He sank his knife into the seal which stared up at him without flinching as all the seals had on his trip south. Its hot blood steamed and coagulated on the ice as it flailed weakly, uncomprehendingly, looking up at Teriaq as if to say "What? What is happening to me?". He offered it his canteen, pouring out a bit of his water for the dying creature to drink. Respect. When it stopped moving he started skinning, splitting the seal from tail to ears. He tossed the skin into the polynya, no way to tan it, no way to know if he'd remember how to. The ribs were opened next and the intestines drawn out, they too were tossed into the hole. The meat he saved, cut in strips and wrapped in discarded tee shirts. The blubber was added to the nearly-empty jar he'd stowed away on the sled, towed behind the snowmobile. He fought the temptation to swallow some. He was hungry. Arctic exertion burned away his calories. He felt himself grow thinner inside his four layers of cloths. Instead, he chewed on a strip that was still warm. A fading memory said that his blood would be redder and his breath hotter. He didn't know why. He didn't remember why.
He continued to chew on the fresh, bloody meat as it steamed in the sub-freezing air as he walked back to camp. Top half of the red survival tent stood out on the ice along with a freshly-excavated, black snowmobile. It was the first he'd been outside in a week, the howling winds had held him in. It was July. July in the Gulf of Booethia. The ice should have retreated but it was back early. Against season and greenhouse gas it returned bringing snow and wind with it. Teriaq knew why.

When he closed his eyes he saw it again. The beginning. Green ice. Blue skies. Brown stones, slick with blubber and blood. A gasping beluga, half-dead, stares out with panicked eyes, unknowing. On breakers, wine-colored with blood white whales float like limp, cotton rags on the tide. Still more of them come to throw themselves against the rocks. Leaping gleefully and squealing they push out of the waves and onto the cobble. The dead bake in the constant, summer sun of the arctic. He stood and watched with his old friend Fullbrush.
"They're supposed to be in the inlet." Teriaq grasped for meaningful words. "It's calving season." He looked at Fullbrush whose eyes were unreadable behind the sunglasses. "Doesn't this bother you?"
"Beachings are always sad, Teriaq, but what do you want me to do? Cry? That's not why we're here. We're only supposed to look like a field station. We're not actually supposed to be ecologists."
Gulls came. They picked at the washed up carcasses. They pecked out the eyes of the living but weak. The beaching was a buffet for the children of Sila. The tell-tale flukes of orcas cut the deep water; they'd been coming further and further north with the permanent retreat of the sea ice. Teriaq watched as they swam inward toward the carnage, watched as they ate the confused and concussed white whales. Some surfed their way into the shallows. The gulls did not scatter. They did not react. They continued eating, dumb and oblivious. Some tried to fly but faltered on the air. The rest ate.
That was when the first orca, limp, confused, washed ashore.
"Get on the radio," Teriaq said.
Their receivers erupted in static and screams.

Teriaq bundled into his tent for the night. It was screwed to the skin of the sea and held down by hundreds of pounds of drifted snow. It wouldn't move unless the ice did. He lit the small, gas stove in the tent's vestibule, put some snow in a pot to melt. He fished around in the rucksack for something else to eat and produced 2 nearly empty peanut butter containers and some crackers. He scraped the last of the peanut butter out, spread it on the crackers. Licked his fingers. Still hungry he had more seal meat, this time cooked on that same stove in the animal's own blubber. He hoped the heat would kill whatever it was in the fat that fogged him.
He had had several weeks of fuel and less food when he first ran from 641. Not nearly enough to make it to the nearest "city" which was half a continent away. There was a chance of making 300 miles to the nearest town. A good chance if the snowmobile didn't die on him. Food was a problem. In the Arctic you're supposed to eat 6000 calories a day; the easiest movements are hard in the cold. Teriaq had been eating less than that. His clothes hung looser.
There is no dawn this far north in the summer. Teriaq woke to the sound of a thuds against the tent. He donned his outer layers and stepped outside. A puffin had fallen from the sky and broken its neck against one of the struts. Still more lay in various states of injury and death on the ice. A rain of birds that had forgotten how to fly. Unnerved, Teriaq put extra effort into breaking camp.
The growl of the snow mobile carried him away from the birds. He kept his eyes on the ice, sticking to thick, white ice. Young, black ice is thin and wouldn't support his weight, let alone the weight of the snow mobile. Gray ice is shifty and brittle, the result of many freeze-thaws where the currents are strongest. Worst was green. Green was Her color and he knew that no amount of incense and combing could undo the crime that made Her freeze the seas. He sped north east, hopefully he'd hit the western coast of Baffin Island soon. The coast meant national parks and national parks meant park rangers, Inuit villages, people of some kind. He'd be able to contact his employer's employers. He'd be able to let them know that She'd escaped, and importantly, why She'd escaped.

