Vasvis Ten-Fold Reaper stepped out of the shower, and spread her arms wide. Water dripped down onto the floor as spindly metal arms whirred out from the smooth white walls, drying pads working their way across her body. Other arms fed her long black hair through drying rollers, and another set held out the day's clothing: a shortish skirt, a tank top, and a long white coat with a high collar and far too many belts and pockets and chains. On the back was the image of a clenched fist, surrounded by a sunburst.
“My Lady, we have received further reports from Varssarang Station,” a deep, pleasant voice said over a hidden speaker.
“And?” Vasvis pulled her arms through the sleeves of her jacket.
“The island has been completely obliterated, all original personnel are dead or dying, the fires on the ocean surface have yet to stop, scraps of dark matter waste still dot the area to a distance of over forty kilometers, and the dying screams of the dimensionally shifted continue throughout the blast zone.”
Curses. Another setback, more time wasted. This put the project…at least another eight months behind schedule. This was unacceptable: the Kinetic Overdose Gel, the Deep-Sea Nuclear Reconnaissance Endoskeleton, the mk7 Selchangelon unit series, the LONGSTRIKE orbital harpoon gun, all of that worked. All of that was developed on time all while the Temporal/Spatial Boundary Overpass Device floundered along like a morbidly obese man with one leg trying to reach a piece of unidentifiable fried food on a high shelf. She sealed the clasps on her boots.
“Furthermore, the barbarian fleet bearing their representative has arrived. Shall I send a drone out to retrieve the test subject now?”
“Yes, yes, fine.” She waved her hand absentmindedly. Savages. Who needed them? Completely uncivilized. No manners, no culture, lived off of scraps, completely helpless against the things in the deep, and, worst of all, they were horrible house guests. They always smelled like fish. But…but there were a few of them who were interesting. Especially this one. He actually volunteered to have stuff shoved in his brain. Still a fish-shitting savage, though.
“As you wish, my Lady.”
Vasvis rolled her neck and cracked her knuckles. Time for work.
—
Nikolai picked at the massive scab on the fleshy part of his thumb. The skin was peeling around the edges of the brown-red patch.
Time passed. He sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the ship, salt in his nostrils, and the wind rattling the fishbones that hung from the rim of his wide-brimmed hat. He took a swig from a plastic jug, filled with some pale yellow liquid with unidentifiable chunks bobbing at the surface. Setting that aside, he reached into his vest and removed a dented tin of chewing chalk from his inside vest pocket.
Nikolai was a philosopher, a shipseer. It was his role in life to look at things and think about them. Of course, one could not live off of philosophy alone, so he also served as doctor, navigator, keeper of records and accounts, translator, and advisor to the captain.
Sometimes, when he was away from the others and left alone with his thoughts, Nikolai imagined that he was dreaming, that the movements he made were merely the phantom actions of his sleeping mind wandering about in a great, unknown dream-time. He looked the part, with his hooded eyes and quiet, deliberate words and posture of perpetual lethargy. A sleeper waiting to wake up, stuck in that limbo before the dawn where the sleeper is aware of their sleep but cannot manage the effort of waking themselves.
The world he looked out on was likewise a dream: A ridge of jagged black mountains reaching up to the clouds, splitting the world in half. Misshapen reefs and bars broke the surf, stone melted and twisted into bulging shapes. Birds roosted on the distant crags, crowing and screeching and flying about.
And there, towering even over the mountains, was the Center. A white cube, kilometers to a side, reaching from the surf to the clouds. Windowless, unadorned, monolithic. Even from this distance, it looked too big to be real.
Nikolai was jerked out of his dream back into sleep. Someone was standing next to him. He did not break his gaze from the structure in the distance.
“It isn't right, Nikolai,” a woman's voice said. Mu. Nikolai swallowed his wad of chalk.
“It's for the good of the fleet,” he responded. “Or, right and wrong are relative concepts with no objective basis. Or, it was predestined by fate. Or, it never happened, and I am simply a dreaming god.”
“Nikolai.” Mu sat down next to him. “No one returns from the Center. I don't even want to think about what they'll do to you in there.”
“My choice and my life is my own.”
“That doesn't make it right. You're one of us.”
Nikolai finally turned to look at Mu. Poor, simple Mu, with her splotchy birthmark and yellow teeth and solid black eye and ox horn buns. She was not a philosopher: She was a midwife, a whaler, a mechanic, a brewer. She knew nothing of the dream that was life.
“I came to you a stranger, and I must be moving as one. The Center was willing to pay a fortune for my safe delivery. By nightfall, you will all have enough fuel and food and medicine and machine parts to supply the fleet for months.”
“I still don't like it.”
“What's happened has happened,” Nikolai said again, with the intonation that this was his final statement. He offered the tin of chewing chalk to Mu. “Chew?”
“No, thank you.”
Nikolai snapped the tin shut and placed it back in his vest pocket.
“You have no work to do?” Nikolai said. Mu and the others were always busying themselves with things they called work, but they never chose to put their minds to the real work of determining who they are, why they are here, and what exactly was for lunch.
“The whole ship's gone quiet. Now we're all just waiting for the Center to come.” She nodded towards the Center. “It doesn't really feel like it's out there, does it? I can see it, right there in front of my face, but it doesn't feel real.”
“Reality does not bow to expectations. Expectations merely mask what is. This is what it is.”
“Asshole.”
Nikolai was not entirely sure why Mu chose his company above that of others. It was one of the great questions that he enjoyed pondering. She had no interest in philosophy, nor any ability for it, she had made no romantic movements towards him, and was not subtle enough to hide any secret feelings of that sort. He had no interest in the art of brewing or song-weaving, and felt no romantic inclinations towards her. Occasionally they would work together, but that could be said of any two people on the ship. It was not particularly a close friendship even: more of a mutual toleration.
It was what it was, and what it always had been.
Wait…Nikolai squinted, peering into the distance. Movement by the Center. A tiny patch of wall turned black for a moment before turning white again.
Yes, there it was. A white sphere, dotted in the center by shifting concentric rings of black. A ship of sorts.
One of many, and possibly his last.
—
The door opened to the command room. Her command room: a wide, open space split into two tiers. A high-backed chair, more of a throne, sat on a little extended platform that looked out over the banks of computers on the lower level. It had sculptures around the base, savages and the beasts of the deep, crushed underfoot. On the wall behind the throne was a bright mosaic of the First Punch: a great whale shark, struck down and killed by the Great Fist Harker. The founding of the Center, in those foggy mythic days. The day man fought back first against the selachian menace, when they dove into those bottomless oceans and met the enemy at their door, when they fought on the beaches, and in the tidepools, and on the reefs and in the flooded ruins of the ancient cities laid low by the aquatic adversaries. And they succeeded. The Center was founded, and the threat was driven back beneath the waves where it belonged.
“If it must be done, kill the ocean itself,” spoke the Harker so long ago. The thought always made her a little teary eyed, though she never showed it in public, save in Special Center Patriotism Moments.
But right now, there were more important things to do, such as devour the food brought to her by a little mechanical servant. The contents of the bowl consisted of gold-leafed rice grown in the backs of political prisoners, jellied fetal pandas, sea-vent lychee, and ruby-dust tiger testicles with a Château Lafite sauce. Apparently, the kitchen staff decided to be low-key today.
“Mmph…mm…computer, make me a reservation for forty in the Super-Fun-Time-Room for say…sixteen forty-five. Double dose of XLSD. And make sure you bring in those twin bastrodon strippers.”
“Of course, my Lady.”
“The savage here yet?”
“The drone has just docked. A team is prepared to move him to the Audience Room as we speak.”
“Ah. Guess I should get down there, then.”
Vasvis kicked at the base of her throne, right at the sculpted face of a baby that was getting mauled by a mako. The chair began to descend on an elevator.
This entrance called for music, though she couldn't decide what kind.
—
The aerobathsyphere drone stopped. A circular section of curved wall opened, and Nikolai was greeted by a half-dozen bulky Center troopers, bearing shackles. He didn't complain. The troopers were higher-ranking than the grunts and scouts he had seen over the years, and all that rank seemed to have gone right into human-growth-hormone treatments. In one of the many Center fashions, they wore white vests, had their hair bound into four queues, and had division insignias tattooed on their arms. One of them either lost a bet or was drunk, and had a photorealistic penis tattooed across the right side of his face.
Nikolai was unfazed by their appearance. Thugs, nothing more. A thug was no threat to a philosopher. They were a stepping stone anyway in the way of his actual goal. He followed them through winding white hallways, silent, wandering through his dream. He could feel it stronger now, the tug of waking up. Dreams within dreams had led him here. Perhaps now he would finally wake up.
The Center wanted people of certain talents. They could build for muscle, plan for smarts, train for sexual prowess, but certain types of mind they wanted to get into. They wanted people who could dream. Piecing that puzzle together had taken years. Building up the nerve to seek them out willingly took several more. Dreams within dreams had guided his hand in the end. They revealed secrets of the foundations of the world to him, foggy and faded as they were. He had found the philosopher's goal: the truth.
That truth was thus: Things had always been, and they had not always been.
Now all that was needed was to wake up from the dream and find out what was behind the truth.
The group came to a set of doors, which in turn led to a large, well-lit room. The walls were all decorated with brightly painted bas reliefs, mostly depicting the butchery of sea life or various sexual acts, or sometimes a combination thereof, and lined with massive gold-plated statues of people doing those very same things.
There were two chairs. One was small and bolted to the floor. The other was a throne. A woman lay sprawled across the arms of the throne, stuffing her face with something Nikolai did not care to know about.
The guards fastened Nikolai into the chair, and once again, he did not complain. They could kill him, but if he didn't make much of a fuss about it, they probably wouldn't. Not entertaining enough. And even if they did decide to kill him, which they probably would, Nikolai was beyond the point of truly caring.
“Holy fucking sharktits, that's good stuff,” the woman said. She glanced over at Nikolai. “Oh, yeah. You're the savage who wants to get things stabbed in his brain. That's a kink I can respect. I mean, that's why you're here, and not already getting shit stabbed in your brain, because I want to congratulate you on having a good taste in fetishes for a shit-eating savage.”
“So you say.”
“I mean, you got some balls on you. If you weren't some sorta fish-shitting savage, I'd fuck you.”
Nikolai's mind shifted. New thoughts flowed through long-empty neurons.
“Veronica…”
Dreams within dreams.
“Wait, what?” the woman righted herself in her seat and squinted at Nikolai. Nikolai himself had no idea where the word had come from, but he could feel more on their way, unbidden, worming around in his head like leeches in the bloodstream. The haze was wearing down, breaking apart.
“What are you mumbling about, fish-shitter?”
More thoughts, words, images, feelings, everything bubbling up without any sort of reason or logic, without definition or order.
The shark! Remember the shark, Nikolai! Dreams within dreams! Truths locked away within dreams within dreams until in his sleeping state could not tell one from the other!
Nikolai woke up.
“I know you, Veronica! You were in charge of…of…goddammit you were in charge of the pictish badgers… we worked together, and you said the same thing to me when-”
“Wait, what?”
“Back then! The world has always been like this and it has not always been like this!” The words were flowing freely now. He was awake, awake! “Listen, Veronica, something has gone wrong, something has gone horribly wrong, we broke the universe and I …I know…argh I know what it is but I can't find the words to say it! But we can fix it! We can undo it all! You just have to trust me, please.”
The woman stood up from her chair. Fright, disgust, confusion on her face.
“You're fucking crazy, fish-shitter.” She snapped her fingers. Two of the statues moved from their pedestals, arms splitting into spidery masses of sharp, whirring tools.
“I know you, Veronica! I know you!”
The woman left the audience room behind her, showing no sign that she had heard Nikolai.
—
The examination of the man went off without a hitch, or so Vasvis was told. The entire thing had put her in a sour mood. Results were probably messed up, what with him being even more insane than usual. She hadn't actually looked at the test results, but she was quite certain that he would have no connection with the Dreamtime.
Quite certain.
And to make matters worse, the strippers were unavailable. There went the best part of the whole damn orgy. Maybe she should just cancel it, hop herself up on Fukkinkawaii and have vicious hate sex with whoever she could get her hands on.
That was a good plan, were it not for the fact that she couldn't get the fish-shitter out of her head. He was crazy, she knew that. Completely out of his mind, babbling nonsense, nothing to worry about.
So why did she remember his face?
The ceiling of the Esoteric Reflection Chamber gave her no answers, save the crushing existential residue of the worthlessness of everyone else in the world. Usually that cheered her up, though not as much as vicious drug-fueled hate sex.
She got up and walked out the door, leaving behind other people's problems. Down the hall towards the elevator, sulking.
The elevator door opened to reveal a blood-soaked, wide-eyed, and thoroughly naked man wearing the freshly severed head of a great white around his neck and no small amount of occult symbols carved into his flesh.
“I'm a shark! I'm a shaaaaaaaaaaaark! Suck my dick!”
Vasvis Ten-Fold Reaper scowled, jabbed him under the sternum with her left hand, and tore it out. With her right hand, she made a fist and caved in his skull.


September 18th, 2160 - Within the Wanderer's Library
The night-time is late, and very down. No early morning brightness peeking from the borders of the moon's domain. Just a permanent, thick gray, from which only my nook-light provides relief. I slump in my reading chair. The times have made me a very tired man, yet these words aren't going to be read by themselves. But the words keep swimming off the page… I scoop them back in, fixing the jumbled mess of prose until the story once again becomes legible.

Once upon a time, there was a brave knight named Scott. He defended the whole world. The master he served was a great king, named Glob. But one night, a rabid rat bit him on the nose. Soon the kingdom was in peril. Has the king gone mad? Soon, the answer to their worried question was relieved, as the king beheaded all dissenters. The brave knight Scott was horrified. He was not sworn to protect a madman. So one night, Scott placed a deadly serpent in Glob's bed….

There used to be so many others, like me. Ones who cared about keeping the last sane place on earth. Before they were damned, we saw ourselves as the last best hope for the mind. Somewhere, in our infinite capacity for wisdom, there was a book. The truth was somewhere in the great halls, and we just needed to find it. We could fix everything, maybe even make it better! But as the outside keeps slipping into a dark age, into ignorance and oblivion without any silver lining, it became harder and harder to resist, or even to care all that much. They couldn't ask for our help.

Once upon a time, there was a brave knight named Scott. He defended the whole world. Themaster heserved wasa great king , named Glob. But one night, a rabidhavrat bit him on the nose. Soon the kingdom was in peril. Has the king gone mad? Soon, the answer to their worried question was relieved, as the king beheaded all dissenters. The brave knight Scott was horrified. He was not sworn to protect a madman. So one night, Scott placed a deadlyserpent in Glob's bed….

My vision shakes, even when I close my eyes. I can see it twitching through the swiveling lines and endless plaid portals that lurk behind my eyelids. I'm sharp. The prose does a backstroke, gracefully falling off the page and shattering onto the floor. The world shatters with them, tinkling and falling around me like gold from a prospector's pan. The spine snaps in my hand, and I hear it cry out in relief as the whole goddamn world goes to hell. My clenched eyes do nothing to save them. They won't even save me.

 He defended the whole world. Themaster he

 served wasa great king , named Glob. But one night, a rabidhavrat bit him on the nose. Soon

 Hasking gone mad? beheaded all dissenters. The . He was not sworn to protect a madman. So one night, Scott placed a deadlyserpent in Glob's bed….

The shattered tome slips from my fingers, and words fail. The broken ground trembles, and I can hear the compendium of all human knowledge spilling out of their collections of spines and covers. The pages all around me ruffle and collapse. My own eyes slip past my clenched lids, spiraling down onto this sea of babble. Through the cracks in the fourth wall, it all swirls around my sight, filling me in with all information disorganized and nonsensical. I can see everything, but I know nothing. Just as I slide down, the library does too. I can see, for it refuses to be ignored even as the last thoughts are snuffed. It demands respect, even as it kneels before death. The gateways stretch and snap like shattering violin strings. With a sick crescendo, we shed the last worlds, and plunge boldly into darkness. The wanderers have settled into the grave. We are done.

