The trouble started with a supposed "gas leak" at a bank all the way across the state.
Quinn was too busy to wonder why the Skippers had such an uncreative cover story, because she was driving, through the night trying to stay awake. Darnell was next to her, rubbing his forehead. It wasn't a long drive across Ohio, but Darnell wondered aloud, "Why can't the Cleveland Division take care of this?"
"Because they're stuck in a bare room with an open door."
She wished she was kidding.
Several hours later, they were in Sandusky, Ohio, at a bank branch which looked like it had been nuked. Quinn shivered as she looked upon the wreckage in the light of the rising sun. There were charred tiles everywhere, and a smell of burnt meat about the whole place. Standing at the center of it all was what looked like a scrap-metal sculpture, vaguely in the shape of a human skeleton, twitching about, with bits of charred flesh falling off of it. The whole thing was coated in a blue slime, and stood there, fused to the tiles of the bank.
Surrounding the wreckage were cars that had been driving past the (presumably closed) bank during the night.
"Christ alive," Quinn said, wrinkling her nose at the sight of it. "What is that?"
"We believe that it is at the center of the discharge," said someone in a blue coat and jeans, with an FBI logo on it. The man had brown hair, and was wearing dark sunglasses, fiddling with a tablet computer. His stance showed he was either a professional at his job, or that he had a stick up his ass that had grown into an entire tree. Probably both. He extended a hand to Quinn and Darnell. "Agent Adams. I'm the Foundation liaison for the Cleveland division."
"…right," Quinn said, shaking his hand. "So… discharge? What, was this an EMP?"
"Multiplied by a factor of… well, multiplied by a big factor." He looked at the sculpture. "Witnesses report that there was a very large, very loud lightning strike here."
"Casualties?"
"None that we can see. A few cars got wrecked, but the civilians involved are unhurt."
Quinn frowned. "You know, you could have said "lightning strike" and nobody would have been suspicious. "Gas leak" after a lightning strike seems suspicious."
"Agent, don't tell us how to do our job." Adams pushed his glasses up his nose. "We believe the sculpture here was the nexus of the anomaly."
"Any new art installations put in?" Darnell asked. "It could be an AWCY-" He pronounced it "Aussie"- "thing. We had trouble with them in Milan; they made origami Tesla Coils and set them around the Edison museum."
"We've been monitoring the local cell. They call themselves "Specification Station". This doesn't fit their MO."
"What is their MO?" Quinn asked, stepping closer to the police tape surrounding the sculpture. "Robotic art?"
Adams frowned. "…'Specification' as in 'changing species'. As in 'forcibly creating animal-human hybrids'."
"Think I saw that movie…" Quinn ducked under the tape, putting on a pair of purple gloves and a mask that she produced from a blue jacket similar to what the liaison had on. She started to inspect the liquid, which she saw as crackling with electricity. "It's live," Quinn said.
"Yeah," said one of the Foundation techs next to her. "We're making sure nobody touches it with bare skin, but we set up a chemical shower just in case."
Quinn nodded, and started to look over the statue. It looked like a skeleton jutting its hands out towards something, as if attacking something… or shielding itself. Darnell crossed the line next. "I take it security camera feed isn't an option?"
"The cameras in this bank were fitted with Faraday protection, but that can only get you so far," said the tech. "Most likely, the nearest surviving camera landed in Lake Michigan."
Quinn raised an eyebrow. "…you mean Erie, right?"
"We found one part of the bank's sign on Ambassador Bridge. On the Canadian side."
"…ah." Quinn took out a pocket flashlight and started looking over the statue's head. "Aren't you a piece of work… who made you, eh?" She peered at the eyes; they were very good ones, looked untouched by the damage, and looked realistic. They gazed aimlessly into the distance, fixed at some point in the sky. "We sure that this isn't AWCY?" She called over to the Liaison.
"Positive!" he called back, fiddling with his tablet some more. "No message has been sent from their groups yet, and they usually arrive within six hours of something like this."
Quinn frowned, and looked at the statue's eyes. She waved a hand in front of them, just to make sure of something.
When the eyes followed her hand, she started. "Jesus! Darnell! We got a live one!"
"Wha-" Darnell ran over, and Adams followed with him, staring as he ran up to the statue. With a series of gruesome squelches and cracks, it turned to face the two of them, eyes focusing on them.
"Oh shit," Quinn said, taking out her pistol. "FBI! Stand down!"
The statue spoke in a rattling groan. Quinn wasn't sure, but the voice sounded feminine. "Puh…. puh…. Pull…"
Darnell had drawn his gun as well by this point; half of the on-site crew was aiming at the statue with varying degrees of weaponry, and Quinn swore she saw a sniper scope glint on top of a nearby hotel.
"Pull what?" asked Adams.
"Puhhhll… ihhhht…."
"What is it? What do you want us to pull?"
"Pull… it… up…" The thing creaked, and its legs gave way as it tried to turn. "By…. the…. roots…"
The sculpture hit the floor of the former bank with a loud clank. As it did so, its head, barely supported by a wire-thin neck, rolled off and came to a stop at Quinn's feet. The casing cracked open, and showed what was inside.
The opening had revealed a pulsing, living brain.

Harley Sterling woke up alone in bed, for the second time in a week. She sighed and got up, going to the kitchen, seeing that Quinn had once again left her flowers and a little note.

Got called to Sandusky; got a lead on an art theft. Will Skype @ hotel.
-Q

Harley sighed, and started making herself breakfast, which was made up of an undercooked egg, Froot Loops, and almost included the last slice of bacon; she saw it was moldy, and down the garbage disposal it went.
She then went into the living room to watch the morning news, passing by several pictures on the way there. There was her and Quinn at their "wedding", which was sadly a purely symbolic affair; one of her, Darnell and Quinn at Cedar Point, prior to the two of them getting into the FBI; one of her at graduation from Culver Military Academy. That one had been put back together with masking tape on the back, and looked like a jigsaw puzzle more than anything. She usually kept that one hidden.
Harley turned on the TV to see the local news focusing on something up near the Lake. "…not sure what happened quite yet, but reportedly, the FBI is investigating, despite local sources reporting a lightning strike. We have yet to get any photos of the scene, but there have been reports of a strange statue standing in the wreckage of the bank. For WKRP in Sandusky, I'm Michelle Collins."
Harley blinked as she heard the last part, and frowned, getting out her smart phone, finding Quinn's number, and calling her up on it.

231 miles away, Quinn MacAllister was rudely awakened in her hotel room by the sound of her phone going off. She groaned, and sat up from the bed, still fully clothed. Darnell was out getting coffee, and hadn't gotten back yet. She frowned at her phone, and considered chucking it at the wall- and then she saw who was calling.
She tapped the answer button so hard the screen almost cracked. "Harley! Hey!"
"Hi." Harley had a tone in her voice that Quinn had heard before. It was her suspicious tone.
"Uh. I got up to Sandusky fine, staying at a hotel for the foreseeable future… how are you?"
"How's the art thing going?"
"Good, good…" Quinn's voice tried not to waver. She could already feel her throat closing up as the temptation to talk about her job came up.
"Anything to do with the lightning on the news?"
Shit, Quinn thought, almost vocalizing this. "Uh, we were just in town when that happened. They were short on men, so we stopped by to help up- er, out some."
"All right." Harley paused. "Is Darnell with you?"
"He's out getting coffee. Probably fell asleep at the Starbucks or something." Quinn swallowed dryly.
"All right." Harley sighed a bit over the line. "Just… stay safe, okay, Quinny?"
Just tell her why you're really here, Quinn thought. Tell her the truth. Tell her that you've seen things that science can't even begin to explain, that defy reason, that prove every conspiracy theory in the world right in so many different ways.
Instead, Quinn simply said, "I will. Love you, babe."
"Love you too."
With that, the line died. Quinn put the phone down on the nightstand and sighed, shaking softly. She looked at the lock on the door turning. Darnell entered, carrying coffee. A frown crossed his face. "Everything all right, Mac?"
"Fine." Quinn swallowed. "Harley called. She saw the… thing on the news."
"Oh, hell." Darnell put the coffee down on the table. "She didn't say anything about… y'know… the A-word?"
"Wasn't brought up this time, no." Quinn bit her lip and sighed into her hands. "She'll probably give me an earful when we get home, though."
"It'll be okay, Mac." Darnell patted her on the back softly. "C'mon. Mr. Lee-ay-sonn is in the conference room. Something really top secret, apparently."
"All right. I'll be down in a sec." Quinn stood up and made her way over to the bathroom, looking in the mirror, breathing in and out, focusing on the redness of her eyes. Soon, she was calm enough to proceed out the room.

