The unseasonal Christmas tree lighting did little to hide the grime of Maloof's interior. Marlin Wexler stared at his whiskey on the rocks. A drink with two ingredients - and the bartender had managed to fuck it up.
He checked his Rolex. Fifteen minutes late.
Marlin hated this bar. How he had to drive to the other side of Atlanta. The jukebox that only played awful Greek guitar music. The eight swordfishes Maloof had mounted to the walls. The cute sign mounted by the register, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." The chairs that felt like they would fall apart at a moment's notice. He hated that he was here on a Tuesday afternoon like some goddamned booze hound.
Most of all, he hated the thrill he got from being here.
By rights, this meeting should be taking place in the CIVIL-TV offices. They should be right in Marlin's executive suite, with the wide windows overlooking Peachtree. Marlin should be reclining in his leather chair, peering over his mahogany desk. He would look big, despite his slight frame and receding hair. He would feel big. He could talk about how, in three years, he had built this company from nothing into the leading provider of what Marlin delicately called "exotic entertainment." Whoever came to see him had to supplicate themselves before him and the temple of his own success.
That was how it was done, with him calling the shots. But every time, Vadasz was the one who decided where they would meet. And every time he chose here.
Every time, it was absolutely worth it. The first time he had come to Maloof's, he had walked out with six hours of tapes of Argentinian secret police torturing some dissident. It had taken maybe ten minutes to leak his plans to run it on CIVIL-TV's subscriber-only satellite channel to Amnesty International.
What they said about no bad publicity was true. Amnesty could call him "callous" and a "merchant of misery" all they wanted, but CIVIL-TV saw over six thousand new subscribers, each popping fifty bucks a month to get their rocks off or maybe just indulge in a bit of car-wreck curiosity.
Truth be told, he needed something like that again. With overseas investors coming into town, he needed something to dazzle them with.
Some big, sexy, tasteless program that would show that CIVIL-TV was just around the corner from being profitable. He had taken a risk after ABN, leveraging everything he owned into a rinky dink satellite operation. After two years, it was still hemorrhaging money. Operating costs were rising, and subscriber numbers had peaked before beginning a slow decline to the baseline.
He wouldn't go back to the sticks. Crawling back to Pollensbee, proving everything everyone had said right. Puffed up white trash who washed out and got fired from the first big city job he held.
What he was getting now was product. What he needed was a miracle.
As he waited, Marlin checked the television set peering down from ceiling corner.

A black screen with a picture of Ronald Reagan. Caption: "LEADERSHIP THAT'S WORKING".
White letters on a muted purple background. "WXVA-15, ABN Atlanta." Wipe to smiling anchors sitting behind a biege desk. "News you can trust!" Wipe to smiling TV stars. "Laughs for the family!"
An old lady in a peach dress leaps in silent joy. Behind her, a board flashes with blinking yellow and blue lights. Several people run up to hug her. Cut to a shot of a hotel sitting atop a white-sanded beach.

Vadasz entered through the far door. He was a rumpled suit of a man, his eternal five o'clock shadow intersecting the latticework of splotches on his cheeks and neck. Maybe that was why he insisted meeting here with its red and green lights. His bald spot peeked from beneath his slicked back hair. He wore a Tech sweatshirt and blue jeans, a plastic satchel slung over his shoulder. With grunt, he slumped into the stool opposite Marlin.
"You're late," Marlin grumbled.
Vadasz gave a smile half full of disintegrating teeth. "Good to see you too," he said, beaming. Without hesitation, he took Marlin's whiskey and began to drink.
Marlin considered protesting, but remembered the taste. Let him have it, he thought.
"Do you have the tapes?" he asked. The sooner he could be out of Maloof's and away from Vadasz, the better.
Vadasz opened the satchel and produced three video cassettes in unmarked blue plastic boxes. He slid them across the table.
"As requested, Human Lab Rat Volumes One, Two, and Four. Three literally doesn't exist," he said. "My guy say it's intense stuff, though. And coming from him… might wanna run it by legal? Or a coroner first? I made it three minutes."
"Jesus Christ, would you keep your voice down," Marlin hissed, "Do you even know what discretion is?"
Vadasz shrugged as he took a sip from what was now his drink.
"It's fine," he said, gesturing around the half-empty bar. "Most of the people here don't even know what day it is, and the rest of them just don't care."
Marlin glanced around. He to agree. A couple of punks in a corner booth, a couple of already-soused retirees, and a bored-looking bartender were the only witnesses to the exchange.
Vadasz put the glass down.
"Besides," he said, "having the tapes isn't a crime, not really. Now, broadcasting 'em? Might get you in some hot water. Producing them? That can be hard time, depending. But for legal purposes, all I am is a humble procurer, a finder and a maker of connections."
He shrugged. "Besides, it's not like you're the only person I sell to."
"Who else do you even sell to?" Marlin asked.
"Not at liberty to divulge," Vadasz said, a smirk playing at his lips. Marlin idly considered punching him in the face before nixing the idea. No sense in burning a connection for a little wounded pride.
Instead, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a small brown envelope. Without a word, he tossed it on the table.
Vadasz grunted into his sip of watered-down whiskey. He swept the envelope into his lap.
Marlin wanted to be out of this place, out of the presence of Lazslo fucking Vadasz, dragging him down into the muck. A shudder of disgust traveled along his back.
He wanted out of this place, with these tapes safely in a machine where he would never have to see them again. But he couldn't let Vadasz get the last word in.
"You ever watch your videos?"
"For editing and quality? Sure. Or do you mean making sure they're real? Definitely."
Marlin shook his head. "No, for fun."
"What? No, of course not." Vadasz's face crinkled, halfway between confusion and disgust.
"Why do this, then?" A note of genuine curiosity colored Marlin's words.
Vadasz shrugged. "Why do anything? I'm good at it, for one. I've got a lot of friends of friends of friends kinda things. Plus you have the thrill of the chase, all that kind of stuff? Why? Why do you do this?"
"Because I own a business. One which relies on people like these," he motioned at the bar patrons, "watching videos like yours."
Marlin leaned back, the rickety chair creaking at the pressure. "Keep me posted on anything that comes down the pipe in the meantime, yeah?"
Vadasz nodded and left.
Marlin Wexler sat alone in the bar, three cassettes worth of unspeakable violence and the remains of a whiskey on the rocks.

