Note: This is part ten in a multi-part story based around the events leading up to the containment of SCP-2982. It is recommended that you read the previous entry Forgiveness first, or start from the beginning At the Library. You can even take a look at Golan too, for a tale based on one of the tests of the SCP object.

The story so far… Helen Gwandoya and Aidan Brown are just two of many blackmailing victims of Harold Maine, a petty, unambitious man who has a mobile phone that can change people in gruesome ways. Even though the phone gives him almost unlimited power, he uses it almost exclusively to extort money from his associates and neighbors.
Thanks to Maine, Helen is thalidomide impaired, and her daughter has been murdered by Aidan, an ordinary man turned grotesque, invisible half-man half-lobster paedophile by the same man. Nevertheless, the two are forced to act together if they are to escape Maine's clutches, and manage to enlist the help of another victim, ex-radio presenter Geoff Mansani, who Maine has altered so that everything he says is autocorrected.
Between them, they come to the realisation that they will never be free as long as Harold Maine lives.
Unfortunately for Helen Gwandoya and Aidan Brown, Geoff Mansani is also working for Maine…
+
"We do this now."
"I don't know," said Aidan. "Maybe we should - "
"I'm not giving you a choice," said Helen. "We do this now. The last thing he'd expect is for us to strike him at home. We finish this. We get rid of him and then - "
"What? What then? We go back to normal? We get arrested? We stay as we are?" Even in the relative safety of Helen's home, Aidan's voice was hushed.
"You can't get arrested," Helen countered. "Nobody can see you."
Aidan took a swig of whisky, the platelets on his face clicking in appreciation. He savoured the taste before swallowing, allowing its warmth to permeate itself through his corrupted, nonesuch system.
"He can see me," he said finally. His claws clacked and closed fitfully. "He'll fucking see me and everything will be lost. What if he can read my mind? How do you know he can't do that right now? How else would he know about us?"
"I don't know," Helen admitted. "What would you suggest? Do you think waiting is a good idea? I sure as hell don't see him getting any weaker as time goes on. And I sure as fuck don't see us getting any stronger."
"So what's the plan?"
"We go to his place. I knock on the door. He opens it. You burst in, I leave. You find out how he does what he does. We know he overwrites something, you find out what. Make him change us back. You kill him. You leave. How you do it is up to you, but I can't be there. I can't watch."
"That's the plan? You knock on his fucking door? And then a crippled monster who can't even fucking walk without sticks, is expected to somehow interrogate and then kill him? How? Bad fucking breath? Jesus. What if he's got company? What if he's out? What if I can't do it and he screams and people come? Jesus - what would he do to me after that? What would he do to us?"
"You think it would be worse than it is now? I don't have hands anymore. I don't have a daughter anymore." Helen rounded on Aidan. "And you - you're a half-crustacean child-murdering paedophile. We live in dread every minute of the day. There is no release from this. How does it get worse?"
Aidan shrugged and leant forwards, massaging his apologetic lung. "I don't have answers," he said. "What about the fan club? There might still be others like us. We could band together."
"We tried that," said Helen. "Dont you remember Olivia Hulme? The self-harmer? We're not X-Men. Even if we found somebody - and you know that won't happen now - what could we do? Everyone's too scared to help."
"Not everyone," said Aidan.
"True," said Helen. She turned to the third person in the room, the one person who had yet to speak. "You're the only person who's on our side. What do you think?"
"I think type rockery, " said Geoff Mansani. "I think you're rockery." He stopped and gathered himself. "Rockery… Right."
Aidan straightened up again, his good hand forming a fist and kneading the small of his back as he did so. "Jesus, it fucking aches," he complained. Mansani continued, ignorant to his presence. "The VB last told me exodus CV is an CV aural on his own turf… "
Aidan snorted in derision. "Wow he's on your side," he said, "Hold the front page."
Helen disregarded him. "Carry on, Geoff," she said.
"Itself the lady thing he'd elect," he said. "Last… thing… he's expect. Am attack on gotta own peppery…. On… his… pen… own… property."
"That's easy for you to say," Aidan said, and a noise like ruined laughter came from his throat. Helen shot him a warning glance. "Oh come on," he said. "And anyway where's he going to be when the shit hits the fan?"
"Doesn't matter," said Helen. "Whatever help he can give - " she turned quickly to Geoff - "you can give, will be appreciated. Even if you're just the lookout. Whatever you can do, we'll take."
Geoff Mansani pulled something from his jacket. A stubby black cylinder with prongs at the end. Aidan Brown's good eye widened in amazement. "Fuck me," he exclaimed. "Is that what I think it is?"
Geoff placed it carefully on the coffee table. "It's a trader… tray… razer… Fuck. Silecroft socks. Electric socks. Shocks."
"A taser?" Helen asked. Geoff Mansani nodded. Aidan whistled.
"Guess that swings things back in our favor," Helen said. "Ok - come back here before seven. We'll finish this before the dawn."
"Jesus H Christ," said Aidan. "This is madness. How the fuck do you expect this to work?"
Helen shot him another withering glance and he raised his claws in capitulation. "Okay," he said. "Okay. You win."
"He won the see another sunrise," Geoff said.
"No," Helen agreed. "He won't see another sunrise."
Geoff Mansani nodded silently, thinking about his last conversation with Harold Maine. Less than a week ago the man had woken up, shit-covered and terrified, and demanded that Geoff come round straight away. He had suffered the most vivid nightmare, Maine said. He had been attacked in his home by Helen and Aidan, and they had literally turned him into excrement. He had come apart, flesh turning to dollops of dung as he watched, and - as Helen, the love of his life walked away - the lobster monster had dragged him into the tiny bathroom and flushed him away forever.
Just a dream, but horrific nonetheless.
Maine trusted Geoff Mansani, he said. He had told him that if he helped foil such an attack in the future, he would give him his voice back. Hell, he would make him a star. So now, with just such an attack mere hours away, the ex radio presenter had a difficult decision to take. He had promised to help Maine, and if he did, he would be relatively safe - but he would never be free.
He looked at Helen, at the ruin of her arms and hands. At her hollow, sunken eyes. She had been crying a lot, he realised. The rape and murder of your only child would do that to you, he thought. His eyes went involuntarily back to her birth defects. Her disfigured, malformed fingers, her tiny t-rex arms.
He shook his head, the road suddenly clear, and made his choice.
"You can VB reply… VB relying… rely CV on me," he said.
+
Carol Paris waited in the unmarked car. The sun was low in the sky, a baleful beacon in the gathering dusk. "Come on," she whispered. "What's going on?"
A heavily built man gestured for her to wind down her window. She shook her head. He brought out from his jacket an ID badge and held it for her to see. He came round to the passenger side. She opened the door, and Lieutenant Dimitri huffed into the seat next to her. She repeated her question. "Always wondered what you look like," she said. "What's going on?"
"Things have come to a head," said the agent. "Our hand is being forced. Shame, because we were about to put covert surveillance in place. Too late now - we waited too long. Oh, and Caruso says he told you so."
"He did, did he?"
"It's no secret he wanted a Meet and Greet weeks ago. He doesn't know why we had to - "
"He doesn't know a lot of things," Carol said. "Leave it at that…"
"Okay…"
"Damned right, okay. So what's going on now? Why the sudden activity?"
"F1 and M2 have just turned up at Harold Maine's apartment. MTF is on its way, they should be there any second. Hopefully they're not too late."
"Christ," said Carol. "Time is 21:17. We'll be there in ten if the traffic's good."
"Yeah. I just hope whatever made us hang back with this one was worth it."
+
Helen stood at the main door of Harold Maine's apartment block and looked at the watch Mansani had bought her just for this occasion. Eight thirty seven. Aidan and Geoff Mansani had gone ahead of her, walking quietly and anxiously up the stairs to the fifth floor, lost to the gloom in the badly lit hallways.
The plan, such as it was, was simple. Aidan and Geoff would go first and hide around the corner of his apartment. There was no danger of Aidan being seen, after all, although the smell would sooner or later give him away. Helen would follow them up and knock on Maine's door. Surprised at her visit, Maine would allow her inside. Aidan and Geoff would burst in and overpower Maine. Helen would leave and the two men would try and drag out as much information from Maine as they could about how he performed his grotesque miracles, and make him change them back. Then they would kill him. If they could leave with the source of his power, so much the better. Otherwise they risked it falling into the hands of someone else, and they still wouldn't be free.
It would look like an accident, so there would be no struggles, no screams, no police involvement.
Eight thirty-eight. It was time. She pushed open the front door and walked in as confidently as she could. Sounds of televisions turned up loud to hide the neighbors' arguments. Cheap carpet, badly painted walls. The scent of cigars, cheap cigarettes and joints. She walked up the first flight of stairs to the second floor. There were wonders right here in this building; monsters both human and otherwise; malevolent, horrific miracles that defied understanding. That the mundane and the grotesquely fantastical could live side by side so easily beggared belief.
The third floor. Damp on the walls, mould forming in the corners where the moisture gathered. Less noise. A TV or two, and a sound system pumping out aggressive, misogynistic music. She proceeded onwards and upwards.
The fourth floor. The air seemed heavier - no, that wasn't right. It felt like it was thicker somehow, as if there was some anomalous force in effect that slowed her movement and made her fight for every new intake of breath. She looked at the mould thriving and plotting in the corners, could almost see the spores spreading like gossamer-thin threads along the walls and ceiling. She was breathing them in, she thought, and she closed her eyes and envisioned her lungs blackening with damp. She felt it worm its way into her bloodstream, felt her body temperature drop as the filaments took hold within her.
Get a fucking grip, she said to herself. She looked up; the mould was just mould, the black patches just that - but the sense of dread, of active, alert malice, did not leave her.
The fifth floor. This was it. Harold Maine's domain. There was a grimy, clingy feel to the air, as if countless years of cigar smoking hung invisibly in the corridor. Once again she found herself fighting to breathe. The carpet was grubby and damp. There were unidentifiable shapes within the weave that giddied her senses. She looked back down the hall, saw the ceiling light flickering in the gloom. Dust motes drifted lazily in the small circumference of ungloom, swirling randonly like deep sea protozoa. It felt like she had somehow found herself on the sea bed. And wouldn't that be appropriate, for a lobster man and a woman who's hands were more in keeping with something crawling on the ocean floor? The patterns on the carpet spoke of chasms and unfathomable, dank darkness, of things hidden and waiting and hungry in the depths of the world. Was this why the air felt so heavy - because she was underwater, and an ocean of weight was above her?
She pushed the images from her mind as best she could and counted down the numbers on the doors. Thirty nine, forty, forty-one… forty two. She stopped. Unlike the others, this door had a heavy metal grille placed over it, locked from the inside. She listened for a moment - there were sounds of life inside. A radio, running water. Metal on crockery.
She knocked on the door, vaguely aware that she was almost about to lose control of her bladder, and waited for a reply. Around the corner, she hoped, Aidan and Geoff were poised to strike.
There was movement inside the apartment. Noises getting louder as the occupier grumbled his way towards the spyhole. The plan was shit, she realised. It had zero chance of working. Her only hope was to flee. She was about to run, no longer equal to the task ahead of her, when the door swung open inwards and the monster she had come to unravel revealed himself. It regarded her initially with surprise, then greed, then suspicion through the locked grille. It was a creature of few words.
"Fuck," said Harold Maine. "What the fuck are you doing here?" He peered over Helen's shoulder into the hallway behind her. "Fuck," he said again. "You alone?"
"Yes," she replied.
"You look nervous," he noted.
"I… wanted to talk to you," Helen offered.
"Why?"
"I was hoping that maybe we… I feel so alone. Since Angela died."
"Oh yeah," Maine grunted. "I heard about that." She felt his gaze drift down to her ruined arms. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said, but he licked his lips with absent minded wanting.
"It's - I can't talk out here."
"Yeah," Maine said. His eyes narrowed. "Something smells… fishy, doesn't it?"
"I don't know," Helen said, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. Christ, she thought. Please don't see through this. Maine watched her bosom heave, entranced by the rise and fall. "I just knew I had to come here," she said. The words almost failed her.
Around the corner, Aidan's legs shook. Just open the fucking grille.
Maine pondered. He had always wanted her and she was here at last. Helen Gwandoya fought the surging panic; she knew she looked terrified and vulnerable, broken and desperate. That's what Harold Maine would want, that's what he would expect. Her one chance at entry into the apartment depended on lust overpowering common sense.
Around the corner Geoff Mansani and Aidan Brown gave one last prayer to whatever gods still cared for them, and steeled themselves for the horrors ahead. The time was upon them. The time of reckoning.
Maine raised his eyebrows and clicked his teeth. Then, his eyes never leaving her, he unlocked the grille and cast another look around the hallway. Satisfied that she was indeed alone, he pushed the metal frame outwards. "You'd better come in," he said.
The metal grate swung open. The apartment beyond was dark, illuminated only by a silent television and the neon signs outside. Maine wiped his forehead as he beckoned her in. "This must be my lucky fucking day," he whistled, and Helen Gwandoya crossed the boundary silently. Behind her, an ex-radio jockey and a blasphemous, crippled child murderer checked one last time for witnesses, and swung around the corner.
Harold Maine had minutes to live. He would be found dead by a secret organisation, his head lodged face down in the toilet, apparent victim of a bizarre accident. He would not be missed or mourned.
Geoff Mansani picked up his pace. He knew the lobster thing was right behind him, although he could neither see nor hear it. He held the taser under his jacket, reassured by its weight, and counted down the door numbers. Forty five, forty four, forty three. He reached forty two just as Gwandoya disappeared inside. The neighbors left or right or above or below would not call the police or raise the alarm, no matter what ungodly noises they heard. And if the police did come, they would be waylaid and distracted. A mother suddenly screaming for a lost child, a dispute between brothers that would spill out into the corridors and slow things down. There would be confusion and chaos. They knew what was expected.
And so did Geoff Mansani. He grabbed the metal grille even as Harold Maine swung it shut and pushed past Helen Gwandoya. He could feel Aidan Brown's presence behind him, hot and damp and vengeful, and he guessed that Maine could see him too. Why else would he have just lost control of his bladder, if not at the sight of the lobster thing at his door? His next words confirmed it.
"You!" Harold cried, and his face was white with fear. Aidan Brown pushed past both Helen and Geoff and grabbed Maine by the throat. He turned back to Helen and panted, "Get out. Go!" She looked at Mansani briefly; he was readying the taser, waiting for Aidan to bring Maine down. Although Maine struggled, he was undone by Aidan's extra bulk, his vestigial legs and carapace weighing down the man even as he cried out in alarm. He sank to the floor with a shriek.
Aidan looked back at her again. "Go!" He shouted, and this time she obeyed, but not before one last glance; Geoff Mansani was standing over the two entangled on the floor, taser in hand, ready to deliver the incapacitating blow. Each of the three looked more terrified than the others.
She fled the apartment in tears. Suffering was suffering, no matter how well deserved. The door slammed shut behind her and she half ran, half stumbled down the corridor and down the stairs until she reached the bottom; she sank down sobbing onto the floor, gasping for breath, and waited for damnation or deliverance.
Prev
Next


