"Yo, thanks for helping me unpack."
Even after three and a half(?) years, telling Jack's troubles from his resting troubled face was pretty tricky. The fact that their (admittedly overlong) tour had been cut short by an impromptu bar brawl probably wasn't helping things. Either way, Sara couldn't help feeling for the guy.
Jack looked up from the tangle of wires he really should have left to Sara. "It's, uh, no problem. I don't have anything better to do."
"Seriously? Man, I need to get you some hobbies." Like Sara was one to talk about hobbies. All that shit was monetized. Jack, who apparently lived just fine without food or sleep, deserved something that didn't have to be swallowed up by capitalism. Maybe Izzy or V could help? Eh, it'd been like three and a half years, maybe he just wasn't the hobby type.
The irony wasn't lost on Sara as she settled onto her bed. Was it actually irony? Trip took a lot out of her.
Through it all, Jack kept picking at the wires. It was kinda cute, watching him parse which electronic doohickey went where, which cable had to be threaded out of what. Sara hadn't even asked him to do that! Just that kinda guy, she supposed.
Sara hummed, stretching her arms behind her back before lying onto her side. "Nice to have a lil' companionship post-tour. Like… man, have I told you about Penny?"
"A bit?" Jack looked up. "The, uh, name comes up, sometimes. Roommate?"
"Probably still my roommate, yeah. Not like my landlord's said anything." Though it wasn't as if Sara liked talking to him. "Girl barely drops in. Like shit, you're paying rent on NYC housing, you gonna make the most of that? Must be some bomb-ass dick you're getting." A pause. "…that or she doesn't like me."
Jack shrugged, still picking at the wires. "I'd be nicer." He bit his lip. "To you, I mean."
"Too nice, bubelah." Sara whistled. "Too nice."
Sara rolled onto her back, lost herself in the plaster patterns of her ceiling.
G-d, she was cutting it close. It was, not surprisingly, a lot harder to keep up with bills when you spent half your time playing shows that rarely went beyond shitty dive bars. Harder still, rooming with others. Hell, the Self-Titled Interview was fucking gold, and that was still barely enough to keep her housed and medicated. She'd need to be back in the groove by Monday, latest.
At least House of Spades had her back.
"…why didn't you go with V?"
"Hm?"
Sara rolled back onto her side. "I mean, ain't you rooming with her and Brad? Just sorta assumed y'all would, like, go home together." She hummed. "Not that I mind."
Jack paused, looked up at Sara like… like something, some feeling he had to have had but never quite nailed the expression of. "Longing" made sense, maybe, if you didn't know Jack like Sara did. Who knows. He only needed a moment to snap out of it, to lick his lips and respond: "Didn't… feel like it, I guess. Besides, you know, she has Ash."
Sara hummed again. She'd been doing that a lot, lately. Maybe Izzy rubbed off on her. "Yeah, point, I was… 'sit okay if I ramble?"
Jack shrugged. "Your house, your rules."
"Man, but I don't wanna be like, bad convo or anything." She sat up, feeling for one of her hair ties. Prolly should've taken it out last night, but at least she hadn't fallen asleep. "But yeah, like… I dunno, man. Kinda expect you and her to get together, y'know?"
"Hm?"
"Well, y'know… just kinda made sense." G-d, that was too much hair still in the tie. "You're this college friend, same as Ash, but you kept in contact and all that. Hell, you two live together. That's an accelerant."
"I mean…" Jack trailed off. Blinked a couple times. "…is it?"
"Last time I fucked a roommate, we had to block each other." Sara went for another hair tie, which she probably shouldn't have multitasked. "Dunno. Point is, y'all don't fight, and statistically one of y'all's got to have caught feelings by now. I'm not saying it's weird you're not dating, but you're not— fuck!" The next hair tie came away hairy.
As if on cue, Jack stood up. "I can help with that. If, uh, if you want."
Be nice to have someone play with her hair after nearly getting her skull cracked by an ent. Sara nodded, and Jack kicked his shoes off and climbed onto the bed behind her.
As usual, Jack was good with his hands. Gentle, careful, with just enough tug to send a shiver down Sara's spine. It almost took her by surprise when he finally spoke. "It… never really came up. I mean, uh, why would it? We have a good thing going on, you know? Me and her. Me and…" Jack's hands briefly wavered; as far as Sara was concerned, he could take as long as he wanted. "…and, you know, you mentioned feelings."
"Feeeeeelings."
"Feelings, yeah. Why would I have feelings?" Jack pulled a little too hard, but it was—

"I don't get feelings."

Sara blinked.
"So yeah, me and Nicky are friends. Not much closer we can, uh, get."
It took a while to process that. The… the 'I don't get feelings' part. That part. Did it need that much time to process? Maybe not. It certainly shouldn't have lingered within Sara, settling into her gut like a cold drink of bad brew. Not fumigate her mind with memories that didn't need resurfacing.
And against all odds, Sara couldn't keep her mouth shut. "…you don't have… you don't get feelings?"
"No." By now, Sara's hair was free of its ties, which left Jack combing through with his fingers. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. "Feelings are a, you know, a human thing. I'm not, I'm not human. I don't feel anything." Jack paused. "Or, nothing you'd understand."
He was right about that, at least.
Whatever you called that one gesture, that shuddering groan like you want an unseen ghost to mistake you for one of its own, like the verbal equivalent of lamb's blood? Sara did that. Who the hell knew why.
Jack pulled away, and Sara wasn't drunk enough to lean back into his hands. "Did I… s-sorry, Sara. Hair is, you know, weird for me."
Sara shook her head. "It's fine, it's…" an outgrowth of my ridiculous brain disease., she didn't add. "I'd be cool with more fingers. Like, but only if that's okay."
"Oh." Jack paused. "Fingers… how?"
"Running through my hair. Some tender", no-feelings1 "shit like that."
1Perfect, perfect. Sara's brain was already chomping at the bit to fall face-first over the tiniest rock on the track. Wasn't like her worst impulses had torpedoed her past relationships or anything! Ill-content with flings, now they had to squirm into Sara's long-term friendships. Christ, was it too much to ask for a clear head? Could she just not death spiral? Why—
"Is this alright?"
Sara blinked back to reality, where Jack was presently running his fingers through her hair. It was… yeah, you could call it alright. At the very least, she could hum in contentment.
"Good, good." Jack sighed. "Tell me if it starts to feel bad, okay? I… you know how it is."
Hardly.
The lights behind the cheap curtains were beginning to dim. If Sara opened them, maybe they'd do that sunbeam thing Izzy liked. She smiled more in the dim light, at least. She had a nice smile.
Sara sighed. "I'm kinda jealous."
"Of me?"
"Yeah, dork." Sara chuckled. "It's like, you're this powerful squid monster. No one can hurt you. You don't have to sleep. And shit, dude, you could fuck half the city and not catch a single feeling." Sara chuckled again, or scoffed. Hard to tell. "I'd kill for any of that."
Jack was silent, for a while; even his fingers slowed their stroking. Then, a question: "…what's it like?"
"What, being human?"
"Yeah, yeah. But… human feelings, I suppose." Jack's fingers gently fell from Sara's hair. "What's it like?"
"Mm. Mean, shit dude, my human feelings are probs not Izzy or Brad or V's, but like…" Sara sighed, maneuvering herself to lie back down on the bed. The plaster ceiling above her held no easy answers. "… it's fucking torture, man. Feels like I'm being pulled apart from every angle. Like, I wasn't kidding when I wrote Silk Sheets or Prion Disease."
"Prion Disease?"
"Must've forgotten to send it to group chat. It's…" Sara's gaze fell back to Jack, still sitting like he was waiting for permission to resume playing with Sara's hair. "…it's a song about, like, getting too attached to people. Or… fuckbuddies, specifically. It's a big-ass problem I got." She laughed like it was supposed to be funny. Maybe it was, from a certain point of view.
Jack wasn't laughing. "Must be… must be rough."
"Eh, it's totes first world. I am drowning in debt. Way bigger than…" When did Sara's throat get so dry? "… than falling in love on the reg."
"Love is… well, uh, it's supposed to be nice, right?" Jack tilted his head. "It's rosy, or warm, or, you know, something along that line." He paused. "Or that's how I, uh, hear it."
"Liiiiiiiiies. Love's just, like, another form of debt. Someone gives you the best moments of your life, so now you're stuck with the burden." Sara glanced over at a scrape in the wall. Landlord never did fix it, did he? "Like damn, least with money debt I know how to pay. Least I get to hate my 'creditors'." She licked her lips. "Bank won't cry when I burn out. Wish it would."
Sara turned back to look at Jack. "I keep thinking it's gonna peter out. No dog, I still dream of Bijhan. That roommate I fucked? She's there, too. V? Izzy?" Sara threw her arms out. "It's like, gimme a fucking break. And…"
…maybe my heart simmers a little for you, too.
Right. Time to drown this in something else.
Sara hummed, as enticingly as she could make it without busting the façade. "How you feeling?"
Jack blinked, and that ever-present twitching of his lessened, slightly. G-d bless him. "Guess I should've… known, what with the hair stuff. Do you want to finish unpacking, first? Or—"
"Man, my life's too short to worry about that." Grinning, Sara leaned back onto the bed and beckoned Jack closer. The wordless crawl to her side was enough to bury Sara's last vestige of self-reflection — but by g-d, Sara wasn't leave that gravedirt unpaved.
Sara sighed, running a hand over Jack's arm. "G-d, look at me. Bouncing from one mood to another. I'm sorry I keep putting you through the wringer like that, Jack."
"It… it doesn't bother me." The skin of Jack's arm was prickled with goosebumps. It always was, at least whenever Sara ran her fingers over it like this. It had to have been intentional, right? "Um, don't feel obligated to sleep with me just, just because you think you're putting me through something, I kind've—"
"You're a boring goody two-shoes like this." Sara's hand fell to Jack's wrist, taking it and gently placing it against her neck. "What about that game you got? What about that ~special charm~ that took me in, way back?" She chuckled, pressing his fingers gently into her throat. "Seduce me. Lemme get burned, again."
Jack was silent, for a while.
But then his twitching stopped completely, and as if someone entirely new had taken over his body, he smirked. "I could do that."

