibrating in the back of her brain. Her eyes kept being drawn to the lock. It looked exactly the same, visually, but it was also incredibly different. "What's Apakht?"
"It's the End," the Harbinger said.
The fabric of reality began to unfold before their eyes.

Canon Hub | The Gate Opens (Part 2 of 3) »


Private content

	This area of the website is private and you don't have access to it.      If you believe you need access to this area please contact the web site administrators.

    If you already have an account, please sign in.


The full moon shone brightly upon the dense canopy of the virgin forest, faint beams of moonlight reaching through to the earth below. A gentle summer's breeze raked the treetops, warming the creatures that had gathered in the clearing by the lake. Hundreds of animals had formed a semi-circle around the great rock which ancient paws had carved. The air was full of the chatter of countless species, producing a din the likes of which were seldom heard in those empty lands. Wolves and bears rubbed shoulders with deer and horses while rats and weasels scurried underfoot. In the trees, the creatures of the air perched attentively—eagles and pigeons, hawks and gulls, falcons and crows, owls and bluejays. A few of those animals that could do so carried torches, for the benefit of those animals whose night vision was not as keen as the rest. A silence fell over the assembled beasts as a wolf, ancient and scarred yet almost regal in its disposition, approached the rock and began to howl and bark at the assembly. Any man who happened to pass through those woods would have heard nothing more than the cries of an animal—but courtesy of whatever miracle had brought these creatures together in ancient time, the animals who stood in that clearing understood every syllable from the wolf's maw.
"Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!" howled the wolf. "Bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciaries, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all bailiffs and liege subjects of the realm! It is my honor to present to you, his Royal Highness, by the Grace of God, King of the Forest, Lord of the Plains, Duke of the Grand Fir and the Undergrowth, Count of the Swamp, Margrave of the Hills, Warden of All the Streams and Rivers, and Lord Protector of the Cities of Man, Defender of the Faith, and so on, and so on, and so on, King Andrew the Fourth."
The animals assembled on the ground fell to their knees and laid their heads on the ground, and the birds tucked their heads into their breasts, as King Andrew IV trotted into sight atop the great rock. The king was a young fox, having barely been a yearling when his father Eugenio VII was killed by barbarians the previous year. He wore no adornments but a simple crown upon his head, the same that had been passed down from king to king since the days of the Exodus. A moment passed in silence as Andrew surveyed the crowd before him, and gestured for his herald to come near. Those who dared to look upward at his majesty would have seen a look of awe and terror on the wolf's face as Andrew chuffled silently to him.
"And may I further present," the wolf cried hesitantly, "as his majesty's guest for the evening—His Holiness, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God, Pope Innocent the Twenty-Seventh."
The contrast between Andrew and Pope Innocent could not have been more obvious as the deer climbed to the top of the stone and stood beside the king. Unlike the simple crown Andrew wore, Innocent was covered head to toe in elaborate vestments, the finest that the raccoons and apes of the land could sew, and a miter nearly half a meter tall, bedecked with gold and jewels, rested between his antlers. The assembled animals rose to their feet with reverence as Andrew nodded, and Innocent touched his snout to his chest three times, making the sign of the cross as best he could.
"Our friends!" Andrew began, barking as loud as he could so that he could be heard by all the animals. "Knights, nobles, peers of the realm, and peasants and serfs alike—hear us this night, for a threat has come to our lands that imperils not only our nation, but all of Christendom itself! Not since the time of the Exodus have our people known such an enemy as the heathens which now return to this land to resume their ancient debaucheries—the vile forces of the nation of man."
A commotion arose from the crowd at the mention of that last word. Cries of doubt and skepticism arose from the masses. "Who among you recall the tales you were taught as children?" Pope Innocent called out, silencing the crowd. "As surely as every word of the Holy Scripture is true, so are those stories true—for before the coming of plagues and the scourging of the Earth, every corner of the world was ruled over by the kingdom of man. Though they claimed to follow Christ—for Christ Himself delivered His Gospel first to man before we of the forests came to know it—they had grown bold and arrogant, and knew not the true teachings of the church of their fathers. And believing that nothing existed that could not be seen, they enslaved your ancestors, the true followers of Christ, and kept them in their prisons while sinners and Protestants roamed free across these forests.
"But your ancestors kept the faith, and God rewarded them. For just as He scourged the Earth of wickedness and spared Noah, so He cleansed the Earth of mankind, and again we were free to sing the songs of the Lord and be fruitful."
"For six hundred years," King Andrew proclaimed, "no man has been seen in our forest. But not a fortnight ago, the Duke of the West Reach and his knights vanished while surveying the eastern reaches. Baron Simon and his eagles were dispatched to seek out any trace of them—and when they caught a whiff of roasted venison—" he paused as the animals reacted to the horror of imagining the good Duke roasted for food—"he spotted the men who had taken our knights and cut them limb from limb, to roast alive and feast upon, and the great heathen temple they have erected—forged from the wood of our own trees which they have felled, and built on the very spot of King Edward I's final victory over the Protestant horde!"
"The humble mice who scouted their shrine have witnessed the proof that even the divine wrath of God was insufficient to convince these men of their sinful nature," the Pope shouted. "They have built a thing of mockery, in the style of the ancient cathedrals men built before they lost their way—but this is not a place of God. They worship a man who they claim died and rose again, but this man was known to your ancestors during the Captivity as little more than a conjurer of cheap tricks, his only gifts coming from a simple trinket that no doubt was forged by the Devil himself! They have made idols out of their ancient books that they parrot without understanding, and wear the icons of the ancient despoilers upon their gowns! These men are no friends to Christ or to Christendom—and with our nation, there can be no hope of alliance."
"The east has fallen to these heretics already!" Andrew shouted. "They have already slain the good Duke and his knights. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impunity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them! They will make this land their own! They will take from us that which we have for centuries tended and built! They will give no quarter for women and children, and nothing shall await you but the plow—or the spit! Whatever petty quarrels you have had amongst yourselves, this is the time to forget them—for now we face a greater foe!"
Pope Innocent lowered his voice as he exhorted the crowd. "Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. In ancient time, the righteous among mankind waged wars of the cross against the heathens of their day. I, or rather the Lord, beseech you now—take up tooth and claw, and prepare for crusade! So your Church wills it!"
"So your king wills it!" cried Andrew.
"So God wills it!" responded Innocent.
"God wills it! God wills it! God wills it!" The cry of the crowd reached from treetop to treetop, echoing throughout the forest.
—-
The grass crackled under Brother Gareth's sandals as he trod down the overgrown trail that had, centures before, been a massive highway. His eyes darted constantly along the treeline, watching for any movement in the undergrowth. He was not accustomed to loneliness, for Overwatch was always teeming with hundreds of doctors and priests and D-Castes. Out here, loneliness was both a curse and a boon, for at least it meant he had thus far eluded the enemy's spies. The Holy Amulet, wrapped in a strip of hide for his protection, drummed against his chest under his thick brown robe. He held his hand against his chest to steady it, tracing its patterns through the fabric as he said a quick prayer to the man within.
It had been nine days since Cardinal Andrews had told him to leave Overwatch Cathedral alone and take the Amulet east to Shyton for safekeeping. Thanks to the Neutralizationist zealots who had breached the Peace of Westmont when they attacked and reclaimed the Seventy-Third chapel, the tensions between the Holy Foundation and "the kingdom of Romania Nova", as the "liberated" men whose homes had fallen under its rule called it, had erupted into the sixth crusade in thirty years against the animals and their strange religion that honored neither the Lord Bright nor His saints and prophets. The animal forces had gained ground and had been within a day's march of Overwatch itself when he left. That the Holy Foundation would win the day, he had no doubt; but the Amulet was not safe so close to those creatures that regarded it as no better than the rest of the demons that haunted the world.
Gareth paused a moment and sat on a log to drink from his waterskin. His body ached from the long walk, and his head was heavy. There were not known to be any of the demon-possessed beasts in these woods, but one could never tell from appearances whether the crow or the deer or the mouse skittering along the road was just concerned with its next meal, or whether it was watching and reporting to its superiors. He had rested little, and slept even less. A few more days and he and his burden would be safe behind the great walls of Shyton, the sea at his back. Safe to relax, and rest, and…