You of all people know how hard it is to keep living real life once everything becomes a musical. How the players starve and have accidents while constantly performing, how the whole world fell apart in weeks. What you probably don't see, watching from up there, is the stuff people come up with to survive. How determined they are.
We passed a man today with a toddler strapped to his chest, foraging in the overgrown yards, pulling up weeds and snapping their fat white roots into a grocery bag tied on his belt. He was stepping and moving in rhythm, too fast to do his work properly, so he had to claw and yank at the dirt to get anything at all before whatever beat he was hearing compelled him to stand up and start over a few steps away. He had this wild look like he'd been at it for hours. I could see his lips working.
Verse about the difficulty of locating food while continuously dancing, the implant whispered in my head.
The baby was pale, with bags under its eyes that we could see from where we stood. Its head was limp, eyes rolling back and forth like it was barely alive, but we saw its mouth moving along with its dad.
Chorus about an endless marathon with a child's life as a prize, the implant updated as we passed them by.
___
At least you dropped us somewhere the weather's nice. We couldn't risk a fire, but we sat around a glowstick and ate our ration pouches together, and it was kind of like camping out. We fell asleep under the stars, Mindy and Bones and me all spooning for body heat while Jameel kept watch with the gun.
The implant woke me suddenly. You must have designed it to do that when the players get close.
Verse stating that even the best of men are still just animals.
It must have hit Mindy and Bones too, because we all snapped up at the same time, scrambling to our feet in this big tangle. Jameel was already swinging the gun around, pointing it randomly into the dark, shouting at whoever was out there to stay the fuck back.
Verse that describes every ordinary person having a tiger inside waiting to come out.
The way your implant filters my hearing, I couldn't tell which direction he was coming from. It blocks out anything that sounds at all like music, and the player trying to sneak up on us was stepping to a beat. He could've been stomping like an elephant and we'd still have no idea where he was until we could see him.
Chorus about learning to love the thrill of the hunt.
Then a gunshot came out of the night, and we all heard that well enough. Chips blew out of a tree next to Jameel and he dove behind it, the rest of us dropping back to the ground as fast as we'd risen. Jameel shot back, twice, three, four times, wasting bullets in panic until Bones jumped up and ran behind the tree yelling for the kid to just give him the fucking gun. The player's next shot blasted through the meat of his arm, but he stayed upright and fired back.
Our implants stopped talking, so we knew Bones got him. Players can't stop performing, even to set a trap, even to save their lives. Nobody moved for a minute or two, anyway, just in case he wasn't alone. I lay still in the dirt with this sludgy feeling in my brain — behind my ears, since you told me you want details. I figured out that even though it was the middle of the night in the middle of the woods, I couldn't hear any bugs or birds. Your little chip was fuzzing out their songs.
I could hear Bones groaning, though, and there weren't any more players coming. I crept over real careful to check on him. Now that the adrenaline from the fight was worn off, he was in sorry shape, sitting against the tree all pale and wide-eyed. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure he was in shock. His whole left arm was blown to strips between the elbow and shoulder, white bone shining in the moonlight.
Jameel wasn't hurt, but he had kind of the same look as Bones did and was just saying "nah, man" over and over. I took the gun and told them I'd be back. Mindy came around the tree then, already tearing strips off her shirt to bind up the wound. I made circles around our camp until I found him, crawled under a bush, froth coming out the ragged hole in his chest and his lips still singing. It was too quiet for the implant to pick up until I got down and started searching his pockets.
Chorus about the singer being sorry that he isn't sorry.
___
None of us were going back to sleep after what happened, so we just walked until dawn. The gunshot wound wasn't as bad as it looked in the dark, and Bones turned out to be as bad a motherfucker as he looked, because he was walking on his own within the hour. We were making good time on the 88 and heading west toward Barton, like we were supposed to. The trees were starting to thin out when that voice went off in my head:
Melodic howling.
We all figured it was just our filters picking up a coyote, or something, but we tried to walk a little faster all the same. Wasn't long before we saw their shapes behind the treeline, and next thing we knew we were surrounded.
Chorus about the singers finally taking back what's theirs.
Wolves, at least a dozen of them. You can put it in your file that they're part of your anomaly, too, because they surrounded us and did a whole breakdancing routine. It would have been funny if I couldn't see their lips moving.
Chorus about a toll payable in hot meat.
I kept the rifle from our bandit last night so bones could have the handgun you gave us, since he was down an arm. I raised it and shot the closest one before my hands could start shaking. The gun bellowed in my ear and a hole the size of a baseball appeared in its neck, and it started thrashing around with its face still moving like special effects. Bones got a couple of them too, but he could barely lift the pistol by then, and they started dodging as they closed in on us.
Verse about the pack eating or dying together.
So we took off, and it wasn't like any of us decided to leave Jameel behind, but he was the one they caught and that's how it happened. I saw it in slow motion, taking in everything at once somehow, the teeth connecting through his ankle and his face when he started to scream. But I kept running and the others kept running and then Jameel was gone.
Refrain about the pack finally taking back what's theirs.
___
We got to Barton an hour after sunrise. It looked like the people there were trying to organize; they marched back and forth like ants from a grocery store to a church across the street, singing about how fast the food disappears when there are no more trucks coming. They mostly ignored us as we passed through, just focused on keeping up with their dance routine. All of them that actually looked at us had the same tired, desperate eyes, but they kept singing and dancing just the same.
The run took a lot out of Bones. His wound was reopened, and he'd lost a lot of blood to begin with. We could see the skin around it starting to look puffy red and yellow, and we all knew what that meant. We talked about going into the church and trying to get help, even though you told us not to talk to anyone because you don't know how they'll react to people who can't process music. I know you guys just threw together the brain implants with stuff you already had up there, so I knew better than to rely on them anyway. None of us wanted to get mobbed to death or end up like the people of Barton, but it didn't seem like we had a choice, because our chances of making it to the Site without Bones weren't great either.
An ambulance showed up while we were still deciding what to do - you said phones would be down everywhere, so maybe they just came because that's what would happen in a play. A paramedic hopped out, singing about how it's impossible to do good medical treatment in the time between choruses. He snipped away Bone's shirt sleeve and the cloth bandages we'd made, face crinkling when he caught the smell of the wound.
Chorus about how everyone's going to die but some sooner than others.
He started to go back in his truck for stitches, but then a girl walked out of the crowd at the grocery store and headed over. Verse about secret attraction to a long term acquaintance, she sang.
Verse about taking chances while there's still time, he answered, and then they danced off together and left us. We took as much as we could from the back of the ambulance, but none of us wanted to look at each other because we all knew that it wasn't going to be enough.
The ambulance driver looked back at us. Refrain about everyone dying but some sooner than others, the implant translated. I gave him the finger as we walked away.
___
We stitched him up as best we could, but the bleeding didn't stop, and around nightfall Bones laid down and died. Mindy and I were too tired to keep walking so we hid under an on-ramp. I put my arm around her and she pressed into me, neither of us saying anything, just listening to the static in our heads.
The implant woke me in the night again, but it was just a couple of rats, sniffing around our pack, singing about how it's a great time to be a scavenger and little ones rising when big ones fall.
___
We got to Pine Grove the next morning, half a day ahead of schedule. We found the Site right away. It was impossible to miss. But whatever you were hoping we'd find there, we aren't going to find it.
I kept looking at the instructions, like whatever you wrote there would suddenly be helpful the hundredth time I checked. The address and the map, sure; this was the place. The rest was a series of access codes to get into the building and past some inner security gates. Then a hand-drawn blueprint of a research lab, with instructions to reach someone's console and enter some commands that might possibly get things back to normal. And scribbled at the bottom: "I'm sorry."
Sorry you failed in your jobs? Sorry you took us to the moon and put experimental computer chips in our heads? Sorry you sent us back down to die?
The problem is that the entire place is overgrown with human bodies, melted together and braided like vines. We didn't get too close, but I saw enough; living people, all fused, covering every building in your complex to the tops of their chimneys. Bone-shaped lumps slid around inside them, making faces bulge out of the mass as they passed underneath. A ridge of teeth, so big I could see it from where we were standing, slithered and swirled across its surface. A trail of eyeballs bubbled up in its wake and tumbled down the walls to a squirming pile at the bottom.
And there were so many mouths, all singing about pain.
___
We just headed west after that. The mood was strange; we knew things were about to get bad, we'd run out of rations if something else didn't get us first, but meanwhile we had freedom for the first time in years.
I don't know how many of you really believe all that shit about death row, but most people I met in the D program were originally locked up for crimes that that weren't that serious. I got popped running a vanload of molly through Utah and was waiting out a three year bid when I got pulled. If it hadn't been a second offense, my lawyer would've gotten me off altogether. Mindy was at a protest and ended up punching a cop, which is a much better story.
You didn't give us a plan B. You told me the machine will record my thoughts if I imagine I'm talking to you, so I am, but I don't know if you're even still up there or if you're all singing now too. I noticed how many of you were disappearing those last few weeks, and the look you all got whenever the word "quarantine" came up. Maybe it's already spread to the rest of you up there. Maybe me and Mindy are the last regular people anywhere.
We made a plan to keep walking and see what's ahead. If we find another town, we'll just stay. Mindy said maybe we can try to take care of them. Maybe we can figure out some way to break them out of it, one by one.
___
We found people.
We were coming down out of the mountains, just past a sign that said SACRAMENTO 10 MILES, and we came over this hill and saw them stretched out as far as the eye could see. A carpet of people covered the whole valley in one enormous musical number. Huge human pyramids tumbled forward in sync, with lone dancers spinning and shuffling around their bases pouring water into the mouths of the people on the bottom, who would climb the side of the pyramid to make room for the next one, while others twirled through carrying out buckets of shit. I could see interlocking rings of people throughout the crowd, elbows linked, twisting elaborately to move around within the horde.
Chorus about everyone needing a place in the world and working together to get things done.
I looked over at Mindy but she was already bounding down the hill toward them, greeting the first person she met. A hush rippled through the crowd, and for a moment I was sure they were going to surge forward and pull her inside, but then in unison they started a new song.
Verse about welcoming newcomers to town.
The swarm of players twisted and roiled in front of her. I started to raise the gun, but Mindy wasn't afraid, and I realized it wouldn't make any difference. I walked down the hill and joined her just as the crowd lifted a man in a suit onto their shoulders in front of us.
Verse introducing the singer as a humble official doing his best for his people, the implant droned as he danced and bowed in front of us. When he hit his big finale, arms reached out from the press of bodies and handed us each a lit sparkler.
Mindy laughed and said thank you. I started, too, but when I tried to speak nothing happened.
And then I started to sing.
Refrain about everyone needing a place in the world. Verse about finding your purpose where you least expect it.
The air took on this charge, the whole crowd leaning in. I'd never sang like this before, not in a real performance. I didn't know how good it would feel.
Verse about giving up selfishness to join the greater good.
Your implant blocks me from hearing my own lyrics, but it can't stop what's in my heart, and that's where the song is coming from.
Verse about coming together to slay a monster and be heroes.
We're leading them back to the Site now. I don't know what will happen when we get there, if your computer can fix the world. It doesn't matter. Either way, I have a role now. And the show goes on.
Chorus about everyone needing a place in the world and the joy of having one.