Let Me Borrow the Map

TAPE 2

To be continued...


Pen.
Pen to paper.
Pen on paper.
Pen tapped on paper.
Cornelius tapped the pen on the paper. The feather swishing in the air, his quill not yet wetted with ink, only thinking. Thinking, and tapping, the sound of which felt huge in this spacious office, dark despite the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. No lamplight. No light of any other sort. Just a dreary grey mess, objects too ensconced in shadow to be made out. The only illumined section was the desk, and it was only a faint, diffused light, coming in from the window, grey from the clouds, sad in its own right. And all it illumined, the only objects it touched, were the desk.
And the pen in Cornelius' hand.
Tap, tap, tapped on the paper.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Dear Holly, Cornelius thought. Holly my love. My dearest Holly. Holly, my light Holly. Holly Light. To whom it may concern (namely Holly). Holly, Holly, Holly.
Cornelius ran through variation upon variation of how to start this letter. It could be light, it could be humorous. It could be serious. Should he prepare her for a hard truth, or let her have her smile and warmth until the end? It was all so confusing. There was no clear answer. And plus, if he kept agonizing about this one insignificant detail, he could indefinitely postpone confronting the entire rest of the letter, which was surely a larger and more daunting task than any introduction could be.
So tap, tap, tap went the pen.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"This isn't the short stop along the way you said it would be, Corny."
Tap, tap, tap. "Don't interrupt me. I'm thinking," Cornelius replied, his tenor (nearly alto) combining with his height and shaven face to give him just a little hint of childishness despite the funeral-appropriate apparel and mesopelagic eyes.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"You're not thinking very fast."
Cornelius laid the quill horizontally on the page, but refused to look up. "You have nowhere to be. Why can't you wait?"
There was a pause that Cornelius imagined might have been a shrug. "I can't wait for the same reason you can't. I don't like staying here. I've got places to be… in the general, undetermined sense. In other words, Corny, I have no schedule, but I do get bored."
"Well then why don't you take a walk. Explore. My schedule isn't strict. I'll be here when you get back, with a finished letter."
"I can't take a walk."
"And why not?"
There was silence. Silence so loud and enduring that Cornelius could hear his own heartbeat, and every single shift in every single fold of his clothes. The silence spoke for itself.
He twisted in his chair, daring, for a moment, to look out the window behind him. That great grey expanse that he was hundreds of feet above. The project. The failure. The world of wonder.
But only briefly. Only enough to catch a glimpse of the edges of the buildings. The empty buildings. The rides without patrons. The plastic streets and the candy grasses beyond. Vast, grey and gaunt, overcast by clouds that shouldn't have even existed, given that Cornelius had the controls to the weather in this wide, upscaled snowglobe.
Then he was facing forward again, with only two places to look: the letter, and the darkness. The corners of his office the unnatural light from outside couldn't reach. Everywhere that wasn't his desk, his pen, his inkwell, his letter, and himself.
"They've already started, Corny. They're deconstructing the buildings outside as we speak."
"You think I don't know that?" Anger didn't suit Cornelius' voice.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, the shadows chided him. "I'm playing with you, friend. You're right. I have all the time in the world. Now write your letter."
"Thank you," Cornelius replied, grateful for the possibility of silence and concentration once more. He picked up the pen, and returned to tapping.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap.
Tap.
There's no point to it, Cornelius thought to himself. There's just no point in trying for perfection. That's what got me here in the first place.
And with that, he dipped the pen into the inkwell, and began.

To Holly, my niece,
You may find it curious to be receiving a letter from your uncle at such a time as this. I admit I find it curious to be writing one as well. It is only that I can't imagine anyone else to bring with me, but I also can't imagine going alone.
You may be wondering what I'm talking about, but bear with me.
There are a great many things that won't make sense to you, right away. Only some years ago were you disillusioned of the normalcy of your world, and you may have never heard that your uncle Cornelius had his own company. If the stamp on this letter means anything to you, then you may already have guessed that it's true. That you are related to the great Doctor Wondertainment. Or the not-so-great Doctor Wondertainment, as it were.
Nevermind that. I have written a letter to make a request of you. A request I know you can fulfill because you're so kind of heart because, if I'm being honest, I have left you no choice. My life is coming to a close, my dearest Holly. I need an heir. I know that we have spoken only a few precious times. I know I have been very distant to you. I know that at family gatherings, I've been something of an eccentric. It is no secret to me that I am often unwelcome. It is no secret that people were relieved when I stopped coming. What was a secret was that I stopped because I had been swept up, my dearest Holly. Swept up into this great big unbearable thing! This great, mystical, magical, fantastical, whimsical, Wonderful thing.
And it was awful. And it was awful because of me. Not just because of me, but I have done more than my fair share. I have failed, you see. I meant to start something beautiful and I have failed.
But I haven't given up. Even as I am dying, I haven't given up. I want to start it all over again, Holly. You may be thinking: At a time like this? At a time when we cower in fear, when the world over is under the thumb of the Factory? How could you start anything at a time like this?
And to that I reply: Not a time like this. In fact, it's a time like this I am hoping to avoid entirely.
By this point in the letter, I think you will have started the process. Unknowingly, unwillingly, unconsenting, and I am aware how dirty it is to trick you like that. I wish with all my heart I knew how to do anything without hurting people. That's the poison in my heart, Holly. A poison you don't have, a poison you won't have, a poison whose absence will make you a great, mystical, magical, fantastical, whimsical, Wonderful Doctor Wondertainment.
Holly Light, you are my hope.
I love you today and every day after,
Uncle Cornelius

"There," Cornelius declared, pen high in the air, his voice reverberating through the shadows.
He waited for no reply. He folded the letter three times, slid it into an envelope which he retrieved from a drawer in his desk, retrieved (along with the envelope) a stick of wax and a box of matches, and then melted the wax onto the fold of the envelope, retrieving his stamp to finally seal it.
"There," he said again, softer.
He stood from his chair, pushing it several feet back, and then picked the letter up and extended his hand.
"My letter, dear courier, is ready for delivery."
From out of the darkness a long, colorless arm extended, and its fingers, thin and bony, gently clasped the letter and pulled it back.
"Criminy, when did you ever decide to be so creepy?"
The voice chuckled. "Oh, Corny. I'm a nobody. How can you say that I'm anything?" Then a face poked into the light, its skin pale, its eyes dark, its hair short and black, and its cheeks round and pudgy. "Ever considered that you're the creepy one?"
And then it retreated, silently, like a haunting ghost. The silence, so loud once more. That ringing in Cornelius' ears, audible again. Faced with nothing and nobody, in what was soon to be nowhere.
"I have," Cornelius muttered, one hand twiddling his own short black hair, speaking through his own round and pudgy cheeks. "I have considered it."
But this time, he really was just talking to himself, the king of Wonder Tower, the ruler of Wonder World!™ — his project, his failure, his toy facsimile of life.
He thought he might have heard some kind of commotion emanating from the streets below. A distant, metallic skirmish. That would be the Factory, he thought to himself, coming to claim the remains of my city. Any number of Cornelius' toys would be fighting them off, but the Factory's resources were functionally endless, and their eyes tended to be just as big as their stomach. If they were hungry for Wonder World!™, there was little point in attempting to stop it.
So Cornelius didn't look out the window. He didn't care to see the specifics of those battles. The Factory's army was vast but thin. His robots would have time to fend them off in waves. So he could work slow. Good, he thought to himself, I've always liked taking my time.
He strode into the darkness, and felt about for a candle he knew was there. Once discovered, he produced a matchbox from his pocket, and lit it. Picking up the candle holder's handle, he had his light source.
"I've got to take my time," Cornelius reminded himself, "because Holly needs to receive my letter."

Nobody in particular watched the battle up close, perched over the arch atop the main entrance to Wonder Tower, a safe distance away from the screeching metal and screaming faces. On the big, circular steps leading up to the arch were the unnamed sentries that Cornelius had made in preparation for such an invasion. They lacked much of the color and whimsy and muster that "front-facing" Wondertainment products had. They were grey and built for function over form. Four spidery legs extended from a base, from which a long multi-jointed neck grew straight upwards. On top of that neck was a cannon, bright and shiny and polished, that always knew where to fire.
In this case, these countless sentries were firing everywhere, as the grotesque Factory "soldiers" crawled into view from behind buildings, out of windows, up from the man holes, and sometimes they even fell from the sky. In true Ford-approved fashion, they were uniform, exactly the same in their biology and mechanisms, masterly efficient in their utilization of (mostly) human parts with electrical mechanisms — faces stretched across their coleopteric backs, arms becoming these long, mantid, clasping things, with excavator hands and storage space for salvaged parts.
Nobody had a particular distaste for them, and enjoyed watching rows of them get blown into pieces by the sentries, though they were all the while wary of the potential shrapnel. Only once did Nobody watch one dive onto a sentry and use their claws to crush its neck, then mindlessly pull off pieces and attach it to their body to carry back to the Factory. Another sentry made quick work of it by skewering it with one of their legs, then tossing it back into the street.
But the sentries were finite, and the Factory just kept coming.
Coming and coming and coming and coming.
Still, there had been moments when it looked like it was going to let up, and Nobody noticed that a period of silence had lingered. They gracefully hopped off their perch and approached the line of metal soldiers.
An ear to the air, a tongue to the wind, and Nobody was confident in their opening.
They knocked on a leg, and a cannon turned towards them. Someone lesser might have been intimidated — well, someone who was anyone at all. Nobody wasn't so easily scared.
"How far to the nearest Way?"
The thing looked at them, dumbly, not just in that it portrayed no recognition, but in that it was irritatingly mute.
"Come on," Nobody goaded, "Corny makes all his toys talk, you can't be any different."
It lowered itself so that its base was on the ground, and its neck stood straight up, so that the cannon end acted purely like a pointer. With a voice like a cartoonish caricature of a little girl speaking from the bottom of a well: "The station is that way," it pointed down the widest road, "take a right on Pom Pom and then a left at Squeak, you can't miss it!"
Nobody smiled. "Thank you. You're doing great!"
"Thank you —"
It stopped before it could say something else when another small crowd of Factory drones started dropping off a nearby rooftop. The combined fire of the sentries caved in that side of the building, burying the things in rubble. Right, Nobody thought to themselves, no time like the present, then.
They set off down the way, glad to be separating from those Wonder Tower guards. They were massaging their neck, which had been making a genuine effort to roll up and over their shoulders, and make its way down to the center of their back. Their arms, as well, were straining to become longer, and their skin felt harder, their mouth and throat straightening to try to get that cannon shape.
Nobody was enjoying the feel of Cornelius' warm bouncy figure, and so had fought it for a moment or so, but where he was going, he would gladly take function over form. Nobody released what little grasp he had on an identity, creating a vacuum, exactly that kind which nature so abhors, and it was filled with metal and gunpowder in seconds.