Gareth recoiled in shock and horror as something touched his shoulder, awakening him from the slumber he had fallen into. He had slipped up, and it had cost him. Dazed by the midday sun as his eyes darted open, he stumbled around to face the thing that had accosted him, reaching as he did so for the knife on his belt.
"Forgive me, friend," said the traveler in black who stood before him. "I meant only to ensure that you were well."
"I… I'm sorry," Gareth said as he lowered his knife. "I haven't seen anyone on the road in days. I feared I was under attack."
"Understandable," the man replied. "These are… dangerous times, and few would dare this lonely road. What brings you this way?"
"I am…" Gareth searched his head for a lie to conceal the nature of his mission. "I am a humble sculptor on my way to Strait City, in search of work and a patron. There is little call in the western lands for a man of my profession, on account of the war."
"Indeed?" the traveler said. "It is the war that calls me westward. What news have you heard from the front?"
"Very little," Gareth said, hoping to put an end to the man's uncomfortable questioning. "I try not to concern myself greatly with matters of church and state."
"You must have some opinion," the man said. "Are you one of the Traditionalists who holds that the Scripture is inerrant? Or are you a Neutralizationist, believing that the Holy Containment Procedures must be rewritten, and the church ought to destroy the demons rather than imprisoning them? Or perhaps your sentiments lie with the animals and their God?"
"I know nothing of the theological disputes the church is having amongst itself, friend," Gareth said.
"I am all too familiar with them, sir sculptor," said the traveler. "Many years ago I was occupied all my days in observing and recording their petty squabbles. But now I am… free of that obligation." Gareth noticed for the first time the notch carved into the man's left ear—the mark of a slave sold to the Foundation, or an outlaw taken by its knights for his crimes, and pressed into the D-Caste. "Now I am engaged in a different sort of occupation."
"And what might that be?"
"I was seeking a man traveling this very road," the man said as Gareth's worst fears were realized. "I was asked to find a churchman carrying a very special object to Shyton."
"I have seen not a soul since I passed St. Lament," Gareth lied. "and there are certainly no men of the cloth in that disreputable city. Where did you hear such a ridiculous thing?"
"A little bird told me," the man said with a grin.
"Well, best of luck to you then," Gareth said, "but I have lost enough time and should be on my way."
Gareth's heart sank as the man stood in his path and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I must ask a simple thing of you, my friend. I was told that the man I sought wore a particular object around his neck. Might you permit me to see what hangs on the chain you are wearing?"
"It is a simple mememto, good sir, and you have no right to accost me about it. Now please unhand me."
"Be reasonable," said the escaped slave. "If you are not the man I seek, then I mean you no harm, but I must know for certain." The man reached for Gareth's necklace and grasped the chain. In a flash, Gareth drew his knife from its sheath and plunged it into the man's stomach. He gasped as the blade found home, his grip on Gareth loosening as Gareth drew the blade out and stabbed home again and again.
"Forgive me, huntsman," Gareth said as the man fell to his knees, "but I can allow none to stand in the way of the Lord's work."
"And forgive me, doctor," the hunter said as he struggled for breath, "but none can stand in the way of the one true God. Laudate Deum!"
Gareth never heard the wolf coming until it lunged at him from behind, knocking him to the ground like a rag doll. He tried to turn and attack it with his knife, but the jaws of the beast found his wrist and his weapon dropped to the ground. Another wolf was on him in an instant, and soon the air was filled with the chatter of lesser creatures gathering all around him. The last thing he felt before he lapsed into unconsciousness was the chain around his neck snapping as one of the dogs pulled it from him.
—-
"This is your fault, Second," the Seventh said. "We should have sent a knight, or better yet, a whole company."
"We all agreed that would draw too much attention! A lone traveler was less apt to be noticed by their spies."
In the chamber above, a D-Caste draws a handmade shiv from his robes and stabs a guardsman through the heart.
"And yet he was found, Second. And he is dead, and the Holy Amulet missing. The evidence is incontrovertible—the Lord Bright is in partibus infidelium. The time for debate and inaction is over. I demand that the Council immediately order the commission of Procedure Escheat against all lands occupied by the animals, in accordance with Holy Containment Procedure 1845, and neutralize them once and for all."
"You would escalate this crusade even further?" the Third asked. "It was your Neutralizationist nonsense that got us into this predicament!"
The two watchmen guarding the armory are no match for the dozen D-Caste that attack them. In the dark, they arm themselves.
"Lord Bright never intended the Holy Containment Procedures to be unchanged forever," the Seventh said. "It is known that the ancients changed them constantly. Nor did he mean for no demon to ever be destroyed—else He would not have left us the instructions to do so. It was right that we attacked the Seventy-Third chapel and destroyed the world-of-snow, for if they had learned to make it work a great doom would have befallen us."
"Each of the 'demons', as you call them," rebutted the Third, "is a unique creation and a memory of the ancient world! There will never be another like it, and each one you destroy takes us one step further from re-learning that which has been lost!"
The guardhouses are taken, and the sleeping soldiers are easily locked in their barracks and kept out of trouble. The D-Caste close the gates and seal the front door of the cathedral and begin to make their way into the catacombs.
"If Lord Bright is truly among the heathens," the Thirteenth said, "perhaps He will be able to make them see the error of their ways. We must allow him time to win them over to the church."
"Can we afford to take that chance?" the Seventh asked. "Every missionary we send into their lands ends up dead. Every city they win from us, they tear down our chapels and burn our Holy Doctors alive. They would just as soon destroy the Holy Amulet—and deny us the guidance and counsel of our Lord for all time—as listen to Him!"
"This is heresy! If we do as you propose, we would be just as likely to destroy the Amulet ourselves, or lose it forever in the chaos! I'm sure you Neutralizationists would love nothing more but than to be rid of our Lord as well, but-"
"Gentlemen!" The First shouted. "This is not the time or place to argue the merits of Neutralizationism! The Seventh has made a proposal—let us vote on it in the traditional manner."
"Nay!" the Third said. "I shall keep no secret of where I stand on this issue—and may no other man or woman in this room fail to do the same."
Outside the meeting hall, the Omega Guard, swords and crossbows in hand, stare down two dozen orange-robed D-Castes with steel of their own. The sergeant nods to his men, and the guards lay down their weapons. The leader of the D-Caste smiles.
"The matter has been decided, Seventh," said the First. "The vote stands nine to four. This Council will not act to neutralize the animals at this time."
"Then I and my compatriots have nothing further to say at this time," the Seventh said as he rose to his feet with the Ninth, Fourth, and Twelfth. "We shall be taking our leave. Guard, open the door."
No sooner had the door guard begun the traditional knock than the door began to slide open. The four walked towards the door—as dozens of D-Caste, armed to the teeth, swarmed in and formed a circle around them. The door guards barely had time to draw their swords before the rebellious slaves' steel felled them - and, blood on their swords, they stared down the remaining members of the Council still at their desks.
"What is the meaning of this?" the First shouted. "This is heresy! This is treason!"
"This is the tide of progress overwhelming tradition," the Seventh said as he turned to the leader of the group. "Take these milquetoasts to the dungeon, and then send the word that the ancient fire is to be released into the western lands. Burn the forests. Burn the prairies. Burn the villages. Drive every last one of those animals out, and every last man who sides with them. Kill them all—the Lord Bright will know His own."
—-
The wind blew lazily over the barren hillside that weeks before had been verdant and full of life. Only a few blades of grass, here and there, erupted from the scorched moonscape. Nothing stood but the blackened stumps of great trees. Great mounds of ash scattered in the wind, the remnants of those animals the knights had gathered up and incinerated en masse. For hundreds of kilometers the devastation extended, a testament to the greatest fire the world had seen since the Great Breach itself.
In the skies above, a lone crow glided in search of food. It was a long way from its home and knew nothing of what doom had befallen this place—it knew only that it was hungry and could find no food. Its eye caught a glint of light in a hollow hundreds of feet below. It was too shiny to be food, but perhaps another animal had been hoarding whatever it could find and had stashed the shiny object with some nuts or acorns? After determining that whatever creature had stashed the gleaming thing was nowhere in sight and would cause no trouble, it swooped down to investigate its find.
The crow dug at the ground around the piece of metal that protruded from the ground. It wasn't food, nor was it even one of the things that humans sometimes stored food in—just one of the shiny little baubles they liked to wear. Disappointedly, the crow nudged it aside to see if there was anything underneath.
Well, it thought to itself, this is certainly different.


[INSERT OFFICIAL FBI LETTERHEAD HERE]
Federal Bureau of Investigation
United States Department of Justice
Washington, DC.
[DATE]

Dear [RECIPIENT],
I am writing to you today to express my great sorrow for the loss of your [RELATION], [DECEASED]. [DECEASED] was killed honorably in the line of duty on [DATE], while attempting to save the life of an innocent held hostage by an unknown attacker. The loss of an officer is always a great tragedy, but it is especially hard when an officer was as close to us as your [RELATION]. [ENTER SOME WORDS OF PRAISE HERE].
I know you must be overwhelmed with letters of condolence, and the pressure of making arrangements must be terrible, so please do not feel obligated to respond. However, if there is anything I can do to help you, it would be a great honor to assist the [RELATION TO DECEASED] of one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's finest officers.
Sincerely yours,
Charles Ogden Geirs
Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Unusual Incidents Unit

Jack - Please don't repeat the mistake your predecessor made last time and send this without filling out the fields first. The last thing I need is six grieving widows throwing a fit because they got a form letter from their dead husband's boss.
- Cog


Dr. Herrero walked slowly along the empty white corridor, like a condemned to the scaffold. His footsteps echoed on the cold walls, while several cameras observed him from the ceiling. He knew that he was being analyzed by the most sophisticated surveillance devices ever invented by man. If those cameras at any moment found anything abnormal, the security system would have activated the alarm in the whole building and the automatic sentry machine guns stationed near the door at the end of the corridor, capable of tearing any intruder into pieces in a few seconds, would have blown him away.
Hilarious, he thought. The defenses would do nothing against the one they're actually afraid of.
Nothing happened. Dr. Herrero arrived in front of the massive steel door resembling a monolithic tombstone. He said, with a calm and determined tone that didn't show the storm of emotions weighing in his heart, "Dr. Robert Herrero, Clearance Level 5, Access Code 09-42-8695." The microphone above his head registered his words, and the sentry turrets, which hadn't stopped pointing at him since when he arrived there, immediately disengaged themselves and started guarding the corridor again. He pressed his hand on the digital fingerprint sensor and the enormous door opened without a sound.
It. It. They always called her "it". Like an animal. Like an object. Like something worthless.
Robert entered the elevator, as empty as the rest of the facility, and the door closed behind him. Even there, he was constantly monitored by video cameras. He didn't pay them any attention, and, as he had done many other times, pressed the single, big grey button on the wall of the lift, which started descending into the darkness. Dr. Herrero crossed his arms and waited, giving an absent look to his reflection in the elevator's mirror. Time had not been gentle with him. He was still good looking for his age, but his face was marked by wrinkles, his hair grey and his right cheek crossed by a long, thin scar. He touched it gently, thinking that, maybe, the end of that story was finally near.
Am I ready? I know what they'll ask me. Am I ready?
The elevator reached the floor, 400 metres under the Italian surface. The secret bunker didn't have a name; it was built to host the most important meetings of the Foundation, and the Foundation wasn't in the habit of giving a place a name if it didn't officially exist. As the door opened, Dr. Herrero was greeted by two men in black uniforms. Robert knew one of them, the German, Captain Strauss. He was rapidly making a career for himself, and his presence there made Herrero think about his son, Martin. Made him think about how much Martin hated him. What hurt Robert the most was that Martin had a good reason to hate him.
Strauss saluted him. "Greetings, Dr. Herrero," he said in awkward English. "I have been ordered to inform you that the assembly is about to begin. Your presence is required as soon as possible." Robert nodded and walked down the gently sloping hallway, heading to the conference room. All his confusion disappeared during that walk, supplanted by a sense of urge and anxiety. After all, he was a member of the Foundation, and he had made vows to it. Most of the researchers laughed at those vows, laughed at the old words. Secure, contain, protect. Robert lost a lot for those vows, and they were all he had left. He had lost his wife. He had lost his sons. The words were what he hadn't lost.
Arriving in front of the room, Dr. Herrero stopped, revised mentally the information he had, breathed deeply to calm himself, and opened the door.
The room was occupied by a large, round mahogany table. Around it there were almost two dozen people, speaking in a low tone. There were members from every secret department of the Foundation, though oddly not a single member of the Senior Staff. Robert noted in particular three figures, two men and a woman, in black business suits. He had never seen them before. As soon as he walked into the room, Dr. Jonathan Redwood, the American presiding over the meeting, welcomed him. “Hello, Robert. We were waiting for you. Please, have a seat.” Robert walked to the nearest empty chair and glanced at his colleagues; most looked nervous and stressed. This probably feels awkward for them, Robert thought. Redwood stood up.
"Gentlemen'', said Redwood. "Before we begin, I'd like to remind you all that this meeting is classified Level 5-Black, as per protocol GK-09-Black, and what we are going to discuss today is classified for all individuals without level 5, O5, or GK-X clearance. Our orders come from the director of Project Green King, and to him and him alone do we report our actions.” He looked at the people around him. "Is that clear?'' Everyone nodded.
"Good. In that case, we can begin." he said, clearing his throat. “As you have been informed, Project Green King is focused on the containment of an entity considered one of the most powerful beings the Foundation has ever faced. This being is a reality bender identified as Entity HL-49, or by its original codename, 'Green King.' This entity may have existed for years, maybe decades, before its interactions with the organizations predating the Foundation. At some point after this "discovery", it began to investigate us. Our best psychological profile—"
"Guess," one of the dark-suited men said, his Krakow accent showing. "Your best guess."
Dr. Redwood cleared his throat, looked around nervously. "Our profile suggests that it was scared. It knew that, if we captured it, we'd eventually find a way to keep it contained forever.” Redwood stopped, drank a sip of water and began talking again. "To obtain the information it needed to escape us, the Green King resorted to an ingenious strategy, as Operative Magnus will now explain you. Magnus?”
The dark-suited heckler from before stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Redwood. Green King, thanks to its abilities, managed somehow to create a reality bender under its control using only an ordinary man. This person, contained by us, is SCP-343. His infiltration was total, and after him came others, but for a long time we didn't suspect anything. And this gave the Green King enough time to spy us…spy on us.” Magnus shook his head at the English phrase.
"Today, we have uncovered three different entities within the Foundation that worked for the Green King," Magnus continued. "And we would have never discovered we were being spied upon at all were it not for the Green King's difficulties in controlling its puppets.'' Magnus stopped for a second, then resumed talking: "It made a mistake. During an attempt to gather information, the entity appears to have suffered some sort of episode or break; during this, its puppet, a young Palauan girl, was freed from its control and began confessing to us that it had been "possessed," as she put it, by a being that was giving it anomalous abilities and monitoring its interactions with Foundation personnel. In combination with the already extant evidence of the Green King's existence that the Foundation had, we were able to deduce this particular entity's involvement. That was the beginning of our problems. It became more careful, more shrewd, it found methods to prevent us from finding it. We continued looking for it, winning some battles, losing others. The situation, however, remained somewhat stable. Back then, the Green King was a powerful reality bender, but still a reality bender like many others, simply trying to escape from us.''
