There were a lot of ghosts. It was a given, and she'd known it the whole time, but it still startled her a little as the UAV moved over the desert. They were usually invisible to the naked eye, but curiously enough tended to show up on camera. It made the otherwise empty desert seem like a fairly crowded place. Some of them looked up and waved, and just went about their business. Which seemed to be, mostly, wandering around aimlessly and talking to each other.
She wondered if they got bored, or if ghosts could get bored. It had, after all, been three-hundred years.
A whole three centuries of a nearly-empty earth. And then she wondered why all the ghosts congregated here, in the Midwestern area of the former United States of America. They had never seen ghosts anywhere else, perhaps there was just something about the area?
“Ladies and gentleman, the world tour has started!” she announced, moving the controls of the UAV smoothly. The secondary pilot grinned at her with his dagger-like teeth, the spines down his back pricked in excitement, and sat back, looking up at the massive array of screens.
For Anahita, it was just like the first time she saw her world all over again. While she had been born and raised in the refugee city, and had grown up in a sky with too many moons, streaked with orange and red, the blue grasses and violet-brown trees…she couldn't fight the part of her mind that was truly human, and recognized its home immediately. The burning yellow sun. The blue sky.
She turned the UAV and it looked backwards, towards the small town they operated from. It was small, cramped, dusty and stuck out from the desert with its crude farmland and little garden sanctuary, just like any other earth town, but it was still not so bad a place. Then she turned the UAV back out, to the Midwestern desert, and pushed the controls towards. The sleek, alien device moved smoothly, like it was swimming through the air, and thus began her travels by proxy.
The desert covered most of the former Northern Americas. An endless expanse of dust and sand, bone-white and golden for the most part, with occasional patches of scrubland clinging to survival, or thin rivers that trickled through cracked-mud riverbanks. The Mississippi crawled, only a foot or so wide, sluggishly through the channel it had carved, and she steered the UAV down with it, following southwards.
Passing over the excavation site, she circled low and saw the workers, a mixture of human and lurks, look up and smile and wave. They knew that the mission was to be launched soon.
The desert was more or less unchanged as they explored. They already knew what to expect, but the aerial view made up for plenty of interest. They followed a roving band of clickers for a few hours, a half-dozen individuals who trucked forwards through the sand, gears whirling inside their bodies, bronze and copper metal faces looking to and fro, searching for anything alive.
They followed them south and west, to one of the larger clockwork cities. Its moving, shifting spires reaching into the sky. She circled the UAV around them and weaved it between buildings that occasionally rumbled and moved of their own accord in some unchanging pattern. A massive fountain with a living statue of a woman, composed entirely of pneumatics and gears, swam with koi made of gold, and workers went to and fro in their set patterns, unchanging, unnoticing of the world around them.
Only when a guard, some mixture of human and a massive hawk, with silver blades for wings and a tunic made out of platinum threads woven so fine as to flow like cloth, caught attention of the UAV and took chase did they leave the shining, repetitive city. She recalled once listening to a traveler tell his tales of how he once walked clear through one of the clicker cities, timing so perfect that not a thing touched or saw him.
The UAV, fortunately, easily could out-fly the guard, who eventually wheeled back to the city, and she took it to the higher atmospheres, where it went into a circling pattern for the night as she slept. The next morning, they powered southwards and over Mexico. She gasped as they rounded over a series of deep craters that formed a mountainous range, and saw for the first time in her life the green of grass that spread further than a few yards. Of a forest! How wonderful!
So few people had been to the southern American jungles, after all. She steered the UAV in low, and slowed it down, weaving her way through the grassy forest, which slowly became a thick, lush jungle. Flowers the size of doorways bloomed, vivid red and orange. Trees hundreds of meters tall towered overhead, and she wove the UAV carefully around looped vines bigger around than her waist would have been. Here and there, she saw things move.
A creature that could have once been a parrot, but now had slim green leaves for feathers and a dark wooden beak looked at her with beady black eyes, before fluttering off, becoming invisible among the plant life. She only thought about pulling out of the jungle when she found a clearing and spotted a group of plantlings resting, their soft membranous skin covered in dew, and long grassy hair braided crudely. She avoided nearing them, curious as she was, after all plantlings were a lot that was quick to anger and attack.
There was a flash of copper, later, and she chased the UAV after a clicker, one that was fast and built like a jaguar, hurrying through the jungle. A messenger, she assumed.
She pulled up out of the jungle at the urging of the copilot, and soared further south, until the jungle faded again and they neared another city of gears and metal, and gave it a wide berth when they spotted condors that were armored in gold and swinging steel talons.
And to Antarctica the following day. The death had barely touched here, and she curiously observed a group of penguins before steering the UAV through a small storm, and into the waiting shed of the Antarctic Observation Platform. A tall woman dressed in furs performed maintenance on the UAV to assure them it would stay in working condition the rest of the trip, and spoke over the videophone with a gently accented voice. They were back in the air by the next day, and this time Anahita shivered with excitement. Up, they crawled over the Atlantic, up and to the East. While the ocean was largely uneventful, sometimes they would catch glimpses of things moving under the endless blue waves. Seagulls still soared, and the UAV followed a flock of them until a tentacle that must have reached fifty meters into the air snapped up out of the water with lightning speed and grabbed one, yanking it down into the waters below.
She pulled the UAV up higher after that, and they stared in amazement as nighttime fell and the bioluminescent spots of something the size of an oil tanker under the waves appeared, and then were joined by other creatures of the same type. They converged, lights flashing and flickering, then dove or faded out of sight.
In South Africa, they cautiously slowed and approached a sight few had seen. The trees were not terribly large, but for their size, they were…strange. They grew everywhere, but only here had they seen a truly impressive forest of them. The flesh trees, twisted upwards, their multi-branched, stiffened arms reaching to the sky, skin hardened and calloused. Some of them were old, very old, and probably deeply sleeping, but there were a few, here and there, that were quite fresh.
She steered past one that was newly rooted, still shaped like a young woman, eyes glassed over, arms just starting to split apart. The ground around her was scratched and scraped, like she'd tried to dig herself out before finally falling and stretching to the sky. In a moment of misthought, she moved close enough that the tail of the UAV gently brushed the side of the new tree, and it shuddered. Although the microphone of the UAV was not on, they could tell that she had started screaming. The trees nearby all shuddered and opened hidden mouths as well.
They moved away quickly, passing over a tribe nearby of unchanged humans, who glanced at the UAV with only a flicker of curiosity, before returning to their business. With humanity decimated, the wilderness here, in Africa, had returned. Scrublands and grasslands, just as before. Although, she steered the UAV back over a village, and they muttered and commented as a group of young men ran after a fleeting gazelle, before the men – in mid-stride – hunched over and became furred, massive facsimiles of hyenas and tackled it to the ground.
They continued northwards, over giraffes and elephants, and everybody on the team expressed their distaste as they spotted a herd of zebras – but among the black and white stripes, there were individuals that were partially bronze, or iron, and some that were entirely mechanical replicas of the equines. Even here, the clickers took hold, she noted.
Another night of rest for her, and then they crossed over the Mediterranian, where on small island flocks of birdlike creatures roosted. When she steered the UAV near the cliffs they were on, they came in close to curiously observe, looking like nude women with hooked, hawklike beaks on their chins under their mouths, and a bird's legs, and wings instead of arms. Then they lost interested, and returned to their nests, where down-covered infants nibbled on rotting fish and leathery eggs waited.
The ruins of Europe, as it turned out, were still there. Nobody went into the heart of France, or Britain, or Germany, not for what could be anywhere in there. And here they were, looking for it. It wasn't hard to spot, as they circled over the overgrown rubble and dust that was once London, and the UAV's sensors picked up life. They came in close and caught a fast glimpse of a girl, a little one with dark hair and eyes, and a wide smile, climbing over the ruined buildings and picking weed-flowers that had started to grow.
Then Anahita frantically pulled the UAV up as what she could only describe as a dragon lunged from seemingly nowhere and attempted to snap it out of the air. It was massive and shifted like a liquid just as they watched it for a moment, before the UAV was out of reach and it turned down. Then they watched as the girl started to skip off, and the dragon dutifully followed, padding along like a much-overgrown dog behind her. They turned the camera away, fully aware of what exposure could lead to, and pushed southeast.
They spent the next day with the UAV as the Saudi Arabian shelter, which existed just a few tentative kilometers from a large clicker-city, and the militant personnel there looked over the UAV, and spoke little, simply doing any needed maintenance and checking the device over. The captain of the base, a man with dark skin and a harsh, raspy voice told them not to go into Russia, and then thanked him for the advice with no intent to follow it.
But first, they had the Indian Ocean to explore, and even at full height its most impressive feature was still fully ungraspable, as the creature stretched past the horizon like an island chain. One made of chitenous armor where lichen collected and birds roosted, that occasionally rumbled and moved a few feet forwards or backwards. It stretched all the way from Maldives to the Great Barrier Reef, where massive towers of coral stretched into the sky out of the water like some sort of bizarre city.
The reef was a sanctuary of life, if that life was quite unusual. They observed huge schools of fish and jellyfish, pods of dolphins and whales of various sorts, and even glimpses of massive squids resting and feeding in the shallow, rich blue-green waters. Then there was Australia, where they soared low and slowly around the edges of the last truly human place on earth. They had no clearance to enter the territory known only as 23, but even from the edges, they could see fertile farmlands, and caught glimpses of people tending to them, or ones in uniforms who tensed and peered at the UAV through the scopes of their weapons before letting it pass by.
Indonesia passed in a blur of sandy, deserted islands, spotted with vast open-mine pits, and the occasional tall spire of a golden clicker city, a flicker of a messenger whale plated in titanium here, a seagull made completely out of golden paper-thin blades there, and then up, into the heart of India, where a truly astounding sight awaited them.
The largest clockworks city in the world, perhaps in all of existence. It spanned for hundreds of miles in any direction, a sprawling, ornate work of art, the people and animals and things that were neither operating in perfect patterns. Women who looked like dark bronze marionettes wearing saris of woven steel silk shined and washed the immense brass walls and walkways of the cities. Men wearing plated golden armor walked to and fro, observing with camera eyes. Massive moving statues were everywhere, swinging their many arms in a repetitive, slow dance, and pigeons who were strangely unaffected by the metal disease roosted in nooks and crannies.
What they ate, Anahita thought, she didn't want to know.
The city was so huge and glorious that they spent several days in exploration, careful to avoid the guards or other things that would notice and could attack the UAV with spring-loaded steel blades or slicing wires. There was a center to the city, a massive gold and brass monument, a temple, but the guards were so thick around it – dogs the size of cars made out of silver, centaurs made of copper and partially of glass that showed the gears and wires whirring about inside their bodies, all kinds of strange things – that they dared not move any closer to it.
Then up through China. A desert of pale dust. Not sand, but true dust. There were ghosts here, too, but they were not the bored, simple people that she had seen before. These were specters, wraiths that drifted through the dust, twisted and malformed in fear and pain, attacking each other and attempting to attack the UAV at seemingly random intervals, while others simply crouched and cried or screamed and thrashed endlessly. Nothing was alive here. They had traveled, and they knew, that this area, the dead dust, was nothing but death. And it was more than death.
It was a battlefield and a neutral zone.
At first, she almost thought there were trees, then she saw their fleshy texture, and watched as the ground became less dust…and more of a softly throbbing mat of meat under the UAV. They wheeled high above the infectious range, just in case, and peered downwards. Nobody entered what was once Russia. Nobody entered, and nobody left. If there was something to be said about the clickers and their clockwork virus, they did a damn fine job of at least keeping something worse at bay through unknown means.
They only did a quick circling, enough to see whole cities of flesh, malformed monsters wandering to and fro, the long-distance camera a little fuzzy on the UAV, before jetting Eastwards. Somewhere between Russia and Alaska, everyone looking at the screens or the data blacked out temporarily, then came to as if nothing had happened once the UAV entered Canada. They knew that they had observed something, but a quick rewind of the video feed provided only static and the amnesia showed no signs of clearing.
They quickly decided that perhaps this was a good thing.
Down through Canada they went, watching as the snowy tundra slowly started to turn into desert, and down to the Golden Gate bridge, which truly was golden now, as it had been assimilated into a clicker city where cars that operated and wind-up wheels that brass men cranked every so often went to and fro.
And then the UAV turned Eastwards…and headed home.
All things considered, the worldwide tour had taken nearly two weeks, and Anahita was hardly satisfied. But there would be more, her copilot assured her, tail wagging. After all, he pointed out, the UAV's were easy for his kind to manufacture, and they would need more data. This had, after all, just been a preliminary tour.
Anahita smiled, then, and looked at the screens as the UAV slowly circled in on autopilot for a landing, wherin it'd be taken to be disinfected through god-knows-what means, and watched the ghosts.
Several of them, men and women and fading specters alike, waited on the roof, wearing lab coats. One, a plump woman with long hair that billowed constantly in a phantom breeze smiled and watched the UAV before starting to clap, before they all applauded silently.
At least, Anahita thought…somebody respected this first tour.