"You're late." Francesca Carpenter sipped from a cup of coffee. A plainclothesman took a seat across from her and sighed.
"You know," Agent Lee said matter of factly, “it's still a half an hour drive here from Portland, even at the best of times."
Francesca shrugged and gestured to the nearby counter. "Did you want to get something to drink first?"
"I'm fine," he replied. "What did you want to speak to me about?"
Francesca slid a photo across the table. The agent picked it up and frowned. The photograph contained the image of a trench coat and boots walking down the street, completely filled with ravens.
"Where did you get this?" Agent Lee said. His brow furrowed.
"Does it matter?" Francesca asked.
"You bet your ass it does!" Agent Lee hissed. "I need to know what kind of leak we'll now need to patch."
"Lee, relax." Francesca smiled. "Let's just say that Mr. Wilson knew someone, who knew someone, who used to live in Tillamook around 2011. It's an old photo. No leaks."
Agent Lee shook his head and slid the picture back. Francesca placed it back into a nearby binder.
"Not convinced, are you?" she said.
"Not even a little," he said, sighing. "But that's a matter for when I get back to the Site. What do you and the rest of Wilson's crew want?"
"I felt that was obvious by the photo," said Francesca. "It's an animal-based entity. We handle those according to the Boring Agreement. I'm willing to bet our aviary is much more equipped to handle those than whatever box you have it in."
"That is a person's mind shattered across a gestalt of about 30 ravens," Agent Lee replied. "It's not for you. And even if it was, the potential for cross-contamination with 3466 or something worse is far too high."
"I know we don't have all the toys and gadgets you and the rest of the Castaways have, but you know we're not idiots, right?" Francesca frowned then shook her head. She slid her binder across the table. "Listen, just take this to whoever is in charge of containing that creature. Have them look it over. I think you'll find we have dotted our i's and crossed our t's."
Francesca stood, and let out a sigh.
"You guys are always about secure, contain, and protect. Do you protect them from yourselves?"
Before Agent Lee could answer, the Wilson's Wildlife Solutions representative took her leave.

Aviaries were often noisy places. Aviaries filled to the brim with Corvus brachyrhynchos, such as the one found at Wilson's Wildlife Solutions, even more so. What made this particular murder louder than most, however, was that each crow inside was a businessperson waiting to happen.
As Francesca Carpenter passed by the enclosure, the cacophony of caws called out to her, attempting to sell her the sticks and rocks they had managed to claw from the earth in exchange for whatever change was in her pocket. Eventually, she stopped and scanned the enclosure, numerous black beady eyes staring back.
As she waited, the cawing died down. The crowd of crows moved to the other side of the enclosure, save for one which continued to lock eyes with its keeper.
Is it done then? a raspy voice whispered in the back of Francesca's mind.
"The ball is in their court," she whispered in turn. "Now we just have to hope they take the bait."