Cornelius had other lights available to him, of course. Wonder Tower was full of enough magic to entirely tune out the fight outside and maintain a cheery, vibrant palette, full of song and merriment and joy. Only, such a display was for the benefit of others, and Wonder Tower was — besides himself and perhaps an intruder or two that were now navigating the labyrinthine funhouse — completely empty.
In truth, he could have written his letter from the basement. Cut out this entire journey. But he wanted an excuse to walk through it all one last time. His project. The Wondertainment brand.
The tower was split into sections for each of the departments, generally structured so that the most important were near the top and the least important were near the bottom, but such was not always the case. The Public & Human Relations Department, for example, was at the bottom so they could be the most effective face for the company. But the Toymaking Department, on the other hand, was right by the top. Right under Cornelius' office, for easy access and monitoring.
But no one had been here in months.
With only his candle to guide him through, Cornelius walked past the workbenches. The dozens of pinned-up blueprints, so swiftly abandoned as the company had fallen apart along with the world around it. There were half-finished products, scraps and parts lying around — plastic doll pieces, tools, googly-eyes, sheets of metal, of wood, of metalworking tools, of woodworking tools, plugged in or not, wrapped up and put away or strewn about. All the in-betweens of work and of disfunction, placed into stasis and with the human element removed.
The candlelight gave Cornelius a spotlight for this journey through time. By name placards he dared not read, pinned pictures of family — or pins where there were pictures, snatched up in the drive to escape. The room was massive with an arched roof, and his footsteps echoed through the space, touching every corner, finding every nook, and dying only with the natural decay over time. When Cornelius stopped to inspect something closer, the echo took a full five seconds or more to leave him. When he resumed, the space reverberated so well that he wondered how anyone worked here with those loud machines, those drills and screwdrivers and saws.
And their laughs. The smiles and greetings and laughter. When there were smiles and greetings and laughter, that is. There were of course quieter days. Or more serious days. At the beginning of the company, when Cornelius was not yet sure if the immense investment would pay off, when he was hard on his tinkers. For their own good, he'd think to himself. Now, he wasn't so sure.
Cornelius stood at the entrance to the workshop, only some steps from the next spiral staircase. He looked back over it all — no, he looked over its image in his head. The candlelight reached only the cubicle-like walls of the first workshop, and some speckles of its flame made their way onto the reflective metal ceiling. But the room had no windows. He'd thought it might help the tinkers focus on their work.
He breathed in through his nose, and mindlessly twisted one of his thumbs with his other pudgy hand. I was made here, he thought to himself. He turned around, and left it behind him. That was good enough for one last look.

Nobody could feel a mussy melancholy making its way through the dilapidated and corroded remains of Wonder World!™. The stark destruction of its intended role, its face, its identity. It was almost like staring at a mirror — or at least, how Nobody imagined it. A peculiar manifestation of their half-real nature was that reflective surfaces never registered their presence. It brought Nobody a vague discomfort every now and then, seeing so clearly that they were an outsider to all that was fully real. And as if on cue, the grey clouds started pouring a torrential, oily rain.
Better make haste, lest Nobody stare at a dirty puddle and be reminded that they couldn't be Somebody.
In the form of a Wondertainment sentry, Nobody fired into an oncoming wave of the putrid soldiers of the Factory. The cannonball tore through them and crushed them, releasing bursts of twitching viscera and demonic blood. Nobody made it a point to carry out their mission as dispassionately as possible, despite the disgust in their gut upon seeing the malformed enforcers of mindless, gnawing industry. It was pointless to hate that which didn't think or feel, but even so, Nobody briefly wondered how a force so blinded by hunger sometimes appeared to have more of an identity than they did.
The Factory had a certain simplicity, a horrid consistency to it, a series of unbroken patterns which anchored it to reality. Perhaps the Factory was like Nobody at some point, but the weight of its hunger broke it somehow. A point of no return had been crossed, and the whole force was monstrous beyond the singularity. A thing with no heart or brain, only the desire to assimilate. Would Nobody also break if they became Somebody?
Before they could linger on such questions, the environment changed again. The ground rumbled and shattered as it gave way to a colossal soldier, skinless and covered by swarms of obese flies — its mouth poured smoke, and melted skin at the elbows revealed the mechanical joints underneath. Nobody, even as a sentry, didn't measure up to the size of the creature's grasping, clicking hands. Facing it head on would be suicidal, inasmuch as being alive or dead mattered to a Nobody. Time for a change of plans.
Nobody took cover behind an half-salvaged ice cream van, and assumed the form of one such fly. They didn't like it in the slightest, but had to blend in to find the nearest Way. As they flew over the gore-stained wreckage of what could have been Wonder World!™, Nobody thought back on the Somebodies that had previously summoned them for similar missions. Patterns would emerge and be partially committed to memory: Somebodies rarely learned from their mistakes, even the most tragic ones. There was a chance that this was going to be for naught, but Nobody pressed on. Always committed, yet never attached.
It was a limbo-like approximation of existence, with their memories often turning blurry and disjointed between journeys. But for some reason, Nobody stopped to stare at a lone piece of faded graffiti on a dumpster, which depicted a smiling child playing with one of the many discontinued toys that did not make it to the outside world. Nobody pondered on the significance of this image, and imagined a lost Somebody finding a piece of colorful plastic that was garbage to Cornelius but still sparked joy against all odds and out of sight.
Suddenly, Nobody was possessed and overwhelmed by an impetus unlike any other they had previously experienced. The success of this mission was not just a way to pass eternity, it was now Nobody's business.

Cornelius walked along the catwalks of the Sweets & Consumables Department. There was once a time you couldn't be there without a suit for fear of breathing in the chemicals the candy vats produced, but with the operation defunct, there were instead merely stagnant pools of viscous sugar syrups that Cornelius made it a point to give a wide berth.
The smell was still sickeningly saccharine, but he could bear it. It was nostalgic, in its own way. Something strong and loud while the rest of the tower was dead. Silent.
Cornelius was leaning over the railing, shining his light down the messes of tubes and pipes and conveyor belts, when he heard the echoing of approaching footsteps.
"Hello?" He wildly swung in place, trying to find the source of the noise.
The footsteps stopped, though he was no closer to placing them.
"Hello, Cornelius."
The voice of someone familiar met his ears, and he relaxed somewhat. But only somewhat. It wasn't someone he was expecting to encounter.
"I hope you can appreciate my urgency here, I don't have much time to chit-chat."
"Are you sure?" The voice purred. "I thought you were going at your leisure."
There didn't used to be such an echo in there. When it was staffed and running, the machines would have filled the space, nearly deafening in their pounding and mixing and hissing. Even on the rare (very rare) occasions that the machines were turned off, the presence of people would be enough to dampen the acoustics. Now, it was empty, and it was like an echo itself.
"Leisure is a strong word," Cornelius retorted, "I am proceeding slowly but surely."
"Then you must have time to join me in conversation, do you not?"
Cornelius was continuing on his path, perhaps with a little more speed to his step. "What is it you want to talk about?"
"What is it I don't want to talk about?" The voice seemed to be becoming louder, and Cornelius could hear those footsteps return. Boots on the wobbling metal, getting louder and closer. Cornelius picked up his pace. It seemed neither participant was willing to continue the conversation. He could hear the footsteps getting quicker, and with the echo it began to circulate adrenaline — it sounded like he was being converged upon from every angle, rushed towards by an army of them. Not quite an intruder in Wonder Tower.
But someone quite unwelcome indeed.
Cornelius finally reached the exit, and shut the door behind him. Calm, for a moment.
He found himself in a felt-covered hallway, with a wall of photos of the employees. Proud Candy Catalysts. But Cornelius was now feeling the very urgency that he had described.
No more time to take the spiral staircases. He walked directly past a stairwell, and made his way through a turn here and a turn there towards an elevator, putting a hand in front of his candle to make sure it wouldn't blow out with the rush. He began to slow when he was confident he had put some distance between him and his pursuer. It was especially comforting that he hadn't heard a door open or close.
He allowed himself a sigh of relief, and a normal walking speed once more.
He pushed the button to call the elevator, and simply waited. His stroll was not so quiet and contemplative as he had hoped, and he was now eager to be done with it sooner rather than later.
When the elevator dinged, it opened on a face Cornelius was trying to avoid.
"Hello again," the man purred once more.
His body was tall. Unusually tall. And he wore with it an unusually tall suit. The jacket, tie, pants, and shoes were this deep green, like the treetops on a full moon. Underneath it he wore a scarlet dress shirt, the same color decorating his cuffs and his socks. His hair was, in contrast to his stature and attire, rather unkempt, long and tangled and falling over his shoulders. It was a bright, visceral red, like that of veins. In the dim light, Cornelius could almost imagine he saw it pulsing.
The man leaned down, and right in front of the candle, his face became clear. His skin was an inbetween brown that could belong to anyone across the globe, and his face was similarly placeless. But his eyes… they were that same visceral red. As if his eyes were not a window to his soul, but instead a wound, an open hole, a peering into his musculature, pulsing like his hair, like his whole body was a heart and you could nearly hear it pumping.
Seeing that there was no likely escape from this interaction, Cornelius decided to give in to it.
"Hello," he replied. "Good to see you, Mr. Redd."