"I don't pay you for 'can't," Marlin said, "I pay you for 'do.'"
"Right, no, I get it. It's just there's not anything to be done on our end. The problem is all on the customer's side," Paul replied. He shook his head, ponytail wagging behind. The light from the monitors flickered in the lenses of his coke bottle glasses.

A dirty man in a torn jacket nods his head as a reporter asks a silent question.
Blocky robots leap into the air and turn into cars.
Shots of Reagan. A shot of Mondale speaking. Yellow text across the bottom. "Sunday, October 7th. 8 PM" The blocky ABN logo in the corner.
A well-dressed man walks into a lavishly-appointed living room, says a line, and pauses, smiling.
A man mouths a wordless scream as a whip comes down across his back. Zoom in on his hands clenching and unclenching. The leather tears into his skin again and again.

Marlin flinched and looked back to Paul.
"It's like this," Paul said, flattening his left hand and angling it towards the control panel. "Beam comes down from the satellite, right?" The hand sloped downwards, passing over a half-eaten slice of pizza and a heap of cassette tapes.
Paul's right hand rose up, perpendicular to the control panel. The left hand bounced off it, then continued its downward trajectory.
"Now this," he said, motioning his right hand, "is a jet or a weather vane or a flock of geese. Enough to knock the signal out of wack for a few milliseconds. The signal makes its way to the dish, but now you've got two signals coming in, one timed right, one timed a little bit off."
He spread his hands with a flourish. "And that's where the ghost comes from. Tell them to check and see if there are any radio towers or tall trees in the area and that should solve the problem," he said, leaning back.
"I'm not going to tell a paying customer to just figure it out himself. You're going to fix it," Marlin said, standing up and making his way to the exit.
"Marlin, that's what I've been telling you - short of a miracle, there's nothing we can do for this guy," Paul protested, "Especially not without messing up the signal for every other customer we have!"
Marlin walked to the door of the engineering room. As he passed into the hallway, he turned to face Paul. "You make images appear on screens across an entire continent. I pay you to perform miracles. If you can't handle it, I'll pay someone who can."
Without waiting for a response, he turned and headed down the hallway towards his office.
Outside the executive office, Jeannine was takking away at the word processor. She looked up from her typing as he approached. "Morning, Mr. Wexler," she chirped, "A young man in your office. He said it was urgent."
Marlin stopped, looking at the closed office door. It wasn't uncommon for people to come in with tapes of animal abuse or clumsily staged sex videos. Things that filled up the hours in between essential programming. Still, Jeannine usually had them drop off the tapes.
"Didn't you tell him to wait?" he asked. It was a genuine question. Jeannine was in her late forties and five foot nothing, but Marlin had seen her shout down men twice her size. She hadn't even needed to get up from her chair.
"Yes," she said, "but he was quite insistent. Something about a new tape. I rescheduled your eleven o'clock for three, so you should have some time."
Marlin nodded. "Thanks, Jeannine," he said. He opened the office door and headed inside.
The young man had his back to the door. He faced the big-screen television Marlin kept at the end of his office.
As Marlin entered, the young man turned in his chair, scratching at his neck. It looked as though he hadn't slept for a week. His yellow shirt was torn and dirty. Next to buttoned-down suburban dads, kids like him were his most reliable suppliers for mundane content.
"So," Marlin said, his voice sharp, "you have a video. Impress me, kid. Wow me with whatever you have."
The young man was silent for a moment. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tape.
"I found it. It was hard, but I found it," he said hoarsely.
"So what is it?" Marlin asked. He sat down at his desk, propping his feet up. In his drawer, he had a Colt. Sometimes it was necessary for when the cranks came in to present. This kid didn't seem like the type.
"It wasn't special. But everything that it is, that's special," the kid continued, "It tells you - man, it tells you all you ever need to know!"
Marlin leaned back and lit a cigarette. This was how sales should go.
"That's great and all, but before we talk cash, I'll want to see it," Marlin said. He took a long drag, then leaned back and exhaled towards the ceiling. With a nod of his head, he motioned for the kid to pop the tape into VCR.
The young man inserted the cassette, standing beside the television set. He seemed self-conscious the screen went black.

Interior shot of a large church. The audience is at least a thousand people. Shots of smiling people standing shoulder to shoulder. Their lips move in unison to a silent hymn as triumphal organ music plays.
Medium shot, framing the whole of the congregation. On the wall is hung a huge cross. The frame shakes violently for several seconds, then is still. The camera lurches to the doors. Three burly men in masks enter, then bar the doors. The congregants don't seem to notice. The masks look like that old wrestler from the space movie.

Marlin nodded. "Okay, okay."
The young man looked from the TV to Marlin, back to the TV. His brow was knitted with concern.

The organ music dies down. The congregation is singing the same tune. The words are too forceful almost to make out. It sounds like "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" but the words aren't all right.
One of the men takes out a cordless drill. The frame moves drunkenly, drawing closer, as if the cameraman is loping towards the scene. The frame tightens on the drill bit. The head blurs into motion as it slowly descends into the young woman's skull. The frame shifts to get a better view. The drill is fully inserted into her.
Blood leaks from her eyes and nose. She doesn't seem to notice as she continues to sing. The masked man pulls the drill out and she slumps to the floor, liquefied brain leaking from the hole in her head. Her fingers twitch slightly as she lies there. All around here, everyone continues to sing.

"Holy shit," Marlin mumbled.
He had seen people die on tape many, many times. Executions, botched surgeries, assorted tragic and impersonal accidents. What was always evident was the sheer artlessness of death. How sudden and awful the real thing was.
He had also seen countless "murders" on tape as well. People torn apart by dogs, decapitated, burned to death. Mewling torture victims dismembered by their captors. Bound men disemboweled with power tools. There was a artifice to them, a spot where you could identify the boundary between human and prop. It was that jump, that slight change in angle, that made these scenes more bearable than the grainy footage of pedestrians being crushed by semis.
There was no jump here. It was a single, uninterrupted shot of a woman being murdered. Marlin felt some small part of himself shrivel and die.
"No, no," said the young man. He was shaking his head.