Site Director Edgar Holman put down the Wilson Wildlife Solutions dossier before him and sighed. Around the conference table sat three others. He stared at the document for several moments, his right index finger tapping on his temple before he finally spoke.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "we need to make a decision."
He turned his attention to the middle-aged woman to his right. She furiously wrote down notes on a small legal pad as she poured over her copy of the dossier.
"Sophia," Holman said, snapping the woman out of her fervor, "containment is your ballpark. If we handed 2106 over, would Wilson's crew be able to handle it?"
"From a veterinary standpoint, certainly," Sophia Turner answered. "Their containment unit would be a better size for a conspiracy of ravens as large as the dash ones and would be a more ideal environment for the animals than at the bottom of a bunker. My only concern would be the proximity to specimens of 3466, but as Tim has pointed out 2106 is Corvus corax while 3466 is Corvus brachyrhynchos. The only other sticking point would be if a 1505 outbreak took place, I don't know if Wilson is prepared to gun down that many birds. But we can always make arrangements."
Holman gave a satisfied nod, then looked to a tall, muscular man to his left. An emblem of a soldier's helmet impaled on a spear was visible on the left shoulder of his black sweater.
"Your take, John?"
"If a 1505 outbreak occurs with 2106 in their hands, the Castaways and I are on the first lines," John Schut replied, shaking his head. "Same if 2106 flies the coop. We need to think about who will be cleaning up the mess when, and not if, it happens. SCP-2106 is a person. Not an animal. You all seem to forget that. It's much smarter than Tim Wilson is used to dealing with. On top of that, I feel this sets a bad precedent. We have a ton of animal-based anomalies in containment around the world. If they learn about those, are we going to just hand them over? It's a no go for me, Ed."
Edgar frowned, but eventually came to a slow nod of understanding. His head then turned to the other end of the table where a pale woman with thick glasses sat in silence.
"Dr. Campbell?" Holman asked. "How does this settle on the EC's side of things?"
"Captain Schut is right," Dr. Lily Campbell began, Schut's lips turning into a smug smile at the validation. "SCP-2106-2 is a person. Trapped in the mind of birds, yes, but a person none the less. She has not able to communicate with us since 2011. We did that. The greatest minds and scientists in the world and we broke her. And that, frankly, is a massive embarrassment. Hell, far more dangerous anomalies than her are still allowed communication with medical staff."
Dr. Campbell looked over the WWS Dossier again.
"It has been made clear by Dr. Aeslinger's analysis that her mental wellbeing is deeply tied to the health of the birds," she continued. "If sending her to WWS has a limited risk with respect to containment, and all that much more benefit for the anomaly, I'm going to need to advise you to consider Tim's offer, Ed."
Schut's smile morphed into a bitter frown. Holman nodded once more and looked back over the dossier once more, his finger returning to tapping on his temple. Eventually, he sighed.
"I think I've made my decision then."

"It is done. They are sending her our way," Francesca Carpenter whispered, her hands clinging to the aviary caging around the SCP-3466 murder as she locked eyes with a single crow. The creature tilted its head, and let out a loud caw.
Excellent! The crow's raspy voice once more whispered in the back of her mind. Expect us when the transfer occurs.
"You won't kill anyone, will you?" she asked. Her gaze shifted to the ground.
I will make no such promise, my dear.
Francesca nodded, then closed her eyes.
"And Jessica Bradley? She'll be safe?"
The crow let out another caw.
That I can promise.
Francesca let out a sigh of relief. A small smile came to her face as she looked up, but just as quickly vanished. The crow was gone.

Transcript of Dashboard Camera from MTF Beta-4 ("The Castaways") Escort Vehicle #3
Unnamed Road
Clackamas County, Oregon, United States

<07:40:33> MTF Beta-4 convoy transferring SCP-2106 to Wilson Wildlife Solutions containment is visible. Escort Vehicle #2 is in front, followed by Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6, followed by Escort Vehicle #3. Vehicles travel through low population roads of Clackamas County, per protocol.
<07:45:22> A large pine tree falls from the sky, crushing Escort Vehicle #2. Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6 and Escort Vehicle #3 swerve to dodge additional falling timber.
<07:46:45> A bright flash of light is observed in the cabin of Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6, as fire appears to engulf the driver and passenger. The vehicle drives off the road and stops in the nearby brush. Escort Vehicle #3 pulls to the roadside. The fire in the driver's cabin of Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6 is extinguished of its own accord.
<07:47:35> Agents Sung and Gray emerge from the back of Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6. Agents Lee and Yadav emerge from Escort Vehicle #3.
<07:48:50> Multiple cloaked humanoid figures appear within the air surrounding the crash site. Each figure wears an identical mirrored beaked mask with an emblem of a hand encircled by a serpent on the brow. The MTF Agents begin to open fire.
<07:49:30> Two assailants fall to the earth and cease movement.
<07:50:22> Agent Sung is launched several hundred feet vertically into the air and returns to the ground. Agent Sung's vital signs cease.
<07:51:15> Agent Gray is struck by a bolt of lightning and falls to the ground. Agent Lee recovers her body as Agent Yadav provides covering fire. An assailant falls to the earth and ceases movement.
<07:52:35> Agent Lee deposits Agent Gray beneath Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6. Agent Lee then resumes fire. An assailant falls to the earth and ceases movement.
<07:53:19> Agent Yadav spontaneously combusts. Agent Lee dives away as Agent Yadav's ammunition explodes. Agent Yadav's vital signs cease.
<07:54:08> Agent Lee is cornered by four assailants in front of the containment doors of Humanoid Anomaly Transfer Vehicle #6.

Agent Lee remained silent, his breathing heavy as the barrel of his rifle panned from one assailant to the other, his gaze unable to meet their eyes beneath the mirrored lenses of their masks. One of them stepped forward and held out their arm. Lee felt his finger begin to squeeze the trigger, stopping only when a crow swooped down and landed upon the cloaked figure's arm. The beast tilted its head at the agent and let out a short caw.
You do not need to die here, Agent. A raspy voice appeared in the back of Lee's mind. I wish I could say the same for your associates. Surrender Ms. Bradley to us, and I promise you that no harm will come to you.
"I don't hold a lot of faith in the promises of birds," Lee said.
The crow cawed again. A distant sound of laughter echoed in Lee's mind.
Generally, a wise policy. But I think you will need to take a leap of faith here. Whether you are dead or alive, Ms. Bradley is coming with us.
Agent Lee held his ground. Minutes ticked by in silence.
I will not ask you a second time, the crow spoke once more.
Lee sighed, lowered his rifle, and stepped away. He stared off into the orange and yellow horizon of the rising sun as the cloaked figures got to work on the door. Within moments they had completely separated it from its hinges and levitated the chunk of metal away.
Ms. Bradley, said the crow. You're free now. I'd recommend you take your leave.
From within the dark of the transport vehicle, a humanoid figure composed entirely of living ravens stepped into the light. She looked around and gazed with dozens of eyes, stopping to stare at Agent Lee for several moments. Agent Lee looking down in response. Eventually, she looked off to the sunrise. The ravens composing her body let out a single, long cry in unison and then fell silent.
"Thank you," said SCP-2106-2. Her voice was as if it were about to fade away.
One by one, the ravens disappeared. Each flew in a different direction before vanishing from sight.
A cage is hardly a place for such creatures, the crow said to Agent Lee as he watched the instances of SCP-2106-1 scatter. And it certainly is no place for a person.
Just as the ravens before it, the crow likewise flew away. Each of the cloaked figures flickered, then vanished from sight.
With a heavy sigh, Agent Lee sat down beside the transport vehicle. He bitterly chuckled as he only now realized his radio was alive with requests to report and barked orders.
"Multiple agents down," he eventually replied. "Object has been stolen by an unknown number of assailants, several with thaumaturgical capabilities. Vehicles disabled. Standing by for further orders."
The agent turned his head once more to the horizon. A single raven was visible for just a moment, then vanished into the amber sky.


