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"Spread the Word"
Visions dancing in their heads.

More by this author!

2021

1 January
Site-55: near Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

"I get it, Dr. Everwood, but it still seems a bit… much."
"I told you to call me Jay. And I dunno, does it?" Dr. Justine Everwood smiled at the tanned, athletic woman sitting across their desk. Faeowynn Wilson was dramatically out of place in an antiseptic Foundation office. "Maybe I've been doing this for too long, then, because it sounds like a fun exercise to me."
Faeowynn smirked. "Your perspective's off. You might need to lose that sense of Wondertainment."
Everwood half-shrugged. "Alright, so maybe it is a bit much. But we think it'll work, and Wilson's Wildlife only stands to gain if it does. Are you in?"
Faeowynn sighed. "You know I'm in no position to refuse. The Shelter needs all the help it can get. I'm in."
"Excellent." Everwood stood up. "We'll have you back in boring Oregon by feeding time."
"We don't have 'feeding time', we're not a zoo. And don't think I didn't hear how you pronounced 'Boring'."

Dr. Nhung Ngo looked up, up, up at the broad-shouldered agent who'd met her in the foyer. She took in his fading tan, and the bags under his eyes. She made notes, not in the superfluous clipboard she kept clasped to her chest, but in the secure server that was her brain. "You must be Reggie."
The man blushed. "Agent Lucasz, generally. Nobody calls agents by their first names."
Ngo extended her free hand. "Well, Reggie, just call me nobody."
He took her hand; she allowed him to win the resultant grip comparison. "Might not wanna call yourself Nobody while you're at the GoI Research Group."
She already knew why Lucasz looked so tired, but she knew it was important to have him say it, so she asked: "Busy month?"
He laughed mirthlessly. "The logistics of your project… We've stacked up terabytes of info on every dangerous GoI there is, written god knows how many reports and contingency plans." He rubbed his red eyes. "I do info security, and this has been an info security nightmare. All that confidential data in one place, trying to keep a stopper on any leaks… I hope it's all been worth it."
"It has!" She beamed at him.
"I just wish they'd let me look at some of the good files. Something uplifting. I thought I'd get to read about the Oneiroi, or the Second Hytoth, or help Dr. Everwood with the Wilson's Wildlife thing. Instead it's just thieves and murderers and lunatics."
"Well, don't think we don't appreciate the sacrifice. We'd never have been able to pull this off without all that research."
He looked slyly down at her. "Plus the magic word. Do you have it? Or should I say them?"
She nodded. The staff at Site-55 were in on a big secret: three of ETTRA's mole-exposing operations utilizing the one-time password were taking place on the same day. This day. Sokolsky had lied about there only being two copies of the password; there were in fact six. "I do. I'm going to use your radio setup to deliver the password to three of our agents before they head out on their missions, and then wait for them to call in for their second copy when they need it."
"Seems risky." Lucasz was in serious danger of acquiring permanent forehead lines. "I've secured the lines as best I can, but what if someone's listening in?"
She shook her head. "You worry too much."

There were no visible seams between the walls, floor and ceiling. The sum total of furnishings was one table and four chairs. There was a softly-humming air vent, and a complex-looking ceiling speaker. The door had an airlock. This was as soundproof a room as had ever existed.
"Dr. Ngo," said Dr. Everwood, standing up from the table and extending a hand. Ngo clasped it warmly with both of her own. "This is my assistant, Rex Alces."
Ngo smiled at the unimpressed-looking man, who did not stand up. "I know this is clichéd," she said, "but I've heard a lot about you."
"Oh." He looked even less impressed, now. "You're with HR."
"Be nice, Rex," Lucasz muttered. He placed a small metal container on the table, and opened the lid.
"No, nothing quite so austere," Ngo half-trilled. "I'm a headshrink!" She reached over the table, and Rex reluctantly shook her hand. She made certain not to grip too hard. "Want to unburden yourself before we get started?"
He glared at her before responding; the height difference wasn't much, even though she was standing up. "I'm a professional. I do my job. If you've looked at my file, what you saw wasn't my fault, and it cost me a month's pay. Can we get this show on the road?"
"Good idea." Lucasz emptied the container's contents onto the table: a small black box with small black buttons, a keyboard, three pairs of headphones and a microphone. He began plugging everything into the box. "Alright. Dr. Ngo is going to call today's three agents, and give them their first copies of the password. When she does that, we all put on our headphones and listen to some soothing white noise until she's done. Same drill when each agent calls in for their second copy." He pulled a PDA out of his labcoat. "I'm keeping track of all incoming calls. In the meantime…" He shrugged. "Anyone think to bring a deck of cards?"

The first few hours passed in relative comfort. Ngo and Everwood discussed policy; Rex actually had brought a deck of cards, so he and Lucasz played a few games of low-stakes solitaire. Lunch was delivered, and it was good; washroom breaks were permitted, and Rex made a crude joke about letting Ngo bring the black box and microphone with her when she went. She laughed, politely. Lucasz covered his face with his hands.
The monotony was broken when Okorie called in for her second copy. Once the headphones were all snugly in place, Lucasz pressed a key on the box, Ngo leaned into the mic, and she whispered the fateful words.
That brief interval seemed to break the spell, and the next few minutes passed in relative awkwardness. Everwood and Ngo were content to wait, comfortable in their own skins and roles; Rex crossed his arms, looking for all the world like he was pouting, and Lucasz started tapping the table so hard they could've heard it through the headphones.
Finally, Everwood cleared their throat. "I know how we can pass the time. Lucasz, you haven't looked at the Wondertainment file much, have you?"
His face lit up. "No, I only got to read up on the bad GoIs. The dangerous ones."
Rex unfolded his arms. "Wondertainment's plenty dangerous."
"Well sure, but they've got their hearts in the right place." Lucasz smiled. "All these groups have a mission, just like us. And just like ours, some of those missions have positive outcomes. I remember back at Site-64, we—"
"Let's talk about having your heart in the right place." Everwood shared a meaningful look with Ngo. "The DreamScape story?"
Rex groaned, and Ngo nodded. "Sure. Who goes first?"
"You do," said Rex. "You did the first interview, and I've forgotten all about it."

2019

8 March
Private residence: Salem, Oregon, United States of America

Ngo nodded as the man spoke. She wasn't feeling particularly affirmative, and she didn't find the conversation scintillating, but she did want him to keep talking. Sometimes, if she tried hard enough, she could nod so rhythmically that people timed their narratives to it, getting what she needed without saying anything herself.
This was shaping up to be one of those times.
"I can still see the box, plain as day." The man who rented this apartment, whose broken down sofa Ngo was presently sitting on/in, blithely persisted in his ponderous recollection. "I saw it on TV. The PerfectPlay DreamScape. I can't even imagine who it was for." He laughed. "It had the World Space Patrol vessel Fireball XL-5, and the whole crew. It had all of the Samurai Pizza Cats, including Francine, the mission control chick, and it had all of the Barnyard Commandos, which is nuts. They already had toys! Their show only existed to sell toys, but this playset had different sculpts that matched the cartoon better. I have no idea how they worked out the rights for all that shit." He shook his head. "Probably all secretly owned by some media conglomerate in Israel."
Ngo very carefully did not wince. She nodded.
"Anyway yeah, that playset was the only thing I wanted for Christmas. It was tailor-made for me. I saw all the Fireball XL-5 reruns on our local affiliate; do you know, that shit's British? And from the sixties? When you could say whatever you want, and you could just tell a story instead of checking off diversity boxes. But the Pizza Cats were also good shit. Adapted from some Japanese thing that wasn't nearly as good, because of course it wasn't. But okay, so my parents go to every local store, right? They search the shelves, they send the drones into the back rooms, they even start asking the parents of my friends if they've managed to find the damn thing, so they can buy it from them. No dice. Nobody's got it. It was the worst Christmas ever, but that's not the half of it."
Ngo glanced around the room at the eight glass cases filled with plastic action figures and maquettes, and nodded.
"I figured Christmas was a longshot anyway, all the tryhard rich parents probably bought up the set for their brats before my parents could even get off work. Things should've been better by my birthday. They weren't!" He was getting flushed, now; when he'd opened the apartment door a half hour ago, he'd looked like a man who got flushed easily. "My birthday's in MAY! The clerks kept insisting the toy never even existed. That I was misremembering, that I was getting my commercials all mixed up. Bullshit. I know what I saw. They were probably hoarding the DreamScapes themselves, to sell on the internet."
"In 1997?" Ngo interjected.
He waved her off. "Doesn't matter. I demanded that playset for Christmas again in '98, and when I still didn't get it…" He looked, for the first time, momentarily thoughtful. "Do you know what gaslighting is?"
Ngo was a psychologist. She knew what gaslighting was. She nodded.
"Well the whole god-damn world's been gaslighting me ever since." He clutched at the armrest of his dilapidated armchair; he came away with a handful of stuffing, probably asbestos. "But I'm a grown-ass man, and I can look shit up, and you know what?"
Ngo nodded. "Hundreds of other people remember the playset, but nobody remembers it as well as you do."
"Exactly!" He flicked the stuffing onto the floor. "And they weren't even close. This one asshole thinks it was some Simpsons/Rugrats/Captain Kangaroo shit, as if that even makes sense, and one guy remembers the Pizza Cats but swears up and down it was a Bucky O'Hare crossover! Serious Melinda shit."
"Mandela," Ngo nodded. "The Mandela Effect."
"Yeah, that shit. Where everybody remembers it wrong except me. I think most of these pricks think it's some kind of joke, and they're trying to get in on it. I don't want their fucking memes, I want my DreamScape!" His eyes were watering. "I can't even find a picture of the box! I can't find commercials! I don't even know who made the fucking thing."
"Why does it matter?" Ngo finished her final note and clasped her clipboard to her chest. She carefully sharpened her final question. "Who cares about some toy from your childhood?"
His eyes widened. "I care! Because they're telling me it's not real, everybody's telling me it's not real, and I can see it when I close my eyes!" He did close his eyes, to blink away the tears. "My only fucking certainty in life is that damn toy existed."

2021

1 January
Site-55: near Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Lucasz looked troubled. "Did it exist?"
Everwood shook their head. "No. Nhung passed that interview data on to us, since it was obviously a Wondertainment thing, and while we were able to confirm dozens of cases of people having seen the commercial, we couldn't find a single copy of the playset. Not even empty boxes."
"Okay." Lucasz rolled his shoulders. "Was this… a trick? Were they trying to—"
PING. A green light lit up on the box, and Lucasz picked up his PDA. "That's Chief Ibanez."
They went for the headphones, and Ngo delivered her memetic payload once more. She waited just a moment longer than necessary to give the all-clear; Everwood pretended not to notice, Lucasz looked like he desperately wanted to hear the rest of the story, and Rex looked increasingly irritated.
Headphones off, Lucasz broke the silence. "Were they just trying to confuse people? Or did something go wrong?"
Rex huffed. "If they were aiming for 'confusing', they overshot the mark."

2019

12 July

Rex looked over the dismal list of subjects with distaste. "What a bunch of losers."

Subject: A. Dibra, female, 47 years of age
Description: Subject believed that radiation from cell phone towers causes cancer.
Action: Subject occupied a cell phone tower in rural Mississippi and engaged in a standoff with police. Said standoff concluded when subject electrocuted herself whilst attempting to destroy a power transformer.
Subject: K. Pachis, male, 39 years of age
Description: Subject believed that the Earth is flat.
Action: Subject's garage exploded, setting his home and five other houses ablaze. Nine reported fatalities. Wreckage recovered from the scene suggests subject was constructing a homemade rocket.
Subject: V. Chey, female, 47 years of age
Description: Subject believes that the Egyptian pyramids were constructed by beings from another world, that Protocols of the Elders of Zion describes a real conspiracy, that fluoridation causes same-sex attraction in amphibians, that present United States immigration policy entails a plot to replace the present citizenry, and that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing did not take place.
Action: Subject's familial and social circles have cut all ties. Subject orders groceries online, does not leave her home, and remains under Foundation surveillance.
Subject: S. Dustin, male, 51 years of age
Description: Subject does not believe in the existence of bacteria, as he cannot visually perceive them.
Action: Subject has been released from multiple employment contracts for refusing to wash his hands after using washroom facilities.

"We're sure these are all…?"
Across the office, poking through a filing cabinet, Everwood nodded. "Law enforcement and social worker interviews confirm it. Every one of them got stuck on the DreamScape commercial, and every one of them became a cynical idiot. I doubt it made them racist or selfish or what have you, but it certainly made them… suggestible."
Rex leaned back in his chair. "You know what they say about correlation and causation."
Everwood closed the cabinet. "That you can prove both, with enough data?" They glanced at him. "How many cases is that now?"
He tapped a few keys on his keyboard. "Twenty-seven. Not all of them as dramatic as this batch." He tapped the printout; his hand froze. "Where did they interview that last guy? Not here, I hope." He glanced around the room for a bottle of hand sanitizer.
Everwood leaned on the cabinet and sighed. "You know, it might be twenty-eight. I think I remember this thing myself."
Rex raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying you're a cynical idiot?"
"I remember catching the tail end of an ad on TV, when I was six or seven. Some impossible box of stuff, Ninja Turtles and Dragon Ball Z and… Sailor Moon? And I think it had a TARDIS, too."
Rex nodded. "Are you saying you're a cynical idiot?" he repeated.
They put their hand in their labcoat pocket and walked over to him. "I'm saying this thing seems to have really messed people up, given them a more… magical outlook on things. Some of them turned nasty with it. Who's to say I didn't end up working here because that half-remembered toy commercial disrupted my sense of normalcy, of logical progression?"
"Bit of a reach." He reached across the desk for the stack of unopened mail in his inbox. "But that counts as a personal revelation, right? I wonder if it'll push us over the threshold."
"For a mea culpa from Wondertainment, you mean?" Everwood sighed, spying a garish purple envelope in the stack. "Always freaks me out a little. How do they know we're on to them, and how do they know when to chime in? Maybe they've got a form letter for every undiscovered gadget in Corny's bag of tricks, all ready to mail out once we've done the legwork."
"Doesn't freak me out," muttered Rex. "Drives me nuts." He extracted the purple envelope, and grunted when Everwood snatched it out of his hand. Probably pissed off I didn't check the mail until now. They tore it open, already nodding before they even read the first line, then passed it back to him wordlessly.

July 12th, 2019
From the desk of
THE MAKER OF BELIEVERS!

Most Esteemed Snoopers,
As you have already no doubt surmised, one final project of the late Dr. C.M. Wondertainment brought a little magic into the lives of children everywhere at Christmastime. He taught them the power of imagination; he allowed them to dream the biggest dream they could dream, an experience no actual toy could give them. A child's imagination knows no bounds, and needs no bridle.
If, in the course of their creatively-stimulated lives, a few wayward souls have turned their attentions to activities unsavoury, the present Dr. Wondertainment confesses herself heartily disappointed.♥

Dr. H.L. Wondertainment

♥ Dr. Wondertainment's heartfelt disappointment should not be taken as an assumption of legal responsibility.

"Piss off," said Rex.

2021

1 January

About halfway through Rex's disinterested monologue, Director McInnis rang in and Ngo made her final delivery of the day. Having heard the laundry list of sad fates before that happened, Lucasz was waiting with white-knuckled anticipation for the second half of the story. He looked positively ill by the end. "I just… wow. That's pretty cold, and I can't believe they didn't realize how it was gonna turn out."
"Maybe they did," Rex snapped. "What if Corny didn't give a shit, figured if it worked, it worked, and if it didn't, it'd be somebody else's problem?"
"Yuck." Lucasz grimaced. "Well, at least he's… at least the new Dr. Wondertainment is…" He trailed off, obviously thinking about that note.
Ngo stood up. "Well, friends, it's been a pleasure. Shall we call it a day?"
Rex was already out the door before Lucasz could splutter a protest. "You can't just end it there! There's obviously more to it. We're more rigorous than that. Even he…" and he nearly gestured at Rex's retreating labcoat before realizing what he'd done.
Everwood snorted. "Even he what?"
Lucasz was obviously wrestling with something; Ngo and Everwood let him wrestle. After a few moments, he apparently won. "Okay, look. I know what this is really about." He pointed at Ngo. "You're not a member of Sampi-5243. You're a psychologist."
Ngo shrugged. "I do all their debriefings. I'm attached to the taskforce."
Lucasz shook his head. "But that's not why you're here. Why you're here. This plan is way too dangerous to be the real plan. Maybe it's a dress rehearsal for the real thing, but it's not the real thing itself. There's no way you're sending out all these passwords to three agents on one day, I don't believe that for a second. This is just the cover story for the real operation, whatever that is, and you're using the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and give poor Rex an ethics review. Because he gaslit SCP-5057 and hasn't always had the most professional demeanour, right? You picked this Wondertainment story just to see if you could get him to realize what's wrong with himself."
Everwood kicked the container under the table. "Go on."
"Rex…" Lucasz looked at the ceiling. "Rex is really trying, you know? He's in over his head, and he's dealing with weirdness outside of his comfort zone, and he's just… doing the best he can. He's trying to do the right thing."
Ngo carefully crafted a look of thoughtful consideration, presented it to him, and sat back down. "That's all very well and good," she said softly, "but the work you do here is a matter of life and death. You can't lose perspective on it."
Everwood sat down next to her. "You think there's more to the story? Well, you're right."

2019

22 August

Everwood put their hand on one hip and scowled at their assistant. "I thought you said the file was closed."
Rex glanced up from his desk. "It is. Why?"
"You didn't finish checking all the files!" They tapped the manila folder they'd just dropped on his blotter. "There's an interview from 1997 you didn't even look at yet!"
"What's the point? I know how these Wondertainment things go. We screw around with them for a while, playing Keystone Cops, late to the party, yadda yadda yadda, and then BAM they send us a note saying 'Yeah, it was us, sorry, that one Dr. W. sure did suck didn't he, won't happen again', rinse and repeat." He pulled said note out of the folder, and brandished it at them. "File closed."
They grumbled something under their breath, brushed their hands over the file's contents until they found the only sheet they hadn't seen mentioned in Rex's final report, and picked it up.

Interview Log
Subject is male, age 45, married with no children. Subject was detained on 01/01/1998 after an emergency services call from his residence in Tulsa, Oklahoma resulted in the recovery of one instance of SCP-111.
Subject was extremely cooperative, and narrated the events leading to his acquisition of the object in question without prompting.
I don't tell stories and I don't have a great memory, but I'm gonna tell you a story, and you're not gonna believe how well I remember it, and I don't really care. It happened like this, and it stuck with me. I'll tell you, and it'll be your problem, and then maybe you'll let me go.
It's Christmas Eve, and I'm at the bar. Don't make anything of it. The wife's got her bar and I've got mine, and never the twain shall meet. I see this guy walk in, and while I'm not the staring kind, he's the kind you just can't not stare at. Ho boy.
I don't know what to make of him. He's big, real big, like a big eater, only whatever he's been eating it ain't working out for him. Never seen somebody with a complexion like that; looks like he'd been made up as the Tin Man for Halloween and they couldn't get all the paint out of his skin, so they just kept rubbing. You know they originally cast Jed Clampett as the Tin Man? Buddy Ebsen? And he swallowed the paint, right, and it fucked up his lungs for the rest of his life. Whatever was in this guy, it'd fucked him up real bad.
Now, the light in the bar is low, sure, but from what I can see he's wearing a colourblind special. Purples and pinks and such. Real garish shit. He sits down at the bar, just sags into his stool, and he asks for… you know, I don't remember what he asks for? Because I'm too busy staring at his eyes. Man has beautiful blue eyes. Might be the only thing hanging in that sack of grey skin that doesn't look half rotted-out. Whatever he orders, he puts back a whole lot of it while I sit nursing my whiskey and staring at his eyes.
He finally notices, and he looks back at me. The eyes are still blue, but there's something… well, something grey behind them. He says to me "Can you keep a secret?"
I shake my head. "No," I tell him. "Everybody says I can't."
He nods. "That's fine." He pulls his hanky out and wipes his forehead; if he's been sweating, I haven't noticed. I almost expect the hanky to come away grey. It doesn't. "Maybe this is something they should hear."
"Who? Who are you?" I ask. I think we've established by this point why I would've wanted to know these things.
He doesn't answer. He does keep talking, though. "I really, really thought it would work out, this time. You know? I thought I could do it. I'm not without talent, I think I've proven that much." He was staring at his drink; I was staring at his eyes. "It was a fantastic idea. A pure idea. Simple. Direct. And wonderful."
"What are you talking about?" I try to ask him, but there's something hypnotic in the way he's rambling that traps the words in my throat.
He keeps going. "Anything they could dream up, anything they could work up the will to want in their tiny little hearts, and I could give it to them. I've given people LIFE," and he slams his fist on the bar so hard the bartender looks like he's gonna ask for damages. "I've made LIFE." He slams it again. "This shouldn't have been beyond me. It should've worked."
I realize he's crying; it looks strange against that sallow skin.
"I was so certain. It was all falling into place. We had all the commercials — and our commercials WORK, you understand, the demand was GOING TO BE THERE… all we needed was the product. I came this close," and he makes that hand signal you make when you come this close to doing something, "this close to working it all out, to giving them a Christmas they'd never forget. But in the end? In the end he ruined me."
"Who ruined you?" I ask. I don't know what any of this shit means.
He taps his own head, nearly knocking his ridiculous Willy Wonka hat off. He was, he was wearing this fucking Willy Wonka hat, it was really something. He taps his own head, hard, until it's just got to hurt to keep doing it, and he keeps doing it. "Him. Him. Him. He wants me to fail. And I'm just about fed up with it, do you understand?" He looks at me again, and it's not just his words that are pleading. "Do you?"
I tell him I don't understand. He nods. "Neither do I." He reaches into his pocket, the one that hasn't got a snot-covered pink hanky in it, and he hands me — I shit you not — that fucking snail you took earlier.
"Do you have a child?" he asks, sliding off the stool and tossing some strange, shiny-as-all-hell coins on the counter. "Give them that from me, and tell them I'm sorry. Merry Christmas."
And away he goes.
Silence on recording.
Goddamn snail burned down our Christmas tree.