The camera swings around. One of the masked men knocks a young girl in a blue dress to the floor. She can't be more than seven or eight. He raises a boot and stomps on her back. Again and again and again. The shot doesn't include her face, but the floor is soon covered in blood.

"No, man, this isn't it," the young man protested, "That isn't what this is. It's beautiful and, man, it's profound!"
"Son," Marlin began, turning his gaze from the girl to the man, "I'm prepared to offer you $300 for this tape." The going rate was around $2,000 for a medium budget "snuff" film, but the young man seemed like the sort who'd measure his fortune in vials.
The young man shook his head. "No, no. It's lying, get it? It - it - it says it loves you, then this! Don't you get it!?"

A black kid, looks to be around eleven, convulses as one the assailants begins to strangle him with gloved hands. A brown finger hooks into the eye hole of the mask. As the kid falls to the floor, the mask comes off.
The face of Marlin Wexler is revealed. He turns to the camera. As the kid's convulsions stop, Marlin smiles and waves at the viewer.

The bottom fell out of the world. Marlin was looking at shapes, forms with no meaning. Light twisted and turned in front of him, but he refused to understand it.
Marlin worked hard to put the images he had seen into dollars and cents. If the Argentine tapes had brought six thousand, this would bring at least twice that.
Less lawyers, plus the revenue from the investors, less possibility of CIVIL-TV being shut down altogether, it still came out miles and miles and miles ahead of any other option he had. Miles and miles and miles, like the song.
Miles and miles, he thought, miles and miles. That wasn't him, couldn't be. That wasn't him. He stared at one of the shapes.
After what may have been seconds or minutes, he noticed the kid staring at him. He had backed himself into a corner next to the screen. The world came roaring back
"Kid," Marlin said in as even a voice as he could manage, "I need you to give me that tape."
The kid just continued to stare. Marlin refused to look at the screen. Silence.
"Give it to me," Marlin snarled.
With trembling hands, the kid hit the eject button on the VCR and pulled out the tape.
He made a dash for the door.
"Give it to me!" Marlin shouted. He lunged over the desk, but caught his leg on the chair. With a thud, his stomach slammed into the desk.
His half leap succeeded only in scattering a pile of papers to the floor. By the time he looked up, the young man was gone.
For a few moments, he laid in silence. Then, he burst into laughter.
Jeannine peaked her head in. "Is everything alright, Mr. Wexler?" she asked.
Marlin gave the smile of a man in on his own private joke. "Of course, Jeannine," he said, "Why wouldn't it be?"
He couldn't stop laughing.

By the time Marlin looked up from his desk, the shadows of the building across the street had swallowed the last of the day's light.
Balancing accounts, approving programming, reviewing invoices. Suddenly, he found that he couldn't get enough of it. Anything that kept his mind from wandering back to that woman. Thinking about what that kid's movie was. How that junkie piece of trash had found a dead ringer for Marlin and committed it to tape in his scum video. Just what the kid was trying to pull.
Marlin shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. Marlin was the only game in town for content like that. The kid wouldn't be selling it, or worse yet, taking it to the cops.
All at once, he noticed the silence of the office, everyone else having long since gone home for the day. The TV was on, muted.

Closeup of a masked man in green fatigues gesturing with a rifle. Maybe somewhere in Lebanon. Behind him is a tinted car window. Medium shot of a rain-sodden field. So Ireland, then.

Marlin realized that he was walking down the hall from CIVIL-TV's offices. He wasn't sure if he had locked up, but knew it didn't matter. He felt the pressure of the Colt tucked into his belt.
He was in his car, acutely aware of each turn he was making to the young man's apartment. All kids like that lived in the exact same place in East Lake. The traffic drifted in and out of focus as he drove
A few minutes later, Marlin was at the door of the apartment. Inside, he could hear laughter.
He pounded at the door with an open palm. He hollered something inarticulate and obscene. No response. A well-aimed kick knocked the unlocked door back until it hung crooked on a single hinge.
The smell of rotting meat billowed from the apartment door. Marlin gagged, then put a crooked elbow to his nose as he stepped past the threshold. It didn't help.
Inside, the floor was strewn with heaps of clear plastic wrap, old magazines, half-eaten food. Other things Marlin couldn't or wouldn't recognize. The entryway dripped with anemic yellow light from the overhead, thrumming gently. The sense of disgust and unease began to seep into the corners of Marlin's rage.
The sound of laughing became louder. It was canned, recited. There was thunderous, tinny applause. Marlin realized he was hearing the TV in the next room.
"Kid," he shouted, "I know you're in there. Come out! Hand over the tapes and we can talk this through." No response but further applause. He turned the corner into the living room.
He saw the top of the kid's head peeking over the back of a green armchair. The chair was facing a TV set, tuned to some daytime show.
"Kid," Marlin yelled again. The audience roared as he stepped forward. His words caught in his throat.
The young man laid in the chair, his body distended almost beyond recognition, folded and re-folded in on itself. His flesh was a mass of sores and lumps, pulsing in time with the sickly light of the overhead. Puss seemed to ooze from every inch of his body.
Each labored breath from his emaciated chest seemed to draw a new round of applause from the TV audience. Marlin gagged at the reek of sickness.
It was the eyes of the man that caught Marlin's words, though. Bloodshot and lined, but pleading.
Fully aware.
The young man raised an impossibly infected hand, its meat tender and crusting, towards Marlin. The flesh on the arm remain stuck to the crusted fabric of the couch, stretching, then tearing with an unspeakable wetness. The kid seemed not to notice as the skin sloughed off.
His jaw was unhinged in a toothless scream. The holes where his teeth had been were impossibly widened, filling his mouth with a yawning blackness.
"J-J-Jes-" Marlin began. A sound came from the television. Marlin turned.

"Marlin!" the narrator shouts. Marlin appears on the screen, entering the set of a game show. He is grinning and waving
"Marlin! Marlin!" the audience chants in a unified voice. The host is saying something.
It isn't actually saying words, just stresses and pauses in the right places to make it seem like words.
The host smiles, every feature of his face wiped clean but the gaping, devouring grin.
"Marlin," he says in his tinny voice. He points out from the television set.
The glass begins to stretch and extend as the host reached out further, further, his hand grasping out from the cathode ray box. Reaching towards Marlin.

Marlin tried to run, but tripped. From his position on the floor, he could see the glowing hand grasping towards him with blind fingers. He lurched back, trying to distance himself, only to find himself face to face with the kid.
The young man's mouth grew and grew and grew as he began to scream the sound of static.
The static was everything.

Marlin started awake. He was lying in a green armchair. He lept out of it as the memory of the dream came back to him.
After a moment, he surveyed his surroundings. It was the apartment from the dream - the kid's apartment - but totally bare except for the chair and a television set tuned to a dead station. The only illumination was the blue of the static dancing across the screen.
After a quick sweep, Marlin confirmed the entire apartment was empty.
As he prepared to leave, Marlin noticed something perched on top of the television set. He crouched down, and saw it was a black cassette tape. On the spine was a strip of masking tape with something written on it. He held it in the light of the television static. He could make out the spidery black letters.
"SARKIC SERMONS" they said.
He felt his stomach turn, but he didn't know why.
Marlin tucked the VHS tape into his inside pocket. As he approached the door, he saw that it was half-kicked in. Gingerly, he stepped over the ruined frame.
Behind him, he could hear the static of the television roar to life. Blind and feral.
He dashed from the apartment and down the hall. The static was growing louder, nearer. He dared not look behind himself. Finally, he made it to the door, bursting into the warm July air.
The sounds of the Atlanta night were all around him.
But it was only when he was on 285, surrounded by a sea of headlights that he felt he could breath again.

Keep Circulating The Tapes | Because You're On Television, Dummy »


by Ethagon

Every organization has holes. Not even something as wrong as the Department of Surrealistics was exempt from this. It is imperative to fill these holes as much as possible to not let something unpleasant slip through the cracks.
Department Head Marcel Sequitur was currently out somewhere in the-world-that-made-sense to fix one of these holes. Apparently, someone had managed to kill the Starfish. Now the Higher-Ups were curious why Surrealistics had barely done anything about it despite being so uniquely suited for engaging with Fifthism.
They were of course right and wrong. Naturally, the Department hadn't been spared by SCP-Five Five Five Five Five. Their solution to a thought bigger than your brain had been to shove that thought into a space inside a tiny part of your brain and promptly ignore it. And somehow that willful ignorance was what everyone was angry about.
Anyway, that was why the real Marcel Sequitur was currently on his way to feed the angry pigeons that were his superiors. It wouldn't do to have the Department without a head, however. This left acting Department Head Marcel Sequitur as the only choice to do the job. Now he had to worry about holes as a Department Head Actor was supposed to do. Although the specific problem Site-⌘ faced was more accurately described as holes leaking out.
Thankfully they had countermeasures against that.
According to the Reverse Peter Principle, everyone can be demoted to their maximum competence. Today they would demote the whole department through a coup. He couldn't wait to get started. (They had also used this principle to create an Apex Tier Pluripotent Employee with absolute no authority over anything, but that was beside the point.)
His phone rang punctually to the end of his train of thought.
"Told Mathematics someone broke in and they refused to answer. You know anything about that?"
Ah, that meant the assassination had started. Great.
Just as he hung up, another call came through. "0.5 jaywalking taken from the boolean vaults via. fuzzy gloves. Jaywalking numbers true, The Antropomorphised Approximation of the Axiom of Reason numbers true, Amnestics of Class ⌘-"
He cut the speaker off, just in time for the next call.
"Are properties the personal of eye authority? Invisible Mornings."
He thought about the right framework for a moment. Ah, Site Director Morrison had already locked himself up for the coup. This was working out great.
And the next call.
"Some just vomited out a spider leg. Help."
"From their left or their right eye?"
"Left for now."
"Well, then everything seems five."
Hung up again.
Hmm, they hadn't planned for spider legs at the generic welcoming party. This might influence whether or not the surprise challenger would defeat the undefeated champion in the pinata boxing ring, but they were harder than that, so it was probably fine.
A spider leg. Were they going to poison or stab him with it? He was so excited to find out.
Oh, another call!
"My immediate superior already had a headache and now the room is drifting off."
That was a bit early during the coup and the caller was obviously lying about the headache.
The drifting might cause a genuine problem, however. After the Fourfold Destroyer had obliterated the Site, it wouldn't do to drift off towards the central chamber, lest he finds himself within the shards. Yeah, maybe he should check in on the general welcoming party after all.
The acting Department Head opened the door of his acting office and stepped outside.
He walked down the infinite corridor and thought about what the welcoming party might think. Theirs was a framework of happiness and naivety, a simple good time. Around them thoughts of future connections and opportunities to rise in social status. And all of it lying on the foundation of the stress that managed to make the party work. No, that was too close. He thought of grass instead.
He arrived at the minigolf parkour a half room leftwards of the welcoming party. It was obvious from the moving grass how everyone was still a bit delirious from the spider leg venom. He nudged the first ball a bit so the black 8 and four other golf balls came closer to the hole. The second ball got nudged into the kitchen to bring everyone water.
That should get the balls rolling enough of their own. It wouldn't do to see the Department Head, even if they were just an Actor, interfering with the party during a coup.
The balls cycled ever closer to the pinata boxing ring in typical party motions.
He was just about to leave again when all balls looked at each other. Something was trying to press itself out of every right eye in the party room. It was a shrill prolonged start of a single heartbeat.
Nonononono. He took out the emergency phone of the golf course. "This is a message from the Department Head. All personal, non-personal and everything in-between will go immediately into your designated self-built quarantine tents. Singular." He couldn't allow even remnants of thoughts of a corpse to combine back into even a single heartbeat of a god for even a single moment.
His next step was to take a map out of his golf club that showed the position of everyone that went into singular confinement. The problem was that the coup was already underway and he couldn't just stop it, it was a coup, after all, otherwise, the problem would be solved by just isolating.
And just like he had feared, some just ignored his instructions. Those who did were lost now, trying to understand the five-dimensional geometry currently expanding in and out of their head. If he looked at the five main gathering points of these geometries it was clear what would happen. Their reality-warping was used to slowly turn Site-⌘ into a gate to the fifth dimension. The resulting unleashing of a horde of half-dead angels onto the world through every ⌘ would be just as terrible as the resurrection of a one-heartbeat god.
More importantly, this would go seriously counter to all the other greater anomalies the Site needed to contain with its whole structure. Site-⌘ was like a cardhouse made of holes when it came to containing very destructive anomalies.
The golf course trembled. Right, he should act like a Department Head. But he wasn't really Marcel Sequitur. Could he act like he thought the thoughts a person with a lower dose of agnostics thought would be normal thoughts? At least he could try.