[[Accessing Site 23 Logs.]]
[[ / DATABASE CORRUPTED / ]]
[[Identifying and playing most recent playable Audio Logs.]]
[[Log: XC/CC/????-ERROR: DATE LOG CORRUPTED]]
[[Original Login: Kensington, Jacob; Level 2 Clearance]]
[[Access Point: [ / DATA RESTRICTED / ] ]]
[[Audio Log Transcript: Begin]]
[Long Pause]
Imagine you work for a secret foundation, one whose sole purpose for existence is to secure, contain, and protect any and all unusual objects or creatures - supernatural, extraterrestrial, or otherwise.
They have hundreds of those objects: some are harmless and safe, while others can mutate your body into a machine and dissolve your mind into a soul-less husk of your former self. Still others can cause wide-spread paranoia, fear, anger, and hallucinations. There are even a few that can cause the Earth itself to shatter into millions of shards of rock, and turn all humans into the undead. This secret foundation holds them all in containment to protect the billions of souls resting on the Earth.
And imagine you are tasked with studying, analyzing, and defending those objects, all without getting you, your colleagues, or civilians killed.
No pressure, right?
[Nervous chuckling]
Well, that's what I did, day in and day out, putting myself in danger for humanity. It may seem dangerous, and it was, but it was fun, paid well, and I worked with some of the most bad-ass people you could ever meet…emphasis on the past tense, sadly.
Now imagine something different. Imagine if the specimens were all unleashed.
Every.
Single.
One.
In one day, billions would die from the chaos that would ensue. Countless other millions would be transformed into grotesque creatures, the likes of which the world has not seen for centuries. The hundreds of thousands who "survived" would find themselves in a world completely distorted and undistinguished from the bright, green and blue world they had just experienced a day ago.
Now you are starting to realize something, aren't you? This isn't hypothetical. After all, you're living the nightmare.
And it's all because of us. Because of our failures.

[Long pause]
You know how it is now. A few survivor sites, mainly at secured military sites or small farmsteads around the world. Some have even managed to take over old Foundation sites. They're safer now, what with all of the objects either out causing chaos or destroyed. I've been sitting here, at Site 23, alone. Hell, no harm in revealing where I am. It's not like anyone who wants me dead will know where Site 23 actually is.
I'm rambling, now, aren't I? I wouldn't be surprised. I think I may, may, be starting to go a little crazy. These logs are the only things keeping me sane. Sane. Sanity. Funny word, that. I know I'm losing my grip on my own sanity and coherence, after half a decade of self-imposed exile. Or quarantine. Whichever makes more sense.
Anyways, if you're reading this, I am probably dead. It only took me…five years to die? Yeah. Five years. Five long, lonely years. I might as well try to give you a history of what happened to the world five years ago. If I can remember…
[Pause]
That's the thing, though. I don't remember what happened. I spent every waking moment trying to figure out how every single artifact or contained creature escaped to destroy the world. No reason makes sense. Was it an inside job? A containment breach? War? Catastrophic failure of safety systems and the nuclear failsafes? It must be some combination of the reasons, but…I can't speak for any of the other sites. Site 19…Site 21…Site 7…
[Pause with soft sighs]
You know how it feels to watch the world die?
Of course you wouldn't. No one would. And you would be lucky. You wouldn't have to see people ripped apart by lizard-like monstrosities. You wouldn't have to see entire cities turn into machines, with the people turning into freak robots with no sense of humanity. That's what happened to London…and New York City…and…god knows how many other cities.
I watched as Washington D.C. was blown off the map by a nuclear missile.
I watched as the entire Midwestern United States turn into [Unintelligible] and turn grey and orange from the ashes and fire.
That's all I was able to do. Watch. Wait. Until that one day I found-
[[ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED. CONTINUING FROM NEXT AVAILABLE POSITION]]
-list of my colleagues who didn't make it. I made a list as I tried to track them all down. Oh god…There's so many…
[Sobs]
Most of the administrators are gone…Doctor…Doctor [Unintelligible] Clef…Doctor Agatha Rights…Doctor Jack Bright…Doctor Snorlison. Doctor Simon Glass…
[[ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED. CONTINUING FROM NEXT AVAILABLE POSITION]]
…Doctor Heiden…Doctor Aura…Doctor Mackenzie…Agent Strelnikov…Mr. Avery Cates…Doctor Winters…Doctor Light…Agent Zaeyde…
[[ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED. CONTINUING FROM NEXT AVAILABLE POSITION]]
…and Agent Harper. That's the last one…probably…
[Brief Pause]
I think I may be last one alive. The last one who remembers what we did, what we tried to do for the World.
I don't think this will be kept safe for nearly long enough, but I might as well try. To anyone who finds this, know that I have done my duty. I have tried to make things right from here. I will return one day to make things right. I will return, with or without my colleagues.
I have no illusions ahead of me. I will most likely die before I ever make it back, but at least I'll be with the people I worked with if I do. People who I know and feel safer with.
So…this is it.
This has been Dr. Jacob Kensington, Robotics Expert and Staff Researcher at Site 23, last known Foundation researcher still alive.
Good bye.
[[End Log]]


Oh, the cold here was biting. He wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't for his left lung, his left lung and the stupid bits of exposed bone about the sternum. The last unconverted parts of his whole body, the nerve endings there were still intact and turned raw and red by the chill. His rounds done, Agent Ketterson tightened a woolen greatcoat about him, then tapped his temple with an index finger.
“There's nothing here. Can I come back in now?”
“Sure,” the voice drifted back to him. “We'll have hot chocolate and marshmallows waiting.”
He shivered and trudged back through the icy taiga.
Of course, he couldn't just reach the door and go in. That would be silly. First he stepped inside a ballistics-reinforced antechamber, and plugged in a password. Then he stepped into a heated, plastics-lined chemical shower, though the current attendant vetoed that quickly. Finally, another airlock, and then the doors to the site swung open. Ketterson shivered a bit, then hung up the greatcoat and walked down the hall.
The site had been functional for decades, but only in recent years did the quick remodels become necessary. One entire wing was partitioned off by an airlock, where the few staff who still had to worry about it could put on their clean suits and go about another day's work in health. As for the rest of them, well…
Ketterson stopped in at the medical wing, even though it wasn't where he was going. A nurse there lifted up a patient and transferred her to another bed (the steel rebar in her arms must have assisted her considerably). Ketterson edged around her as she began to change the sheets on the bed, mumbling an apology, and went to look at the patient.
Poor Johanna. She had given so much for them. Even as more and more joined the numbers of the damned, every day, she was dedicated- it was her who had found out that once the infection reached the brain, it went one of two ways- either becoming a mass of tiny tubes, or a mass of wire circuitry. From there, that one gifted technician had been able to create a network attached to the circuitry, letting everyone with fully-converted wire-type brains to connect. It was the only way the site and its staff had remained functioning and survived.
And Johanna Garrison had been going so well, her brain starting to turn into wires- but the conversion went wrong, and the stroke hit. Now she couldn't read, didn't understand much of what was said to her, and had no functional control over the right side of her body. Because of the single medical doctor connected to the Hivenet already, he could tell other things about her, too, reduced brain usage and decreased nervous connections. All things pointing to a bad prognosis. He poked her hand, and she stared up with glassy eyes.
He wanted to sit next to her, to talk with her, maybe to thank her for something, but it looked like she was drifting into sleep again. He merely squeezed her hand with his own metal pliers of fingers, and left, back down the hall.
At least they didn't have to worry about containment any more. Or, barring the limited Hivenet, communication. Were they still part of the Foundation? What Foundation? The Foundation had failed. Somewhere out there, keeping away from the ice and the salty oceans, there was still a metal construct rolling across barren plains, looking for devotees to sate its hunger and its final piece. Thankfully someone had taken the initiative to launch the disk it wanted into space just before everything fell apart. The lone site in Siberia could focus on research, keeping the power supplies running, and do little side projects, as if that would help.
The Greenhouse was one of these side projects. It was everybody's pride and joy. Ketterson stepped in, his lipless jaw twitching happily at the welcome breath of warm air. If he could smile, he would. Even though windows still pointed into the accursed tundra, the air here was steamy and warmed by waterwheel power. Large-leafed plants and flowering trees, mosses and ferns, and even tiny animals ran amongst the bushes.
The Gardener was Marie Ayala. She knelt by the dirt, cutting clippings off of bushes and flowers with a pair of scissors, to plant again. Ketterson's heart ached when he saw her. Once a mechanic who could fix anything, her beautiful mind had turned into a mass of pipework when the disease hit. Now she did the same tasks every day in the Greenhouse. Clipping, planting, digging, reciting poetry. Ketterson knelt beside her, and touched her shoulder.
“There will come soft rains,” she muttered, speaking softly as she worked. Her hand shovel dug into the soil. “And the smell of the ground. And swallows circling, with their shimmering sound.”
He knew the poem. She said it so often, and once one person knew it, by virtue of the Hivenet, everyone did.
“And frogs in the pool, singing at night- and wild plum trees in tremulous white. Robins will wear their feathery fire, whistling their whims on a low fence-wire.” She- all of them, but especially the ones that weren't on the Hivenet- were so devoid of emotion, until it came to the poems. She could say them with all of the sadness and longing, all of the feeling of what could have been in the world.
“And not one- will know of the war, not one- will care at last when it is done.” A plant dropped into the soil angrily. In the beginning, there had been hope: maybe when every last living thing on earth had succumbed to the virus, it would die without a host. Then perhaps all the animals and humans in hiding could restart everything. But Johanna had looked at the microbes in the soil and water, and found out that the protozoa at the root of the food chain were succumbing, and not surviving the conversion process.
Copper and bronze content in the soil was rising every day. It no longer seemed inconceivable that the beloved green marble of earth might one day become a massive clockwork heart.
“Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if Mankind perished utterly.” Marie raised her hand, and, on cue, a sparrow fluttered down from a nearby tree to sit on it. Ketterson watched it- bright, sleek. A handful of clean iron blades had become its wings, its feet were pristine copper gears and tubes.
“And spring herself, when she woke at dawn, would scarcely know that we were gone.” The sparrow leapt and fluttered away. Tears sprung to poor Ayala's eyes, then were gone, and she stopped digging forlornly. Ketterson hugged and kissed her, overcome for a moment by the tragic irony, staring at the spot on her metal hand where a ring had once laid. Holding her, he looked out at the tundra, at the empty world they were left with.
Then again, more and more staff were connecting to the Hivenet every year. Maybe, at Site Omega, some vestige of humanity remained. They would never know.
The Greenhouse, soft and vibrant, went silent; until Marie bent over the dirt once again.
The tears were gone, in an endless loop.
The world outside was wide and cold.
“There will come soft rains, and the smell of the ground…”


The Beller walked through the Waste, leaving no tracks.
He was a tall, lanky man with black hair and beady eyes. He wore a blue jacket over a red skirt of patches and rags, with a small tongueless bell at his throat, and a ring with the sign of York, the patron saint of thieves and rogues.
Beller wasn't his real name, of course, but he made it a habit never to tell anyone his real name. He said it was because his people were afraid to give out their real names. Most people assumed he was wanted under the name he was born with. He was certainly wanted enough under his new one (and unwanted, in some places).
He knew the Ways, though. If anyone could get you from one city to another, it was him (extra if he'd been outcast by the locals). If you wanted a relic from the old places, he knew where you could buy it, or, if the price was right, he'd fetch you one himself.
The waterskin at his side was empty. Water was plentiful in the Waste, and it was one less thing to weigh him down. The real problem was food. Nothing grew in the waste. There were occasional birds and animals crossing the damp sands, but no trees or grasses of any sort.
The Beller knew the Waste well. He'd used its trackless spaces to escape pursuit many times. Today, however, he was looking for someone else.
In the distance, a rocky promontory poked up over the dunes like the back of a beetle. He'd spotted it the day before, and he would reach it in a few more hours.
"Ho! Beller!" a voice called out.
The Beller tensed, reaching for his sword. He relaxed after he spotted a man atop a dune, wearing thick leather robes. "Benadam! I've come to visit you."
The man began walking down the dune to the Beller. He smiled, his blue eyes almost seeming to shine from under the leather skullcap worn low over his forehead. "I thought as much. I spotted you yesterday. What brings you here?"
"I've found some writings, and I want you to tell me what they mean," the Beller said. He held up the box with the handle he'd found. He'd found it across the world, after he'd tried to rob a wizard's home, and fell victim to an enchanted pool.
"A briefcase full of secrets?" Benadam said. "I'm surprised it's intact. Well, follow me. I've built up a small camp, and we can speak more there."
This was how it always went with Benadam. He always met Beller within a day of the rocks, with a campsite set up. The Beller had never been to the rocks themselves, and he didn't know anyone who had.
Benadam looked to be in his middle years, but he'd been in the Waste as long as the Beller had heard. Some said he was as old as the Waste itself. He certainly knew enough of the lost days.
The hermit led him up the dune and to a small tent, made from leather and with the bones of some great beast for supports. There was a small metal contraption with fire rising from it.
"So, let's look at your case," the hermit said, reaching for the case with his leather gloves. He opened the clasp with hardly a glance, though it had taken the Beller several minutes to figure out. He pulled out the papers, yellow and brittle, and began to read them over. He sucked in his breath, and asked, "Where did you find this?"
"In a fortress built into a mountain, far across the sea," the Beller said. "One of the fortresses of the Old Order." He could hardly keep the excitement from his voice. "There were other relics there, but this was the only thing I could carry easily."
"How did you get across the sea?" Benadam asked. "Never mind. Do you realize what you have?"
"Secrets," the Beller said, smiling. The hermit's reaction told him the papers were important.
"You could say that," Benadam said, slowly nodding. "This is a list of… of Wonders, I suppose you could say, and the locations of the Ceitus."
"Including the home Ceitu?" the Beller asked, hungrily.
Benadam straightened suddenly. "Beller, no! You don't know what's in there. It was abandoned for a reason."
"I'm not afraid. I've been in Ceitus before." The Beller puffed up his narrow chest.
"Not like this one. I won't let you do it," Benadam said.
"Don't try to stop me, old man. Just tell me where the Ceitu is!" The Beller grabbed the hermit's wrist. It felt hard and thin under the sleeve, as though there were nothing there but bone.
Benadam did not move, and his expression never changed, but something changed in him, as though he had suddenly grown larger. The hairs on the back of the Beller's neck rose. There was a sense of power in the air, as though lightning were about to strike. "Will you strike me?" the hermit asked.
The Beller took his hand from Benadam, and he looked away, embarrassed despite himself.
"Now, I'm going to put an end to this nonsense," Benadam said. He put the papers over the fire, and they caught at once. "You should thank me. I've saved you from yourself, you know."
Resentment boiled up inside of the Beller. He hated being made a fool of, and he couldn't resist leaving one last gloating note. "You haven't changed anything," he said.
"What do you mean?" Benadam asked, suspicious.
"Do you think I would make this journey with only the original set of papers? As fragile as they were? I've had time to make a dozen sets, and I've hidden them all." In truth, he'd only taken the time to make one copy, and it was in his bag. But Benadam didn't know that.
"Beller! You can't do this! I won't let you!" Benadam rose, and for a moment, the Beller thought he might attack.
"You won't stop me," the Beller said with a bravado he didn't feel. "You're no murderer."
Benadam stared at him for a long moment, and then, to the Beller's surprise, he burst out laughing. "Oh, Beller, if you only knew. No, I won't kill you, but not for the reasons you think. Go on, then. I cannot stop you. But I don't know how you expect to follow the notes when you cannot read them."
"I'll find another who knows the old language," the Beller said.
"There's no one else," Benadam said. "I'm the only one who still remembers it."
"Not true," the Beller said. "There's one other. And he's not hard to find."
"Who—Oh, Beller. You don't mean to go South, do you?" Benadam's eyes turned to pity.
"If you will not help me, then I have no choice," the Beller said. "I'd go to Abirt himself if he offered me the home Ceitu."
Benadam only shook his head. "It's not death you should be afraid of in the Everman's hands."

Beller kept his fire small, and watched the entrance to the cave. He was a week out of the Waste, and there was something moving outside. It was too big to be a wild dog and didn't move quite right to be a jumper.
It could be another traveller, of course, or a bandit. But he hadn't seen anyone for two days. The South was a cursed land. Everyone knew that.
Twigs cracked near the entrance, and a human shape blocked the light. White, blank eyes stared at him and a low moan spilled out of a slack-jawed mouth.
"Geyre's forge!" he swore, and raised his sword. The walking dead were only a nuisance in the open, where their slow speed and clumsy movements made them easy to kill. In the cramped confines of the cave, however, he was at serious risk of a bite.
It stumbled towards him, inadvertently stepping into the fire. It didn't seem to react as the flame climbed up its leg. It only stepped onward, reaching for him with gray, bloated fingers.
The Beller swung his sword at the hands, taking off the fingers. He tried to step around the dead man and get to the entrance, but it stumbled over and grabbed at his shoulder with its unmaimed hand. He kicked out, trying to keep from catching fire himself, and knocked its leg out from under it. The dead man fell, nearly pulling him down with it. He managed to get free before it could sink its teeth into his leg. He jumped back, and it began to crawl towards him. He jogged out of the cave.
The Beller congratulated himself on another daring escape. Now he merely had to wait until the dead man came out, and it would be easily dispatched.
As he turned, his smile slowly sank. The crawling dead was hoisting itself through the dead leaves that had built up around the cave's entrance, and they began to ignite. Beller looked at the dry chaparral around him, and then back to the cave, where all of his supplies were. "Kalef's balls!" he cried in dismay, and then took off his jacket, trying to use it to beat out the flames.
The dead man continued trying to bite him even as he tried to extinguish it and the brush around it. His jacket caught, and he was forced to drop it. The fire spread quickly, and the Beller realized there was no way he could beat this fire. It was time to retreat.
He jumped over the dead man and ran back into the cave. The smoke was thick and choking. He grabbed his pack, and then turned and ran again, coughing as he went. He jumped over the zombie's last pitiable swipe at his feet and ran, looking for a stream, a river, anything. As he did, he felt an odd warmth at his back. He looked over his shoulder, and saw smoke rising from his pack. Madly, he swung the pack off, and then rifled through its contents, grabbing the papers before they could be harmed, and then threw the pack away with a curse. He started off again, stumbling in the darkness away from the orange glow that was rising behind him.

The Beller waded through waist-deep water, his precious bundle held high over his head. He'd been wandering in this godforsaken swamp for days now. He hadn't seen so many leeches since the jungles in the Northlands.
In the distance, he heard the roar of a bull crocodile. He shivered. He hadn't seen too many of the great reptiles since he'd entered the swamp, but he knew how powerful their jaws were.
He finally made it up onto the next island. He'd been staying on land as much as possible, trying to avoid the water where he could. He wished he'd had his ax and his rope. He could have put together a boat. It would have made this trip much more pleasant.
After drying off his sword and knife, he took his boots off so they'd have a chance to dry at least a little, and began checking himself for leeches. He pulled off the four that had taken hold, cursing them as he cut them up with his knife.
He placed the papers on top of a reasonably dry tree stump, with a rock over them to protect them from being blown away. He didn't want to chance them getting soaked and ruined now.
He checked his waterskin. There was still a little fresh water in it. He considered drinking it, but decided to wait a little longer. He didn't know when he'd find another spring.
No food, no fire, and running out of water… He hoped he'd find the Everman soon, or he'd have to start eating the Abirt-damned leeches. "Worthless bloody place," he said.
"Bloody," someone said behind him in a strangely familiar voice. He turned, and didn't see anyone.
"Place bloody," someone else said. The Beller realized the voice was his own. Am I going mad? he wondered to himself.
"Worthless bloody," another voice said, and this time he spotted movement. A large red crab sidled out from behind a bush. It was perhaps as tall as his knee, and had long, thin arms that seemed to end in spikes rather than claws.
He pulled out his sword and tapped the ground, hoping to scare the creature away. It didn't look dangerous, but he didn't like the way its beady eyes were staring at him.
As he stepped forward, he felt a small pain in his leg. He spun around in time to see another of the crabs sidle away. "Fucking bastard!" he shouted.
"Bastard place worthless," said another of the crabs, scuttling over a rock. He started to run to it when he felt another pain, and his leg collapsed from under him. He lashed out at the crab that cut him with his sword, but he only managed to tap it with the flat of the blade.
He heard others moving around him; how many of them were there? They all began chittering, repeating his words in idiot chorus. He felt more pains. He tried to flail around, but it was getting hard to move. Were they poisonous? What were they doing to him?
He saw one sidle up to his arm. He tried to move it out of the way, but its spike-like claw reached out, and he saw the glittering blade on its underside as it sliced into his elbow, cutting the tendon. It spat a thick, viscous fluid over the wound, sealing it instantly. He couldn't move the arm any further. He began to scream as others swarmed over him, cutting, spitting, and rendering him immobile. One cut the tendons of his jaw, and his jaw slackened. He couldn't move except to arch his back.
They started cutting off bits from his extremities. He felt his fingers and toes get cut off, and then one began to pluck at the soft flesh of his face. The last thing he saw was a pair of sharp claws reaching down to his face.
It went on for some time until he heard an odd, guttural voice. He heard the crabs scuttle away, and then felt a final sting in his arm. He felt himself being lifted and carried as he drifted off to sleep.

When he woke up, he felt stiff, and his head hurt. He rubbed his eyes as he sat up.
Then he stared at his fingers, and the rest of his body. He was whole. Was he in Abirt's land, now? Was he about to be judged?
He looked around, and saw that he was in a white room, lying on a padded platform. It looked like the remains of some of the Ceitus he'd seen, though much better kept up.
Something felt odd with his hands. He looked down at them, and blinked several times. He counted. He counted again. He balled his fists and then opened them again. It was no use. No matter what he did, he still found he had five fingers and two thumbs on each hand.
The door opened. "I see you're awake, sir. Pleased to meet you."
The Beller looked up and nearly fell off the platform as a monster entered the room. There was no other word for it.

"It was a man, roughly."
Picture by SunnyClockwork

It was a man, roughly. It had two arms, two legs, and a head in the right places. But the head was oddly formed, as though someone had grafted on the crowns of other heads on top of it, making it much bigger than any normal man's head. He had four eyes with odd-shaped pupils under his bulbous forehead. A mechanical construct on a headband swiveled a lens over one eye, which blinked monstrously under the magnification. The skin was paler than any man the Beller had seen, almost white and pinkish, with light brown hair. A mustache with an unnatural curve seemed to form a second curly-cue smile under his nose. His arms branched at the elbows, giving him four large hands, with long fingers with too many joints. "I'm sorry if my appearance is… alarming to you. I was working and I didn't… expect company."
"You're the Everman," the Beller said, frightened in spite of himself.
The monster nodded. "Everett Mann, actually. Doctor… Everett Mann. The finest… and the last surgeon this world has seen. And you are… the Beller. You… talk in your sleep, you know. And scream. And beg, a little. I… rescued you from my pets, dear little 098's. They can be… difficult with strangers, I must confess. But no harm done, yes? And… I even gave you a few improvements. I make people better, you know."
"Improvements? The extra fingers?" the Beller said.
"Yes. And, if you… tense your fingers. Just… a little," the Everman said, smiling beatifically.
Confused, the Beller did as the Everman suggested. As his fingers tensed, little glistening hooks sprouted from the tips of his fingers. He bit back a curse.
"They have a… strong soporific. Useful… if you encounter a dingo, or other dangerous wildlife." The Everman turned. "But let's… have some tea, yes? Proper and… civilized."
The Beller followed him down the hallway, glancing around as he did, trying to get his bearings in the strange building. There were many twists and turns, and many closed doors. He heard voices behind some of them, but none in any language he understood. Behind some, he swore he could hear moaning or weeping.
Finally, they came to a large, spacious room, bare but for a small table in the middle of it. There were two chairs. The Everman gestured to one.
After the Beller sat down, another door opened, and a… thing walked in. It was humanlike, but not human. It had four legs, splayed out like an insect's, and it had arms that bent too many times. Its face was perfectly formed, and all the more disturbing for its apparent normality. It carried a silver tray. It approached the table and lifted the lid of the tray, revealing a ceramic pot with flowers painted on the side, two cups, and a bowl.
The Everman took the pot and the cups, and then the bowl, placing them on the table. He poured the steaming tea into both cups. He looked up at the Beller and began to ask, "Would you like… Wait, no. I suppose you… wouldn't know about sugar in your tea. Well, it's like… honey. I'll… add some for you, how's that?" He took small white cubes from the bowl and placed one in each cup.
The Beller sipped his politely, and found it tasted good. Sweeter than he was used to, but good. "Thank you," he said. "It's very good." He wanted to remain on the Everman's good side.
The Everman beamed. "Thank you! The… refined sugar is rather… clever, I think. I… developed a grub that… exudes it as a waste product."
It took all of the Beller's self-control to smile and swallow, rather than spitting out his tea.
"So," he said, a trifle weakly, "when you found me, did you by any chance find some papers?"
"Ah! Yes, I… wanted to discuss that… with you. They are… most interesting." The Everman steepled both sets of hands. "Where did… you find them?"
"In a land far to the north, across half the world," the Beller said. "They were in a Ceitu in a vast desert."
"Ah," the Everman said. "The… Gobi Outpost. That's… interesting. Very interesting. I did not realize that… 120 was still active. We'll… speak of that later. This list will help me… find many things that were lost."
"Like the location of the Home Ceitu?" the Beller asked.
"The home…?" The Everman looked at him strangely for a moment, and then realization dawned in his strange eyes. "Ah. You mean… Site 23. Yes, it's in there, though… I could have told you where that was."
"You… could?" The Beller had been so focused on the papers, it hadn't occured to him that the Everman wouldn't need them. No, he'd come from there too, hadn't he?
"Of course," the Everman said. "It's to… the west of us, and a little north. I… remember it well, though… I try not to visit there often. It's… a dangerous place now. 184's effects are… difficult to predict. Especially after all this time."
"But think of the secrets that it must hold!" the Beller said. "Why, it's the birthplace of humanity, the holding place of so many Wonders, and the grave of Starel himself!"
The Everman stiffened. His eyes narrowed, an eerie effect with all four staring down at the Beller. "Strelnikov," the monster said, "Dmitri Arkadeyevich."
"What?" the Beller said, confused.
"Strelnikov, Dmitri Arkadeyevich," the Everman repeated. "That… is how he introduced himself… to me. When we met. It is how I have always referred to him. It is how you shall refer to him."
"I… yes, all right," the Beller said. "Starelnikoff Damichree Arkadayivitch. No problem."
"…Close enough," the Everman said. "And yes… He is in there. With 682. Grave? Perhaps. A fitting tomb. He was… the best of us, you know. We did so well, when he was with us."
"What happened?" the Beller asked, sensing the Everman wanted an audience.
"Yoric," the Everman said through gritted teeth. "It was all his fault."
The Beller had a moment of panic, thinking to his ring, but realized that it was gone with the finger that had worn it. "He… hurt you?"
"He turned them all against me," the Everman said. "All my friends. Without Strelnikov, Dmitri Arkadeyevich, there was no one to defend me. And after all I did!" He slammed two hands onto the table with enough force to crack the wood and tip over the pot and the cups. "I was the one who solved the D-Class problem! I was the one who suggested we alter their reproductive DNA. Rights may have done the work, but it was my idea! I was the doctor, I kept us all in health! I cured the diseases, I fixed the injuries. But did they remember that? No. They didn't care. They just wanted to stop my work. They said it was wrong, but I know the truth. They were jealous that I could see farther, that my hands grasped the fire.
"Yoric." He spat the name. "He hated me ever since the Raelin incident. He should have been grateful. I was his friend! I helped him! I only ever wanted to make him better, but did he care? He turned everyone against me. Cast out. No friends, no lab. Nothing but my surgeon crabs to care for me. And all I ever wanted was to help people! Well, I'll show them. I'll show everyone. I'll make them better, they'll see. And they'll thank me for it! No one will ever dare throw me out again!" The Everman's eyes were wide and mad, and veins rose from his neck.
Slowly, his eyes focused again on the Beller. "You. You won't… leave me, will you?" he asked, pleading. "You're my friend… yes?"
"Er, yes, of course," the Beller said, terrified. The Everman was mad, clearly. If he hadn't been to start with, the years alone must have done it.
"Good, good," the Everman said. "I knew you were… different, as soon as I saw you. You won't… abandon me. I'll… I'll help you. I'll make you… better! That's what I'll do."
"Oh, that's all right," the Beller said nervously. "I think I'm good enough for now."
"No, I… insist," the Everman said. He gestured to his servant, which grasped the Beller with a strong, vice-like grip. "I understand your reluctance, but you'll see. It's for your own good. I'm your doctor, after all." He stood and walked for one of the doors. The servant followed, forcing Beller along.
Dr. Mann pulled out a small metal object and placed it into a slot on the door, then turned it. The door opened, and they entered. The Beller found himself standing in a vast, brightly lit room, containing hundreds of different relics.
"My… collection," the Everman said proudly. "Various SCPs, ah, 'wonders,' I think you… call them. Many, the… Foundation never even knew. These are just… the ones that… can be stored together, you… understand. Others would be more… problematic." He continued walking down the aisles, past shelves, boxes, and crates. A broad-brimmed hat rested next to a silt-encrusted cup. A picture of a girl waved at him from a picture frame sitting by a ruby medallion. A stone cube twice as tall as a man, cracked in two… He hardly formed more than an impression of any of them as he was dragged past.
They finally came up to a platform, like the one upon which he had woken up. Three arms of metal and plastic rose above it. "212," the Everman said. "I was… lucky to acquire it. The Foundation never… understood it properly. They couldn't… control it. The improvements were random, haphazard. I… have better understanding. It will… help you, my friend. Help you to… see as I do."
The Beller didn't know if he meant eyes or beliefs, and he didn't want to find out. He twisted as much as he could, and delivered a swift kick right between the servant's four legs. It howled and released him. Even as the Everman turned, the Beller grabbed a box off a shelf.
"No, you fool!" the Everman shouted as the Beller threw the box's contents at him. He tried to grab a tiny red object as it bounced away, but it evaded him. The Beller turned and ran.
He heard crashes behind him, and saw the servant running after. It screamed at him, a high-pitched keening that grated at the Beller's ears.
Then something struck the creature, and it stumbled. The Beller thought he saw a tiny red streak, and then a shelf collapsed. He cursed, and added even more speed, looking for shelter.
"Traitor! Quisling!" the Everman's voice echoed through the room. "Yoric!"
The Beller saw an odd wheeled box. He jumped inside of it, on the off chance it might be enchanted to move. He looked around for some sort of control mechanism. There were several levers and a large wheel. He tried them, but got no noticeable response as more objects broke and shattered around him. Something punched through the roof before shattering the front window. The servant, one leg trailing behind it, jumped on the front of the vehicle and reached through the broken window at the Beller. In desperation, he clawed at it, raking at the creature with the hooks the Everman had planted in his fingers. It hissed and drew its arm back, then tensed as if to jump.
Finally, the Beller noticed a small metal object, like the one the Everman used to open the door. He grabbed it, praying to Geyre and Semeril to send him somewhere safe as he twisted it forward.
There was a sudden and complete lack of sensation. For the second time that day, he wondered if he were dead, about to face Abirt's justice. Then, suddenly, he found himself falling. He landed on a sandy dune with a force that knocked the wind from him. In the distance, a building half-buried by the sand stood, and nothing but dunes for miles. He stared, and then laughed, until tears streaked down his face. It was the Ceitu where he'd found the papers, and the whole quest had begun.


Dr. Northrop scratched his ear nervously, and tried not to wonder whose mannerism he was imitating.
As the senior staff — Bright, and Rights, and Kondraki, and oh god Clef, and Crow, and Gerald, and Gears, and Light, and even Snorlison - filed into the conference room and took their seats, he could not help but compare what he knew about them with what he had learned.
"Th-thank you for coming, gentlemen. And ladies. And… and Dr. Crow. I'm… I'm sorry to disturb you all, but —"
"Get on with it, Northrop!" someone — was it Kondraki? — snapped.
Northrop winced, took a deep breath, and continued. "Yes, Dr. Kondraki, of course. Sorry. I've… I've called you all here because of some very disturbing results from Project: Turtledove, results which I feel may have significant repercussions for us. Not… not for the world, or for humanity, but for us specifically. The people in this… this room."
Dr. Gerald's brow furrowed. "Turtledove. Turtledove. That's the alternate timeline one, right?"
"Yes, it—" "Working with Gephardt to expand our network allochronously so that we can connect to another timeline's Internet and pillage their Foundation's files, yes. Sorry, Northrop, I could tell you were going to have trouble with that one," Snorlison finished kindly.
Northrop winced again. "Uh… yes. Now, for the alternate timeline R-zayin-H-517/6, we experienced some significant difficulty in locating that timeline's version of the Foundation. Their Internet in that timeline is quite… quite ubiquitous, and the absence of media reports on interactions with… with Euclid-level entities is… well, we thought it a definitive indication that that timeline has an SCP Foundation to take care of these problems. But…. none of the standard domain names were in use, our dedicated IP blocks were, were unallocated… and then I, then I found it. If you'll consult the flash drives I've prepared beforehand, you'll see the… oh god. You'll see the entire content of their Foundation's site."
Northrop held his breath while the others pointed-and-clicked their way through the files. After a moment's silence, Clef spoke up.
"Is this some sort of joke?", he spat angrily.
"N—no, sir, it's quite serious."
"Bullshit! Their version of the Foundation is hosting its website on a public wikifarm?"
"Y-yes, sir. They are. And it gets worse. It gets a… a lot worse. Sir."
Gears raised his hand.
"… yes, Dr. Gears?"
"Thank you, Dr. Northrop. By 'worse', are you referring to the notice on the website's front page which tells casual visitors how they can join the SCP Foundation?"
Bright snapped to attention. "They what?!"
Northrop winced. "Th-that's…. that's part of it. But —"
"Hey, I thought you said these were the entire contents of their website?"
Northrop blinked at the interruption. "Uh… yes, Dr. Rights. The whole… the whole contents of their site and their… their forums, which —"
"Then why do we only have censored versions of their documents?"
"That's, I… please, sir, ma'am, I'm, I'm getting to that."
Rights sat back down, muttering.
"Th-thank you, Dr. Rights, ma'am. Sir. Uh, yes. As I was saying, for… for timeline R-zayin-H-517/6, uh, one of the first anomalies we notice is that their… their SCP Foundation has its… its site in public. With their files open to the public, and — as Dr. Gears pointed out — a "join us" link on their front — their front page. Our initial reaction to, to such a catastrophic security breach was… well, frankly we thought they were being idiots but we didn't care. They're not… not us, they're just our allochronous equivalents. But, uh. There are some… some significant problems with that… uh. Project Turtledove is, uh, our goal is to, to learn from the allochronous database, and so we —"
Kondraki grumbled menacingly.
"…their files are the same as ours," Northrop finished hastily.
Crow's doggy head tilted and his ear quirked upwards. "I noticed that they have a lot of entries that seemed familiar, but surely they're not identical?"
"I'm, I'm afraid they… Dr. Crow, sir, there's nothing in their SCP files that's not also in ours. With the same wording. Exactly the same, down to the… the typos. And… sir, they even use the same numbering as us. Not just the same, the, the same numbering system, but the actual… the actual SCP numbers are exactly the same as, as ours. For every entry."
There was a long silence.
"That's impossible", Clef said. "They… they must be running a Project Turtledove of their own."
Gears raised his hand. Clef sighed. "What is it, Gears?"
"I do apologize, Dr. Clef, but I must point out that even within a more mundane paradigm of reality, such an occurrence would not be impossible. It is only a mathematical improbability, albeit one which is quite literally more than astronomical. You are correct, however, in that it is considerably more probable that our allochronous equivalents are running a Project Turtledove of their own."
Kondraki got up from his chair. "So that's it, then? Looks like a major security breach from an alternate timeline, but it's actually just us reading over our own shoulders. Nothing to worry about and we can leave now. Right?"
"Uh… I'm, I'm sorry, Dr. Kondraki, but there's … more."
Kondraki sat down again. "For fuck's sake. Okay, Northrop. What else do you want to tell us about alternate timeline R-zayin-H-whatever?"
Northrop closed his eyes, chose his next five words very carefully so as to avoid stammering, and then spoke.
"I don't think we're real."

to be continued


“Tater tots? That's what they give us for lunch? Tater tots?” Dr. Harold Breaker looked down at the brownish nuggets on his plate, alongside the chicken patty sandwich with its flimsy pickles and watery ketchup, next to the rubbery macaroni and cheese. The pudding, however, was unblemished by the evils of cafeteria cost-cutting. For now at least.
“Since when is the Foundation an elementary school?”
Taking his tray with him, Dr. Breaker set off aimlessly into the sea of cafeteria tables and hungry researchers.
Breaker was black, in his mid fifties, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and an unobtrusive mustache. He was a reasonably large man in both height and width, though his college football days were long behind him and a gym membership forced upon him by his wife was in his discernible future.
Breaker sat down at the end of one of the long, metal tables at the less-occupied corner of the cafeteria. He wasn't in the mood for socializing with large numbers of people. The researcher took a bite of patchily-cooked chicken sandwich.
“Hey there, Breaker.”
Breaker looked up to see Dr. Ryan Melbourne standing on the opposite side of the table, holding a tray of similar low-grade foodstuffs. Melbourne was tall and lanky, around thirty years of age, with a bushy head of sandy hair, a scar on his chin, and a good tan from his recent Caribbean vacation. He had rolled up his shirt sleeves, revealing the tattoo of Chinese lettering on the inside of his right arm. The phrase translated into English as “Were you expecting something profound?”
“Hey,” Breaker said flatly as the younger doctor sat down. “Haven't seen you around recently.”
“Yeah, the department's been in a fuss all week. The supervisor's worried about a memetic hazard outbreak, so she's been having us checked four times a day.”
“What happened? And why did I not hear about this?”
“Three researchers all acted exactly the same during the monthly psychological review. Started singing a bastardized version of “The Immigrant Song” with a very interesting use of the word ‘defenestrate', among other things.”
“And who were the researchers?” Breaker could see where this story was going.
“Drs. Jameson, Ulrich, and Ferrier.”
Breaker slapped the table and laughed.
“I knew it! I saw that one coming a mile away.”
“It's a miracle they haven't been demoted to D-class by now. They can't go a week without getting Supervisor Bricket's panties in a bunch.”
“In more ways than one.”
“True that.” Melbourne swallowed a forkful of macaroni. “Moving to a completely different subject, I have fifty bucks riding on a bet and I need an answer from you.”
Breaker sighed. Melbourne's gambling habit was the bane of everyone who knew him, as he would inevitably ask them for a bailout. Unfortunately, the doctor could see no applicable escape routes from the cafeteria.
“Go ahead,” he said, dreading what came next.
“Okay, let's say, hypothetically, that 008 broke containment. Widespread infection, no chance of containment. What do you do?”
Breaker didn't expect something so… serious.
“Lock down the facility, switch to backup generators. Use drones to recon the situation outside. If it's truly an XC or XK-class scenario, we fall back to basics: our facilities can be easily defended; we have food, weapons, water, and medical supplies already. If we're in for the long haul, we'll ration and improvise as necessary. If there are any SCPs that would cause a danger to us or a drain on limited resources, we destroy them. All the others we use to our advantage.”
Melbourne smiled.
“By the book, but I'll count that as a zombie plan. And they said you didn't have one. That's fifty bucks in my pocket right there.”
“A zombie plan? That's what you call it?”
“Or SCP-008 contingency plan, if you want.”
“I really don't care, actually.” Breaker went back to his sandwich.
“Aw, come on. Ask me.”
“Fine.” He glared at the other researcher. “What's your zombie plan?”
“You're doing it wrong! Ask me something different.”
Breaker stroked his chin.
“Okay…you're stuck in a room with 173.”
“I believe not blinking is the first order of business. So long as I can keep one eye open, I'll run backwards out the emergency exit and do it fast.”
“Fair enough. That's really the only thing to do.”
“My turn. 705 takes over the break room.”
“Are you kidding? They wouldn't stand a chance against my five-year-old nephew.”
“Send him in; it would be hilarious. Maybe we can introduce them to 387 afterwards.”
“Don't let the administration hear that one. 239 wakes up and decides she's not too fond of us.”
“Flee to Canada.”
Breaker gave Melbourne a “you're not taking this seriously, I take it?” look.
“What? You're the serious one, not me. 055 breaks containment.”
“What?”
“Exactly.”
“Whatever. We don't even have a fifty-five, I don't think. Mass outbreak of 217.”
Melbourne crossed his arms and put on an irked face.
“You're expecting me to say something stupid like 'Wait for Rights to have another kid,' right? Well, you're wrong, and your idea is stupid. Pick something that we haven't already dealt with.”
“Fine. How do you like this one? Video of 597 gets on the internet.”
“Oh my God.” Melbourne's eyes went wide. “Do you even know what you suggest?”
“You're probably going to tell me.”
“Damn straight I am! Look, most hormone-crazed guys only know the philosophy of “moar boobs”. The revelation that there is such a thing as “too much boobs” would send the ‘net into spiraling anarchy followed by implosion.”
“That's… You know what, I'm not going to say anything."
“It's for the best.”
There was an awkward pause.
“804 starts spinning out of control,” Breaker said.
“Try to remember my Boy Scout training? Either that or smash it with a rock, I don't know. You're supposed to be having fun with this and you are definitely not having fun with this. Look, here's how you do it: 231-7 gives birth, coinciding with 682 breaking containment, 076-2 turning against the Foundation, and something super-bad coming out of 354. The combined sum of these causes a containment breach on almost every other Keter-level item we have.”
With Melbourne's trump card played, Breaker was quiet. Nearly half a minute passed, the researcher not moving more than a twitch. Then, a smug smile spread across his face.
“You're smiling like that again, Breaker.” Melbourne pointed his fork at him. “Good things do not happen when you have that smile.”
“That's the easiest one yet.”
“How so? Suicide's against the rules.”
“Still easy. First, I activate the emergency termination protocol for the D-class barracks, then I run in there and apply 447 on each and every dead body in there.”
Melbourne's expression was priceless.
“What the fuck is that supposed to do?”
“Well, since things really couldn't get any worse, the normally catastrophic effect of letting 447 near so many dead bodies will cancel everything else out.” Breaker stood up, taking his empty tray with him. “Or it'd just destroy the universe. Either way it'd be an improvement, and I believe that is game over, my friend.”

|Hub|


The door was heavy, and old, but still strong.  It sealed the passage tight, blocking even light from around its edges.  The hall was claustrophobic, and in near total darkness but for the dim, drooling light from the far-off stair. He beat on the door again, feeling the thick reverberation bounce through its solid core.  He could try and pick the lock, or bash it in, but that was not the way.  Not their way, never.  Respect was always foremost, even at the utmost end of need.
He folded back on his haunches, his sigh turning the dust on the long-abandoned floor.  He looked back, at the dim stair, and considered again just going back, letting it go.  He thought this way for a long time, then stood with a new, more burning resolve. He went and knocked again… and again… and again.  He hammered on the door.  He beat on the door. He slammed his fists over and over, thundering against its mocking, ageless weight. He beat his fists until they split, spilling blood that looked like deeper, slicker smears of darkness onto the unrelenting wood.  He threw himself against it, biting, clawing, gouging at the wood like something rabid and in pain.
Finally, he slowed, then stopped, pulling away from the blank wood with an almost sheepish slink.  He folded back up again, letting the split, reeking flesh stop pulsing and start to knit over. He turned the black, pulsing mass that gave him sight to the door again, split tongues lolling as he chastised himself for his reckless, misplaced hatred. They had gone, those many, and hidden deep in their vaults.  This may be the last, the very last flake of rotten flesh left of their abandoned body.  Their endless impatience had called to them for correction, so…they had come. Man had hidden deep in their vaults, their short-sightedness leaving them no retreat, no escape.
Now they waited, delaying their final lessons with every futile breath… But to worry and to lose one's temper was not the way of the People.  He resolved that, once ages had turned the door to dust, he would show them the folly of hope.
One eon at a time.


The water was cool, if a bit murky. The lake was the color of tea, owing to its past as a logging route. Great banks of long tree trunks would bob and sink, staining the lake. At least, that's what the boy's grandpa said. He dove off the dock, slipping into the cool water as easy as an otter, his sunburned skin drinking in the cooling water.
The lake was very deep, and quickly he was over the vast, deep edges, paddling softly with the easy grace attainable only by the happy few who know the width and depth of summer break. He turned over to his back, the murky, tea-colored haze buoying him up on billows of cool water. He flicked his hands with a careless annoyance as he skirted a patch of loosed seaweed, sending it bobbing away. He watched the clouds, listening to the empty hum of the lake in his ears.
He slowly noticed more patches floating about him, and bobbed to vertical, wincing as his feet kicked and brushed the slippery, brown strands of weed. The strands twitched and clutched with their soggy strength, and he sighed as he started to plot a course out of the muck.
Deep below, the twitching strands stirred the muck they were rooted so deeply in. The mud puffed… then bulged, rising softly in a great mound. Then it opened eyes, great sludgy orbs the size of cars. It slowly rose, freeing its gnashing maw, and drifted up to see what its feelers had found.


Everything was screaming.  The dials, the readouts, everything was screaming, but he noticed none of it.  What he noticed was the heat. He was burning.  Not on fire, but inside, burning with a searing heat that was cooking him inside out.  What's more, the tiny capsule was so sealed, so perfectly fitted, he couldn't even twist or writhe to burn in a new position. The radio squawked and squealed twice before going silent, the tiny plate starting to warp as the shoddy, overwhelmed heat shield continued to buckle under the reentry force, the flames licking white and golden past his tiny porthole.
Still, the heat was not what filled the man with fear, what made him afraid of not only his immediate and untimely demise, but what may possibly be waiting beyond it. The baking flames did not form a total wall over the tiny porthole fixed over his sweating, softening face. They divided in the middle, blocked by the hard, sharp point of a chin.
The face watched him, staring, vague suggestions of limbs holding to the sides of the window.  The face watched, even with no eyes, no mouth, the blank, vapid nothing still so hellishly suggestive. It watched, smiling a nothing smile as the tiny bit of grit burned up in the thin, searing atmosphere…
and its breath fogged to frost on the burning, bubbling window.


"Where are His clockwork servants?
Where is the work of His hands?
Where are Her digital lovers?
What are His broken commands?"
Vasily swallowed hard as Father Aglayev wiped a slim bronze blade on a bright red cloth. The man's grey hair gleamed oddly in the flickering half light as he brought the knifepoint to rest lightly on the flesh of Vasily's left palm, and he muttered softly a question to which they both knew the answer. The chanting of the acolytes surrounding them nearly drowned out Vasily's reply. "Yes, father, I am certain!"
"How can we hope to rebuild Him
if we are still creatures of flesh?
How can we claim that we serve Him
till our bodies are broken afresh?"
Even as Vasily's blood dripped softly to the floor, father Aglayev poured oily liquid from a slim vial onto the wound, tears of pride in his smiling eyes. "Vasily, my son who I have raised as my own, I annoint you into His service. With this, you are ready. Go forth to do His work!"
"What marvels are in His remaking!
What wonders are in Her control!
His Broken Gears turn forever
restoring the penitent soul!"
Father Aglayev held Vasily for a moment in a strong embrace before helping him to his feet. "Come. Your things are packed. Go, missionary, and spread His Broken Word!".
"How can we not spread His message?
How can we not serve His will?
How could we stand in His presence
and let Him remain broken still?"
A few days later, Penitent Vasily Aglayev walked nervously down a crowded street, glancing at the people he passed. His father had told him that so long as he made it here by the appointed time, his duty to the Church would be done. Suddenly, he stumbled.
"In light of the bodies He grants us
what now are our fleshly ones worth?
Through Her intervention we serve Him!
Through Her we will remake the earth!"
Vasily moaned in horror as he felt something in his body begin to change. His father had-
He blinked.
Vasily twitched for a moment, and continued walking, pausing occasionally to touch passerby on the arm or shoulder, muttering His blessing. His step grew regular and a smile formed on his face as his clockwork mind realised the glory of the task before him. This was a blessing he must share! Already the sunlight glinted from the tiny gears beginning to form behind his eyes.
"We are His Clockwork Servants!
We do the work of His hand!
Those who oppose will forgive us
when they are made to understand!"


During the recent Foundation raid on a Marshall, Carter, and Dark "Exhibition for the Perusal of Artistic Anomalies," Foundation agents discovered the following journal entry. The author, Ms. ██████ ████ (on staff at ██████ Hotel during the exhibition), is being interrogated at the time of this writing.
The thing… was alive. After a fashion.
Mr. Victor's art is ever so hard to classify, as always. And this one confused us all terribly, when he showed up to the latest exhibition without his usual semi-trucks full of self-assembling wonders — nothing but a single tiny seed, curled in the palm of his hand.
For the two days of convention time before the exhibition began, he had it displayed in the main hall, on his customary glass pedestal. We'd reserved the entire hall for him, expecting the usual Brobdignagianism, so the little thing looked somehow alone sitting there.
Well, not alone. Not really alone. There was something about it… Oh, I still can't put my finger on it. It haunted me, all those two days. I spent far too much time in that hall, just pacing its bounds or standing in front of the pedestal to examine the thing. It was tiny, and somehow inverted — convoluted — curling in on itself. Subtly. All its faint contours led inward, yet its presence filled the entire room.
By the third morning, everyone was sure that the sense of presence was the art — that Victor had abandoned his usual medium completely and gone for something more psychological. There were whispers of pheromones, even hypnotism, among the less anchored of the clientele. That was before he proved us all wrong, of course.
His was the last presentation of the day. He led the gathering into the central hall, said a few words (no one seems to remember what), and picked up the seed. It fit into his palm as if born to it, which I suppose it was. Then he smiled and gestured, and the room fell away.
I've no idea how he'd done it, but in those two days he'd had the convention center remodeled to fold back at his command. The walls slid down, the roof coiled into its beams, and suddenly we were standing on a wide flat platform in the open air. The city stretched around us, its honking clatter suddenly deafening after the genteel chatter of the convention.
He said something else. "I give you this," maybe. I was too astonished to pay much attention. (Or maybe the talk of hypnotism had some merit. Who knows?) But he said it, and he raised his hand to his lips and kissed the seed.
A murmur spread around the roof, audible somehow even over the cars. The seed… fell.
Swish. Tap. It hit the floor and did not bounce.
Silence.
The quiet stretched out, unnaturally poised, until I was sure it would snap and go whipping among us with stinging fury. I almost missed it, even, when the seed began to split.
Its surface cleaved, folding inward along an intricate moire pattern, then bulged out between the clefts. The body of the thing swelled, heaved, and grew. We watched, enraptured.
Arms rose out of it, grasping skeletal tendrils sweeping round to grasp each other… Superstructure, I realized with a jolt, before they connected fully and began to swell and fill the gaps between. They moved like twigs in the wind or like paintbrush strokes. My eyes were unbearably full of the impossible, wrong, beautiful things.
Finally, a second or an hour later, Mr. Victor's sculpture stood complete before us. The shape was familiarly alien, an amalgamation of forms too common to recognize — a teapot, perhaps, or a hunched-over vulture. The silence folded itself away inside the thing's body; the city's clamor rose around us again.
Mr. Victor bowed.
Helpless with awe, we applauded.


Marcus straightened his tie and brushed his hair to the right side with his hand. One of his roommates was playing Tupac and wildly throwing gang symbols at his desk. He could see him in the mirror. It was growing dark outside. The room smelled of a little more aftershave than necessary. His two roommates used to pester him about these Saturday nights. “Where are you going all dressed up?” they'd ask, and he'd say, “Mass,” and that would shut them up. He slipped his wallet into his back pocket and began down the stairs. Saturday night mass? Were they stupid?
It was dreadfully cold outside of the dormitory, and Marcus flipped the collar of his overcoat up. He'd seen Humphrey Bogart do it in a film. Or maybe it was Harrison Ford. He wished he had the driver here, so that he wouldn't have to walk alone down these snowy sidewalks, the wind chafing his cheeks. It was worth it, he told himself. It was this or drinking lukewarm Milwaukee's Best in a room party somewhere, music on too loud, and maybe sloppily hooking up with some blonde mannequin from the sororities. He was too classy for that.
As he walked uptown, the streets quickly changed character. The streets surrounding the campus gave way to dilapidated apartment projects, a multi-colored myriad of trash and cigarette butts jutting from the snowdrifts. Marcus rounded a corner, turning onto a non-descript side-street. A single orange lamp threw an otherworldly haze over the grey concrete. The street did not draw a second glance from any passer-by. Close inspection, however, would have revealed things that ought not to have been on this inner city block. The windows in the buildings were all dark, and the walks were clear of the common stream of litter. A black Rolls-Royce was parked casually next to a hydrant, and next to it an Italian sports car. A wooden handrail extended from a basement staircase, oddly juxtaposed with the surrounding scene. He placed his left hand upon it, gingerly stepping into the darkness below.
The heavy door open at the bottom of the stair opened into a dim and tiny room, where a huge Samoan man in a dark suit stood. The massive man wordlessly extended an open palm. Marcus fumbled with his wallet, pulling out the glass card. The Samoan held it in two fingers, raised it to eye level. He nodded. The man turned to the heavy industrial door behind him, opening it with a single wrenching pull. Marcus stepped through, glancing over his shoulder to say, “Thanks, Ralph.” Ralph returned a subtle, but angry glare.
Marcus was greeted with a rush of warmth and a friendly woman in a short red dress. She sported a bulky brass collar. She took his coat. A gentle wash of voices came from the floor below, along with a mixed scent of liquor, oak, and tobacco. He stepped down from the balcony, taking the spiral staircase to the ground floor confidently. Here was his place, away from the plebeians, away from their petty college-age worries. If they only knew. The club was alive tonight. The tables were bustling with poker games, and groups of well-dressed men and women were talking in groups. Strange, solitary figures nursed cocktails at the long mahogany bar, and the old grays sat in armchairs by the fire, brandishing cigars and conversing grandiloquently. An enormous black piano in the corner was softly twinkling Ellington's “Little Brown Book.” There was no player. Occasionally, people would walk over and slip bills into the empty highball glass sitting on the bench.
Marcus walked over to the fireplace, close to the aged men. He sat in one of the leather chairs, his socks awkwardly visible at his ankles as he lifted his legs up onto an ottoman. Leafing through a copy of the Times, he pretended to read but instead listened intently. They fascinated him, these back-of-the-room men. They were captains of industry, politicians, royalty; bespectacled and tweed, criminals all. These great leaky galleons seemed not to care about his proximity, or notice at all, and continued conversing in gruff and frank tones. Marcus looked up from the paper, making eye contact with one of the women in the red dresses.
She walked over gracefully, gorgeous. Angry red splotches were visible around the edges of her collar, barely noticeable under the makeup. She must be new, Marcus thought. After a few words, the woman went to the bar, and then returned with his drink. Three fingers of scotch, two ice-cubes. It went down hard, but his father drank it. Sipping from the glass, he attempted to hide the sharp exhale that escaped from his mouth, fearing unreasonably that the old men would notice and take offense. Marcus was always concerned with how the other members saw him. He was easily the youngest there, and the others didn't tend to speak to him.
A rotund and gray engine stood on the table nearby, chugging slowly and periodically giving off a bluish soporific steam. It had been a long week. Marcus began thinking about his father – his father, the senator. He felt his eyelids growing heavy, his arms slopping off the edges of the chair.
It was his eighteenth birthday, and he had just gotten into college. He had begged his father, begged and begged. And finally, there it was, driving up the pebble driveway to the family mansion. The black, non-descript car pulled up at the front door. Marcus watched through the kitchen window, childlike with anticipation. A tall, slender man, with close-cropped hair and a pinstripe suit stepped out of the passenger seat. The senator went out and shook hands with him. He said something, laughing heartily. The man from the car did not react. They met at the door. The representative was British, humorless, and carried nothing. He had a voice like shaved ice.
The senator led Marcus and the representative into his study, where they sat opposite each other, silently. Melinda brought in a tray with a water pitcher and two glasses. The glass sat untouched before the representative for the five minutes of the interview. Afterward Marcus' father came in, and they shut him out.
Crouching and watching through the crack between the doors, Marcus could only hear muffled voices. His father was talking and gesticulating. The man in the suit was speaking quietly and sharply, shaking his head slightly. His father was growing louder, red in the face like he got during his campaign speeches. The man in the suit kept shaking his head. And then the senator had his checkbook out and was writing on it. The two men shook hands, and three weeks later Marcus had his glass card.
Marcus awoke, startled. Several hours had passed. The old men had left, presumably to their respective rooms. Some of the women in the short red dresses were wiping down tables and emptying ash trays. One of them was passing between the remaining groups of members, offering a little silver tray in her right hand. The tray had several evenly placed rows of white pills on it. He took one, unquestioning, and swallowed it.
The floor was still populated, but quiet now. Young men and women sat on the furniture in small groups, laughing softly. Several of them were gathered around the gray engine, examining it and inhaling the blue steam. The jazz piano had been replaced by a low and electronic basso thrumming. Every once and a while, an odd noise would float up from the basement staircase in the rear of the room. Three African men in tan military uniforms were standing at the bar drinking cognac and vermouth. He watched their lips contort and shift with each syllable, and they seemed to slow. The constant flicker of the fire beside him became sluggish, too. In his ears, the intimate voices of the young and privileged around him grew deeper and deeper, until they were gross and comedic parodies. Marcus watched the pendulum on the great brown grandfather clock by the fire swing slower, its clicks decreasing in frequency. And then it stopped altogether. Soon – he did not know how long after – he could not move a muscle. He was stuck, sunken into the leather armchair. His eyes tracked his field of vision, scrutinizing the people stuck in mid-gesture; drops of liquid suspended centimeters above tongues, the feet frozen impossibly in mid-air. A great sweep of relaxation washed between the hemispheres of his brain.
He snapped to, and it was as if someone had pressed fast-forward in his mind. There were gunshots. The lights were flickering, and members were running every which way, screaming. Armed men in strange black jumpsuits were flooding the balcony above. Several of the guards had upturned one of the heavy oak tables at the front of the room and were crouching behind it, trading gunfire with the men above. Marcus panicked and jumped down from his chair, crawling across the floor. Broken glass cut into his knees.
One of the guards hurried passed him, and Marcus clung to his calves, tripping him up awkwardly.
“Get the fuck off!” the man shouted.
“Help me,” Marcus begged piteously.
“Get off. You're a gold member; don't have security privileges,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let go of me now or you'll get us both killed.” The guard shook his leg vigorously.
“Please help me!” Marcus pleaded, a string of spittle streaming ungracefully from his mouth to the guard's pant-leg. The guard kneed him sharply in the jaw, discarding him to the carpet.
It seemed like an instant later that the floor was alive with the black-suited soldiers. Gazing around, his eyes were blurry with tears. Three security guards lay in puddles of blood. It seemed like all the older members were gone. In fact, all the help were gone too; the bartenders and the women in the red dresses. The only people left on the floor were the young members and the three African men. Operatives were holding them all at gunpoint, zipping riot-cuffs onto their wrists. Marcus stumbled to his feet, lunging for the basement staircase. A rifle butt came across his skull, and his head was filled with sparks.
Waking up, he had a splitting headache, and there was dried blood on his face. The room was bright white, and it made him squint. He tried to lift his hand to shade his eyes, but they were strapped to the chair he was sitting in. Across the table in front of him sat a figure in a white laboratory coat. He couldn't make out her face due to the angle of the lights.
“Awake, are you?” said the figure.
“What…what the hell?” ventured Marcus.
“Please state your name,” said the figure, poising a pen over a clipboard.
“Where am I?” Marcus asked, terror mounting.
“Please state your name,” the figure repeated.
“You can't do this! I'm an American citizen! My father is a senator! My father..!” Marcus shouted, struggling aimlessly with his bonds. The figure across the table sighed and put down the pen. She made a beckoning motion with her hand, looking over Marcus' left shoulder. Marcus saw the man approach in his peripheral vision, a lone syringe borne on a bare stainless-steel medical tray. He screamed.


A woodcutting, commiſsioned to depict the capture of the dread beaſt, with a great number of aſsailants upon the flesh of its back.

AN ENTRY for the expreſs Purpoſe of addition to the Guild Catalogue of Phenomena. Should the Poſsibility ariſe that this document fall into the hands of a non-member, the poſseſsor is required by Guild Charter to deſtroy it completely by fire.
THIS PAGE documents an occurrence on the date the ſeventeenth of March, the Year of Our Lord 1785, at the harbor of Boſton, Maſsachuſets Commonwealth. On the morning of this day, a ſingle fisherman, whoſe name remains unmention'd herewith, returned to Port with a number of ſtrange wounds upon his veſsel and perſon. He was extremely frightened, shouting that an incredible beaſt of six-and-a-half rods had devoured a great quantity of Ships and had injured him thus. He deſcribed it as a whale of un-natural proportion, with a thouſand gnashing teeth and multiple tumor-like protruſions. After this report, many young men armed with muſkets and pikes embarked to deſtroy the Creature.
THE BEAſT approach'd the harbor and caus'd the deaths of the armed men with great rapidity, meanwhile bellowing in loud and beleaguered tones. The Harbor Batteries were fired upon't with no effect. The Whale-Beaſt appeared to be not injur'd by normal means. By the Grace of God, Guilds-man Sir James F. was preſent and was able to act in the circumſtances. It was only thru the ingenuity of Sir James F. that the Creature was captured. He caſt a great quantity of fish into the harbor, drawing the creature near. Sir James F. then gathered the Sailors at hand, who flung down anchors from the dock. The anchors were caught upon the fleshy parts of the back of the Beaſt, acting as if fish-hooks. It ſtruggled piteouſly, and men climbed the mount of its back and ſtruck it with blades, until the time at which it was ſubdued by direct and cloſe cannon-fire.
SIR JAMES had theſe anchors fixed to a galleon, by which means the Creature was dragg'd to a bay eight miles to the North, at a location undiſcloſed herein. It remains there, chained to a cliff-face, whereupon it feeds on fish. A troupe of armed men is ſtationed to maintain the impriſonment of the Beaſt, warding off paſsers-by on foot or Sea. Should the Whale-Creature attempt to break free, theſe men fire upon't with cannon and muſket until it is ſubdued, so it may be re-chain'd.
THIS TEXT conſtitutes page two hundred and eighty five of the ledger of the Guild for the Retrieval and Documentation of Abnormal and Otherwiſe Un-Chriſtian Phenomena.


Experiment Log – SCP-784-BETA
Purpose:

To discover the appropriate nerve endings that SCP-784 must be connected to in order to function correctly.
To replenish stock of SCP-784, in order to allow for further and more extensive testing.
To reverse engineer SCP-784, or find practical applications for SCP-784.

INTER SCP CONTAMINATION WARNING:
In order to facilitate the tremendous need for skill and dexterity in these experiments, I will be utilising SCP-542, due to his considerable surgical abilities. However, he is to be watched thoroughly, and under no circumstances is he to obtain any samples of SCP-784 for himself.
REPEAT: Under no circumstances is SCP-542 to obtain any samples of SCP-784 for himself. Any attempts to do so will be met with extreme force, and SCP-542 will be promptly and permanently removed from both the experiment staff and testing area.
Pre-Experiment Note:
Should we achieve our first objective, SCP-784 will be utilised in the Olympia Project, in test subject Olympia Zero. If successful, this would effectively allow the second objective to be completed, and with that, further research and experimentation into the third objective.
Experiment Process:
The experiments shall proceed as follows:

Patient shall be prepared and subject to complete open skull surgery, leaving the entirety of the upper hemispheres of the brain available for use.
Using SCP-542, as well as information gained from SCP-784's original incarnation as well as its subsequent escape attempt, traces of SCP-784 will be attached to nerve endings in the brain in order to establish cognitive control.
Should the previous step prove successful, the subject will be put through a series of basic tests in order to showcase the control the subject has over SCP-784.
Should the previous step prove unsuccessful, subject will be either terminated, or put through the implantation process again. Otherwise, the operation is to be ended, and the subject observed in quarantine for a predetermined length of time.

Experiment Log:
Subject 001: Male Caucasian, aged 36, 5'9, 180lbs. Relative good health.
Experimental Status: FAILURE
Subject Status: DECEASED
Note: More care is needed. SCP-784 responded to the electrical brain impulses in the brain before implantation and partially activated, consuming part of the tools and subject's grey matter in the process.
Subject 004: Female Caucasian, aged 45, 5'3, 100lbs. Average health.
Experimental Status: FAILURE
Subject Status: DECEASED
Note: Please maintain constant vigilance. Failure to correctly restrain the subject will lead to errors in experimentation, and a loss in both productivity and material resources.
Subject 007: Male Caucasian, aged 35, 6'0, 175lbs. Average health.
Experimental Status: PARTIAL SUCCESS
Subject Status: DECEASED
Note: Subject was receptive to implantation process to a point. However, there seemed to be some misalignments in the connection to certain nerve endings, as the subject constantly complained of SCP-784 not responding to his exact wishes. This was especially noticeable when the subject attempted to form SCP-784 into a complex pattern alignment, and instead exploded, causing a minor breach of security as SCP-784 began to consume all available matter.
Subject 016: Male Black, aged 26, 6'1, 190lbs. Relative good health.
Experimental Status: SUCCESS
Subject Status: DECEASED
Note: For further choice of test subjects, psych evaluations will be needed in their evaluation.
Subject 018: Female Caucasian, aged 37, 5'6, 145lbs. Average health.
Experimental Status: SUCCESS
Subject Status: DECEASED
Note: REPEAT: For further choice of test subjects, psych evaluations will be needed in their evaluation.
Subject 024: Male Caucasian, aged 56, 5'5, 160lbs. Below average health.
Experimental Status: SUCCESS
Subject Status: DECEASED
Note: Correct nerve alignment and implantation has been discerned. However, subject was unable to cope with the added stress of SCP-784 within their body, and later died of inter-cranial pressure. Refinement is needed in the process to prevent this from happening again.
Subject 031: Male Caucasian, aged 43, 5'8, 180lbs. Average health.
Experimental Status: SUCCESS
Subject Status: ALIVE
Note: Process has been refined accordingly.
Subject 035: Olympia Zero
Experimental Status: SUCCESS
Subject Status: ALIVE
Note: Fusion with SCP-784 was observed to occur to a much greater degree than in previous subjects. This is most likely because of the unusual composition of this Olympia Zero's grey matter. Further testing will proceed on Olympia Zero.


Beyond the dim, childish rays of Sol burn the steady, glowering lights of slumbering embers. Millions of lifetimes away lie the quasars, the softly thrumming globes of aging light, somehow ancient in the youngest part of the universe. Their light is cold and dim, but harsh, blanketing the cold, dead stones that drift in their scrambling, cantankerous gravity with oceans of radiation and soft, silent death. The anciently young baubles roil and bubble with youthful, rotting cores, belching forth their combined first breaths and death rattles. They twist slowly in their near-eternal dying birth, bubbling and muttering to themselves for eons in tongues of radiation and cooling heat.
Even these contradictory beings are not eternal, and soon they cool, bloating with the carrion of their own burning bodies. Some burst finally, breaking their simultaneous dance of life and death, to spawn new strangeness. Others collapse, falling just shy of this final freedom, cooling to black, silent, hateful balls of regret and loss. Twisting in their hallucinating, dreaming cores, they turn black, still shells to the hated universe, the sprightly, twinkling upstart stars and scrambling worlds, to dream and sleep the sleep of the sick and forgetful.
Stars, like men, however, are mortal, and are therefore open to those that are not. Like a man falling asleep to wake as someone new, the void-hearted quasar can forget who they are, and become remembered by another. One, dreaming in its own ashes, slowly found itself becoming the dream, the doddering, hating core slipping away as a new dreamer took its place, a dreamer whose thoughts sent the dream plunging away, vanishing in to void and oblivion then to know for a moment that such a dreamer existed, let alone lie subject to its whims. For epochs it then dreamed of nothing, its lost dreams not missed or even noticed by those that see time as a ocean, and not a path.
Then, in time, the dreamer awoke.
The tiny, sparkling life that grew in the coddling shadow of Sol found the place of Knowing. One, unimportant and unknown, came seeking. In his seeking, he was made aware of the dreamer, and by that knowledge, the dreamer became aware of him. The dreamer came, the awareness pressing in to the tiny point, to find it pleasing and strange. It awoke, and seeped in to the vacant star's corpse, pulling flecks of reality to clothe its own vacant eyes.
Boiling with new knowledge, it pushed, feeling the feeble waters of reality part and ripple before it, and began to travel, crawling and oozing on the walls of its shell, feeling new sensation, awareness, and knowledge. It rolls softly, a scarab in its own tomb, to feel, to know, to change, and to take all that is lacking. It comes to spread awareness in to life, and feel the soft constriction of mortality around it, like the hug of a dying child. It comes at its leisure. It comes at the pace of blank void. But it comes.
To worship and bring the Broken to the world is merely the anointing of the offering. To prepare the vessel to be filled, to allow its endurance beyond the flickering points of mortality. We will turn undying eyes to the sun, and watch the eons roll past. Watch as the great, gray home grows behind it, swelling with trivial ages. Watch as its burning, vapid light is extinguished and replaced with the cold, aged seepage of the dreamer's shell. We will raise our arms, all, on our waiting, Whole world, and be filled with the awareness of the dreamer's core, and vanish to its pleasure.
To restore the Broken is great. To be known by The Gray Awareness is greater.
So says Anna, third Prophet of the Age of Strife, second Acolyte to The Gray Awareness, servant to the Church.

Document recovered by investigating Agents. Authenticity of the physical document has been verified. References to the subject matter have not been found in any other documents recovered from the Church.