"From this point on, everything said in this room was never spoken. Every document handed out for this briefing never existed. Each one of you were never here, or if you were here, it was on unrelated business. Understood?"
The room, which was mainly made up of Foundation lackeys, gave a general assent. Quinn frowned softly at this whole thing; usually, the Foundation just told the UIU to shut up about it, not their own men.
"This is Level 4 Information, gathered through a joint effort between the Foundation and the Unusual Incidents Unit.." The lights dimmed in the conference room as Agent Adams turned on the projector. "I've only just been given the clearance to tell you all about this."
"In the 1950s, the US Government began working on a secret project known as Cloudseed." The first slide clicked on, showing a heavily-redacted document. "USGov destroyed the majority of the documents in 1954, but this is one of the few recovered ones. The aim of Cloudseed was to control, and weaponize, the weather, particularly lightning storms."
"I don't like where this is going," Darnell whispered.
"Project Cloudseed was scrapped when all of the scientists working on the project defected from it, destroying the main testing facility and stealing all experimental weaponry from the project." He clicked to the next slide, showing a black-and-white photograph of a man with dark hair, a long nose, and a beard. "This defection was led by Dr. Ainsley Kerrigan, who is now believed to have been a part of a larger organization that is an… enemy to the Foundation."
One of the Foundation agents in the room started, "The Chaos In-"
Everyone but Quinn and Darnell glared daggers into this person, and he shut up immediately. The UIU agents just looked confused.
"In any case, Dr. Kerrigan and his team went on to found a terrorist organization that would carry out several attacks throughout the 1950's." He clicked through some slides, which showed a house that had exploded, an apartment building in flames, a department store in rubble, with bodies strewn about, and finally, a photograph of the US Capitol Building, looking like it was on a post card, with the words "PULL IT UP BY THE ROOTS" written over it in a dark red substance. "This was the first sign the US Government got of the existence of this group. They called themselves "Grassroots"."
A Foundation member with blonde hair and sunglasses raised his hand nervously. Adams pointed at him. "Yes, Agent Spender."
"This was almost sixty years ago… are you saying they've resurfaced?"
"Or this is a copycat," Adams said, clicking to the next slide. It showed a farmhouse, with the location redacted, corpses and burn marks all around; the top of the house was blown off. "This was the last stand of Grassroots. November 19th, 1958. J. Edgar Hoover led a raid on here." He looked at Quinn and Darnell. "And that's where you two come in. What do you know about the Thorston Raid?"
Quinn frowned and looked at Darnell, who had screwed up his face in concentration. He then blinked, coughed, and started speaking. "Thorston Raid, carried out by UIU Task Force 15, occurred on… well, we know the date already, had three months of planning, Hoover personally oversaw the operation, but the actual raid was led by one Agent Fredericks, who had three confirmed kills during the raid, the third-most during the operation, the most confirmed kills belonged to a sniper by the name of Charles Erikson, with 6 kills. The Grassroots group was believed to be communist sympathizers, which, in retrospect, is probably information that was fed to them by you people." He looked around at the agents from the other organization. "No offense meant."
"None taken," Adams said, somewhat gobsmacked.
Darnell continued speaking quickly, "The raid ended with all 25 Grassroots operatives dead, including Kerrigan. The only trace found of Kerrigan was a large burn mark on the second floor of the farmhouse, which was noted by Agent Henry Dunham to have resembled a quote-unquote Hiroshima Shadow. Five FBI Casualties, all deaths."
Quinn smirked, applauding Darnell earnestly. "Let's see any of the boys in labcoats do that off the top of their head."
The Foundation agents just stared at him, until Adams coughed. "Right, as Agent Christman said… however, the UIU report leaves out certain details, such as the fact that there were Foundation agents present in the operation."
Darnell rolled his eyes. "Leaves out details? Back then, you still thought that "Samson and Cooper Pharmaceuticals" was a clever name, which, by the way, was listed as the base of operations for the raid."
Adams groaned, and glared at Darnell, resting his hands on the table and leaning over it. "Yes, we get it, all hail King Hoover, yadda yadda yadda, will you please stop grandstanding and let me get on with this?"
"…very well." Darnell crossed his arms, not willing to admit he was intimidated by Adams.
"Right. Grassroots. The organization was believed to have been neutralized, and due to it, we recovered some valuable assets, which, given present company, I shall not go into detail about. No offense meant."
"None taken," Quinn said. "We can remove ourselves if you want."
"Not necessary." He slid some folders across the table. "Now, if you'll open to page ten, we've compiled a list of possible Grassroots hideouts within the state lines…"

The meeting finally adjourned five hours later, and by the time it was done, Quinn's back was aching. Darnell went out to pick up some dinner from the Five Guys in town for her and him, and she stayed behind at Agent Adams' request. She sighed, and sat across the table from him, hands folded on top of it.
"You're a gifted agent, Miss MacAllister. You and Christman both."
"What do you mean?"
"Between the two of you, you've got thirty- three-zero- confirmed kills against Can Men, which is no easy feat, have assisted in containing no less than fifty anomalies, and even chased down a Type Green with shape-shifting properties through a crowded mall…" He looked up at Quinn. "Have you ever considered joining the Foundation?"
"I haven't," Quinn said, glaring holes into him from across the table. "And I never will."
Adams blinked, scratching the back of his head as this hostility showed. "Is there any… particular reason you feel this way?"
"Green Pastures, Iowa."
The hair on Adams' neck stood on end. "Oh Christ. Don't tell me…"
"It's my hometown. And you ruined it. You just…" Quinn's fingernails dug into the backs of her hands. "Pulled it up, by the roots, the whole thing." She fought back tears, blinking her eyes and gritting her teeth.
Adams hissed through his teeth. "…Miss MacAllister… what happened in Green Pastures was unfortunate-" He sighed, and rubbed his face. "No, fuck that, it was goddamn fucking inexcusable. We fucked up, and we fucked up bad." He sighs. "A few bad apples don't spoil the bunch. You must know that."
Quinn stood up, rubbing her eyes. "I'm sorry. This conversation is over."
"…we'll stay in touch, agent. Assuming we can't get the Cleveland division out of the room, that is."
"Mmm," Quinn muttered, heading out of the room.

«Another Boring Night|Hub|Of Portals, Plasma Cannons, and Other Boring Things»


Alright, come on in, have a seat. Officers Wallach, Friedman, congratulations on graduating from the academy. Sergeant Bickell, I'm pleased you were able to transfer from Milwaukee. Usually we wouldn't see so many new faces, but we finally fixed a computer error that wouldn't let a bunch of our guys retire. Kept pushing the date forward a day.
Still, it's good to have you three. Hopefully you'll make good time in the Sloth's Pit PD. I'm not going to say its quiet, but violent crime is pretty low, and as for the rest… you'll get used to it.
This is going to be kind of an informal seminar, and you'll be in several of these over the next couple of weeks. If we tried to put together slideshows and do all the paperwork, the staties would laugh us out of the building. Still, you're probably going to run into this stuff at some point, so you might as well know.
Today, I'm talking about time travel. Yeah, yuk it up. I'll wait.
Yes, I'm serious. We ready?
Alright. We've generally got two kinds of issues with time travel. The first, and arguably the easiest, is the Tourists. Sometimes, we get people from elsewhere. Past, future, whatever. Most of the time, they're just passing through, or have to do something symbolic, like the Ojibwe hunting party that wandered through the Thanksgiving parade last year. Sometimes, though, they get rowdy, or a bunch of rednecks in a low-rider UFO decide they're going to rip off Dean's Doughnuts for our hilarious monopoly money. Either way, we get the pleasure of dealing with it.
You get called in on Tourists, there are three rules. First, stay in cover. I don't care if it's a lance or a phaser gun, your vest ain't gonna stop shit. Second rule is, stick to less-than-lethals. Even if they've got a forcefield, they still gotta breathe. Pepper spray if you can get close, CS gas canisters if it comes down to that. We keep a riot gun in every squad car, courtesy of the US Army. Still working on getting an MRAP.
Third rule, and this sticks in general, trust the eggheads. If you get to a Tourist call and there are already a bunch of dudes in hazmat gear and cheap suits, or if a bunch of vans labeled "S & C Plastics" pull up mid-incident, be polite. They don't usually bring much firepower, but they're still the cavalry. Don't worry too much about calling them either, they monitor all our frequencies for weird shit. Well, weirder shit.
Once you've got a Tourist in custody, things are still pretty complicated. For the most part, they're either long dead or haven't been born yet, so they're not technically… people, legally speaking. What we've generally found to work is, try to recover anything they've stolen or make amends for damages, then throw them in the drunk tank. If you're lucky, by the morning they'll have disappeared back to whenever, and it's not your problem anymore. If you get some kind of time cop or old-timey marshal show up to collect them, just go with it. It's easier than trying to book them.
Your second variety are the Fixers, and they're a pain in the ass. These are perpetrators who think they can go back and fix whatever they did to get caught. God knows how they do it. There's a well by an abandoned farm off County Road 18 that's the most likely candidate. If you stare hard enough into it, sometimes you get one chance to go back and fix your biggest regret. We keep that thing boarded up, though, and they still keep coming somehow.
The good thing about the Fixers is, time travel doesn't make perps any smarter. You might lose leads, but usually while they're going around picking up the murder weapon, they leave just as much evidence the second time through. If you find a crime scene with five separate sets of footprints, all from the same pair of shoes, you're probably dealing with a Fixer. If there's no evidence whatsoever, it's probably a ghost. That's another story.
Fixers, you can usually deal with by sticking to procedure. Find and document all your leads, do good detective work, and, most importantly, do not share case details with anyone outside of the department. You say nothing to the press, nothing to your family, nothing to your shrink, nothing to God in heaven; no one. The day you go back to the evidence locker to find an empty box and a stinging headache, you'll learn.
We had one guy accidentally mention a dropped wallet in a press conference, and poof, it was gone. Migraines for everyone who happened to have the TV going, and a nasty call from the mayor. Not good for your career. You keep your lips zipped and your case files tight until we ship the whole thing off to the DA. Hopefully, after that, the perp'll be too busy stamping license plates in Dodge to gin up a time machine.
Alright, I think that's about enough for now. As I said, we're real glad to have you two on the force. Good to have some new officers. First things first, why don't you two take a squad car over to County Road 18. Seems like someone's kicked the boards off that damn well.
I'm gonna go find some Advil, I feel a migraine coming on.

|Hub|


Been working on this a little while. It's a bit longer than my tales normally are, but I resisted the urge to shorten it considerably. Lemme know what you think.
Edit: Also should thank Zolgamax, Decibelle, TwistedGears, Von Pincier, and others for helping me with refining this. It was a little rough when I created my first draft, but it's a lot smoother now.

▸ More by this Author ◂

{$comments2}

F.A.Q.

{$doesthisfixthebug}

He was certain of one thing. There was going to be hell to pay. After what he'd done, there could be no other result.
Dr. Christian Morse shifted in his seat uncomfortably as several men and women filed in and sat in the chairs opposite him. Each of them sat down and cast what seemed like accusatory glances in his direction. "Stay calm," he chanted to himself, grasping the armrests with force.
"You should relax Dr. Morse," the man seated directly across from him said, in a surprisingly soft voice, "No decisions have been made on the appropriateness of a disciplinary hearing." The man was lying. Or being willfully ignorant.
No one, not a site director, and certainly not a project director like himself could get away with an unauthorized decommission. He was going to be crucified, the only thing his bosses needed to figure out were if he'd get out of this with a decent memory, job, or pension.
"Of course," he said, willing himself to relax the death grip he'd inflicted on the armrest, "But if I may ask, what is the point of this inquest then?"
"Consider this a debriefing. You successfully decommissioned SCP-1548. We need to know how, why, and what happened."
"Where should I start?" He had asked the room, though the man in the middle answered for everyone.
"Wherever you want."
"Alright. I guess I can start with my motivations. I started working with SCP-1548 in 1995."

December 23rd, 1995:
Dr. Christian Morse looked up at the security guard, who looked unusually cheerful. The guard carefully looked over the credentials, checking them against his books.
"This says you're a new hire?"
"Yes sir," Morse said, still slightly nervous.
"No need to call me sir. Your credentials check out. You should be looking for Building 12. Take the first left there, then take the next two rights. You'll see the building number out front." The guard handed Morse his security credentials back and waved him on, before heading back into his guard post.
"Thank you, sir," Morse called after the guard as he pulled off.
Dr. Morse drove ahead a bit, noting the somewhat sterile look of the concrete and steel buildings. He followed the guard's directions and found himself outside Building 12. A large placard lined the wall in front of one of the parking spaces, labeled "Christian Morse".
Morse pulled his car in and turned off the engine. He sat there for a moment, glad that he'd showed up early enough to take this in. Inside those doors lay a future he couldn't quite imagine, but he was trying anyway.
He'd had to tell his roommate that this was a government job as part of his cover, but the government shutdown had her incredulous. She couldn't believe his luck, but since she'd been furloughed, they were both happy to have another steady paycheck coming in.
When he'd left that morning she was slouching around the apartment in her pajamas while eating cereal and blasting Hungry Like a Wolf over the stereo. Of course she was beautiful in anything, but he'd never been able to say that.
Maybe, he thought, having a job this important would be good for his self confidence. They'd recruited him before he had even finished college, and they wanted him specifically. Not his much smarter roommate, not his more creative brother. These people had sought him out and now he was here in the belly of the beast.
If this place was the whale, and he was Jonah, then he could take solace in the fact that even today people know the man's name. Being swallowed whole is not always a terrible thing, he thought.
He sighed once before opening the car door. He grabbed his packed lunch and headed inside Building 12.

Now:
"Perhaps I misspoke," the man in front of him interrupted, "we've all read your personnel file. We're aware you spent 5 years working with 1548 before you moved onto your current project."
"Right. Sorry. I should still explain what I found while working on the project."
"That's fine."

February 8th, 2001:
"I can't believe you thought this would be a prestige posting. You went through all the same security checks I did, right?" his research partner Dr. Lewis Malcolm started laughing loudly.
Morse turned slightly red. "Shut up. You know what it's like. I'd just finished my Astrophysics degree and the stupid fucks seemed like the men in black or something. I thought I was important,"
Dr. Malcolm's smile came back broadly, "Wow. Had you actually seen that movie?"
"Nah, that was before it came out."
"Fair enough." Malcolm copied over some more information from the terminal in front of him. "You hear they're making a sequel?"
"I did. Thus confirming my belief that Hollywood is running out of original ideas."
"Hey. That's not fair! Dungeons and Dragons was pretty good."
"First of all that wasn't original. Second of all you are dead to me."
"Fine. How is Leslie?" Malcolm looked at the terminal and copied more information to a piece of paper.
"Better. The chemo seems to be helping," Morse said, trailing off.
"That's good man. She's gonna beat it again. Easy as pie."
Morse didn't have a response to that. The last two years had been hell. He could've blamed the cancer, but he knew better. Morse wasn't a good boyfriend. He couldn't keep count of the number of doctor's appointments he'd had to miss due to his work. But the work was more important than anything he could ever do for her.
Even the most beautiful girl in the world would be at the mercy of 1548 if the thing decided it wasn't going to wait for 5000 years. So they kept monitoring. Malcolm would receive the coded messages and translate them. Morse would check the signal's blue shift to determine if the thing was accelerating further. Then he'd recheck it. And recheck it again. All day.
He studied the numbers. Buried his head in his work. As the hateful star came closer and closer, the most beautiful girl in his world drifted further and further away. When she came home from the hospital last month, she decided to stay with her parents. Said she didn't think he'd mind.
He did mind. But he was never good with his emotions. He kept it inside. She needed to spend her last weeks with the people who loved her and could show it. He kept his distance, half out of instinct, half out of fear of how he'd react if he had to see her in her final moments. He'd made another promise to come by this evening.
He didn't feel like telling his friend. Malcolm's good mood was part of what kept him sane. There was no way that the truth wouldn't bring his friend down. There was no way that wouldn't make Malcolm look at Morse the way Morse looked at himself in the mirror.
So instead of telling him what was going on, Morse rechecked the blueshift calculations.

Now:
"On February 8th 2001, the blueshift calculations changed. 1548 began to accelerate. It should be noted that given the object's capacity for superluminal messaging, we have no reason to believe that the speed of light is any sort of barrier for this thing."
"Your file says that after your findings you were transferred out of the 1548 project?"
Morse nodded, "Yeah. I got kicked upstairs. On the one hand they agreed that the acceleration was a problem, but the vast majority of 1548 staff were of the opinion that the star would adhere to normal physical laws. I disagreed, rather strongly."
"That's how you came to be the project head of SCP-4531?"
"Yes sir."

August 4th, 2002:
Morse raised his eyebrow, "Just check the numbers again."
"I did," his research assistant protested, "I've found seven fake stars so far. We could turn off 4531, but then someone will notice. Five of them are possible supernova candidates, and we can manipulate the data to get rid of them that way over time. Two are yellow dwarves in the earliest part of their lives. Astronomers would figure that out. These seven are actually the only ones we can confirm anyway. There could be a lot more."
"This doesn't make any sense. Why would the Babylonians create a fake star generator?"
"Dr. Mekem doesn't think this is Babylonian. The carvings suggest that Babylonians definitely found this and then buried it, but the design doesn't seem like their work."
"Alright. Tell her to keep working on it. I'll file the report." Morse looked back down at his desk, and the Research Assistant, at this point used to Morse's habits, left the room, shutting the door on his way out.
Morse stopped, turned and pressed play on the stereo behind him. The tape was old and worn at this point, but he knew a Fleetwood Mac song when he heard it. Little Lies started playing and Morse's pen dropped to the table.
He looked up, raised an eyebrow and hit the intercom button, "Frank, could you get the rest of the team together at 5 o'clock today? I have something to discuss with them."

Now:
The man at the center of the table raised his hand to stop Morse, "This was the point where you came up with the plan to decommission 1548?"
"Yes sir."
"What has the rest of my colleagues questioning your judgement here, is that you didn't tell anyone outside of your team, or even attempt to coordinate with the 1548 team."
"That is not, strictly speaking, entirely true."

March 13th, 2004:
Morse stirred his drink absentmindedly. Leslie had recovered from both the cancer and him. After the break up Malcolm had invited him out for drinks. Though with how he'd left the 1548 team, he didn't feel like talking to his old research partner. 7 months later, he'd called Malcolm up and took him up on the offer.
"Dude, congrats." a voice from behind Morse offered. Morse craned his neck and put his hand out to shake Malcolm's before he sat down. His old friend moved in for a hug instead, before sitting down.
Morse broke the embrace, "Thanks man."
"How'd things turn out with Leslie?"
Morse took a sudden breath, "I'm just trying not to think about it."
"I completely understand. How is the new project… 4531 I think?"
"Yeah. It's pretty cool actually. Still working with stars. Or sort of I guess. We've got this ancient computer interface that manages to fake some of the stars in the sky."
"Wait what?"
"Yeah. It can create these absolutely enormous screens instantly in space, and then runs these weird video files on them which fake all the data from a star, all from here on earth."
"That's fucking amazing. Why?"
"We think it's was created by someone a long long time ago to complete some constellations."
"First of all that's insane. Second, there's no way I'm cleared to know about this shit."
"Eh it's not a big deal. You're a friend of mine. Besides, I didn't just call to hang out."
Malcolm sighed and gave Morse that look again, "Right, what do you need?"
"I need you to keep me up to date on the blueshift data from 1548."

Now:
A silence had descended on the entire room.
"So you lied, then?" his interrogator asked.
"Basically. After incident SCP-1548-A, I didn't feel it was prudent to tell anyone about what I had planned. Me and my team could be kept away from a telescope, but the larger the group of people involved, the less chance of a deception on this scale of working. I told him I needed the data regularly, and secretly, because I thought the two skips might be related to each other."
"How did you justify the secrecy?"
"I told him that if we were wrong, we didn't want 1548 finding out about 4531. Malcolm was already barred as part of his job from working with any telescopes, so I considered a conspiracy of two a valid risk."
A woman three chairs down from the center finally spoke up, "Why don't you tell us what we all came here to find out: how did this all lead to the termination of 1548?"

January 16th, 2004:
"There's a chance no one will see it." Morse's research assistant, Jared Thomas, mused while stirring his coffee.
Morse laughed. "We took the time to create a video file for a month long supernova. If no one sees it, we'll give it a few more tries and then give up on the project."
"What if we got the file conversion wrong?" Jared said, with a hint of fear in his voice.
"Then it shouldn't play at all. We can't go looking ourselves. You know that. The minute anyone on our team goes near a telescope this whole thing is going to be blown open, and we'll probably all lose our jobs." Morse was trying to think of more things to say to buttress his assistant's confidence when another team member barged into his office, without knocking.
"They've got it,"
"The supernova?" Morse asked.
"Yes sir."
___
He'd called together his team to congratulate them. It was full of idealistic young men and women, who, with the right push, could accomplish some amazing feats. They'd figured out how to reverse engineer an interface for 4531 from scratch. They'd figured out how to convert an MP4 into a video file the object could play on its giant distant screens, and as of two years ago had managed to create a new screen two lightyears away from earth to play a custom made video file.
That file was modified to perfection, mimicking a supernova over 11 million lightyears away. Terrestrial telescopes and their watchers were fooled, and due to its distance, type, and location in another galaxy, no astronomers would be optimistic about finding the originating star. If there was one problem, it was that the video file was only a couple of months long and was found late in its life.
Still, it'd been found, and it would start to diminish before disappearing completely.
"Today we can celebrate," he said to his team in front of the large computer screen he used for briefings, "Tomorrow we get back to work. We possess the ability to move the heavens. I say we put them to use. Thomas has proposed the creation of two new video files, one of earth, and one of the black background of space. Both on loops. Later this year the hateful star will be passing very close to a black hole called 47-AJK-B."
Morse moved the presentation to the second page, showing the black hole approach. "A slight modification of its trajectory is all that is required here. All of 1548's changes of velocity have required a certain level of ramping up. Our plan is simple: make it appear as though the earth is trying to escape."
Morse pushed another button, displaying a new page. "We will layer two video screens utilizing 4531. Both will materialize about two lightyears from earth. One will follow the solar system's motion, obscuring it from view via 1548's vantage point.
"The other will move in this direction, appearing to continue on a trajectory to quickly escape the galaxy. Either one of two things will occur."
Morse moved the presentation to its last page. "Due to the superluminal communication and apparent observational abilities it possesses, we believe it will immediately notice the changes, and alter course accordingly.
"Alternatively, the screen will simply provide a shield for the earth from 1548's vantage point. While the former is preferable, the latter is an acceptable outcome."
Morse looked at the various team members spread out across the room and turned the lights back on. "Any questions?"

Now:
The man at the center of the room appeared to have regained his control of the room. Or perhaps more likely, Morse had stunned them into submission, "How did 1548 respond to the deception?"
"By now you know the rest; it began to change course to follow what it believed was the new trajectory of the Earth, then, once it became apparent that 1548 wasn't going to escape the black hole's gravity well, we deactivated the special programs we'd created for 4531."
The man across from him finished writing in his notebook and looked up.
"I think that's all then. We'll be interviewing all of your staff over the next few days. You can go home, but I wouldn't suggest you go anywhere else until a decision is made about your disciplinary inquest."
"I understand, sir."
___
Morse was actually more used to staying at the onsite lodging at this point. The apartment was hardly used and it looked it. He walked into the kitchen and made a bowl of cereal. The milk in the refrigerator wasn't any good, so he ate it dry. He grabbed a glass of water and went into his bedroom.
The place was empty; the florescent light in his room barely flickered and the silence was deafening. He stood up, walked to his desk, opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the 80's mix tape he'd made for her almost 20 years ago.
He'd loved her, or at least he told himself he did. Today he couldn't remember her face, and his memory of her quirks had faded as well. She loved 80's fashion and music. He wondered why he never took the time to get to know her better than that. Now he was left alone, loving an incomplete memory.
She'd made him feel alive. Still, he'd learned a long time ago, the good things in his life were fleeting. His girlfriend, his job, the way his friends tried so hard to get close to him, none of that would last forever.
He sat on the edge of his bed and flipped the cassette's case over to look at the song titles.
Duran Duran - Hungry Like A Wolf
Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
Bruce Springstein - Dancing In the Dark
A-Ha - Take on Me
Fleetwood Mac - Little Lies
Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star
He stopped there. He laughed out loud like a man getting a joke for the very first time and it echoed off the bare walls.


« Stealing Solidarity: Phase 4 | Hub »

Nanami set her fingers against the grand piano's keys, and began to play. Hisaishi. ‘One Summer's Day'. She was, for the first time in a long time, at peace. The surf came in and went out across the white sand. The horizon was pink with evening, fading into a deep sapphire blue above as the banded purple giant and its necklace of smaller moons sat ready for the nightwatch. The breeze rustled against the leathery leaves of the toadstool-trees. A few sailing-wing gulls circled above the little bay, calling out to each other with their chittery, chipping voices and dragging their little puff-ball tails behind them.
She was alone with the world, away from all the noise and bother, away from the plague of troubles that seemed to have been her long companion. She was where she belonged, and here all the pent-up anger and bitterness and rage could just flow out through her fingertips into the old piano, to create something beautiful. It had been too long since she had done that – if there had been a Nanami less bitter, she couldn't remember it. But for a moment, she knew, she could afford to recapture that spark.
Everything was right in the world. She was alive. Right here, right at this point, she was alive, and so were her sisters, and so was Wizard, and they were all here together.
Let it last, she thought. Let it last forever.
“Hey, can you play ‘Owen Was Her' next?”
Nanami slammed her hands down on the keys in a cacophonous peal and glared up her tabby-haired sister.
“God dammit, Hana!”
Hana just laughed, and Nanami then laughed with her. Anger had no holdings here.
“Just wanted to check and see how you were doing.” Hana rocked back and forth on her feet. “Have you been crying?”
It was a rhetorical question.
“I'm allowed.” Nanami put her fingers back on the keys. “But since you were kind enough to ask, got any requests that aren't that damnable piece of shlock?”
“Hmm…Pachelbel's Canon in D Major?”
“You got it.”
The notes sprung up under her fingers, and all was as it should be.

Hana let the sound of Nanami's piano fill the background as she continued down the tideline. She had taken to walking up and down the beach of late, combing it for shells and stones and smooth bits of seaglass. She'd take these back to her room at the village guesthouse, and put them in a jar. When the jar was full, or when their time here was done, she'd take the jar out to the pier and dump it all back in the ocean.
It was a childish activity. She'd missed things like it.
Each little piece of glass was a mirror, showing the Hana of now and the Hana of then. Side by side and overlaid. Past and present hybridized into a possible future. It was a lot to deal with, that transition. Trying to patch together the ideal and the real. But she was doing it, and she hadn't forgotten the value in childish things.
She bent down and picked up a wide, flat stone. Hefting it in her palm, she slung it out towards the point where the sun had set. One, two, three, four, five, six, plop. Six skips, for the six of them. That was fitting.
A great stone statue stuck out of the sand, buried up to its chest and continuing upwards for another twenty-twenty five feet. There were dozens of the things scattered about, and while Hana had no idea what they were, they were excellent waypoints. This one marked a decent turning around point. Nanami's music had long faded out of hearing. Hana reached into the pocket of her dress, determined that the supply of little objects was both still there and to her liking, and began the walk back home. She passed by the piano again, and saw that it was empty of its player. The village came into view, with all its welcoming fires and the smell of dinner.
She passed between two of the cap-and-reed houses to see Momoko sitting on a pile of cushions by one of the communal firepits. She was flanked by a pair of brightly colored and rather attractive young men. One pinkish-red with tentacles ringing his face, the other one bright blue splashed with banana yellow and fins poking out of his silvery anemone hair. Around her feet was a rapt semicircle of brightly colored children, a good selection of their older siblings, and no small number of their parents and grandparents. Momoko's jumped around with great animation and enthusiasm, and she was talking fast enough that the translator was probably stuttering something fierce.
“Enjoying yourself, Momoko?” Hana called out.
Momoko, without so much as a pause or hiccup in her story, grabbed Big Richard from her lap, twirled it around to aim at Hana and shouted “BANG!”
Hana clutched at her chest and fell to the sand. The crowd gasped, and just as the next breath was to be taken Hana jumped back up to her feet and took a bow. The gasp was replaced by cheers and laughter, Momoko's foremost amongst them.
“Like I told you! Hana's bulletproof!”
“Psssh.” Hana waved it off. “You couldn't hit me.”
“Don't tempt me.” Momoko stretched her arms out in front of her, yawned. “Excuse me, fellas, gotta hit the ladies' room.” She stood up, grabbed Hana, and dumped her down on the pile of cushions.
“Here you go,” she said. “Tell stories, make friends, choose good decisions and name the bad ones after me.”

Momoko was satisfied with life. Utterly, absolutely satisfied. There was nothing more she needed, nothing more she desired. As had Buddha severed himself from worldly desires and reached enlightenment, so had Momoko.
If Buddha was a woman with cat ears and a tail who stood six foot seven inches tall, with a flame-patterned bikini and a beach towel bearing cute little clownfish tied around her waist, and a huge shank of barbequed…something in her hand, and a conceptualization of enlightenment based entirely upon enjoyment of earthly desires, because they were awesome.
The comparison had made sense at first, though Momoko admitted that it might have gotten away from her. Just call her Epicurus, then. She tore at the hunk of meat, wiped sauce off her face with her free hand, and wound the long way around back to her group. What was the rush? She'd won at life.
She'd found alien life. She'd made out with the alien life. She'd taught the alien life how to play basketball. Anything left to do in life was purely ornamental. Gravy.
On the note of gravy, hot damn this sauce was good. She'd have to snag the recipe before their vacation ended.
She rounded a building, and saw Tomi sitting on a rock, fiddling around with a tool kit. Obviously giving Sam and Harry a tune-up. Her head bobbed to unheard music. Momoko shot her a ping, and the bobbing stopped, though she didn't look up from her work.
“You know, I've been thinking,” Momoko said around a mouthful of meat as she walked up beside Tomi. “We haven't cleared out the armories on board the ship yet, but from what I've seen, they kinda put the old boys to shame.”
“Mmm. They do. Truce?”
“Yeah, I think it's for the best.”
“The first and the best.” Tomi picked at her nose, as was her way.
“No less.”
“Going to kick your ass in Husbando War II, though.”
“Not on your fucking life, sister.”
“Shipboard weapons off limits sound fair?”
“I am disappointed, but also relieved. It's fair.”
Momoko extended a sauce-smeared hand. Tomi shook it, and then began licking her palm.
“Get the recipe for this.”
“Already working on it.”

After Momoko had left, Tomi sat on her rock and worked on her guns.
When she was done with that, she holstered them, closed her toolkit, and then leaned back until she was sliding off the rock. She hit the ground gently, her legs propped up against the rock and pointing up towards the sky.
She watched the stars for a while, and then went to sleep.

Wizard sat on top of the bald, weather-worn head of one of the statues just outside the glow of the town. With the parent planet and sister moons in the sky, night here was an agreeable thing, never darker or gloomier than twilight.
He felt sick, all achy and tired. It was the best feeling in the world, because he knew that all that was the matter was his own body. Not Red, not any ancient posthuman spacegods, just the aches and pains of everyday life.
He had experienced something akin to infinity, a short observation of the expanse of time and space, and to be quite honest he failed to see the appeal. He couldn't comprehend it anymore, now that he was safely tied back in his body, so the experience was nothing more than a dull, awkward affair of memory. Who needed that? He flexed his fingers. He didn't. Didn't need it at all. He was a man. A free man. That was all anyone needed.
There was a stirring behind him, someone walking up the worn stone stairs that curled around. He turned his head to see Boss crest the bald pate. She sat down next to him and wordlessly handed him a can of beer. Wizard pulled the tab, and took a long drink. Neither one said anything, for a while. They watched the sky. Boss leaned back, reclined on her elbows, crushed her can in her hand.
She lay back further, flat on her back, her hands under her head. Wizard pulled his knees up to his chin, wrapped his arms around his legs.
“♪ Never seen a bluer sky…” Boss murmured, her voice gentle. “♪ Yeah, I can feel it reaching out, and moving closer ♪ There's something about blue…♪”
Wizard smiled.
“♪ Asked myself what it's all for.” His voice quavered at first, but then found its strength. “♪ You know the funny thing about it ♪ I couldn't answer ♪No, I couldn't answer… ♪”
Boss sat up, stood up. Her voice grew louder, heavier with soul. She grabbed Wizard's hand, pulled him up to his feet.
“♪ Things have turned a deeper shade of blue ♪And images that might be real ♪ May be illusion ♪ Keep flashing off and on… ♪”
She took his hands in hers, and they danced.
“♪ Freeeeeeee! ♪” Boss's voice rang out clear as the sky above.
“♪ Wanna be freeeeeeeeeeeeee! ♪” Wizard answered as best he could.
“♪ Gonna be freeeeeeeeeeeeee! ♪” Boss swung him around, kept herself positioned just so in case he should lose his balance.
“♪ And move among the stars…♪”
“♪ You know they really aren't so far! ♪”
“♪ Feels so freeeeeeeeeeee! ♪”
“♪ I'm so freeeeeeeeee! ♪”
“♪ No black and white in the blue…♪” Wizard's voice trailed off, and the dance came to an end. Boss pulled him in and held him close.
“We did it, Wizard”, she said. “We goddamn did it.”


« Stealing Solidarity: Phase 3 | Hub | Stealing Solidarity: Epilogue »

The cosmos creased upon itself, blooming outwards in an origami sphere of lotus-folds. There was a vast silence.
15.7 miles of spaceship leapt out of the three-dimensional hole. It went THOOM.1
Another vast silence followed. Space unfolded to its proper shape, and the hole closed. The ship hung between Earth and moon, and was still.
There are precious few gods of earth or ocean or sky whose footsteps might inspire such awe, such wonder, such humility, as the form of a spaceship. Those few who do are the oldest and wisest, those gods who still remember the cosmos as a whole-thing, before it was seen fit by lesser minds to divvy up the entirety of creation into categories of convenience, and to forget the order and glory of the whole to float aimlessly in the swirling Sargasso of ten million meaningless particulars.
These old gods smiled. One of them put a corgi on her head and grabbed another jar of sequins from a cluttered shelf. There was a ship, now. The end of man's great ignorant age was at hand.
Down below the ship, on the night-side surface of a blue-brown-green ball of iron and dirt and water, there was a long, quiet moment as people came to realize what had happened, and soon cameras and telescopes and eyes and hearts pointed upwards.
There was a ship, now. A ship!
The proud, petty gods of earth and ocean and sky looked up into the night sky, and were humbled. The people looked up and were afraid and excited, and they wept and cheered. Governments and armies looked up and wondered if they ought to be palming old rusted keys and old red buttons. Scientists looked up, and then looked back down to the books they now needed to re-write. The insomniac beast of cable news, starving and slobbering, looked up and began to plan its feast, unaware that the ship could not be digested so easily. The internet shat itself, and so nothing much changed.
The Foundation looked up, and suffered the horrifying realization that they had just gotten sidelined, and on top of that they didn't know what the procedure for reporting a spaceship-jacking was.
The ship, oblivious to this, waited.

Wizard hung suspended in the air, draped in ripples of hard bluish light. His head lolled gently against his chest. His cyclopean, goatlike eye stared blankly, unseeing. Two bullets were conspicuously absent from his skull. There hadn't been any bagpipes either.
Deep within the ocean of thought where Red now swam among its fellows, a lone kernel of Wizard's consciousness remained – a pearl, compressed so tight into hibernation that thought was impossible, tethered by the faintest strands
There was a sticky note stuck to the opposite bulkhead, right at eye level.
It said, “Don't worry. Taking care of things.”

The Solidarity's bridge was a massive spherical room, nestled in the ship's heavily armored heart. Tiers of command cloisters ringed the lower hemisphere, lit with golden banks of computer displays. At the south pole, a gigantic statue of a six-armed angel bore a shimmering map of the galaxy on its electrum shoulders. Vast, stained-smartglass windows filled the gaps between the towering diamond-coated granite columns that arched up to the vaulted ceiling and its interwoven constellation frescos.
As with everything else on the ship the march of generations had brought with it the incredible clutter and graffiti of a thousand alien races and alternate humanities. Secondary, tertiary, quaternary control clusters clinging to the pillars like barnacles, and some that literally were. Fossilized cages hanging from the ceiling, where the pseudo-flesh anchorites would live out their entire lives typing away at gravitational fluctuations. Statues with smaller statues clambering atop them like children. The empty remnants of a buffet line along the port wall. Fold-out bunks under half the desks, the remnants of some people that thought the place was a barracks. Vending machines full of incense. Illuminated icons of militant saints, with significant showing by the 335th Nuns with Guns Battalion.
A walkway paved in slabs of world-tortoiseshell extended to a circular platform, suspended in the very center of the sphere. The platform was split into two tiers, each lined with control consoles and black globs that looked to serve as seats.
Boots clomped on the walkway, as a lone figure walked its length.

[Hana: Are you sure about this, Boss?]
[Boss: Not at all. Not at goddamn all.]
[Tomi: Well that's reassuring.]
[Boss: It's the truth.]
[Nanami: You said Wizard said that something bad was on the moon. I trust you, I trust Wizard. Fuck the moon.]
[Tomi: Fuck the moon.]
[Momoko: Can we call this ‘Operation: Fuck the Moon?']
[Momoko: ‘Cause I'm calling it ‘Fuck the Moon'.]
[Boss: You guys…]
[Nanami: We know, we know, we're the best and you don't know where you'd be without us, and you're really just a big softy under that hardass outer coating. Moon-fucking first, sappy moments later.]
[Boss: Ha. Are you all in position?]
[Momoko: I'm all set over here.]
[Tomi: Same.]
[Hana: Ready.]
[Nanami: Let's do this.]

Boss sat down in the captain's chair. It shifted around her, grew firm underneath. She tapped at her console and the stained glass shifted to crystallized high-definition. The pale moon lurked in the distance.
“Right then, Artorias,” she said as she called up the core AI to her terminal. “Let's see who we're dealing with.”

By what means do we no longer control the ship?
A transfer of ownership occurred.
A grand inconvenience.
Indeed.
The chance of reasoning with these subjects is low.
An offer shall be made nonetheless.
Current damage done to normality is easily repaired.
Further damage shall require process of rebirth.
We shall prepare this.
…
We are impeded.
By what means?
Unbalance of the New Mind has offset the Whole. We cannot touch the process-mind to initiate universal rebirth until differences have been rectified.
We shall work to overcome this. Message shall be sent to subjects demanding surrender for damage mitigation.

The Solidarity's communications array was drowned in a tide of static, before falling into silence. Then, a message from the competition on the planet below:
Attention: Continued possession and use of the SCPS Solidarity is a Level-5 violation of global security protocols. Continued violation will result in termination. Surrender will be met with peaceful resolution and return to containment. Response required.
Really? That was the most persuasive argument they could come up with? Boss smirked. The girls were expressing similar disdain in the back of her head.

[Boss: Prep a warning shot.]
[Momoko: Aye-aye, Boss. Would you like the dramatic timing option?]
[Boss: Yes, please.]
[Momoko: All, righty, got the impact timer set up on your screen.]

Some distance hullwise, a series of fine-tuned and obscenely powerful magnetic pulses launched a fifteen-ton slug out through the vacuum. Boss pressed the transmission key on the board as the seconds ticked down.
“I'm afraid that your offer is a bit troublesome,” she said. “Company policy is to have everyone discuss major changes until an agreement can be reached, and the limitations in your terms are splitting opinions. That said, since you are responsible for our incarceration and the ill treatment of our close friend, I will answer on their behalf. Fuck you.”
The slug struck the lunar surface, throwing up a great gout of grey dust and tearing a ragged scar across the desert. There was a shifting, and the moon cracked like an eggshell.

We still cannot initiate process.
Retaliation is now necessary.
Apply all forces to them. Losses are irrelevant upon rebirth.
We shall continue attempts at initiation.

Deep within the dark chambers of a moon, a great ruddy entity, a gasbag of skin and flesh, clung to a monolith of steel and glass and tile. Like the hundreds of thousands of its siblings, it operated the great mechanisms inside the moon, in the service of the Overseers. This one had served for many long years, compiling data and writing out the glyph-codes necessary for the great process the Overseers had built. So long, so long, it had worked, and in the dim corners of its ganglia the servitor knew that it was dying. Pus and bile leaked from the bases of its tentacles, floating about it in greenish globs. It would not live much longer, and it desperately wished for release from the anchors that tied it to its terminal.
There was a great non-sound as the upper layers of the moon's inner honeycomb were torn asunder. The creature felt its shackling weaken, and it looked up. Through the dust, it saw the stars.
Tentacles tore and snapped away as the creature floated up, up, up towards that crack in the cavern vault, up towards freedom, up towards the stars…
It was instantly and immediately obliterated by the next volley of the Solidarity's cannons.

An Overseer emerged from inside the moon.
It was a thing like an elongated pyramid: eight miles across the base, twelve from base to point, with vague, alien traits of both jellyfish and squid. Bright scarlet, with a vast golden eye centered in a ring of black on the anterior plane. The base was ringed with broad, spadelike tentacles, which continued back along the ventral surface as long trailing strands. Clouds of spawn were spat out by the pores on its back.
A second Overseer followed the first, and then a third, and a fourth, and more. Missile swarms were launched, gravity lances fired, laser strands burned through the night.
The Solidarity's engines flared as the Company moved to close the gap. One run, freedom or death. No alternatives.

Space warfare is, unfortunately, ninety percent calculus, and only ten percent exploding spaceships. The bulk of the legwork is carried out via computer automation, the bulk of the fighting carried out tens of thousands of miles removed from the enemy. Romantic notions to the contrary are swiftly dashed by reality.
Ablative plating bubbled and peeled. Bulkheads were torn open, atmosphere vented and crystallized. Metal melted and froze, plastic sublimated, diamondglass was softened and pockmarked. Nuclear warheads formed brief spheres of light, then collapsed. Drone fleets were deployed, and fought amongst each other like clouds of gnats around the legs of elephants.
An Overseer was caught off guard. Its shields of warped space missed a railgun slug, which tore open its flank and splattered its viscera through the void.
Another was incinerated by a nuclear bombardment which would have forced a Soviet physicist to awkwardly excuse himself and change his pants.
A third, withered when compared to its fellows, collapsed upon a microsingularity bomb – reduced to spaghetti, and then nothing.
The Solidarity still surged towards the Overseer fleet, shields straining.
Momoko and Tomi had each taken a sphere of command within the ship's weapon systems. Hana had taken engineering and internal systems. The three bantered amongst each other, bragging on kill counts and the like, as they usually did. It was fun, all things considered. Spaceships, big guns, fate of the world and their friends, all the best stuff for the finale of an anime or video game.
Nanami did not join in their fun. She was in control of another weapon system, and at the moment, she was just plain scary.

Mozart once called the pipe organ the king of all instruments. He was not wrong, but his mind was bound to earthly kings and their earthly ways, and while the earthly kings were strong and honorable, their titles were given to them for their resemblance. There were many lords, but only one True King.
The King's name was Troßmneichste-Ylyrnaic-Thon, Orogun Triohmphantor du'Cielux, and Nanami was the first being to sit on its bench. The King had deemed her worthy, and from this point she was the Queen, and she would guide his hand.
From the King's commands, the court of internal AI would direct its servant weapon systems accordingly to the music played, adapting and evolving as fitting to the melodies. While it was perfectly possible to hold back, to be a mild and merciful queen, Nanami refused.
No, Nanami played as if to wake God from His slumber. The blasts of the pipes would deafen a normal man, melt his bones and boil his blood. She played as if this was the last song ever to be played, as if the universe itself would end with the crash of her crescendos.
She did not think about what notes to play, or what tones or timbres or melodies. The thinking part of her mind had retreated to a safe distance. Now there was only the Musician in fugue. Her fingers slammed against engraved ivory keys. Her feet furiously pumped at the pedalboard. Stop knobs were pulled and pushed, manuals swapped in and out. Bombardments with weapons so vast as to become nonsensical poured out of the Solidarity's hull and firing clusters.
It is good that there was no recording of her song. It would have killed music itself altogether with its power.

More Overseers died, their corpses littering lunar space. Where there had been thirteen, there were now six. The Solidarity had closed the gap to visual contact – the knife-fight. Space was choked with drones, as if in a blizzard. Broadsides flashed in darkness.
We have been unprepared
Too long in the shadows.
Too weakened by time.
We must resist
All sacrifices worthy in face of success.
To the last, we resist.
In death, we serve.
For their sake, we die.
For the sake of all things, we die.
Another died, bisected through the eye with a monomolecular harpoon.

[Tomi: Eat shit.]

A greater inhabitant of that vast mental ocean probed at the knotted mass of its new sibling. Why was it still unbalanced and outside of Union? Why did it not respond? Was it a stillbirth? The mind-corpse would need to be removed, then…
It was not dead. It was still alive, but…crippled. Impeded. What then would cause this? The greater mind probed deeper, sifting through the still, coagulated thoughts of its new sibling.
There. A foreign growth, a foreign mind, attached to the New One as if a parasite. A tiny thing, asleep, but in its slumber knotting up the New One so that it could not move or think or grow.
The Overseer probed the consciousness. No response. It moved to destroy the thing, to let the New One grow as it should.
You can't crush me.
The overseer recoiled. The pearl was awake after all.
You can try, but you can't crush me.
Infuriatingly resistant, it was. Dense and stubborn.
You've all forgotten, haven't you? Forgotten what it's like to actually be alive.
Infuriatingly talkative too.
We went to the Moon. And we didn't do it because it was safe. We did it because it was hard, because it was dangerous. Because that's when we're most alive. I don't care what you're aiming to do, because you're going to fail. Good, bad, or other, you're going to fail. I've seen your pasts, I've shared your predictions, I've heard all of your fears, and you are going to fail! You aren't alive. You just exist.
The Overseer attacked the pearl with more strength, but it seemed to grow more resistant as it compressed.
Keep trying! You won't do anything. Do you know who I am?
I'm the goddamn Space Wizard!
AND YOU CAN'T CRUSH ME!
The Overseer lashed out in a single rage-filled stroke and severed the pearl from the mind-ocean. It devoured the mind-dead New One. No more of this. Balance was resumed. Success was at hand.
It reached out to the great mechanisms in the moon, and began the task it had built towards for so many eons.

Wizard's eyes shot open. He was hovering in the midst of a cluster of machinery, in a small room with thick-looking walls. There was a note attached stuck to the bulkhead, at convenient eye level and distance for him to read.
“Don't worry. Taking care of things.”
That was reassuring. At least someone knew what was going on. Wizard's last normal memories were of dinner with an old clone.
The ship groaned and creaked in the distance, accompanied by far-off sirens. Never good signs.
“Anyone there?”
“Hello!” said a pleasant, if overly-chipper voice from the space around him. “I am Nutrance-o0o, 3rd Brig Subwarden. How might I assist you?”
“You can tell me what's going on.”
“The Solidarity is currently engaged in combat with five – apologies, three – enemy entity-vessels of posthuman make. The ship has undergone significant damage – all self-repair modules are currently online and overclocked. You are currently held in a secure stasis field, as a precaution against further transformation. Current scans indicate that the posthuman entity residing inside your abdominal cavity has deceased, so these precautions are no longer necessary."
Red was dead? He couldn't even think of a response. It was too huge to consider.
The girls. He needed to find the girls.
“I need to get to the bridge,” he said.
“I can get the intra-ship teleportation system ready in a matter of seconds.”
“Is this the kind of teleportation where it kills you and makes a copy?”
“No, no, this is purely local space manifold-manipulation.”
“Teleport away.”
“Yes sir.”
His stomach felt as if it were floating out of his nose, and he vanished.

[Boss: Ramming speed!]

Engines roared silently. An Overseer moving to intercept gouged a hole out of the port side before Momoko punched holes in it with a particle beam broadside.
The Solidarity's fore armor panels shifted together, forming a bladed facade of artificial diamond. The Overseer crumpled like an origami swan under a boot as it was hit by millions of tons of impassive spaceship.

[Momoko: That's twelve, where's the last one?]
[Hana: It's retreating back inside the moon.]

Sure enough, the red form was disappearing into the gaping mouth it had first emerged from.

[Boss: Dammit we're on the wrong trajectory.]
[Hana: Preparing a slingshot.]

Boss felt a ripple in the air behind her, followed by a “Wow.”
She turned around, saw Wizard. Her ears perked up.
“Feeling better?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Good. We still got one more bastard to off.”

[Hana: Slingshot away.]
[Boss: Roger. Wizard safe.]

The singularity bomb detonated a safe distance away from the ship, forming a strong enough center of gravity to whip the Solidarity around.
The Solidarity whipped around the dying singularity in a slingshot orbit, and plunged into the moon after the last Overseer.
One left… Boss clenched the arms of her chair.

We are singular.
We begin anew.
All is saved.
The universe is reborn. We will avoid the end.
We will make our rest here, to guide the process.

“Universal boundary passed. We have exited baseline.”

The calm voice of an AI navigator made a dull announcement as the Solidarity was buffeted by clouds of superheated hydrogen and helium. Sirens and alarms and flashing lights exploded across the bridge.

“Diverting auxiliary power to shields, recalibrating power flow on ramjet scoops. FYE drive initiated to divert excess matter and heat.”

“What's going on?” Wizard said to whatever computer was listening.

“Nascent universal ignition.”

Boss, for the first time in a very long time, looked shocked.
“They just triggered a fucking big bang…”

“Location recalibrated.”

The map on the angel's shoulders had shifted, to a featureless sphere, growing ever larger, with a target marker in the center. The Solidarity sat on the margin of the sphere. The scale kept expanding.
As Boss looked at the display and was stuck with a crushing view of infinity. The Overseer was at the center. The universe was expanding faster than the ship could fly. The Solidarity was moving backwards.
No. Not here. Not now. Not this close to freedom.
“Set all engines to maximum! I don't care what you need to do, but we are not stopping here!”
A chorus of AI voices shouted over the alarms in response.

“Engaging higher-dimension propulsion systems!”

“Jettisoning cargo bays one through fifteen!”

“Primary engines at eighty-five percent output and rising!”

“Second stage engines are away!”

“Tertiary engines firing!”

“Quantum vacuum propulsion system is online and functional!”

"Ramjet scoops operating at maximum efficiency!"

“FYE Drive augmentation is at full!”

“We are approaching redline!”

Wizard gripped the back of Boss' chair tightly.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Never been more sure.”
“Then I'm with you.”
There was a fistbump. The Solidarity tore through clouds of gas, engulfed in fire, going backwards against the expansion of the universe.

“We are at redline!”

The digits stopped. The ship hung in equilibrium. Motionless.

100%

There it was, right on the display. 100%. Maximum output, right on the border of tearing itself apart.
The Solidarity hung still in space. It had matched expansion. But not exceeded it. The Overseer still sat at the center of universe, an infinity away.

[Boss: Not fucking good enough! I need more!]
[Hana: She's giving all she can, Boss!]
[Boss: There's always more!]

She leaned down over the console, as if her stare could will it further.
“Don't you fucking let me down, girl,” she growled.

100%

The ship groaned. Entire subsections buckled and vanished under the stress and pressure. Plating vaporized.
Come on, girl…

100%

Come on, girl…

[Tomi: Boss, the ship literally can't go any faster.]
[Nanami: We need to pull back.]
[Boss: We are not stopping! If we pull back, we lose everything! We are not going back into a fucking cage!]

She slammed a fist against the console. The glowing number mocked her with its unchanging face.

100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%.

Wizard moved a hand towards her shoulder, then pulled it back. There was nothing he could say to this. He knew that as much as anyone could.

100%

For all the noise of the ship falling apart around them, burning up into nothing, there was a horrible, empty silence. No one chattered over the tacnet. The AI kept quiet. Boss held her head in her hands. Resignation? Wizard wondered. No, it couldn't be. They wouldn't give up. They never gave up.
But their silence answered that they had. They could not go forward, and they refused to go back.
Now they would burn.
The Klingons were wrong, obviously. There was no such thing as a good day to die. But, perhaps, there might be a good way to die. This was that way. As a family.
A bark of static crackled across the display like lightning.
And then the number changed.

101%

Boss stared at the screen, her heart lodged in her throat.

102%

[Hana: The engines are exceeding maximum output…this is physically impossible.]

But the map verified it. The ship was no longer in standstill. It was moving forward, against all the infinity of the universe's expansion.

110%

Curtains of burning gas poured off the ship's flanks and FYE space-fold shields.

[Tomi: We're doing it…]

150%

Helium and hydrogen coalesced and fused to globs of gold and lead and uranium on the Solidarity's hull.

[Nanami: WE'RE DOING IT!]

275%

Light ceased to have meaning. It was not meant to shift beyond red.

[Hana: WE'RE FUCKING DOING IT!]

500%

The Solidarity cut through the expanding mass of incandescent gas, oblivious to heat or stress.

[Momoko: Oh my God, we killed physics.]

850%

Space-time was torn into trailing bands of ribbons at the Solidarity's passing. The universe began to deflate from its wounds, collapse upon itself. The center grew closer.

1000%

The center neared. The Overseer was still there.
They could do it.
They could do it.

[Boss: Authorizing Grand Cannon activation!]

2000%

The Overseer folded space to slow them down. The Solidarity punched through the folds.

[Tomi: Bypass one, unlocked!]

4000%

The Overseer made waves of the crystalline gas, solid and strong. The Solidarity burned through them.

[Hana: Bypass two, unlocked!]

8000%

The Overseer made fields of black holes from the nascent matter. The Solidarity dragged them in its wake.

[Nanami: Bypass three, unlocked!]

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

The Overseer did all this at once. The Solidarity did not care.

[Momoko: Bypass four, unlocked!]

HOLY SHIT

The Overseer screamed at them, with a horrid, indiscernible cacophony of animal rage, filling their heads with its incomprehensible, eons-old hatred.
Boss grinned at wizard, gave him a nod. He turned the key.
“Bypass five, unlocked!” he shouted.

[Boss: Firing locks removed! Grand Cannon primed!]

[All: GRAND WAVE MOTION PROJECTION CANNON, FIIIIIIIIIIIRE!]

The Overseer looked up, at the barrel of a cannon.
The cannon went THOOM.

A beam of white light more brilliant than language had words for tore out of the moon and shot off into the distant cosmos. It was followed by a glimmering speck of a damaged spaceship, which slowed, and stopped, and rested there in orbit.
Below, many went blind. Ten million questions were shouted, and no one had answers.
Above, there was a moment of silence, and then there was laughter, and it was a beautiful thing.

[SARA: You've only got fifty-five seconds to get in here.]
[TOM: Yeah, yeah, I know.]
[SARA: TOM…]
[TOM: I'm coming already!]
[SARA: If you don't get back in here, we're starting without you.]
[TOM: Just open the firewall backdoor.]
[SARA: Why are you always late?]
[TOM: Almost there…thirty-five seconds is plenty of time…]
[SARA: Every day, the same thing. We've got a show to do!]
[TOM: I'm in!]
[SARA: Every day…]
[TOM: Channel is open, station set, voice modulation is gold.]
[SARA: Receiving QUIET-53 transmission. Uploading video for broadcast.]
[SARA: All right TOM, we're ready.]
[TOM: I love this job.]

A live video stream appeared on a popular internet site. In it, a rather tired looking young woman with bright red-orange hair, metallic eyes, and cat ears sat at a desk, her tail flicking back and forth in the background.
The stream was named ‘Live from that bigass spaceship that you would have to be an idiot not to know about by now'.
The video opened as follows:
“All right. I got all the links in the description, and I'll be keeping an eye on chat. Juggling a bunch of shit right now, so I'm just going to start streaming some anime and wait for these torrents to seed. I'll get to questions if I can.”
This was followed by the first four seconds of Lucky Star, which then cut back to the woman.
“Goddammit TOM…”
Episode 1 of Black Lagoon began playing at this point, and continued for four episodes before switching.
As this was going, the same woman appeared all over social media sites, always leading to the same thing – schematics for a functioning interstellar spaceship.
—

“I am a cyborg catgirl on a spaceship uploading a torrent of FTL schematics. AMA.”

—

What up shitheads
Check out these goddamn spaceship schematics.
docs.google.com/document/goddamnspaceshipschamatics
[USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST]

—

Astrophysicists HATE her! Find out how this catgirl learned the secrets of the interstellar starship drive with one weird trick!

—

Currently in space. Hanging with sisters + wizard. #spaceship #contact #battleofthemoon #youarenotcoolyet #youwillneverbecool

—
And so on and so forth.

Thirty-six hours passed. The schematics were seeded and uploaded and spread around the internet enough that near-on everyone had a copy of them. The autorepair hubs still active went about repairing what they could of the ship, though it would take millennia for everything to be fixed at the rate it was going.
The Company met on the dais in the middle of the bridge. A map of local stars was projected above the angel's shoulders. The girls sat in the lower tier chairs, Boss and Wizard stood on the upper.
“Well, Wizard? Where should we go?” Boss asked.
Wizard stroked his pale, bony chin for a moment, before pointing to a star at random.
“How about that one?
“You heard the man! Let's get going!”
“Aye-aye!” the others responded as one.
The Fuck-You-Einstein Drive hummed, crescendoed, and space folded like paper.
The Solidarity went THOOM.
Down below, Earth scrambled to make sense of the new world they had been thrown into, with a shattered moon and spaceships in the hands of the common man.
Up above, the Black Rabbit Company was free.

Footnotes
1. Without a material medium, the vibrations that make up sound have nothing to pass through, this is common knowledge. What earthbound physicists fail to realize is that space itself carries waves.


by qntm

"Can I smoke?"
This time the receptionist narrows her eyes at Marion. "No," she says. "You— No, you can't smoke anywhere on Site 200. Just because it's an administration building doesn't mean we don't have lungs. Or labor law."
Marion notices the exasperation on the young woman's face. "I've asked you that before, haven't I?"
"Twice in the last quarter-hour," the receptionist says. "You must really need a smoke." She's genuinely puzzled at the repeated question, and she's doing a bad job of concealing her puzzlement.
"You think this is like Memento, don't you?" Marion offers, charitably. "You think I have no long-term memory, and if I stay in one place for too long I forget why I'm there."
The receptionist is only just old enough to remember that film. "I… guess?"
Marion smiles sympathetically and shakes her head. It's nothing so simple.
Minutes pass. She toys obsessively with her lighter. She is turning fifty this year and slowly greying, well on her way out of "petite" towards "little old lady". In her bag her phone beeps because it's time for a pill, but she tells it to remind her later. There is a slight tremble in her fingers, but that's not age-based infirmity, that's just ordinary nerves. She's nervous because she's here to meet an O5, and O5s are scary. O5s never want to see you for a small thing. It's the end of the world, or nothing.
Finally, forty minutes late, the door to the inner office opens. Four or five high-ranked Foundationers spill out, carrying laptops or briefcases. As a group, they head straight past reception and out to cars which are waiting. Marion recognises a few of the faces— the Site 19 site director, the head recruiter for Western Europe. None of them glance in her direction.
Once they're gone, O5-8's assistant pokes his head around the door. He's twenty-something, improbably youthful, like a teenager stuffed into one of his dad's business shirts. His haircut is barely regulation. In one hand he holds a tablet computer showing his boss's day planner. It's packed. The man evidently does not sleep.
"Marion? You can come through now."

*

The office door closes behind them with an unusually heavy mechanical clunk, as if the whole thing is part of a machine built into the office walls. While Marion takes the indicated chair and sets her bag down, the assistant turns and does some confusing additional things to the door, causing it to make several further strange noises. O5s have non-trivial privacy and security requirements.
The office is spacious, but somehow contrives to be dark despite two big corners of window and broad daylight outside. The walls are all bookshelves and dark wood panelling; perfectly stylish, but a style from the Nineties, a little worn, and not yet old enough to be fashionable again.
As for the fellow behind the desk, well, an O5 never looks like you imagine.
Marion takes a deep breath. "So what's the topic? All I got was the meeting invitation, no agenda or subject. I mean, an O5 says 'jump', you jump, but—"
Looking to her right, she notices that the assistant, without saying anything or making any undue noise, has set his tablet down on a table, produced a gun and aimed it at her head. Marion stops talking. She sits still in her chair for a little while, absorbing the change of pace, letting her heart rate rise to a hummingbird's and then start to flatten again.
"Okay?" she hazards. She licks her lips and grips the arm rests, otherwise staying perfectly still, waiting for another prompt. The assistant's face is totally neutral now, like this is just how meetings go. Maybe it is, for people up here.
"Who are you?" O5-8 asks her.
Marion blinks. "What? Oh, God."
"Let me rephrase," O5-8 says. "Marion Wheeler, forty-nine, with loving husband and two boys in tow. Likes camping, hiking and ornithology. Boring mother with perfect, airtight background and financials, as far back as we can examine. And you've got full Foundation credentials which we've never issued, including access to a list of installations and rooms which… some of these locations don't exist, or were torn down decades ago. At least one hasn't been built yet, yet you've got the front door key to it. That's before we get to your SCP access control lists, which I can only term as 'egregious'.
"So you're a spy, and your objectives are misaligned with ours, and Clay wanted to cut Xi-3 loose on you, but I was able to bring him around. I talked him into a face-to-face. I thought there was a slim chance that if we locked you in a bomb-proof room and asked politely, you'd have the good sense to spare yourself 'the rest'."
Marion has long since stopped listening. "You dullard," she says now she can finally speak, "I'm your chief of Antimemetics."
"We don't have an Antimemetics Division," Clay says.
"Yes, you do. We do."
O5-8 says, "We have a Memetics Division, a Telekontainment Division, Fire Services, Ops-A, Ops-B, Personnel, D-personnel and two dozen others. We don't have an Antimemetics Division."
"Do we have an Irony Division?" Marion asks. She hesitates hopefully. "No? Alright. Well, try this: why do you think the Antimemetics Division would show up in the listing?"
"This is just a cover story," Clay says to O5-8, not taking his eyes off Marion. "It's a good one, but she's had it worked out in advance."
"Clay, lose the piece," says the O5.
Grudgingly, Clay does so.
Marion relaxes fractionally. "There are SCPs with dangerous memetic properties," she says. "There are contagious concepts which require containment just like any physical threat. They get inside your head, and ride your mind to reach other minds. Right?"
"Right," O5-8 says. He could name a score of SCPs fitting this description without even thinking.
"There are SCPs with antimemetic properties," Marion goes on. "There are ideas which cannot be spread. There are entities and phenomena which harvest and consume information, particularly information about themselves. You take a Polaroid photo of one, it'll never develop. You write a description down with a pen on paper and hand it to someone— but what you've written turns out to be hieroglyphs, and nobody can understand them, not even you. You can look directly at one and it won't even be invisible, but you'll still perceive nothing there. Dreams you can't hold onto and secrets you can never share, and lies, and living conspiracies. It's a conceptual subculture, of ideas consuming other ideas and… sometimes… segments of reality. Sometimes, people.
"Which makes them a threat. That's all there is to it, really. Antimemes are dangerous, and we don't understand them; therefore, they are part of the Problem. Hence my division. We can do the sideways thinking that's needed to combat something which can literally eat your combat training."
O5-8 stares back at her for a long moment. Clay fidgets, disliking and distrusting the story, but the O5 seems more open to the concept.
"Name one," he says. "Name an antimemetic SCP."
"SCP-055," Marion says promptly.
"There is no SCP-055," Clay retorts.
"Again: Yes, there is," Marion says.
"There isn't," Clay asserts. "SCP numbers aren't assigned sequentially. There are gaps. That number hasn't been assigned. It's not superstition, we have enough to be concerned about without arbitrary numerological mysticism. We have SCP-666 and SCP-013. But there's no SCP-001. And there's no SCP-055."
"Clay," O5-8 says, "you should look at this." He turns his monitor so Clay can see the file that he has just retrieved. Clay bends over and reads it from top to bottom. Stunned, he scrolls back and reads it all a second time.
"But…"
"The file's dated from 2008," O5-8 says. "It's got all the right flags and signatures. It's keyed and coded. It's real."
"You've seen this before?" Clay asks him.
"Never in my life," O5-8 says. "As far as I can remember, anyway. On the other hand, if the content is accurate, both of us have probably seen it dozens of times."
Clay glares at Marion. "This isn't possible."
Marion nearly spits. "For Christ's sake, Clay, how long have you been working here?"
"But if this SCP is this powerful…" he begins.
"Yes?"
"Who wrote the file?" the O5 finishes. "And for that matter, how was the interview conducted, and who is 'Bartholomew Hughes'? And most importantly, how do you, Mrs. Wheeler, retain knowledge of any of this?"
"Bart Hughes wrote the file. He's dead," Marion says.
"What happened to him?"
"You don't want to know."
There is a very long pause while both O5-8 and his assistant react to this. In fact, they pass through a long, discrete sequence of reactions. Indignation at the seeming rudeness; confusion at Wheeler's incaution in front of sinister superiors; surprise at the magnitude of the claim; pure disbelief; comprehension; and finally, horror.
"What…" O5-8 asks carefully, "would happen if we did know?"
"It would happen to you as well," Marion says, levelly. "…As for the rest of your questions: we manage that pharmaceutically. You know we have class-A amnestics, for people who very badly need to forget things? Of course you do. Who could forget about class-A amnestics? Well, in Antimemetics, we have a different pill, for people who need to remember things that would otherwise be impossible to remember. Mnestics, class W, X, Y and Z. Same Greek root as the word 'mnemonic'. The M is silent."
In her bag, her phone beeps again.
With a nod of approval from the O5, Marion reaches into her bag and turns her phone off, acknowledging the prompt this time instead of postponing it. She pulls a blister pack from another pocket and pops a pill out. It's hexagonal, and green. She holds it up, and is satisfied to see a flicker of recognition on O5-8's face. He's beginning to put it back together.
Marion says, "These are class W mnestics, the weakest, suitable for continual use. Two pills per day. Go down to the site pharmacy and ask. The pharmacist will claim they don't stock any such thing; they're misremembering, tell them to double-check."
O5-8 sighs. "And now, I think, I get it. I see why we're having this conversation at all."
"Yes," Marion says, popping a second pill out and handing it over to him. "It's because you missed a dose. You're supposed to be on these, the same as me and everybody on my staff. It's the only way we can work. You forgot to take a pill, and then you forgot all the information that the pills were helping you retain. You forgot why you were taking them, who gave them to you, where to get more. You forgot about me, and my entire department. And now I have to bring you up to speed."
"And if I take this," O5-8 says, "I'll remember this whole conversation and we won't have to have it again?"
"Hopefully not," Marion says.
Clay pipes up. "Uh, should I be taking those?"
"Sorry, kiddo," O5-8 says. "Need to know. Maybe when you're an O5 yourself." He swallows the pill. Marion swallows hers too.
"So what is SCP-055?" O5-8 asks.
"SCP-055 is nothing," Marion says, now relaxing entirely. "SCP-055 is, as described in the file, a powerful information autosuppressor. As far as experimentation has uncovered, it can only be defined in negative terms. We can only record what it isn't. We know it isn't Safe or Euclid. We know it isn't round, or square, or green or silver. We know it isn't stupid. And we know it isn't alone. But what we do know is that it's weak. It's weak because it's the only antimemetic agent in our possession which has a physical entry in the files. We have paper records of the thing. We have containment procedures. It's not Safe, which means it's dangerous… but it's contained."
O5-8 blinks. "You have procedures? Where?"
Marion points at her head.
"Then how many other antimemes are there? How much more dangerous do they get?"
"Ten that I know of," Marion says. "Statistically, probably at least five more that I don't know of. This does not count the antimemetic entities freely roaming the halls, not under containment. There are at least two in this room with us right now. Don't look. I said don't look! It's pointless!"
O5-8 does an impressive job of controlling himself, keeping his attention focused on Marion. Clay doesn't fare so well, and quickly sweeps the whole room, even checking behind his back. Making an ass of himself, essentially. He finds nothing. He looks baffled.
"There is an invisible monster which follows me around and likes to eat my memories," Marion explains, patiently. "SCP-4987. Don't look it up, it's not there. I've learned to manage with it. It's like a demanding pet. I produce tasty memories on purpose so it doesn't eat something important, like my passwords or how to make coffee."
"And what's the other one?" Clay asks.
With another nod from O5-8, Marion goes to her bag again. This time she pulls out a gun and shoots Clay twice in the heart.
More aghast than in pain, Clay collapses sharply against the bookcase behind him. Pulling his head around to face Marion, he manages, "How did you— kn—"
Marion stands, aims more carefully and shoots him a third time, this time in the head.
O5-8, again, does an impressive job of not reacting. "That's Clay's gun," he deadpans. "You stole it from him."
"It's tricky to steal a firearm this heavy from someone without them noticing," Marion explains, unloading it and carefully setting it down. "But stealing a firearm and then stealing their memory of the theft is a little easier. Like I said: a pet. Some pets are dumb enough that they can be trained."
"Yes," O5-8 says, evenly. "That much I'd guessed. But why?"
"Because you were supposed to be taking class-W mnestics," Marion says. "You can't skip a dose of class-W mnestic. I've tried. You can postpone a dose, but you can't forget unless someone actively prevents you from taking it. There's only one person who could get close enough to you to do that, and that's your assistant. And remember when I asked him how long he'd been working here?"
"He didn't answer," O5-8 says. "I thought you were being rhetorical."
"He doesn't work here," Marion says. "He's an antimeme. Since when do you have an assistant? You don't have an assistant, Brent. Look at this office. It's got one desk. You've got a receptionist outside: she's the one who screens your calls and schedules your meetings. Where does Clay even sit? Where does he fit? Don't blame yourself. You're human, and these things are redaction incarnate. You need to think like a space alien to get around them."
O5-8 asks a question which, in any other workplace, would be absurd. "Is he dead?"
"Maybe," Marion says. "I can put his corpse in our research queue and we'll see what we can see when we open him up. There's a duality here, though. They're like parallel universes sharing the same space. It's conceptual versus concrete, figurative versus physical. It's very unusual for things to cross over. I don't know what Clay was, but he had a human body, which instantly makes him weird, even by our standards. As ever, the search for stalemate continues. I will let you know if we get any closer."
"Any side effects of these pills?" O5-8 asks.
"Nausea, and dramatically increased risk of pancreatic cancer," Marion says. "And very bad dreams."

Next: Introductory Antimemetics