He should make a list. These always help.
Define the chicken that comes before the egg? No, the last egg would not be of help here.
Remember the ABCs of Security: A, B and C- No, that's not it, damn it!
Blow stuff up. The only problem being, that Site-⌘ didn't have On-Site-Nukes (did other Sites really use nuclear weapons? That seemed wrong.)
[EXPUNGED FOR NUMEROLOGICAL CONCERNS]

The Sequitur Actor was just weighing up the consequences of starting another list when he had a realization. He was holding the map at an angle of exactly 5 degrees. He might not be able to solve the problem, but he could maybe mitigate it. That way Foundation Anchors of Surrealistics like that thing with mathematics could prevent this problem from further leaking out.
He went out into the corridor again (He took the golf club with him) with his mind pointed in the direction of the middle of the Site. And of course, there just had to be some Five-dimensional geometries in his way. This was really starting to annoy him. There was nothing special about your average surreal five compared to all the other wrong things out there to discover and explore. It's like somebody opened your eyes for the first time and you go "oh, a cat!" and never focus on anything else the world of sight has to offer you. That made it all the more irritating for his fellow and unfellow co-workers to fall for a trick that might as well not exist at this p- Whoops.
Seems like he had accidentally ranted himself to the barely existent portion of the Site. Directly before him hovered the nearly unreal eyes of Rank(-∞), the Apex Tier Pluripotent Employee of Surrealistics at the very bottom of the latter, entirely focused on the only job it was allowed to do: Barely existing. Even non-existence would be like a promotion to the Unreality Department, so it was strictly forbidden to stop existing.
He shouldn't be here. Rank(-∞) would take any chance it would get to be promoted and enact its god-like competence on the Department, unknowing of the fact that this very promotion would keep them from changing anything.
He took a step back only to realize a geometry, a spider and a full hand standing behind him, ready to attack. He was able to duck, right in time to see the attack gliding over him and towards Rank(-∞). Before they reached Rank(-∞) the whole Site folded, redirecting the three attacks into the correct sorting apartments for each.
The Site unfolded again and only left behind the outline of the eyes of Rank(-∞), filled with hate. Outraged about the fact of having to do a job several infinities above their pay grade, an unending barrage of complaints started to conjure itself out of the walls.
The trick with handling Rank(-∞) was normally to have a bureaucracy geared towards making its infinity of complaints specifically grind to a halt unable to be fully processed. The complaints were always perfect, so even processing these fully through any system would leave the department no choice but to promote it. He couldn't be bothered with that, so he gripped onto the list of complaints and rode them up to the middle of the Site.
The middle of Site-⌘ was built like a webpage. Thankfully the fifth mindset, or what was left of it, didn't understand having both a middle and a central chamber and so found neither.
Come to think of it, why hadn't he been affected by that thing? He thought about it and immediately regretted it.
He had opened the gate to that tiny closed part in his brain and the party of the thing lurking within could finally breathe again at the same moment it realized it was dead.
Still, it tried to collapse outwards pressing at his head from within. What was he doing again? Right, the header. Every step took an eternity as his thoughts spun on about these most beautiful of fives, how could they have ever dared to kill it? At least a single heartbeat should-
He reached the header. He couldn't trust his thoughts anymore so he let his body run on autopilot. Still, there was a magnetism to it. The other corpse parts closed in on him so that the five great communities could thrive again for at least a single moment. They would neat that hope after weeks of despair-
He levelled the header and with a burning head, he turned the lever to exactly 717 degrees while-

-there was no lever at all. He checked his watch just to be sure, but no the lever had really just been made up. Damn it.
There were other things to do, so he left the middle of the Site and bumped into another researcher as he walked in front of the next door. He assessed the newcomer from the floor. Yeah, this wasn't the face of a traitor.
"How is the evacuation going?"
"That was actually what I wanted to ask you about, sir. How can we make people leave Site-⌘ through the image of a cognitohazardous ⌘ if that image is still in Site-⌘?"
He stared into the newcomer's eyes. "You're low on Agnostics."
He got wide eyes as a response.
"You're working here as a charlatan, right?" A nod. Crap, no wonder why nobody had thought ahead about this exact scenario occurring. If one of the responsible lie tellers forgot their doses of the drug, that made these lies worthless to consider and left them wide open for unconsidered lies.
He tossed one of his doses, which the charlatan eagerly swallowed up. He should also take one- No he was acting as Marcel Sequitur who had enough self-control to take Agnostics like you take a good wine: After a long day of work, but before you start work.
He spun around three times to get some orientation. "Alright, here's what we'll do next. You go and reinforce the re-entry-evacuation, I don't think any Insurgents will be among those that actually leave, so you will plan a counter-coup inside the coup to stop them and you will go with me to get some outside perspective. Make a one-use exit free for the last part, please."
And with these new orders, the four split up.
Leaving the Site with another person always made him curious, because you could never be quite sure if the person you were leaving with was real or just made up to increase the workforce on the Site. (And even then nobody could stop you from just hallucinating the person.)
Okay, they had entered the Mathematics Department and the charlatan was still there. For now. He looked around the deserted room and yup, that was a real dead body, punched right in the pineal gland. Evidently, failing the assassination attempt like it was supposed to happen had failed.
The charlatan also took a look at the body. "This doesn't look like a punch to me."
It didn't really matter how he had died. They should focus more on what it meant.
"If it was a punch then not from our department."
Hmm, he highly doubted that the CI got any double agents in mathematics, but it was always a possibility.
"It just means everything went according to plan."
Ah, now he got it. The Chaos Insurgency knew exactly what they had to do in order to gain whatever they wanted out of this situation: Nothing. He shivered in horror. Worlds could be at his feet if he could come up with master plans like that.
"Yes! That's it!"
"Wait, what did I say?"
"Not exactly what you said, but the failed assassination of a foundation mathematician is supposed to be a metaphor for the surrealistics department as a whole and those supposed to anchor us during the coup. Now with an actual assassination, it's clear that part of our people drift off during the coup and lose themselves in the best GOI suited for their coup-kayfabe: The Chaos-Insurgency."
The Department Head Actor groaned. It was so obvious in hindsight. "In that case, it's clear what to do. Give our dead friend here Agnostics and start annoying him. As soon as he starts getting angry at you, you immediately administer him these Gnostics as well." Hopefully, they were still close enough to the Site for this to work.
The charlatan nodded but looked a bit concerned while he took the Gnostics and rightfully so. It was definitely not allowed to mix Agnostics and Gnostics, but he wasn't sure anymore whether or not it was the bad kind of not allowed or the good.
It had consequences, but he wasn't sure which of the fifteen sets he remembered were the things that would actually happen. Most of these would still be better than a dead person, so it didn't matter in the end.
Back on Site-⌘ he immediately looked at the map in his golf club. The counter-coup was working. Everywhere the coup gained ground, which was everywhere, the counter-coup started to work its way through the ranks of the coup and broke it apart into the kind of coup that resembled more what should actually be happening. It wasn't exactly what was supposed to happen, but this department was good at improvising.
That was when the speaker system turned on.
"2.Step Abandon your posts and seek what is important."
They were even acting out a Step Compilation. This was worse than he thought. He saw the fake Insurgents bolting in random directions and some of interest like the boolean vaults. One of them was even running in the direction of the central chamber.
This was the one he had to focus on. He couldn't allow any disruption in the nap of Site Director Fourfold Destroyer. Although he suspected that the Agent was more interested in the thing surrounding the central chamber.
He took just a sip of Agnostics to go a single step leftwards and started running in direction of the central chamber. Due to his fast lane permissions, it didn't take long for him to catch up with his enemy.
Said enemy started talking into a microphone again…
"-Step w-? --??"
… while running into the border of the Quartering Path, a purgatorial space they had purchased from the Department of Purgatorial Spaces and likely the thing the fake agent was after.
The just as fake Department Head followed suit soon after and became four.
He was Irving Gat meeting his friend Ernest in a restaurant before he joined surrealistics.
He was an employee in an endless box office and on his computer was a message that offered an escape.
He was an apple trapped in a howling storm, that reached for the sun.
He was a Site Director standing in front of a city. There was a header in this beautiful city until it was levelled by a hand, that wasn't red and not a hand, but it thought it was right. It crumbled into crumbling cycling cities made from ash. From what was left, an Agent emerged.
Irving sat down his drink. "So how did it go?" Ernest followed suit. "The test run worked great. I think we might actually finish the project before the deadline." Irving chuckled. "Now wouldn't that be something?" "You should have been there. It's your project as well." Irving sighed. "You know I can't. Transfers take up a lot of time, especially for this Department." He adjusted his chair and caught a glimpse of the gun Ernest had gripped under the table. He ignored it.
The instructions the person on the other end send him were very easy to follow. He just needed to move this one file full of sensitive data from Place A to B and he would never have to work again in his life. He declined. The next message contained a threat.
The apple was hurled around by the roaring all-consuming storm. It got hotter the closer the storm came to the sun. The eye of the storm gazed at the apple, wary about what it might do. It did nothing. It was an apple.
The Site Director tasered the approaching agent, waving his personnel to contain him with the others. He looked towards the fulcrum that was a once-and-future city and saw another horde of insurgents sprint towards him. They were all copies of the first agent.
"You shouldn't go." Irving looked up. "What do you mean?" "I can't let you join Surrealistics. It would be a waste of your potential. I have a better proposal for you." He raised an eyebrow. "It's nice to know how much you want me here, but I'm afraid this is out of your hand." "Don't be stupid, I know you saw the gun." Irving chuckled. "A gun? You should hear yourself talking. Maybe you should be joining Surrealistics instead of me." He only got a frustrated glare as a response. "Either way, I think I should be going. I know it's hard Ernest, but I know you can find a replacement for me." Irving turned to leave and got shot in the back.
It was blackmail. Countless tiny infractions he had collected over the years. Still, they would let up to something that would get him fired. But right now he was an employee and he would do his duty till the end of his employment. He reported the messages to his superior, indifferent to the price. The security hole got patched, but his life under the company ended.
The apple melted away as the storm consumed the sun.
His men wanted the Site Director to pull back. There was no way to go up against this horde, but everything that came from the nexus before him had to be contained. The horde of clones became insurmountable and as they climbed out of the not-city it cracked. The cracks spread and everything within them unravelled. Before they reached him all clones looked at him and spoke in one voice: "⌘.Step Profit." They were washed away by the cracks.
Four of him had died in a way, but all of him had fulfilled his role until the end and so he emerged full again from the quartering path.

"So they're still trapped in there?"
"Yes, you don't really get out of that space until it carved the common core out of you throughout all iterations. I was lucky to know how it worked beforehand." He was sitting in front of the person that he was 50% sure of to be the real Marcel Sequitur.
"So what were they after?"
"It's always plans within plans with the Chaos Insurgency. I think they never wanted to usurp Site-⌘. They were after the purgatorial space and the Class-⌘ Amnestics from the start."
"What would the Chaos Insurgency want a purgatorial space for?"
"I have no idea." the Actor said, but he thought about the visions he saw in the quartering path.
The (maybe) real Marcel took out a sheet of paper. "So how many Class-⌘ Amnestics did they steal."
"True, sir. They didn't use fuzzy gloves, so they had to take all of it."
"So we have false of them left?" Marcel sighed. "Seems we have to find out again how to actually make these then. You know we have additional procedures to protect the boolean vaults, right?"
"Sorry, sir. There are others in the department that are better suited than I am to be at two places at once."
"No, that's not what I- Whatever. Why didn't you level the header?"
"There was no lever when I got there."
"That's something at least. It seems it's time to update our security protocols."
"That's where you're wrong, Sir!" he countered with enthusiasm.
"Oh?"
"See, as long as we put the new Class-⌘ Amnestics into the boolean vaults again, we can make this exact scenario repeat, resulting in the exact same outcome at the same outside-time. But the Chaos Insurgency doesn't have a boolean vault so they will only ever have true whole amnestics."
Marcel smiled. "Right. This is Surrealistics where we build our security out of holes."
"And regardless. They only have an amnestic which they can use exactly once to remove memories from a place. And it's still the Chaos Insurgency we're speaking about, they can't do anything of actual significance with it."