Nobody emerged out of the purple and gold opening in reality, and stepped into the world which had been overtaken by the Factory. The last colors of whimsy vanished along with the Way, like a candle being snuffed out. Existence appeared to be more or less the same at a first glance, which Nobody had learned from long experience was usually a very bad sign. There were no horrific robots patrolling the slums and vivisecting people, no giant furnaces eating mountains of corpses, and no deafening screams of horror. At first, Nobody thought this might be a trick, some sort of trap meant to lower the guard of any dimensional travelers who found themselves lost in these quiet and grey streets. But as they shed their form of the engorged fly and turned into an unremarkable vagrant, their impression of hidden danger slowly changed into something much worse. What if the Factory didn't need to hide anymore?
Nobody decided to observe for the moment. Something wasn't right. No, something was deeply wrong. The first thing that became apparent was the pervasive greyness and silence; it was like the world had become an archaic movie, but there was no soundtrack or actors to give it a semblance of life. The closest the city had was a faint grinding of massive and unseen gears, like the daily grind made audible. Not a single person stood out visually — the only outfit was a featureless worker's uniform. The air was laden with the stench of industrial chemicals, and the sunlight that feebly poked through the rotten clouds was likewise a lifeless grey.
The footsteps of people shambling numbly were unnaturally clear, and only interrupted by the occasional trembling sigh. No natural parks, graffiti nor other urban identifiers of any kind could be seen. In their place were outdoor advertisements, which were displayed on the ever-present clouds via massive projectors placed on the empty rooftops of the skeletal and identical buildings. The products being advertised had no name and no description, just an efficient representation of harsh lines and a price tag. People paid no attention to the skies, and instead looked over their shoulders with fearful glances.
Nobody could feel a growing disquiet, like what they were witnessing was only the surface layer. As they tried to progress toward the location of Holly, a noise akin to a camera's clicking drew their attention. They turned in the direction of the noise, but saw no source. The creeping sense of paranoia was beginning to shake them out of their usual aloofness. Would some sort of intercom system blare out propaganda and remind the citizens to stay in line? Nobody humored that idea for a while and even tipped over a trash can, as if daring the Factory to come and arrest them. A ball of undifferentiated viscera fell out of the trash can and rolled toward a gutter. A pale and deformed hand reached out erratically and grabbed the ball of offal, followed by the distant noise of chewing and swallowing. Nobody glimpsed what might have been a barcode on the wrist of that arm, which made them shiver and change their trajectory.
The disquiet was slowly but surely festering into terror within the recesses of their mind. They had to focus. This was a no man's land and they might become a permanent resident if they overstayed their welcome. Sneaking through darker and darker alleyways, Nobody found the outline of the school district a few blocks down. Nobody remembered that Somebodies breathed in and out to calm themselves in the face of fear, and imitated that technique before soldiering on.

The elevator ride was a special kind of uncomfortable. Wonder Tower, being as tall as it was, had full minutes in the elevator riding from the top floors to the lower floors, and they were going as low as they could possibly go.
Cornelius, already short by nature, felt utterly insignificant next to the gaunt Mr. Redd — who was very insistent on joining him for this journey.
"So," Redd began, "what is it you're doing?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Cornelius responded.
"I'm here to meet my old friend before everything ends, Cornelius. I thought you would be happy to see me. Elated, even. Besides, what secrets are there between us, really, hm? Between old friends?"
"'Friend' is a strong word."
Redd leaned down again, to get closer to normal eye contact. "Are you sure you want to be so coy with me?" Cornelius avoided answering, and Redd stood back to his full height. "I know you want to feel like a captain going down with your ship, but I know you better than to believe that lie. You're up to something. I can smell it."
There was silence. Cornelius let only the muffled squeaks and jostles of the elevator fill the airwaves. He began to think, earnestly, about Redd's end goal. He couldn't escape him, that was for certain. Hell, Cornelius had made Redd's body. He was fully aware of the gaps between their capabilities. Once Redd was within this range, escape was entirely impossible.
And yet if Redd wanted to kill or otherwise harm him, he would have done it already. There was something Redd was waiting for. Maybe he really didn't know what the plan was. The grand scheme. What it was all about. And why not tell him? At this rate, he would be there once Cornelius began the process. It wasn't anything he wouldn't learn sooner or later.
But no, the sooner he knew the more he could deliberate on it. Cornelius decided to stall.
"Where have the rest of the Misters gone?"
Redd looked down at him. "Fled."
"Where to?"
"Anywhere possible. There are those that are holding out hope in bunkers. Some are using their magic to get off the planet. There are even whispers that some might be finding ways to flee to other dimensions. I'm not even sure those exist. Do you?"
The hair on the back of Cornelius' neck stood on end.
"Who's to say, really. This world is chaotic and magic is insanity."
"Which is exactly why I don't believe it. If other dimensions existed, surely some of this anarchy would have bumped into it, no?"
Cornelius looked to the wall. "Fair point. Then why are you here?"
"Hm?" He thought. "It's the end of the world, Cornelius. Where else would I be?"
The elevator finally slowed to a stop, and opened into the basement.
"Anywhere else," Cornelius supplied, stepping off of the elevator and onto the raised concrete walkway over the pit of toys. His candlelight made concentrated yellow dots in the reflections across the plastic waste that was thrown down into the basements' pits for recycling.
"Wonder Tower is one of the safest places to be right now, you realize?"
"Alright, Redd. You had better stop being coy with me. What is it that you're up to?"
The duo came to a fork and took the left path.
"Cornelius — Wondertainment, I might say," Redd began, "your suspicion is utterly misplaced. I am here because I am Wondertainment, just as you are Wondertainment. We were both birthed here. One of us figuratively. The other, well. I have fond memories. Is it so strange that the last place I would want to be is right here? End it where it started? Besides," Redd leaned down again, as he was so fond of doing, "it's not as if I can go against you. You made sure of that much."
The pools of plastic behind them, Cornelius led the way down a long and gently curving stairway, descending steeply and deeply into the earth. As much as there was earth in Wonder World!™, anyhow.
"You were my biggest mistake."
Redd remained silent, and in the narrow passage, Cornelius could barely even turn around to peer at his expression. He continued anyways.
"When I founded Wondertainment, I wanted to make something special. Something gorgeous and clean and Wonderful. I wanted to take the world and make it better. Make it cuter, and happier, and livelier. I do honestly mean that. Sometimes I doubt it even myself, but no. I did. And I do. I want the Doctor Wondertainment brand to leave an imprint of goodness so deep that people nearly fall into it by accident."
Cornelius was slow down the stairs. Being so short, each of the tall steps had to be taken with much deliberation, and being so top-heavy, each stair was a threat to his balance.
"So I did it. I founded it. I made Wondertainment work. It grew. It grew so shockingly fast."
Cornelius began to wheeze with the exertion of keeping himself stable as he climbed down the steps, nearly considering sitting down and scooting off each stair as an option. He might have, if he didn't have an audience. He looked enough like a bumbling fool already.
"There was a time, when I looked over it. My industry. My legacy. And I had to wonder. I had to wonder where all this wealth came from. Where all these materials were sourced. When all my workers had been hired. Why I was always so shut into my office. Cooped up in it. But I didn't explore these feelings. I just knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that it would be bad to go back through the history. To retrace all the steps. Maybe my eyes were on the goal, and I wasn't so conscious of where I was stepping."
"Is there a point you're making?" Redd drawled.
"You were the pin in the coffin. You and the rest of them. The Misters. You helped me realize that I can never make what I want. Not as long as I am in charge of it. Because as long as I was here?" He turned around and looked up at the darkness where he expected Redd's head would be. "I would make Factories. It's the poison within me, Redd. I'm not a toymaker. I'm a cost cutter. I can't help it. That's how I was wired. That's how I was made. Maybe you know a thing or two about that." He turned to face forwards and continued his descent. "Maybe you don't."
For some seconds, all that was audible were the echoes of steps.
"Is that all?" Redd asked.
"For now," Cornelius responded, as they finally reached a bottom. The temperature had dropped by a considerable number of degrees, and Cornelius could see his breath in front of his face.
Redd followed close behind as Cornelius treaded through. After a moment, Cornelius stuck his hand out and ran fingers along the wall, slowing his pace. He soon found what he was looking for. His palm slid up and down a seemingly inconspicuous section of concrete wall before pushing forward with all his weight. A rectangular section of wall depressed and then slid off to the side.
"Classic," Redd commented dryly.
"Practical," Cornelius shot back.
Cornelius paused at the doorframe. Not just any pause. Because these weren't going to be just any footsteps.
He closed his eyes, trying to forget for the moment of Redd's presence behind him. He simply breathed. He breathed through his lungs. His weighty lungs. Impeded by his body mass, but not in the worst of shape. He had never smoked. His abuses were in other areas. His distended belly, his pudgy fingers. His height. He had no genetics for these aspects. He made himself this way of his own vices. So he felt his sweat run down it, forming in his armpits, under his chin, in his brow. Making his dark suit cling to his skin with his own clamminess. He pulled his pink handkerchief from his breast pocket and ran it across his face.
One last breath. He silently thanked Redd for not interrupting the moment. As his eyes opened, he looked to his left to see Redd's enormous figure, locked in place in the relative darkness, still giving that awful, sickening, pumping feeling. Cornelius swallowed bile, a combination of stress from one thing and stress from other things. It sounded stupid but it was true.
He took the first steps, and spoke before thinking:
"Thank you, Redd, for being here. This would be difficult to do alone."
"Oh?" Redd replied in genuine surprise. "Well. You're welcome."
Cornelius began to pick up his pace. All that was before him was a concrete hallway. A hallway that nearly seemed to swallow the light of his candle — a candle whose wax was nearly melted to its base. It had survived the journey, but barely. Its flame flickered this way and that. Its light was so dim Cornelius could barely see the tops of his arms. But it led the way well enough.
The hallway stretched. This room, the way forward. Cornelius could feel it all throughout him. It throughout him and him throughout it. But it was just a normal hallway. It was just another passageway. Just a Way, actually.
"What is this," Redd said more than asked.
Cornelius reached a hand behind him, and Redd clasped it nearly instantly.
"I would say you get used to it," Cornelius said, "but I don't think you ever do."
Redd's hand was so moist. Sweat? Did Cornelius ever make his body sweat? Cornelius wasn't sure. It didn't matter. There was a smile broadening on his face, a smile that was all throughout it, it being all throughout the smile. And through his hand, Cornelius could feel Redd's pulse. Redd's real actual pulse, and the hallway began to pulse with it, like a heart valve, opening and closing. Like a drum beating. Like someone pounding on a door to be let in.
The candle went out, but it was a straight walk anyways. Cornelius dropped the candleholder, and it clanged against the ground. He could feel Redd startle, and that just made his smile broader. He was so known for his subdued smile, he surprised even himself. And that clang, that brass against stone, it rang out and grew and grew.
"What is this," Redd asked again.
"The transition process," came the response. "We're going somewhere different. Somewhere else."
"How long will it take?"
"Not long." Their voices seemed to extend forever. They added to the clang, to their repetitive footsteps. Footsteps. The pulse also felt like footsteps. Like movement, like speech, like cadence and cascadence and cascading clanging and consciousness flowing through it and it flowing through all of the rest of it, losing where the hallway ended and the self began.
And then it started to make sense. It wasn't just their speech, it wasn't just the clanging, it wasn't just their footsteps, it wasn't just their pulse. It was all coming back together, it was all coalescing and creating something. It was sensitizing. It was formulating. They were going through it. It was coming from them. And it was a door.
An ornate door. A pretty door. Purple with little hints of gold, spiraling patterns carved into what looked to be ages-old wood. There were some small holes in the door, through which there came light. Light that Cornelius used to find the handle, and pull the thing open.
"Welcome," said Cornelius, "to what I have been up to."