Magnus lowered his voice. "Operative Amber will continue the briefing from this point." He sat, and the black-suited woman sitting beside him stood up.
"On 11 February 1974, during our sole offensive measure to date, two unnamed mobile task forces launched a direct assault upon a suburban home in eastern Pennsylvania where it was believed the Green King was basing its operations at that time."
"Its base was in a populated town?" one of the other, unnamed researchers asked.
"This is not a press conference," Operative Magnus said. "Please remain silent throughout the briefing, Taurus." He turned to the woman. "Please continue."
"During the attack," Amber continued, "two civilians were killed. Judging from radio transmissions from operating agents in the field, the civilians were between the ages of eight and fifteen years of age, both male. Entity HL-49 was engaged moments thereafter, the entity apparently having discovered the deaths of the two civilians in the house. A screaming was heard over the radio just before contact with the assault force was lost entirely. Moments afterward, an explosion was registered within the on-site fission reactor of Site 86, from which the assault was launched. The Site was lost with all hands."
The room sat in silence while the assembled individuals absorbed this information. Operative Amber continued moments later.
"Event E-GK-04 was one of the largest attacks against the Foundation ever recorded in our history. Perhaps most frighteningly, our psychological analysis of the Entity suggests that its restraint came primarily out of a lack of thorough intelligence gathering."
"Restraint?" a voice in the room said.
Operative Amber paused, looked at the speaker. "The Entity's restraint in not killing every man and woman working for the Foundation was due to ignorance. It didn't take the time to track us all down, then burned down one of its best leads; one of its operatives was working out of that Site. The annihilation of Site 86 was, in the end, just a self-defence act, and the Green King kept running away without any actively hostile action against us, but it was starting to break down mentally. It might have lost its mind entirely. Then, it…" Amber paused a moment, cleared her throat. She briefly made eye contact with Herrero, looked down at her notes. "Several years later—"
"I can tell the story from here out," Herrero said. Robert stood up, slowly, while the people in the room looked at him. His blue eyes seemed like trying to incinerate Amber. He knew she knew the story; at least, her version of it, but he was nevertheless raging. It wasn't her place. "Sit down," he said to Amber. "Now.'' The wrath in his voice made the woman turn pale slightly, and she sat.
"I was twenty-seven when I met her, my wife." Herrero continued. "We met in a park one night, late at night, later than either of us should have been out. We were both running away from something, wandering, hoping to find something better, and we found each other. She told me about her first love, the breakup. I told her about mine. I told her a little bit about the Foundation, some of it a cover story, some of it…maybe more than I should have. She told me about her job, how much she hated it, how much she—"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand how this is relevant—"
"You can wait a goddamned minute, Jeff. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to call you by your names. But you dragged me in here, and you know what you're asking me to do, and I know what you're asking me to do, so you can sit through my little pity party." Herrero sighed. "It was a quick courtship, a quick…it was just all so fast. I fell in love with her. We were happy, for the first time in our lives. That was all I knew."
"One morning, right around four o'clock, we were asleep. I was restless, I got up and went to the kitchen. Right at that moment, there was an explosion. Explosions. An attack. I was a desk worker, I had no experience with what was happening. I was knocked unconscious by some force. When I woke up, I was blindfolded, tied to a chair. A voice kept asking me questions, random questions. Pain happened. I blacked out."
"The Green King used torture? Can't it—" The black-suited man stopped, seeing the look Magnus gave him. Robert couldn't see that look, but he was sure the operative wouldn't be interrupting again.
"No," Robert said. "Two mobile task forces swarmed our house, took me into custody. She had left already, had known what was coming. The Foundation had figured it out somehow. It was just another operation for them." Robert looked up at the ceiling. "She knew I worked for the Foundation. It was infiltration for her, at least at the beginning. Maybe the whole time. I lost my wife, and I'll never know if she felt anything for me or not or if she used me to get to the Foundation. I'll never know if she thinks I set her up. I'll never have an answer to that I can believe. Ever."
The room was silent as the implications set in.
Redwood stood up and coughed, embarrassed. Then he spoke: "After… after this Event, E-GK-06, the Green King became actively hostile to the Foundation, and the leaders of the Green King Project decided to make its existence a secret to everybody but a few personnel. This happened twenty-five years ago. And now, I'll let Operative Taurus conclude.'' Then he sat, and he looked sideways at Robert, feeling bad for him. Robert looked like he had lost all energy, and simply sat there, staring at the table.
Operative Taurus, a corpulent Hispanic, stood up: "Since E-GK-06, the Green King has become more hostile, dangerous and aggressive to the Foundation as time passed. As years gone by, the deterioration of its mental and moral conditions, which had stopped during its relationship with Dr. Herrero, resumed at an even faster pace. Now, we think it is at a final stage. As the psychological evaluations say, the Green King is tired, exhausted, and doesn't want to fight or hide anymore, and these discouragement and depression can lead to unpredictable consequences. As you know, four days ago we had two more Events, and yesterday Site 40 was attacked. We know the Green King is involved.''
"Thus, the Green King Project leaders have decided to eliminate this threat once and for all. The Neutralization Committee expressed their agreement, and our R&D division has developed a weapon that we believe will be able to render the Green King harmless for enough time to kill it. All what we need'', he said, looking at the people around him, "are the right time and place, and a bait to lure it and maintain it in the same spot for enough time to let us activate the weapon."
The people around the table started talking all together, and Taurus had to speak up to make them stop. "It will have to be a carefully chosen bait. Considering its hate towards us and its powers, we'll have to choose the right person, someone able to speak with it for several minutes without being annihilated.'' He looked at Robert. "Dr. Herrero, we think the best candidate for this task is you.''
The room was again silent. Everyone was speechless. Robert seemed not having heard at first, then he started emitting a guttural sound that made the people around him shiver, while his shoulders winced. The laughter exploded, harsh and raucous. The laughter of an insane man. It seemed like boiling water was gurgling in the man's throat, and when it faded, its echo resounded on the walls. Dr. Herrero stood up, his face darkened and pointing towards the floor. He spoke with a low and dreadful tone.
"You are asking me to help you kill the woman I love, trying to take advantage on an oath I took when I was too young to really understand it and that I am too honest, or stupid, to stop observing. You take advantage on the fact that I haven't seen her for decades, hoping I accept. Now tell me, you manipulative sons-of-bitches: why should I do it?''
"Dr. Herrero," Magnus said, a frown flashing across his face.
"No, goddammit, I deserve an explanation. You tell me exactly why I haven't given enough yet."
"Robert."
Robert threw his hands up. His mind was confused, but in the great storm of thoughts, one of them stood mighty and beautiful, like a beacon in the darkness. I would see her again.
Am I ready? I know what they'll ask me. Am I ready?
He looked up, and a single, bright tear fell from his right eye.
"All right. I'll do it."


From Bernard Fall's article "New Technology and a Familiar Strategy in Viet-Nam," published on December 28th, 1966.

A desperate fight broke out on the far side of McNamara's Plaza just as I sat down to interview General Roland. Even at a distance we could hear the rattle of machine-gun fire flare up before being drowned out by nearby batteries of heavy guns. Exploding artillery shells echoed through the hazy morning, rattling all the windows in downtown Saigon but failing to faze my impeccably uniformed host.
General Roland is part of the new breed of American fighting men, a veteran of Korea tapped to oversee one of the most sensitive aspects of Lyndon Johnson's escalation. Big, tall, he carries himself with a brusque, almost rambunctious air; surface informality conceals a quick mind and a deep belief in the inevitability of American success — if they can just get their hands on the right tools.
We had met to discuss the latest generation of “Special Talents” soldiers whose recent, spectacular debut rests at the center of the Army's newest push to bring some resolution to the nineteen year old Indochina War. The current hostilities, a large Viet Cong raid on the outer defenses of the city, were an unscheduled backdrop to the meeting, but the general refused to be deterred by the percussive interruptions, and seized on one particularly significant blast as fuel for a tangent.
“All that stuff you hear out there,” he said, gesturing expansively towards the distant blasts, “is ours. Our planes find every Viet gun that gets within twenty miles of Saigon and smash it. Meanwhile, our heavy artillery puts out more firepower per square mile than any other army in history. We have complete weapons dominance over the Viet Minh.” He paused, rapping his knuckles on the desk. “What we haven't had is a certified way to chase down the Viets in their holes and through the jungle. At least, till now.”
The general's confidence was not wholly persuasive. Previous administrations had made similarly strident announcements of similarly decisive breakthroughs. Not two years previously, large batches of ultramodern auto-defoliants intended to destroy the enemy's jungle concealment had been deployed in tremendous concentrations in order to create a “firebreak” around the Vietnamese capital. The resulting strip of desolation, eight miles across and almost forty long, bears the name of McNamara's Plaza in dubious tribute to its primogenitor.
An even earlier wonder-weapon promised to end the threat of Viet Cong tunnel complexes. Much was made of an array of specially constructed stakes which, when activated, sent massive waves of vibrations through the ground in order to shake any concealed excavations to pieces. The system proved far more effective at splintering the concrete roads on which Western forces depended than collapsing the enemy's deep tunnels.
General Roland shook off comparisons to earlier experiments irritably. “Everything you're talking about comes from the same period, the same mind-set. A failed mindset that the army has put behind it.”
“Today our operations are governed by our mobility, a mobility which the enemy totally lacks. Eleven years ago, the French had one hundred and sixty-seven aircraft to serve the needs of all of Indochina. Today, we send out that many planes on a single mission,” he said, warming to his theme. “Our air cavalry responds to Communist incursions before they can withdraw, and the boys in Special Talents predict those incursions more reliably than ever before.”
Details regarding the Special Talents units, or “Spectrals” are exceedingly difficult to come by, but any old Indochina hand knows that in mentioning only their intelligence functions the General far understates the extent of their activities in the field. No doubt the men of the 388th Independent Special Company would not recognize the character of their operations in that limited description.
“The Special Talents give us incredible precision,” Roland continued, “and what that precision means for the people of Viet-Nam is security, plain and simple. Security from Communist intimidation, security from Communist extortion…”

Letter from Bernard Fall to his wife, February 11th, 1967.

My beloved Dorothy,
There is a whole new war here, a new type of war, industrial and implacable. The American war machine has become unrecognizable.
Out in the jungle bear-clawed women hunt the Viet Cong through their own tunnels for hours before emerging. Airborne commandos on interdiction patrols carry weapons which calcify their targets in the blink of an eye. Villages suspected of sheltering the enemy are plastered in napalm that collects itself into a moving mass of fire and waits for survivors to emerge from cover before flaring back into life.
The administration's claims that such “special talents” represent a natural progression of any known science are utterly false. Perhaps no explanation for these things is possible.
Our government has chosen to fight the beliefs of a whole people with incomprehensible violence because they are totally unable to offer any alternative to Communism but poverty and corruption. Everywhere the absolute contempt of the Saigon clique for the people of Viet-Nam is clear.
For twelve years I have studied the conflicts of Viet-Nam and written and warned. I fear there is nothing more I can do here, except come home, and tell the world what they have done. I do not know if they will allow me.
Give my love to our daughters. You mean the world to me. I will be with you soon.
BF

Bernard Fall disappeared on February 21st, 1967, while on patrol with a company of Marines in the war-torn region of Viet-Nam known as the "Street Without Joy." The fate of his final letter is unknown.

« What the Spybird Saw | Hub | SCP-2498 »


"What happened to the boy?" The children started intently at their older brother over the fire.
"Why, he was eaten by the Lion that Stalks the Night, of course. Each of his limbs was eaten by one its mouths and the rest of him was split between the sixth and the seventh," the brother answered with a smile.
The girl gave a shriek and drew her hands to her mouth. Her younger brother started to cry. The elder brother looked on impassively. It would be a week before his younger siblings would be able to sleep peacefully. He doubted that they would be able to leave the hut after sunset without thinking of the Lion that Stalks the Night. That would teach the little bastards for throwing cow dung at him.
In a place that wasn't a place, the lips of the Lion that Stalks the Night twisted into seven monstrous smiles.

It had existed long before Homo sapiens sapiens, finding its home in the night and other dark places. For a long, long time, it had existed as only an inarticulate idea, unthinking and unnamed, banished with the coming of the dawn. But that had been before the story. The story had changed everything.
Now it had focus. It had names, more names than it could count. Pinyin Si, Nidab, Ariman, Shanem, Kadeeb, Angra, and many, many more which had been forgotten a hundred generations ago. With each story it was told through, it changed. Even from telling to telling, it never stayed the same. Sometimes it was a foreign warrior, village-burning, woman-stealing. Sometimes it found itself as a dragon, fire-breathing, hero-slaying. Sometimes it was a god, wrath-bestowing, death-bringing. Sometimes it was victorious, as a lesson to wicked children who wouldn't obey their parents. Sometimes it was defeated, as a salve to the fears of those same parents. In every story, it fought a different foe. Sometime it fought the Hero, the King, sometimes the Brave Village Boy. But every time, the story changed.
It was what was unknown. What could be out there. Disease, bloodthirsty enemies, monsters, curses, death, many thing worse than death.

"You're going to what?"
"Write it."
"You're going to put the miracles of Sudita, his conquest of Ur, his begetting of the lineage of the King, his slaying of Gilgali, onto mud?"
"Well, yes, I'm going to do that But more importantly, his name will be kept. Look in the archives some time. What do you see? Records of taxes, taken by men who have been dead for years. You can still read them. This way, Sudita will still be remembered, long after you and I and the King are all dead."
"Who's going to read it, anyway? Other tax collectors, checking grain returns with their reeds? Are they supposed to go out and tell the stories of Sudita to the people? Which of them is best suited, I wonder? Abumum? Or maybe Damurru could fart his way through? Oh, I know, how about Nidita? I'm sure that the people would love to hear him stutter the begetting of the King's line! 'And he l-l-laid w-w-with her for th-th-th-three d-days a-and nuh-nuh-nuh-nights…' The King will have you gutted for this, you know, right?"
"You're missing the point."
"Oh? Then please enlighten me, O soon-to-be-disemboweled cousin of mine! Please, share your brilliant plan of writing down Sudita's travels, like it's a gods-damned contracted!"
"Writing it down means the story can be understood long after we died. What if, gods forbid, the story-tellers forget the tale of Sudita? What then?"
"… You really have gone off the deep end haven't you? Fine. Write down the tale of Sudita. Present it to the King. Just don't expect me to help when he has your arms cut off and your eyes stabbed out for your disrespect."

It was enjoying itself, insofar as it could. At the moment, it was a fat, bloated ogre, a wily python, a child-devouring beast with ten eyes, and many thousands more. It was triumphing, losing, destroying, stalking. In one story, thought by a small, frightened boy on a spit of an island, it was a large lizard devouring an entire family. It smiled, rather enjoying the story. It hoped that the story of the family-devouring, invincible monster would become a strong, powerful tradition, told again and again, each time gaining in ferocity. Then again, it liked those kinds of stories, the free-floating, idle day dreams, where it could move almost to its heart's content, almost devour everything.
Suddenly, a part of it was Gilgali. This was odd, as it wasn't the Day of Strength, when the stories of Sudita and Gilgali were told, but it wasn't that unusual. People liked to tell stories of the slaying of the mad tiger. It didn't begrudge them their enjoyment. However, as the hero drew closer, Gilgali noticed something odd. Everything around Sudita seemed to get… actually it wasn't sure. Sharper, maybe? Buildings held their forms, trees stayed in place. The faces of the villagers begging Sudita for aid against Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes, stopped shifting and became solid. Sudita, Lord Of All Men, Founder Of Imar, charged to the cave to destroy Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes, as he had done a thousand times, where he would slay Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes, as he had done a thousand times. For the first time, though, Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes was unsettled.
The pain struck before Sudita, Lord Of All Men issued his challenge to Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes. It was yanked out of its many possibilities, jerked into one. This time, it did not hear the words describing it, only felt them. They fell like chains, binding it as Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes. "From atop his trove of jewels, Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes," the chains began, "roared in response." It cried out in response, feeling each word -no, not word, shape- etched upon its sides, its arms, its eyes, like fire. "He swiped at Sudita, Lord Of All Men, Founder Of Imar, but was too slow."
It felt "the spear of Sudita, Lord Of All Men, Founder Of Imar," (no longer a club or a sword or an axe) plunge through its heart (no longer its head or its eye or its gut). The pain of death was nothing new, but somehow this one was. "Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes heaved a mighty last breath and fell on its side." The linked shapes which dragged it to its side (not longer its back or its belly) burned more than the spear itself. It felt itself swiping at Sudita, Lord Of All Men, Founder Of Imar, but found itself too slow, it heard his challenges and responded with a roar.
Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes shut its lantern eyes as it died, and waited for the story to end. But it didn't. It saw Sudita, Lord Of All Men, Founder Of Imar, as he defeated the Six Wicked Lords and founded the city of Imar and bedded Ninla, begetting the line of Kings. But it was still swiping at him, hearing his boasts, feeling the spear driven through its heart, dying. Every moment was suspended, each as real as the next.

The victorious warlord moved through the dark blood-stained halls of the Palace of Imar, surrounded by humming gaggle of priests.
"But as promised-"
"Are you sure that-"
"A new temple to Ammetu and fifty gold pieces apiece was-"
"-could anger the gods…"
The warlord paid them no mind. The reward for their treachery would be given in due time. Most likely, he mused, in the form of beheadings. Never trust a traitor, his father had told him.
They entered the dark throne room, the dim glow of several torches the only light. The king still sat on the throne, his eyes open in uncomprehending surprise. His robes were stained dark red beneath where the priests had slit his throat. Before the throne laid a small heap of clay tablets. The warlord gave the king's body a push, toppling it from the throne. He gingerly picked up the rod of kingship and sat down.
"All hail King Cambises the First, ruler of Paadu and Imar, Lord of the World, Bringer of Rains!" The priests surrounded the throne in a semi-circle. The King looked on with disinterest as they continued their adulation. A pair of slaves discreetly removed the former king's corpse. When the priests were done, Cambises pointed to the heap of tablets before him.
"What are these?" he asked to no one in particular.
One of the priests stepped forward. "Your grace, these are the records of Sudita, the Founder of Imar. They tell of h-"
"Burn them." The king flicked his rod in the direction of the priests. "Or smash them, or whatever. I don't care. Just destroy them. Imar has no history before now, understood?"
"B-but your worship, a display of such… disregard for a man such as Sudita, Grandson of Pazhu, could ang-"
"I'm sorry, was I unclear?" The king sat up straight in his throne. "Get rid of them. Now."
"Y-yes, your worship." The priest bowed and gathered the clay tablets for destruction.

In a place that wasn't a place, Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes felt itself freed from its bonds. It gave a monstrous grin.


I remember my birth. There were flashes of life before I was born. Self was the first. Quorum was the second. Fight and Flight arrived together. I was aware but unaware until the day of my birth.
I was born at the edge of the jungle just beyond the riot of growth that grasped out at the passing sun. The plants below strangled and shaded, poisoned and parasitized the bodies of the grasses and trees. Time is limited for the plants that cannot withstand the attrition of the expanding canopy. Animals take advantage of the tangle; it was no different on my day. To this day I thrive at boundaries.
A family approached the edge of the jungle on a mission. Some were in the canopy moving hand over hand, branch over branch. Others remained below in the underbrush, tightly grouped and cautious. Infants clung to their mothers, wide-eyed and wrinkled. They stared out at the world as only infants can. I stared with them. Some of the young hooted in excitement but are quickly silenced by the body language of the elders.
They said:
Here is the edge of the jungle.
Here is the plain.
Here the family is exposed.
A grey-bearded elder changed direction. She had found what they sought.
Just beyond the tree line grew the hill of food, a hill of baked clay pock-marked with holes. The ground around the hill was bare for the plants could not grow nearby. There would be no canopy, no sheltering grass. The family would have to go into the open.
Some of the elders approached the hill of food, watched by young, hidden in the underbrush. The elders with the least hunger, or least status, sat around the edge of the hill watching the grasses and brush beyond. The hungriest and most respected of the elders bit off shafts of grass or sappy twigs and skinned them down to their cores. The elders dipped their twigs into the holes of the hill of food and waited.
The food within the hill did not like being poked and so angrily bit the twigs. Some of the food hissed in rage; some tried to climb the twigs. The elders were unafraid and nibbled the food as it protested. Some shared with each other, those nearby or those watching the grass. Food was to be had. All was well for the family.
The young were curious. Soon some had left the underbrush, emboldened by the contented sighs and hoots of the elders. They began themselves to poke the hill of food. Sometimes the food bit them causing cries of distress. Sometimes they managed to eat the food before it escaped or fought. The elders shared with the young and the young imitated the elders. The family was learning.
Movement.
A hoot of alarm.
The family tensed, seeking a direction to flee.
Out of the underbrush another family emerged bearing stones and heavy branches. The other family approached a coula nut tree.The young climbed up into the tree and shook the branches in excitement. While below the other family's elders gathered the best nuts. The other family braced the nuts against the stones and swung the sticks against the nuts with all their might. A chorus of excited hoots arose over the percussion of delicious crunching.
The family on the food hill was at first perplexed with these interlopers. What was that other family doing? How could they put those tree stones in their mouths? A few more nervous hoots passed through the family.
At this point the interlopers ceased their nut cracking having taken notice of the family on the food hill. The interlopers were stunned. There was a family sitting on the hill of horrible, stinging, insects, consuming the little monsters with reckless abandon.
They are us but they are not us. They are strange. Emotional consensus was building among the respective families. All of them were covered in fear-smiles and danced threat displays. Danger. One of the more aggressive males found a stick covered in the angry, stinging inhabitants of the hill of food. As he raised his arm to heft the stick I became aware of my own existence. As the stick landed in the middle of the frightened, confused nutcrackers I slid behind their eyes. I instinctively stuck my fingers into their hypothalamuses and twisted.
By the time I was finished the two families had scattered. One elderly male lay concussed on the ground, felled by a rock hurled in fear. I lingered until the predators found him and then woke him. I hovered over him as his brain pieced together that he would no longer exist. When just before he died I clutched at his memories and followed their trail into the jungle. I lived among his family for many years, always at the edge of the sleeping grounds, waiting. In time I would spread to their extended family and follow them out of the jungle. I was the predator lurking within pareidolia in every shadow and every pattern.
Through your fearful eyes I have watched as you crawled onto the plains. I've seen lions take your kills, take your children. Your migration north, east and west spread me across the planet. I stalked you in the winters when you learned of the snow. I laughed when you drove your cousins to extinction. I wanted to kill you when you befriended the wolves. When the ice creaked beneath your feet as you crossed the sea I ate your worthless prayers. When your families reunited I swam in your mutual ignorance and drank of your arguments.
Now I live in the moments just before sleep. Will you wake? I frequent hotel rooms. Can you trust those before? I walk behind travelers on foreign roads. Have you made a wrong turn? I delight in the daily failures of weathermen. Will the snow ever stop or the rain ever come? I bask in mistranslation. What did you say? I will be happy when maps are covered with 'here be monsters' and none dare explore. Why risk it? I long for the death of trust, of certainty. Who knows?
Words must fail.


* **CoolGuy95 has joined #post-phenomart
Welcome to Post-Phenom Art - RULES: www.pastebin.com/GHeXgyQW | Topic: Non-Euclidean Sculptures: Overdone or Underdone?
Topic set by TheEntirePolishArmy on Sat Jan 11 2012 00:47:55 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
Phenylalanine: so baisically you just need to work on your shadding
blusepth: okay
Phenylalanine: hey coolguy, welcome to postphenom. you're new here right?
CoolGuy95: Hello people. I'm new.
jorgumander: ASK HIM THE QUESTIONS!
blusepth: ASK! ASK!
CoolGuy95: questions?
Phenylalanine: 1. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PIECE OF POST-PHENOM ART?
Phenylalanine: 2. HAVE YOU EVER CREATED ANY POST-PHENOM ART YOURSELF?
Phenylalanine: 3. HOW DID YOU FIND US?
CoolGuy95: I would say Stendhal's Nightmare.
CoolGuy95: No, and a friend of mine mentioned you guys.
blusepth: Who?
CoolGuy95: She said her username is autotrophic or something like that.
Phenylalanine: Ah, you're with autotrophia. She's cool.
Phenylalanine: Well, the initiation is complete. your free to go
blusepth: ONE OF US.
jackomundo: ONE OF US.
CoolGuy95: So you guys are Are We Cool Yet?, right?
blusepth: ah hell noes
jackomundo: nope
Phenylalanine: No
CoolGuy95: but, I thought you guys did post-phenomenological art?
jackomundo: well yes
CoolGuy95: i thought that was kind of AWCY?'s thing.
Phenylalanine: We do post-phenom art, but we're not AWCY. You can't really be AWCY. It's like, a kind of meme really.
blusepth: AWCY? is definitely not cool.
Phenylalanine: Everyone is really damn tired of AWCY jokes.
CoolGuy95: okay
jackomundo: .tell AWritingDesk https://i.imgur.com/bnCs3.jpg
VanGogh: Acknowledged.
Phenylalanine: So we've moved away from using AWCY in just about anything. It's an old, worn out joke that no one laughs at anymore.
blusepth: Also, AWCY? kind of got used by people who used post-phenom art in a way we don't really approve of. Like Stendhal's Nightmare. What's the point of making beautiful art if people can't appreciate it without dying or going crazy?
jackomundo: ^
Phenylalanine: These days, not many people do much of that "edgy" crap. At least not in our little circle.
CoolGuy95: I really didn't know all this, I just heard a little about AWCY and I thought it was interesting. I figured it would be a good way to expand my experience in art.
Phenylalanine: Its fine
jorgumander: yea, you're new here after all. can we see some of the stuff you've done before?
CoolGuy95: Sure. let me dig some of this stuf up
Epimonsterous has joined #post-phenomart
CoolGuy95: it's not post-phenom, but here it is: https://i.imgur.com/AD9Lz.jpg
Epimonsterous: ooh are we reviewing art?
jorgumander: not bad, but not good either
Phenylalanine: I kind of like it, but it feels like it needs a lot refinement.
blusepth: it needs to be in color, like psychodelic swirls and stuff
Phenylalanine: Hey Epimon, we're just taking a look at this new guy's stuff.
Epimonsterous: Eh. The shapes are a little lopsided, and your shading needs work.
CoolGuy95: Is it really that bad? I mean, I know I'm not great but…. D:
blusepth: keep practcing, its the only way to get better
jorgumander: ^
jackomundo: background landscape would help too.
CoolGuy95: thanks for the feedback guys
Phenylalanine: You take criticism pretty well, that's good.
CoolGuy95: thanks
jorgumander: so people, today I put together a quick tutorial for people new to post-phenom. just a simple animated picture.
jorgumander: https://i.imgur.com/xsnISqj.jpg
blusepth: lemme look
jackomundo: the writing is kind of sloppy.
Phenylalanine: I can barely read it, but I think I know the process you're describing.
Phenylalanine: The one with the crystals and rat blood?
jackomundo: yes
Phenylalanine: That's a good one, tried and true. Still, you really need to improve your handwriting. Maybe use the text tool in Photoshop instead.
CoolGuy95: it sounds interesting
blusepth: jacko's tutorial is pretty hard to read, but it is a good technique for you to try out CoolGuy.
jorgumander: yea, it is pretty simple and cheap.
CoolGuy95: I think I will. I can read the tutorial well enough since my own handwriting is bad.
Phenylalanine: It would be good for you as an artist. It's always a good idea to experiment in new mediums.
CoolGuy95: I'll get started right away. I can get a mouse from the pet store down the road.
Phenylalanine: One thing before you go CoolGuy.
CoolGuy95: ?
Phenylalanine: If you see the letters "SCP" in that order anywhere, on a truck, on a building, on someone's clothes, anywhere, drop what you are doing run.
Phenylalanine: Run like you have never run before.