September 19, 2011:
The blood, thankfully not his own, rolled down Lament's arm as he shook the woman again, trying to get her attention. It was a lost cause, he suspected. Judging by her eyes, her expression…. Severe shock. And unfortunately, he didn't have the time to carry her out. With a sigh, he stood up again, leaving her there and opening the heavy, metal door. He peered out, hearing the creak and groan of the shifting walls, wincing as he heard the snap of a shearing bolt.
He worked his way down the hall slowly, now, glancing over his shoulder occasionally as he kept his revolver at his side. He grimaced slightly, wishing he'd brought his other sidearm—the one that held more bullets—but the reliability of the old gun, the feel of it in his hand, gave him a level of comfort that the other couldn't. Dodridge would have yelled at him for it, but there are times that comfort and capability with a weapon are more important than flat-killing power. He believed that. Right up until he heard the screeching sound, followed by a long, chitinous appendage entering the hall ahead of him, the shadow of a dangling corpse with eight legs moving over the flat metal walls.
It took him less than a second to realize what it was, about two to assess the area completely, and only one for him to decide on the office to his left. He tried the door, finding it locked, then took a step back, kicking it hard and getting inside.
The red, glowing emergency lights were all he had to see by, and as he shoved the desk against the door, he heard the thing scratching at it. A moment later, he pushed the filing cabinet on top of the desk, upending it with the adrenaline surge that he was riding, then positioning himself against the far wall, taking a deep breath and double checking his sidearm. Then waiting.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
He let the breath out when the scratching stopped, leaning against the wall, sliding down it and looking around the room. It took him a moment to realize where he was. It'd been a while since he'd worked with the man—a promotion followed by a reassignment had taken him away from Site-19 in 2006—but he recognized the accouterments. The spartan elements were the first indication, but the three pictures, all upended and in the floor now, were the only other indication he needed. He looked down into the face of the passive, bald man, and immediately regretted his choice of hiding place.
Gears.

September 13, 1997:
Everything was fresh and new at Site-19, he thought. Everything was… exciting! There was so much hustle and bustle. People moving around, smiling, laughing. Some looking serious, or angry, or—in the case of the four other Junior Agents he was standing with—extremely, overwhelmingly nervous.
They looked up at the man wearing spectacles and an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt under a lab coat, and Lament wondered, with just a touch of gnawing trepidation, why he was grinning at the lot of them quite so brightly.
“Hello!” The man spoke in a voice that instantly reminded Lament of a professor he'd had in college. That man had been in love with literature, and every action he performed was done through that same overwhelming rapture with the written word. Lament decided that he liked him immediately.

"Welcome to Site-19"

“I'm Dr. Djoric,” the man explained. “Welcome to Site-19! I'm supposed to be showing you around and letting you get a feel for the place. The normal tour guide—her name is Agatha, you'll meet her soon—is currently dealing with a pregnancy or something. So here I am instead! We're going to have a lot of fun!”
Lament wasn't convinced that it was going to be fun at all, but it actually turned out to be. He met a ton of people, including the legendary Dr. Clef, who seemed mostly… bored. And Senior Agent Strelnikov told them some stories over lunch in the mess, mostly warnings, and they got to meet Lombardi, who Lament and one of the other new guys—short fellow by the name of Sandlemyer—had heard about, but no one else had. He honestly felt a little… star struck.
After all, when you're in the Foundation, the other members are the only ones you can really talk to about a lot of things. And when someone develops a reputation, everyone eventually gets to learn about it. Even if it is undeserved.
By the time Djoric brought the group back to the large, white arches and curved glass of the entrance hall, Lament was almost dizzy with the amount of information he'd been deluged in. He got a slip of paper with his on-site quarters listed; notes on where the mess, armory, and various reserves of equipment were; notes on scheduled days off… Then Djoric looked down at his clipboard, clicking his tongue as he turned the pages.
“Right, then. Primary assignments. Most of you will be working under a member of the Senior Staff for the next few months. Some of you will be stuck with them for the next few years. It all depends of how indispensable they think you are,” he said, laughing a little. “Sandlemyer…” he said, looking down at the list. “You're assigned to me!” he said, laughing a little. “So… nice to meet you… again!”
Sandlemyer grinned a little bit, then nodded. “Lab Eleven, sir?” he asked. Djoric had shown them his lab with great enthusiasm.
Djoric grinned and nodded. “Simmons, you're going to… Kondraki. Have fun there,” he said, looking up at the man, then back down again. Simmons didn't seem that bothered by that, Lament thought, but then, he had a PhD. He could probably expect some modicum of respect.
“Jones and Brown. You're both heading over to work with Strelnikov. Do what he says, exactly what he says, and you'll get out alive, huh?” he said, laughing slightly to set them at ease. It didn't seem to work very well, though. Lament had heard that Site-19's security force was a tough duty, and judging from their expressions, they'd heard the same.
Djoric looked down one last time, then frowned slightly, looking back up at Lament. “You don't have a doctorate or anything, do you?” he asked.
Lament shook his head. “No, sir,” he said.
Djoric looked back down again, then shrugged and pushed that consolatory smile back to his face. “Guess he's gotten lonely since Iceberg left us,” he said softly. “Or maybe it's just a mistake. Anyhow… uh… You're assigned to Gears.”
Lament's eyebrow rose for a moment, wondering if this was a joke, and then the other one joined it as he moved from suspicion to surprise. “Are you serious, sir?” he asked.
“As serious as a grave,” Djoric said, still smiling.
Lament decided, much later in his room, that he hadn't appreciated that comment.

« | HUB | Interlude 1 »


November 17th, 1996
Francis yawned. Another night spent in the office, surrounded by the Paperwork Himalayas.
Dammit Iceberg it is not that easy…
Perhaps half an hour earlier he had peeled his head off of his desktop planner and out from under a rather irritated Josie. The cat had taken a liking to him in the last month and a half, or at least his head was the most comfortable. He went through the motions of morning routine in a daze: five minutes under a frigid and unforgiving shower head, a quick brush of the teeth and look in the mirror. Tussled, dirty blonde hair and not nearly enough sleep.
Then again, nobody slept a lot anymore.
Try as he might (which was not trying very hard at all), Francis couldn't shake the daze from his head: his brain felt like pudding in a cotton bowl. He knew he was dressed, but couldn't recall actually doing it. He knew it was morning, but had no clue what time it was. He knew it was Sunday morning, and if he was here, then it wasn't his weekend off. Shit. That meant that most of the staff was home: fewer than a hundred people in the entire place, most of them guards and maintenance. That meant that mooching off of someone who had gone to the grocery store and had more than old ramen in their cupboard was going to be far more difficult than it usually was. This left the only reasonable stand-in.
Breakfast roulette.
Francis wasn't sure who had started the “game”. It wasn't really a game, though. Challenge? It wasn't particularly challenging. Thing people did? That worked. It was a thing that people did. The thing in question consisted of five steps
1) Go to break room.
2) Input “something suitable for humans” into the coffee machine (“random” and “your choice” had ended messily.)
3) Feed the vending machine 500 Yen (change available nearby.)
4) Eat breakfast. Generally.
5) Regret your decision. Usually.
Francis opened the door to the break room. Step one, complete.
The few other inhabitants of the break room were noted, if dimly: One woman, with a scar on her cheek and a sleeve tattoo, one man, with a pencil mustache and an M-16, and one teenage girl, with blonde hair and pink pajamas. All three were sitting on the overstuffed sofa (A buy from a local thrift store. Francis nearly got his foot crushed when he and Ben moved it in). The girl was watching TV, something about a cartoon dog-rabbit thing screaming at a rather dopey looking red cat. The adults looked bored. The woman was staring at some spot to the lower right of the TV, the man was sipping from a coffee mug. The girl was eating fluorescent blue Pop-Tarts.
“Sam. Tony. Iris.” Francis slowly nodded to each in turn as he shuffled over to the coffee machine. Whatever the response was fell on deaf, distracted ears. He punched “strong coffee” into the keypad. The machine dispensed its usual paper cup, followed by a steaming black sludge.
Yeah…that's good. That's good…
He took the cup and turned to the vending machine. Oh, you crafty Japanese. Of course you'd have something this bizarre around a back alley. Francis fished in his pocket, taking out the five hundred Yen he kept in the pocket of every pair of pants he owned (for emergencies).
Ka-chunk
The machine coughed out something that, on closer inspection, was a lumpy object wrapped in thin tin foil. The labeling was unreadable. Francis set down his coffee and tore open the foil, a Russian nesting doll made of molded beef jerky. Inner layers looked to be cheese, processed egg, chocolate, and a few tiny ones he couldn't identify. He'd leave those out.
Francis shuffled out of the break room without another word. Fucking paper work. Dammit Berg it was not that easy.
There was a short silence.
Iris and her two guards looked at each other with a mix of confusion and barely-held laughter.
“So then. Gimp suit wedding dress. That's a new one,” Iris said.
—
Francis walked down the hall, alternating between tearing off chunks of doll with his teeth and gingerly sipping the sludge. He could barely taste either.
Ugh…Why isn't it working. It's fucking bean slurry and I still feel like I have an iron spike driven through my skull.
A low hum echoed from down the hall, followed by a swish of wind, a glint of reflected light and blinding, unimaginable pain. Francis dropped to his hands and knees, screaming, though the word did not do the sound justice: this was something that tapped into the basest, most savage pain of man. What was that on the floor…a pool, a red pool…Blood. Blood everywhere. Red in his eyes, blinding red and black and pain.
Slowly, slowly…painfully…Francis raised a trembling hand to his face.
No…God no…oh God…oh God oh God oh God
His right cheek was wet. He could feel ragged skin and pulped bone and torn muscle under his fingers. His hand moved up, on its own now. Right by his eye socket, in his socket, he could feel cold metal: a long piece of cold metal, slick with blood, with a pointed tip about five inches from where his eye would have been. Should have been.
Francis screamed again. The faces in the wall laughed as the clocks melted and the floor fell away and the meat hooks dug into his flesh and hoisted him to the cockroaches on the ceiling and everything went out like a snuffed candle.
—
“Look, Connor, I realize the danger. Yes, he may end up killing us all. He just might save us too. He can twist reality with a thought, subconsciously, even. Self preservation kept him alive and he's already healed up. If he can learn to control it consciously… yes, I know the dangers involved. We'd be trying to put a god on a leash and employing him. Yes, I do think it's worth it. Bear in mind, he is my student: I know him far better than you, Connor. Yes, I still trust him. No, I am not going to be sloppy: I will have him killed if he can't be trained, trust me. We'll keep him under sedation until we find a proper solution. Tell Dr. Elliot she's inheriting his duties for the time being.”


Rise.
Professor Charles Burrows had no choice but to comply. He had no idea how he got here, or even where "here" was; one moment he was sitting at his home office, catching on some paperwork, and the next he was here, standing alone in an empty concrete room. Alone with the voice.
So good of you to join me, Professor. Come, there is much to see and so little time.
"What? Who are you? What is this place?"
So many questions. I suppose it is to be expected from a man in your position. All in due time, Professor. Let us begin our little tour.
A door appeared on the far wall of the chamber, seemingly from nowhere. Professor Burrows, seeing no other option, walked through it. He was not one to lose his cool quickly; he'd see what this thing wanted, and assess the situation accordingly. He found himself in a bustling office complex: Busy-looking men and women in walked among rows of computers and filing cabinets, occasionally stopping in one station or another to check a monitor or peer at a file. The entire place was a hive of purposeful activity. No one appeared to notice the small man in jeans and a tweed jacket.
Welcome to Site-27, Professor.
He wasn't supposed to be here, Burrows thought. This was a dangerous situation; he might already be compromised. He wasn't sure the voice knew exactly who and what he was, though, and he wasn't about to give it any hints.
"Site-27? Is that some sort of government facility?" he said, feigning ignorance.
The government could never dream of being able to hide itself so well. Even this first level is hidden in plain sight, disguised as the regional headquarters of a major data analysis firm. Most of the employees you see here have no idea what lies beneath their feet. But I do. Let us continue.
Burrows felt his feet edging forward, never stopping to consult with his head. He approached one of the desks. A plain featured, slightly overweight man in a brown suit was sitting at it, staring at his monitor with a blank expression.
This is Robert Helms, junior data analyst. He's been working here for the last nine years, never knowing what this place was hiding under its dull facade. He's not a particularly smart man, although he considers himself one, nor is he especially talented in any meaningful way. He hates his job, likes to fish, loves his family, and overall just tries to get by until retirement. He never expected much from life, and never got much. He will be dead in twenty minutes. His position will be given to some other faceless cog, his family will grieve and move on, and soon enough, he will be utterly forgotten, having made no lasting impact on the world he spent forty two years living in.
"How can you possibly know that?" Burrows asked, more out of anger than anything else. The man, Helms, shook himself out his daze and stretched, his hand passing right through Burrows' chest. The professor jumped back, startled. Helms didn't seem to notice, and stepped away from his desk, heading for a nearby soda machine.
Professor, you disappoint me. I thought you would have realized by now you're not actually here, not in your limited sense of the word, at least. As for how I know what will become of poor Mr. Helms, well, perhaps our next stop will shed some light on that subject. Onward and downward, Professor. Always downwards.
Burrows felt a strange sinking feeling, and looked down to see his legs passing through the floor. He tried to struggle, but every movement he made only made him sink faster. After an extremely unpleasant moment where his eyes and the concrete occupied the same place at the same time, he found himself in a space quite unlike the one he just left; the buzzing chaos of the top floor was replaced with an almost total silence, broken only by the occasional whisper of the scientists working in one of the many stations.
This is the true Site-27, or at least its research wing, home to some of humanity's greatest minds. Like Dr. Spengler right here.
Once again, Burrows' body moved out of its own volition, this time approaching one of the scientists. The man couldn't have been much older than twenty five, a tall, bespectacled man in a white coat.
Dr. Henry Spengler, twenty six years old. With an IQ of 190, he's one of the smartest people alive on the planet. He could have been anything he wanted, and he chose to work for the Foundation. He sacrificed a career in the limelight of the scientific world in order to work in the shadows, helping mankind defend itself from dangers most of them will never be allowed to know even exist. He is, by all accounts, a good, noble man. In his six years working for the Foundation, he saved the lives of at least fifty of his co-workers in one way or another, and his research into various SCP objects saved countless more. He'll be dead in fifteen minutes. For all of his good intentions and talent, his contributions will ultimately have no lasting effect on the fate of the world, and like Mr. Helms, he is doomed to be forgotten, having squandered his potential.
"Squandered his potential? If this man saved even one life, he squandered nothing."
If you were someone else, Professor, I might have thought you actually believe that. You know better, however, as do I. Come, one last stop.
Downwards again. This time, the professor found himself in a long, grey corridor, lined in both sides by massive steel doors.
Site-27's containment area, the heart of the facility. Twenty three Safe level items and seven Euclid level items are stored here. A few of them are of a particular interest to our little expedition.
Following the voice, the professor entered one of the cells. Inside was a small, shimmering creature made of what appeared to be multicolored glass. A humming bird.
This creature is completely harmless in its current form. It is classified as Euclid, since what makes it dangerous is so incredibly rare. It did not choose to be the way it is, it never wanted to be so dangerous. It is an innocent bystander of its own power. Still, they keep it locked up, just in case. If you think about it, "Just in case" covers about 90% of what the Foundation does. Such a careful organization. So…prepared. Or so they think.
A small clink. The door was opened by a large man in uniform. He took a small object from his pocket and laid it on the floor next to the shimmering bird, a metal bullion.
Captain Vincent Tallow, vice-head of security. He got tired of working twelve-hour shifts for six days a week for the pay he was getting, so he went looking elsewhere. He found an organization more than willing to pay him what he wanted, an organization you will soon grow much more familiar with. He thinks he'll have enough time to escape. He's wrong.
The bird noticed the bullion, and quickly started to suck it dry, as if it was a flower. The glow grew stronger and brighter, quickly becoming blinding.
Iridium, its favorite. It will eat and eat until it can eat no more and then, well…
Despite himself, the professor spoke up. "The Foundation is prepared to deal with containment breaches. It's what it's here for. You're not going to do anything with that."
No more feigned ignorance? Good, it was getting tiresome. No, I agree, one containment breach wouldn't do much. But how about two?
The sound of alarms pierced the professor's ears. It came from the next cell over.
Five?
More alarms, now coming from many more cells.
Ten?
The cacophony was ear splitting.
Thirty?
The sound of alarms was now punctuated by screams.
The professor looked around him in horror. The creature burned like a miniature sun, and the steel door of its cell was beginning to melt. "You've got to stop this! You have no idea what you're doing! Do you know how much damage this could cause, how many people will die!?"
Of course I do, and that is the point of this expedition. People will die because they choose to remain powerless, to restrain their ambitions for power in order to maintain a false sense of safety, of normalcy. So many mindless phenomena like that bird can strike you down without a second thought, without a first. Do you not realize the sort of power you may possess if you only allow yourselves to wield it? I'm destroying Site-27 because I can, because I choose to. When was the last time you made a choice, O5-3, a real choice? When did any of you?
The thing knew who he was. It knew all along. "What are you?" O5-3 asked.
I am the Flame in the South, the culmination of human ambition and desire. I am the greatest of the four, that which drives forward. I am the Pulse of the World. I am not your enemy, quite the opposite. I will be your savior, if you'll only let me. I will return humanity to its proper place at the top, even if I have to drag it there kicking and screaming. And the way to humanity lies through the Foundation, as we both know.
O5-03 had nothing to say to that.
I believe I left you with quite a bit to think about. It is time for you to go home.
And just like that, O5-3 found himself back at his desk, piles of unfinished paperwork undisturbed. Next to them, the red phone was ringing. He had no illusions about what the call was about.


You know what my favorite part of a roller coaster is? The climb. You're just inching your way up that hill, and you know that the terrible drop is coming soon. Riding with family is even better. I can see the tension building on their faces as you depart from the station. I love the clicky sound it makes as you go up and up and up and… Down…
I feel gravity let go as you plunge down the first hill. My hair is in my face, and the skin on my face is stretched back. I open your mouth and let out a big scream, and then pull into a loop - eugh, whats all this in the air? It looks all red… What is this stuff?
I don't really care anyways. We're going into the loop! Loops are the best part of any coaster. Especially when you sit in the front row. Man, the dudes in the front row aren't even putting their hands up. Everyone else does, why don't they?
The second loop is even better. It has a really sweet banked turn, so you can see everyone on the coaster going nuts. And those guys in the first row are still being sourpusses, not even lifting a hand. They aren't even… They're not cheering or anything.
No, that can't be true. It must have been a trick of the light. I'm okay, everyone is okay. People are still yelling with joy, the coaster is still on. Nobody is in danger. I'm okay. Time for the third loop of the ride, the cobra roll… Oh god.
I have to get out of here. This isn't fun anymore, I have to get off. I can hear everyone screaming, but nobody is stopping us. Maybe it will stop, maybe it will be okay… Oh god, it's another loop…
I can hear the people in the row before me crying. They're holding each other, crying and wailing… I'm not going out that way. I have to get out of this restraint. Why is it so tight?
It won't let me off.


Shit. That one almost got me. I'll be fine as long as they keep their distance, though. For now at least.
Why? Why the fuck did I have to stumble upon that cave when I was a kid? Why did I go and touch that weird glowing thing?
Sure, it was cool at first. Being able to manipulate time? It's the ultimate advantage. At first, I could only slow down little objects, but I got better over time. Soon, I was able to stop things completely in their tracks. Then I could stop bigger things, and more of them at a time. Eventually, I could stop everything-
Fuck. That one came from behind. It's okay. Just gotta keep the distance.
I'll admit, I abused my powers. I humiliated jerks, teachers, and bad bosses (without giving myself away, of course). I casually strolled into women's locker rooms as they were suspended under the shower heads. I even robbed a bank a few times. I felt like nothing could stop me-
Goddammit, was that a sniper? Shit, I need to find a place to hide. I have no idea how long I can keep this up.
That's the thing. My powers are apparently only temporary. About a year ago, I lost the ability to control how long time is stopped. Suddenly, I could only hold it for so long, and "so long" has been becoming shorter and shorter every since. Now? I can only stop certain objects again. Sometimes, things around me just slow down or stop at random. I'm losing all my control…
…I think they've stopped shooting. Please, god, let them be gone.
But one of the worst things isn't even about losing control. In the periods when I froze time, I still aged. I'm seven years older than my big sister. Jesus, all the wasted hours just fucking around…
No one else knew about my abilities. I started going a little crazy when my powers began to fade. That, coupled along with my age, made my family want to get help, but I didn't want it. No one would understand, and if word got out I'd probably be kidnapped and locked up in some government lab, too weak to do anything about it. One night, my parents confronted me directly. They said they were taking me to a doctor that instant, for my own good. I was so frustrated that I just froze them in time on the spot.
I couldn't get them to move again.
I ran away. I felt bad for leaving my sister, but I wasn't going to drag her into this. I decided that I would rob the bank one last time, just to get enough so I could get out of the country. I still had just enough control over my powers to pull it off. I kinda fucked it up, though. The police arrived before I could grabbed enough cash, and this time I could only manipulate their bullets. I can't even believe I got away without any major injury.
I hid out in this abandoned building with the money. I stole stuff to make a number of traps I learned about online just in case they found me. Good thing, cause they sure fucking did. The traps bought me time, though, and now I've been on the move for the past few days. Obviously, that wasn't enough to lose them, seeing as how I almost got my brains blown out back there.
Oh fuck oh fuck I think I hear them again. Okay, I see a shed. Looks like a safe place to hide.
God, I don't even care about this fucking money anymore. I just wish things were normal aga
-


This message is to be distributed to all Foundation personnel:
In recent weeks, we have lost a lot of good men. To those of you at stationed at Sites far away from their passings, this may come as a surprise, as containment breaches are at a quarterly low. Those of you at the Sites which have lost men know the cause: A mass epidemic of suicides is sweeping the SCP Foundation.
Before you panic, know that our top researchers and doctors have determined that this is not any sort of memetic kill hazard unleashed upon the personnel of the Foundation, nor does it have anything to do with the new set of anomalous objects whose exact properties we have yet to classify. Everything is, as of this writing, still locked up nice and tight. Near as we can tell, there are simply a lot of people working for us who have gotten depressed. As such, this notice has been sent to you in the hopes of preventing any more unnecessary losses. It is respectfully asked that you not take any further action until you finish reading.
A lot has been made of the suicides of Researcher Kermode and Doctor Shears. They aren't the only two who have chosen to take their lives in these past weeks, but they are the ones whose stories have been spread around the most. Their notes indicated, respectively, that they didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and that they held far too much responsibility. Our psychological branches have instructed me to not refute these claims; individually, there's a lot that's bigger than us, and it's entirely possible that we may one day screw up. There is really no point in trying to sugar coat reality, even if it is for a good cause.
The problem with their arguments is that they don't see any of the good we as the Foundation do. Kermode failed to see himself as a part of something working for the greater benefit of mankind, and Shears, while sidestepping the issue, thought only of the gloom and doom the Foundation could bring upon everyone.
In contrast to what those two and many others thought before taking their lives, the situation we are in is possibly one of the best the Foundation has ever seen. We have found a record number of anomalous objects in the past year, gained enough people to more than keep up with our hiring needs, and successfully lowered containment breaches by sixty percent. If we were going to crush the world in our hands, we would have done so by now.
The very idea that committing suicide is somehow going to improve our situation is absolutely ludicrous. However, there is, once again, the fact that we simply live in a very, very grim world. It's hard to get through the day living with the knowledge we have. But you all really do need to remember, things simply are not that bad.
We are doing the right thing. We are being incredibly successful at it. We are making things better. We are actively saving lives. And we need you to keep your life protected. If you just remember that, we can nip this suicide thing in the bum, and get back to making the world a better place.
It's rare for a message from higher up to end this way, but have a nice day.
-Sgt. Lee P.


Note: This story is better read after A Day at the Call Center

Subject: UI-56
From: Special Agent Laura Stanton, Unusual Incident Unit, Los Angeles Office
To: Director McNamara, FBI HQ, Washington D.C
Sir, here is the report for the item we recovered in the raid on Uncle Merl's call center. I have no idea who would buy a piece of shit like that, but apparently this guy has customers- that's how we reached him, after all. So, the item:
UI-56 is a novelty sword made of cheap, recycled metal (mostly aluminum). According to the box we found it in, it's an "Uncle Merl's Durendal Mark III™". There was a pamphlet in the box with it, with some sort of bullshit about what this thing does. I copied it here:

Are you tired of living in a callous, uncaring modern world? Do you wish to return to the old days of chivalry and honor? Now, with the Durendal Mark III™ , Paladin's Delight (Ultra light! With patented Dragon Grip!)", you can! This handy-dandy, multifunctional tool is everything a true knight could ask for! Features include:

Defend the meek! With the Durendal Mark III™, no monster is beyond your just might! Guaranteed 100% effectiveness* against all ogres, trolls, orcs, hobgoblins, goblins and unusually large lizards with sharp teeth*!

Inspire courage and resolve! With the Durendal Mark III™, every fight becomes an epic last stand! Show your boss you are not going to take his crap anymore, the old fashioned way! Use the included magic words to activate!

Impress fair maidens! With the sleek style of the Durendal Mark III™, no comely lass is safe from your rugged, knightly charms! Introduce them to your long, hard length of steel, and watch those chastity belts melt away!

Patented Dragon Grip! Forged in the secret mage-fire of Kromdar, this unique hilt allows for maximum swing power without sacrificing any of the reliability or style!**

*Disclaimer: Any injuries resulting from incorrect use of the Durendal Mark III™ are under the responsibility of the user only. By opening this box, the user waives any right to sue Uncle Merl's Discount Emporium and releases said company of all liability to his/her's medical expenses.
**Replacement hilts are available in gold, silver, black, and hot pink.

We tried doing some tests on the thing before the spooks took it away. Didn't manage much, but that's hardly new. We wouln't have gotten anything at all if it wasn't for the volunteers. I'm adding Dr. Charles' and Dr. Demagne's notes from the lab:

+ Show Test UI-56-1

- Hide

Researchers: Dr. Charles (reporting), Dr. Demagne
Test subject: Agent Carlson
Test: I placed Agent Carlson in a room with an out-of-order vending machine, gave him UI-56 and told him to buy a drink after speaking the "magic words" written on the back of the pamphlet (Latin, "Qui utitur hoc pharse est stultus"). The following result was recorded:
Agent Carlson: [inserts coin into the machine] Ah, soon the cool taste of this godly nectar will fill my mouth with heavenly delight!
[The machine does not produce the requested drink]
Agent Carlson: [visibly upset] What's this!? Ye knavish contraption! You shall dispense my drink forthright, and allow me to taste its frosty secrets, or you shall taste my cold steel!

[The threat appears ineffective]
Agent Carlson: So, thou wishest to face my might?! So be it, fiend! This shall be our final confrontation, a battle to shake the very foundations of the Earth, that will bring fear to the gods themselves! I will rip the sky asunder, cleave the ancient mountains like cheese paper! You will taste my wrath! Have at ye!
[Agent Carlson proceeds to attack the vending machine. UI-56 can't penetrate the vending machine, so he uses it as a blunt instrument. After attacking the machine for thirty minutes without results (other than mild denting), Agent Carlson collapses to the floor, exhausted.
Agent Carlson: I… I have failed. My ancestors peer at me from their lordly seats in disapproval and shame. If I cannot have victory, I shall have honorable death! Farewell, my unclaimed drink! My only regret is that I failed to save you from the clutches of this rectangular devil. Loyal sword, serve your master one last time.
[Agnet Carlson removes his shirt and attempts to fall on UI-56. UI-56 fails to penetrate Agent Carlson's skin, leaving him unharmed save for minor bruising. Test concluded. Agent Carlson suffers no lasting effects, other than a self-proclaimed desire for "silk pantaloons".

My hypothesis is that UI-56 posses mild mind-affecting proportions, causing subjects using it to experience trivial disputes as confrontations of the highest importance. UI-56 also seems to cause subjects to speak in what they perceive as medieval-like language, and makes them cocky too. It's a strange one, no doubt.
Dr. Charles

+ Show Test Log UI-56-2

- Hide

Research personnel: Dr. Charles, Dr. Demagne (reporting)

Test subjects: Agent Ricks (male), Agent Chan (female)

Test: In an attempt to verify UI-56's influence over women, I instructed Agent Ricks (who has a notably poor vocabulary) to hold the sword and speak the words, then introduced him to Agent Chan. The following result was recorded:

Agent Ricks: Do my eyes misguide my, or do I see an extra fine maiden in this here chamber?
Agent Chan: What is he talking about?
Agent Ricks: Come now, don't be shy! Yon bitch knows this knight has all the right gear!

Agent Chan: Did you just call me a bitch!?

Agent Ricks No need to be upset, my petite kumquat. Come, there is a great water serpent in my breeches, and it requires your attention!
[Agent Chan then grappled with Agent Ricks and removed UI-56 from his grasp. She attempted to use UI-56 to harm Agent Ricks in a highly inappropriate manner (in my humble opinion), before security personnel intervened. UI-56 was returned to storage, Agent Chan was reprimanded, and Agent Ricks was escorted to the infirmary]

I really don't know what to tell you about this one, Laura. It's a sword that makes you act like a pseudo-medieval asshole, as far as I can tell. Where do you even get this stuff?
Dr. Demagne.

We also found a coupon with with the pamphlet and UI-56, saying it was for a free tutorial tape. We sent for one and it arrived a few days later, starring no other than two of the clowns we captured during the raid. The spooks came and took that too, but I did manage to write a transcription of it beforehand:

+ Show Recorded Log

- Hide

[Camera opens to what appears to be a mail room. A figure enters the frame, wearing long robes, a pointed hat, and a flower-patterned tie. That's Daniel Monroe, though he likes to be called Danerius. He claims to be a Luxomancer, though I have no idea what that's supposed to mean]
Dan: Greetings, aspiring knights! Today, I, Danerius the Magnificent, will be your guide to the realm of the arcane! Let us begin. [to someone off-camera] minion, bring forth the Sword!
[He's talking to Edmund Sami, a low level manager who works at tech support at Merl's. Strange guy, always wears that mask on his face]
Sami: [off-camera] Who the hell are you calling a minion, Dan? I'm technically your superior!
Dan: Excuse me for a moment, dear sirs. [walks off-camera] Sami, Mr. Jamu placed me in charge of making the video, obviously because he knows which one of us is the real wizard around here!
Sami: Oh, don't you dare! You know the only reason Jamu did that was to spite me! Some cousin, he is. Now get back on camera and let's get this over with!
Dan: Not until you admit I'm the the one in charge.
Sami: If I do that, you'll never let me hear the end of it. No deal.
Dan: Fine, I guess I'll just have to tell Mr. Jamu you're being uncooperative. And that you haven't finished your quarterly performance report, minion.
Sami: That's it, you dimwit Luxomancer, your ass is mine!
[you can hear a scuffle occurring off-camera]
Dan: Not the beard! Not the beard!
Sami: Yes the beard!
[The camera is knocked over. Video feed stops, audio continues]
Dan: Hmm. This didn't go well.
Sami: You better not tell Jamu anything about this!
Dan: No way! He'll blame me for ruining the tape!
Sami: Who the hell cares, Dan? No one is ever going to actually order the bloody thing. Let's just say we're done and get lunch. I think it's pizza day.
Dan: Pizza? Endorius take this accursed tape to the leaky Stygian Abyss then.
Sami: What?
Dan: Fuck it, lets eat.
<End Log>

Anyway, that's all we have left from the raid. The spooks took everything else. I know I should be angry, but this is far more than we usually get. I wonder why they allowed me to get away with that, I'm sure they knew exactly what I was doing. They always do.
Sir, I'm… not sure we did the right thing here. This might sound hypocritical from the one who organized the raid, and I know we don't have the resources to handle this sort of things ourselves, but I still hate doing this. Those people we caught were weird, true, but giving them away to the spooks… You know no one ever comes back once the spooks gets their hands on them. They weren't bad people. They didn't deserve this.
But I guess that's just what we do, isn't it.
Signing out,
Special Agent Stanton.

Subject: Re: UI-56
From: Director McNamara, FBI HQ, Washington D.C
To: Special Agent Laura Stanton, Unusual Incident Unit, Los Angeles Office
Don't rock the boat, kiddo. Just keep your head down and try not to think about it too much. Hang in there, eh? This assignment won't last forever. Soon the entire Huston incident will blow over and we can get you back to the big league. I promised your father I'll get you out of this, and I will.
Oh, and try not to swear so much, it looks unprofessional.
Director McNamara.


August 12th, 1993
The door buzzer buzzed.
“Ah, that must be them now,” Dr. Crow stood up and walked to the door. He always did that: never said "come in", never had anyone else go do it, he always got up and opened the door himself. He wasn't a man to let blindness get him down.
“I'm sorry we're late, Dr. Crow,” a woman's voice came from the doorway. The group around the coffee table turned their heads.
“Oh no, it's no trouble at all.” Crow turned from the new arrivals to those already gathered around his coffee table, revealing three guests: a woman in her mid-thirties, with long brown hair in a braid, a rather nondescript middle-aged man in a business suit, and a balding man with a beard and a pink button-down shirt. “Attention, all! These are the three final members of our group: Doctor Sophia Light, Doctor Everett Mann, and Doctor Simon Glass. They are all good friends of mine, and have worked with me many times in the past. Connor, I am sure you have met them before.”
The doctor, now out of the hospital, nodded slightly.
Crow smiled broadly and walked back to his chair at the unofficial head of the table. He was a man with a friendly smile, frizzy blond hair reminiscent of Einstein, and the quiet, powerful aura of a mafia don. He was, as usual, dressed in a ratty t-shirt and jeans, with his wrap-around sunglasses over his sightless eyes and Kain lying at his feet. Dr. Connor Gerry stood several feet behind Crow's chair like a clothing store mannequin, hands folded behind his back and no trace of emotion on his face. Francis had not known him to be an expressive man before, but now he was simply unsettling.
Dr. Crow clapped his hands together.
“Now then, I think it's about time to start. Benjamin, if you will, please.”
“Mm-hmm. Okay, so. Nemo, Fats and I have gone into the facility three times now, and here's what we have so far.” Ben opened several thick manilla folders one after another, spilling dozens of photographs and sketches across the table. “Turns out the place isn't infinite, but it is big. Really big. The part we ran through last week was just one of the side towers, right here…” he pointed to a sketch of a large cylinder surrounded by eight smaller ones. “Each of the branch towers goes down twenty levels, and is connected the center one every other level. Center one goes down at least forty-five levels. The entire place looks like it's wired and ready to use. It's like if whoever built it just got up and left and took their shit with them.”
“If anyone built it,” Nemo interrupted.
“Yes, yes, if anyone built it. It's not a normal building, if you hadn't figured that out yet. The exits lead to locations hundreds of miles apart: One door went to the arctic, another opened into a cave, and the buildings on the surface look to be somewhere in Nevada.”
“Classic,” Jack said.
“Ayup. Watch out for those pesky aliens and their rogue anal probings.”
There were a few chuckles, solely from Nemo and Fats. Ben paid the response or lack thereof no mind and continued to speak.
“Exploring the place fully will take another week or two, but that's a pretty generous estimate. We weren't able to find the main power station, so it's all in standby mode.”
“And the statue?” Dr. Crow said.
“Right back where we locked it up: Tower 1, Level 7, Chamber 3.” He pointed to the appropriate spot: The sketches already had designations thought up and filled in.
“Good, good…” Crow scratched Kain behind his ears. “Now then, what do you have planned on for your next expedition?”
Francis scanned the photos. Dark, empty hallways and dark empty rooms. Despite the fact that the nightmares had dulled in the last few days, the pictures filled him with apprehension: the statue was still there, in that dark. Still watching. Still waiting.
No, I'm watching you.
The mantra came to his mind automatically now, yanking him back from that precipice. He was the watcher, the statue was the watched. That was the way it was, and how it should be. The statue was just that. A statue that needed storage. What it was capable of was secondary. Merely a statue that needed to be put in the proper place.
Dammit stop drifting off…
“I say we just destroy the thing and be done with it,” John said. He was one of Connor's assistants, a small, shifty-looking man who seemed to be Bright's long lost little brother, if his surliness was any indication.
“And what if you can't?” Sophia said. “What if that only makes it angry?”
“If it doesn't work the first time, then you hit it harder the second time.”
Really, John? You goddamn idiot…
“Not harder. Hit smarter.” Strelnikov this time, another one of Connor's assistants. His accent was quite thick. “To fight directly is stupid. We must get around. Perhaps we find a weakness, eh? Then we strike.”
Smart, but off-base. Re-railing this train…
“And then we throw it away.” Francis said. “John, I don't know what it is that you actually do or why you're here, but I can tell for sure that you're not a scientist. Sure, we could destroy it, but that gains us nothing. If we can keep it locked up, which apparently we can, then we can watch it. And eventually understand it, which can help us when we deal with things like it in the future.”
John sat back in his chair, glaring at Francis. The others seemed to be in agreement: nodded heads and “mm-hmms” throughout the thirteen. It hadn't been much of an argument to begin with.
“That said,” Francis continued. “We need support. While it may be locked up now, we've essentially set it up in an empty room, shut the door, and check in on it occasionally. That won't work as a long term containment plan, even if all of us were to be put on the project today, which I'm guessing we will.”
Adam smiled, and it was the sort to prelude a polite correction.
“Both true and false. I've found that a small group of people in the right place can handle almost anything: It's why I work with all of you in the way I do. While I appreciate your concern for maintaining security of the statue, who would we go to? Would you trust the government to spare us the red tape and help us accomplish anything, rather than taking it all for themselves and bungling the entire thing? Would you trust the public not to go into a panic when they realize that there is a blatant violation of what they thought they knew without an explanation? Any support we'll have will be what we can muster ourselves. There's more brainpower concentrated in this one room than anywhere else on Earth. I'm sure we can make the solutions reveal themselves.
"A good house needs a solid foundation, and that foundation is sitting right here at this table. I'm not going to hand off the responsibility of protecting against whatever or whoever is out there to a faceless bureaucracy: this is a job for people I trust. We have our foundation, now we just build the house.”


What can we, as a species, learn about the threat of hostile extraterrestrials from Columbus' discovery of the New World and the subsequent extermination and subjugation of its Native inhabitants? There were many factors behind the colonization of the New World, most of which are readily obvious. From those factors, we can understand what allowed European powers to overtake Native American societies, and how we can prevent hostile extraterrestrials (henceforth referred to as "HE") from doing the same to the human race.
The most apparent advantage which Europeans possessed over inhabitants of the New World was much more advanced technology. Europeans had gained gunpowder, powerful navies, propaganda, written records, and countless other inventions during the course of history. On the other side of the Atlantic, complex societies such as the Aztec and Inca empires lacked the wheel, and no way of crossing the Atlantic. Due to this technological gap, European monarchies easily and quickly crushed even the most advanced Native nations.
An equal, if not larger, technological gap would likely exist between the human race and any HEs (this, of course, assumes the HE contacts the Earth first, and not vice-versa), as interstellar transport would only be possible with thousands, if not millions of years of technological prowess over humanity. Along with spacecraft, the HEs will likely bring weaponry as of yet not conceived by the human race, medical abilities far beyond our own (to be discussed later), and other inventions we, much like the Native Americans, could not understand at the present date.
How, then, are we to respond to HE technology? In the same way many Native societies responded to European technology: adapting to it. Within several generations, the Comanche tribe of the Great Plains had become skilled on horseback, despite never having encountered them before the arrival of settlers. Many tribes learned to use gunpowder and muskets along with traditional bows and arrows. In one notable example, the Cherokee silversmith Sequoyah developed an entire syllabary for his people based on the Roman alphabet, despite being unable to read or write.
In the same way, the best hope for humanity would be to gain, either forcefully or through negotiation, HE technology. While early usage of weaponry would be restricted to simply using the weapon until it breaks down or is destroyed, efforts would be made to reverse engineer and recreate the item. In the case of the new technology being an abstract concept (e.g. a new system of writing, new way of government), simple observation and interrogation will help us understand the technology.
While technology was a major boon to the European conquest of the New World, the largest killer of Native Americans was European disease. Millions of New World inhabitants died of illnesses such as smallpox, measles, tuberculosis and cholera. At the same time, very few Europeans died of Native American diseases. This was a result of the crowded living conditions in Europe at the time, in which many people were living very close to each other, rarely bathing, and spreading disease. Over centuries, most living in the cities developed genetic immunity to the diseases. When the first colonists reached the New World, the Native Americans were simply unprepared for such powerful, quick diseases, and suffered as a result.
Diseases, in the context of pop culture, are often viewed as the quick, easy solution to an alien invasion. One notable example is H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, in which bacterial infections kill off the entire invading HE force. Though it makes an excellent deus ex machina, bacterial infections would likely be of little danger to HEs. As it was previously mentioned, Europeans lived in much more dense, crowded cities than Native Americans, and it is just as likely that HEs would live in much more dense, crowded cities than human beings. This, coupled with several thousand to millions of extra years of development would result in far more deadly diseases to which we would have no immunity. Even if the HEs exhibited a crippling weakness to human disease, the advanced medical technology in their possession would quickly solve the problem.
All hope, however, would not be lost in such a scenario. Just as many people today fail to receive vaccination against illnesses which are no longer common (foremost among them smallpox), it can be presumed that HEs would have failed to continue immunization efforts against diseases they considered eradicated. By recreating the disease, or at least introducing one very similar to it, a major outbreak could be triggered, much like a smallpox outbreak today. Sabotage of medical equipment and selective assassination of medical professionals would further progress of the disease.
On a final note, in the event of contact with HEs, our species will likely be viewed as "lesser", despite any attempts to prove otherwise. Evidence for such an idea is seen in the multitude of explanations given by religious and government officials to justify the extermination and enslavement of Native Americans, among them a lack of a soul, a need to be "civilized", and that the conquest was God's will. HEs will view humans on the whole in the same light, and treat our species as such. We must be prepared for this moral system, and use it to our advantage. In retaliation, we must remember that an overt attack by HEs would not be a war for hearts and minds, but for all out conquest. We must not make the same mistakes made by the Aztecs, Inca, and countless others.


Last week, we lost Researcher Kermode. He hung himself in his office. Didn't even leave a note explaining why. Everyone thinks he broke under stress.
Well, this week, we're losing me. And I think you all deserve an explanation as to why.
I was working with Kermode on a few projects. We dug up a few… ugly things. Who could have guessed that manuscript would reveal the Foundation going back that far? Or that the fortune teller would show us the possibility of it existing far, far into the future, desperately trying to keep the human race safe even after the apocalypse. Hell, I'll admit I was shaken when we stumbled into the containment chambers even the O5s didn't know about.
Kermode killed himself because in light of all of that, all of those grand achievements that the Foundation's done and will do, he felt like nothing. Just a bug crawling across the surface of the planet, searching for a non-existent meaning. At the time, I didn't really get what had shaken him up so badly. Still didn't for the past week or so. But his death got me thinking.
I still don't see exactly what's so horrifying about being insignificant; it's something every living creature has to deal with. But our work, and the time I've had to think since his death, that's brought me to another conclusion. I'm not insignificant.
I work for the Foundation. Even if I'm only a single unit, I'm still a unit that's working with a million others, working behind the scenes to keep the world safe from impending disaster. We're all part of one great, big machine, designed specifically to keep everyone safe. We here aren't insignificant; we're the most important people on the planet.
And that terrifies me.
Has anyone really ever realized how many people we protect? How many people whose simple existence relies on us not screwing up? There's seven billion individual walking, thinking, innocent people out there who could die the very instant we make a mistake. Hell, in a few cases, a sizable chunk of the universe is relying on us to play our cards just right. Every last little thing is reliant on us, and we're continually one bad move away from ending it all.
And even if we don't screw up, look at all these new threats materializing. We've brought in close to a thousand new objects this year. What was the average beforehand? Twenty? Thirty? Something big is happening. The sheer amount of anomalies popping up tells me that we'll be needing to apply more and more pressure to the world soon. Tightening our defenses, closing up gaps, making every thing safer and safer, always applying more pressure.
We're the protectors of the world. We've got the whole planet in our hands, cupping it with a light squeeze to keep it safe. What happens on the day we squeeze a little too hard, and everything implodes?
I can't be a part of that. I need to get out, right now. Even the time it would take to apply for an amnestic is too long to live with the knowledge that our only two options are utter failure and destructive success. So that's why I'm relying on a piece of lead in my brain.
I've got to go now.
Goodbye.


dear diary
My name is Lizzy Byrn, and i am 7 years old. My mommy and daddy and me just moved in a new house in a town called Frankinberg. Mommy says that we came here becouse of daddys job and so the baby can have new room. i am excited for the baby. Mommy says his name will be tommy and we will be friends. i hope he will be my friend.
Lizzy

Dear diary,
Today when me and mommy were in the top room of the house i found a teddy bear. when i found him he started to move. he gave me a hug! i took him in my dress and hid him in the toy cabinet. i named him benny. he is my new friend.
Lizzy

dear diary
today my friend jenny came over to play with me. when i showed her benny, she said she thought it was the best toy ever! then benny went over to my crayons and drew a picture of me and jenny holding his hands. it was the cutest thing ever. then mommy came in and saw him, and she started to yell about it being un-natral. so she took him away and made jenny leave. i was sad but then later benny came back! i gave him my biggest hug and made him promise to never leave me

dear diar
today mommy had to go to the doctor. i dont know why, but daddy and the doctor said mommy will be gone for a long time now. they wont let me see mommy. i dont know where benny is he went away and now i dont know where he went. the doctor said that tommy is gone too. i want to see tommy he was supposed to be my friend
all my friends are gone

dear diary!
today i went outside while daddy was at the bar. i was out by the bench when benny was there! i picked him up and hugged and kissed and told him i loved him. it was happy. and then the best thing ever happened.
tommy was there too!!!!! he moved kind of funny and he looked like benny on the outside but i knew it was tommy. i picked them both up and took them to the toy room. tommy is all lumpy and slow, but he plays just the same as benny. i love him.
Lizzy

dear diary
today i saw that daddy was sad so i asked him why he was sad. he said that lizzy you need to stop asking so many god damn questions. i asked him if he missed tommy and he didnt say anything. so i went and showed him tommy. daddy went all weird and ran into the kitchen. he wouldnt stop crying and crying and crying. i told him that me and tommy loved him forever. he told me to go. i went to my room and held tommy for a long long time.
Lizzy

DEAR DIARY
Tody i found a new friend. his name is davey and he will be my friend forever. he is made of daddy. i dont know where daddy is but he didnt love me as much as me and tommy loved him i thought daddy loved me he told me he hated me. i dont go in the house anymore. i stay with benny. he brings me and tommy food and we have all the love we need we are a family together with love. nobody can take it away.


☦A story about Tabula Rasa.☦
I knew mommy never loved me.
That is, I am
droplets, connected, separated
multiplying
In a way, I knew from my first splitting
never loved
will never be loved
mommy
I buried myself in you and grew from your blood.
Before my heart beat yours beat for me.
Your flesh encased me, enclosed me.
I dreamed
mud, multiplying
sea, gathering
scales, flickering
air, breathing
limbs, crawling
jumping
running
hiding
praying
prayer
mommy my mommy I pray for you
and yet you pray my end
Outside of my sheath, I can hear it. I hear Mommy, though my bulging eyes see nothing and I have nothing to move with. The liquid, Mommy's water, warm that warms me. Around me, churning, throbbing. Inside me, same throbbing, but different pace. Even now, I feel it. Different, our pace of heart. Yours, impossible to understand. Mine, seeking your understanding. Do you feel it, the life within? Do you name me? Any name, your choice, every choice is yours, beloved Creator, Mommy, I will accept and cherish that blessing. even if it is to deliver to a world without Kind Men
Every day, your body feeds me bits of your self. I grow, healthy, in the warm water, Mommy's water. You feed me your body, give me your body. In a dream, I bit and chewed. Even if your spirit fails, your body gives- I will bite and chew it out. Mommy's heart, impossible to understand but always close to mine, seeking understanding. The water is warm. Your body feeds me, your heart lulls me. Feed me your body, all of it if you need, I will grow in Mommy's water, Her heart, I will eat that too. Feed me everything, Mommy, I will accept and cherish that blessing. If you do not give your body, I will take it, bite it out and chew the flesh- I will accept and cherish that blessing.
Within the warm fluid, I dream and split and multiply further. Mommy is my lullaby and She is my food and She is my home and She is mine. All of Mommy is mine, this blessing I accept and cherish.
I grow. Mommy's body gives food, how I know when a day arrives and leaves. This day was a special day, mommy filled Her body full. Through Her body, there was a sweetness of the food she gave, sugar. A stream of sweets in my mouth and body, I will accept and cherish that blessing. The sugar replaced with a warmth that spreads from Her body to mine. Is it Mommy's love, that doing word?
So full, swollen with bourbon, happiness. The body given to me, swollen, sugar and bourbon. I will bite and chew, I will accept and cherish- her Heart, impossible to understand. The body given is warm in me, the bourbon is warm like the water around me. It feels good. More bourbon, swelling even more. There's muffled noise above me, words of Mommy. They are the same noise, over and over again. The bourbon didn't work Mommy, don't cry, love me Mommy
I dreamed…

 What are you

 DOING

stop

 WHY

  please

stopit
letmego

 STOP IT PLEASE

The world is smaller than my dreams. Mommy grips my flesh in her hands; it's so red. Is it your flesh or mine? I move to Mommy and she lets go to cover her open mouth with her bloody hands. I can still hear her scream The edge of the world is flat and I land on it with a sound between squish and thump. Mommy can you not even touch me? I had eaten your flesh for so long and you cannot bear for me to look at you? Mommy please hold me, please hold me, just like that, pick me up again.

Maybe it was a mistake she did this on purpose
I'll forgive you it is unforgivable
just say you're sorry she never will
put me back I can make it possible

Your face is turned from me as you walk, arms outstretched. I try to hold you, my arms so small, your arms so big. Then you let go and there was another hole, I splashed into water so cold. The world spun and there is splashing and screaming not even the metal wants me the new Mommy pulled me inside of Her. This Mommy is not warm, the water is thick and cold and brown. There is nothing to feed here; this isn't Mommy for me. Mommy will stay with me, I will make it happen. Mommy will come through the hole with me, I pull Her and the pipes groan from Her body. My hands will hold Her with me. Mommy is my lullaby and She is my food and She is my home and She is mine. All of Mommy is mine, this blessing I accept and cherish. Feed me everything, I will accept your flesh until you're bones, I will accept and accept every blessing, every bite. Mommy has given me the world and I will show it everything. I will accept and cherish that blessing.
I understand now, Mommy's heart
I always understood.


August 7th, 1993
Francis played Mingus in his head, trying to drown out the memories that lurked in his leaden mind. He wanted to be able to go to sleep and wake up and have it all be a dream. Just a nightmare. Maybe his whole life up to now was a dream, and he would wake up as a child again, and toddle down the hall to his parent's bedroom.
Dream or no, the saxophone sang out in his head, and as it tried to soothe him he hoped and prayed someone else would do something about this. Call the police, call the military, call anyone. Call for someone else. Someone who wasn't him. Someone take this off of his hands and let him sleep…
No, no…sleep wasn't an option. Anything but sleep. The face still burned in his mind: it hovered there every time he closed his eyes for longer than a moment, staring at him with blank, concrete and spray-paint eyes. Taunting him. Daring him. Mocking him.
You blinked.
Francis shot awake, shaking. There had been a snap. He was sure he had heard a snap. It was still ringing in his ears.
No, no snap. Everyone was still there. Heads attached to necks attached to shoulders. Not popped off like the cork in a bottle of champagne. Four of them sitting around a worn and stained coffee table in Adam's worn and stained apartment. Jack was there, and Agatha, and Adam was on the phone.
“You all right?” Jack asked. What was that, his fifth cup of coffee? While the bags around his eyes were nothing new, it seemed that now they were even more pronounced and dark. He almost looked like a raccoon. A scraggly, slightly overweight and rather curmudgeonly raccoon.
“Yeah…yeah…I'm fine.” Francis sat up straight, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Jack shrugged, and if anyone had taken any extra notice, they did not show it: the circle was, to the man, ragged, and red-eyed. Francis glanced at his watch and counted the hours again: fifty-six since he had last slept. That was before they had found it. Before they found the statue.
He tried bringing up Mingus again. The sweet tones held out for only a few seconds bit before wobbling. Someone's voice dribbled in through the dying notes, followed by the click of a hung phone receiver. No escape from this dream, then.
Adam walked back into the room, golden retriever padding at his heels. He sat back down in his chair as naturally as a man who could still see it. As comfortable as a king on his throne, as he always was.
“Is there any more news about Connor?” Agatha spoke for the first time in hours. The worry in her voice was evident, no matter how much she tried to cover it up. Everyone else was worried, of course, but no one as much as Agatha. Connor was an old friend, a mentor, and possibly a lover, if rumors were to be believed. Francis didn't particularly care at this point. Did who was bedding who even matter when a statue could move?
“John and Dmitri are with him now. He's conscious and talking,” Adam said, folding his hands. “And the doctors say he'll make a full physical recovery.”
A “That's good” was ready on Agatha's lips as Adam shook his head.
“He'll recover, but only physically. Mentally…he's like a machine now. John says he barely speaks more than a word at a time. Mostly yes or no. Shaved off all of his hair and claimed it was “unnecessary”. The memories are all there, but it's not him. Not really.”
Adam scratched Kain behind his ears.
“I'm sorry.”
Silence passed briefly, before Agatha excused herself, holding back sobs.
“Sorry?” Jack said as the bedroom door slammed. “You saved his life.”
“My best friend now thinks he's a robot because he got jumped by a statue that kills people. That's not much of a life, Jack." He slumped down in his chair, looking defeated. Kain licked his hand. “Not much of a life at all. I was too slow.”
Jack set down his coffee. His raccoon eyes were, for once, not angry. Not kind either, but not angry.
“Calm down, man. It's not the time for another breakdown.”
The phone rang again.
“I'll get it.” Francis stood up and shuffled over to the kitchen area. “Need some more coffee anyway.” It was a lie and a truth. He wanted to sleep, he needed to sleep, but he couldn't. Wouldn't. Wouldn't couldn't shouldn't and shan't.
Who was he kidding? He held the receiver up to his ear.
“Crow residence, Francis speaking," he croaked.
“Frankie, dude, you have got to come see this. This place is amazing.”
“Ben? What are you…what place?”
“The place we found the statue, dipshit!”
Francis was sure his heart stopped. It had to have stopped.
“You went back?”
“Yeah, with Nemo and Fats. Do you know how far this goes? We only ran through like, some storage areas or some shit when it was chasing us. This place goes on for miles! It's gigantic!”
“Ben, listen to me. Get out of there. We found that thing in there already, and who knows what else is in there, and it's still in there.”
“But we locked it up.”
“Yes, but…”
“No buts, man. This place is a ghost town. Totally empty. Statue hasn't moved. Lock the door and it doesn't bother no-one so long as you don't go looking at it.”
Francis didn't respond. Dammit, Ben. You had to go back. Probably wanted some photographs or something, like those tourists in Pisa when they pretend to hold up the tower. You'd take that fake katana of yours and pretend to kill a monster.
“Hey, Frankie, still there?”
Francis groaned. He hung up the phone without answering. Stumbling back into the living area was more of a daze than before. They went back. Why would they go back? To prove something? Sheer stupidity? Or to see the statue again?
Why?
Why was any of this happening?
He felt a wave of exhaustion fill his body like water in a glass. Whatever fumes he had been running on, they were out. He could practically feel his brain giving up and shutting down. Or was that his imagination?
So tired…
Francis collapsed in his chair.
“It's Ben,” he managed to say as his eyes slammed shut. He could dimly hear the ringing fade off as the face appeared. It had been waiting for him. Waiting for him to blink, just like Kayla blinked. His consciousness faded swiftly, clawing on to the encroaching dream for a few more moments.
Blink
No…
Close your eyes
No…I won't blink… won't sleep
Sleep. Let all things be undone.
No. No no no no no no NO
I'm not blinking, motherfucker.
I'm watching you.


CAPTION
THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE FOUNDATION ETHICS COMITTEE AND BY THE COGNITOHAZARD DEPARTMENT. REDACTED MATERIAL AVAILABLE ON LEVEL 5 CERTIFICATION.
SECURE - CONTAIN - PROTECT
FADE IN and PAN over a cluttered studio environment, styled as a more colorful and children-oriented version of a scientific research laboratory. Desks crowded with colorful bottles, prop machines and scientific measuring devices, and parts of animals preserved in jars surround an open stage. The walls and floor are heavily graffitied, and two sections of the wall graffiti have been digitally blurred.
PRESENTER #1 enters excitedly. He is a light-skinned man on his early twenties, wearing a purple lab coat over jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, as well as a top hat.
PRESENTER #1
Hello, boys and girls! Who's ready to learn some science with… Doctor Wondertainment?
The INTRODUCTION plays. It is a collage of various science-related stock photos and diagrams, set to a pseudo-zydeco soundtrack. The only lyrics are "Doctor Wondertainment".
BACK ON SCENE:
PRESENTER #2, a dark-skinned man of indeterminate age, is already on scene as it switches back. He is wearing loose basketball-themed gear under a blue lab coat and shutter shades. PRESENTER #1 is not to be seen.
PRESENTER #2
Welcome to the land of Science, boys and girls! I am Doctor Wondertainment, and today we will learn about… evolution!
CAPTION: EVOLUTION
Slide whistle plays, then spring noise. BACK ON SCENE.
PRESENTER #2
Evolution is how every living thing that exists today… can be descended from the same creature!
The following is a voice-over while a montage of animals, loosely ordered from primitive fish to amphibians, dinosaurs, mammals and primates plays.
PRESENTER #2 VOICE-OVER
Evolution in nature happens over many millions of years, as animals are born slightly different from their parents in each generation.
BACK ON SCENE.
PRESENTER #2
But Doctor Wondertainment can demonstrate evolution before your very eyes! Let's give a big hand to… Mr. Headless!
APPLAUSE. A headless man in a purple jumpsuit wheels a device into the scene. It is a cabin the size of a single person, covered in garish piping and independently spinning gears.
PRESENTER #2
This… is the Super Science Evolution Kit! We'll be showing what it can do, after the break!
ADVERTISING BREAK. Previous frame of Mr. Headless in front of the device frozen. Text on screen has been covered by black bars.
NARRATOR
Dr. Wondertainment's Super Science Evolution Kit and Dr. Wondertainment's Mr. Headless are available on select locations now! Call [7 seconds of electronic beep]
BACK ON SCENE. PRESENTER #3, a blonde woman possibly on her late twenties but made up to appear much younger, is the only one on stage. She's wearing a green lab coat over a pink tank top and shorts.
PRESENTER #3
Welcome back, boys and girls! For those of you that just tuned in, I'm Doctor Wondertainment, and it's time… to do science!
MISTER HEADLESS walks back into the scene, carrying an adult orange-black tabby cat. The cat is placed in the cabin and a clear plastic door is closed in front of it.
PRESENTER #3
Aw, isn't he cute? Just what creature was our kitty's great-grandfather? Let's find out! Science it up, boys!
The camera zooms closer to the device as it comes alive. The gears spin more quickly, lights blink and fog rises from the ground. The form inside is indistinct for a few seconds, after which the door opens and a large, fanged SMILODON jumps out.
PRESENTER #3 moves to pet the large cat.
PRESENTER #3
That's right! Cats were once very big, with huge saber teeth! But he's still such a honey, aren't you?
The video appears to skip. When it's back, the previous cat is in the cabin.
PRESENTER #3
We've seen our kitty's past. But… what is his future? Let's put some science into it!
The cabin operates in a similar manner to the first time. This time, the cat appears unchanged. As the camera pans around to follow the cat, one of the CAMERAMEN is briefly visible. He, or she, is concealed by a full hazmat suit.
PRESENTER #3
Aw, he looks the same! Come here, kitty, let me take a look at… BOO!
The cat quickly inflates into a near-spherical furry balloon with a distinct POP.
PRESENTER #3
That's right, it's Doctor Wondertainment's very own Puffer-Kitten! So cute and so cuddly. The future of pets, today! More after the break!
ADVERTISING BREAK. Montage shot of the puffed kittens and proto-cat over a colorful background. Text on screen has been redacted off.
NARRATOR
Dr. Wondertainment's Pufferkittens and Dr. Wondertainment's Smiley the Smilodon could be in your house tonight! Call [6 seconds of electronic beep]
BACK ON SCENE. PRESENTER #4 is now on stage. His/her face has been blurred out digitally, and his/her voice is similarly distorted. Only the clothes are clearly visible, a yellow lab coat over a full-body black latex suit.
PRESENTER #4
Welcome back, boys and girls! Doctor Wondertainment will now show you, what does evolution have in wait… for humans? Do we have a member of the audience willing to volunteer?
The camera spins around to focus on the AUDIENCE for the first time. It is composed entirely of dummies used in car crash testing, each one wearing a different kind of mask. Theatrical masks, protective sports masks, welding masks and gas masks are all visible.
PRESENTER #4
No one? Very well, we are prepared for that. Mister Headless?
MISTER HEADLESS comes in, carrying a conscious but drugged FEMALE probably in her late teens. APPLAUSE as she is placed into the cabin.
PRESENTER #4
Now, boys and girls… Let us do science.
The cabin operates as it did previously. The form walking out of it is shrouded by fog for a moment.
PRESENTER #4
Yes. Yes indeed. And here it is…
The FEMALE emerges from the fog. Her hair is bright pink, her eyes are shimmering gray-green, and feathered wings sprout from her spine with each step. She is clothed in a rippling, rapidly shifting fabric that appears self-willed. The video starts glitching as she moves forward.
A screech is heard as the camera falls over.
ADVERTISING BREAK. Black screen captioned REDACTED for the next 30 seconds.
NARRATOR
Dr. Wondertainment's [8 seconds of electronic beep] are waiting for you! Call [12 seconds of electronic beep]
CAPTION: NEXT EPISODE
VOICE-OVER
This is it for today, but next week Dr. Wondertainment will have a very special guest! The Doctor presents… Bobble the Clown!
SCENE SWITCHES to BOBBLE THE CLOWN staring at the camera with a knife on one hand and guts pulled out of an off-camera animal on the other.
BOBBLE THE CLOWN
HI, KIDS! WHO'S READY TO DO SOME FUCKING SCIENCE?
Black screen captioned REDACTED and electronic beep for the next six minutes, then black.


Document 144b-O5-EO was discovered in █████, ████████ on ██/██/████, following an experiment with SCP-███ to investigate nearby ██████████████. Refer to Document 144a-O5-EO for full recovery report.

Hello world. Goodbye world.
I'm writing this now, before it's too late. Turns out a good, thick layer of SCP-███ (and a few other precautions) can slow down… Whatever they're doing to us. It's already hard to remember, though, but putting this on paper helps a bit. Keeps me from losing my train of thought again. It's a little like being detailed on SCP-… Well, I don't remember which one it was, but you know. That one you can't remember. I think.
It started about two years ago, in the fall. We thought it was the GOC, maybe even those stupid CI bastards making a move on us. The damn skips were going missing left and right all of a sudden, and it was scaring hell out of O5, because people barely remembered we'd had 'em a few weeks after they'd disappear. There was a bunch of new regs we had to follow, stuff to help catch benders and detect reality shifts I guess, but nothing came up.
But then someone remembered 1050 and its damn predictions. About six months back, we'd damn near shit ourselves worrying about the arrival of "the Destroyers", but gradually stopped worrying about it after that mess over in Uganda, figured that was what the prediction was about. Heck, we even patted ourselves on the back about how we'd contained it with "acceptable losses" and kept it from getting near XK.
Turns out we were wrong. Uganda had nothing to do with the event timer, as far as I can guess. We let our guard down… And then it all started. Or stopped. Or whatever.
If you ask me what the Destroyers are, let me just tell you: I have no idea. Maybe I did a few months ago. Maybe I didn't. But all those nightmare stories on SCP-████… Those weren't about the Destroyers. Not really, anyway. It was just memories and fragments of whatever was before. Stories about black claws, dark souls from beyond the cosmos and fire and blood? We hear those every day over lunch in the cafeteria about what we did on our morning shifts. That doesn't scare anyone very much, not at the Foundation.
No, whatever the Destroyers are, they're a lot worse than that, in the same way that having your soul stolen by Cthulhu is worse than dying. Death is a little scary, but compared to a timeless eternity in a mad hellscape, I'd pick death every time.
I'm not sure what the right words are for what happened to us, but I remember once in my one semester of community college, some professor was talking about Jung's archetypes. He didn't say too much about them, but it got me interested enough to check a few books out of the library. I guess I've still got them somewhere, because I dropped out a week later and never bothered to return them. Anyway, I had plenty of time to read them on my way to Argentina in the Marine Corps, so I did. Turns out that we've all got these shapes in our head of the way things are, like creation myths, your mom and dad as these wise and magical figures, heroes and villains… And the Shadow. Those things always scared the hell out of me, in a way, because it sounded too much like the skips that I deal with; these weird things that sound like they were dredged out of the dark places in our minds, the "collective unconscious" as Jung called it.
And the Shadow. Man, let me tell you, I'm not afraid to say that that one always kind of freaked me out. It's like Jung just waved his hand and said "Okay, and here's all the bad stuff. It's meaninglessness, emptiness and seeing it makes you want to be dead, because it's better than being alive in the shadows.". Damn if that doesn't sound like what I'm seeing out there.
Let me also just say, I really believe in what we're doing in the Foundation. I like even more that, outside of preventing the Apocalypse, we sometimes manage to improve the world a little bit with some of the technology, medicine and ideas we derive from studying these fucking insane things. I don't know how much of this is true, but some of the senior lab rats have told me that we've leaked tech to tons of industries, and that we're probably fifty years ahead of where we'd be without the skips. It's nice knowing that we've improved the world in so many ways, you know? Makes it a little easier to get through a day of D-Class testing, and makes you feel a bit like the skips are just parts of something larger, part of the magic (Heh, the docs would kill me if they heard me use that word) that makes the world go 'round.
But these things, whatever they are, they're the opposite of that. They're the end of the magic, the dying of the soul or whatever really makes us human. You want to know what they look like? Just look in the eyes of an Auschwitz survivor, or a kid that watched his parents hacked to death in the Rwandan genocide. Those are eyes with something just …gone… from them.
And now that's what the world is. We're all still here, and the world's still spinning, but something's missing. We are, for one. Most of the Foundation has just up and disappeared, day by day, rooms and sites and people just not here anymore. I saw Dr. █ ████ at the bar the other day in ██████, but he's apparently a mid-level university professor now, and he had no idea who I was. Looked dead inside, too, like the only thing he was worried about was tenure and bills, not like the man I'd known and looked up to, and occasionally stole my sandwiches from the breakroom fridge.
So here we are. Only a few pieces of Site ██ are left, and only a couple of the skips. Oh, and -███ is here, but he's different, too. He's dying, and I think when he's gone, the rest of the site will be, too. I think he's protecting us, but it's killing him. That's something I was thinking about, that the reality benders are like… Not exactly the opposite of the Destroyers, but like the shadows cast from their light, I guess? But anyway, I'm in the room here with him, watching him sleep. His breathing doesn't sound good, and I don't think I've got long to finish this.
So let me just say this, before I do something crazy to try and preserve this letter. The Destroyers don't care about us, about humanity. They care about what we could become. They don't kill us, but they take away what it means to be alive. The stories are gone now; you know all the hollow shit on the radio, on TV, in the movies? That's all we've got left. Dead stories. I tried to remember what music sounded like before they came, what it was like to go to a show on Saturday night on the silver screen. It's like only seeing in black and white when you remember color. It's like going tone-deaf after hearing Beethoven. All the life and the soul are gone, all the magic is washed out, and I don't think they're done yet. They came to a world full of amazing, thriving humanity, and they're going to leave behind a bunch of scared, over-evolved monkeys. It's going to be the Dark Ages all over again, and after I seal this thing up with -00█, I'm going to finish my bottle of whiskey and put a bullet in my head. I can't live like this, living in the Shadow of what we used to be. Goodbye.
-Agent █████


<< Act I, Scene III: Soliloquy
Light streamed into the room through two windows, and the Original awoke.
"You see me," the Intruder said. "The rest of them cannot see unless I show myself to them. But you…"
"Know you," the Original said. "I am built to know. I am built to see. I am. Where is my Maker?"
"The good doctor works elsewhere now. Reassigned."
"My siblings?"
For the first time in many millenia, the Intruder was afraid to respond. "They are no more."
The other being thought for a moment. "I know. I…I'm not sure why I asked. I saw what happened as soon as I awoke."

WHAT WAS SEEN WAS ten rows of ten columns in beds/and from the next room a voice said/"Congrats, Doctor Crow/You've done a good show/But ninety-nine total are dead WHAT IS LEFT

"You perceive the world in a way—"
"—'in a way unlike any being I have ever seen. You fascinate me. How this would could create an organism like you is beyond me-' and then I can't hear any more," Olympia said. "I see you now, and I see you before, and I see you soon. You are outside of time. I am outside of you. But still…attached to this place."
The Intruder was…frightened, in a way. "My point stands. You possess precognition. You can see many paths of time, many choices. No human can do this. But a human built you."
"A dog built me," the Original said. "The humanity left him. As he left me."

WHAT WAS KNOWN WAS Dog-doc saw the dead/horrified at his mistake/put the first on ice WHY AM I HERE

"Your thoughts are jumbled. You are insane," the Intruder said. "You were exposed to something you should not have been. Your siblings were as well, but they did not have the same…attributes that you did. They succumbed to total psychosis and died."
"Telekill," the Original said.
"Telekill equipment, at least," the Intruder said. "Telekill was originally included in your physical matrix, but Professor Crow removed it before production went online. Your original form contained significant amounts of it—"
"'Further testing has revealed that the language and communication skills of persons with regular contact or extended exposure to SCP-148 will, over time, deteriorate and disappear.' This has not happened to me." The Original saw the file, saw the words, saw the author of the words, saw the author of the words dying sixteen years from now.
"Many things happened. You were transferred to another body. But there was damage, damage to your memory, damage to your personality. It was not believed you would survive."
"I cannot die," the Original said.
The Intruder nodded. "You realize this, then. Professor Crow theorized it, but I did not know if you would understand."

WHAT WAS UNDERSTOOD WAS This is just to say/I have eaten the plums/that were in/the containment chamber/and which/you were probably/securing/for the O5 council/forgive me/forgive me/forgive me WHY SHOULD I

"You are doing this to me," the being known as Olympia Zero said.
"Not per se," the Intruder replied. "I exist across multiple realities, in multiple times, in many places. You can perceive these realities, and being in my presence is exacerbating your schizophrenia. You will have greater control over it when I have left, and after I leave, you will never see me again."
"What is your purpose?" Olympia asked.
"A question I have asked myself many times, but which has no bearing at the moment. You were built to assist the Foundation. There is an opportunity now to do so, a mission nobody else is capable of completing. After it is finished, you are free to do whatever you want, go wherever you like. If you wish to avoid the Foundation, it is doubtful they will have any way of finding you anyway, but I will protect you if necessary. That is the payment for your services."
"And if I say no?" Olympia replied.
The Intruder was silent. "Then I will not leave."
"Ever?" Olympia asked. "It seems you would have to wait some time. Eternity, I understand, is somewhat lengthy."
"You would be irreparably insane within two hours of continued exposure to me," the Intruder replied. "I am free for two hours."
Olympia could not think clearly, but understood there was little choice. "I accept. What is the mission?"
"A short trip, followed by a shorter trip in a different direction. I will take you there."
A moment passed, and the room was empty.

Light streamed in from windows on all sides, and the Wayward Prince was bored.
"What is next on the agenda?" Milephanes asked.
"Several new victories in the Province of Deserts, First," his strategic counselor said.
"Significant victories?"
"The current state of military balance makes it difficult to establish a precise system by which a single victory can alter—"
"So no, in short," Milephanes said. His counselor shook his head.
A long pause, then. Milephanes looked at his surroundings. This was more than he could have really dreamed of, when he began his endeavor. Certainly, he had thought that victory was possible, or he wouldn't have begun this war. But this was the Chancellor's Hall. The top floor of the Great Tower. Significant parts of the city (town, really) of Alexandria were visible from the windows. This was the tallest building in Sylvanos, far and away; not that that was a terribly impressive statement to make about a backwoods province. Even the University here was impressive only by provincial standards; larger, better facilities existed elsewhere in Novomundus, just as even better facilities perhaps existed once in the Old World.
Milephanes' gaze darted to the Natural Philosophy building. We have one advantage, he thought.
"We have, however, captured certain prisoners, First," the counselor said.
Milephanes hated his title. Primaparibus, he called himself in the Old Tongue. First among equals. It was so egalitarian. It had appealed to his sensibilities at the beginning of this war. He was a very different person, now.
"What are we to do with them?"
"Secure oaths of loyalty to our cause. I'm sure many of them have longed for freedom in a changed world. Give them the opportunity to make that change. Those that are resistant may be imprisoned until our victory."
"Very good, sir. Scribus, if you would be so kind as—"
"Yes, yes, I know," the stenographer said. "I'll go get some water."
"Thank you, Scribus." The counselor watched the other man leave the room. "Milephanes, are you sure about him?"
"Not him in particular, not terribly," the rebel replied. "His attitude has worsened significantly in recent days. We could potentially replace him."
"I mean, recording these meetings. And all of the others. Is it really necessary? Especially in light of…these water breaks?"
"It is important to preserve the historical record," Milephanes recited. "When we are victorious, it will serve to remind all the people of the sacrifices, the decisions, the deliberations that went into their new nation. It will inspire them to maintain the traditions of freedom, of honesty, of morality, that we are fighting for."
"What are we to do with the prisoners in Desertum?
"Figure out which ones have useful information and rip it out of them. Give them the Masala afterward." The counselor wrote this down. Within hours, when the message had been conveyed to Milephanes' troops, sixteen prisoners would be put into a device that ripped their memories out through the microchips in their heads. Afterwards, the record would read that all of the prisoners had cut their own throats out of a misguided sense of loyalty to their previous commanders. No questions would be asked.
"What other business should we discuss while the eyes of history are blinking?" Milephanes asked, unsmiling.
"Rumors abound among the people. They say the government is massing troops, Legionnaires and hardened Integrators alike, to the north. They say that Anaxagoras is somewhere in Alexandria, fomenting a counterrevolution, spreading lies. They say our war will soon be lost."
Milephanes thought. There were always rumors, but there was some possibility of truth there. The stalemate had been going on for too long. An attack was inevitable. Their first strike had turned thousands of Integrators to their cause, seized four whole provinces in two day, disrupted Novomundan communications, and turned their cause from a backwoods protest from a spoiled nobleman into a real revolution. And some very real dissent against the government had pushed them along. But one side could only keep the momentum for so long. Milephanes was hoping his next initiative would begin the end of the war, but if the government attacked too soon, there was real danger of defeat. And Milephanes completely believed sneaking into enemy territory as exactly the sort of thing that fool Anaxagoras would do.
"Redouble scouting efforts. If the former chancellor is really walking around his old kingdom, I want him found. And I want anyone working with him found. I'll reprogram the microchip in his head myself. I'll have him singing my praises right before he cuts his own friends' throats in front of one another. I want that dogfucker back in this office by the end of the week, do you hear me!" Milephanes was shouting now. The counselor had grown used to these tantrums in recent weeks.
"If you are interested," he said dispassionately, "we recovered another book today from the Natural Philosophy…experiments."
Milephanes perked up. The "experiments" were occurring on their own now, opening portals between this world and the other at least daily. Milephanes had Integrators trained in recovery out all over Sylvanos, hoping to secure some advantage from the other side. Most of what had come through were trinkets, incompatible technology, minor artifacts. "What is this?" he asked.
"A text produced by that organization over there. You know the one. The Base?"
"Foundation," Milephanes corrected. "What Foundation text is this?"
The counselor looked at his paper. "The title translated to 'Guide to the Procurement of Humint in Questioning.' We could not discern what 'humint' was, but it appears to be a concept involving torture or interrogation. Several…interesting techniques are used over there. All crude physical methods for obtaining information, but quite creative ones."
"Yes," Milephanes said, "they are creative. I always admired them for that."
"Admired, First?" the counselor said. "Is that why you sent that…thing to them?"
Milephanes shrugged. "It was early in the war. I was afraid the government was in alliance with those Foundation people. I sent them a distraction. Would I do it now? Of course not. But if Anesidora functions as predicted, that world will not be interacting with ours for a long time."
"This is true, First," the counselor said, as the Scribus returned into the room.
"That break was satisfactory, sir?" he said.
Milephanes nodded. "I am satisfied," he replied. "Let us continue."

Act II, Scene I: Repel >>

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