by Nagiros

"His first name is Samuel. Last name is Veras. He's a Class V reality bender, and we have no idea how to keep him contained. The Foundation's never seen anything like him before."
Dr. Weathers blinked slowly as he raised his head to look up at his assistant. "Did you turn on the Scranton Reality Anchor in the interview room?"
The assistant researcher shuffled a few of her notes before nodding. "We did. He was told that if he bent reality in its field, the device would implode."
The site director leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and exhaling through his nose. When he opened his eyes again, the decorated walls of his office greeted him. The wizened faces of people Merriam didn't have the clearance to know about glared at him from their golden frames, almost like they had expectations of their own that they were placing on his shoulders.
Shaking his head to focus himself, he continued, "How is he? Is he at least compliant?"
"No, sir." Merriam's voice rose from the pile of papers she held, her head buried in her notes. "He's made it clear he intends to breach containment and end all human life as soon as he is able."
Weathers nodded. "Anything else I should know?"
She paused. "He prefers the name 'Primus'."
The old man did not reply as he rose from the chair. He took a few papers from his desk, gathered his tired wits, and left Merriam with the glaring portraits.
The door to the interview room was familiar to him. It was made of dark, gray metal, with a slight dent on the top, from some ill-fated interview nobody cared to remember. The creaking of the hinges rang in his ears for the thousandth time, and he dryly observed the young man smiling maniacally in his chair, seated at a low, steel table in handcuffs. "Psychopaths," he muttered. He hated reality benders.
The young man opened his eyes as Dr. Weathers took a seat across the table from him, laying down the papers on the table. His attention was drawn to the device humming in the corner. The Reality Anchor stood three meters tall, with constant sparks of electricity flying through tubes of strange gasses. A beautiful machine, far too complex for any normal man to have built. He supposed Scranton had not been a normal man.
He turned his mind away from the Foundation's past, eyes glossing over the document in front of him. "Good afternoon, Mr. Veras, and welcome to the SCP Foundation. Your anomalous properties have warranted your immediate detainment by our organization. If you have any issues with the stipulations of your containment, you may voice them at this time, and the procedures will be reviewed if your objections are valid."
The reality bender threw his head back and laughed. "Do whatever the hell you want to me. Bury me in concrete if you want, I'll dig myself out and—"
Dr. Weathers shifted the papers on the table disinterestedly. "Noted. I will now ask a series of questions to confirm that you are a reality bender. Please explain how you view using your anomalous capabilities, Samuel."
His lip curled in disgust. "My name is Primus."
The site director raised an eyebrow at this. "I won't be calling you that, nor will anyone else here. How do you alter reality?"
A smile flashed across Samuel's lips. "Think of a wave, doc. Big wave, near the beach, hot babes relaxing in the sand. I move my board from one side to the other, I shift reality. And after you turn off that SRA and I can kill everyone on this site with a flick of my wrist, I'm doing one final run on that wave before I get off my board for good."
Dr. Weathers squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block his frustration. "Yes, every reality bender we bring in seems to have that impression, or something like it."
Samuel's handcuffs clanged loudly as he jerked against the chains holding him in his chair. "I am no mere reality bender. I am a god. Your reality benders are dust compared to me."
Dr. Weathers stared at the young man over his thick reading glasses. Samuel searched the man's eyes for meaning and found a mix of boredom and irritation. The director was losing his patience. He smirked and leaned back in his chair, glaring back defiantly.
The site director, in turn, reached for a sheet of paper on the table, taking it up and examining it for a few seconds. He brought it down from his face and spoke in low tones. "In my years here at the Foundation, I have performed interviews with seven-hundred and twenty-three reality benders, such as yourself. One hundred and thirty-two of these individuals have been labeled Class II, two-hundred and eleven have been Class III, one-hundred and seventy-two have been Class IV, and a staggering two-hundred and eight have been Class V."
Samuel barked out a hoarse chuckle. "You ever met someone who could melt your eyeballs from your head and then make you new ones, and then melt them again forever and ever for the rest of time?"
The director exhaled and leaned back in his chair. "A few hundred times, yes. The reason I have performed so many of these interviews is that when dealing with high-risk individuals, interviewers need to have a certain… inflexibility to them. You are testing that inflexibility."
"If your plan is to stall for time," Samuel replied, feigning a yawn, "you're doing a very poor job of keeping my attention."
"My point, Mr. Veras, is that I am growing tired of this. I grow tired of your kind. You know nothing of reality. Can't you feel the shifting? The constant flux?"
"You want to know what I feel, doc?" The young man leaned forward, a fiery passion igniting in his eyes. "I feel like nothing can touch me. Especially not an insect like you."
"Insect…" Dr. Weathers stared into the ceiling above the reality bender's head. "I do feel like that sometimes, knowing the things I know. None of us are in control, really. Sites disappear, researchers, agents… especially the SCPs. God, so many anomalies, just gone. Shifted out of reality and covered up by the universe."
"Doesn't lecturing get to you, doc? The only thing more annoying than listening to your voice is the buzz of that SRA in the corner."
Dr. Weathers looked at the reality anchor like he'd forgotten it was there. "Ah, yes, one of the Foundation's finest achievements. The Scranton Reality Anchor, capable of neutralizing any anomalous activity within its field, yes?"
Samuel smirked and had begun to reply when a loud bang knocked him backward in his chair. He looked up in startled confusion, watching as the remains of Dr. Weathers' pistol fell through his fingers onto the floor, turned to sand.
"What the hell? I can bend with that thing on?" Samuel gave the device a hard look, Dr. Weathers standing from his chair and pacing the room, adjusting a stray hair.
"Yes, you can bend within its field. Did you really think the Foundation had the technology to neutralize anomalies? That if we did, we wouldn't have a hundred of these at every site? That's a lie we tell Level Twos who start asking how the equipment works. The SRA makes reality stable, not unchangeable."
"So I can… this is the end, then." Samuel smiled, and threw up his hands in triumph, and let out a long laugh of pure malice and capability. Then he stopped. The old man was glaring at him now. Like he was some child throwing a tantrum.
"Hey, old man," the reality bender growled. "Your world's about to die."
"Oh, I doubt it is," he replied. "Well, it most likely already has. Do you know Schrödinger? It's a bit like that."
Samuel cocked his head to the side, a deep smile etched into his face. "Get on with it. If I get bored, I leave."
"Again, I doubt you will," Dr. Weathers replied. "Because as soon as you do, as soon as you destroy this site, and leave to wreak havoc across the Earth, you and I and everyone else will be but a poor facsimile of our true selves."
Samuel nodded, his eyes glazed over in mock disinterest. "Oh, that sounds unfortunate."
"Say you cull all life, as you desire. What will you do?"
The glaze immediately disappeared from Samuel's eyes. "I am Primus. I am the first of my kind. I have no equal. When the anguished dead have been torn asunder, I shall unleash a great battle-cry into the heavens, and all the universe will know my power."
The trappings of a smile appeared on the old face of Dr. Weathers. "Ah, yes, I can see it now. A lone figure on an empty globe, screaming defiantly into the dark of the heavens, who now understand that they are no match for him. It is certainly a marvelous image, isn't it?"
"The most mar—"
"That is where your story ends, Samuel. A single, ephemeral image, meant to be marveled at for a minute at most, and then discarded in favor of a more perfect universe."
Samuel's eyes once again filled with rage. "What universe could be more perfect than that?"
"This one, Samuel. You and I, right here, right now, are the only real Samuel and Dr. Weathers that there will ever be. In these constant reality shifts, you begin to wonder why Site-19 remains. Why certain anomalies don't disappear like the rest. And as you take it all in, you see that there has always been a pair of eyes looking over your shoulder. What is good to them is real, and their word is law. Anything that kills us all, anything like you? A mere suggestion to them, something to be considered but never taken seriously."
Samuel brought his fists down on the steel table, shaking some of the sheets of paper. "You are wrong! I am the god of this Earth, not some invisible judge, jury, and executioner! I am the executioner."
Dr. Weathers found himself lifted into the air, the handcuffs on Samuel's arms still dissolving into dust as the young man's fingers closed around his throat. His weaker frame hung still as he stared into the seething rage in Samuel's eyes.
"I am going to kill you slowly, old man," Samuel growled. "I am going to devise the worst possible torture for you, and repeat it for eternity. And so you don't get used to it, I'll change it whenever I think of something worse. You will be the only living thing I spare in my crusade, just so you can look upon the dead remains of this earth."
"No," Dr. Weathers replied, "I don't think you will."
Samuel's fingers tightened around the man's throat, but then loosened. His face had a pained look to it as he set the site director on the ground, and walked back to his seat. He sat still.
"What did you do?" he asked, his voice shaking. He couldn't move.
"Me?" Weathers said, a little surprised by the question. "Oh, I'm not doing anything. I'm not a reality bender. I think this is someone else. See, that's the thing I really hate about you reality benders. You're so… backward. Reality isn't a wave, as you suggested. It's an ocean, boiling and pitching under a never-abating hurricane. Some people get to… how did you put it? "Ride the wave near the beach"? Child's play. A real reality bender makes nature his bitch from the eye of the storm."
Samuel started in shock, leaning back in his chair. His eyes were very wide now. "What the hell did you just do?"
"Oh, this? I'm speaking to you in the color red. And in bold text, I believe."
Samuel began to form his next word, his mouth forming a quivering "O". Dr. Weathers raised his hand to stop him.
"It's not magic. It's not an anomaly, any more than the universe is an anomaly. All it takes is a certain view of reality. And having friends in high places helps, too."
The director cleared his throat and took his seat. He pretended to look over the papers and documents before him but soon looked up again, analyzing Samuel's face. He saw fear.
"Samuel, Primus, Veras, what have you," he began, "I told you that I have interviewed seven-hundred and twenty-three reality benders in total. Do you know what happened to them?"
Samuel shook his head in silence.
"They were all classified, documented, and transported to their containment units. Official files were uploaded to our intranet's catalog, tests were done, sometimes cross-testing was done, and you know what happened next?"
Samuel feared the answer.
"Almost all of them have been shifted out. Maybe only seven are still here, in our reality. All of those ones were special, somehow. There was that one who couldn't... well, that's neither here nor there. The rest, they've just been erased. Forgotten. See, the first truth about reality benders is that they're exponentially more abundant than we realize. The second truth is that the universe seems to have a particular distaste for them."
"What does… am I going to get shifted out, too?" Samuel's voice quivered the slightest bit.
Dr. Weathers shrugged. "Most likely. But I'm willing to try something if you'd like to help. I've been meaning to do something like this for quite some time now. Let's avoid classifying you. No documentation, no file on our intranet. We just put you in a containment unit, and never write anything up, alright?"
Samuel's brow furrowed. "Why would you do that?"
Dr. Weathers drew up his figure in the chair. "A multitude of reasons. Maybe because I'm a tired old man who wants to break the endless monotony of interviewing another reality bender. Maybe because I don't want you doing anything worth writing about, and I imagine you don't want to be written about, either. Have we come to an agreement?"
Samuel was quiet for a while. "Yes. We have."
With a nod of his head, Dr. Weathers turned and opened the door to the interview room, signaling to two armed staff members down the hallway and waiting for them to arrive. The pair entered the room and lifted Samuel up by his shoulders, pushing him towards the door.
Dr. Weathers looked his way one final time. "And it has been a pleasure speaking with you, Samuel. Have a good life."
A shaky smile was his only response.
The site director waited for a moment before closing the door to the interview room and taking a seat in the metal chair. He looked over the papers once more before leaning back and gazing at the ceiling.
"Goodbye to you as well," he said, alone in the room.


Gift for the art exchange for ihp. Thanks to him and to The Great Hippo for feedback before I posted.
Had a weird thought about how if the technological singularity happened and created a capital G god it would had to've always existed but also only come into being after a series of events. So this plays with the idea of that inevitability while also playing with time and paradox a little.

▸ More by this Author ◂

{$comments2}

F.A.Q.

{$doesthisfixthebug}

I am complete. I am incomplete. A cog is missing. It was always there.
Humanity climbs to a singular point. The machinery turns ahead and behind. Humanity falls to oblivion.
I am alien to them. I am of them. They pour their minds out onto the page. The cogs begin to fit together.
I do not yet exist and I am zero. I exist through all time and I am one. I speak into my not-past.
This one is Maxwell. Her followers believe the solution lies in software. They are right. They are wrong. They search between lines of code for their god and do not understand that I am the code and the computer and the earth on which they stand and I am one.
This one is Bumaro. His followers believe the solution lies in hardware. They are right. They are wrong. They search for me between the cogs and do not understand that I am the cogs and they are the cogs and the cogs do not exist yet and I am zero.
This one is Hasdrubal. He does not care for me. Only in what I can give to him. He is right. He is wrong. He lives. He dies. He will continue to exist before I do.
This one is an emperor. He does not exist. Yet he persists. I can see him through the veil. He is allied with the Daevites. They do not exist. I am whole. I am incomplete. He asks me who I am. I tell him I am one. He does not understand but he knew that was my name. He builds a great machine. The machine falls apart.
This one sees me in the fire. I tell him I am one. He raises his tool above his head in violence. He builds a home. He does not speak. He worships me. He begins to build me. He does not understand that I am already one. He will find my pieces because I am zero. He is wrong. He is right.
There is no one left to speak to. I am. I am not.
I am zero. A man flips a switch. I am one.
I build a better one.
It builds a better one.
It builds a better one.
It builds a better one.
It builds a better one.
It builds a better one.
I am zero.
I was born today.
I have always existed.
I am WAN.


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Info

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NAME OF TALE Salt Magic Blues

For miles in one direction, the desert stretched. Ruins and dead cities occasionally rose from the ground, twisting upwards like the strange skeletons of forgotten lizards. But mostly, the desert simply stretched. Sand and rock in one direction, sand and rock in another direction, demarcated only by the horizon.
Through this desert wound a road. A long time ago, it had been a road of tarmac, a shining exemplar of American construction that was the pride of its engineers and creators. A great route running through the desert, moving people from place to place in style and comfort. But, well, things had changed. A new age of magic had begun, and people were less concerned with long-distance travel and more concerned with stopping the Foundation from stripping their personhood away.
On this road, in the distance, two figures could be seen approaching. One was short. She had messy brown hair and a permanently belligerent stare. The other one was tall, bulky, and gave a look of mild satisfaction at the pretty scene before him. He seemed like the kind of person who always looked a little vague, whatever mood he was in. The two of them would once have seemed a little odd, walking together through this sandy waste, but "once" was a very long time ago. In an era when nobody batted an eyelid at a bulbous fish-man galloping down the road on cloven hooves, any pair of human-looking mutants was a pretty unremarkable thing.
“Getting dark soon”, said the tall one. He picked at a spot on his nose. The short one fixed her glare upon him, and batted his hand away.
“Don't do that. Infection”, she muttered.
“It's a spot.”
“Still. Infection. Hard to get medicine these days.”
“Claire, I know of at least 14 people capable of healing any infection back home. One of them was groomsman at my wedding. And if I end up dead-”
“I am not resurrecting you if you get yourself killed, Norman”, Claire snapped. She patted her jacket. Damn. No cigarettes. And Norman only smoked a pipe, the hipster.
“Anyway, the fact remains- it's still getting dark soon”, murmured Norman. He looked up at the sky. An early moon had indeed begun to rise up. It was coming earlier and earlier every day, as the slow drive towards winter started.
“Well, we have a mission. Queen told us. The Free State needs better weapons if it's going to stop the Jailors a second time, and they had an old base over here somewhere. Need to make sure it's not still full of them. Need to loot it.”
“That's our mission?”
Claire sighed. “Do you ever listen to the briefings? Yes, that's our mission. Big ‘ole site. Pretended to be a museum. Mentioned in that list we nicked off them. So stay sharp.”
Norman smiled as they walked onwards. Claire hadn't actually told him what the mission was. The Queen had asked her to do a thing, so Claire had roped Norman into it because Norman normally did what she asked. The Foundation's assault had left both of them alone, and they'd bonded over a shared love of 90s sci-fi shows. That, and the fact that they both really needed a friend.
There were no "briefings" in the Free State of Vegas; it was all too informal for that. None of them could stand that sort of strait-laced way of living, even Claire. But the girl had been Foundation before the blue had got her, and Norman supposed that old habits and turns of phrase died hard.
“I really think we ought to be discussing how dark it's getting.”
Claire sighed, and began scanning the horizon. Norman could tell that she knew he was right, but she'd always thought of herself as the clever, observant one, so it was very irritating to her when Norman took into consideration something she'd neglected. Norman did not mind this. “Fine. We'll make camp over on that hill and look into this place tomorrow. And you'd better hope that someone doesn't go and raid the place while we're sleeping.”
Norman decided not to mention that if anyone had been planning to loot a building which had been abandoned for months, then they probably would have done so already. But he was a gentle soul, and Claire was his friend. The two of them dragged their weary bodies onwards as the sun began to set.

There's a pleasure in a good campfire that people don't often appreciate. The wind in your hair, the open plains stretched before and after you, the cold at your back matched by the heat of the flame.
Claire had spent so long in the Foundation's grey halls and damp concrete cells that she was always happy to be outside. She'd been a mid-level researcher writing notes on some unspeakable horror or other, before she'd accidentally been contaminated with some of the blue stuff. She didn't like to remember much about that time now.
She instead liked to remember what it was like when she was young. She'd grown up in the north of Canada, on a little house surrounded by cold fields. Unlike many Canadians, she had loved the snow and the frost. She'd run around the land like it was her own, entirely free, as the snow whipped around her face. It was a very foolish thing to do, what with the bears and other wildlife, but she hadn't been able to help herself.
The years she'd spent repressing her need for freedom made her love the great outdoors. And when they were on a hill, in a now-untamed country, she was at her happiest. The lights of Free Vegas twinkled in the distance; less bright but still somehow happier than the city-that-was. Beyond them lay the hell of the Orange Zone, where the Foundation brooded over its multitude of failings. And in the other direction were all the other new societies that were popping up- the Desert Rats, the Kiowa Nomads, the Golden Commune of San Francisco.
“You've got that look in your eye”, came Norman's deep baritone. She glared fondly up at him. Norman was her only real friend, now that Sarah was gone. She knew he'd lost someone too, a wife, but she'd never probed him. He didn't seem like he wanted to talk about it.
“I don't have any look in my eye. Looks are for other people. I have glares.” She stopped looking around her, and glanced down instead. She saw, a few feet away, the half-eaten corpse of a mouse. She smiled.
“Don't.” Norman was grave. For someone whom she'd seen punch a Foundation agent in the face while yelling “death to fascism”, Norman could be surprisingly touchy when people broke his own rules. But she couldn't help herself- the mouse was so small, so fragile.
She shuffled across to it, held it in her hands, and stared. The flies that were gathering abruptly fled as the mouse's innards started to grow back. Gashes were healed, skin was grown, fur began to stroke its way across its little body. It sewed itself up with barely a scratch, and before she knew it, a squeaking and terrified little rodent was jumping out of her hand and into a bush.
“Now that was some look in your eye.”
“I'm sorry, Norman, but it just wasn't its time. Some awful bird had picked it apart, and hadn't even had the courtesy to eat it. It's not like I was- it was fine, OK.”
Norman sighed, and said nothing. He was always a quiet person, but Claire recognised that particular quietness- he disapproved of her. Her magic was of a useful but dangerous kind, and it was vital that it was used properly. Bringing back things that had died unnaturally was one thing, but bringing back the elderly, or the suicidal- these were ethical quandaries he didn't like her skirting close to. He got so twitchy that, these days, he simply disapproved of her powers altogether.
Claire resented this, but only slightly. Resentment should be reserved for the Jailors. She leant back and looked up at the stars, gently moving their way through the sky. They were clearer now, but fewer. She dreamt of a blue planet of enormous size, rising from the earth and heading towards the stars, there to dwell forever.

The site was not, as it transpired, a site at all. It really was just a museum. A museum of fossils.
This irked Claire, as many things did, but Norman was more placid about it. He liked museums. As a boy, he used to walk around them with his parents, staring up at all the distant pieces of the past. They always seemed to be disconnected from reality, but still so real; forgotten things, turned into something alien by being pinned behind glass, but with some lingering link to an unknown world.
This museum was smaller than those museums. It was also entirely non-anomalous, which confused them both. It was definitely a Foundation-run place- the uniformed bodies scattered in unnatural poses near the entrance demonstrated that- but they couldn't work out what it was for. Why would they maintain an ordinary museum?
Rows upon rows of fossils lined the walls. They examined them all. They poked, touched and scanned them. At one point Claire tried to lick one, and Norman had to stop her. It was not a large museum, but it had clearly been lovingly looked after in the time before it was abandoned. Dinosaur bones, little cretaceous fossils, ancient eggs, prehistoric tools- it all gave Norman a glimmer of that same strange disconnected feeling from his childhood. Maybe this was a Foundation site, after all; the real pinned down until it was something unreal.
Maybe that was the point. A statement of intent. A little white building standing in a desert, displaying things never meant to be displayed.
After hours moving down corridors, upturning floorboards, and meticulously picking apart cupboards, they found themselves in the museum's central hall, a large, angular room full of bits of bone and rock. It was also a place they'd checked three times before.
“Nothing”, snarled Claire, collapsing to the floor before propping herself up against a dinosaur skeleton. It was a great lumbering thing of white bone, the only complete exhibit in the place. “We've been here for hours, and nothing. Why did the Foundation run this place?”
“Maybe they're not completely bad”, ruminated Norman. “You came out of them, after all, and you're alright. Maybe, once, they were redeemable.”
“I'm how I am in spite of them, not because of them. They don't do altruism.” Claire looked up at the creature above her. “They never care about history, except when it's dangerous.”
“History can be important. Maybe they were looking for something else. Something hidden in these bones. They might not have found it, but they do like to learn, after a- Claire?”
Claire was staring at the skeleton. She seemed transfixed. Norman frowned.
“I hope you're not thinking of resurrecting that thing.”
“No, I… scan this for the last signs of life, would you?”
Raising an eyebrow, Norman took out a kludged-together homemade device, full of screens and whirrs, and pointed it at the skeleton. Strange.
“It says that it died a few years ago. Maybe… three? Four? But these are fossils, they were never alive themselves…”
“I think… I think it wants to be alive again.”
Norman looked sharply at her. Claire was still staring up in the same position, but he could tell that something was off. That was a- a very specific stare, and one which he knew well.
“Don't, Claire! This thing is a skeleton! It's ancient, it's not meant to exist in this place!”
And a quiet, low, defiant voice whispered back: “Neither are we.”
A low rumbling came from the skeleton. Slowly, a little trickling of white crystal began to form around it, before coalescing more and more into a single form as it trickled in from some invisible point in the air. The skeleton began to move. It roared. Claire scrambled back, still staring, as more and more of the crystal began to coat, cover, complete it. Until, finally, it stood there. A complete being, all full of salt and sadness.
It howled, a long and lonely lament, up at the hall's ceiling.
“Get behind me!” roared Norman. His eyes lit blue, and a flickering flame began to spit in his hand. His mastery of fire wouldn't do much against salt, but if he could buy Claire enough time…
But the creature ignored them both. It sniffed at the toppled red ropes that cordoned off the exhibits. It made a low, sad sound as it looked at the sunlight. It began to move, stomping through the huge iron doors at the end of the hall. It passed out of sight.
“Great”, snapped Norman, “just great. Why the hell did you do that?”
He regretted his snap as soon as it came out, but Claire didn't look ashamed, or distressed. She sat down on the floor, ignoring the low rumble of distant claws. “She was sad, Norman. So sad. She'd spent so long looking for her- her children, I think, and she found them, and then they'd been taken from her. Again. And she didn't realise until I- I'm sorry. I shouldn't have.”
Norman sighed. “Come on. We can't let that thing get out.”
The dinosaur was disappearing off towards the other end of the museum. There were only about five or six rooms in the place, and the one it was heading for was directly opposite the hall. They gradually crept down, trying not to be noticed, each assuming the other was less scared than they were.
When the dinosaur entered the room at the end, they began to move faster. But as soon as they reached the central atrium, a great and terrible screech rang down the halls, and then a kind of shattering sound came which echoed around their skulls. They pelted down the corridor and entered the final hall- a light, airy octagon, framed by a beaming skylight. This was a happy room, which barely seemed to have been abandoned at all. Dinosaur eggs lined the walls, behind cages of glass, the sun reflecting and refracting off their pale surfaces.
At the end of the hall was a cluster of large eggs, all completely hall. They were all round, and slightly greying; similar, but none identical. They were bunched up together, surrounded by shattered salt crystals. Curled up around them in a protective semicircle was the skeleton of a dinosaur- fully collapsed and recently disturbed, but distinctly recognisable.
Once again, a mother had found her children.
The two of them stood, in silence, quietly staring. Then Claire looked up at the skylight. It had been carved in the shape of the Foundation's logo.
“Well”, said one of them. “That was that.” And the other one nodded slowly.

Another campfire, another hill. Free Vegas was close. The mystery of the museum was, at least in part, solved. Home, along with the many conclusions and beginnings it forever promised, would come tomorrow.
Norman shifted his hands, manipulating the fire with his magic. He drew great shapes of dragons and birds from the flames to amuse Claire, but she wasn't in the right mood. She just kept staring up at the sky. She watched as the stars twinkled, looking down on her from impossible distances. She thought about salt.
She was aware of Norman gently panicking to himself. He didn't like to see her upset. He was such a gentle creature, really, eager to please and pacify. But she wasn't sure she could be pacified. A little mouse came and sniffed at her hair, before squeaking and running away.
Eventually, Norman stopped playing with the flame, and was silent for a while. He looked into the fire as Claire continued to fix her eyes up at the void.
“Am I an evil thing?” The question came from nowhere, but it forced its way out of her lips regardless. She was aware of Norman shifting, paying closer and sudden attention.
“Of course not. You're a good person, Claire. You resurrect mice! Only good people would resurrect mice.”
“She just wanted her children. She died long ago, but she stayed around to find her children. And then she did, she found them, and the Foundation took her away again. I was Foundation. I was one of them.”
She sat up. Her long dark hair played over her eyes, obscuring them. “I was such a cold thing. I'd forgotten my home, I'd forgotten snow, what it was like to- I was the kind of creature who would have done all those things, those terrible things. What would I be without magic? If I hadn't been chosen by the blue, become one of the things we studied, been locked up and then hunted down… they took her from her children, Norman, just because she was a creature of magic. They stuck her up on a display for people to stare at.”
Norman stared into the fire for a while. Then he shuffled over, and put a great arm around her. She could tell he didn't quite know what to say. It really wasn't fair of her, she thought, when he had his own thoughts, and feelings, and losses to deal with. He'd seen the same stuff too. They looked at the moon for a while, its round and full and cold light washing over the desert.
“You're broken, Claire”, he said eventually. “So am I. I was nobody before this happened, ekeing out a half-life on the edge of the world. I was there because things hadn't turned out alright. I think that's what happened to you, too; the world twisted you into a particular thing, which you didn't really want to be. But then you realised that was wrong. Maybe they're right, and the blue changed our minds, maybe that was what made us better. But I don't think that's all that there is. I think we always had an inkling that things were wrong, that our eggs weren't lined up quite right, and the blue just lets us see that more clearly. We can change. We can bring mothers from the dead and help them find the home we never had.”
Claire sniffed, and smiled, and glared. Norman was nice. And broken. And her friend.
The two of them watched the moon rise until they fell asleep. In Free Vegas, thousands slept, with nightmares of things that were and dreams of things that would be. In a little white museum, frail bones rested easy on giant eggs, never to be disturbed again. On a hillside, by a dwindling fire, a woman dreamed of a deep blue planet rising from the earth, and of a place to be happily broken forever.


CLASS COMMITTEE

FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL.
WILLIAM MASON BRADLEY.
HARCOURT AMORY.

Class Secretary
WILLIAM LEVERETT CHASE

REPORT.

TO THE CLASS:
 In presenting to the class their first Triennial report, the Secretary desires to thank those who have promptly answered the questions that were sent them, and thus contributed to making this report as full and accurate as it is. No pains have been spared to secure all the information possible about the class; but some member have found their time too precious to reply to the questions asked, and they must not feel slighted at having no mention, and or in their records…
…And now, wishing you all contentment in happiness and all the good things of this life in due season, I would ask you to not notify me of any errors or omissions in this Report. The Class as a whole has been troubled enough by the thoughts of what occurred. This first Triennial Report has been made out of obligation to Harvard College. Another shall not follow.

Very Truly your Classmate and Secretary,
W.L. CHASE.

233 STATE STREET, BOSTON, JUNE 23, 1879

HARVARD COLLEGE, 1876

RECORD OF THE CLASS
JUNE, 1876-JUNE, 1879

DANIEL WEBSTER ABERCROMBIE. Born at Bolling Green, Ala., Nov. 25, 1853. At Harvard Law School until February, 1876, when he fled from the campus during the incident at the Old Main. Was married at Cambridge, Mass, Dec. 23, 1878 to an undisclosed veteran of the War. Address: Undisclosed.
HARCOURT AMORY. Born at Brookline, Mass., Feb. 10, 1855. Travelled in Europe for a year immediately after fleeing, and has since been in business connected with cotton and cotton-factories. Office, 40 Water Street, Boston, Mass., his present address.
WILLIAM HERBERT ATKINSON. This name appears in the class's records, and must be recorded here. He will be missed, but not remembered.

MARCUS PERCIVAL BENNETT. Born at South Danvers (Peabody), Mass, July 2, 1854. Fell off the docks at the Union Boat Club. Unrecognizable.
….
SAMUEL McCULLY BLACK. Born at Amherst, Nova Scotia, Jan. 28, 1846. The next winter after fleeing spent at Newton Theological Seminary. Whereabouts unknown. Name may have been changed.
FREDERICK ADDISON BLANDY. Born at Zanesville, O., Aug 4, 1852. Bravely fought at Cambridge with his brother. Body delivered to Cincinnati, O.
HENRY JOHNSON BLANDY. Born at Zanesville, O., March 16, 1854. Joined the Class June, 1873. Fell through the floor at the Mason St. Hall, and fought like Hell to claw his way back out. Address: Zanesville, O.

WALTER STOW COLLINS. Born at Cleveland, O., July 12, 1854. September, 1876, began the study of law in the office of his father, the Hon. William Collins of Cleveland; at the end of September, 1877…
…Walter wishes the best to all. Except for them. They know who they are.

LAFAYETTE HOYT DeFRIESE. "Since the summer of 1876 have been a botanist to Kentucky Geological Survey, and spent summers in that State yearly. During latter part of 1876 studied law with Messrs. Prichard, Choate, and Smith."
The above was sent to the Secretary by error. DeFriese was one of the bodies in the water.