She held her breath.
"Are there any survivors?"

They could feel the air buzz, almost as if they were in tune with the movements of the very atoms around them. Or perhaps it felt more like they were vibrating and the air surrounding them was resisting. They weren't entirely sure, and they didn't have it in them to debate which it was. They were barely registering that they were feeling anything at all. They couldn't hear anything, save for a ringing sound. There was an ebb and flow to it. Just as they seemed to come to terms with it, it got louder, demanding more of their attention. They didn't have much attention to give.
They weren't entirely sure what they were seeing. There was a bright light, obscured by something… lots of somethings. What was the word for what they were thinking of, with all the stones and dust… rubble? From their perspective, it was all moving around, floating, but they were at least conscious enough to understand that they, and everything around them, were stationary. Rubble was the right word, right? Their head was swimming, their vision was swimming, and what attention span they had kept being stolen by the damned ringing sound.
And then there was the pressure. Something was holding them down. There was a sort of stabbing pain in their… stomach? There was a more precise term they could be using, but it was escaping them. They couldn't breathe. Whether it was an actual weight or an obstruction of their airways was still a mystery to them, as it seemed everything was at this point.
They hated that. The entire reason they'd survived their career at the Foundation as long as they had was that they hated mysteries. They were driven by problem-solving. They'd always wanted to explain the inexplicable. Since starting their work, they'd become a firm believer that there was nothing they couldn't explain. Except for the way they felt at that moment. But that was only inexplicable because they were incapacitated. They couldn't necessarily count that.
Vanilla. That's what was putting them off, the smell of vanilla. Klein was right, it was a bit overwhelming. Dr. Clemency Klein, Researcher at Site 17 with a specialization in humanoid entities. The absolute bane of their existence, and likely the biggest prick the Foundation had ever seen. He was an unfortunately integral part of their research team. They'd always thought Klein was just bitter that they'd gotten their promotion so soon after joining the Foundation. He'd been up for promotion as well, but he hadn't gotten it. Instead, he'd been placed under their direction. You know, Bright had made a lot of questionable decisions but that one made them wonder whether he held a personal grudge against them. Not that he even knew them… that they remembered. Then again, sometimes it felt like they did.
Back to Klein though, to who they devoted far too much attention for their own good. Klein was a lazy pain in the ass who thought he had more seniority than them and therefore had the right to boss them around even though they had the authority over him. It didn't help that he was older than them either. God, if he called them 'kid' one more time they were going to kill him with their own hands. And that's why they'd demoted him as soon as they got the chance- although come to think of it they didn't have the authority to do that. They were just a team lead- for now. Perhaps they were mixing up their fantasies and reality. It was clear that they were confused, and given their state they had every right to be. Where was Klein was now, while they were stuck? Probably gloating in the break room. Lord knew he loved that place.
It was funny about the vanilla though. They'd never considered it overwhelming before. They'd always carried a roller of it on them when they knew they'd be conducting tests. They hated the smell of a sterile lab, as silly as that seemed. There was an edge to it that didn't sit right with them- although for some reason that edge now seemed completely unnoticeable to them, and that fact alone left them scratching their head. Not literally, of course. They couldn't move their arms.
The vanilla hit them again. God, they'd never realized it was so strong. They supposed the reason that they liked vanilla so much was that it reminded them of baking- which wasn't entirely different from their work if they thought about it. Every test they did was a recipe, and they were provided with ingredients and procedures. Most of the time, they got their desired result; sometimes, like this time, they didn't.
That seemed like an analogy was worth bringing to Glass during their next session. He'd probably be able to find some deeper meaning to it, as he always did. Dr. Simon Glass… now there was a man that listened. Where was Klein again?
How had they gotten here?
Well, clearly the test had gone sideways. But for some reason, their mind wandered much farther back than that. Right to when they'd started with the Foundation. They'd gone through the entire system, from the schools right into a researcher position. Hell, they'd probably been around the Foundation for longer than people with clearance much higher than theirs. If Klein had bothered to pay attention to any of that, he might have understood why they'd been promoted so soon. They'd only tried to explain it to him a million times. Idiot.
They'd never been able to choose a path, per se. When they'd applied, they'd tried to coin a term, 'audiolinguistics'. Language, music, and the entire spectrum of sound had always fascinated them. That lasted about a week. Before that, they'd trained a little bit in antimemetics- not that they remembered much of it. They'd fallen a bit behind on their mnestics- which was kind of ironic when you thought about it. Before that, they'd almost gone through as a field agent. Man, what had possessed them to think they wanted to exert themself like that? They'd been such a pushover before they'd understood who they were- which they'd like to think was well-rounded. Or was that just what they told people who criticized them for not having a specialization? No, they were pretty sure they were still using their youth as an excuse for that.
"Ever since I can remember, I've had this feeling I would die young. It never stopped."
That was… odd. The voice sounded like their own, but they definitely weren't saying them- at least not out loud. Maybe it was a shock response. It was certainly unsettling. The voice was laughing, but it was a melancholy laugh, not a happy one. The words the voice had spoken were very familiar. They fit with their voice. It was something they'd said. Something about hearing it felt cathartic, like they were getting closure. But it also felt visceral- like an auditory slap in the face. They didn't like it. Then again, they'd rarely ever liked the voices in their head. They couldn't for the life of them remember when or where they'd heard voices before, though. Why were those memories eluding them? Yet another thing to add to the things that eluded them exactly when they needed them most. Right up there next to love.
That wasn't to say that they hadn't loved. How much of it they'd gotten in return, on the other hand… that was debatable. They'd loved their parents, for as long as they could. Their family had meant everything to them. Did they even still have a family? Part of them said no. Their mother was KIA, and their father… well, they were pretty sure they'd made it clear to him that he wasn't a welcomed part of their life. And that was all the family they had- supposedly.