Janet Tyrease Clinton hunched into her coat. The bridge of the icecutter was cold and the trip was long and slow. She felt the hum of the water deluge system through the hull and the sharp cracks in the sea ice against the bow of the USCG Healy. They'd reached the Barrow Strait after a month of icebreaking. The slow pace chaffed at her, so close to their goal. So close to the epicenter.
She pulled out her Foundation-issued laptop and connected to the satellite intranet to distract, to remind, to motivate herself through the next week's grind. There, mass amnesia in Norway as contaminated, salted fish are accidentally introduced to ice-locked coastal villages. The ruins of downtown Tokyo as drivers, pilots, pedestrians, forgot traffic signals. Fire fighters lost the wherewithal to put out the burn, haphazardly spraying water on smoldering ruins. In America millions of pounds of contaminated fish sticks had entered the school lunches. Children forgot their parents' names. There were lakes where the water would make you forget how to swim or which way the surface was. Another mass beaching of whales, this time in Southern California, 30 minutes outside San Diego. In the arctic the ice had returned, spreading out from Somerset Island against season, current and tide.
"You seem troubled, Lady Clinton," said Eugenio through his text-to-speech translator. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
She looked at the fox. It sat on a stool, uncanny eyes staring at her over the console. "No, nothing. How is the Weather Knight doing?"
"Ah, the little chap has been doing his best to keep the wind under control but the further we go north the harder it is." A pause, the fox's paws bapped at an oversize keyboard. "He could probably do with an inspection from you, Lady Clinton."
She nodded her ascent. Eugenio was prone to polite understatement. The fox king claimed this was for the sake of propriety but Janet couldn't tell if that was true or just speech-to-text's even tone. In the biological lab a number of Foundation scientists were running tests on wild-caught samples. Others processed blubber and meat samples. Somebody cursed as the centrifuged shuddered to a stop, the display reading "error, unbalanced". They had so many samples to process, so much pulverized meat, fat. The room smelled of isopropanol and hexane.
Janet and the fox angled toward the live specimen room. A ringed seal stared up at an exhausted-looking avalanche of scruff in a lab coat, unperturbed at the close proximity of so many human predators. In the corner of the room a blackbird shifted on a dowel in an aviary. Its feathers were dull and a small pile of feathers had begun to grow on the floor. It chirped, twitched a little, chirped again.
"The Weather Knight greets you and apologizes for its state," translated the fox, itself translated by a machine.
"What's the matter with it?" Janet said loudly enough for the scruffy veterinarian in the corner to hear. The bird sang. The vet focused on examining the seal.
"The Weather Knight says that it has been unable to sleep. It's been trying to maintain the winds like you asked but when it sleeps something pushes back."
"I see. How long do you think it can keep things the way we need them to be?" There were contingency plans in the hold in case this happened. If 1948 couldn't keep the winds from changing and the ice from slamming their passage shut there were drastic options. Drastic, sea boiling options.
"The Weather Knight doesn't think it can keep this up for much longer, a day or two-"
The ship rocked and groaned with sudden impact. Eugenio fell off the counter top, paws akimbo. The blackbird, 1948, flapped irritably in its cage. Janet found herself face first in the thatch of the veterinarian's beard. The seal looked as calm as ever. This was wrong. They'd been going a paltry three knots in the open ocean. They couldn't have hit something, unless…
The alarm sounded. Anomalous contact. A spear of green ice punched through the port hole. Time for emergency measures.

Teriaq's camp sat at the base of the cliffs. It was hard, too hard to climb and Sila was angry at him so he did not dare. A nearby polynya he'd surrounded with carved, narwhal horn, tupilaqs bound together with seal ligaments. He'd seen Agloolik swim close when he'd grabbed an unaware seal, seen the qalupalik grab at his flesh offering and water sacrifice. His inu was strong here. The sky was right. The sea was right. He did not know how much time he'd spent out here. Vague memories of fear. Vague memories of fleeing. When he went to check the polynya, for incursions by the monsters below, for seal, he passed the remains of his magic dog. Black and hard it leaked oily blood on the ice from the green icicle that impaled it. It had not frozen, such was its magic, but it was dead now. A bug pinned by Sedna's wrath.
He smelled piss on the wind as it shifted. Skalugsuak had breached the surface of the polynya, fins lazily spun in the water. It scratched itself against the ice over and over and over, the water cloudy with blood. A poor omen Teriaq knew, but of what? What drew Skalugsuak from the pisspot to him? Should he end its misery? He smelled smoke on the air. In the distance a canoe, he knew it was the wrong word but could think of no other, metal clad tore through the green ice of the bay. Prow clad in flame. No, led by a giant of flame, waist deep in the water. Head wreathed in plumes of steam from the sea and smoke. A furious howl against the wind in a language he didn't understand. A memory stirred. Teriaq reached for his belt where he kept a little bit of magic. Black material, a handle grip, a lever. He raised his arm, pressed the lever with his finger, and sent the flare skyward.