The rat Has beheaded The serpent

| Hub |


There was a cataclysmic reshuffling of the deck. Something very far away had been broken, first on that most basal of structural scales — the atomic nucleus — and then on a much more macroscopic and aesthetic scale — land, sky, composite stone, and refined metal. Beams and boards splintered. Foundations cracked and craters formed.
Several seconds later, something else far and nearby broke open. There was a Way in the wall of the laboratory, haphazardly structured and clearly unintended. Smoke, steam and ash billowed through the hole from the other side, as was now both allowed and required by the air pressure differential. Severed wiring on the rims of the hole fizzled. The desert's stillness was broken, and irreparably broken at that.
Several minutes later, the emergency lights and fire suppression systems in the laboratory came back online. Though not purposeful, a cloud of chilled carbon dioxide spilled onto the desert sands and dissipated. The fires inside were put out, but the sun outside burnt on.
Several hours later, if one strained one's hearing, the distant thrum of one or many motorized vehicles was apparent in the regions surrounding the laboratory chamber, even through the Way. If one used artificial enhancements, one would hear shouting. Maybe even slamming doors and the tapping of toes.
Several days later, after much preparation and forethought, a hand in possession of six fingers and mottled ashy skin probed through and gripped the side of the Way. Wrapped in a rubber glove, it was joined on the other edge of the breach by its mate. A lean, towering humanoid figure vaulted itself through the hole. Feé˜fo˜panp's booted feet sunk into the sand to his ankles, and he shifted his weight so he would not sink any deeper. His reflective, protective full-body suit twinkled.
His earwig crackled into life. "All clear. Getting readings now." He waited. "Readings check out. Environmental conditions not harmful to life. No life present."
"No life at all? Describe the nature of the new area," a tinny voice piped through the electric umbilicus springing from the back of his suit.
"Desert as far as I can see. Temperature of 1080 Pwu. Altitude indeterminate." He paused, squinting at the sky with his myriad instruments. "…The sun isn't moving. This isn't Praveal."
"Bureran that. Okay, turn to face the realized window. What does it look like on your side?"
The giant complied. "Same shape, same depth on the inside, zero depth on the outside. A direct connection."
"Okay, come on back. Watch the drop."
"Bureran." His nimble, elongated fingers grasped at the ragged edges of the Way and with a mighty chin-up he pulled himself up, into, and through it.

Scientists young, old and ancient watched as Feé˜fo˜panp fell back through the hole in the top of the laboratory wall, briefly obscuring the clear blue sky behind him. He was scanned, his cable was disconnected, and Rad-Squad took him through the secondary airlock to decontamination. The data was sent to be analysed.
Several minutes later, the data returned from analysis. Everything was clean. The scientists left the room as it was sealed off and filled with expanding sealant foam, from the bronze-inlaid floor to the vaulted ceiling.
"Walk with me," said the scientist of the most advanced age.
"…" all said.
"…What do you suppose we do with it?" spoke a middle-aged scientist.
"…" all said.
"Research." An older scientist proposed.
"…and development?" A slightly younger scientist queried.
"Research and development," all agreed.
"—and development." said the youngest researcher.

Several weeks later, the Way was unsealed.
Several months later, the area through the Way had been fitted with personnel transport pads, railways, barracks, labyrinthine facilities, and a production command center. The last of these was by far the grandest structure. Eighty-one-hundred ˜Reiuqù tall, an utterly massive gray building oversaw the desert. A pyramid, at least from the outside, with two enormous spheres of beryllium bronze which hung like balloons in the air and connected by thin pipes. The structure was constructed of the standard Codalitao protein, which was what made it such a genius feat of engineering. Chalk it up to the pressure, the temperature, or the gravity, but it was amazing that it worked. Using the absolute best in dysdimensional protein folding had allowed the Pravealeaons to construct a factory facility inside that far exceeded the size of the pyramid in all eight directions. In its gut was the Way.
Several years later, the factory ended production owing to a sudden and total lack of employees. All non-essential materials were scavenged and harvested thereafter.

Several millennia later, there was an admittedly quite minor reshuffling of the deck along the eastern seaboard, and an organization devoted to protecting normalcy uncovered the factory. Several years later, they reopened it.

Addendum:
Date: 03/18/19
Recent advancements in dematerialization science and containment techniques have allowed for the successful unfolding of protein P-17392-1 AKA "pyramitin." Procedures to unfold said protein as it occurs in SCP-1216-3 are to begin shortly.

Addendum:
Date: 03/21/19
RCOC considered a loss. Lenox considered a loss. SCP-1216 upgraded to Keter effective immediately.


I don't care.
No, in all seriousness. That's the answer to your question. I don't care.
Apathy is stronger body armor than anything else. Why should I care that there's a damned great lizard running loose? I have papers to file, dammit! Why should I give a damn that the semen-eating girl is loose and headed for my sector? I'm on break.
Everything's a narrative. Everything, especially real life. This one, that is. I have suspicions regarding other 'real lifes' that I'm working on in my spare time. But I digress. Narratives. They exist in the world, just as coincidences do. They aren't very strong, mostly just a set of cliches played out repeatedly. Trained task forces fall easily while resourceful civilians manage to save the day; head researchers who by rights ought to be filing paperwork take on the dangerous task of decomming a dangerous SCP; 682 escapes and starts a rampage; things like that. And people always act as they would in a bad thriller, or a bad sci-fi, or a bad action flick. Except me.
That's how I've lived to be ninety, kid. I don't care what goes on around me, I do what needs to be done. I survived walking through the middle the Clef-Kondraki Incident because I didn't so much as acknowledge their presence. I got some coffee from the break room while Kondraki was in his battle suit, and I was in my office filing forms to request a budget for reconstruction of the Site when Clef was freezing the hallway. I'm always that kind of person, and it's helped me survive. 682 rushed by an inch from my face, and I did nothing. Didn't so much as flinch.
That's another thing, you know? That bloody great lizard isn't hostile, it's reactionary. It's like a reverse of 173 - you watch it and feel any emotion or reaction regarding it and it hates you. That's why whatsisname's experiment with the kids didn't work, and why 053 got along so well with it. I just don't feel and don't react. It works for me.
That's how it works, kid. Take it or leave it, I don't much care.


☦An old man's shadow. SCP-106.☦
Someplace, in a dirty, damp basement, there sat a figure in a rocking chair.
A hanging lantern swung directly over the figure's bald head, dimly reflecting itself on his sweat. An unbuttoned leather vest revealed his gray, distended belly.
He rocked back and forth anxiously with a wide, toothy grin on his wrinkled face.
He reached for his liquor, then began singing softly to nobody in the empty basement.
Clumsy bear is roaming about the woods
He picks up cones and sings his songs
He could smell what he would not be able to describe as ozone. There was muffled screaming, and he could hear the latch to the basement being rustled.
More screaming now, but he wasn't sure what was producing the noise. The old man shook his head and closed his eyes.
A cone sprang back in his face
And it hit him good
The old man took to the fallout better than most of his friends did. He watched everyone die. He watched himself die. Such things happened. You couldn't dwell too long on them.
A black puddle materialized on the ground in front of him.
This made the bear angry
So he stomped his foot!
The man sang with his smile intact, but there was confusion in his eyes. There was confusion enough to warrant another swig of the clear liquor. He saw the reflection of his face, smiling, rise up through the puddle of black.
The bear screamed, ow! ow!
He stepped again on this acorn.
"You don't want this," he said in his inquisitive drawl, turning his head slightly "go fuck yourself."
His reflection smiled at him, seeing that it was himself. He sank back into the bubbling black circle and the old man continued to rock in his chair.

The testing subject felt the tingle of his flesh being emancipated as he ran through the endless, acidic corridors of the pocket. He had an upset stomach, too.
Clumsy bear is roaming about the woods
He picks up cones and sings his songs
Where was that sound coming from? Finding it was the only thing to do here.
He turned a corner a bit too sharply and planted his hand on the dry frying pan walls. He took solace that the only limit to pain was greater pain, so he recovered and continued on toward a chained old wooden door in the distance.
His eyes began to burn to the nerve. This was difficult to ignore. He closed his eyes and charged into the door. Everything was rotten, so this wood would give.
No give.
A cone sprang back in his face
And it hit him good
He opened his eyes, and in the brief, white pain he could see that there was no old man lurking around the corners.
But his eyelids were beginning to burn off now, and his lack of skin meant covering them was going to cause more problems than it was worth.
This made the bear angry
So he stomped his foot!
The singing was just beyond that door, he could hear it so… no, he couldn't hear anything anymore. Something was wrong with his eardrums.
This whole situation was frying his brain.
The bear screamed, ow! ow!

He dragged the man through the walls, through time, deep into the maze.
He was now gliding, exceptionally still, watching the man run through the halls of the labyrinth. He approached the human like he approached everything: at roughly 4 kilometers an hour.
He sunk into the wall, and glided, hidden, alongside the man in the corridor. Absorbing the burning flesh caused him a sort of gratification that he couldn't really place. He didn't care though, he couldn't care, he didn't really have what you would call higher brain function.
He just did this one thing, and…
This made the bear angry
He didn't do anything else.
He poked his head up through the floor and looked stupidly at himself in the rocking chair.
"You don't want this," he said in his inquisitive drawl, turning his head slightly "go fuck yourself."
He sank back in the floor.

He laughed quietly to himself.
And he rocked in his chair in the isolated cell underneath a sprawling labyrinth of tight tunnels, underneath a large, decaying facility in a cold part of a dead world.