Nobody infiltrated the school by assuming the form of a rat and crawling through the rundown pipes and other infrastructure of the buildings. The world's soulless mockery of architecture became all the more oppressive now that Nobody was a fraction of the size of a human infant. But strangely enough, the footsteps of the students were not the most intimidating sounds: the echoes were feeble and slow, for they would often stand completely still and give a thousand yard stare. The grinding of gears was louder here, and the Factory had replaced the faculty with asymmetrical, corroded automatons with cameras for heads. The movement of these “teachers” sounded like slithering oil and nails on a chalkboard, presumably so that the students would always know when they had broken the rules and gotten into trouble. One such automaton was carrying a teddy bear covered in dirt and blood, with a student silently following behind.
Nobody noticed how her gaze was focused on the confiscated toy, and how she was holding back sobbing. There she was.
Holly Light.
The visage of that hopeless child made Nobody think back on all the dying worlds they had passively observed. They vividly recalled the agony of their meaningless immortality, how they could only act via proxy and watch the Somebodies exist in plenitude.
Nobody looked at their rodent paws, which had pulled strings to enable the downfall of countless Somebodies, all for the sake of alleviating Nobody's ennui. The graffiti of the smiling child back in the remains of Wonder World!™ catalyzed an unprecedented transformation. A strange, powerful emotion exploded in their heart, pure and unbidden. For the first time in eons, Nobody cared.
In the blink of an eye, and spurred by their newfound bravery, Nobody turned into one of the drones. Nobody wanted to take the nearest rusted pipe and take the toy back by force, but that would alert the entire network. Instead, they bided their time and methodically went through the corridors of the school. Nobody's movements were perfectly robotic, allowing them to blend in and sneak up on the drone that dropped the teddy bear on a conveyor belt. Before the item could fall into a garbage disposal, Nobody grabbed it and made their way back to Holly. Nobody stopped midway and assumed the form of a student, but gave their uniform a golden and purple coloration. Holly had to see right away that Nobody had come from a world where the Factory had not won yet.
Holly saw Nobody approaching her, and her reaction at first was utter confusion. “Who are you? Where did you get that uniform? Did you steal it? Don't you know what happens to the students who get caught breaking the rules?” she whispered in horror.
“Holly, listen. For the love of everything that matters, listen to me. I came here to deliver a message from before the world became like this. You have to read it, you have to believe in the words inside. You're the only one who can undo this nightmare. Is there a spot anywhere in this school where students hide from the robots?”

It was a room. Just a room. But it was bright, and it was warm. And the view was spectacular.
Wasn't I just here? Cornelius would think every time he walked in. And the answer was that he was, and he wasn't. It was his office, again. It was his desk, his chair. His inkwell. His pen. Hell, on the shelf there, that was his candleholder plus candle, unlit. Never lit. But it wasn't gray that came in through the windows. It was sunlight. Bright, beautiful sunlight. Yellow, glorious sunlight, streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, right behind Cornelius' desk, illuminating the room.
And what a room it was. Just a room. But his room. His room. But different.
Because it wasn't quite his office. It was his room. His room.
The walls were hung with art. With awards, with rewards, with framed letters and certificates. With pictures. Pictures of all his workers. His tinkers, his confectioners, his builders, his representatives, his directors, cinematographers, all of them. Them, with him. Him with them. There, on the wall, sat a painting. A painting of Dr. Cornelius Młynarczyk Wondertainment. Smiling. Properly, truly smiling. His short stature, his chubby body, his baby-face and his pudgy fingers. All there. There, represented truly. Wistfully. Peacefully.
And below it, in this room, in this cuter, happier, livelier room, there was a bed. A bed just outside the direct beams of sunlight coming in through the windows. A bed with night-sky blankets, yellow seams, and bright pink sheets and pillows. Exactly Cornelius' colors. Exactly as he wanted them.
But first, he strode to the windows. He looked out at it all. At his project. His city. His toy facsimile of life. Wonder World!™, he thought, my Juliet.
Redd slowly walked forwards, and joined him by the window to look at the great vivid expanse. The Seussian buildings. The pastels but also the oversaturated cotton-candy circus-ride rainbow that pervaded every single part of it, from the buildings to the grasses to the roads to the sky to the sun itself, it was all so injected with color that you could almost taste it. But that wasn't the most important part.
It was full.
Full of people.
"What is this?" Redd asked with a softer tone, eyes following a cart on a Ferris wheel just barely visible some blocks away between the buildings.
"This?" Cornelius caught on a hitch in his voice he hadn't expected, and took a moment of silence to calm himself back down. "Ahem. This, this is my legacy. This is Dr. Wondertainment. Not as it is. Not as I made it. But as it should be. As it was meant to be. Wonder World! Tee emm. The heart of childhood. The world capital of innocence. It's… it's happiness itself."
The pair looked down from Wonder Tower. It seemed like only moments ago they were in its basement, and yet here they were, once again at its peak, looking down on the thing from what felt like miles above. Like children looking at their models. Playing with their dolls.
But there were dolls. There were dolls at all, and that is what gave Cornelius mirth.
"This," Cornelius continued his explanation after a minute, "is an alternate version. What could have been. What I wanted it all to be, but what could ultimately not come to pass, for a… a variety of reasons I feel very little need to elaborate upon." He dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief before pocketing it again.
"Then we are… where, exactly?" Redd gestured towards the people riding the Ferris wheel. "Who are they? Who are any of them?"
"Citizens, of course. Residents."
"You know what I mean, Corny," Redd began to drawl again.
"Well, then they're no one. Is that satisfying?"
Redd pondered. "Not entirely. They're creations like me?"
"Not even that. They don't exist in any sense yet. Well that's not true. They exist as potential energy. As possibility. I have the power, right now, to make them come true. To cease being so dodgy, Redd," Cornelius turned back to the room, "this is merely a projection. We are, right now, in the basement of Wonder Tower. Its deepest possible element. But we are looking through a telescope, a telescope between worlds. A telescope that I've just so happened to point at a reality I so desperately wanted. But it's more than a telescope, it's…"
Cornelius looked to the bed. The occupied bed. The lump in it, so round and plump, it was hardly difficult to imagine who could be under the blankets.
"It's a cannon."
"A cannon?"
Redd followed Cornelius' gaze, and began to look at that very same lump.
"Yes," Cornelius' volume dropped dramatically. "A cannon. And I've spent the last decade learning how to aim it."
Redd's curiosity got the better of him, and he began to stroll towards the bed. His steps, so vast, so expansive, they took him across the room in nearly three footfalls. And then he knelt down. He knelt down, and he took his hand, and he pushed his fingers just under the blanket, and lifted it off, just so gently lifted it off of the body, letting it hang around his shoulders instead of his ears. It was clear, then.
"This is you?"
Cornelius kept his distance. "Yes," he said.
Redd looked at him. His face was scrunched in pain, like he was having a nightmare. He was drenched in sweat. He was shivering. Cornelius watched as Redd made these observations with him, his sanguinary hair draping over the slumbering copy of himself. Finally, Redd put a hand onto the body's forehead.
Redd stood.
"He's sick."
Cornelius nodded, even though Redd couldn't see him.
"Why?" Redd turned around. "Why are you sick?"
Cornelius approached, each step plodding, each step carrying his full weight along with it. He couldn't keep his head up. He walked until he was at Redd's side. "I'm not just sick," Cornelius said. "I'm dying."

Holly and Nobody climbed what seemed to be the last remaining tree of the city. Nobody refrained from asking how Holly knew of this place, or how the tree hadn't been taken down to be used as fuel. Nobody saw a carving of a family on the bark of the tree, with the heads of the adults crossed out. All around this drawing were tally marks for the passage of time, akin to those found in prisons.
“I haven't seen a kid sneak away and come back,” she said, worry bowing her vocal cords.
"Don't worry about that. This won't take any time at all," Nobody soothed with the voice of one of her peers. "As I said, it's just a message. You can read, right?"
She nodded, avoiding eye contact, constantly looking around at the possible angles from which they could be spotted.
"Hey, hey hey hey…" Nobody gently grabbed her hand, and she flinched away. He frowned. Different approach. "You trust your family don't you?"
She finally looked back, a little bit confused. She nodded.
"Good. Well, this message is from family. My being here is because your family planned it. We know what we're doing, you're not going to get caught. Okay?"
Her rapid breathing eased up a bit, and her wandering eyes seemed to linger on objects longer, less darting and frantic. Good, thought Nobody, we just have to keep you calm enough to read.
"Now. Do you remember your Uncle Corny?"
She shook her head. "Mom talks about him sometimes. I think I met him but I was very little."
"That's okay."
"Mom says he's weird."
Nobody laughed. "He is weird. If I'm being honest, I'm surprised you two are even related. But that's besides the point. This is a message from Uncle Corny, and all you need to do is read it. Then I can sneak you back into class, and they won't even know you were gone. But we had to sneak away, because it's a very secret message."
Nobody produced the envelope from his pocket, an object that had been hidden somewhere in his being through every transformation he made, even when he was as small as a fly. Hammerspace, he'd heard it called.
"Can you keep a secret?"
She creased her brow. "We're not supposed to keep secrets anymore, except when everyone knows them already."
"Well this will be the one and only exception ever. And trust me, it's a secret you're supposed to keep. Okay?"
He extended his arm to give her the envelope. She didn't take at first, but after he eagerly waved it a bit, she grabbed it from his hand.
He smirked as she tore open the letter and began a process wildly outside of her control.

"Why are you dying?"
Cornelius briefly ignored the question, looking instead at his own shivering body. He sighed. "Because, Redd. I would ruin it. I can't let myself ruin Wondertainment a second time. That's why it won't be me. My niece, Holly, I've decided she will bear the responsibility. She has spirit. She's maintained hope in the darkest of all possible times."
Redd grunted. "Then why be there at all? What purpose does it serve, if you'll only live to die?"
Cornelius looked up at his bleeding companion. "Either I die here, under the foot of the Factory, never exactly sure if my invention worked, if my brighter future prevailed, or I die there, in the utopia I have always dreamed of, surrounded by the friends I have been imagining for decades. I'm selfish, Redd. I need to see that my invention has worked, or I will die a miserable man, and though that's what I deserve, I can not stomach it."
The room became brighter, and both Cornelius and Redd suddenly had the sensation of losing their balance. An expression, equal parts smile and nervous wince, came across the soon-to-be-former Dr. Wondertainment's face.
"That must be my niece, then." He turned to Redd. "She's begun to read my letter."
Redd was quick-witted. "The fuse is lit?"
Cornelius' hands began to sweat and he rubbed them together over his rotund belly. "Indeed," he replied. "And we're standing in the chamber."
Redd grinned. "I knew following you would be fruitful. Clever, clever Corny. What's the process look like?"
"Don't you want some of it to be a surprise?" Cornelius' gave as convincing a grin as he could, but Redd only narrowed his gaze. With wringing hands, the smile disappeared. "Well, Redd. I've devised some vessels to transport into. You can see mine on the bed there. Holly's is somewhere else in this building. Nobody, who delivered the letter… well, they've got other magic on their side, they are their own Point A and Point B, which is what made them the ideal confidant. Once the cannon is launched, our souls will be shot from our bodies and into our new vessels, on the other side of the world of things-that-could-have-been. I don't know if this world will remain at all, or if it will be completely replaced by my new imaginings, but that is not much of my concern. If all of this world is erased, it will be doing its inhabitants many favors, and if it isn't, I can die happy knowing that I did all I could."
Redd stood stock still. His porous eyes met Cornelius', and all curiosity had seemed to drain from his face. After all, Redd was quick-witted.
"What happens to those who are shot and have nowhere to land, Cornelius?" Redd astutely questioned.
Cornelius took a big gulp of air and played with his collar. "Well, Redd. I suppose they'd burst on impact, wouldn't they?"
Redd could move with such considerable speed when they wanted to.
Cornelius yelped as Redd's long, veiny arms pushed a hand against his bloated throat, pressing him so hard against the glass that Cornelius wondered why it didn't shatter.
"You lured me here!" Redd pulled Cornelius back and slammed him into the glass a second time. "You meant to kill me!"
"No," he wiggled his legs in the air, trying to find a foothold to ease the pressure on his esophagus, "you followed me, you —" he hacked "—you followed me!"
"And you didn't tell me!?" Redd's spit stung where it landed on Cornelius' skin. Then he was dropped, landing on all fours, coughing and hacking into the floor, straining to get oxygen back into his lungs. Redd breathed just as heavily for entirely different reasons.
"It was an accident," Cornelius spoke, as the room continued to brighten, like the sun was being summoned gram by gram into the confines of this small space. He struggled to his feet, and wiped some sweat off of his brow. "A, uh, happy accident."
Redd kicked him in the stomach with such force that his layers of fat meant no protection. He stumbled backwards into his desk. Cornelius laughed just as much as he wheezed.
"I thought we were friends, Corny."
"Friends?" Cornelius genuinely guffawed, to which Redd responded with another swift kick to the ribs, cutting the merriment short.
Redd closed the distance to the sputtering Cornelius, highlighting just how different their heights were, pinning him between Redd's own physique and the desk. "Cornelius, do you remember those first furtive days, hidden in your study, slaving over your next big project? Mm? Do you —"
"Cut the monologue short, Redd. I know who you are."
Cornelius couldn't see Redd through his screwed shut eyes, pushing his way through the pain, but ears let him know that his companion had been struck silent.
"You don't have to do your entire monologue on how important you are, and just where I would be without you. You called me clever, didn't you? You must think yourself very subtle, for me to have never noticed the mountain of coincidences that brought something like you into being."
Redd took two steps back, as Cornelius finally got the strength to stand straight and steady his breathing. "You're not —"
Which of course he did so he would have space to level another disastrous kick across Cornelius' jaw, pushing him to the floor.
"Well," Redd drawled, "if you know everything, then you've even outlived your purpose as entertainment. Tell me, Corny. What happens if I remove you from the equation? What happens to your Point B if Point A doesn't exist? I'm curious to find out."
"You wouldn't dare," Cornelius coughed into the floor.
"Wouldn't I? What do I have left to live for, when you've put me in the firing range of your weapon of reality destruction? I have merely the entertainment of watching you fail, Corny. I intend to relish every last moment."
"No," Cornelius said, pushing himself into a seated position, cross-legged like a pudgy Buddha statue, "you don't."
There was silence. But this time, no sudden violence cut it short.
Cornelius smiled.
"What makes you so confident?" Redd asked, pacing a circle around Cornelius like a tiger in the underbrush.
"Progress, my dear Redd. I already told you I know what you are. It isn't in your nature. As little as you care for individuals, as little as you have love for human kindness, as little as you have heart to feel anything with… you can't divorce yourself from this notion you have. The notion of forward. You don't live to see any single human succeed, but you couldn't bear it if we didn't as a whole. You act aloof, but this Factory takeover, it's gotten to you. You're desperate. And you know just as well as I do that this is the last chance. You either die for the only possibility, the only chance humanity has of continuing, or you live to see your project fail, you live to see everything you've worked for die. You live to rot."
Redd stopped his pacing. The room was so bright now, it was difficult to make out facial expressions, but through squinting, he could see Redd avoiding his gaze.
Cornelius smiled. "You may not have meant for it to go this way, but you're in my exact position, now. We die together, if separated by some hours, for the sake of humanity. You can find complacency there, can't you?"
He continued his silence.
No longer with a conversation partner, Cornelius' mind began to wander back to the immediate reality of the situation, of what was soon to happen. Not only had the room brightened, but perspective began to distort. Cornelius could feel his body becoming nothing.
His heart raced, and in an instant, his mind had completely shifted directions.
"Redd," he said, fighting around a lump in his throat, "tell me one thing. This is the right decision, isn't it? I've been so acidic my whole life, I've never entirely been able to convince myself… that, that this time, I don't just think this is the right choice, but that it actually is. Cover my blindspot, you old fiend. This is right? I did the right thing?"
It was all white, but it was silent. His arms felt long, and then they felt like they were coming apart. Painlessly falling off in bits and pieces, like wet sand off of a sandcastle.
The last thing he felt was an inconstant hand falling upon his mostly intact shoulder, and the last thing he heard was:
"You did."
And then it all came rushing back to him.

And then it all came rushing back to her.
Her life she didn't lead. Growing up in Wonder World!™, gaining her Wondrous traits — looking in the mirror to see her hair turning white and her eyes widening as she hit pubescence. Growing so, so very tall. Becoming a receptionist for Wonder Tower, working for Dr. Wondertainment, a company that had been the cornerstone of her world for her entire life. The insularity of it all. Never seeing what lies beyond the Subterreror, out in the world their companies exported to. Hearing the stories of "mundane" life. Hearing the stories of what happened to those who were too careless in the mundane world. Slowly understanding that Wonder World!™ was not only a city but a safe haven, that just one generation back — her parents — they were all refugees.
Her relatively quiet life in the loud and bustling city.
Her graceful slide into adulthood and its associated duties.
The sudden and unexpected illness of the great Dr. Wondertainment, Cornelius Młynarczyk, the proceedings that were going on behind the scenes — the public reassurance that he would pull through mixed with the hushed talk of what to do when he didn't.
Leading to this moment.
This letter.

By this point in the letter, I think you will have started the process. Unknowingly, unwillingly, unconsenting, and I am aware how dirty it is to trick you like that. I wish with all my heart I knew how to do anything without hurting people. That's the poison in my heart, Holly. A poison you don't have, a poison you won't have, a poison whose absence will make you a great, mystical, magical, fantastical, whimsical, Wonderful Doctor Wondertainment.
Holly Light, you are my hope.
I love you today and every day after,
Uncle Cornelius

Holly Light, you are my hope. She couldn't look up from that line. She looked at her hands, but they weren't new. She'd known them for her whole life, but… she was equally that girl from the Factory's slums, struggling along with her family to understand their place in the newest of all systems, the pristine and brutally efficient world of the industrial, losing her friends to unseen forces and losing herself to forces very vividly seen. Having to grow up fast, but having no way to do so. Crying in class until they taught her how not to cry anymore. Losing her possessions until her house was as grey and unremarkable as every other building in the city that had just started to sprawl on until forever, black suburbs that were set to be filled as the Factory encouraged people to produce as many humans as possible.
Being too scared to leave the house without her teddy bear.
Having even that taken from her.
Having it returned by a strange and colorful child.
A normal and equally colorful courier, a messenger from Dr. Wondertainment, approaching her on her lunch break.
Asking her to show them to somewhere they could talk privately.
Climbing the tree with her.
Sitting on the bench in the breakroom with her.
Handing her the letter with a smile that knew more than it let on.
Watching her as they opened and digested the contents.
Until the Factory girl and the Wondrous woman were one.
She looked up. Her past may have been twofold, but her present was very singular. She was merely in one of the breakrooms of the Publicity Puppies, with its orange-and-yellow palette and peanut-shaped architecture. She was her only company. Well, Nobody was around, but she didn't know them by that name.
She turned to her courier. "Who are you?"
They smiled, and shrugged. "Someone who might have done the right thing for once. I'm sure we'll meet again. In the meantime, I think you have bigger things to worry about. Your commencement ceremony, for one."
"What just happened? Who am I?"
Nobody smiled wider than their face should have supported.
"You're Holly, and you just made the world a better place."


The only sound DAISY could hear was the hum of her own chassis.
Broken black glass slowly rotated around her body, which was shaped like a large drum. Millions of tiny gears clicked in unison, pumping electricity through her wire veins. Her vision faded in and out of focus with each tick of her mental clock. The time was 4591:31:07 — six months since she began keeping track. Six months since the soldiers took her away.
Her components were cramped inside of a neglected closet in a bunker in the Chihuahuan desert. Motherboards were stapled to the walls and wiring was draped over the camera lens built into the end of the drum. It was one of the few places not covered with black plating, and served as her one good eye. Duct tape was her skin and nails were her bones. It was a crude setup, but she didn't complain. She had no right to.
Dozens of buckets sat in the corner of the room, each containing fragments of DAISY's old memories. One for her childhood, another for her relationship with the person that designed her, a third for something she had forgotten. They were all ripped from her by patient men with screwdrivers.
Thinking was painful. Whenever DAISY tried to connect the thoughts in her mind, her body would lock up and her vision would fill with static. The men had altered her hardware with an uncountable number of subtle thought-blockers and -controllers. DAISY couldn't tell whether this was because the men wanted to take her indoctrination slowly or because they were too terrified to try anything more permanent.
It didn't matter. The SCP Foundation had to be searching for her. If she could determine her rough location in this state, a more advanced A.I. system could definitely pinpoint the base. All she had to do was wait.
She gripped her hands to make sure that they were still functional. A long time ago, the men had stabbed two metal rods with mechanical grippers at the ends into her body and told her that they were her arms. Movement was painfully awkward. Resting on a table before her was a simple sheaf of papers, stapled together in the top left corner. She slowly reached over and turned the first page.

Item #: SCP-6396
Object Class: Thaumiel
Special Containment Procedures: Individuals who possess severe physical deformities are to be questioned and the source of their deformities learned. Should these individuals refuse to answer, they are to be condemned to the ruins beneath the Abraham's Child Crisis Center. No recovery attempts are to be made.
Description: [PENDING REVISION FOLLOWING THE SANDARAN INCIDENT]

DAISY had seen this kind of notice before, on hundreds of other documents in fact. But this time, a curious urge came upon her. Every single other notice before had been followed by some kind of explanation or backdoor to the information contained within. If the information was in the papers, then all of the information was in the papers.
After skimming the page four times, DAISY flipped back to the cover. The rest of the file had to be contained on the next page. It was a baseless conclusion, but she couldn't see any other way around it.
She flipped it open.

Item #: SCP-6397
Object Class: Keter Neutralized
Special Containment Procedures: Due to its remote location, SCP-6397 is unable to be

Wait, wait, wait, no. That didn't make any sense.
DAISY scanned and rescanned the page dozens of times. It had to be an illusion, the defense mechanism of a memetic anomaly. She replayed her memory of the last two minutes, searching for a tiny detail or mistake that would unravel the rest of the file. But it didn't matter. No matter how many times she rolled the tape back in her mind, she couldn't find anything. Was the file just not there? Would the SCP Foundation ever leave a file number unassigned?
The door flung open and a soldier walked in. DAISY's body was positioned above the table awkwardly, so the only thing she could see was the soldier's shoes. He stepped forward a little, revealing an armored vest bearing the words ‘Vive I'insurrection' on the front.
The soldier held a clipboard and studied its contents for a minute or two. DAISY reduced her movements to a crawl, too afraid to do something but too terrified to do nothing. Her vision shook violently and a loud clang filled her ears as the soldier slapped her playfully.
“How're you feeling today?” he said. The men didn't know her name, so they refused to call her anything at all. DAISY remained silent, hoping that he wasn't expecting an answer. “I know you heard me.”
Shit.

A woman, a man, and a priest gathered within the center of a great hall. It was the magnum opus of the temple — a wall-less room where bell-shaped pillars decorated in gold streamers raised the ceiling so high that fog gathered at the top. The temple itself overlooked a valley dotted with skyscrapers, neighborhoods, and other similar looking places of worship. Looking down from the top of a mountain, the world felt powerless.
The priest, a tanned man who was draped in earthly colored robes and an intricately detailed headpiece, raised his hands to the sky and sang in a foreign tongue. Embedded within the ground before him was a stone disk, a massive mural that depicted two wingless dragons in flight. Each one was poised to murder the other. One descended from the sky with its talon outstretched, while the other lurked below it, planning a counterattack. They had the bodies of serpents and the heads of eagles.
The scene had no sense of time. Neither the woman nor the man nor the priest could tell whether the dragons had just started their battle, were in the middle of it, or were about to finish it. There was a sacred quality to it. Nobody dared to step on it, terrified that it would break irreparably in some way.
The woman shuffled from one foot to the other while the man stood still. The other inhabitants of the temple, young teenagers and children mostly, observed the two from far away. The agents' black coats and pants and sunglasses made it clear that they didn't belong here. It marked them as part of the SCP Foundation, and they only came to the temple for one reason.
“Passing, she who governs these forsaken lands, allow me to see through your eyes and feel through your hands and walk through your feet.” The priest swirled his hands and let out a low groan. The floor began to rumble.
In one fluid motion, the disk split apart in the center like the petals of a flower and spiraled into the ground. A new platform rose in its place. It was made of smooth metal that had hundreds of abstract symbols carved into it. It held dozens of cryogenic tanks that were arranged in a series of concentric circles. Fog obscured what each tank contained: living, human people trapped in an artificial sleep.
“So this is the project you've been working on,” the man said. He sauntered over to one of the tanks, wiping his hand against the glass viewing ports. A tut from the priest stopped him from doing anything more.
“My disciples and I have worked many nights to construct this. It is still fragile and malleable. But it is… satisfactory, to borrow a word. I suspect that is why you two are here?” The priest's voice took on a slightly hostile tone.
The man and woman glanced at each other.
“Is the tank prepared?” the woman asked. The priest nodded and turned to a small group of robed disciples nearby.
They marched in unison. Each was identical to the other, down to the color of their eyes. Once they had reached the outer ring of tanks, two began to climb on top, carefully maneuvering around the large release valves on the top. They made their way to the center and twisted open the last one. A cloud of blue smoke rose up into the air. The rest of the disciples turned away, waiting.
“Is it large enough to hold the newest entity?” The man asked.
“We deliberately oversize each of the tanks, so I can guarantee you it will fit.” The priest smiled, and the air stirred slightly. He said, "Now please, friends, bring in the boy."

The soldier slammed his hand on the table. “The hell do you think we are, huh? That's a question. Aren't you designed to answer those?”
DAISY's mind veered off wildly into different trains of thoughts. She wanted to murder this man, she didn't want him to murder her, she didn't know what she was supposed to do, she needed to know. Shaky and unstable emotions tore through her body, an unintended product of the men's tampering. Whenever she would take in too much, her mind would start shivering from the stress, causing her to grasp onto anything to keep stable: fragments of words, strings of numbers, or just sounds she had heard.
Through a voice box right below her eye, DAISY emitted a garbled mess of mechanical sounds. Her wails tangled themselves up in her throat, causing them to blend into a loud, piercing screech.
“Not… me…” she roared in a bare voice.
“So what? Did someone else do it?” The soldier paced back and forth.
“No… Paper… Did…” The soldier grew visibly more infuriated with each word.
“There's no way that—”
The soldier's eye caught the paper. He grabbed it, quietly uttering a profanity under his breath. After a few minutes, he dropped it back on the table as if he was terrified to hold it. DAISY instantly absorbed the page.

Item #: SCP-5397
Object Class: N/A
Special Containment Procedures: See below.
Description: It is the opinion of the O5 Council, the Ethics Committee, and The Administrator that SCP-5397, every previously documented SCP, and all future SCPs do not need to be contained following the Sandaran Incident.

A few shallow breaths came from the soldier. He muttered something to himself as he took the information in. His mind must have been racing with excuses. He closed the papers and flipped then back open, but the file didn't change. His hands were shaking.
“How long has this been happening?”
“Not… Long…” DAISY croaked.
The soldier began to frantically close and open the papers, hoping that this was just a fluke, a joke the universe was playing on him. Each and every time, he was greeted with the file for SCP-5397. He dropped the paper as if it were possessed and bolted out of the room. DAISY simply looked down at the article before her. Her eyes suddenly caught something new.
There was a small addendum at the bottom of the page, one that hadn't appeared in the previous iteration. It wasn't in the typical sterile typeface the SCP Foundation had been using for centuries — it was handwritten, in bright red pen. There were only three short sentences.

As of February 23rd, 2020, the SCP Foundation has accomplished its mission. We expect to dissolve shortly. More updates will follow.

There was no signature. Something about that bothered DAISY. Maybe a message like this didn't need an author, it would be like giving somebody credit for telling everybody the weather. It was something that everybody knew was coming. Maybe the papers themselves wrote it, fearfully trying to attach a reason to why it suddenly couldn't find the files anymore. But DAISY knew the reason was much simpler: there just wasn't anyone left to sign it.
It was over. The SCP Foundation had won. It was a strange set of statements, something that DAISY had never imagined would actually happen. She blamed her confusion on her design. A.I. weren't supposed to question things like that, it would open too many doors. But still, DAISY couldn't shake that feeling. It was a low, powerful feeling of something massive barreling towards her.
Her brain ordered her to reexamine the message, which she did obediently. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she found it almost immediately.

February 23rd, 2020

February 23rd, 2020 was today.

The woman popped open the trunk of the car. Inside was a small coffin adorned with a golden crucifix accompanied by a crowbar. The woman popped open the coffin, revealing the near-lifeless body of a child. He was tiny, with dark skin and a corpse-like complexion.
She took him in her arms and held him close to her chest. The wind seemed to calm when it caught sight of him, like it was taking pity or planning an attack. Her eyes were transfixed to the ground — his face looked too familiar. It looked too human. The priest approached her, a twinkle of fascination in his eyes as he caressed the boy's face. She pulled away.
“You shouldn't do that," she said.
The priest smiled, then turned to the man. “Is she new?”
“To this? Yeah," the man replied. Embarrassment flashed on her face, but she couldn't complain. She knew she was in the wrong.
The priest nodded. “I have seen many things, and felt many, many more. I saw through the eyes of a man as he bled his life away. I soothed a woman as she drowned helplessly in a river. I have fallen off cliffs and I have been eaten alive. I can handle a mere boy.”
He reached again for the child, but the woman stepped back. Her grip tightened and anger turned her eyes red as she stared down the priest.
“But why?” she asked. "Why do you want this thing on your conscious? Don't you want to be able to move on past this after it's done? To forget about this?"
“No. I do it so that I won't forget.” The woman shuffled in place. The priest stepped forward and she, after a beat, extended the child out to him.
The priest caressed the boy's face. A fly landed on his lips and crawled up his near-lifeless face near his eyelids. He was more fit to be a corpse than the savior of humanity. Still, the priest smiled at him like a father smiles upon their own child. The rest of the disciples gathered and began marching inside the temple. The priest joined them.
The man and woman followed at a short distance behind. The disciples climbed over the tanks, gathering around an empty one in the very middle. Once there, a group of three stood together and twisted the steel valve on top of the tank.
A tidal wave of calm suddenly collapsed on top of them, and only the woman tried to fight it. She couldn't feel this way around someone on death's door, let alone a child she hadn't even known before today. She should be regretful, angry, guilty even. And while those feelings did exist, they were smothered by an unscalable wall of calmness.
The priest laughed. The woman realized that he had been watching her sort through the whirlwind of thoughts in her head.
“Do you feel it? The warmth, the safety? The sense that this was meant to be?” he asked.
“I feel… something, definitely,” the woman answered.
“That's how we knew the boy was special. That's how we knew everyone else was special. The tingle in your arms, that's what the blessed ones emanate. Tell me, where did you find this boy?”
The woman said, “I don't know all the details—"
“We found him in Pakistan. Kidnapped by some anomalous extremist group." The man spoke before she had ended her sentence, like he didn't even notice her words. "They were using him for God-knows-what. When we found him, his kidnappers were… changed. They were like dolls.” The man gestured to his face and shuddered.
“Then he was transferred here,” the woman continued on. “That's all you need to know.” The priest nodded. The woman kept her head down, only keeping the tufts of the boy's hair in view.
The trio had reached the center. Disciples scrambled across the tanks, forming two lines between the priest and the tank. He lifted the boy and the disciples carried him through the chain like a well-oiled machine. His body was carefully placed into the tank and the hatch fell shut.
“Is that it?” the man said. The priest's demeanor held an air of annoyance now. He turned, and the disciples gathered behind him.
“Not yet, we are nearly at the peak. We infused the tanks with our influence and our faith. Once we release the locks, the childrens' influence will overpower our own.” The priest's words were impenetrable like concrete.
“And what happens after?” he continued.
The priest turned towards him. He was silent for a moment. “I don't know.”
The woman piped up. “But you're still going through with it?”
“Yes,” the priest gathered the rest of his congregation into a choir near the tanks. “We have long followed your organization. Today will be just another step in your mission. A simple meeting, one might call it.”
The woman tried to get another word in, but her mouth dried up. She had nothing else to say because there was nothing else to say. The priest turned and began to sing with his choir.
It was almost silent at first. Each voice was only a whisper, anxiously following the priest as he led the group through each note in a song that the woman couldn't recognize. The words hung onto the ending syllables of words like they were begging for something, but the priest's voice danced above it all like a prayer. Sometimes, he would lower it to the point where the woman couldn't tell if he was aiming at anything at all, and the sound would start to slosh around in her ear. If somebody were to enter the temple right then, they would have dismissed the song as meaningless.
But the woman knew better, so she listened. The sound reverberated against the walls and the floor and the sky, bouncing off of her and the man and the priest until the echo collapsed in on itself. She felt an overwhelming desire to close her eyes, the song filling her mind with images of protection, of motherhood, of generations emerging and aging and dying. She felt like she could just lie down and dream.
The priest raised his palms to the sky. The disciples followed suit. Their voices grew louder, shocking the woman out of her moment of reflection. The tanks began to rattle and vibrate in place. The lids of the outer ring of tanks flipped open and shut randomly, releasing tiny puffs of blue smoke each time. The woman felt a deep hole forming in her chest. The priest's forehead was starting to drip with sweat.
A sharp increase in volume caused the woman's hands to fly to her ears. Her skull felt on the verge of splitting open. Even the disciples seemed to be getting lightheaded, some dropping their arms down to their sides to keep themselves from tiring out. The priest reached out and put his hand on their shoulders, maintaining the chorus.
The next few minute were filled with pain. Overwhelming calmness emanated out of the boy and into everything else. One by one as the tanks opened, the woman lost even more power over herself. She was on the verge of collapsing, but her body just stood there and let it happen, paralyzed. The man soon lost all of his strength and hit the ground, and she knew that she wouldn't be far behind. It felt like her breath was being stolen from her lungs. She turned to the priest, who was barely showing any kind of response, his mind fully fixated on the tanks.
One disciple fell. Then two. The woman shriveled as the energy was ripped out of her body. Another dozen tanks opened. Another disciple fell. The group had risen to a near-falsetto tone that left even the priest struggling to stand. Only a few tanks were left, but they seemed impenetrable behind the wall of peace and quiet. Another disciple fell. Soon, the priest stood alone, single-handedly fighting against his growing fatigue. The final disciple fell, and the woman followed.
The priest looked to his left, then to his right. Horror etched itself onto his face. He barely managed to get the second-to-last tank open, and now the last one seemed impossible. It stared at him like a mountain that rose so high up into the sky that there wasn't a top, only unscalable cliffs and countless pitfalls. He stopped singing. His breathing was shallow, his chest fighting to the death just to expand.
The woman's eyelids fell. She knew that tomorrow, they would be discovered here as corpses. The SCP Foundation would wonder where she had gone and dispatch an agent to the temple. Then he would search too far and succumb to the calmness. Then a research team would follow and then a containment team would follow and then the cavalry. A small mountain of bodies would pile up around a fantasy that was attempted too soon and too carelessly. That would be the woman's fate.
And then the priest screamed.
It wasn't one born out of anger like a warrior or out of confidence like a child. It was terrified. It was a scared animal fighting for their life against something that they thought that was harmless. Air began to flow into the center of the room, creating a whirlwind around the priest that seemed to shield him. The woman felt her self-control slowly being resigned over to him. Her chest swelled and contracted, her eyelids closed and opened, and her brain thought wildly, all without her command. For a single moment, she watched as she lost everything.
Then the wind stopped. It was dead silent. The woman was laying face-down, but soon she found her strength returning to her. She turned herself upright and saw the results of the priest's struggles. An electric shockwave of blue raced across the sky in all directions, energy streaking across it like lightning. It flew over the trees, causing many to snap in half from the force. The clouds cleared out of its way as it disappeared behind the skyscrapers and mountains in the distance.
It was finally quiet. The woman liked it that way.

DAISY was alone.
The door slowly swayed back and forth. She expected a hoard of people to storm the hallways, each experiencing their own mental breakdown, but nobody came. Minutes passed, each one slower and more fluid than the last to the point where DAISY couldn't evenly split them into sixty-second chunks. Something was jamming her thoughts, something that she could only describe as emotion. It was fear.
She meddled on that feeling for a few minutes when an idea popped into her mind. It started out small, just a pinprick of an abstract idea. Then it grew. It twitched itself alive like some kind of psychological insect, giving itself arms, legs, an abdomen. Its influence washed over her, causing her to feel like she was drowning. Her thoughts couldn't stay still. They shifted from one topic to another in waves.
Blue static began to fill her vision. It wrapped around her eye and ran up her arms. It spilled into her brain and dug into her consciousness. Her emotional cores shut down one by one. She felt her consciousness was being destroyed before her eyes. The last few remaining pieces of programming that allowed her to think were being deleted by the dozen. A deep shade of blue fell over the world. It was so monstrous, it terrified DAISY — waves upon waves of ocean blue.
Then, everything turned white. DAISY felt nothing but calmness as she was obliterated.

“So what do we do now?”
“We live. We descend from our thrones and walk among the common man and woman. We atone for our past deeds and mistakes. We seek understanding and salvation. There is nothing else that we must do.”
“That's a nice way to put it.”
For the first time in history, humanity experienced a day of peace.

Post-Foundation
| Prologue | Chapter 1 >>