"He's disoriented and suffering from acute amnesiatic poisoning."
"It's no wonder. He's been eating nothing but seal meat and blubber for the past few months. Every sample we've started this expedition has been full of the stuff." Janet said, her voice tired, "Will he recover?"
"Give him a few weeks of filtered water and therapy? Maybe. Guy was pretty far gone when we picked him up. Couldn't remember English at all." The doctor thumbed through his clinical notes. "We found this on him though. Personal notes, could be useful. "
The doctor handed Janet the journal. She paused. The sea around them boiled with the fire giant's passage, bound to service by a friendly "loaner wizard" from the Hand. She opened the journal. Trembling words greeted her.

"Your name is Teriaq LeChatlier. You are heading south. You once worked for a bunch of white people that called themselves The Foundation. They screwed up, poisoned the water with that stuff they used on you when you first arrived at site 641. Told you it was for security, that you couldn't know where you were. Do not eat the seal unless you can't eat anything else. The seals are poisoned. The whales are poisoned. They will not know you for what you are. You will not know who you are. Avoid the green ice because that's Her ice. She's angry. She is going south. She refuses sacrifices and songs."

It went on like that with Inuktitut pictograms cutting in until it was illegible. She closed the journal, put it aside for the anthropologist. They'd come to the right place. Janet walked over to the wall beside the sedated Teriaq and turned on the intercom.
"John. Transmit my identification code to Oversight. Include the message 'Our suspicions have been confirmed. Widespread contamination by amnesiatics in vertebrate and planktonic samples even as far as 73 degrees N by 88 degrees W. 1836 is likely beyond containment. Decommission will follow barring a breakthrough with re-acquired asset. Likely last radio contact until decommission attempt. Listen for clear code." She paused, considering. "Wish… wish us luck."
Teriaq slept. The Healy trundled. The giant waded. Janet decided to take tea with Eugenio. Fraternization at the end of the world.


He'd never seen it in person and now he never would.

Item #: SCP-13175
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Total containment of SCP-13175 has been determined to be impractical at this point in time. Current protocols dictate monitoring of anomalous effects produced by SCP-13175 by on-site personnel. Monitoring of on-site personnel for symptoms analogous to any known anomalous effect caused by SCP-13175 is to be conducted by off-site personnel by means of remote viewing, analysis of documents produced by on-site staff, and psychiatric evaluation.
Addendum 04/14/2377: SCP-13175 is currently scheduled for permanent decommission on 08/01/2377 following unanimous vote by the O5 Council. Extraction protocols for personnel and civilians within the hypothesized effect vicinity of SCP-13175's decommission are under review pending…

Aiden Reichardt minimized the file before resting his head softly on the keyboard of his terminal. The computer sputtered several pings and pops at the repeated and faulty commands his forehead was transmitting before falling quiet, matching the deafening silence that was Reichardt's only companion in the otherwise empty office. He had returned from lunch several hours prior to an email from Silvers informing him of the addendum's appearance.
"Following unanimous vote by the O5 Council.” Those fucks. What had begun as a dull ache behind Reichardt's left eye after opening the email was now a roaring engine of pain, slowly draining what little fight remained in the Senior Researcher. Not a single goddamned pity vote, even.
The flask was in his jacket pocket and was, as always, full. He had been terrified when he'd stolen the anomalous object from an incoming shipment of items cleared for designation and containment, but the fear had only made the drink taste better. The risk of termination, of termination, was minimal; the flask was assuredly just another anomalous object that would be locked up and forgotten within weeks, only seeing the light of day again during annual inventories. Reichardt was proud of himself for the relatively minor transgression. He'd made an honest-to-God decision and followed through. It was easy for him to imagine his father and grandfather, both long dead and former Foundation staff themselves, nodding in approval; he had been raised in a household that respected protocol but despised the Foundation's single-mindedness in containing every little thing. They're sucking all the mystery outta life, his grandfather would say. Reichardt commiserated with the thought as he tried to suck all the mystery out of his flask. He'd never been able to place the flavor but it vaguely reminded him of a whiskey he'd had on his first trip off of the station in his early twenties. Traveling off their artificial little satellite for vacation was still a new concept in those days and Reichardt had figured himself on that trip to be the first member of his family to touch the soil of any planet in well over a century.
His monitor faded to black before beginning its screensaver cycle; an old one he'd dug from an archive of software from the Earth days, its low-resolution twisting pipes were garish but offered him a nostalgic moment for a world and time that Reichardt never experienced himself. He stared at the colorful pipes as they wound their way across the void of his screen, slowly filling its blackness with vivid greens and pinks, thinking about Earth.
He'd never seen it in person and now he never would. The designation of an entire planet as an SCP object wasn't a new concept when they'd classified Earth as SCP-13175 but even still it had been a point of controversy. As interplanetary travel had become a more regular occurrence, one fact had become unavoidably obvious: anomalous activity existed everywhere to some degree but there was no place within humanity's reach that had anywhere near the quantity of anomalies as Earth. Reality was simply less stable there, as the science had proven. Reichardt had been several years into his career with the Foundation at that point when the file went live. In the intervening three decades the O5 Council had never made any comment on the subject and quiet warnings were issued to those who began questioning the decision too loudly. Reichardt remembered it as the day his father resigned; moreso, he felt like he had watched a part of his father die that day. Following the intentional decolonization of Earth in the 2170s the planet had been used as a resource; within decades it was a ghost of its former self, a husk that had been thoroughly reaped and left to decay back into the soil it had once emerged from. Less than a million people were still on Earth. The number of stalwart populations who'd stayed behind, religious fanatics and survivalists and those who believed that mankind should stay where he came from, had dwindled to almost nothing and few were the researchers or industrialists who believed that the planet had anything more to give. There were still a few Foundation-controlled facilities even, or so the rumors went. Keter objects whose threats of global or galactic destruction the Foundation hadn't been willing to risk leaving behind to chance.
Why now, then? Reichardt's body ached from being in his cubicle chair for too long but the soreness was rapidly dulling behind the mask of his growing inebriation. He stood for the first time in hours and stretched, staring out the nearby window at the vast universe beyond. Earth wasn't visible from this station and Reichardt felt a twinge of regret. He'd never married or sired children and as an only child, he was the last in his line. No Reichardt would ever step foot on Earth again, and at his age he would likely not be approved for off-site travel until his retirement. Even then there was no guarantee. What's changed? The twisting pipes on his monitor had fully covered the screen and quickly blinked out of existence, the fresh blackness penetrated by red and white pipes this time.
Alone in the emptiness of space with tens of thousands of others, Aiden Reichardt felt more than a single planet slip through his grasp.

Item Description: A flask of an unidentified alcoholic liquid which is constantly replenished as it is drained.
Date of Recovery: 4/16/2377
Location of Recovery: Recovered from the personal effects of a deceased employee on Foundation Satellite Station ████-███.
Current Status: In storage.


Today was a filing day, as far as Riven could tell.
Kiryu Labs processed a cache of anomalous items every week. Generally, said anomalous items usually came accompanied by some basic safety instructions garnered from the simple preliminary tests. “Basic” could be considered a misnomer to a new associate, but after about three months of processing the objects, instructions such as “do not handle without lead gloves” or “potential memetic hazard, immediately report any urges to break into song and dance” and “sword talks when its handle is grasped” became steadily less and less surprising.
Researcher Riven Mercer, head assistant to Dr. Mark Kiryu and effective babysitter of the Labs when Mark was out on business/working on his external department projects/on vacation leave to bother his little sister, kept the hard copies of the documents containing these basic instructions in a heavy-duty storage cabinet in the lab office. The instructions were organized chronologically in neat folders, until the documentation would be needed by other departments. Usually the information would be digitized by then, but the anomalous object labs were always picky about never destroying tangible files that might be useful down the line.
There was one special folder, considerably thinner than the rest. It held the scribbled handwritten notes that came in when Kiryu Labs was given not an object, but a location to investigate. So when noontime came and Riven spotted the memo on his desk reading “New assignment, all-nighter, researcher-agent/2-man team, museum” he raised an eyebrow and rushed to claim the sofa in the spare sitting room (nap space was hard to find in a lab) by dumping his laptop, lab coat, extra blanket from the cupboard, and squishy office chair pillow onto it. He then immediately went to raid the lab's supply cabinets to pack a light backpack.
He hadn't gone on an overnight assignment in months.

It was reported that the museum had visitors daily during the first few months it was open. It was different from other such places, so was said, because it only opened after dark. Something about sunlight not being of the right quality to properly accentuate the best qualities of the crystal. Most people believed what they were told, agreeing that the interior lighting was like nothing they'd ever seen before. Subtle in all the right ways, to the point of other-worldliness, they said. You could lose your worries looking at the shining stones, they said. If you didn't watch yourself you'd find that you'd linger for hours.
About a year or so later, people reported hearing voices emanating from the delicate crystal vessels on display. And the fewer visitors crossed the threshold, the more disembodied voices were heard from within. Some people started returning the crystal bird figurines they'd purchased from the museum's tiny gift shop. The prices hadn't been exorbitant, but that wasn't the main reason no one stuck around to ask for refunds.
According to the brief background Riven read while en route, Foundation personnel successfully managed to convince visitors that the rumors were unfounded, but there were still plenty of theories about the artifacts actually stealing voices. And it didn't help that the curator seemed insane when the visitors started to thin out. Talked to the walls, they said. Talked to the crystal things. Talked to the disembodied voices. Then the museum abruptly closed its doors and no one heard from the man since.
Riven had glanced at the dwindling sunlight outside the car window and grimaced at how easy it was for the Foundation to forge the paperwork to take over ownership of the place. At least the prelim sweeps were done—no living organisms detected in the building or on surrounding premises.
The museum itself turned out to be rather charming. Two stories, sizable but not grandiose, perched at the top of a hill surrounded by forest, it was rather out of the way from the city streets but actually not that long of a drive away from the Foundation site. The dirt pathway was rough and unworn, as there were very few vehicles that ever went directly to the building. Visitors parked at the foot of the hill and went up the scenic tree and bush-lined trails on foot. No maintenance was carried out because oddly, the museum's collection wasn't put together over a period of time. It just showed up, along with the curator, who apparently owned the place and opened it to the public one day. No reservations, no tickets, it was a come-as-you-may word-of-mouth sort of place, hidden like a castle up in the fortress of trees.
There was a nice view of the ocean in the distance, though one would need to cross a mile or so of forest before hitting the beach. The sea breezes didn't reach the hill tonight.

He didn't really need the jacket he brought with him, Riven thought to himself. The night wasn't that chilly… although, he added silently, I can't say the same about that agent they sent along.
Aside from his daunting stare, Agent Tai Yang Shen was a nondescript man. His was a face that you could look at, pin a quick insignificant personality to, and then promptly forget. Today's black collared jacket, thin cotton gloves, half-rim glasses, and trendy messenger bag might have suggested a self-reserved college student, not an undercover agent for a shadowy paranormal organization—but that was probably the point, Riven decided. The average person might expect that messenger bag to be filled with notebooks and old receipts for coffee; what was actually inside was probably the mission brief, a Foundation-issue anti-memetics kit and maybe an intermediate chemistry/first aid emergency pouch cobbled together from what experience dictated would be used most. And all sorts of other knickknacks besides, since Mark had mentioned something about Agent Shen being good with knives.
Riven hadn't heard much else about Shen, admittedly. The Chinese agent had been recruited from an American university following some high-profile field work, and Kiryu Labs nabbed him for background investigations of the item caches. Apparently the man had gotten bumped up to Level-3 and Agent status after an overseas assignment in China dealing with some bloody-minded ghost with a thing for numbers.
“Ready to proceed?” Shen asked, causing Riven to jump a bit. He couldn't help it, he hadn't gone to a museum in ages, and Kiryu Labs out-of-site business without Mark was a rarity. He was starting to miss Mark's easygoing, if sometimes-aggravating, “everything is ooookay” demeanor, really…
“Researcher?” Shen questioned again, opening his messenger bag and rifling through it as if looking for something.
“Yeah, I'm good to go, Agent She—”
“Just titles now. We are in a confirmed auditory cognitohazard zone. No intelligent beings noted yet, but it's best to say little about ourselves. Wear this.” Shen handed Riven what looked like a wireless headset, with some sort of strange gadgetry perched on top like blunted cat ears.
“New-issue adjustment processes all incoming sound through anti-cognitohazard filters.” Shen continued when Riven looked at the headset as if unsure if it would catch fire in his hands. “You don't need to understand the details to use it. Put it on.”
Other knickknacks indeed. It's hard to keep up with all the new Foundation tech these days. Riven slipped on the headset and adjusted the microphone piece. It was sturdy, and a rather comfy fit over the ears, actually.
“This too.” Shen held out a watch. At least, it looked like a watch—the display seemed more like a digital compass. Riven put it on without comment, adjusting the strap to fit his wrist. Meanwhile, Agent Shen had extracted his own headset/watch gear.
“It's linked to the headset. The screen will change displays when you encounter non-ambient noises, giving you a direction and distance from source in meters.” At the sound of the agent's voice, the compass needle swiveled to point at Shen, and a little number “0.7” blinked up at Riven.
“…I think… I think I hear music. Classical. Soft, very soft, though. Can barely hear it.” Riven wrinkled his forehead, as if in deep thought. He adjusted the headset slightly.
Shen didn't seem ruffled, or at least his voice in Riven's ears didn't sound like it was. “That's the anti-cognitohazard filter. Meant to be minimally invasive. We wear these; we give up our sense of hearing to the machines.”
Riven just nodded mutely.

It had taken all of five minutes for Shen to run some “just in case” scans using equipment from his messenger bag, and to adjust his gear to some esoteric specifications. Riven had fidgeted the entire time, feeling rather out of his depth. He'd still felt uneasy when they ignored the prim “closed” sign and entered the museum through unlocked doors.
Maybe it had something to do with all the window drapes being drawn. It was a precaution so people wouldn't see the lights inside and get suspicious, the brief had noted. Riven wondered why the display lights couldn't have just been turned off. Wouldn't subtle flashlights have made more sense?
“So why are we actually going into the museum ourselves? Isn't it the items that are anomalous, not the place itself?” Riven was still trying to get used to hearing his voice processed through the filter.
“Tried to take samples. Artifacts did nothing when taken out, or when put back. Some of them started to deform. As if melting. Patina seemed to be spreading to nearby things, and we had to dispose of the ones taken to the labs.” Shen's voice was clipped as the two walked through a hallway that would lead to the main exhibit rooms.
“Why send us, though? The most experience I have with antiques is maybe two art history classes in college. Those were years ago.” Riven craned his neck to look at a set of elegant swan-shaped perfume bottles. The museum's lighting twinkled over the multifaceted rock crystal surfaces.
Shen made a noncommittal noise as he unhooked some sort of Swiss-knife-like tool from his belt. “Researcher and agent. We're qualified, and we're expendable. It's the best combination, really.” The agent looked pointedly at the case displaying a clear quartz snake with several circle-shaped depressions in its back.
“Candle-holder?” Riven hazarded a guess. Shen shook his head, motioned for quiet, and approached the case. Riven trailed warily behind. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a notepad and ballpoint pen.
The platform light illuminating the display case (what was that about, Riven thought, there are no light switches or wires anywhere!) seemed to flicker brighter as the two approached.
“Snake… like hydra …supposed to have seven heads… always seven?”
Blinking several times, Riven could've sworn the crystal animal in front of him vibrated slightly when the noise began. He chanced a look at Shen, but the agent's gaze was pointedly fixed on the snake. It was probably important to listen. Was the bit about the hydra important? Something related to an ongoing investigation?
“Remember that… vase thing with… Theseus? And … minotaur? I thought …it was a unicorn.”
It certainly didn't sound important… Adjusting the headset slightly, Riven noticed that the voices were somewhat warped, even without the classical anti-cog-haz filter in the background. He felt like he was eavesdropping on someone real, just several paces away. He wrote that down.
“…terrible. Why did you… art history class anyway? …Slacker.”
Riven had to fake a cough to muffle his incredulous laugh. He'd been expecting some sort of arcane ritual or demonic chanting. Shen remained unmoved and said nothing.
The effect was anomalous enough, but what they were hearing sounded like a spat between two high school students. Typical of a lazy afternoon spent at an art museum, one would think. Close your eyes and you'd be able to imagine the not-so-happy couple bickering about grades while you were trying to focus on the artwork.
With a nod of his head, Shen indicated that they should move on.

“It's … bird! Polly want… cracker! Polly want a cracker! …Squaawk!” The sound of children laughing, of little feet smacking against the polished floors. Riven looked behind him a few times, each time expecting to see a horde of little ghost children or maybe human-animal hybrids cavorting through the room. You never really knew what to expect, with anomalous places.
He and the agent had been circling the carved jade phoenix for the past ten minutes or so, listening. The sculpture was magnificent, really, Riven thought. But he kept the opinion to himself, since Agent Shen seemed all too focused on recording snippets of seemingly inconsequential sounds, and tapping away on his cell phone. He'd done the same routine for the carved jewel beetle collection and the crystal deer fruitbowl-thing. Record noise with headset, and stare at phone. What could be so interesting about Foundation gear when there were anomalous crystals to look at?
Honestly, we're in an anomalous museum. Even if it wasn't anomalous, the place is interesting enough to warrant looking at the pieces and not your phone, right? You can look at your phone whenever you want… Riven leaned a little closer to examine the phoenix's intelligent-looking, if empty, eyes. The light around the piece gleamed brighter, as if excited.
“Squaawk! Braawwwk! Brawk.” More childish laughter, but more reserved. As if the nonexistent children had noticed there was someone else in the room. Riven stepped back a bit and glanced at his mission buddy.
Agent Shen was looking at his phone again and rubbing his eyes.
“Getting bored already?” Riven grinned. He was actually starting to enjoy the museum a bit, given that he hadn't needed to break out any of the emergency supplies now feeling like rather useless weight in his backpack. “It's barely been half an hour, and we haven't even seen the top floor yet.”
To Riven's surprise, Shen replied amicably, “You're right. Let's go see the most famous piece in the collection.”

“Are you sure it's worthwhile to see this? The brief didn't say anything about breaking and entering.” Riven's incredulous whisper echoed through the upstairs antechamber. He should've known it wasn't a regular Swiss knife the agent had been carrying.
“We're not.” Shen's soft reply barely drowned out the sound of gently rhythmic metallic clicking.
“You're picking the lock to the room.”
“I know. Keep watch.” Even through the headset Shen sounded annoyed.
Keep watch, he says. Keep watch for what? Stupid stick-in-the-mud no appreciation for art—that noise. Is that footsteps. What was that noise. Riven's sour mood evaporated instantly when he realized he may have been hearing something approaching. Footsteps? Those sounded like footsteps.
He contemplated asking Shen if he heard those too, but didn't want to distract the agent. The sooner that door was open and Shen could watch his own back, the better. Besides, Riven realized, he couldn't even see anything that would be making the sounds. And the filter gear would've blocked anything harmful to hear…
Those were definitely footsteps. Riven glanced at the sound-locator thing. Two numbers, 1.6 and 2.3. Two compass needles, neither moving. Something was here.
…or, Riven amended, it sounded like something was here. Maybe the ghosts here liked looking at the place? There were two large murals on the walls, both lit faintly with the ubiquitous display lights. They provided some visitor information about the history of the museum. Maybe a map or something, he didn't really look. Were those footsteps getting closer?
“Door's open. See anything?” Shen's calm, placid tone snapped Riven's concentration like scissor blades on a guitar string—it was almost comical in retrospect. Twang.
“No. Nothing. Didn't see anything. But I could've sworn I'd have a heart attack,” Riven managed to stammer out, as he relaxed visibly when the heavy double doors began to budge. It must have been only a minute or so, but it felt like hours. “Didn't know what to expect.”
Shen chuckled dryly. It sounded like static having a choking fit. “Don't use a mirror to look around corners if you don't want to see anything following you.” The agent slotted the lockpick tool back onto his belt, and there was a faint click of blade against case. “You use the mirror because you do expect to be followed, and you want to see what is after you…”
The rightmost door opened smoothly inwards.
“…before it sees you.”

Oh god it's a crystal dragon, Riven thought. It's lovely. Look at that workmanship on the wings. So intricate. Wish I could look at it a bit longer. Wait, is this an anomalous effect? Shit.
The entire thing couldn't have been more than half a meter tall, but the lighting was spectacular. The soft white glow cast an ethereal sheen to the rock crystal, and as they crept closer it brightened to a moonlight-like shimmer. The dragon's four limbs were crouched in a fighter's pose, wings outspread and fangs bared in a challenge. Or perhaps some sort of savage welcome? Riven scrambled to take notes.
“People think they're gone once they leave the museum. That's not true. They've only left when no one remembers. I remember. You remember. They're still here, really.”
Riven jumped slightly, and thought his headset was malfunctioning. The voice he was hearing was clearer than anything else he'd heard so far, clearer than even his accomplice's voice. Speaking of which—Shen was tapping the case the dragon was in, as if trying to ascertain how the light worked. It flickered every time the glass was touched, but there didn't seem to be any motion-sensing machinery near the case at all.
“Everyone leaves a little of themselves behind, wherever they go. Memories carried by people who don't know them, might not even see them, but feel the ripples of their actions.”
Shen was tapping on his phone again. Riven rolled his eyes, and focused on the dragon. This place wasn't so bad, really. And that smooth, velvety tenor voice was easy on the ears.
“After you experience enough of it, the loneliness isn't so bad. You coax it into your life a little bit at a time, and someday you'll start to greet it like an old friend. Don't worry about me. I still remember you.”
“Researcher. Researcher Mercer. Hey. Hey. Snap out of it. Riven. Riven, time to go.”
“…What?” Riven snapped out of a daze he hadn't realized he'd entered.
“Time to go,” Shen repeated, holding out Riven's notepad. When had he dropped it? “Now.”

“This museum… whatever it is, whoever it is, loved the person that voice belonged to. I'm sure of it. We've encountered similar things before, in objects.” Riven had to lengthen his stride to keep up with the agent's quick movement down the stairs.
“We don't know if that voice actually belonged to a person. We don't know if a building, even an anomalous one, is capable of ‘love'. Save conjecture for the lab.” Shen's shoes skidded a bit on the tiled floor, and he seemed relieved to see the front doors.
“I'm pretty sure there's decent evidence if we go back—” Riven attempted again.
The agent sighed. “We don't know. Maybe we will sometime. But not now.”
Riven shook his head. “I really don't think this place is dangerous. That's why I'm on this assignment, right? To give my report as a researcher on the observations I made. ”
“Look outside.” Shen's voice was flat, devoid of any indicative affect.
Riven, slightly fuming, made a show of striding to the nearest set of heavy window drapes and dragging them open. To his surprise, the glow of early morning's light suffused the room.
“It's dawn. Already? But we arrived here…”
“Just after sundown.” Shen was checking his bag.
“But it felt like…”
“Only an hour. The time difference happened when we looked at the displays.” Shen took off the half-rimmed glasses, and tucked them into his jacket. “Who knows what tricks this place plays on the other senses?”
“But…”
“These places are dangerous, Researcher. We can't trust them.” Shen patted the cell phone on his belt, which coincidentally buzzed once, as if in agreement. “Our team is here to collect us. Time to leave.”

“I still can't believe I didn't notice.” Riven grumbled into his mug of tea three hours later.
“They make these pairs on purpose, Riven. They wanted someone with a researcher's curiosity and eye for detail, while accompanied by an agent given more information to monitor the scenario.” Agent Shen was sitting on a swivel chair peeling an apple with a pocket knife. “The team before us was a containment specialist and a D-class.”
“They sent in other teams?” Riven glanced up. Just how much “need-to-know” information was kept from him?
“They usually send in a few, for questionable anomalous locations. But I think we'll be the last exploration team. The cog-haz department will take over for now.” Shen started to slice the apple. He was making rabbit shapes. “Right now, we need to file the report, get tested for residual cognitohazard effects, and then you go back to your lab and I go back to the field. The file is out of our hands now.”
“I see.” Riven took another sip of tea. It was weird talking to an agent in the lab's sitting room. “Uh… hey. I'm sorry if I came off as unprofessional. I must have seemed like a little kid in there.” When was the last time I was so excited about anything? So excited I didn't notice the time passing, or the effects of the lights, or the strangeness of the sounds. The agent probably thinks I'm a fool for getting so caught up with the artifacts.
Agent Shen shrugged. “They wanted you to go in with a blank slate. More genuine reaction. You focus on observing some things, while I keep track of others. Fuller report.” He paused in his apple peeling, and frowned a bit when the slice didn't carve evenly. He shrugged when he noticed Riven staring. “I'm better with turnips.”
“…turnips?”
“Yes. Turnips.”
There was a resulting silence that could be considered comfortable. Riven still felt like he had much more to say, though Shen looked perfectly happy to resume carving the apple into little rabbits without a word.
The lack of noise got to Riven. And frankly, he was curious. “Hey, Tai?”
“Yeah?” The agent flicked a bit of apple skin off the knife's blade.
Riven couldn't help but ask. “What was your favorite thing from the museum?”
Shen grinned, and for once it didn't look like it took an effort. There was a hint of wistfulness in the expression. “The phoenix. Did I ever tell you I minored in Art History?”


"You missed."
"Shut up." Rosen covered his eyes, grunting with disapproval as he surveyed his throw.
Victoria Rockward skipped up to the starting point, grinning like a madman. "It's my toss now, Rosen, and it looks like your lead is slipping."
Rosen shrugged. "You're just getting a lucky streak, is all. If my rings could stop wiggling so much, I'd be hitting every shot just like before."
Victoria locked her eyes onto the post, slowly moving her arm back and forth as she tried to finalize her aim. "They aren't wriggling for me. Maybe they're just repulsed by you."
Before Rosen could respond, she tossed, her ring sailing through the summer breeze. It snagged to the end of the post, briefly twirling around it before settling onto the ground. It began wiggling around, but it stayed in its place.
She lept into the air. "Yesss! That's 8 for me, Rosen. 11 points isn't so secure now, is it?"
"We'll see, we'll see…" Rosen stepped up. "If you'll excuse me, I have a game to win."

Victoria smiled as she surveyed the mass of wiggling rings that now covered the lawn. "Well, that was fun. I gave you a run for your money."
Rosen nodded. "It was, actually. I haven't had this much fun since lawn darts got banned." he turned back to her, picking up their pieces. "Play again?"

Memorandum to Foundation personnel: Use of SCP-2584 is a privilege, not a right. Any future occurrences of 'Ouroboros ring toss' played with research specimens will result in severe penalties. - Director Fulton


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Kingdom of Stone: Slay, Cure, Protect
An abandoned tale series that will be picked up again some day
Eat more of my SCPs. Eat them all.
Also please eat some of these

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

The whole mob seemed to groan as it came to a halt, like steel creaking and bending. Dodger had a foot out, ready to take another step, but held put as the order came to halt. They'd arrived at Whore's End. The stench of sulfur had been present for hours. Now there was a distinct tinge of ammonia and chlorine.
"Beautiful place," Dodger said with a smile, approaching a nearby riverbank, where the water gushed rapidly, giving off the sulfur stench most prominently. It was even lined with trees — no leaves, though. A group of young people started flocking to the river, one girl kneeling beside it and reaching in to scoop up some water. