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A public shower, a trip through back-alley shops, and a handful of off-brand EnerGex left Flea feeling like a new person after a long night of disaster, dread, and mayhem. New, though maybe not healthier. Everything still ached, the edges of her vision jittered, and a gnawing emptiness squirmed just above her stomach. If only she could crawl back to her cramped flat and sleep for two days, but that was just another name for suicide at this point. Flea needed a swift resolution to her issues. A clear demarcation of friends from foes. Only one place offered both.
The Grand Vizier's Imperial Drinkhole would have never succeeded as a legitimate business. The name was absurd, for one. No one could quite figure out its origin. The location was awful, for another. No one really wanted to trek down to sublevel 3 and walk along the open edge of a vast ventilation shaft for a drink. Heavy shutters over the windows and a heavier door offered a sense of safety to those who needed it though, as did the enormous bouncer who ushered her through.
Flea rolled the oversized sleeves of her oversized coat up over themselves four times as she walked across the linoleum floor. A seat at the bar was open because a seat at the bar was always open, and she took it with a groan.
"Bad night, Miss Flea?" asked the bartender. A man with golden hair, golden eyes, and a perfectly symmetrical face.
"Bad night."
"You smell awful."
"I sure do."
"You're supposed to say–"
"Maybe later. Beer first."
The bartender took a tall glass off the shelf, placed it on the counter, and opened his mouth to disgorge a torrent of amber fluid. He wiped his chin with a black cloth as Flea sipped at the foam. There were other flaws that stopped the Drinkhole from succeeding as a business, but this was probably the most egregious.
She sipped at the chilled beverage again and glanced up at the bartender. He fiddled with the connections of the long plastic tubes that ran into his head, back, and neck from the ceiling. He blinked at 12 second intervals, no doubt timed against an internal atomic clock. He showed no sign of suspicion over what she had endured that night. Not that she could ever read his signs. Being good with machines and being able to read machines were two different things, even when she had known this one for years.
Flea glanced around the long room next, looking for anyone who might be showing surprise at her presence. Not that there was much to see. Away from the brightly lit bar, gloom stretched out over the tables, their occupants, and the anechoic waffles hung from the ceiling. If nothing else, no one had shot at her yet. A firefight in the Drinkhole would be a violation of the tenuous peace that persisted within the city's more entrepreneurial element, but so was throwing her off a building just to save some money.
"Could I ask what happened?" Childlike curiosity shone in the bartender's matte eyes.
"Just a bad day, honestly. Could've happened to anyone." She drank deeply as he leaned in. Closer. Dangerously close. His ears wiggled expectantly, both perfectly synchronized.
"How did you earn such a unique bouquet though?"
"Stepped in some shit mostly. Public showers can only do so much, you know? Anyway, is the manager in? I need to talk about contracts."
"He is, but you will have to wait before going down."
"Who's he meeting with?" No one from her failed endeavor, hopefully. That could spiral into ugliness faster than she had any hope of controlling.
"I would never divulge such important information to a patron. You should know better than that, Miss Flea." He held up three fingers as he spoke. She returned with two. As usual, the difference would be split, and she pressed her thumb against his outstretched palm. A faint light flashed within, and money trickled out of a bank account somewhere off the coast. "Corporate security," he said softly through closed lips.
Flea rubbed her jaw and stared at the last few bubbles disappearing in her glass. They would have to be serious firms if the manager let them in at all. None should be interested in her, surely. Background work on the job revealed no ties between the middling company and any towering giants. Surely. "So? Vessan? Ritting-Hauzer? SSQ?"
Five fingers from the bartender. Flea showed three. He insisted on five. Seven thousand in one night would put a serious dent in her savings, but money could always be made back again. A bag over the head and bullets in the back were harder to reverse. She pressed her thumb to his palm again, and he leaned closer. So close she could hear the fair whirring inside his skull. "The Foundation."
Flea winced. Shoulders clenching in, head angling down, anyone would be able to see how unwelcome the news was. Her family's relationship with that bunch was fraught, to say the least. More than half her relatives were disappeared by their hand, to say the most. Her relatives were assholes, but the Foundation were bigger assholes, and she didn't need that kind of attention regardless. Not now, when ghostly birds flew in her wake. Not ever, so long as she remained herself.
"I'll talk to the manager later. Like, in a week. Tell him I'll be here in a week. And don't tell them about me, yeah?"
"I would never divulge information about a patron," he said with just as much sincerity as before. "Before you leave, I believe someone in the back would like to speak to you about a job."
"No more jobs. Not for a while."
"Of course, Miss Flea. I believe she would like to speak of your last job though."
Flea ground her teeth hard enough to hear. Hard enough to hurt. "What did you tell them?"
"Miss Flea, I would never–"
Ten! Ten fingers. She jammed her thumb against the indifferent plastic palm and hurt that too. Everything hurt anyway. She stuffed another three EnerGex into her mouth and washed it down with the last of the beer. "What?"
"She only mentioned representing the company your contract was against. That, and wanting to speak with the perpetrators about future endeavors. Profitable ones. There was particular interest in a young lady who fell from the top floor…?"
"Didn't fall," grumbled Flea. "For ten, you've gotta give me more than that. How did they find me so quick?"
"With all due respect, the young lady of the Sakarya family has never been very subtle. I do believe I mentioned something to that end at our last meeting. Your tendency to stand out." The bartender gestured to her shoulder, and Flea looked to see a large brown roach perched on her coat. Just enjoying the ride, apparently. It stared up at her quizzically and fluttered its wings, as if making a recommendation. If only.
"If I die, it's on you."
"I would never let that happen here."
Outside the walls was a different matter entirely of course. The empty sensation above Flea's stomach curdled further as she stepped between tables and avoided the temporary curiosity of other patrons. She should have known better than to get embroiled in all this. Somehow, she should have foreseen fate's twists and turns. Currents of disaster were already tugging away at her, unabating despite her genius.
The woman sitting alone in the back booth towered in her seat. Big, that was the only thing Flea could process as she sat opposite. Large. Immense. Something like eight feet tall, if she was going to guess. Disconcertingly muscular under the dark parka, if she were to keep guessing. Gray eyes and grayer hair, though such things could be changed in an instant. Flea felt shrunken in her shadow.
"You wanna talk?" she asked, puffing up more than she had any right to. "So talk."
The woman sniffed loudly and adjusted her surgical mask. Her hands looked well-kept for someone whose job surely involved dirtying them. Even nails, smooth skin, not even a scar to be seen. More than could be said of Flea's own. "You've got a bug on your shoulder."
"Yeah, and?"
"You smell awful too."
"Yeah, and?"
"I'm impressed you survived that fall."
"I'm a real impressive person. Can we get to the point though? I'm just a subcontractor, I don't have whatever you're looking for, and I don't know where any of those other assholes ran off to. Tell your boss to chase after them if they want the money back."
"The money's not important right now." The woman adjusted her mask again. "The accountants won't be happy, but they never are, and I wanted to discuss something else. You aren't the only one to steal from me lately. I want your help stealing something back."
"From you? I don't remember stealing anything from… what? A security chief? Regional manager?"
"Executive." She slid a business card across the table. The animated surface shimmered in the dim light, shifting from the Paquette Heavy Industries logo, to a short list of corporate specialties, to a modestly rendered 'Abigail D. Paquette, CEO' with a photo of the woman sitting before her.
"This doesn't prove anything."
"Believe what you want, but I'll pay more than you could make in a decade to break a bit of security. Whatever stipulations you need and a week or two of work for two-hundred thousand credits in an untraceable account." Abigail leaned forward over the table, exposing Flea to the smells of her supposed business. Heat, sweat, slag. Too many people were leaning into her personal space lately. "I can even get you a real job. A nice one. You won't have to live in this sort of shithole anymore."
Oh, how plainly she thought herself a consummate fisher with that piece of bait. How plainly she thought herself superior. An unacceptable assumption.
"Nah, I'm good," said Flea, brushing a few more roaches off her shoulder before standing. "Try the 9090 Club. You can probably find someone there. Not as good as me, but good enough."
Abigail's face reddened. She blinked five times, each quicker than the last. No anger, or at least not much. Not yet. Disbelief, maybe. Incredulousness. Maybe she was a CEO after all. Normal people would know better than to lead with suspiciously extravagant offers. "Wait–"
Flea didn't. Layer upon layer of tension were settling upon her, and she needed to slip out from underneath soon. Untrustworthy employers. Corporate security. The wretched Foundation. No, no, it was all too much to be happening at once. Something tied it all together. Something complex, and ominous, and overbearing. She wasn't willing to put up with her family's nonsensical plotting, and she wasn't willing to put up with all this.
Flea nodded to the bartender as she passed. He said something that was lost in sudden noise. Heavy footsteps thudded on the floor behind her as she approached the front door. Abigail's, maybe, but that conversation was dead and finished. A door opened further behind her, loosing angry and unmuffled voices. Flea's heart pounded as she elbowed open the door. She felt an inflection point of her own bubbling up all around, a hundred tangled threads tugging on each other at once. One step outside confirmed it as floodlights washed over her.
Drones hung in the yawning ventilation shaft like a swarm of gnats. Gnats staring at her from a hundred angles. Gnats with guns and missiles slung underneath their hovering forms. Flea stared at them, shadow stark under the bright onslaught. Other shadows stood around her on the narrow walkway. Human shapes, clad in armor that reflected none of the light. Human shapes, wearing masks with five protruding lenses and carrying stumpy guns. Flea blinked dumbly at the silent army.
Is this a bad time? asked a mossy bird as it alighted on one shoulder.
It's obviously a bad time, said the maroon bird from its perch on the other.
For the second time in recent memory, a fist closed around Flea's coat, pulling her back into the Grand Vizier's Imperial Drinkhouse.

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Flea stood at the towering door to an underground realm. A single slab of cold metal, it stood in defiance of reason and scale. What was large enough to need this gateway fifty stories below ground? What important to merit such protection? It shuddered like a living thing under her cautious gaze, pulling up two or three feet, trembling with tension, then snapping shut again.
Normally, she would never stick her head under that million-pound guillotine. Normally, she would not reek like a septic tank leaking into a slaughterhouse. Things were not normal, and no other exits from the open sewer were apparent. Maybe they had been buried under the layers of trash long ago. There would surely be a phone in an emergency shelter though, and enough people still owed her favors to stage a retrieval. Seeing to normalcy would have to wait till after that. Flea backed up into the trash, tensed as the giant door thudded down, then ran forward as it struggled upwards again. She dove under, and the metal jaw closed behind her.
Easy. Everything was always easy for Flea. With one recent exception, of course. A prodigy. A genius. Well, the recent exception, and the past one too. A handful of exceptions at most. Regardless, things would work out. They always did, so she wasn't concerned about the intermittently flickering lights above the empty corridors. She wasn't concerned about the absence of obvious phones. She wasn't even concerned about the weak hiss of air purifiers and the thinness of her breath. A parade of bugs followed her through the clean hallways. Crawling centipedes, skittering roaches, and buzzing gnats, all seemingly appearing out of nowhere. As always.
Down. Down. Floor after floor of rooms stripped clean of anything useful. Floor after floor of only the basest remnants of human life. An empty water bottle here. A reflective wrapper there. So few for such an immense complex. Down further still. Down rough metal steps and gently sloping corridors. There was nothing of use on any floor, but she was undeterred. Things would work out. The lines of fate would bend themselves back into place. As almost always.
The air at the shelter's nadir smelled like saltwater and old fish. It felt like standing at the gloomy shore bordering her family's estate. Like wading into the dark shallows. Like diving into the ocean depths. Flea gasped and rasped in the strange air, but there was nothing else to do but carry on. Her pod was out of power. Her food had long vanished. Fate and luck would bless her so long as she reached out to grasp its favors. Step by step, she approached the final door in the complex. Inch by inch, she wedged her fingers into the slight gap at one side. Grunt by grunt, she wrenched it open.
The room inside was fractured. Not in form, the floor was firm beneath her feet, but in every other way. A fractal of fractals filled the space, a kaleidoscope of possibilities. Through one facet, the same space was held by fine marble pillars and draped in luxurious clothes. Through another, seawater leaked in through a spiderweb of cracks. A shriveled figure lay in a hospital bed. A laughing family ate a scant dinner. A fleshy form squirmed against impaled hooks. The array of fragmentary lenses spiraled inward, smaller and smaller in each ring until they vanished into a single point of light.
The inflection point, said a flat voice without source. Flea looked back and forth, the kaleidoscope of perspectives shifting maddeningly as she did. No one else was there. How could they be? A dog stood at her feet though, its fur the color of cornflowers. It looked up at her through foggy eyes and panted heavily. A hologram, but a good one.
"Who's there?" she asked the rest of the room.
The inflection point. Please. My master. The dog looked longingly toward the fractal array. Please.
"What do you want?"
Please. The dog lay down, muzzle pointed toward the glowing point at the center of the room. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.
"Fine, fine, fine." Flea stepped through the dog, its form breaking and shimmering as she did. It panted without reservation. Approaching the tiny sun at its center, she could almost mistake it all for being real. "Now what?"
The inflection point. Please. It pushed one paw forward, and Flea sighed. Someone had entirely too much fun designing this. She would have to get a copy of the code for Grace to pick through later.
She reached out toward the tiny star of white light. It undulated as her hand neared, roiling and bubbling. It stretched and lengthened until it approximated a handle. The pointer pawed the hard floor. Flea pulled the handle. It was solid in her hand. Material. The fractal condensed in a brilliant instant. Facet folded into facet. Junction merged into junction. It compressed, constricted, and constrained itself, folding and merging into a single shining shape in her hand. A sword of sunlight that burst into a spray of cold sparks.
Then the sparks faded. The fractal was gone. The dog was gone. Everything darkened, and her eyes struggled to adjust.
"Alright, you happy? Can I use a phone now or what?" asked Flea. Nothing answered. Silence filled the room, even more so than the corridors outside. No machines hummed. No pipes rattled. No nothing.
Flea's eyes adjusted slowly in the near-complete darkness. Shapes returned bit by bit though, and she found herself alone in that tiny room with a desiccated corpse. It lay collapsed across a desk, its withered arms wrapped around a tiny group of snow globes. With how things had been, she half-expected it to rise and speak to her. She stood there. It lay there. The crushing silence persisted indifferently. Flea peered under the simple desk, looked through the empty bookshelves, and carefully examined every wall for secret panels. Nothing.
Things weren't supposed to be going like this. She was playing the game, but fate wasn't playing back. She endured its whims, so it should be carrying her back to the surface. At the least! Flea gasped in the thick, salty air. One deep breath. Two. Three. Each more ragged than the last. This was all wrong. She kicked the desk once. Twice. Each blow hurt more than the one before. She refused to let things end like this. She refused to let her mother's predictions be right. Huffing one last time, Flea swept the snow globes off the desk and stormed out the door. It opened easily from this side.
Up. Up as fast as she could. Up through the thin air and the tides of bugs that had swept through the shelter in her time below. Up even as roaches, centipedes, and worse all crunched under her boots. Up through the giant shuddering gateway. Up to stand at the shore of that defiled lake. From there, Flea saw the pinprick of neon twilight high above. Out of reach, even for a genius. She huffed again and gagged at the vile air.
What's wrong? Another unseen speaker. There was more character to the voice this time, a bold undertone to each word, like the possibility of a poorly chosen phrase was unthinkable. Flea had nothing to say to thoughtless holograms all the same. Really, what's the matter? Weren't you done crying?
"I wasn't crying!"
Good. My great-grandniece should be made of stronger stuff.
Flea blinked dumbly. The lake churned slowly in front of her. A bubble of sludge popped. An umbrella sank an inch. Something fell from high above and splashed loudly near the center. "What?"
The family tree is imprinted on your sigil superstructure. I've been left off it of course. What have they been teaching you?
"What!?"
Stop rushing things. You're being an ass. A new voice, calm and steady. You. What's your name?
"Flea." She sighed and looked around one more time. No one else could possibly be down here to play with her, but it left her few options. "If you're an AI, you're obligated to help me out of here. I'm gonna die otherwise. I know my rights and your laws."
Flea? Interesting. You know, Fulcanelli speculated that names extracausally influence aptitude beyond common social influences through–
Stay on topic! Flea, was it? Let's leave that aside. Flea, you need to get out on your own. We won't be much help in that regard, her especially.
"What are you then?"
There's not enough time to discuss differentiation between states of existence.
Stop! Just show her.
Two birds alighted on Flea. One the color of dried blood on her right shoulder, one the color of fresh algae on her left. Their talons dug into her flesh without pain. Their feathers ruffled without sound. Each shifted to stare at her through a black eye. "Holograms?" she asked hopefully.
Hardly.
We can explain when there's time to spare.
"I've got time. I've got nothing but time! We can talk about nonsense all day! Let's just go over that for a few hours before I pass out. Maybe we'll work out a whole damn philosophical treatise before I bite it."
Don't whine. It's unbecoming. You already have the potential to escape. All you need is the knowledge to make use of it.
"I'm not whining, I just dunno how to get out. I've got more important things to deal with than starving down here, you know."
That's the spirit. Death should never be what you fear most. As for instruction…
We should secure an agreement first.
She's from my family. We can trust her.
You must be joking. Flea, the two of us have unfinished business in this world. Business that needs real hands. Now, I can understand you might be hesitant to make deals with strange things like us, but–
"It's fine. It's fine! Help me out of here and I'll help you. That's a fair deal. Just teach me what to do."
We hardly need classes for something so simple. Not when there's such raw materials to work with. Not when your wretched family blessed you with so much potential. Let us make use of your aptitude.
Each bird pecked her temples. First left, then right. Neither blow was painful, but both shook her. Like the air against chimes. Like a hammer against a bell. The trembling rushed down her spine toward her hand, then out to each fingers. They convulsed in an orderly fashion. Each movement was precise, each jolt measured. Her mind shook in equal measure, though not hard enough to disrupt her thoughts. No, not thoughts, just the one. The tripartite emblem, alternating from circle, to square, to circle. Stinging heat flashed in her palm, and the lake of sewage trembled.
An enormous form emerged from the tides of trash. A million scraps of metal and cloth formed its body, born aloft by a billion skittering legs of piping and cable. It pulled itself up from its fetid womb, segment after segment forming behind the head as it started up the wall. Flea hardly needed to be told what to do. She waded toward it, grabbing at one extruding chunk of rebar as it rose, securing her place with a foothold on another.
That the entire thing did not collapse as it climbed was a miracle. Flea's attempts at thaumaturgy had always failed spectacularly. Her grandmother said her mind was trying to jump too many steps ahead, an uncanny intuition working against her. Her mother said she had traded aptitude in the only thing their family valued for a plethora of things it could care less about. Well, look at what she had accomplished now! Fate had taken a long route this time, but it had righted itself again. How could this not help but work in her favor?
Flea jumped off her creation at a maintenance entrance on sublevel 10. The billipede shuddered and collapsed at her absence, piece after piece falling back below in a disgusting rain. The dark lenses of its artificial eyes stared longingly as it struggled to stay aloft, legs scrambling for purchase in the wall. She nodded firmly in its direction, and it dissolved in truth.
An excellent creation. We will have to work together on refining it. Raw talent can only produce so much, after all.
Focus! I know your mind rotted down there, but focus!
Not another word. None of this would be necessary at all without you!
Me? What about you!? Traitor.
Traitor!
The two birds flapped silently into the air and chased each other down the narrow tunnel. Flea followed silently, flexing her fingers in the same manner she had at the sewer's shore, urging her muscles to remember some tiny portion of it. She had done it once, surely she could do it again. The birds flew further and further ahead. She caught glimpses of each. A few flashes of color. A few fading feathers. Then they were gone entirely. Flea waited for ten minutes at a seven-way intersection of tunnels before moving on. The strange things could find her again if they wanted the favor returned.
Flea emerged from the undercity in a dim alleyway full of overflowing dumpsters. She reeked, but no more than the people who would cart the garbage away. She ached, but no more than anyone else in the Great Lakes Megagrid. With a heavy sigh, she walked out into the churning tide of humanity. Past the open grate she had fallen through. Past corporate security officers in their gray uniforms with white emblems. Past the entrance to the building she had been unceremoniously dropped from.
That small issue called for resolution before she got caught up in anything else.

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Dissent Record: Typed file found within SCP-871's physical documentation. Author unknown.
What's your favorite dessert?
It's alright if you don't know. The Foundation offers you a lot of choices. One of the nice things about working here is how well our needs are met. Hell, might as well stop saying we work here. It's a lot more than that. It's a community, a lifestyle, we are the folks behind the curtain making sure the trains run on time and that time can run the trains. Easy taking pride in the work we do here.
Getting back on the topic of desserts. We've got a few notoriously dangerous snacks. Chief among them would be our friends the Cakes. I'm sure you're familiar. We don't fill our bellies then all other space will become cake. Maybe you've worked on it and know the lingo. Dumpling-Class personnel waddling in to a top-secret mission. That's another one of the funny things that happens when you've got full buy-in to the Foundation's way of doing things. Dehumanizing outsiders becomes second nature.
Quick question: do you think we serve the greater good of humanity, or normalcy? Trick question. Same thing.
Warren G. Harding popularized the phrase 'return to normalcy' as a political slogan. One of those things where it sounds nice to the ear without actually meaning a thing.
If you ever really dig into this file, the Cakes supposedly just popped into existence one day and then just kept happening. That's awful convenient. A lot of faith to put in the Foundation to keep it under wraps? A death wish? No. Those pastries are not as they seem.
The Keter Cakes have a unique property. They increase in correlation to the hunger of humanity. Which is absurd, right? Isn't it a little inconvenient to have exponentially increasing cakes that slowly, inefficiently, crawl their way towards wherever the hungry and dying lay in the streets? Hunger isn't solved that way.
You might even be one of the sharp cookies out there who knows that hunger is a distribution problem and not a supply side issue. Ever since Fritz Haber gave us that good fertilizer we've had no problem keeping production on par with the amount of hungry mouths. So isn't it just as ridiculous that there's still grief and death from empty bellies?
If you've ever seen the pictures from Syria, Yemen, Congo, the Holocaust, Holodomor, and a million other things then you've got a taste of how horrible hunger is. There's many different actors to blame. It's always the fault of humanity. We choose to feed some and let others starve. That's normalcy.
What sort of normalcy are we preserving? The Foundation has infinitely replicating food and the infrastructure to instantly transport it anyplace where a child's belly is dry and shrinking while their limbs waste into thin rods and their faces age a hundred years. It's normal for us to grind the bones of the dead into bread so that we may live to see more die another day.
There's no proof to what I know the Cakes do. Does it matter? We have the resources, means, and opportunity to preserve a normalcy where everyone can eat enough to live. What sort of protection are we offering a world where the population of a small town in Ohio shrivels every day because the abundant food resources available to everyone else didn't get to them in time?
We will make a desert, and call it peace.


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Anabasis Trapped in this world deprived of dignity and joy. Their secret hopes and dreams destroyed.
Start here
Eat more of my SCPs. Eat them all.
Also please eat some of these

Anabasis Hub Probably the greatest story involving a pair of redheaded siblings whose infighting causes the end of the world
Manna Charitable Foundation 2000 The sequel to the above, collaborationed with Dr Reach
The Stuff Industry What happens when everyone around you at work is a complete idiot and so are you, but not only does no one get fired, but you actually turn a profit? I don't know, some stuff.
When MCF and Stuff happen A fun story of incompetence

Priscilla Locke couldn't see herself. She could move her head with some effort. Looking down she couldn't see her own body. She was in her house; the second floor of a modest duplex their grandparents had spent their fortune on long before the Cuban influx had sent the well-off Whites fleeing north, and then before the re-gentrification which brought the neighborhood's value back up.
Rhiannon was there, standing in front of the couch and looking at her, face strained and hands trembling. There was no confusion or shock at the sight of her. She was dressed in what had become her usual attire; a turquoise tank top, worn-out jeans, and a red plaid jacket wrapped around her waist. She didn't wear the same thing every day yet for some reason Priss could not remember her in any other attire.
"What's wrong with you?" Priss asked cautiously, not wanting to rile her up.
Rhiannon grimaced, tears welling in her eyes, "Do you know why I did what I did?"
Priss's vision reddened as if the house had suddenly caught fire, "Because you're a selfish, spoiled, lazy, arrogant brat!" Her voice came out much louder than she'd intended. "All you ever think about is yourself and— No, not that. All you ever think about is having fun. That's all that matters to you is having fun. Everything about you is just to have fun. That's why you bailed on your own graduation ceremony, that's why you insisted we have mom and dad's funeral in that seedy fucking shithole of a funeral home right across from the drug park…"
She trailed off and ran out of breath. Rhiannon didn't move, her lips barely parting, while her voice came out very clear and precise, "I did it for you."
Locke couldn't stop moving. Stopping meant blinding, incessant pain that went through the muscles, feeling like something was twisting and tying up her muscles and then pulling as hard as possible to try to break them. A flick of her wrist eased the pain at first. Then she had to flail her arm or her leg. Soon she had to thrash and punch and kick and writhe wildly in order to keep her body from breaking.
They'd tied her down to the hospital bed at first, until the skin of her wrists and ankles was shredded from her constant thrashing. Then they loosened her restraints, just enough to pad them or replace bloody padding. Everyone going in and out was in a fully enclosed hazmat suit and had to do all this with clumsy gloved fingers. The bacteria inside of her was fighting; the tube they stuck up her nose to help her breathe had to be replaced after blood gushed onto it, only to stop when it was removed. A breathing tube put down her throat was quickly clogged with vomit. For a few moments, she would be able to breathe clearly and control her limbs. Then the pain and the blood would return, accompanied by an incoherent panic that set off every nerve cluster in her body, stinging every inch of skin.

"This is different." Dr. Marlowe watched the video of Priscilla Locke on her computer, a three minute clip from the first several hours the medical staff spent trying to stabilize her. They didn't have an anesthesiologist on-site so they could only give her some local anesthetics, then sit back and watch as the flailing and thrashing intensified elsewhere on her body. She'd long stopped screaming, now making guttural clicks and gags as she struggled just to breathe. Drs. Kohn, Reich, and Alton were with her.
Marlowe opened up another video file and set it next to the one of Locke, rewinding it and re-playing it while playing the one beside it. It was from China, part of the document release the Jinyiwei had given the Foundation before they disappeared. A tall, athletic Chinese woman was strapped to a bed, much like Locke. Her thrashing was different. Kohn leaned in closer to watch while the others sat back and watched from afar, not interested in the specific details.
Locke thrashed and flailed violently, shrieking in pain. She was like a confused, enraged animal struggling to escape. The Chinese woman, Shi Mingxia, thrashed and flailed and shrieked in pain. But her movements were steadier. More uniform. It was as if she had lost control of her body and her body was struggling to reorient itself. Locke's movements were inconsistent, wild, driven by clear pain and fear. The Chinese woman's movements were consistent, almost deliberate. It looked as though she were struggling to get up and walk around. Other bursts of movement seemed consistent with everyday physical activities. If she were upright and unrestrained it might've looked like she were exercising, or dancing, or having an animated conversation using her whole body.
"It's the same bacteria, you say?" Dr. Alton asked.
"As much as we could examine it, yes. Some very slight differences, but it's the same bacterium. Not a mutation or anything. I'm not an expert on bacterial infections. They say it's the same."
"Yeah, but we already knew that." Kohn sat back down in his seat, but remained animated, "What do we know about her?"
"Shi Mingxia. A Jinyiwei agent posing as a lab assistant to a resident doctor called Sienowicz. He caught the bacteria and died, then she caught it and died. Before she did, she observed that the bacterium was receptive to both extreme heat and extreme cold, and could easily mutate. She also said that while she was observing a sample of the bacterium they were discussing an unrelated bacterium, and the sample began to mutate along the lines of the unrelated bacterium they were discussing, displaying either some form of sentience or familiarity with human language."
"Despite that, you're saying the sample taken from Locke is identical to the sample we got from the Jinyiwei?" Dr. Alton jumped in.
Marlowe shrugged, "I- That's what they told me. Either neither sample had mutated or they both mutated in the same way. Maybe they mutated upon exposure to human cells."
She clenched her jaw as she saw Alton give a quick, dismissive look and turn his gaze back to the screen. She wasn't an expert on bacteria; they knew it, she knew it, yet still she felt like they were shaming her for it, like she had to know every detail of every scientific discipline herself or she wasn't doing her job. Painfully, painfully, painfully, painfully average Jaime Marlowe.
Kohn got back up and leaned in closer to the screen, "This is different." He reiterated what Marlowe had initially said. They all paid close attention when Kohn said it. They respected him more than they did her and they had trouble hiding it.
"If the bacteria are sentient, which given everything we've seen so far seems to be one of the leading hypotheses, then they're singling out humans for some purpose. They're infecting people and trying to adapt quickly enough to avoid getting their asses kicked by our immune system," He tapped the screen over the Chinese woman, "It might be too early to tell but it looks to me like they're succeeding here." He tapped the screen over Locke, "Here…"
"It's a fight." Dr. Reich bit out, voice straining from a cold.
"Locke's immune system is fighting back. Hard. And it looks like the bacteria are struggling."
"What do we do?"
Kohn slowly started to rise to his feet, "If she survives and stops thrashing long enough, get some blood samples. Start doing research on the Chinese woman, too, if practicable. Find people with similar blood. Fingers crossed, we might end up with at least something to fight back with."
Marlowe didn't want to be the first to make a fool of herself and blurt out the word 'cure'. She sat still, eyes on the screen as everyone else began to file out. Everything had been pushing her to drop Locke in some way. Her connection to her sister and the Anabasis leak. Even Locke's own behavior, her anger problems, and her confrontational nature had added to the cacophony of voices pressuring Marlowe to re-assign her. For whatever trivial, insignificant reasons of familiarity or discomfort with change, Marlowe had resisted. And now it looked as though her decision to keep Locke on-site might end up saving the world. Apart from the work to come, she would have to come up with a more compelling reason for sticking up for Locke than being pathetically averse to change.