All that was left was the waste, and in the waste there was nothing. Deserts spanned the Earth, and in one there was a cavern, and at the mouth was a pillar of stone.
It was hardly a shape anymore, but the rock had looked like a man once; now the body had been rubbed smooth and far too thin from erosion. The head was almost absent, rubbed to little more than a tumor on the neck. The fingers of the right hand had broken, and nubs were left on the end of a stump. The left was ground almost to the elbow.
It was moving inwards, although if anybody had been alive to watch it, they wouldn't be able to tell.
Years later, it would touch the back of the cavern, and begin writing on the walls, again. Already there were other lines scratched into the rock, in a language nobody was left to remember. From centuries earlier, they had only started to fade.
I saw a flash today. it was so brief I thought I had imagined it, but it was hot, as the mountain had been hot when I was young. then there was fire. nothing was left after that
before everything changed faster than I could keep up
trees would grow, seasons would change in moments.
now there is nothing left to change
It reached the back and brought its arm up, grinding for months, and leaving one more line.
This will have to be my new home
It finished, satisfied with its journal, unaware of the atomic pace it moved at. As it turned back, it fell. Too fast for the stone man to comprehend, it was on its face, but could not get up. The torso, ground thin from years of erosion, had snapped, breaking his body in two.
For decades, the stone man wept in his own way. It would still be centuries before he died.


Hello, I am Agent Tyler; what is your name?
"Hi, I'm Agent Tyler. So, what's your name?"
"Ellen Jones."
Do you remember how you got here?
"How did you arrive at this location?"
"He brought me here."
Who?
"Who brought you here?"
"The one that remembered my name."
Have you ever encountered anyone else that shared this trait?
"Was he the only one that could?"
"Yes."
How long have you been here?
"How long ago was that?"
"I don't know. Twenty, twenty-five years, maybe."
Have you had any significant incidents with our personnel?
"Have there ever been any incidents between you and our staff?"
"Yes, you killed him."
What do you mean?
"Who killed who?"
"Your people killed him…the one who remembered, the only one."
Why?
"Why?"
"He tried to help me."
I think that's enough for now.
"Well, I think that's enough for this interview."
"Anytime."
…Thank you.
"…Thank you."
Then Agent Tyler left. The way he stood up and slid to the door in that cowardly manner, it hadn't changed at all in two decades. I remembered every single word from his last interview. Always the same conversation; little differences, of course, but after hearing it a few times, I knew the underlying script. He would come every once in a while…usually every month, sometimes once in a season, sometimes the very next day. I don't know why they always sent him; I assume they don't even realize they are doing it. It doesn't really matter. They're all the same.
Everybody but one.
I don't know why he was different, why he could see, but I didn't care for the reason. It was enough that he could. Maybe that was why I was so selfish with him. Maybe that was why I let him risk himself for me. I didn't realize that if he died, it severed my only link to the world.
They killed him…no, I killed him. They didn't even know what they were doing. They couldn't, only I could. I knew what I was doing. I killed him.
He was the only one that cared. He was the only one that could. He knew what my existence was, this body that forgets it needs to breathe, to eat, to sleep, to age, to die…
After twenty-five years, my memories of him are the only thing that let me weather the corrosion of time. They are neither good nor bad, well, really, they are both, but more importantly, they are something. Anything, something to give me meaning. There is nothing else I have.
Time did not forget me, everything else did. I remember. I remember everything.

At least one attempt has been made to destroy SCP-055, or possibly move it from containment at Site 19 to another site, meeting failure for reasons unknown.


☦Eldricht masters of probability. SCP-1855.☦
Before time, a group of construction workers found a space in the infinite nether and decided that one day, a teenage human should need to drive through that point on his way to a new home, and that he should take some extra time to get there, and that certain trees should provide shade and that some of them shouldn't, and that on his way he should be a little hungry.
So they laid the groundwork.
In order to do this they would need dinosaurs and giant flaming balls of gas.
Construction went very according to plan, with the mammals eating the dinosaur's eggs and a politician being shot in the head in his convertible.
They waited a few years and shared cans of watery beer up until this punk turned a corner on a shaded Louisianna backroad. One of them sat in anticipation with a walkie-talkie, and a bag of fun sized Snickers. Their foreheads were coated in sweat as the human puttered closer to his truck. He drew closer, slower, because there were construction signs and the worker was blocking the way.
The human took off his helmet and pulled up to the worker's window.
"Hey, can I go through here? The signs say do not pass. I don't know what that means." said the human.
"Uh, yeah," the worker responded, mouth half full of chocolate, "just follow the pilot car up ahead."
"Hey thanks!" he said, and began to put his helmet back on.
"Wait a minute there, you hungry? I got some Fritos that I'm not gonna eat."
The human looked at the worker, puzzled. "No, not really. I'm not really hungry."
The worker grimaced, and looked away on down the road.
This universe would stretch on in infinite wrongness, its denizens completely unaware how wrong they all were. Of course a few aesthetes would jump off of some bridges due to some sort of implacable existential crisis, but I digress.
The workers held a meeting in an abandoned Wal Mart 3,000 years after they learned that their construction wasn't up to code. The fat man shaped creatures sat in the mucus coated inventory room on ladders and stacked pallets.
"Probability is hard to master," the fattest of them said in a lazy croak "but not impossible. We know that."
Some of them shuffled in their seats, and many cigarettes were lit.
"This universe is wrong, and that is sad. Outside you'll see octopus slime monsters funneling through that big hole in the ground, doing things to the human populace. That ain't right. That's wrong actually. That is not a thing that should happen."
Everyone muttered in agreement.
"But we're not gonna sit around crying about it, or blame anyone, not even Steve. We freeze this world and move on."
They sat in silence for some time, ignoring the weird squishes and screams coming from outside.
"I'll do the honors."
The fattest one opened the loading garage and stepped outside onto the pavement.
"An infinite number of possibilities stretch out around us in every moment," he croaked loudly as he stepped a few meters in front of a human and its monstrous pursuer. "…and it's your job to know what happens at least one hundred million steps ahead."
"Oh my god please help me!" the man screamed as he neared the worker. "Help!" he screamed at the unmoving, bored looking man creature. The worker stepped aside as the human approached, and, a few moments before the human passed him, he extended his foot. The human tripped and the slime monster closed the distance.
"Oh god why! No!" the human screamed as the monster… well.
The group of workers applauded quietly as the fattest turned his back to the vulgar scene behind him, and made his way back to the garage.
"This is how it's done. In a few million years this world, led by the hybrid sextuplepus necromancers, will be frozen permanently by your typical stasis anomaly, and we will be transported to a blank dimension. We'll go from there."

They waited a few years and a human turned a corner on a Louisiana back road on a scooter.
The human was starving, and had been driving for about five hours. He saw that there was a gas station a few miles ahead on his GPS, and decided to drive past the construction workers and the pilot car that was supposed to lead him through.
"Hey buddy, slow down!" the worker screamed as the human flew past him on the old road. But he didn't slow down, and one thousand years later shadow people would be eating human hearts, and the resistance would create a device designed to destroy them all in one fell swoop, and it would backfire horribly.


Senior Agent Jehr stretched as the secretary paged his commanding officer, taking the time to enjoy his first real elbow room in six months. While the survey cutters used by the Foundation had markedly improved in the thirty years of his service and the current generation of field agents were practically coddled by comparison to when he was a fresh rookie, spending half a solar year in deep space in the cramped cabin with five other surveyors and specialists could make anyone appreciate the ability to walk around and stretch their limbs.
Of course, this particular tour hadn't lasted quite that long. Rather than mapping a distant, unexplored planet, Agent Jehr was now standing before the door of one of the most senior personnel in the entire organization, fidgeting in his dress uniform and not looking forward to having to explain why his last trip out had been cut short.
Staring out through the broad viewport at the vast, expansive orbital installation that was the primary service station for ships such as his, Jehr contemplated what it might have been to be a field agent in the earliest years of the Foundation. He remembered reading about those days, when the brave men and women of the Foundation fought a secret shadow war against encroaching anomalies and other organizations alike, when nothing was understood and every day the world didn't end was a victory in and of itself.
But then came the Beyril-Veren Unifying Standard Theory, the breakthrough in theoretical physics that peeled back the veil guarding the secrets of the universe. Almost overnight, anomalies turned from nightmares and things whispered about in hushed tones to curiosities that could be contained, disassembled, and discarded. The Foundation, its own veil of secrecy no longer necessary, became a public organization overseen by governments and politicians, one that would spearhead exploration into deep space and remove the cosmic errors it once zealously guarded in preparation for civilian colonization.
The secretary made an acknowledgement over her headset and nodded at him, signalling that his boss was ready to see him and bringing him out of his reverie. Composing himself, he walked up to the door, which slid open with a muted click.
"Jehr!" he called out from behind his desk, with a booming, boisterous voice that belied the cunning and cut-throat efficiency he was capable of. "How are you, you old fossil?"
"Fleet Director Lum," Jehr replied, saluting sharply.
"Always business, I see," the huge man smirked, returning the salute before chuckling out loud and gesturing towards one of the chairs in his office. "Come, sit. How's my best field agent doing?"
"Yes, sir." Jehr answered, taking his seat while turning down an offered drink. "I'm fine, sir; we've been training a fresh rookie right out of the academy but she's catching on quick. I think, with a couple more trips out, she'll make a great surveyor."
"I expect nothing but the best with you in charge," Lum continued, chuckling as he set down the glass, picked up a digital pad, and slid it across the desk towards him. "Now, then, what's this anomaly you have for me? I have your preliminary report here, but I'd like to hear it straight."
"Yes, sir. We were on our third stop; the first two had been simple mining surveys, which we didn't have any problems with. The third one, though, was a green-zone survey and we found a pre-existing civilization. Well, what was left of it, anyways."
Lum nodded. "That's nothing new, and certainly not something I'd expect you to cut your tour short for. Go on?"
Jehr took a deep breath as he went over the details in his head one more time. "Well, sir, we had jumped in under standard green-zone survey protocols, tagging but not performing detailed scans of the outer planets. Passive sensors were zero across the board on the entire way in, so we had assumed there wasn't any intelligent life in the system."
With a flick, Jehr copied a report addendum from the pad to the holo-projector and an orbital diagram liberally covered with annotations appeared in the air between them.
"When we short-hopped into orbit around the target, though," he continued. "We discovered we were wrong. The gravity well was almost completely filled with debris, mostly loose fragments but several still-intact satellites as well. It's a good thing that Gren always flies by the book, because we took a good dozen minor impacts to our shields before we could pull into a higher orbit. Something definitely used to live there, sir."
Lum nodded again, gesturing for him to continue. Another flick from Jehr, and the projected image changed to a montage of recovered images as well as a computer-aided physiological reconstruction.
"From what evidence we found, it appears that they were pretty typical: carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, gravity and atmospheric pressure only slightly higher than ours. They'd colonized their entire homeworld and obviously advanced to shooting stuff into space, sir, but we did not find evidence they ever achieved FTL."
"What killed them?" Lum asked, as the image panned across the ruins of a destroyed city, the last remnants of crumbling stone and rusted steel fighting a losing battle against the encroaching forest.
"Reality corruption, sir."
Lum paused to stare at him for a moment. "Corruption? Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir; the evidence was all over the place. Our analysis indicates that the process had started earlier in their development than it did for us; they ended up having to devote what technological resources they had just to keep it in check, and eventually they just got overwhelmed. That was, I'd say, probably around a thousand solar years ago. Everything in that gravity well is now either poisoned or dead."
Lum went silent again, mulling over the information. Something was still bothering him. "Ten is going to be pissed to hear that a perfect green candidate is going to be completely unusable. Still, this isn't the first time that that has happened either, so why come back to deliver the news yourself?"
"Well, sir," Jehr started, cringing inwardly as he prepared to drop the bombshell. "We retrieved some samples from the surface."
"You what?" he said, rising out of his chair.
"We followed the book, sir. All the standard quarantine procedures for objects retrieved from corrupted regions, isolated containment, everything. It's completely clean, I just… we saw something while we were mapping the surface, something we'd never seen before. I had to confirm it, sir, and I think you need to see this too."
Under Lum's suspicious gaze, Jehr pulled several sealed sample bags adorned with brightly colored hazard labels from his uniform jacket and set them on the Director's desk.
On top of the small pile was a white plastic identification card adorned with the all-too-familiar black shield emblem with its inset ring and three inward-pointing arrows, clearly visible despite the artifact's age. And yet, printed on its smooth surface in ancient ink, was an unmistakably alien portrait and accompanying script.
"They had their own Foundation, sir. I dug these out of an abandoned underground facility that had been peeled open by a thermonuclear detonation. We got samples of some documents for the cryptos too, but this… well, it would be a hell of a coincidence, sir. They even had the same logo and everything."
More silence.
"You know what Ten is going to say, don't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"The planet is hereby classified as a Veren-level object. Get Sira to give you a file number on the way out and get the write-up together, I've got to make an appointment with Ten. Dismissed."
Jehr saluted sharply once more and turned to leave, breathing a sigh of relief while simultaneously recognizing that his day was far from over.
Fleet Director Lum, alone with his thoughts, took a moment to collect himself before opening the channel back to High Command. Letting his attention wander to the neat pile of sample bags, he noticed that a second bag was attached to the one containing the ID card. Turning it over, he examined its contents: a piece of shaped metal adorned with several gemstones, hanging from a thin chain. Looking back at the card, he mused to himself as he discovered that if he turned it sideways, it resembled an old terrestrial script that he'd studied as a young history student.
"Dree-jahwk Breyht", he muttered to himself. "I wonder who you were."

Item #: SCP-42058
Object Class: Veren (C3/T5)
Stellar Colonization Profile: Unusable. SCP-42058 has been marked off-limits to all exploration and is to be observed via long-range telemetry only. Two armed Foundation patrol ships are to be stationed on the perimeter of the system's planetesimal threshold, and all unauthorized vessels attempting to approach the system are to be tracked, detained, and boarded.
Description: SCP-42058-1 is the third of eight planets orbiting the star G-44-9081, a yellow dwarf located at 78.3 radial loar along the third galactic arm. SCP-42058-1 is in a regular elliptical orbit with a mean distance of approximately 4.6 vyr at the center of G-44-9081's green zone. SCP-42058-1 is suffering from terminal-stage (S7) reality corruption; while its manifestations appear to be trapped within its gravity well, it is believed that the corruption is still highly virulent and that artifacts retrieved from the surface may pose an infection risk.
SCP-42058-2 is the extinct indigenous intelligent species that once inhabited SCP-42058-1. Archaeological evidence suggests that while capable of conventional rocket launches and on track to becoming an interplanetary civilization, SCP-42058-2 was overwhelmed by the high degree of reality corruption and was unable to maintain continuation of species before achieving faster-than-light capability. As of the time of this documentation, SCP-42058-2 appears to have been extinct for over twelve hundred (1200) standard solar years.
SCP-42058 has been designated for observation by Foundation patrol craft. Due to the extensive nature of its corruption, there are no current plans for planetary remediation unless the corruption begins to spread.


I was there.
I was there when a man ripped through five steel doors and tore men in half with his bare hands. I was there when horrible things erupted from a plane in mid-flight and set the sane world ablaze. I was there when the green made the dead dance and scream.
I was there when the orders came through, when those orders were carried out, and when they told us they needed to be carried out once a day, every day, for the rest of her life.
I was there when the two best men I have ever known crumpled in an instant because they looked away, and I stood there, staring into that ridiculous face…
That absurd, ridiculous face.
That was the last time anything ever surprised me.
When I woke up in an infirmary bed to be told that I had been promoted, I wasn't surprised. When they told me that they had falsified my death and administered amnestics to the people who knew better, I wasn't surprised. When they brought me to Command and I met the others, I wasn't surprised. Then they told me that, as part of the O5 Orientation, they were going to explain to me what SCP-001 was…
I wasn't surprised.
When I met the rest of the council, they told me that as per protocol, I would be given an introductory letter from the Administrator. When I asked them where the Administrator was, they simply told me "We don't know." I almost laughed; didn't the O5 know everything? They handed the letter to me and left the room, when I asked why they were leaving, they said, "For privacy". I merely blinked at him; at this point I wondered whether the whole thing was a joke. So I sat down in the chair they left for me and opened the piece of paper.

Welcome, newly-appointed overseer.
You have questions. Perhaps you don't even know what they all are, or care what the answers are at this point, but you have them, and you have many. If you opened this letter expecting those answers, I will tell you all that I have.
Which is none.
What is SCP-001? There isn't one. Was there a first anomalous object that was discovered? Of course. Was it important? Probably not. Confused? Good. At least you're still human. That's all we are, human beings. Human beings that thought we could reliably record the destruction of sanity. We were fools. We still are. The Foundation is compromised, it always has been, and it always will be. Why? We thought that there was a linchpin, a reason for it all—it's because we thought there was a "why".
There wasn't one.
This is the way things are. Nothing has changed, the universe hasn't broken down over time, this is how it's supposed to be. Personnel are told about SCP-001 because it comforts them. It helps to think there is a why, because that suggests that there is a solution, but there isn't. We do not repair: we secure, contain, protect. Surely you must have wondered why the objects are not numbered chronologically, in order of recovery? Surely you must have wondered why some objects have fully documented histories and others don't? Surely you must have wondered, given everything you know, why this world even still exists? See, I told you that you had more questions than you thought.
We don't know how much of what we documented is true anymore, it probably changes from day to day. There's no way of telling what is being affected by what anomaly, especially when there could be an infinite number that we haven't even discovered. Existence is an anomaly.
So what do we expect you to do, armed with this information, or lack thereof? Whatever you can. We do not repair, and we do not solve.
We Secure.
We Contain.
We Protect.

Congratulations on your promotion to overseer.
Good luck.
-The Administrator

I was there when not caring was not good enough to protect me from the truth.
I must have sat for an hour before they came back for me. When they asked how I was, all I said was: "A little surprised." They looked at me and I heard the voice, faintly, "Welcome to Overwatch, Brian." The rest is history, if such a thing exists. There is one more thing, though, the letter had a PS:

Don't worry about it too much, whatever you think is the truth is probably good enough anyway.


"So, before we start, can I please have your name?"
The still, pale man seated before me paused to take a breath, and slowly moved his eyes towards me. His eyes were slower now, and I'd been told he assured staff he expected them to stop in place any day now. They were some of the last moving pieces he had, and you could almost hear them scraping with every glance he took.
"Chetford, Robert."
Robert's voice was almost as dry as the materials he believed to have overtaken his frame. The stillness of his posture was almost more unnatural than the oddness of his movement. It was like a sculpture, coming to life to give a brief snippet of conversation. Which I suppose he was, in his own way. I cleared my throat.
"What can you tell me about your condition?"
He pursed his lips momentarily. "Well… it was two years after Wilson came into office, nineteen-fifteen. I remember it because I was helping campaign for him, down in Norwich. It was a tough spot to be campaigning, and I was out all hours of the day. I was active in those days, although of course that was a long time ago…"
He was still.
"So, how did this relate to your condition?"
"In a moment, please. I'm attempting to get there, by memory. Your head isn't as full as mine is, so give me a few minutes to recall exactly the day it occurred."
His eyes left me, and gazed out the window.
"It was a Tuesday. I'd been working in the church that day, when I met him. He was a queer-looking fellow, about your height. I asked him what he was doing, and he told me to mind my own business. We had a few… words, that aren't to be shared in polite company. I was a hothead then, you see, didn't wait for anything. After we'd been at it for a few minutes, he pulled out his pocketwatch, and asked me for the time."
I raised a brow. "He asked you?"
If Robert could nod, I'm sure he would've. "He asked me for the time, and told me I needed to wait a little more. Of course, I didn't know what he meant then, thought he was making fun of me. But, then he went onto the curse. Told me that I'd done too many quick things, and it'd hurt some friends of his in town. Said someone had to answer for it, and it might as well be me. So, the curse."
This is what I had come to hear about. "The curse?"
Robert's eyes came back to me. "That's how I came to be in my condition. On that Tuesday, in nineteen-fifteen, that's where I am. Or at least some of me. Parts of my eyes and lips are still in the present, aging like a hundred-year-old should. But my mind, my heart, the insides… stuck like concrete back in that time. Still waiting for me to learn some patience. That's what I told them, in the asylum. Took them a while to believe me."
Before I could respond, he went on.
"I sometimes like to think… that maybe, when it's all done, I can look out my window one more time, before these old eyes finally dry and set like the rest of me. Maybe when the last words leave my lips, I'll be concrete all over, and break away like I should've done fifty years ago. If I wait long enough, and see."
Once more, his eyes swiveled away from me.
"Goodbye, friend. I hope time is more kind to you, than it has been to me."

Seated before me was a pale, boney, wasted husk of what might once have been a young woman. At one point her hair might've been a dirty blond, but it was almost gray now, with some flecks of color scattered through the wiry mess intermittently. She had tough, bony arms resting on the table, which had similarly skeletal hands at the end. A black cloth was wrapped tightly around her eyes. I sat down in front of her, and quietly went over my notes.
"It's rotten."
I looked up. "Beg your pardon?"
"The black. It's rotted off." She drummed her fingers on the table. "I can see through it, to the wall."
In a very deliberate way, she began grasping at something only she could see, in a sort of slow, jerky and methodical picking of nothingness. It was an odd sight, seeing such precise movements done for nothing.
"Miss… can you hear me?"
She started. "Oh, yes, sorry sorry sorry."
I coughed, and looked back down to my notes. "So, uh, hello. My name is Stanley, and I have a few questions for you."
Her shoulders shuddered, then hunched close together, almost appearing to fold in on themselves. She threw her head up, and stared at the ceiling.
"Can't tell you much. They don't let me see, like we used to."
"Well…" I said, tapping my pencil on the desk. "When did you first start… seeing?"
She stiffened, and turned to me again. "… Ten. I was ten years old. That was the first time I saw it. When the flower was there, and it was wilted. I was fine. I might've seen two but it was okay. Then I woke up and mother was broken and calling me for breakfast but her face was gone she was hanging and splitting and it was wrong. She was such a nice lady. She made me pancakes every morning. She's dead now."
She tapped her fingers more quickly.
"Now… we don't need to talk about that…"
"It got worse, after that. I couldn't go outside, or talk to my friends. If someone took me into town, all I could see was the rotting shit in the windows and broken toys in the shops. Not all of it, at first, but then there was so much and it was so… just, everywhere. I couldn't take it. That was the first time I lost my mind. Left it somewhere behind."
I blinked a few times. "Well-"
"They're going to take you now. We don't talk anymore."
I waited, for a moment. Nothing happened.
"There's not anyone coming?"
She shrugged. "I'm sorry. I just… that usually makes people go."
"You don't like talking to me?"
She tilted her head down. "… I don't. You're just another one of the endless parade of people, trying to talk to me. Get me to talk to them, about the future or something. Sometimes I can see them, and I don't like that. But you already knew that. You know everything. You read my file, saw what they do. Saw the pills, and the pictures of me when I can't control. Why are you even here?"
I paused. "I just wanted to know about you. Reading a file isn't like talking to a person."
She sighed. "If I look at you, will you leave me alone?"
I shrugged. "I can't promise for the rest of them, but I'll be satisfied."
Without further hesitation, she slipped her blindfold off, and we stared eye to eye. They looked much younger than the rest of her, two sharp blue orbs not wrinkled or dulled in the slightest.
"Your hair's cut… and your eye's black."
I brushed my hand over my head. "So, you can handle it better, now?"
She nodded. "It's easier… here. I hate them, but they keep it from overwhelming me. I can't take my eyes out, and if I went outside… I wouldn't be able to handle it. Even if I just went outside, I'd be broken by the rotting trees and broken animals. You ever see a roadkill deer?"
"Yes…"
"I've only seen roadkilled deer."
I paused. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault. It's just life, seen? We have to have something bad happen to us. Just when the luck fairy was going around, she skimped on me."
"Alright… thank you for your perspective, Miss…"
"Just say one-eighty-seven. I get in trouble unless you do."
"Alright, then…" I stood there awkwardly, for a moment, before gathering my papers and heading to the door.
"Mister Gillespie?"
I turned from the door. "Yeah?"
"Keep an ice pack handy, okay?

I feel sort of odd, conducting an interview like this in a public place. Or at least, as public as the Foundation lets it be. We're in a public park, with a tarp over the whole pavilion with the statue. Signs say that there's some indefinite construction going on. I'm told the locals don't complain much, even though they've been at it for what, something like twenty years? Guess we have some kind of pacification method, or something.
I see the guy, or statue, or whatever you want to call him, he's up on his pedestal. I'm told he likes to stand up there, on his own. They've set up the interview table right in front of him, so I sit down, and pull out my pencil.
"Can you hear me?"
He nods. It's odd to see such smooth motion from someone literally made of concrete, especially after seeing how Robert moved. I thought he'd have some of the same, jerky motions, but it's smooth as butter.
"Alright, can you tell me your name?"
"Private Chester Smith, 17th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry, at your service."
"Is that the person you represent, or is that who you are?"
For a moment, he pauses. "I would like to believe… that it is who I am. There are no black places, or missing pieces in my mind. I can remember it in continuous ways, if that makes sense."
I begin writing. "So, you think you're the same person that you were, ah, designed to represent."
Chester slowly nods. "That is what I believe is the case, yes."
"So, what's the earliest memory you have?"
Looking down to me, he begins to stroke his chin. I can hear the stone grinding.
"Well… I know who I was, before the war. Born here, but I served in Kentucky. Went there to get out of the fighting… but it went and followed me from my front porch, to my farm. Don't remember much, besides my mother and father. I joined up in April, 1864. I got to live in hellish barracks for months, training with the most damned son-of-a-bitch officers this side of the Mississippi. And for what? I got to be the first casualty in my regiment."
The grinding intensifies. "I used to be bitter, but… not worth being mad, when the poor bastard who shot me got hisself killed sometime. All of his friends, too."
He chuckles a little, deep from his hollow stone body. "Sorry, I occasionally become slightly morbid about these matters."
I try to laugh with him, keep things casual. "I understand, friend. What happened after that?"
"It was dark, for quite some time. Stiff, too. It was very uncomfortable, to feel myself falling away… from myself. It was a confusing feeling, being so stiff, and yet so loose. Thankfully, it only took about a hundred years for some nice young men to make me this statue, which I now inhabit."
Before I can say another word, he chuckles.
"I got to go from being rotted and stiff and on my back below the earth, to being above it, but in the same state."
"So… when did you get to be… like this?"
Chester kneels down before me, and gestures for me to come closer. I get up, and walk over, leaning my ear to his mouth.
"It was… the birds. They… landed on me, and… I am certain you know what would come next."
I nod. "I get the picture."
He continued. "I would take my rifle, and try to shoot them… that was how I found out I had a rifle. After that, I started to take a look at what had become of the world around me, and… well, I tried to focus on the birds. If it hadn't been for my friends here, I may have caused much more trouble than I already have."
I check my notes, although I already know what I'm going to say. "It says here, that when the Foundation handed off containment, you… met someone?"
He instantly frowns, gripping his rifle. "I don't think that's what you came here about, is it?"
"Well, it's part of your history here, isn't it?"
Chester frowned at me, and at my present spot, right near his face I could see every crack and imperfection on his stone face. "I would really rather we not pursue this avenue of conversation."
I tried to put on a pleading expression. "Are you certain? Knowing how things changed with knowing a new person, it would really help-"
The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, with chipped stone and swelling pain in my right eye. The interview was over.

It feels slightly odd, to be conducting an interview in a notebook. They gave me a pencil, sharpened with a nice, pink eraser and sent me in. The journal itself is a leather one, with ancient pages I thought would crumble to dust the moment I touched them. But, it stayed whole. On the first page, there were three words written in fancy, cursive script.
Fred says hello.
I wrote in blocky script. It was embarrassing, compared to the curvature above it.
Do you have to talk in third person?
After a moment, the writing appeared on the page itself. The letters didn't fade in, but seemed to be written from another side, and written backwards from their perspective.
Nah, sometimes I just like to have fun. Y'know? I don't get to talk to folks every day.
I paused. Do you write backwards so other people can read what you are doing?
In a quick, scribbled pace, less neat now, he replied I was about to ask you the same thing.
I take it you get these questions a lot
Well, when you're around long enough, you hear the standard gamut one too many times and it gets pretty boring. Even if I do have my stories.
I checked my watch, waiting for thirty seconds to pass.
How long has it been since you wrote that reply?
A quick, jotted answer. Depends, are you the same guy I just got to talk to?
I am
Then beats me, doc. You're the guys who keep track of that stuff.
How does time pass in your books?
This time, the reply is longer, and written slowly. I like to believe that it made him think.
I've actually not heard this one before. I think time passing in books is like… a little path, where I can retread the same steps and words infinitely without a moment going by, and I likes it slow. I guess it's like floating down a little lazy river, seeing a story unfold on the banks. Once you've floated the whole way down, you can turn around and see the whole thing again.
Do some stories take longer than others?
Well, I'm usually in the story. When time passes there, it's like a pocket. Things are normal for what I see, or at least I think it's normal, then for the bits I ain't around in I just float through and watch, sometimes chatting, but I prefer to be the patient observer. Y'know?
I think I do. Is there anything else you can tell me?
Beats me, doc. I wouldn't even know where to ask. All the clocks I ever see are in storytime.
I understand, thanks for talking to me
Anytime… heh.

Excerpt from research document by Stanley J. Gillespie.

Time is a subject near and dear to my heart. My colleagues can attest to my love of the subject, from the instruments we use to measure it, to the theories that we spin about it. For a long time, I wanted to do my own study, not on time, but on the perception of time. How the people who are different see time in their own unique ways. Some, like that poor girl, can see their own reflections, and the reflections of others in front of her. Some might have called her a prophet, in times past, but today we'd just say she's another unfortunate person who can see too much, and they see something disgusting.
Some of them, like Robert, don't have to care about time. They're effectively immortal, so the passing of the clock doesn't pose much of a threat. They sit, as days lapse into weeks, and into years. They set like concrete, binding in with the clock until it stops flat for them, unchanging. They're still, awaiting the eternity of lonesome night that inevitably awaits them. The one thing Robert liked to look at, was his window. I like to think it was his way of still seeing change, and growth, a special window from his private hell. But I know in the end, he doesn't care.
I don't think any of them like it, to have their lives shaped this way. That the clock should deny them respite, or any kind of honor. It can leave someone more than slightly bitter, to have every opportunity for a semblance of normality. Instead, they watch as they die, and their friends die. The enemies die too, but there's nobody to celebrate with, because you outlived them all. I don't blame Chester for hitting me… what else could he do?
And finally, we come to the few that don't abide by the rules. They don't exist as bodies, but as concepts, with time only applying to them in certain contexts. They neither recognize its rules, nor abide by its consequences. They quite literally have all the time in the world, because they will persist with or without another day going by. Fred can exist forever, in his books, seeing the same times day in and day out. He can speed through them quickly, or slow down to watch the same scenes unfold over and over. To him, time is a plaything.
In the end, we can know that time is just a matter of how we see life. It can be a short series of deadlines, with a big X at the end, or it can be a circular pattern, and some of us can recognize these patterns more than others. But in the end, we don't need to worry about it. As the poet Henry Dobson put it:
Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.


"Before I announce the winner," Assistant Site Director Edmunds said to the small group of researchers gathered in Site 73's cafeteria, "I'd just like to thank and congratulate all of you for participating. This has been a difficult year for us, and activities like this always help staff morale. I've enjoyed reading all your submissions - yes, Greg, even yours - and it was very difficult for the judges to pick a winner."
"With that out of the way," he said as he opened the envelope in his hands, "the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. Tom Malthus, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Malthus rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Later, in his office, Dr. James Anderson, associate managing supervisor of temporal anomaly research, cursed to himself under his breath. Malthus had won? His story was a ridiculous B-movie parody! He'd put so much time into his own submission, a self-referential piece about a man who'll do anything to win a writing contest, only to be outdone by this over-the-top piece of hack work that Malthus wrote in about fifteen minutes and submitted two hours before the deadline! "Well," he said to himself, "it's over and done with now. I can't change the past."
Or could he? His position gave him research access to a number of SCP objects that operated outside of linear time. It would be a major violation of protocol if he got caught, of course - but as he went about his work, he idly wondered to himself whether there was any way he could use any of the objects he knew about to change the outcome of the contest.
982? Not likely. 728? Too unpredictable. 276? Maybe, but there's no way he could pull it off without getting caught. 869? 869. Hmm. He'd overseen experiments in the past that involved using SCP-869 to attempt to send information back through time. It'd be risky, but if it worked he'd have had the satisfaction of seeing the look on Malthus' face when he himself came out on top. If nothing else, he could call it just another experiment, right?
It wasn't for six months that he worked up the courage to prepare his parcel; an envelope with a 1948 postage stamp affixed to it, addressed to Site 73. Inside it, another envelope marked with the Foundation's seal and instructions not to open it until decades later - the day the site writing contest was announced. Within that, a third envelope, to be delivered to his own office - and within that, a copy of Malthus' story and a letter to himself instructing him to submit it as his contest entry.
Anderson was on pins and needles the entire drive to Galveston, the entire time bluffing his way past the guards at the entrance of SCP-869, the entire time he made his way past the crowds of people enjoying the park on that sunny summer day in 1948. Looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody else from the Foundation was following him, he made his way out the front entrance of the park, crossed the street, walked down the block to a waiting mailbox, opened it, and dropped his missive in.

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. James Anderson, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Anderson rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Success! Anderson was on Cloud Nine as he made his way back to his office. When the office gopher first handed him a letter that purported to be from his future self, he thought he was being set up. The story it instructed him to submit was frankly ridiculous, and he wasn't even sure almost until the end of the contest that he wanted to submit it - but he did, and it had worked! He'd take himself out for a nice steak dinner that night to celebrate.
He never did, however, bother to write himself a letter.

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. Tom Malthus, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Malthus rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Later, in his office, Dr. James Anderson, associate managing supervisor of temporal anomaly research, cursed to himself under his breath. Malthus had won? His story was a ridiculous B-movie parody! He'd put so much time into his own submission, a self-referential piece about a man who'll do anything to win a writing contest, only to be outdone by this over-the-top piece of hack work that Malthus wrote in about fifteen minutes and submitted two hours before the deadline! "Well," he said to himself, "it's over and done with now. I can't change the past."
Or could he?

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. James Anderson, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Anderson rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Success! Anderson was on Cloud Nine as he made his way back to his office. When the office gopher first handed him a letter that purported to be from his future self, he thought he was being set up. The story it instructed him to submit was frankly ridiculous, and he wasn't even sure almost until the end of the contest that he wanted to submit it - but he did, and it had worked! He'd take himself out for a nice steak dinner that night to celebrate.
It wasn't until thirty years later, his last month on the job before retirement, as he cleaned a career's worth of paperwork out of his filing cabinet, that he rediscovered the certificate he'd been given to commemorate his victory. He realized that he'd never closed the time loop by sending himself a letter with the story in it - and he'd better do so fast, because if he left the Foundation without ever having done so, thirty years of history could wind up in flux. He searched through his papers for hours looking for a copy of the story that had won him that contest so many years ago - in vain. I'll just have to improvise, he thought to himself, as he sat down at his computer and began typing out the story as best as he could remember it after all these years.

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. Tom Malthus, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Malthus rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Later, in his office, Dr. James Anderson, associate managing supervisor of temporal anomaly research, cursed to himself under his breath. How could this happen? His own story, "Revenge of the Ghostly Wrath," was exactly what the letter had told him to submit! Malthus must have seen his story and ripped it off - he had to admit that Tom's story was a little less silly than his own. Clearly, when he closed the temporal loop that had started when he got a letter from his future self, he'd have to send that story instead…

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. Tom Malthus, for his story 'I Was A Teenage Carrot!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Malthus rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Later, in his office, Dr. James Anderson, associate managing supervisor of temporal anomaly research, cursed to himself under his breath. How could this happen? His own story, "Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury," was exactly what the letter had told him to submit! He thought it over for hours and hours before he realized he must have submitted his entry too early - and when Malthus found out there was already a story exactly like what he planned on submitting, he had to come up with something else. Clearly, when he closed the temporal loop that had started when he got a letter from his future self, he'd have to be more specific with his instructions…

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. Sarah Evans, for her story 'Love At 80,000 AU!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Evans rose from her seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was her grand prize.
Later, in his office, Dr. James Anderson, associate managing supervisor of temporal anomaly research, cursed to himself under his breath. Director Edmunds had told him that he and Dr. Malthus had both submitted the exact same story, and since he couldn't tell which of them had plagiarized the other he had no choice but to disqualify them both. He'd waited too long - and by the time he submitted the story the letter had told him to, Malthus had already submitted his 'original'. Clearly, when he closed the temporal loop that had started when he got a letter from his future self, he'd have to be more specific with his instructions…

And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. Tom Malthus, for his story 'How Jester Got His Groove Back!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Malthus rose from his seat, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Later, in his office, Dr. James Anderson, associate managing supervisor of temporal anomaly research, cursed to himself under his breath. The letter he'd gotten from his future self had explained every last detail of how to ensure his victory. What had gone wrong? Perhaps it was inevitable that Malthus would win. Perhaps he'd always write a better story than the one Anderson submitted. Clearly, when he closed the temporal loop that had started when he got a letter from his future self, he'd have to send a second letter as well - one to remove Malthus from the picture altogether…

"And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Dr. James Anderson, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'" The two dozen or so assembled authors clapped politely as Dr. Anderson rose from his seat on a pair of mechanical legs, took a short bow, and accepted the $100 gift card that was his grand prize.
Success! Anderson was on Cloud Nine as he made his way back to his office. It was a small victory in his long career with the Foundation and all the accomplishments they'd made to improve mankind, but it was a victory all the same. Immediately, he grabbed some digipaper and an E-quill, and started writing the instructions to his past self that would close the loop and ensure time remained unaltered…

Assistant Site Director Edmunds' thoughts radiated immediately across the great neural network to all those who had become part of the Foundation-Mind. "And the winner of this year's Site 73 short story contest is - Unit 483012, James Anderson, for his story 'Night of the Revenge of the Wrath of the Ghost of the Fury!'"
Anderson hid his feelings from the accolades of his peers as they drifted into his mind. In the stasis pod where his physical body lay connected to the tubes and machines that sustained it, he rolled over and unplugged his neural jack. This is all wrong, he thought as he suddenly found himself alone with his thoughts. The world isn't supposed to be like this. My past self must have introduced some anachronism when he sent that letter. I've got to fix it somehow…

"Et le gagnant de cette année pour le concours de nouvelles littéraires du Site 73 est - Dr. Tom Malthus, avec son histoire intitulée : Nuit de la Vengeance du Courroux du Fantôme de la Fureur!" Les quelques deux douzaines d'auteurs réunis applaudirent poliment, tandis que le Dr. Malthus se levait, s'inclinait rapidement et acceptait la carte-cadeau de 100 Francs qui était son grand prix.
Plus tard dans son bureau, le Dr. James Anderson, gestionnaire associé à la supervision de la recherche sur les anomalies temporelles, se maudit dans sa barbe. Malthus avait gagné? Son histoire n'était qu'une ridicule parodie de films de série B! Il avait mis tellement de temps dans sa propre soumission, une histoire autoréférentielle sur un homme prêt à tout pour gagner un concours d'écriture, simplement pour être surpassé par ce torchon bâclé et outrancier que Malthus avait écrit en quinze minutes et soumit deux heures avant la fin du délai! "Eh bien," se dit-il "c'est bel et bien terminé maintenant. Je ne peux pas changer le passé. "
Ou pourrait-il?

9/8/13: The Time Contest has ended! The winner is Dr. Gears, with his tale 'Foundation 2099'. Thanks for all of your great entries!

James Anderson cursed under his breath as he read the announcement on the front page of the SCP wiki. His story about Lord Blackwood joining forces with SCP-173 to fight crime had been leading in upvotes for two weeks - and then Gears pops out of the blue again and posts a story that makes it to +100 in under two days? How is anyone supposed to compete with that? If only there were some way to travel back in time and submit Gears' own story before he could…

The quivering purple mass of flesh towered over the two dozen humans who kneeled in chains below it. It began to undulate as speech echoed from within its hulking body. "I have reviewed the literary tributes you pitiful creatures have submitted to me, and none of them are worthy. None of you shall earn your freedom today!"
The slave who had once been called Dr. James Anderson, back before the coming of the Age of Flesh, cursed under his breath. Sure, freedom probably meant a slow death alone in the ruins of the world above, but it had to be better than this. There must be one of the Master's playthings I can get at, he thought to himself, to ensure that he would be free…

Dr. James Anderson woke up in his office and climbed out of bed. It was a sunny Sunday midnight and lunch break was over - time to get back to work and think about his entry in the writing contest he'd be hearing about next week. Outside his door, he heard the sound of a gong - the office courier was here.
He opened the door and shivered as the cold winter air hit him. "L-l-l-letter for you, sir," said the Hawaiian-shirt-wearing courier as he handed him an envelope. Anderson smiled, tipped the boy six shillings and thruppence, and sent him on his way. Closing the door, he sat back down in front of his typewriter and opened the envelope to find a single page, written in what appeared to be human blood;
We were fools to try and play with history. Millions and millions of paradoxes colliding with one another. Now it's all broken. Space and time are meaningless. It's just us, millions of Andersons alone in the empty desert below a sunless sky. He looks down on us, the great gray-faced god where the Sun should be, and His gaze burns our flesh. He sees us now. HIDE THE NUCLEAR LAUNCH CODES IN THE CREDENZA SO I CAN KILL HIM! IT'S NOT WORKING! HE'S IMMUNE! THERE IS NO HOPE FOR SALVA
Anderson yawned as his alarm clock went off - 37:65 on Marsday, Quatuordecimber 72nd. Time for work. He laid the letter down on his desk and started typing out a copy of it to submit for the writing contest he'd be hearing about next week.