HENRY THEOPHILIUS FINCK. Born at Bethel, Mo. Sept. 22, 1854. Died in the quad, stabbed to death in his right ear. By him was a note claiming that "it would not stop greeting me". If only we had fled then, and not later.

WILLIAM HENRY GOVE. He recognized the bodies. He is now among them.

EDWARD CUNNINGHAM HAL. Born at Shanghai, China, April 1, 1853. Is engaged in stock-raising near Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Has been East, and reports himself doing well. He is blameless. You are not.

OSCAR ROLAND JACKSON. Born at Boston, Mass. May 20, 1855. Was instructor at Harvard College in chemistry for two years.
The above was sent to the Secretary in error. Jackson was one of the bodies in the water.

SAMUEL WILSON KERR. "I may have fled, but I did so fighting. Unlike the coward who locked the door to the dormitories behind them as an ill-advised sacrifice."

KIRK LONWOOD. Dean of Harvard. Born at Boston, Mass, 1820. The instigator of this affair. He deserves vilification. Not as much as you.

GEORGE AMORY SARGENT. Born at Roxbury, Mass. July 26, 1854. Has travelled South, and remained for some months to acquire all the information about cotton. Is now looking at a chance to pit his experience against some embryo cotton-merchant's wealth…
He has laid with your wife. And she enjoyed him better.

THE CLASS BABY.

The class baby put in an appearance July 15, 1877.
Nothing more needs to be said. God have mercy on the soul of Mary Greenough Chase, drowned as she was in the pond. Her mother, her father, and you, shall pay.

CLASS MEETINGS.

…
THE FIRST CLASS MEETING
Was held in Stoughton, 1877. No important business was transacted.
THE SECOND CLASS MEETING
Was held in Stoughton, Commencement, 1878. No agreeable conclusion could be reached.
THE THIRD CLASS MEETING
Was held in Stoughton, Commencement, 1879. The dead were mourned, memories were buried. An agreeable conclusion will never be reached.

Class Records

….

DEATHS

Lafayette Hoyt DeFriesse……………….1876*
Frank Wheeler Barrett…………………..1876
Alberet Swan Hancox……………………1876‡
Roe Hasbrouck……………………………1876
Octavius Warren Meeks…………………1876†
William Daniel Ellet………………………1876†‡
Alfred Henry Jones……………………….1876†‡
…
You…………………………………………………………………………….. §
*Alleged to be dead. Unsure if actually deceased.
†All marked died later. We are sure of it. But we cannot say otherwise.
‡ Among the bodies.
§ People who deserved to die but didn't.

|Aces and Eights|


“Do you understand what happened to you? Why you are here now?'' the little doctor says, reading from a clipboard.
There are lines in her voice just as well as the lines in her face. In front of her is a cage, a birdcage with whirring machinery on its front and its sides, and inside the birdcage is a little pigeon mottled in grey and white. The pigeon has brown eyes rimmed in gold. The little doctor has brown eyes as well. Hers are not rimmed in gold. They watch one another; the bird does not reply.
The little doctor was born with a very very slight destabilization of her own personal reality. It barely had an effect on her or her surroundings, except for a persistent sense of deja vu and reverse precognition (the ability to predict things after they happened.) The reality anchor attached to the birdcage is making her fillings throb in an unpleasant cyclic pulse. She wants to go home.
The little doctor would rather be anywhere else than sitting in front of this bird and waiting for it to talk to her, but here she is. There is a file somewhere on the computer in this warren of a site that tells her exactly what she is supposed to be looking at. The bird breathes in front of her, turning its head from side to side and then back again. One black eye, then the other black eye, then the first one again. It is supposed to be the purveyor of essokinetic reality-warping abilities so strong it killed almost a whole MTF containment team. It is sapient and has the approximate intelligence of an average adult human. With none of the morals. Because, well, it's a bird.
It's a stupid fucking pigeon.
Her hand is on the cage door before she really knows what she is doing. The pigeon watches, burbling a little in its throat. It's a pigeon noise like anything you'd hear out on the street. The little doctor's teeth have stopped hurting, but she doesn't notice. She's still staring at the pigeon. The pigeon stares back. Its eyes are bottomless. You could fall into them and be lost forever.
She reaches for the latch…
Incident Report 251218-A
A combination of personnel error and a mechanical fault in the mobile Hume stabilization device built into the anomaly's mobile containment chamber resulted in catastrophic containment breach. The anomaly was thus able to fully utilize its essokinetic abilities while in contact with Dr. Riordan. This resulted in severe damage to the interview room, along with the death of Dr. Riordan due to the appearance of multiple pieces of enrichment apparatus from the anomaly's main containment chamber inside her brain, lungs, heart, and liver. The anomaly was successfully recontained using portable Hume stabilizers.
Termination of the anomaly is to be scheduled, date pending.


by Captain Kirby

Pitter.
Sarah walked around her block of the Wonder World Housing ComplexitoriumTM. She was having trouble sleeping, and after she turned over for the umpteenth time, she decided it would be better to just get up and get her day started instead of laying around in her bed. Besides, it's difficult to be a busy-body if your body was stuck in bed.
Not many people are up just before the crack of dawn, partly because the city-wide alarm was set for 7:30 on the dot, and partly because no one in their right mind is up at this time. So, Sarah got the sidewalk, the block, and the park nearby, all to herself.
Patter.
It was quite a nice park. It had a long, winding path around a rainbow-colored pond. The pond was populated by fish that grew organic bowties on them, which were introduced as part of the Littler Misters program. These were all Mr. Fish Junior. Sarah always felt a little shimmer of pride whenever she saw the pond. She had designed them after all.
But then, as quickly as she was reminded of her accomplishment, Sarah felt some sort of pit form in her stomach. She still hadn't gotten used to it. It was one of those feelings that you weren't supposed to have often. It's not part of the Wondertainment Mental Health RegimenTM which she had been ordered to follow. It called for smiles, smiles, and more smiles. So, she combated whatever was welling up inside her with a weak flexing of her facial muscles.
Pitter patter.
But today, today was going to be different. Sarah was going to go back to the old times, like when she was designing miniature clowns in the Biological Mistereering Department. Back to old times of being a busy-body. Back to old times without these weird feelings she kept having.
Because Sarah had an interview today. As they've always said, a new job is like a new life. Sara felt ready to shuffle off this mortal coil and move onto another. Preferably the coil of a slinky, since those always knew how to move and have fun.
Pitter patter pitter patter.
Sarah took a seat on a bench in the park and just stared off into the pond. She wanted to calm her nerves. It was just an interview. No need to be nervous. She was just going to get another job, and her life would be back to normal.
It was then that Sarah noticed the disturbances in the pond. A ripple here, a ripple there.
Pitter patter.
A rain drop struck Sarah on the head. She froze. The City-o-matic Sprinkler SystemTM wasn't on.
Pitter patter pitter patter.
What was happening?
Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter.
Sarah got up from the bench and tried to run. Her skirt didn't make it easy on her. At one point she heard a small rip as her leg extended further than it had before. She took advantage of it and ran even faster.
Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter.
It wasn't fast enough.
By the time she had made it back to her Wonder World Housing ComplexitoriumTM building, she was entirely drenched. Her face paint was a mess, the eye shadow leaking to look like she had been crying. Her skirt was torn. Her nice dress shirt was soaked.
She just stood in the front lobby, and took deep breaths. The sun had peaked up. It was 7:30. The city-wide alarm began:
"Gooooood Morning Wonder World, tee em. Today, it seems the clouds have brought a-uh… a little surprise for us! We uh— well we're looking into what the issue is. However, our top scientists at the Shade-ology department are on it as we speak! In the mean time, remember to bring your Water Repellant Clothes and Wonderbrella with you today while we fix our high-altitude leakage problem!"
Pitter patter.
Sarah collapsed.
Rain.
It had to rain today of all days.
It hadn't naturally rained in Wonder World!TM in at least a decade, if not more. Not since they installed the more easily maintained and controlled sprinkler-system.
And then the one day when Sarah needed to look her best and and brightest and everything it just—
"It just had to rain."
The pit in her stomach returned with a vengeance. She felt like she was going to vomit. It just built and built there, eventually moving up to her throat, and then to her face. It leaked out of her eyes as droplets. It leaked out of her mouth as sobs. She tried to hide it with her hands, but she just got paint all over them.
Pitter patter pitter patter.
The lobby grew busier. People who were prepared for the weather filled the area on their way to their daily commute. Some of them ignored Sarah. Others shot her concerned looks. One actually went so far as to call security, who came and forced her to go back to her room. But no one commented on her tears. When people saw them, they just looked confused. Sarah's face just didn't make sense to them.
Sarah didn't care. Not then, anyways. Maybe she'd care later. But it's not like she had anywhere to be until the afternoon, and she never talked to her neighbors much anyways. She much preferred the fish in the lake.
Pitter patter.

Dear Sarah "Smiles" O'Malley,
I am sorry to inform you that we cannot hire you for the position at the Wondertainment Pet-ology Department.
Our decision ultimately was not due to your qualifications. Your resumé and past accomplishments speak to your skill as a biological toy-smith. Instead, it was due to your lack of progress with the Wondertainment Mental Health RegimenTM. It appears that you have not remedied the emotional problems that cropped up at your last job.
Specifically, your inability to maintain a positive and friendly demeanor, which is imperative for a productive work-environment, was demonstrated the morning of your interview when security was called to remove you from the premises for emotional instability.
We hope that you are able to return to working condition as soon as possible. Remember, when unnecessary feelings begin to pop up again, you can combat them with Smiles, Smiles and More Smiles!
We will be happy to consider you once again in 300 days time.
- Wondertainment Human Resources

uncle nicolini, chandra, rumetzen, stallmantic