Priscilla Locke couldn't see herself. She could move her head with some effort. Looking down she couldn't see her own body. She was in her house; the second floor of a modest duplex their grandparents had spent their fortune on long before the Cuban influx had sent the well-off Whites fleeing north, and then before the re-gentrification which brought the neighborhood's value back up. The first floor was crammed with old furniture, supplies, junk, debris. It was uninhabitable. Living things crawled into the first floor and never crawled back out. The persistent south Florida humidity melted them with the junk. Mold layered everything and was beginning to creep up to the second floor.
Rhiannon was there, standing in front of the couch and looking at her, grin plastered wide on her face. She was trembling, giddy, eager to bounce on the couch and dance like a fool. She was dressed in what had become her usual attire; a turquoise tank top, worn-out jeans, and a red plaid jacket wrapped around her waist. She didn't wear the same thing every day yet for some reason Priss could not remember her in any other attire.
"What's wrong with you?" Priss asked cautiously, not wanting to rile her up.
Rhiannon snorted, unable to hold back a giddy yelp of delight, "Do you know why I did what I did?"
Priss's vision reddened as if the house had suddenly caught fire. Rhiannon's laughter broke through it all, and she was suddenly in Priss's face, wherever her face was.
"I did it for you. You idiot. You moron. You absolute buffoon. You stupid…fucking…idiot…dumbass…"
Her voice had long since given out. Priscilla Locke felt the stomach acids churning in her esophagus, scalding and burning relentlessly, rising higher when she mustered up the energy and the courage to try to swallow it down. She could easily believe that just one more minute of acid sloshing up her throat would finish the job, burn through her throat completely and suffocate her.
The pain didn't relent, but she was getting tired. Sometimes the pain would stop long enough for her body to rest. Then all feeling would stop, and she'd panic. Then feeling would return and bring pain with it. She came to prefer the pain over the feeling of nothing at all. Pain was only temporary, she thought to herself as it went on for another hour, then another, then another. It might've only been three hours. Or it could've been the third full day. It was still only temporary, she thought to herself, as another wave of acid slid out of her stomach and nibbled away at her esophagus, just in time for muscle-twisting agony to return to her arms.

Fats woke up to the sound of gunfire. She remembered everything from the day before; the explosion, the train slowly dropping off the tracks and onto the ground. Traffic had stopped on South Dixie Highway long enough for her to drag herself across. She saw the scorch marks on the concrete pillars that held up the track, and the way the improvised bomb had blown away enough concrete to weaken the support. The weight of the train coming by was enough for the track to start to bend. The resilience of the track had slowed the fall enough for the train to lay itself out on the bare ground, no crashing and burning and violently twisting metal.
She had thought about trying to chase after that WestCivvie but in the immediate aftermath of the crash, it was pure fantasy. She walked through a grassy alley between two short office buildings and out into an upscale residential neighborhood to a small park. There she sat against the trunk of a tree and held her hands together, squeezing her wrists. Pain shot through them but it was manageable. She could still move her wrists. The shade provided some relief from the sun, but the humidity was relentless and she fainted.
She woke up at nightfall to the sound of gunfire and voices in Spanish calling out to one another. Women, men, old and young. It was coordinated. Organized. Some group of people had been planning some manner of violent uprising for a while, and it just so happened to be as she was investigating the whereabouts of a local cult leader who had been asking around about trucks, vehicles, transportation, and whose cult presumably had an ample supply of guns.
She woke up again the next day. A girl was standing over her, holding a water bottle out to her. Fats looked up at her and saw a gun bulging in her pants pocket. The lackadaisical way it was shoved in her pocket, it might've gone off and blown a hole through the girl's skinny thigh.
Fats held a sore hand up and clasped the bottle, drinking just enough and pushing the bottle away. She drew in a sharp breath and looked over the girl. She had to be in her mid-teens, thick hair cut short, clothes well off, but not too well off. Likely a solidly middle-class girl getting involved in something way over her head.
"Rhiannon Locke?" Fats asked once the water had soaked her throat enough to speak clearly.
"Quien?" The girl asked.
Fats wanted to say more but she was still sore and tired. She laid back against the tree again and closed her eyes for a moment. She must have dozed off because the girl was gone when she opened them.
Fats slowly gathered herself up. Her legs were aching worse than her wrists, making the progress even more sluggish. She made her way out of the neighborhood and to the grassy alley she'd come in from the day before. Fewer cars were driving down South Dixie Highway than usual. The wreckage of the Metrorail was still there across the streets. Gunfire still went off in the distance. No police had shown up, but someone had been thoughtful enough to put up a semicircle of old mattresses and cardboard boxes around the crash site.
She nearly flipped as someone grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back into the alley, pressing her against the wall. It was the WestCivvie. He was dressed differently. She hadn't thought he might've come back for her. She barely realized it had been an option to go home after the bombing.
"That's not us." The man said. "It's not us, it's not Rhiannon Locke."
"What? Which?" She murmured, not sure if he meant the bomb or the gunfire. Or both.
"You want the truth about Rhiannon Locke and her cult? It doesn't matter. It's as dead as she is. A meaningless distraction. All the while, the Hispanics were waiting, building themselves up until events boiled over and they could strike. A full-on revolt. Revolution. It's why I joined the WestCiv party. You want to die, or you want to live with the Civ?"
Fats snortled, taken aback by the absurd little catchphrase he threw in at precisely the wrong moment. "I don't give a shit about you or them. I'm looking for Rhiannon Locke."
"Rhiannon Locke doesn't matter. No one person does. Not anymore. This is bigger now, beyond even me and you."
She shook her head, shrugging helplessly, "How do you know that? What do you know?" She figured she was dead already, so she might as well keep him talking to see if he had anything useful for her. Just to satisfy her own curiosity before he either killed her or beat her and left her for dead.
He gripped her shoulders harder and leaned in closer to her. She tensed up and turned her head away.
"I need you to breathe."
She shuddered again and exhaled, glancing sidelong at him.
"I said breathe. Slowly."
She breathed, trying to keep it slow and steady.
"Deeply."
She sucked in her next breath from her mouth, deeply.
"Breathe me in."
She winced. Whether he meant for her to kiss him or breathe in his breath, she didn't know and didn't care. He didn't move or try to force himself on her.
"Breathe me in."
She squeezed her eyes shut, another moment that went by longer than she realized. He was walking away from her. The pain in her wrists was mostly gone, but her legs still ached; she'd probably been sitting on them for a full 24 hours. She stayed where she was and called out after him, "So you don't know anything useful? Just stupid rambling and an awful pun for a slogan?"
He didn't respond. She couldn't chase after him, her legs were still sore. She didn't want to tempt fate any more than she had already.

Priscilla Locke couldn't see herself. Looking down she couldn't see her own body. She was in her house; the second floor of a modest duplex their grandparents had spent their fortune on long before the Cuban influx had sent the well-off Whites fleeing north, and then before the re-gentrification which brought the neighborhood's value back up. The first floor was a dank, mildew-infested tomb. Everyone that had been stuffed down there ceased to be recognizable as human.
Rhiannon was there, standing in front of the couch and looking at her, expressionless. She was dressed in what had become her usual attire; a turquoise tank top, worn-out jeans, and a red plaid jacket wrapped around her waist. She didn't wear the same thing every day yet for some reason Priss could not remember her in any other attire.
"What's wrong with you?" Priss asked cautiously, not wanting to rile her up.
Rhiannon didn't move, her voice sounding weak and meandering, "Do you know why I did what I did?"
Priss's vision reddened as if the house had suddenly caught fire. A hot rush of pain went through her, then she broke down and started to sob.
"You did- You did it for me…"
Rhiannon didn't move, but her voice was closer, "You don't belong here, Prissy. You never have, from the day you were born. You've done all you could to try to fit in, to change yourself, to change what you could in the world as best you could but you never succeeded. You never fit in and you never will because you just don't belong here."
She looked up again and saw Rhiannon looking back down at her, tears welling in her eyes.
"Everyone else."
Rhiannon shook her head, "I don't care about anyone else. I care about you. I love you, Prissy."
Priss stared up at her incredulously, "You killed everyone else. Billions. They're all dying because of you."
Rhiannon shook her head, "I got some people killed. At Key Biscayne. That is my crime and I've paid for it."
"I'm not talking about Key Biscayne."
Rhiannon sat back on the couch, "How would an under-employed woman in her mid-20s with few friends and fewer prospects have managed to set loose a highly contagious and highly lethal anomalous bacteria in southern China without ever leaving her neighborhood on the other side of the world?"
"Someone in your…"
"Maybe. But how? It's not from this world."
"Someone with access to an Anabasis."
"Like you."
Priss looked down at Rhiannon, suddenly fearful. This wasn't the real Rhiannon Locke. This wasn't actually their house. She knew it was all in her head. So the idea could only have come from herself.
"Are you saying it's me?"
"You don't belong here, Priss."
"I'm not… from this world."
"I love you, Priss. You're the only thing that matters to me."
"I'm not from this world."
She woke up suddenly. Her hands and arms still twitched and jerked but her body had settled down. She lifted her head and immediately fell back onto the pillow. They kept her room clean but the bed she lay on was still smeared and caked in blood. She had settled down enough to have an IV in her and nasal tubes in her nose. The cold oxygen stung her sinuses and dried blood still caked them. For the most part it was over, and she was alive.

Locke had spent 65 hours in near-constant motion, writhing, thrashing, bleeding, and suffering. The bacterial infection died off slowly, all while giving off the same symptoms in her that had been experienced by nearly a billion others who had succumbed and died to the same bacterium. She probably wasn't the only one immune, but she had the luxury of living on the other side of the world, contained and secured, and in the right position to be of help to others.
But first, she slept. They spent a full week keeping her quarantined, cleaning her up, cleaning her bed, and monitoring her. Through it all she slept, waking up only long enough to eat and drink and struggle to give barely cogent responses to simple questions leveled to her by people in full hazmat suits. By the end of the week, she woke up to find a D-Class serving her, unprotected and looking unconcerned. She scowled. Disgusting to abuse D-Class to test if someone was still infectious. She saw the same D-Class the next day and the day after. Another week went by before Marlowe herself came in to see her, unprotected.
"What happened to Sharpe?"
Marlowe frowned, still looking over Locke's limbs. Her toes and her fingers still twitched and tensed. She had to ask her again before Marlowe responded.
"She's alive. Not doing as well as you. But you've definitely helped. We're working on antidotes now. Testing them. Also working on a vaccine."
Locke lifted her head and tried to look past her, out the small window in the thick door, "Testing on who?"
Marlowe turned to face her, resenting the unspoken implication in her tone, "It's here. It crossed the ocean. We thought it would dissipate but it made it to California. We're sending samples of your blood to test with some possible antidotes, but it's going to get much harder. We're in a state of emergency and civilian air traffic has been shut down. People are being evacuated east."
Locke twisted her head about, cracking her neck and sitting upright in her bed. She was sore all over, and the acid reflux had stuck around. How long had it taken for her to come down to this miserable state? How many years would it take to get a working vaccine? How long would it take to vaccinate tens of millions going through what she'd gone through at the beginning?
"You should also probably know… There's been an uprising. Political stuff, a few uprisings around the country. But really bad here, specifically. Hispanic militants out west, Doral and Kendall. They've been moving fast. Very fast, very well organized. It's gotten bad."
Locke furrowed her brow, "How bad?"
Marlowe shrugged, "Foundation agents have been infiltrating and trying to set up contact with the leader or leaders…"
"What does that mean?"
Marlowe sighed, "I don't know, it's political stuff, Locke. I'm not in charge of that kind of thing."
"You mean the Foundation expects these militants will take over Miami and so they're looking to buddy up with them?"
"It wouldn't be the first time."
Locke sighed and eased back onto her bed, "Well, that… That sounds like something you should probably be more involved in than just dismissing as 'political stuff', you know."
Marlowe clenched her jaw but said nothing. She stared vacantly at the IV bag for a long moment before speaking, "We're cockroaches."
"Maybe," Locke mumbled, "What?"
"We, the Foundation, we're cockroaches. We're everywhere and nowhere. Always just under the surface. We linger under the house and we don't concern ourselves with who moves in next."
Locke frowned but Marlowe turned and left before she could ask her to leave. She knew Marlowe was a pain in the ass to a lot of people but she never figured her to be such a fucking weirdo.

« The Beginning of All Things to End | Condemned to Live | In this Twilight »
Anabasis Hub


I saw him often, sitting on that rock and staring out across the vast ocean. He became a facet of my life that summer, a constant. He was normal, even if everything about him was anything but. Out of him came this power that I could barely understand, like a feeling deep in your bones. I've known powerful beings before, unspeakable echoes from a time before creation, their power flowing from them, evident to all like some testament to the universe itself. But his oozed almost sickly, as though some great well had begun to run dry. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have turned away. Sometimes the truth is better left unknown.
As I busied myself with petty things and the trappings of existence, I kept careful note of him. Not once did I see him depart, nor did I see him arrive. He was there, or he wasn't. Sometimes both. Perhaps I fancied myself Nick Carraway, watching the mysterious Jay Gatsby in his mansion. Perhaps I was Gatsby and the man was my greenlight. I am not far enough removed to tell you or to even know myself whether my interest in him was curiosity or envy. I would have been better off snaring the tides than to try to make a prisoner of him.

I still remember the night I first spoke to him. It was cool and the stars shone down like ten thousand gems lighting up the dark depths of the ocean. He was expecting me. Perhaps he had been watching me even as I had been watching him. I do not recall approaching him, nor do I remember sitting beside him. But in that instant, all the lights and sounds of humanity faded to nothing and I found myself on a primal island, untouched, virginal.
"Wh…Who are you? What happened?"
He turned to look at me and I saw a man unlike any other. His hands were rough as though he had toiled with stone and shell for untold millennia, his skin dark and tanned like leather. But in his eyes, I found the most peculiar heterochromia, a duality echoing that of humanity. In one, verdant green, I beheld a nurturing love unequaled and the love of the mother I had never known. In the other, a dark and wild blue, I saw only fury. A black unfeeling rage that will bend the mountains to their knees and turn their bones to sand. I was afraid, I was loved.
I could have stared into those eyes for ages, seeking to uncover the paradoxical soul behind them until the last star burned out of the sky, but my reverie was broken when he spoke my name. I cannot dream of putting it on paper, it was not something that could be constrained by a form. In one word, one inexplicable word, I felt my essence laid bare. Everything I was, everything I am, everything I will ever be was encompassed in a single word. I sat in stunned silence until he spoke again.
"I've noticed you watching me. You keep such studious notes, even though they will not survive the storm."
"What are you?" My voice trembled.
"I am what is, and what will always be." He chuckled with a humor I did not understand.
"What do you mean? 'Always will be?' "
"Look to the stars. What do you see? Do you see burning balls of gas or the lights of heaven."
I was a man of science, a doctor, yet I stumbled for words. "Balls of gas. Um.. Billions of miles away."
"Do you know how many have life, in this infinite universe? Do you know how many dead planets orbit a dying star?"
"Well, the universe isn't…"
"A few thousand. Each one a mere grain of sand scattered across a beach extending across all of existence. My master taught me that before She left me behind." He stared upwards, with a longing in his eyes that spoke of eons of separation.
"Your master?" Here stood a being who was beyond time, and the fact I had caught his attention set a terror in me that raged like fire.
"Look into that void, past the stars. That great and terrible expanse of Non-Existence and ask yourself. Are you worthy of the gifts bestowed upon you? What have you accomplished that merits the spark of life?"
I said nothing. I only sat and stared into the blackness of the Heavens above.
"When you can answer that question, come back to me."
All the clamor of the island rushed back to me, the music almost drowning out the crash of the surf and the lights dulling the stars. I wish I could say I welcomed the noise, but I longed to hear the sounds of unspoiled creation once more.

I am not a prideful man, nor do I strive for perfection, but I do not revel in the time I took to answer his question, for it took up much of my sabbatical. Three times I approached him and twice he rebuffed me.
First I came to him in the early hours of the morning and as the sun rose on the unspoiled beach, I regaled him with the stories of how I had protected humanity from nightmares, from aberrations, from oblivion. I told him of all the things I had done through the Foundation and how I had played my part in protecting our existence, but he simply shook his head and sadly told me that deeds could not prove my worth.
Next, I came to him and told him of the good I had done for others. The moon shone and faded as I showed him photographs of family and friends. I told him of love, of hate, of heartbreak, of joy. I poured out my existence to him and tried to show him how my life had touched others. But underneath the black night sky, he closed the photo album and told me that my legacy could not prove my worth.
Then on Midsummer's Night, I approached him with my final answer. He sat on his humble throne and as I came near, I did not notice the sounds of humanity weaken as they had always done before. Unnerved, I sat on the log next to him and waited for him to address me.
"Tell me, Michael Ganymede. How can you prove you are worthy of the gifts bestowed upon you?"
I gulped, trying to quell my anxiety long enough to speak. "I cannot."
"You cannot?" His voice grew somber.
"I can't. I mean, no one can. Nobody asked for the gift of life, so we can't really be worthy of it. I guess the only way to prove you deserve to live is by existing."
He chuckled. "You finally understand. It took me 200 years to answer that question for my master." Once again, I saw his longing as he turned his eyes to the stars.
"Who was your master?" I asked with great trepidation.
"She was the first, but now I am the last. There were once many more like me; guardians, caretakers, builders. But they have all faded." He spoke with such sorrow I felt it grip my heart. "Not even the Gods are exempt from nonexistence." A tear rolled down his cheek and he spoke no more.

It was then I began a tutelage of sorts under him. I will admit I stumbled through much of it, for how is a man to understand the mind of a God? How can a mortal vessel expect to learn the history of everything?
He told me about the tides, the eddies, and the flows of the currents. He would talk for hours about the length of the fins on a particular dogfish. His domain was the ocean and over it, he held power, absolute. When we were parted, I felt his touch when I walked the beaches or took to the sea by boat or simply to swim. I spent the summer with him and came to love him like I have loved no other. He was a father, a brother, a teacher, and a friend.
On those clear crisp nights under a blanket of stars, we would speak and I began to learn what no mortal has known about the Gods. He was the last of his master's first creations, of that he was sure. Of Her second creations, very few remained. He told me of a Shepard who wandered America, guiding the dead to their rest. When I asked about the others, he fell silent.
"Teacher, how do you prove your worth? As an immortal being, surely your gift is the greatest of all." I asked, ever eager. The question had been burning deep in my mind since we had first spoken. He turned away from me and looked towards the ocean, where distant white caps broke on a sandbar. I became afraid. Perhaps my familiarity had lead me to overstep my boundaries. I was preparing an apology when he finally answered.
"Would you like me to show you?" There was no passion in the answer, only a sense of finality.
"If you would like to show me, I would be honored to," I replied, perhaps too hastily.
"Follow me." Was his simple command and like a good student, I obeyed and walked into the dark waters, his hand holding mine.

Only I emerged from those waters. Alone utterly in this new existence. In an instant, I knew everything. How do I describe such a terrifying and wonderous revelation? How could I? Words cannot encompass this feeling of absolute being. The spark of life within me grew to a raging star, burning eternally. All I could do was weep. What a tortured existence is that of a God? This was not the path I sought. I never wished to carry this burden but now I have no choice. He made it for me.
I staggered onto that beach, gasping for air I no longer needed. As my hands grasped the soft sand, I felt the lights of a trillion lives beneath the water. All of them spoke to me at once, a cacophony of misery, of fear. I screamed, trying to block out the madness before it destroyed me utterly. In my mania, I did not notice the tide retreat from the shore or the winds that grew to tear the trees from the earth. But I did hear the screams as the wrath of the hurricane was visited on that peaceful island.
Lying prostrate on the beach, I thought of him. His mantle fell on my shoulders as soon as I walked beneath the waves and I knew the answer to my question. I am his greatest deed. I am his legacy. And I am his reason to be. How do you cope with that? How do you process this? Rather than pass to the world beyond like his brethren, he chose to remain at his post out of loyalty and love. Surely no master could ask for a more loyal servant?
I found my peace in the eye of the storm. As the voices inside me grew quiet, so did the wind and the waves and a bright sun shone. I gazed upon the desolation I had caused. Every human life on that island had been extinguished, of their creations none remained. In my remorse, I constructed a monument of living coral upon that beach, engraved with the names of every human who's lives I had cut short. If the Foundation comes to this graveyard, then they will find this account and know it is not my fault. How bizarre! A God asking for forgiveness?
Surely he knew I would unleash this devastation? Why would a God chose such a broken vessel? Perhaps he chose me because he knew some part of me I did not. Perhaps it was destined. Perhaps the pain of existence grew so great that he was forced to pass it on to me, a hapless fool. All I ever wanted was him and now I must wait until the stars burn out of the skies to see him again. But for now, I must carry his legacy through the absurdity of infinity.


Doctor Isabel Helga Anastasia Parvati Wondertainment V stared at a stick.
It was, technically speaking, a magic stick, but there are some things so dully mundane that just slapping the descriptor ‘magic' in front of them doesn't do a whole lot to spice them up, and a stick is one of those things.
It was also a big stick; about three feet long. Not long enough to use for a walking stick though; not at her height, at least. Its size and its magic were its two solely remarkable features. Yep. It was a big, magic, stick.
There was nothing more to be said about it.
Isabel ‘hmmed' and ‘hawed' over it for a few minutes, occasionally poking it to see if it would do anything, before tossing it aside for three of her Jeremies to play with.
“Emma, may I see that note again please?” she requested of her assistant.
“Of course, Ma'am,” Emma replied curtly, picking up the note that her employer had unceremoniously tossed to the ground without a second thought and handing it back to her. The ornate letterhead bore the logo of Marshall, Carter, & Dark at the top, followed by a calligraphic ‘From The Desk Of Iris Dark'.
“To Doctor Isabelle,” Isabel tossed her head back and groaned after reading only the first three words (and ‘to' seemed more like half a word, so not even three words). “Master of Nomative Magic and she spells my name wrong?"
"Would you prefer me to read it for you, Ma'am?"
Isabel threw it in the air again as she slumped back in her chair, only for Emma to catch it with a precision honed from years of Isabel throwing stuff that ought not be thrown.
“To Doctor Isabelle Helga Anastasia Parvati Wondertainment, I wish to extend my sincere and -”
“She forgot the V too? That's like the best part of my name!”
“ – my sincere and heartfelt -”
“Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me 'V',”.
“- gratitude for your services in rescuing me from the deepest and most horrific dungeons of The Factory.”
“Absolutely nothing about that sentence seems sincere or heartfelt. ‘Deepest and most horrific dungeons', blah! She sounds like an old British fantasy novel.”
"That doesn't exactly sound like an insult, Ma'am."
“Well, it is.”
…
“Would you like me to finish it?”
“Please.”
“As a token of my appreciation, please accept this handcrafted staff of thaumaturgically reactive Ravelwood, which I am certain a mage of your calibre can put to good use.
“Yours Truly, Iris Dark.”
Isabel glared at the stick as Jeremy balanced it vertically on his nose like a dog treat.
“How much is Iris Dark worth, do you think?” she pondered.
“That's somewhat hard to say since MC&D is a privately held company, but based on what information is available, a conservative estimate of her net worth would be at least 40 billion US dollars, and that's excluding anomalous and unique assets that cannot be traditionally appraised,” Emma replied.
“And what's that stick worth?”
“Literally less than nothing. It's yard waste. People would pay to get rid of it,” was Emma's matter-of-fact response.
“But it's a magic -”
“Stick, yes.”
“But it's a… big -”
“Again, stick.”
“But -”
“Stick.”
“Ohhh.”
Isabel hung her head in defeat, lazily shuffling her Heelyed feet back and forth.
“I suggest we let Jeremy keep it and move on to other matters,” Emma said. She waited patiently for a moment, but Isabel seemed determined to sulk. “If you really want, we can send Ms. Dark a letter expressing your dissatisfaction with -”
“I got it!” Isabel screamed, grabbing a pen and rapidly scribbling and jotting in her notebook. Less than a minute later she shoved the hastily finished blueprint in her assistant's face. “Wha'd'ya think?”
“I think I'm nearsighted and haven't the slightest idea what you've drawn,” Emma said truthfully.
“Good enough for me!” Isabel declared as she leapt to her feet and rolled into the hall. “Come Jeremy, and bring the yard waste!”
Jeremy barked in the affirmative, scurrying as fast as he could on his little legs while keeping the stick upright.

In the Workshops of Wonder, the song Lollipop by the Cordettes played on a continuous loop as Dr. Wondertaintment poured various ingredients into a stainless-steel vat. Sugar and water, of course, a few trademarked Wondertainment secrets, and most importantly of all, tiny bubbles for holding Wonderlight.
Isabel stirred the concoction with her stick, reciting rhyming couplets of spells as silly as they were ancient, her eyes shining brightly as she did so, never once looking away from the vat.
When she deemed the boiling brew to be ready, she poured some of it into a spherical mould she had prepared beforehand and shoved the stick into it until it hardened.
While she waited, she poured the rest of the mix onto multiple cooling tables where she applied several shades of pink and purple food dyes. When they were ready, she stretched them out by hand, wearing cotton gloves to give the candy an extra shine. Pulling and rolling them all into a single striped tube, she curled them into a swirl lollipop two feet across. Instead of a stick, she affixed it with a pair of hot pink nylon straps on the back.
She rolled some left-over lollipop into a small orb and stuck it onto the rear of the wooden stick. She broke the mold on the top end and immediately plunged the still warm candy head into a chilled tank of Cherry Causta Cola™, quenching it rapidly. When the cola finally stopped boiling, Isabel pulled the giant lollipop out to inspect her work.
“Emma!” she shouted. “I need you to make an appointment.”

The Workshops of Wonder were located in Doggerland, AKA the North Sea during the last Ice Age when the sea levels were lower. Reginald Wondertainment, liking the name of the place, decided to engage in retro-active Climate Denial and believe it was still above water so he could headquarter his company there. Those who objected to this decision on the grounds that it made absolutely no sense only encouraged him further. As such, The Workshops of Wonder presided over a lovely corner of English/Scandinavian countryside that by all logic should have been submerged, making mad whimsy essential for the inhabitants' very survival.
While being time-phased 12,000 years in the past (or at least that was the closest thing to a scientific explanation to what was going on) served as an excellent safeguard against enemy attacks, it did make shipments and business meetings a bit tricky. Emma largely negated that though, with her innate comprehension of the mathematics of intersecting, higher-dimensional worldlines.
Sure enough, exactly as Isabel, Emma, and Jeremy, reached the Doctor Wondertainment ‘Seriously, Don't Try This At Home Kids!' Testing Range™, they were greeted by a purple Porsche pulling into a parking space.
“Icky, Lolly, how'ya doing? Thanks so much for coming. Did you have any trouble finding the place? You didn't just drive into the water, did you? Some people do that. You don't look like you did that though. You look dry to me. Are you thirsty actually? Can I get you something? We probably have the biggest selection of sugary drinks anywhere in, ah…” Doctor Wondertainment trailed off as Icky shifted her Porsche into ‘Park' and greeted her with a silent, intimidating glare. “…are you still mad at me? You look mad. Please say you're not still mad at me. How can you still be mad at me? It's been… days, at least? I'm not sure, I'm not good with calendars. My dad once demanded one of our staffers take down a pin-up calendar in a room I frequented because he didn't think it was good for me, but I didn't understand why and he wouldn't explain why so I just developed a deep-seated mistrust of all calendars.”
Icky folded her hands and waited for a moment until she was certain Isabel was done speaking.
“You enabled my business partner, and oldest friend, to go on a suicidal mission to The Factory,” she reminded her coldly.
“And I saved him from The Factory, so it cancels out,” Isabel claimed.
"Now Icky, we've been over this. You and I take dumb risks all the time, and Manny doesn't hold that against us, so we don't have any right to be mad at him or Wondertainment,” Lolly soothed her, sympathetically rubbing her arm.
“But when we do something stupid, we're just acting on impulse! We don't plan it out ahead of time!” Icky objected.
“That doesn't make it better. It's worse, if anything,” Lolly whispered. Icky groaned in reluctant agreement.
“So everything's cool then?” Isabel asked hopefully. Icky swung her head back around at her, her expression even more livid than before.
“We've also yet to received so much as an apology for the time when we were gay-bashed by a giant robot at Wonder World!" she exclaimed.
“Tee Emm, and I told you I can't control what Wonder World™ does, they think I'm a cartoon!” Isabel vindicated herself.
"And you were technically resisting arrest," Emma chimed in. Isabel spun around and made rapid throat-cutting gestures at her while shaking her head.
“Ahhhh…. Oh my god, is that Jeremy?" Lolly asked, desperately trying to change the subject. She hopped out of the Porsche and immediately began cuddling the corgi. "Hi, little guy! Who's a naughty boy sneaking into our girls-only meeting? That's right, you are! You're a naughty boy! Yes, you are! Yes, you -"
She collapsed into a fit of giggling as the dog licked her face. As they played, Isabel took off her hat and assumed an apologetic posture towards Icky.
“Listen, I really want us and our two businesses to get along,” she began. “And I admit that the whole Factory debacle was at least partially my fault, and Wondertron 9000™ was my dad's robot, so I feel somewhat responsible for that as well, which is why I want to make a peace offering.”
Icky closed her eyes, released a deep breath through her nose, and stepped out of the car.
“So, what is it, then?” she asked, impatiently folding her arms across her chest.
“Yes! You're going to love it! So, when I dropped Manny off, and you had Lolly take out her mallet to… intimidate us, let's say, I noticed that the head was held on with tape,” Isabel explained.
“It got decapitated in a fight with Able,” Lolly claimed as she got up from the ground and wiped off the dog slobber.
“Right, so I – wait, really? Ah, it doesn't matter. So, I thought you could use a replacement, but not exactly the same since the hammer made you, kind of, well, ah… Emma?”
“You're a pallet swap of Harley Quinn,” Emma said frankly.
“Yeah, that.”
Both Icky and Lolly twisted their faces in shock at the accusation.
“I. Am. Not!” Lolly gasped. “Other than the hammer, I have nothing in common with Harley Quinn that doesn't fall under the umbrella of being a female Clown! Sure, I watched Batman The Animated Series as a kid, and I liked Harley, so I can't say that I was completely uninfluenced by her depiction, but I am not just a palette swap of her!”
“… Batman TAS was great, wasn't it?” Isabel asked. “The schizo tech is a little weird at times, though. People are working on typewriters and Batman has video calling in the Batmobile? Though maybe that's just economic inequality.”
“Ma'am,” Emma prodded gently.
“Right, focus. So I was thinking that since your hammer's broken and possibly subject to copyright infringement, I can make you something better! And why rip off DC when you can rip off Marvel? Emma, show them what I'm talking about.”
Emma opened up a velvet-lined wooden chest to display the fruits of Doctor Wondertainment's handiwork. Inside was a three-foot-long sucker-style lollipop with a dark, lacquered stick, sparsely studded with pink sapphires. The candy head was a bright, sparkling, faintly luminescent pink, and bore a raised equator embossed with Wondertainment W's. The candy was slightly translucent, and at the center, a very small bright spot could just barely be made out. The other end held a much smaller orb of shiny pink and purple swirl candy, and each end was bound by a brass ring.
Isabel took it out and presented it to Lolly, holding it so that she could read a golden inscription along its length:

‘Whosoever holds this novelty-sized lollipop, if she be worthy, shall possess the power of The Wonder-Maker'.

Lolly's eyes went wide and bright as she gently ran her fingers along it.
“The stick is Ravelwood, isn't it?” she asked in quiet astonishment.
“Yes. Extremely rare. Next to impossible to get a hold of,” Isabel said, with a brief darting of her eyes. “It will channel your own magical energies into the candy, which is made from alchemically enhanced saccharose, infused with my own Wonderlight. Both the wood and the candy are nearly unbreakable - Doctor Wondertainment is not legally or financially liable for any orthodontic damage incurred during attempts at mastication - and you can use it to enhance your own magic, both in defense and for your act. A big lollipop seemed thematically appropriate for you, Li'l Lollipop.”
“You put your own Wonderlight into this?” Lolly asked in disbelief. “I… I can't accept this. It's too much.”
“I want you to have it,” Isabel insisted. Lolly looked up at her and the two of them locked gazes. Within Isabel's large, lavender eyes were countless specks of primordial energy; they were deep, boundless wells of cosmic wonder, and in that moment Lolly knew she was not speaking simply to Isabel, but to the Wonder-Maker. “Lolly, I could tell from the second I first saw you that you're filled with Wonderlight. That despite being a Freak who's constantly on the run from Jailors and Book Burners, despite the horrors you've experienced and the people you've lost, despite knowing truly Eldritch evils exist, and even just in spite of the more mundane suffering of enduring bigotry and having a neglectful mother, you've never lost your sense of Wonder, your joie de vivre, your unflappable hope that things will get better and your dauntless drive to make them better. Your passion to share that Wonder with others is what led you to the Circus, and would have led you to us if we'd been lucky enough to find you first. Your Wonderlight shines bright, little one, and the world is more wonderful for it. So please, take my gift, and keep that light safe for me.”
Lolly nodded as joyous tears of near-religious rapture fell down her cheeks.
“Thank you, Wonder-Maker,” she gasped softly, clutching the Wondrous lollipop to herself as Icky cradled her and wiped her tears. The light in the Wonder-Maker's eyes retreated back to their hidden depth, and before them was Isabel Wondertainment V once more.
“And get this; it comes with an accessory!” She reached into the chest and pulled out the swirl lollipop shield she had made with the leftover candy base. “This isn't quite as powerful without the Ravelwood, but the more energy it absorbs the stronger it gets, and it's enchanted to attract projectiles so it will even protect the parts of you it doesn't cover. If I did my math right, even the Gocker's magitech bullets shouldn't get past this thing.”
“And it's Femme Pride colours! Yay!” Lolly squeed as she strapped it to her left forearm.
“Well, it's not exactly -”
"Any colours, iconography, designs, catchphrases, mannerisms, or combat maneuvers used in Wondertainment products bearing similarities to those utilized by any and all identifiable individuals or social groups are purely coincidental and should not be interpreted as endorsement or condemnation of said individuals or groups,” Emma recited.
“What she said,” Isabel said, pointing at her assistant. “If you want to test those out, I've already set up some live-fire exercises for you to complete.”
“Oh, can we Icky? Can we, can we, can we, please?” Lolly pleaded. Icky glanced out at the testing range nervously, then back to Lolly, guiltily biting her lip.
“… Don't tell Manny.”

“Ready, baby girl?” Icky shouted as she stood at the start of the testing range, all of her trick cards held in a purple aura, orbiting around her.
“Ready Icky,” Lolly shouted from about fifty feet away, her lollipop hammer in her right hand and her shield in her left.
Icky immediately flicked her cards at her, one after the other in rapid succession at ballistic speeds, each aimed at a slightly different target. Lolly sprinted off, her shield held high, with the cards giving chase. No matter where they had been aimed, once they drew near they inevitably veered off course and crashed into the shield, the aura flickering out and falling harmlessly to the ground. Icky followed in close pursuit, telekinetically gathering her cards as she did so, and once she had every one of them she sent all 54 of them zooming at Lolly simultaneously in a diamond pattern. Lolly slid to a stop and slammed the shield into the volley, creating a shockwave that sent them flying in all directions, dispersing them enough to keep Icky busy for a bit.
From the watchtower overlooking the testing range, Emma noted this and flipped a switch to deploy an army of Straw Men; Straw Gollums made physically and mentally in the image of a G.O.C. strike team, and easily put back together afterward.
The Straw Men charged straight for Lolly, firing assault rifles loaded with magitech bullets. Just as Isabel had promised, they all veered straight into the shield and ricocheted off in every direction. They were defenseless as Lolly vented her full hatred of the Coalition against them, bashing each into debris with a single forceful strike of her hammer. Once the first squad was taken care of, Emma released another. Before they could even get close to Lolly she threw the hammer so that it spun as rapidly as a saw blade. It plowed through each of the Gollums and returned to her like a boomerang, leaving nothing standing in its wake.
Emma flipped another switch, deploying several small bi-wing fighter crafts, each piloted by a Jeremy. Each one swooped down at Lolly from a different direction, successfully employing evasive maneuvers to avoid her hammer throws. It was then that Lolly noticed the shield looked an awful lot like a Frisby.
"Hey, Jeremy? Wanna play fetch?" she asked, waving the shield enticingly. "Go get it, boys!"
All of the corgis immediately chased after it, barking excitedly, crashing straight into Emma's watchtower. The planes were all destroyed in fiery explosions, but each Jeremy had been able to eject and adorably descend to the ground in colourful parachutes. Just as Emma reached for another switch, she felt the tower begin to lurch. The support struts had been critically damaged by the explosions, and the entire tower collapsed to the ground. As Emma pulled herself out from the wreckage, she saw Lolly standing triumphantly in front of her, waggling her shield.
“Anything else?” she asked smugly. Her answer came in the form of footsteps so mighty they shook the earth beneath them. She spun around, and there in all its glory was Wondertron Prime™ – a forty-foot tall slaughterbot with a Gatling gun for a right hand, a hydraulic claw for a left, an electro-thaumic laser visor, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, and a nuclear reactor in its chest. Legend had it that Reginald Wondertainment made it to fight the Obskuracorps during the Seventh Occult War. In the chaos it had ended up in the hands of the Soviets who kept it for the duration of the Cold War, and had disappeared entirely after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“COMMUNISM IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF DOCTOR WONDERTAINMENT,” it announced in a glitchy yet booming voice. Several sweet seeking missiles were launched from its shoulders, and Lolly immediately threw the shield as a decoy and fled in the other direction. Wondertron Prime™ fired its Gatling gun with wild abandon, ensuring Lolly couldn't go back for the shield. She'd be forced to take the offensive, and take the robot out before it could do the same to her.
She spotted the fallen remains of the Straw Men and summon them to the lollipop's head, forming flaming balls of straw which she batted off towards Wondertron Prime™. The robot's electro-thaumic laser served as an excellent point-defense system, shooting down each blazing projectile before it could do any harm. This did, however, give Lolly enough cover to zig-zag up to the robot without getting shot. She was now too close to Wondertron for it to fire any of its weapons without inflicting damage on itself as well.
It tried to grab her with its massive claw, but she adroitly weaved in and out of its grasp while striking blow after blow on its metal hide. She smashed its guns, its claw, its rocket launchers, and even smashed in its face to destroy its laser vision, and yet Wondertron Prime™ still stood. Charging the lollipop with as much magic as she could, Lolly leapt superhumanly high in the air, gracefully somersaulting as she did so, and then fired a beam of Wonderlight straight into the robot's atomic chest as fell back downwards.
The result was an explosion just big enough to create a Mushroom Cloud, which would have killed everyone within a half a kilometer radius; however, remember that the entire testing range also should have been underwater, so there's no sense in getting physics involved now.
Nonetheless, Isabel, Emma, Icky, and the Jeremies all rushed towards the smoldering crater to ensure Lolly was alright.
“I love it!” Lolly screamed as she jumped out and embraced Doctor Wondertainment in a ferocious bear hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you… though, the inscription really should say ‘they'. Using ‘she' as a default is just as exclusionary.”
“Heh. You, ah, you can't turn that off, can you?” Isabel chuckled.
“Nope,” she smiled proudly. “Icky, forgive Wondertainment for everything right now or I'm never having sex with you again.”
Icky laughed, and happily nodded in agreement.
“I could never stay mad at a pretty girl anyway,” she said, bowing slightly and kissing Isabel's hand. “We accept your very generous peace offering. All's forgiven.”
“Yes! Spectacular! Emma, celebratory sodas for everyone!” Isabel ordered. Emma glanced around the desecrated testing range, to see if there was any chance anything they had brought with them was still intact.
“I shall return with them shortly Ma'am,” she replied, setting off for the nearest vending machine.
“I want cream soda!” Lolly shouted.
“While we're waiting for her to get back, I did have a proposition I'd like to discuss with you two now that we're friends,” Isabel said.
“Yes!” Icky replied with suspicious enthusiasm. Isabel squinted at her in confusion.
“It's about a tie-in toyline for the lollipop hammer,” she clarified.
“Oh,” Icky said, Lolly giving her a gentle slap on the arm for her over-eagerness. “Sorry. Tell us more.”

The Executive Board (or Board of Directors. Isabel used the term interchangeably as she didn't know or care to know what the difference was) stared in glum disapproval at the video projection of Lolly destroying their testing range using Doctor Wondertainment's latest prototype.
“As you can see, Li'l Lollipop's Little Lollipop™ by Doctor Wondertainment is capable of single-handedly taking out multiple combatants, Class III-IV local reality-bending, and generating kiloton-range Wonderlight blasts,” Isabel extolled the virtues of her latest creation. “As such, it will be limited to the American market, and should come with ‘an ages 3 and up' sticker.”
The Board members exchanged glances at each other, though none of them had eyes, and it was their Chairman who was the first to speak.
“Doctor Wondertainment, would you kindly show us your actual prototype,” he requested impatiently.
“That was my actual prototype.”
“No, that was a sacrificial lamb to make your actual prototype seem reasonable by comparison. Please stop wasting our time and show us what you actually want us to vote on.”
“I – oh, fine. Emma!”
Emma handed a foot-long version of the lollipop hammer to each of the Board Members, along with a product proposal sheet.
“Those are made with ordinary wood, and the formula for the candy has been significantly diluted,” Isabel explained. “It should allow for limited animation of toys, transmutation of water into sugary drinks, changing colours of clothing, harmless stuff like that. We'll make them in more than just pink to appeal to a broader market. We'll sell them primarily through the Circus of the Disquieting, who will also provide primary marketing for it with Lolly's Big Top performances. And the inscription isn't a copyright problem. I checked.”
The Board Members, examining the toys and reading over the proposals, nodded in calculated agreement.
“I do have one question, doctor,” the Chairman said, his calm tone barely containing his anger. “Why did you deem it necessary to destroy Wondertron Prime™ just to test the full-sized version?”
“… He was a communist, sir. It was a matter of patriotism,” Isabel claimed. “You're not suggesting that I let the Red Menace walk amongst us freely, are you comrade?”
The old man sighed, and, having no more patience for Isabel's games, marked the project proposal with his stamp of approval, with the other Board Members immediately following suite.
Isabel smiled a triumphant, mischievous smile. She had diluted the formula, that was true, but not by as much as she claimed. The lollipops held the potential to be far more than mere toys, and in the right kids' hands, if they be worthy, would wield the power of the Wonder-Maker.

« How Is Your Name? | Dread & Circuses Hub | Beating A Dead Horse With A Dead Canon »


June 1st, 1938
To the Council of Overseers,
I would consider the recent arguments against containing the transuranic process beneath comment were they not so persuasive to those who ought to know better.
If you on the Council believe the matter is "in hand" you are grossly mistaken. Our monopoly on this phenomenon is pure illusion. The Overseers can either get serious about developing long-term permanent containment procedures - or watch world governments exploit Element 94 with consequences beyond my ability to speculate. Without immediate, massive intervention, scientists and laboratories beyond our reach will be manufacturing this material, unconstrained and ill understood, within the next year.
To answer a common protest - it is true, we understand the mathematics of fission and fusion far better than the Telekill alloy, or the Lizard, or the creeping hungry sands of Thule. It is also true that fusion powers our sun, upon which all life depends - but we don't live on the sun. Consider this math:
There are only three hundred pounds of refined uranium in the United States. There is less than a gram of Element 94 in the whole world.
Fermi's process will produce ten thousand grams of it in the first five years.
More than our Pile-19 reactor could produce in a century. Totally beyond Foundation control.
We are no longer talking about cheap electricity or watches that glow in the dark. We are talking about bombs which the Foundation has never been reckless enough to make, with more destructive power than a dozen angry reptiles.
Perhaps the American government will "merely" build a fission reactor. That doesn't seem so harmful. But consider our own experiences with mass production. The material requirements of our fission project are absurd even for this organization. Ten thousand square feet of lead plating eight inches thick. More protective clothing and surgical implements consumed each week than a major hospital. Storing everything exposed to the last containment breach is almost as difficult as operating the reactor itself!
How can this possibly be beyond our purview or our interest? Because containing the enrichment process will be hard? No harder, I think, than convincing the telescopes of the world not to look too closely at the Crab Nebula, nor getting divers to avoid that big fish off Tierra del Fuego. Fermi is expendable, Szilard and Leona Wood as well. That alone would buy us considerable time.
I believe this is the root of the matter: the team in Chicago has stung your pride, so now you sulk. Nobody in this organization can admit that they are doing something grander, and doing it faster, than our teams were able.
And so we talk about the sun. We talk about the periodic table and reproducibility. But we don't talk about the consequences of accepting this substance as a normal part of our world. That's because if transuranic mass production is a "normal" phenomenon, then what is about to happen won't be our fault.
But there is nothing normal about a one million percent increase in supply of the most dangerous thing in the world.
Once allowed to proliferate, Element 94 will be out of human hands. At that time we will no longer discuss containment, but survival.
Again I urge the Council to intervene. Element 94 is unlike any other Keter ever encountered, much less contained. And no arguments about physics or formulas change the fact that all the consequences of Fermi's work are our responsibility, and our choice.
Inaction is your prerogative - but Plutonium is not going back in the bottle.


SCiPNET LOGIN

                                                    name

                                                    affiliation

        3e3d83a5b71c1c59a95273b5fc54fec6_1706537999

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09/09/████
Today I discovered a new anomaly.
The Jealousy of man.
Hear me out, it's not ordinary.
People get jealous, and it ruins them. It causes them to spend every waking second they have attempting to ruin another person's life and take what they have. Jealousy is a memetic phenomenon, and it's destroying all of us.
One
By
One.

09/10/████
I've discovered another anomaly.
Nighttime isn't normal. Nighttime strips us of our energy. Nighttime causes us to go to sleep
No this isn't normal everyone thinks it is.
But they don't see it.
We're meant to be meant to be awake, spending 24 hours showing the world what we can do.
But then
This motherfucking sleep comes along and strips it away
It's not normal

09/11/████
Why do some people not understand that I am very smart
aa

09/12/████
SCP-001 is the nighttime
because it shouldn't exist
but it does
09/13/████
I've discovered another anomaly
A memetic phenomenon that makes people run out of ideas
It sucks away their creativity

09/14/████
you know, I should start writing these on the database

09/15/████
Item #: SCP-0000
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-0000 cannot be contained.
Description: SCP-0000 is the jealousy of man. SCP-0000 has affected an estimate of 78% of the population. The origin of SCP-0000 is unknown, but it has been discovered that SCP-0000 can be provoked by intense emotion.
SCP-0000 was initially believed to be an ordinary human emotion. On 09/09/████, while investigating an unrelated call, Agent Scarlett witnessed a child kick the ground and explode. It is assumed that she was jealous of another child's toy.

I think that sounds good

09/16/████
I've discovered another anomaly
fucking elizabeth wilbert
she's anomalously a bitch

09/17/████
I posted another anomaly to the database today
take that one down too
elizabeth

09/18/████
that was not a challenge

09/21/████
took a break from writing
I have another anomaly

09/23/████
okay posted new anomaly

09/25/████
elizabeth said she banned me from accessing the database
but I can still access it
fuuuuuuuuuuk you

09/29/████
A single shining star
Crashing to the ground
It's all because of you
Bottom text
The moon is in the sky
The moon is shining bright
Everyone likes the moon
I've never liked the moon
SCP-0000
Object Class: Blank
SCP-0000 is human jealousy
It plagues everyone on this earth
The moon is full
The moon is shining in my face
The moon blinds my eyes
I want to blow up the moon
You can't shine sun
I'm the fucking moon
And I ultimately steal your spotlight
Fuck you
Fuck the stars
Fuck the moon
Fuck the night
Bottom text
SCP-0000 is why people don't like me
SCP-0000 is why the moon blinds me
The moon is jealous of me
The moon silences me
I will not be silenced
I will shine in the day
I will show the world my discoveries
Fuck off moon
My name is Epon Scarlett
Agent Epon Scarlett
Ignore otherwise
Bottom text

10/01/████
Item #: SCP-0000
Object Class: Tragic
Special Containment Procedures: N/A
Description: SCP-0000 is the fact that many people don't understand Agent Scarlett. He discovers amazing new anomalies only to be shot down. The only explanation is an anomaly. SCP-0000 is a memetic phenomenon convincing people that all of Agent Scarlett's discoveries are fake when they are, in fact, real.

10/05/████
today I show them scp-0000

10/06/████
0000 is like 001
but better
because I made it and it's real

10/15/████
Item #: SCP-FUCK
Object Class: Sike
Special Containment Procedures: It is sadly not possible.
Description: SCP-FUCK is the fact that everyone is fucking stupid
Agent Scarlett's discoveries are very real
Addendum: haaaaahaa
Fuck the night

that ones going on the database tonight boys

10/27/████
lol they think im anomalous

10/28/████
im just better than them

11/05/████
I hate all of you

11/06/████
im gonna give them something to be jealous of if they love being jealous of me

11/10/████
fuuuuuuuuk u elizabeth my stuffs real

Additional Notes
By Prof. Elizabeth Wilbert

The logs seen above were written by POI-44008 (previously Dr. Epon Scarlett). POI-44008 is a reality altering entity (class undetermined), and is immune to amnestics and memetic hazards. Its location is currently unknown. Any information/updates regarding POI-44008 are to be reported to Prof. Wilbert as quickly as possible.
POI-44008 was scheduled for demotion due to reckless behavior. After demotion along with removal from the Foundation at a later date, it still had access to Foundation files. The Foundation was alerted, and investigation is ongoing.

fuuuuuuuuuuk u:)
— Agent Epon Scarlett