Everwood looked over the edge of the sheet at their assistant. "We're gonna need to have a little talk, you and I."

2021

1 January

They could tell by the look on Lucasz' face that he'd forgotten about Rex entirely. All his colour had drained away, in unconscious imitation of the late Dr. Cornelius Wondertainment's deathly pallour. "Does that mean…?"
"Yes," said Everwood. "It means he tried to make the toy, and he couldn't. He had demons, and they undercut his brilliance. All those poor kids got stuck with a bad case of the can't-haves, and they never got over it." They clasped their hands on the desk, and leaned forward. "His intentions don't matter, Lucasz. The consequences do. I'm sure he thought he was doing the right thing, in his own messed up way, but tell that to those twenty-eight, twenty-seven kids who never really grew up."
Lucasz deactivated the equipment in silence. They waited for him. They walked out of the room, and he locked the door behind them. They made it halfway back to the lobby before he stopped walking. "I really wish…" He balled his fists. "I wish I'd had more time to go through all the documents, before the project started. Get to grips with all the GoIs, not just the… overtly problematic ones."
Everwood leaned on the corridor wall and nodded. "We needed the work done fast. 43 didn't give us a lot of advance notice. If it'd been up to me, we wouldn't have put you on such a sensitive project before you had more experience under your belt. Bad experiences, preferably."
He nodded while they talked. He continued to nod when they stopped talking; he continued to nod when Ngo started. "This is why the work that gets done here is so important, Reggie. It's easy to think that there's good GoIs and bad GoIs when all you get is a superficial glimpse. You start thinking Wondertainment is all cute and cuddly, you lose sight of all the times their whimsy's gone terribly wrong. You start thinking Are We Cool Yet? is a bunch of firebrands fighting the power, you forget that some of them just want to use their talents to lash out and burn someone. Gamers Against Weed have doxxed innocent people. Even the GOC doesn't always get things right, and they're actually trying." She put an arm on his shoulder. "If we simplify, if we assume we know how the patterns are going to play out, people die. Good intentions won't bring them back."
His eyes were watering. He nodded.
"Imagine if Wondertainment had the password in 1997, Reggie. The Amazing Disappearing Word, trademark. What kind of damage would it do to a kid, if they could permanently lose access to an entire concept?"
He nodded again, and he tensed up. Two things happened simultaneously, in the next moment: he made a break for it, back down the hallway to where the radio equipment was still waiting in the soundproof room, and she neatly dropped to the floor and swept his legs out from under him.

Faeowynn Wilson watched Lucasz through the one-way glass. He was squirming in the containment cell, his face rapidly transitioning between at least five distinct emotional states. It was bright red. "What did you even do to him?"
"It was awesome," said Rex.
"The floor did it," said Ngo. "With a little help from my Nhất Nam. I'm rusty in my older age, but you'd be surprised how often anomalous interview subjects need a kick in the head." She blinked. "Or maybe you wouldn't be."
The door to the observation room opened, and Everwood walked in. "So! When you were supposedly transmitting to Okorie, you were actually talking to an answering machine. MTF reports it was owned by a rogue Gamers Against Weed blackhat we've been tracking for months, so that's one for the trophy case. Ibanez was actually a whole colony of radical AWCY artists, and McInnis was… say it with me now…"
"Wondertainment," said Ngo. Rex didn't say anything.
"Yeah," said Everwood. "He linked you right up with Wonder World, would you believe? That's a bit beyond our reach, of course, but the Gamer and the artists are a good catch for a day's work." They winced. "I hope Dr. W. never hears how we slandered her. Her letter wasn't half as bad as we said, in reality."
"And I wasn't half as incompetent." Rex looked at them both resentfully. "But I don't get it. How did this help us catch anyone? And why are you fine with losing a whole copy of the password to Wondertainment? I thought that was explicitly a bad thing."
Ngo laughed. "Who says the password has copies? I didn't even bring the original with me."
Rex nodded. "What."
Everwood laughed, too. "This was what sold me on the plan. Nhung read single-use stun memetics into the mic. The folks who picked up got frozen in place for about six hours." They pointed at Ngo. "Thank your Dr. Lillihammer for me, by the way."
Rex harrumphed. "So big old Mr. Softie in there was trying to liberate a relic for the feel-good GoIs, and we gave him a crisis of conscience. Why? Why was that second part even important? Why did we need to see if he'd try to fix his mistake?"
"Because you guys need to learn to lighten up," said Faeowynn.
"That's the short version," Everwood agreed. "The long version is this: there's only so many potential agents or researchers to go around. We can't keep neutralizing people every time they screw up, even when they screw up bad." They tapped the glass lightly with their hand. "That guy, is a good guy. He's done with us, obviously, he can't ever be in a sensitive position again and we're going to have to amnesticize him, but he did the right thing when the chips were down. He was probably going to pretend the GoIs hacked the comms system to steal the password, but once he knew he had to undo what he'd done, and fast, he didn't waste time making up an excuse to go back to the room. He took off at a run." They sighed. "He says he was going to ask them for the password back, and you know what? I actually believe him, the goofy idiot. At least he's got a solid moral compass."
"And broad shoulders," Faeowynn added.
Realization slowly dawned on Rex. "You're gonna send him back to 64, and let Wilson's Wildlife hire him?"
Everwood smiled at him. "I don't know how they do it at the other Sites, but at 55 we don't just dump people in the trash when they make mistakes. I like to think we've got our hearts in the right place, as the saying goes."
He actually smiled back.

Everwood walked Ngo to the exit. There was obviously something on their mind; Ngo let them arrive at the decision to unload it on their own. "I have one question."
Ngo nodded.
"The cover story here was that there's six copies of the password, and you were running three of these sting ops on the same day."
Ngo nodded.
"Lucasz saw right through that."
Ngo nodded.
"Do you actually have more than two copies of the password? And are you actually going to do more than one sting per day?"
Ngo smiled. "What a big day that would be!"

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Fourteen Hours Earlier

Eileen Veiksaar, Chief of Identity and Technocryptography, awoke to the sound of a gentle thumping on her dorm room door. She rolled out of bed on autopilot, retrieved her housecoat from its hook, and swung it on before swinging the door open. The dim night cycle lights of the hallway still nearly blinded her, and it took a moment for the beaming face of Daniil Sokolsky to detach from the luminescent haze.
"Up and at 'em, Chief!" he boomed. "Big day today."

...Here I Come

The Time After Time Password

Whack-a-Mole


headstone 02/21/2021 (Sun) 07:23:44 #83427785

When I was sixteen, I got a job at the local department store to help save for college. I mostly overlooked the gardening, camping, and sports departments. That kind of outdoorsy stuff. But I did have one other duty: the goldfish.
We had this big wall of fish tanks, and while some of them had little crabs or bettas, our main stock was in goldfish. They were cramped in there like sardines— I always felt bad when I had to go and feed them. It wasn't rare that I'd find one or two bobbing on the surface.
Sometimes one would be rescued by a shopper looking for a pet. When I went to scoop one up into a little plastic bag, they'd all swarm the net, like they were desperate for an escape. One even tried to hop onto the floor. I wasn't able to save it.
We had a policy— the 80-day guarantee. All you had to do was save your receipt and if your goldfish died within 80 days of purchase, you could bring back the corpse and we'd give you a new one. For three years, nobody ever used it.
One day, though, a girl around my age came in, dressed in this… punk outfit? A pretty rare look, at the time. And she always had this smile on her face. Warm, welcoming— she was very refreshing compared to the other mindless shoppers.
The moment she walked through the door, she practically beelined to the fish tank. She looked at them and tapped on the glass softly, at which I approached her. I'm not sure how she saw me, but she said, "I'd like one, please."
I tilted my head to the side. "Just one?"
"Yes, please."
So I told her about the 80-day guarantee, bagged up her fish, had her pay, and that was that.
But the very next week, she came back again. With the very same grin plastered across her face, she handed me a plastic bag with a fish corpse, along with her receipt.
I guess I didn't really hide my sadness well, because she reached over, tapped the bottom of my chin up, and looked into my eyes. "It's alright. He lived a good life, trust me."
That didn't do much to comfort me… but it did make me blush a little. Teenage impulse, or something like that. Her soft hands on my skin— it was the closest a girl had ever been to me. I couldn't help it.
"So— uh… do you want another?"
"Mhmm."
So I went over to the fishtanks, opened the top, and reached in with my net, scooping one out. As I moved it into a bag of water, the girl was watching me quizzically. Just as I tied the bag closed, she walked over, stood up on her tiptoes, and kissed me right on the cheek.
I froze, flustered, looking at her as I felt my cheeks redden. She grinned, slowly grabbed the bag from my hand, and waved goodbye before leaving the store.

As months passed on, she went from kissing my cheek to holding my hand to… well, kissing my lips. I suppose that's why I didn't question why she kept coming back with another dead fish to exchange. Or that I didn't even know her name.
After a while, the tank was emptier. The fish seemed more content with all their new space, not even caring to think about where all their friends went. Guess I can't blame them.
One week, she came into the store, just herself, no corpse. Her smile seemed even brighter that day.
"When's your break? I wanna show you something," she said with a wink.
"Right now." That was a lie, but I wasn't about to pass up spending time with her. Besides, I wasn't needed much there anyway.
She grabbed my hand and began dragging me along with her outside. I almost had to run to keep up when she took a sharp turn into the woods. After a while, we got to a big marble-tile building, at which she stopped, took a handkerchief from her pocket, and put it around my eyes.
"No peeking," she whispered, and she began to slowly lead me through a door before sitting me down in a chair. "Seriously, don't look until I tell you to!"
I heard a splash, then a laugh.
"Now look."
There wasn't much to really look at. Well… except for her. We were in a dim pool room, and she was right at the edge of the water, looking up at me.
"Come on in."
I stepped back, then got a running start before jumping into the water. As my head began to fill with different stupid teenage fantasies, I opened my eyes, looking into the darkness below.
And something looked back. Dozens of pale, flat, glassy eyes piercing through the gloom.
I let out a scream, only for bubbles to exit instead. My head fuzzed, and all I could do was watch as the leviathan swam upwards towards me with its mangled fins, displacing gallons of water with every movement. I only saw the glint of its orange scales for a moment before it crashed into me, slamming me against the course back wall of the pool.
With the last of my strength, I reached for the surface of the water only to see the girl there, looking down at me. She gave me another little smile.
I just watched her, barely even noticing that something long and sticky and cold was slithering up my legs. And as it began dragging me down into the deep, and I blacked out.

I woke up soaking wet in the middle of the woods, nothing but trees surrounding me.
After a moment of looking up into the sky, my head empty, I rose to my feet and trudged back to the store. I barely noticed that the fish tanks were completely gone.
And I worked for that entire week. Absentmindedly hoping the girl would come back— that she'd explain what happened. She never did.
I was about to go home that night, and was sitting down in the break room for a bit. That's when I felt the wriggling in the back of my throat. Something churning, forcing itself back up, choking me as it tried to escape. I jumped to my feet and hurled, right into a big glass bowl on the table.
I closed my eyes, wiped my mouth, and blinked. Inside of the bowl was a single, little goldfish, in crystal-clear water.
I didn't know what to do, so I carried the bowl out of the break room. And that's when I saw her. The girl. She pointed at the fish. I knew what she wanted.
But just as I was about to hand it over, I threw the bowl to the ground, watching as the poor goldfish splashed around on the floor, cutting itself on shards of broken glass before finally laying still.
And when I looked up, for the very first time, the girl was looking at me, completely emotionless. No dumb grin. No warm smile.
Her eyes flickered between me and the corpse for what felt like hours. But eventually, she silently turned around and left. And I never saw her again.


Allison Chao was twelve years old when she realized she wasn't human.
After all, how could she be? When she was happy, she didn't laugh. When she was sad, she didn't cry. No matter what happened to her, her face remained stock-still, like a robot. Like a machine. She'd seen how people were meant to act, and they weren't meant to act like she did. The only logical conclusion was that she wasn't human.
Her father wasn't human either, of course.
His face was always the same, too. A blank mask — the most extravagant expressions possible being the polishing of his glasses with a handkerchief, the most meaningful display of affection being a rigid ruffling of her hair. Still, it meant the world to her, and he knew it. That was why he persisted with such awkward displays.
She'd tried to act human — she'd paid close attention to her mother, to her classmates, to the people on television — but when she had, she just got awkward look and whispered giggles. Eventually, she'd had to be pulled away and be told the faces she was making were frightening the other children. So eventually she had abandoned that effort.
It was her and her father, then. They were the only two inhumans in the world. Allison loved her mother dearly, but she just didn't get it. She could laugh and not have it come out like shattered glass.
It was her and her father against the world.
Then, one day, when she came home from school and her father wasn't there — when all she found was her tearful mother and a lack of explanation — that changed. When Charles Gears disappeared, Allison realized how it really had been all along.
It was her against the world.

"The chef worked quite hard on that, you know," Ernest Simms said, pointing at the untouched food with a fork.
Allison glared at him from across the long, long table. The mansion she'd been brought to was decadent in the extreme. It looked like even the wallpaper, emblazoned with fantastical images of angels and demons, was worth more than her college fund — or at least it would have been, if she'd gone to college.
She had other uses for that money, after all.
Her eyes flicked down to the food in front of her. Roast chicken, with half-a-dozen spices and sides she didn't even know the names of. Poison, maybe? No — if this man had wanted to kill her, he could have simply had her shot in the head. He certainly had the money to get away with it.
Still, though.
"I'm not hungry," she said, voice low, face as blank as it had ever been. "Why have you brought me here?"
Ernest chuckled. The old man was disgusting, drooping body dressed in a bathrobe, a tiny pair of spectacles dancing over his nose with every moment. This was a man who long ago had stopped caring what people thought of him — because there was nobody who would dare say it to his face.
"You're a paranoid young lady, aren't you?" he said, taking a messy sip of wine. Red droplets remained in his moustache as he put the glass down again.
"I prefer careful."
"No, no no no," Ernest shook his head, still chuckling. "You are not careful, my dear. Not careful at all. Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. That word you've been tossing around, in the circles you've been moving through? No, I wouldn't say that's careful at all."
"That word?" Allison said, mentally kicking herself a second later. Stupid questions like that only made her look weak. Better to pretend you already knew everything and get the details later.
Ernest grinned. "Foundation."
As the words left Ernest's lips, a flare of hot anger ran through Allison's body. Her face didn't shift in the slightest, but her grip on the tablecloth tightened — just slightly. Foundation. Foundation.
"What do you want from me?" she said quietly.
The old man looked her up and down. "Tell me, dear. Do you hate?"
"I'm sorry?"
"It's a simple question," Ernest said, steepling his hands before him. As he spoke, the flamboyance seemed to drain away, replaced with a simmering, indecent anger. "Do you hate? Do you resent? I've researched you, I know your story. Your father stolen away, your family splintered, your life destroyed. Your suffering is not the product of circumstance. There are people who have done this to you. To us."
Allison nodded, silently closing her eyes. Now this was beginning to make sense. "You too, then? Who?"
"My granddaughter could turn fire to ice with a glance," Ernest said wistfully, his eyes drifting to somewhere very far away. "Turn life to death with a touch. A miracle girl — now one of their curiosities, rotting away in a cell. Your father's situation is much the same. The time stolen from him, the time stolen from you. So tell me: do you hate?"
She breathed out a sigh that felt like it had building up her entire life.
"Yes," she said, voice cold. "I hate."
The slightest smile spread across Ernest's lips. "Very good," he said. "I have hired fifty men — Phantasmagoria mercenaries. Soldiers of fortune for the kind of world you and I live in. They are quite capable, but untrustworthy, as all of their kind are. I would like for you to be my representative in their midst."
Suspicion opened up inside her once again. "You'd trust me with that?" They'd met barely half an hour ago.
"Of course," he smiled.
Liar. It was in his eyes. This man — perhaps he'd once cared about this granddaughter he mentioned. But that love had long since shriveled away into something uglier, a barbed bitterness that existed only to draw blood from the thing that had hurt it. This was a man who had been hurt in his life, and now lived only to hurt.
Well… Allison couldn't say she was much different. So long as she got what she wanted, she was more than willing to paint the world red.
So long as she got her father back.

Charles Gears, known to the Foundation as SCP-8211, died without any final words, suddenly relieved of his guts by a single swipe of the giggling lizard's tail.
She'd dragged him back to a supply closet, hoping to treat his wounds or — at the very least — say goodbye, but he was already gone. He'd been gone for many minutes. She'd left his half innards strewn on the floor on their way here. Idiot. Idiot.
Silent tears trickled down Allison's blank face as she stared down at his body. What little life he'd ever shown was gone now, too. It was like she was looking at a discarded toy, some limp cold thing that had taken him away. That had stolen him, from her.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair!
It wasn't fair!

Ie … mo'j yuf. Eir mo'j yuf.
Oh … poor child. My poor child.

A sob died stillborn in her throat, coming out only as a hollow cracking noise. She looked up from the body, her face wet, staring uncomprehendingly at the inside of the storage closet. In the distance, she could still hear the sounds of screaming, of tearing, of that damn lizard laughing in glee as it rampaged through the Phantasmagoria mercenaries. The blaring alarms stabbed at her pained ears like knives.
"Hello?" she mumbled — and even as she did, she found herself irritated at just how childish her voice sounded, how plaintive it came out.

Ter'eih, ol yuf. Kur nesh piresh.
Hello, my child. Let us discuss.

There was a sense — just for the briefest moment — a sense of utter weightlessness, and the supply closet melted away from around Allison Chao. The walls fell away, crumbling into dust into atoms into nothing, and the floor she was kneeling on overflowed with dark. In the space of a few seconds, the only things remaining from the former landscape were herself and the body of her father.
The place she had found herself was a void, an utter void, endless darkness in every direction. No stars, no sky. Absolutely nothing.
No — no, that was wrong. It couldn't possibly be nothing. She was kneeling on hard floor, wasn't she? That implied the existence of ground. If she could see blackness, then by definition there wasn't nothing. There was blackness, if nothing else. She was in a place that existed.
As if in response to her reasoning, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Everything was still oil-black, but there were definitely objects around her. She and her father were on an obsidian floor, and tiny fragments of black sand floated in the air around her, tickling against her face.
She looked up, and her eyes began to ache.
Before her was a great throne, formed from dark glass, rising up to a height that… a height that her eyes couldn't perceive, not exactly, but it was huge. The kind of throne that kings would sacrifice their kingdoms for. Something was sitting in that throne — not a person exactly, but a mass, a cloud of dancing shadows. It had no face, but Allison swore she could feel the thing smiling at her.

Uor'shef, yuf.
Welcome, child.

The words slithered meekly from her lips. "Where…" she began, before injecting a little more confidence into her words. "Where am I?"

Mor ei'l un eir dioma.
You are in my house.

Her eyes narrowed. She'd heard of things like this before: people using the Ways incorrectly, being snatched away by daemons or imps. She was no fool — she wouldn't fall prey to something like this.
A bundle of hope writhed in her chest. If this was a trick, did that mean her father was still alive…?

Hur. Mul eit ne'er.
No. He is dead.

"You can read my thoughts?"

Hur. Es't kree sho malaer. Tel v'rii mosh varber nesh-pol.
No. But thoughts are predictable. It is not difficult to track the falling of dominoes.

Still holding a hand under her father's head to support its weight, Allison glowered defiantly at the… thing. "If this a trick," she breathed, "I'll kill you. I swear it."

Brin sho'ol ter k'rin. Ei reshi ko braga'sh zet.
There is no trick. I have a proposal for you.

No. She wasn't about to let this thing control the pace of the conversation. She was in control. Even now, especially now, she had to be.
"Who are you?" she said, keeping her voice in its normal, neutral tone. The way she'd spoken before she'd learnt to talk like people.

Ei ju'ge BLACK MOON, yuf.
I am called the Black Moon, child.

"That doesn't mean anything to me."

He't nhis eir hu'shi.
That makes me happy.

She forced a growl out of her throat — a painfully fake display of emotion, but perhaps enough to fool this clearly inhuman thing. "Who are you?" she asked again. "And what do you want from me?"
The shadows shifted slightly, a whispering crescendo building up until it became speech.

Eir vos ter'at tosh, nuf. Eles eir mos nek'ten.
I am a player of games, child. And I wish to help you.

The anger inside her writhed again, slamming itself against the bars of her body. "My father is dead," she said, voice a dead monotone. "There's nothing you can do for me. The thing is done. I failed."

Trun. Ke podra nash necrash. Ton ve-et krish nau'ul Allison.
Yes. A father is dead. But so many still live on, awaiting their Allison.

She blinked, the anger inside her chest fading — but only slightly. For the last few minutes, it had felt as though the world had very suddenly become a very small and sealed room, slowly closing in around her.
A window had just opened, just a crack. Intoxicating hope took root.
"There's still a chance?"

Tr'en.
As many chances as you need. There are as many worlds as drops of rain, and I can give you leave to sail them. To find the happy ending your heart desires..

"What would it cost me?" Suspicion had already turned to bargaining. If she'd been in her right mind, Allison knew she'd be disgusted with herself, but… she looked down at her father's dead face.
She owed him. She owed him this.
The words came from her mouth again. "What would it cost me?"

Eir kosh n'va shor. Te'el. Ezheni mos vas ner peit'ru. Basha'l KHAHRAHK velesh te'en. Endes'ves kor nocht mazh ben tedru.
I told you: I am a player of games. My game is called existence, and I seek victory over my adversary. His pieces are many, his children and wives and meat angels, but I seek quality in my pieces. A singular, immutable hatred such as yours is a rare thing indeed. You would be my piece.

Eir BLACK QUEEN.
My Black Queen.

She gave three responses to this, this offer that would give her life back. That would save her father. That would make everything okay again.
She blinked.
She nodded.
She spoke.
"Yes."
The multiverse would never be the same again.

Next...


« A Fishbowl, Shattered | An Opportunity, Gained | A Risk, Taken »

Well that was a spectacular fuckup.
Don't say anything. This is gonna be another of those conversations where you don't speak. There's a thousand fires that need to be put out right now so let's get this done with. You, Junior Researcher Henry Dromeus, have just survived a major site disaster.
You may think you know what happened, but it's common to lose track of what happens in situations like these, so let's set the record straight. Your superior, Dr. Evans, gave a Chinese zither with the ability to control an army of thousands of terracotta soldiers to a D-class. The D-class didn't know how to play it. That's not where things went wrong.
Things went wrong when Dr. Evans wasn't clear enough about which notes to play. This caused him to play an untested chord, which formed a previously unknown command that he had not prepared for. There were no procedures for this occurrence in place. That was Dr. Evans' mistake.
So with this mistake, hundreds of terracotta soldiers went on a killing spree in the middle of a site full of anomalous objects. They swarmed out of cells that were not prepared for their full force, another mistake on Dr. Evans' part, and filled the hallways and rooms. Security was quick enough to make sure no other SCPs were breached. They were not quick enough to prevent the death of almost every individual on-site.
It was absolute chaos, as I'm sure you're aware. We lost over a hundred men and women, from top researchers to a sizable chunk of D-class. Ancient Chinese terracotta soldiers completely overwhelmed us, and we had no choice but to shut down all access in and out of the site. By this time, you had already escaped the facility. The shutting-down didn't help with the casualties, but it kept the soldiers contained. It wasn't until we were able to call in large amounts of backup that we were able to subdue the rampaging warriors. We ended up destroying a lot of them in the process, too.
It was a…catastrophic failure.
You survived, and for that, you are one hell of a lucky man. That's not the only reason, though.
See, the higher-ups know what you did. When you used your standard-issue handgun to save Dr. Evans, you scored yourself some brownie points. They liked it, and more importantly, they like you. You've got a nice track record and this recent incident is just the cherry on top. So your reward is that you get to walk out of this mess and be able to say you were there.
See, when something goes wrong, and I mean really goes wrong, you don't usually get that opportunity. Whether it's because of mental trauma, classified skips being witnessed, or just morale issues, most people involved in events of this scale tend to get their memories wiped. Nothing drastic, just enough to keep them going from day to day without losing their minds. I'm letting you know this because we like you, and we might as well let you know before you start asking us why no one else remembers the terracotta massacre.
Anyways, there's something else you need to know too. Like I said, you've made a good impression: you've kept your nose clean and your head held high. You've worked with quite a few SCPs by now, and you know the way around.
All of this to say, we now have a new position as researcher open. We want you to have it.
Now don't think this'll be a walk in the park. Your workload will double in size, and your responsibilities will be magnified ten-fold, as will the consequences of failure. That being said, your privileges and freedoms will be multiplied too, and you'll have access to so much more information.
Just don't let us down like Dr. Evans did, okay?
So congratulations. You are now a doctor of the Foundation.
Hm? Well I know you already have a doctorate, but it's sort of a joke we have around here. I'm surprised you're not familiar.
You know how about half of American grad students don't finish their degree? Well, it's something like that with junior researchers getting promoted. It's just like getting a doctorate.
So good luck, Dr. Dromeus. Make us proud.


• Temporal Anomalies Department Hub •
<< Midnight in the Neon City | Neon City Raindrops

Friday, 01:22 18/06/2337 The Neon City Borough, Greater NYC, NY -
It was raining again in Neon City. Thaddeus Xyank cursed bitterly as he stepped into the drizzle and pulled the collar of his rain jacket up to protect the back of his neck. It was always raining in Neon City, and while the other members of RCT-Δt might laugh about it and compete to find the most ridiculous raincoat to fit the weather, Thad hated it.
And since they almost always arrived to nighttime local Neon City, that meant it was also almost always cold. Sure, while the cooling vents from the massive reactors deep underground mostly kept the street-level temperatures at a balmy 26°C, the endless clouds of vent-driven steam had an unfortunate reaction when it hit the air currents funneled through the Skyliner towers. Hence, it was almost always raining in Neon City.
Thad shivered involuntarily as a gust of wind kicked up in the wake of a low-flying autotaxi blew through the alleyway causing more rain to drip down the back of his jacket. "Fucking hell. Next time we gotta collect shit from the Dealer, I'm sending Reggie." he muttered, mostly under his breath as he stalked down the alley towards the crowded thoroughfare leading to the BoomBoom District.
At almost 01:30 in the morning, the parties raging in the dance club and bar district of Lower Neon City were in full swing. TrueKids and the artificially young streamed from bar to club in an endless parade of gaudy iridescence and intermittent flashes as the electrostatic umbrellas of personal rain shields rubbed briefly against each other. The visual cacophony of color and day-glo light was only matched in intensity by the incessant thrumming of new-new-wave synth pouring from dance clubs and the occasional sono-projector carried on the shoulder of a new-teen already trying to ruin their freshly rejuvenated eardrums.
As he slipped into the flow of traffic outside, Thad began cautiously scanning the crowds around him. While always a little on edge when adjusting to a new timeline, he had more of a reason than usual to be careful. Despite Bert and Reggie's extensive sweep of the area after he'd been attacked, there was little evidence linking his assailants with any known anti-Foundation group.
Of course, they could have just been your regular run of the mill muggers. Neon City wasn't exactly known for its fine, upstanding citizenry. Even the Skyliners were douchebags. Especially the Skyliners.

Sunday, 18:03 10/05/2025 Site-17 -
"What the fuck do you mean, 'He went to see the Dealer'?" Reggie glared across the table at her erstwhile colleague. Johann Eisenberg flinched back into his seat and glanced down at the table.
"He, uh, he said he had to go pick something up from some dealer, that he'd be back momentarily." He frowned and tried to meet his superior's gaze. "Why is this such a big deal?"
He jumped as Regina Watts, commanding officer of the RCT-Δt Tactical Operations, slammed her palm down on the tabletop. "You were supposed to stay with him, Private. I gave explicit instructions for you to remain at his side at all times. When he goes to the bathroom, you stand right outside his fucking stall. When he eats, you sit at the table with him. When he sleeps, you bunk down on his fucking couch."
She pushed herself away from the table and stood as the young Lieutenant struggled for words. "Now we gotta go find him. Get your ass to Tac and gear up for the 26th century, Neon City." She glowered down at him. "Now."

Friday, 01:46 18/06/2337 The Neon City Borough, Greater NYC, NY -
It could be going better, Thad supposed. Getting through Club9 to get to the Dealer hadn't been particularly difficult. The club was packed and he'd had to turn down the implants in his eyes because all the glittering holo presences were beginning to give him a headache. At least in 21st-century clubs one only had to deal with smoke machines and laser lighting. The partiers in Club9 would find that positively boring by comparison, though Thad would have vastly preferred that to the semi-real holographic insanity that filled the club.
Now he leaned quietly against the wall in one of the club's back hallways, waiting patiently beside an impressively-engineered door covered in that ridiculous red leather that never seemed to go out of style. For 20 minutes.
He sighed and considered pushing the admittance button for the third time when the thick metal door slid inwards and away from him to reveal the hulking monstrosity that stood in as the Dealer's door guard. The cyborg stared at him through mirrored shades and gestured curtly inside. Smoothing down the creases in his jacket, Thad obligingly followed the gesture and stepped into opulence.
While the glitter and glam of the club proper seemed to fit the absolute stereotype of what a 21st century Sci-Fi fan might think, the Dealer's parlor fit an entirely different one. The walls were covered in a thick crimson shag that probably did nothing to muffle the pounding music from the club, but served instead to evoke thoughts of Miami cocaine dealers from the 1970s in Thad's mind. The entire room was tastefully lit by a myriad of parchment-shaded lamps situated on antique-looking little mahogany tables spread all throughout the space, intermixed between the overstuffed brown leather couches and the huge chrome-and-black desk that dominated the far end of the room.
The office was opulent, sure, but it was tacky as hell and Thad hated it every time he had to come here.
"Your coat, Mr. Xyank?" a short, vaguely asian man stood politely to the side of the door with his hand extended. "No thanks, I won't be long." He replied as he stepped past and into the office. He paused as the little man politely cleared his throat. "Please, sir. You're dripping rainwater on the marble, and Mr. Firenze hates that."
Thad rolled his eyes and quickly shucked the offending jacket before handing it over to the other man. "Fine, but don't take it anywhere, I'll be leaving as soon as I'm finished talking to your boss."
"Of course, Mr. Xyank." The other man bowed politely as he took the jacket, then promptly turned and walked through another door buried in the atrocious shag wall. Thad glared daggers at the door after it closed, then turned back to the room at large.
"Fine, then. Florence?" His voice got louder, "Why make me wait in the hall if you're just gonna make me wait in your shaggin' wagon of an office?"
When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he stomped over to take a seat in one of the high-backed leather chairs in front of the acres-long desk with another long-suffering sigh. "At least the seating is more comfortable in here."

Friday, 01:41 18/06/2337 The Neon City Borough, Greater NYC, NY -
It could be going worse, Reggie supposed. Her tactical squad had stepped through into one of the many alleyways tucked between the massive towers of the Borough, not far from the TechBazaar. The booming basslines from Club9 vibrated the ground beneath their feet, masking the sounds of her team running through the alley.
A group of junkies had been disturbed by their arrival and had protested loudly at the interruption. Her team had ignored them until one of the junkies had pulled a nasty little vibroblade and tried to stab Johnson with it. That had apparently been a cue for the pushers down the alley to open up with their buzzguns and a short, vicious fight had ensued.
Now, the five-person team was stationed in one of the service tubes above Club9, and Eisenberg was cursing quietly as he applied an aidpack to a wound in his thigh. While the Loopy made it pretty much a guarantee that her team would cut through the guards outside like a hot knife through butter, it wasn't a perfect preventative against all injury.
Sergeant Patterson slid up behind her and gently tapped her shoulder. "Yeah, Sergeant?" she didn't bother to look back at him, but he knew he had her attention.
"How many?" he asked quietly, his voice carrying only far enough for her to hear. "Does it matter?" she asked in reply. "Enough to get the job done, but not so many that we don't have remaining wiggle room for whatever comes next."
He snorted at her response. "Hey, as long as you have enough smokes left, what do I care?" He shrugged, unseen behind her. "We're all still here, more or less in one piece. What's the plan?"
She scowled into the darkness ahead of them. "The Dealer's office is two stories below us and about thirty meters ahead. Tonight's the first available time slot in the register, and provided that the Doc hasn't been making any off-book visits, we should run into OUR Thad Xyank there."
He nodded again. "Ok, do we just go in and get him, or what?" She shook her head widely enough for him to notice. "Nah. We're just gonna make sure that whatever he's there for goes off uninterrupted."

Friday, 02:06 18/06/2337 The Neon City Borough, Greater NYC, NY -
Ok, this was getting ridiculous, Thad fumed. He checked his 442i for what felt like the dozenth time and sighed. He was used to the Dealer's idiosyncrasies, but this was becoming excessive even for a drama queen like Luca Firenze.
His internal impatience was cut off as another door hidden in the lush wall carpet hissed open and a corpulent man in a pinstriped blue suit hurried out. The door snapped shut behind him, and the man gave a flustered look back at it before settling down behind the enormous desk. He patted his bald head with a monogrammed silk handkerchief then nodded across the expanse at his guest. "Well, Mr. Xyank. My apologies for my tardiness, I had… other things to attend to. How may I be of service this evening?"
Thad eyed the man warily, and his eyes shifted once towards the spot in the wall that hid the door the man had just come through. "If you're busy, I can come back another time."
"No, no, no!" The man waved his hands dismissively. "Everything is perfectly fine. Just, lots of things for a man like me to handle in a place like this." the Dealer gave Thad an expansive grin. "Now, please, let's get down to business. I'm sure you didn't come here just to pay me a social call."
Thad frowned slightly, then shrugged. "Fine. I need a Voight-Kampff replicator."
Silence hung in the air for a moment before the Dealer shook his head. "Out of the question. You know me, Mr. Xyank, I'll get just about anything for the right price, but even I can't get my hands on one of those."
"Now, come on Florence, I came to you precisely because I know you can get me anything." The Dealer frowned at him. "Yeah. You want a Franz Vaugner Integration chip? I got those in spades. A Kinsington-Hurtweiler device? Difficult, but we got those too. Hell, I can even get you a whole-ass Isosonic Field Resonance chamber. But a Voight-Kampff? There were what, a hundred of those made before the van York protocol got put into place? Nah, I fuckin' can't, Xyank. Don't even ask." He shook his head. "And don't call me Florence, you know I hate that."
Thad snorted and made a throwing away gesture with his left hand. "Come on, Luca. I know you picked one up from the Geotower Heights job I scoped out for you."
The other man glanced nervously to his left, almost but not quite looking towards the door. "Mr. Xyank, Thaddeus, please."

Friday, 01:55 18/06/2337 Above Club9, Neon City -
Reggie grunted in pain as she shoved back hard from the door frame. Her sidearm chirruped twice as she sent twin streams of hypersonic projectiles towards the shattered remnants of the barricade that once filled the doorway.
The tiny flechettes bored a row of need little holes in the remaining plasteel of the barricade, eliciting a short shriek of pain from an operative hiding on the other side. She reversed her momentum with another grunt, then dove to the side as a wave of answering fire belched from one of the other nooks in the killzone.
"Patterson, there are maybe two left. I'm pretty sure I got one at the barricade, but they're changing positions impossibly fast. Eisenberg, you and Smythe go left. Patterson, take Ellsworth and go right. Heads down!"
She pulled a suppression grenade from her tac belt and chucked it into the room behind the barricade. A moment later, the brilliant flash and sonic pulse from its detonation bathed the hallway in blinding light. "Go, go, go!" she barked as she shoved off from the floor and hurled herself over the barricade.
A shape loomed briefly in front of her and she jammed the muzzle of her buzzgun into an armored midsection and squeezed the trigger. The figure fell away from her in a spray of gore and she dove forward on instinct as the sharp whine of another gun discharged somewhere ahead of her. A razor thin line of agony stitched itself across the back of her head and right shoulder blade as she moved, tucking herself into a tight roll.
She came up into a low crouch just in time to see her target's head disappear into a cloud of pink mist and shattered bone as Patterson's return fire ripped into him. She glanced over at the sergeant and gave him a quick nod before leaping forward at a dead run. The room narrowed to a short hallway in front of her, and a panicked-looking fat man in a fancy suit was fumbling at a wall panel next to a security door.
Reggie slammed into him at a dead run, pinning him violently up against the far wall. He shrieked in pain and shock as she pushed the muzzle of her gun into his ribs. "Listen to me, Florence," she rasped at him, her breath coming in quick gulps.
"Whatever you have planned for the Doc, you fucking change it now." She snarled at the sweating man.
"Hey, Reggie! Good to see you, too. I- I didn't have anything planned for the good Doctor! N- Nothing! I swear!"
She glared at him, and jabbed the gun harder against his ribs, pushing aside his rolls of fat to jab hard against the bone. "Good. Now, go in there and meet with him, just as you would any other fucking night. If you pull any shit, remember that I'll be waiting just on the other side of this door." She stepped back from him and made a curt gesture towards the door.
"Go. Now."

Sunday, 18:31 10/05/2025 Site-17 -
Thaddeus Xyank stalked out of his office and set a heavy molded plastic and steel object on the table between Captain Watts and Lieutenant Eisenberg. "It took some convincing, but I managed to get it."
He collapsed into one of the other chairs and sighed. "I don't know what was up with Florence tonight, and I don't really care. But he's getting harder and harder to deal with." He rubbed at his brow and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. "Maybe Marcus can go find someone less… truculent to deal with?" He shook his head, completely oblivious to the steely glare Reggie shot Johann across the table.
"Reggie, I'm sorry that I ditched your bodyguard. I know you mean well, but Firenze's hard enough to deal with without a tagalong. And this went fine, not a problem." He yawned as he sat up and stretched.
"Now, if you don't mind, I think I'll go catch a nap."


James gestures at the urn sitting on top of a wooden desk, one among many. It was small, with a few carvings etched onto its surface. The employees offer sympathetic smiles and words, and as they turn away, James wonders if they would remember him if he was gone, or dismiss him just like another face among the masses.
As he leaves, he wonders why urns are so damn expensive.
The cleaning had begun on Sunday after the death; it was five in the morning when James unlocked the door leading to the office, carrying a stack of foldable boxes. The office was small and neat, with a battered mahogany desk and a metal filing cabinet.
As the hours pass, more people join him to clean. After some time, the Site-Director himself came to pick up a stack of papers that read: LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE ONLY. As he digs through the desk drawers, he finds something.
It's a photograph, a Polaroid, of him and Carter, standing in the rain with red raincoats and bright wide smiles etched onto their faces. The street was dark behind them and the streetlights glowed a soft yellow in the mist.
Surrounded by his friends and colleagues, offering assistance and condolences, he has never felt so alone.
He slips the photograph into his pocket and moves on.

The coffee shop hadn't changed. It was a nondescript brick building that was weathered and old.
His coffee hadn't changed either. As he handed over his credit card he eyed the plastic cup. White, with brown lettering on the surface. Resting on a granite counter-top. It hadn't changed.
As the barista turns away, James wonders if he knows that James' life was upended, as though a child had thrown a game board away. He wonders if he knows that yesterday passes in a blink of an eye, but today feels as though it's been going on for decades.
The coffee is bitter and sharp; it scalds his tongue.
James walks on.

They never tell you about the silence.
It threatens to consume James. He resents Carter for dying, for sacrificing himself, for being an honorable man who was determined to keep families from breaking up and yet, he broke his own family.
He's in his apartment, lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling. It's a soft beige color. He looks at the tiny bumps on it, tries to discern a pattern, tries to distract himself from grief.
It doesn't work.
He's crawling out of bed now and putting on headphones. He presses the play button on his iPod, hoping that the noise would drown the silence out. James repeatedly presses the button to increase the volume, continuing to do it until it reaches one-hundred, and he sits there for what feels like minutes, but when he glances at the clock it's almost two hours later.
When he takes them off, the silence is louder than ever.

His daily routine hadn't changed. Get up. Dress in a suit and tie. Get a coffee. Get on a train to the Site- or more accurately, the train to the outer edges of the city, then ride a bus for ten miles to the Site. Work for eight hours as someone who types up reports.
He's halfway through a post-death report from a lab incident two days prior when he feels the bile rising up in his throat, and he stumbles to the bathroom.
It burns his throat as he heaves. He doubles up, his throat and stomach screaming in agony. But there is no sound except for the soft, ragged breaths coming from himself and the loud droning noise of the bathroom fan.
He flushes the toilet, washes his hands, and walks out as though nothing happened.
When he leaves at six o' clock and gets aboard the bus, and then the train, all he could think about was how the swirling patterns of his vomit matched the ones in his coffee.
It's disgusting, sure, but it's better than the silence.

His father asks him one day, "How are you doing?"
He doesn't deign to respond for a few minutes, and simply stares at the white blank wall in front of him. A long cold cup of tea are clasped in his fingers, and he breathes into the phone receiver. "Fine."
When his father asks him, "When's the funeral?" He hears a tiny, almost imperceptible voice crack and he realizes his father is hurting, maybe just as badly as himself.
He doesn't respond, though, talking to others had never been his strong suit; that was always Carter's job.
"Well- I'll, uh, talk to you later. Tomorrow?" And he says it with such hope, as though James would say no to his own father, it almost breaks him.
But he says, "Yeah, I can talk tomorrow."
They don't talk tomorrow, nor the day after. They end up exchanging emails after two weeks, when the sun begins to fall from its apex and he's typing out a response to his fathers message asking him where he was and why he didn't pick up the phone. But, he doesn't know why he's intentionally pushing away the one man who could know how he feels.
He types out a one sentence message, hits send, and feels more hollow than ever.

To: liam.tenpics|naoklemot#liam.tenpics|naoklemot
From: liam.tenpics|naoklesemaj#liam.tenpics|naoklesemaj
Subject: [LEFT BLANK]

I was busy.

He's digging through his work bag, looking for his wallet. He had placed it there a few minutes ago, and now it seemed to have sunk to the depths of it. He pushes past candy wrappers and pens and stray bits of paper when he feels something hard.
He pulls it out and sees a battered leather watch, with a scratched face and old leather. It was a gift from Carter, from two years ago. He flips it on its back and sees an engraving: FOR JAMES ELKOAN. James wonders how it had ended up in the midst of trash.
James takes out the phone and snaps a photo of it, and he's typing a message to Carter saying, Remember this?, and for a infinitesimal second, less than a heartbeat, before the error message pops up, the silence is gone and is replaced by nostalgia and curiosity.
Oh, he thinks.
And he keeps walking.


Note: This is part thirteen in a multi-part story based around the events leading up to the containment of SCP-2982. It takes place between the Endings and Deliverance tales. Or you could start from the very beginning At the Library. You can take a look at Golan too, for a tale based on one of the tests of the SCP object.

"You!" Harold cried, and his face was white with fear. Aidan Brown pushed past both Helen and Geoff and grabbed Maine by the throat. He turned back to Helen and panted, "Get out. Go!" She looked at Mansani briefly; he was readying the taser, waiting for Aidan to bring Maine down. Although Maine struggled, he was undone by Aidan's extra bulk, his vestigial legs and carapace weighing down the man even as he cried out in alarm. He sank to the floor with a shriek.
Aidan looked back at her again. "Go!" He shouted, and this time she obeyed, but not before one last glance; Geoff Mansani was standing over the two entangled on the floor, taser in hand, ready to deliver the incapacitating blow. Each of the three looked more terrified than the others.
She fled the apartment in tears. Suffering was suffering, no matter how well deserved. The door slammed shut behind her and she half ran, half stumbled down the corridor and down the stairs until she reached the bottom; she sank down sobbing onto the floor, gasping for breath, and waited for damnation or deliverance.
+
Aidan toppled forwards, his good knee landing squarely on Maine's chest; his mandibles clacked and his spittle sprayed the other man's face as they grappled. He turned back to Mansani as best he could.
“Do it, fucking do it!”
Mansani hesitated, the taser impotent at his side. “I can't get know CV, CV positron. Intro positron.”
Aidan's claw found purchase and began to close around Maine's face. The demand came again, urgent and final. “Now!”
Mansani shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. Flashes of Helen, of Angela, of his own wife. But the time for hesitation was over; there could be no coming back from this. The shouts came again and this time he acted. He touched the prongs briefly against the wall to see them spark and then tried to judge exactly where amidst the chaos Aidan Brown ended and Harold Maine began. He saw a scratch appear on the latter's neck and guestimated where the lobster-thing would be. He closed his eyes and swung the taser in earnest.
Mansani could not see it, but his attack connected directly with Aidan Brown's head, who spasmed and slumped, pinning Maine between the floor and the wall. His vestigial legs skittered and spasmed. His good eye rolled up and fixed on Mansani as his assailant blindly jabbed the taser - this time into his exposed lung. The lucky strike turned out to be decisive; Brown groaned - or maybe the noise was air was escaping its ruined housing - and lay still. Mansani stepped back. An invisible antenna or leg or fuck knows what glanced against his leg. He slapped it aside in disgust.
Maine's muffled voice came up from beneath Aidan's unseen bulk. “Get it off me, get it off me,” he said. “Can't fucking breathe. Get it off me.”
Mansani froze again. Having taken the first unsteady step down a dark road, he was fully and absolutely committed to follow wherever it may lead. He threw the taser down the hall before reaching down and blindly hauling the lobster thing off of Maine's slumped form, untangling their unholy communion of arms and legs as he went. He wiped his hands on his shirt and grimaced.
“Get it the fuck away from me,” said Maine, his eyes firmly on his defeated enemy. “Fucking piece of shit. Fucking bastard piece of shit.” He braced himself awkwardly against the wall and pushed Aidan Brown's misshapen head away with his feet. “Fucking bastard freak,” he said, then looking up at Mansani: “Come here,” he said. “Give me a fucking hand. I'm covered in fucking shit or something here. Don't let it get on the floor. Everywhere's gotta be clean.”
Mansani proffered his hand to Maine and lifted him up. “What nextdoor?”
Maine rubbed his jaw where Aidan Brown had held him. The skin was broken and red. “Fucking freak tried to kill me,” he said, almost in wonder. “Fucking piece of shit.” He nudged Brown's carapace with his foot. “Just be glad you'll never actually see this freak up close. Holy fuck. Holy, holy fuck.”
Mansani asked again. “What necks? We need so hurry.”
Maine nodded in acknowledgment; with the immediate danger over his legs suddenly felt weak and heavy. Exhilaration was creeping in. “Help me drag this fuck into the bathroom,” he said. “Fucking piece of shit getting fucking shit everywhere. Grab under his shell. Not his fucking legs; looks like they'd just come right off.” He saw the hesitation in the other's face and snapped his fingers. “Wake up, Mansani. Just reach down and grab whatever you find,” he said. “And make sure that fucking door's locked. And what else?”
“Keep everywhere clean.”
“Fucking right,” said Maine. “Keep everywhere clean. I don't want to see sushi juice everywhere.”
+
Geoff Mansani learnt many things; that half-human, half-lobster monsters weigh a great deal; that moving a large, unresponsive, invisible body in a confined space is difficult and time consuming; that a taser drains its charge fairly quickly, but baseball bats (administered by Harold Maine – Geoff Mansani could not bring himself to further violence) lasted indefinitely; but most of all, he learnt that he was entirely, irredeemably cowardly and selfish. Maybe everybody else was too. Maybe there was not a moral compass in the world that did not point solely and squarely back to the user. Was it a comfort? He didn't know. He half-remembered a phrase, maybe Shakespeare, maybe not: there is no evil, but thinking makes it so. Hopefully that was the case. It had to be the case.
He leant against the cold blue-grey tiles of the bathroom wall as Harold Maine washed his hands in the sink. “Fucking bastard weighs a ton,” Maine said. With a satisfied grunt he lifted Aidan Brown's head over the toilet bowl and balanced it on the porcelain rim. “Should have put rubber gloves on first,” he said, half to himself. “Never get the stench of this freak out of my skin now. Guess it won't matter soon.” A glance back to Mansani. “How long so far?”
Mansani checked his watch. “Fine.. gave mandates. CV VB fine. Fine.”
Anger clouded Maine's face and he grabbed the other's wrist in exasperation. He turned Mansani's wrist upwards. “Five minutes… Okay, follow the plan. You undress him. Should have done that first. Still, what's done is done." He gestured towards the bathtub. "Some bags in there. Put his stuff in one of them. Pass me one too.” He chewed the skin on the back of his forefinger as he mulled over his next actions. Mansani stood motionless. Maine stared at him for a moment, then said, “Did I fucking stutter? Move.”
Maine watched as Mansani began the unenviable task of removing Aidan Brown's clothes, and then he went to his favourite chair. He positioned it so that he could see Mansani stripping Brown – he had no expectation of loyalty from the other out of anything other than raw fear, and besides, he didn't know how long the lobster-man's concussion would last – and then took out his cellphone. He typed for a few seconds, pulled his cheap white fold-up TV dinner table closer, and then lay the phone neatly atop it next to a decades-old notepad. He had left this task until now, and not earlier, as he had not wanted to lay his secrets bare for his enemies to find and use against him; his nightmares had taught him that much, and they had almost just come true. But now he felt time pressing in like a vast suffocating darkness around him, and he hurriedly took the notepad and a battered pen, frantically writing his instructions even as Mansani struggled with Aidan Brown's unconscious unseen mass.
+
Mansani wiped his forehead. “It's done,” he said, putting the last of Aidan Brown's clothes into a black plastic bag. He had been working studiously for the better part of ten minutes, his back to the doorway as he huddled and struggled over the former's unconscious body. He stood up, his legs suddenly cramping as he did so, and turned to face the man who held such power over him.
Maine was naked. Even though Mansani expected it, it was a shock.
“Just pass me the bag of clothes,” Maine said. “You never seen a dick before? Come on, pass me the fucking bag. Good." He pointed towards the fold up table. "Remember the plan. See that notepad on there? Read what it says. Make sure it makes sense. Just read, don't do. Hurry the fuck up. Don't touch the phone.”
Mansani took the notepad. In shaky, poorly formed letters Harold Maine had written a lengthy list of maybe twenty or thirty or more instructions.
Preparation Pick up the phone using your dominant hand.
1 Enter pin number >2982< when prompted.
2 Navigate to Contacts via green icon in bottom right of screen.
3 Tap "search" field in Contacts screen.
4 Using onscreen keyboard enter >Carol Paris< in "search" field.
His attention quickly waned as he watched Maine pulling on Aidan Brown's clothes. They were at least three sizes too big, and they were ripped and torn from where Brown's appendages had either thrust through in the fight or fretted against the fabric over the last few weeks as his strange new physiognomy strained hem and seam. They were made for men, not monsters, and Mansani was only now beginning to understand the extent of Brown's condition. Maine noticed him watching. “Don't worry about me, fucking Voiceover Man," he said. "Read the instructions. Out loud. I want to make sure you understand them.”
Mansani cleared his throat. “Production: Pack up the VB CD phoned.. Poco the CD phone using your don't coming ant. In your dominant hand… Pick up the phone you and your dominant lend… Peterson: Pick up the phone abusing your dominant hand."
Harold Maine stared at him for a few moments. “Again,” he said.
Mansani gathered his thoughts and counted to three. “Preparation: Pick up the phone using your dominant hand."
“Good," said Maine. "Kept my word, see?"
Mansani looked puzzled, and then delayed but instant understanding leapt across his face. Harold Maine had promised him his speech back, if he betrayed his friends, but he'd only half-expected the man to keep his word. He started to say – shout – cry – something, but Harold Maine put his hand to his mouth to stop him. “Keep your joy to yourself," he said. "I need you talking properly so I know you know what you're doing,” he said. "So don't make me change my mind. Here.”
He held out a smooth, flat, glassy black object. Geoff Mansani hardly saw it; he could talk again. He could go home after all this and speak to his wife. He could -
“Concentrate," Harold Maine snapped. "No daydreaming, understand? Before I let you have this, let me make something very clear. This ain't the time for celebrating. If you screw up, you're fucked. And if somehow I screw up, you're fucked. You understand? We're in this together. No going back. We have to get it right."
Mansani nodded. "No going back," he repeated, as much for the simple joy of forming meaningful words and sentences again as to demonstrate his loyalty. His heart was racing, but he fought hard to control it. Tears came to his eyes. Maine grunted and continued. "Other hand, if this works out you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. You're crying because you can talk again but that's nothing. You do this for me and tomorrow you wake up and you got a fucking twelve inch dick and your own fucking radio station and the Geoff Mansani show is a global fucking sensation. A-listers fighting each other to get on your show. A-listers fighting each other to get on your twelve inch dick. And your blind wife in the next room with headphones on listening to Carl Denver and wondering why your twelve inch dick tastes like Kim Kardashian." Maine's eyes narrowed, and then softened suddenly.
"But no," he continued, and his tone also mellowed. "You love her with a singular, total passion. She's your life. So maybe you go home and she isn't blind anymore. Maybe you tell her for the first time in months that you love her, and that breaks the spell and suddenly she can see again. And maybe she's expecting." He let the words sink in. Mansani had closed his eyes. He was trembling. "But for now… Preparation: pick up the phone using your dominant hand.”
In all their dealings Harold Maine had shown neither empathy nor imagination; his torments and his punishments were those of a petty, vindictive child. But that was changing, Mansani realised. He was growing into his role; a slimy caterpillar transcending whatever it had been and becoming - what? Even though the handwriting on the notepad was crude, and the words miss-spelt - the product of an education that had been allowed to die in its infancy, and a sudden deadly urgency that had no place for neatness - the instructions they informed were clear and precise; almost official in their tone. The words of a bureaucrat or politician, not of a petty, grubby, malevolent little man.
He checked himself; his mind was racing and yes, he was crying. His wife would cry too. But Maine could take his speech away again just as quickly. He picked up the phone from the table.
Immediately the screen came to life: Televono Telefex Secrecy 8
Maine exhaled slowly. “Get any ideas about betraying me and you're fucked. The relevant contingencies are in place. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Mansani, and he listened to himself as the words came out fully formed and perfect. “I understand.”
“Okay then,” said Harold Maine. “Step one.”
Prev


Takes place shortly after Pre-Partum Anxieties
Johnathan Everett King, SCP-[DESIGNATION PENDING], sat in his cell at Site-87 and contemplated his miserable existence. Sure, the Department of Gastromony ensured humanoid anomalies like him weren't eating gruel and actually got edible dessert, but it was autumn, and autumn meant a larger focus on apple-based products; his meal for today was a Salisbury steak (long since eaten), applesauce, apple juice, and an apple turnover. King tapped on the cup of applejuice; each time he did, an apple seed floated up from the bottom. He sighed, and looked around.
"Hey, guard?" he called, coming up to the one-way mirror of his cell. "Dr. Kola? You were supposed to come and collect my tray, like, half an hour ago. What gives?"
After two minutes of no response, Dr. King tried the door of his cell. Its lock was still engaged; wishful thinking on his part. He sighed, and rubbed his face, turning back to his plate. Might as well see if the applesauce was any good. Not like the cyanide in the apple seeds could actually kill him.
He sat down to eat, spilling his apple juice in the process. He sighed and shook his head. Maintenance would be in to clean up soon enough. But he soon realized that maintenance didn't need to, because the juice wasn't juice anymore; it was made entirely of apple seeds, which were flowing over the concrete of his cell, filling the concrete at first an inch thick, then two inches, then five, and then—
King had had this exact nightmare before, hundreds of times. He kicked at the seeds with contempt, stomping on several of them. "Gonna have to try harder than that, asshole!"
The seeds coalesced into an upright form, growing muscles, skin and fabric as it took on a humanoid shape. Soon, a man with a tin pot on his head, overalls, and a startling lack of shoes stood before King. He smelled like rancid apples. "Are you honestly going to treat your ancestor and namesake like that, J—"
In response, King punched the apparition of Johnny Appleseed in its liver. Predictably, its form parted as apple seeds spilled from it, but it still doubled over in pain. "Yes, I am. Because you're not really John Chapman. You're that fear bug that's going around."
Johnny Appleseed vomited a stream of beady black apple seeds into King's face. They were stopped when King began strangling it. "I'm not some greenhorn researcher or neurotic agent you can scare with cheap theatrics. Either sit down and have a conversation with me, or fuck off back to Arkansas."
The Appleseed Apparition flowed from between his fingers like grain. It looked at him and scowled. "How do you know about Arkansas?"
"Because Randall Owings, one of the top phobologists in the Foundation, was my son's godfather. And I think you're his pet project— if that's the case, then he's dead. So fuck you for that."
It grinned. "You have a son? Oh, I will revel in torturing him—"
"Shut up." King loomed over the specter and scowled. "He's not even in this city. He works at an aquarium in Chicago. You couldn't get to him if you tried."
It flowed across the table with a rattling sound, taking the seat opposite of King's lunch tray. "Very well. We shall speak."
King sat down and grabbed his plastic cup of apple juice; he was alarmed to find it upright. "So, you're a perception-altering anomaly. Wonder if anything you're doing right now is even real."
"It takes a lot of energy change my appearance, you know." It pulled a flask of cider from its suspenders. "So a bit of trickery is necessary."
King sipped at his apple juice. "Tell me, do you think you have any actual power over me? Over this city?"
"As we speak, I am exerting my influence over it." It shut its eyes and shuddered. "There's a girl named Nancy who lives at 15 Summer Avenue. She's deathly afraid of clowns, and there's one trying to get into her house right now. She told her mother she was a big girl, that she could stay home alone while she went to get groceries. Now, she is hiding in the closet, trying desperately to not cry, for fear of me finding her." It grinned, opening its eyes. "That's the kind of power I have."
King shook his head, tapping his spoon against the tray. With each tap, an apple seed appeared. "Your file described you as being 'affable and friendly' after you scared someone. What changed?"
It laughed. "Let's imagine, for a moment, that I am wearing a monster costume of some form." With that, it suddenly shifted, appearing in the form of a man in a rubber suit. It stank of sweat and blood. "Not very scary, yes? If I jumped out at you and went 'shaboogely', you'd be startled, but nothing much else would happen… if I laughed it off, said 'gotcha!' or something. But if I persist, keep going, then you start getting uncomfortable. Now, imagine you're locked in a room with me." It slammed its hand on the table and began crawling over it, towards King. "You can't escape. I can get as close to you as I want. I still don't say 'gotcha'. I still come closer, and you start to notice things about me— the suit doesn't seem to have any sort of seams, the eyes blink when they shouldn't be able to, and you have this overwhelming urge to scream."
King backed away from it, gritting his teeth. "Party tricks. I know your game, asshole."
"Don't interrupt." It was upon King now, its rubber maw at the doctor's throat. "But then you realize— there is a seam, over the head, of course there is! That's where the mask would be. But…" It backed away, pulling at its head. It stretched and contorted in a way a mask should. Then, with a sound of snapping rubber, it came off, and the whole rubber suit fell, empty, hollow. A voice whispered from all around him. "This is more fun, don't you think?"
King swallowed, looking into the suit. A black, granular mass began flowing from it, covering the whole floor— one inch, three, seven, up to his waist. King had had this nightmare before, of drowning in apple seeds, and waking up in an apple-scented hell.
He backed up against a wall of his cell that should have been blank— instead, he found his hand on a large key that was sticking out of the wall. His eyes widened, and out of sheer surprise, he turned it, falling backwards into a room that was full of coatracks. He continued to tumble backwards, and watched as a man wearing an old-fashioned bellhop's uniform shut the door behind him.
"Got to you just in time, it looks like!" The man offered a hand to Dr. King. "I'm the Doorman. You're our new hire."
"New hi—" King paused as The Doorman helped him to his feet. "Ah, crap. You're with that Union group, aren't you?"
"Got it in one." The Doorman led him further in, heading towards an elevator. "This town is going down the toilet because of that thing you just met. We're planning an evacuation, but we can't do it without an Orchardist." He turned towards King as he pressed the call button. "Without you."
"Why the hell do you need someone who grows apples to help evacuate? You must have a The Firefighter or a The Paramedic or hell, a The Emergency Coordinator or something."
"Yes, but we don't have an Orchardist that helped build a portal that can punch through space-time and cross into another universe." The Doorman pinched the bridge of his nose. "Dr. King, I can appreciate that you utterly hate your powers. But when— not if, when— this thing tries to break down the barrier to the Nexus and escape, we need someone like you."
King frowned as the elevator opened, stepping inside. "That… is the first time in years that anyone's acknowledged my work with Tyler Bailey." He chewed his lip. "What's your sales pitch, then?"
The Doorman smiled, pressing a button for the 293rd floor. "The Janitor is in a meeting with the Firefighter right now. He'll talk to you shortly."

Addendum: In October of 2020, SCP-[DESIGNATION PENDING] was found missing from his containment chamber in Site-87. Video feed was interrupted while he was consuming dinner, and the chamber was flooded with over 500kg of apple seeds. To date, SCP-[DESIGNATION PENDING] is missing, currently presumed terminated.

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