Something deep in their mind was nagging them, telling them that their family was very large. It was multi-generational, andeverywhere in the Foundation and surrounding it… from O5 right over to the Serpent's Hand. Why did the Serpent's Hand hurt to think about? Never mind, they couldn't focus on that. This family… It felt like their own, but it also felt foreign. It seemed like all they'd ever known was a mother and father, but now… they were remembering sisters and brothers, and all the regrets that came with them. They knew of uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews… they had grandparents and they had grandchildren.
Grandchildren?
That didn't seem right. The voice had said they were young, and that felt right to them. Where were the grandchildren coming from? They were too young to have kids, let alone grandkids. They'd never even wanted to have kids- their bloodline was going to end with them. They'd been perfectly content taking care of some of the kids in containment and maybe inspiring a few kids coming up through the system. Yeah… if the dysphoria wasn't enough, the system had turned them right off of having kids. But Yorick… They could remember Yorick.
Their confusion was getting out of hand. They needed to slow down before their thoughts spiraled out of control.
"Please, I'm not done yet…"
They felt a pang in their chest like their heart had skipped a beat- in the anxiety way, not the good way. The voice had a point. There were never done, were they? Every time they thought they were, the pain just kept going. It went on, and on, and on, and on, with absolutely no hope of stopping. That was what the Foundation did to you over time. They'd certainly done their time, hadn't they? A lifetime of it. An entire life in these buildings. And for what? This? Not that this was entirely abnormal to them. No, they'd been through this before. This wasn't even the painful part, as they remembered it. It was the culmination that hurt. It was like a weight. It got heavier every single time, and it was crushing. And they couldn't breathe. Shit. They still couldn't breathe.
They tried to move a limb, any limb. Nothing. They could feel themself shaking with fear, but they could do nothing to control it. They tried to look around, but they couldn't even see anymore, much less move their head. When had things gone black? They should never have let their thoughts spiral. Look at where it had gotten them- they were going to die. Again.
Again?
Why did again feel so natural?
They'd died before, they realized. They'd been in D-Class when it had happened. They'd been in there so many times, for so many things… Things that they'd never done- they couldn't have done all of those things or served that many sentences in D-Class. It literally wasn't possible for them to have lived out everything running through their mind. Then why did they remember it all so vividly? That had to be a mistake. There were so many mistakes…
One crime stood out among all the stories swimming in their head: espionage. That espionage trial was vivid. Not that they had it in them to be a spy. Even if they didn't the last people they'd be working for were the Serpent's Hand. So that's why thinking about the Serpent's Hand had hurt so much- defecting to the Serpent's Hand was their crime among all these other stories playing out in their head. But… it wasn't them. They were innocent. Even with all this confusion, they knew themself. They were loyal like a dog to the Foundation. Their time in D Class was a gross misunderstanding. They'd always known that. And they'd even had it corrected- even if it was a little too late. Too late? How could it be too late if they were still there?
It was because they'd already died by the time they'd been acquitted. No, that couldn't be right. Their mind debunked that immediately. They were clearly alive at the moment, and people only died once- no matter what these memories were saying.
That didn't feel right for them, though, dying once. No… they felt like they were lying, telling themself that. All they had done was state a fact, and yet they felt that they'd betrayed some core aspect of their being. It felt like their death- the one they'd been connecting so strongly to, with the espionage charges- was one of many. For some reason, though, this one felt like a first. Something inside of them was telling them it wasn't- in fact, it was probably the most recent- but it simply felt that way. There was no explaining why. Maybe it was the first for them? What did that even mean? What did any of these thoughts mean? Where did one mind end and another begin?
They felt like they should know what all of this meant. That they did know what all of this meant, they just needed to reach a little further. Like they were finally to the point where they could reach for it and their fingers barely grazed it but in an internal sense. Actually, in a more literal sense than they'd care to admit. Everything internal seemed incredibly physical at that moment- like the inside was all they knew. Like it was all they could feel anymore. And then came the voices, cutting through all their thoughts, shoving the reality of their situation in their face.
"I didn't do it! You know I didn't do it!"
"D-27000, behave yourself."
"I don't wanna go…"
"Restrain them."
"Please… please, you don't understand, there's no coming back from this!"
"Put the amulet on them."
Silence. They could remember the tears running down their face. They could almost feel them now. Or maybe they were just crying again.
"I gave my entire life to you…"
That was where they had ended, and Jack Bright began.
For both a fleeting moment and an eternity, they finally understood. They remembered. This wasn't the first time they had died. In fact, they were long dead- this body belonged to someone else now. All of this, with the pain and the rubble and the lack of air… this was just when their body finally caught up with their spirit. A second, more final death.
They couldn't remember the test- not the scip, not the methodology. Nothing. That was his domain. All they knew is that whatever had happened, their body was trapped. All their confusion had stemmed from the fact that… well, it was very hard to separate themself from him now that he'd been in their body as long as he had. The lines had gotten very blurry between them. But now, everything was clear. Now they felt it all. They were trapped under a pile of rubble, and they'd been impaled right through the abdomen. They were bleeding out. It was ironic. Their body was being crushed and drained, just the same way that their spirit had been during their first death.
A single tear rolled down their cheek, and a rattling breath escaped them as somewhere deep inside themself, they thanked him. They weren't sure if he'd simply wanted to escape the pain of another death, or if he was paying his last respects to them. But for one final moment, they were themself again.

"Negative."
"Damn. I liked that body for him. He liked that body for him." Light cursed softly. She lowered her voice, clearly talking to herself. "That's always a struggle for Jack."
"I'm… sorry?"
"Don't be." She shook her head, coming back into her full voice. "I'll let O5 know to start reviewing D-Class. Anything we can salvage from the experiment?"
There was a brief bit of static over the airwaves.
"An audio recorder. Tascam. It seemed to be on his person. It's intact."
"Bring it in for screening." Light sighed. She knew it wouldn't help. It belonged to the wrong person. She paused. "Is that all?"
"Affirmative."
"Alright. Deploy the amnestics. I'll be waiting for a formal debrief onsite. Good work today." Light told them, though there were a million things she'd rather say. Namely that this was a damn shame.
A real damn shame.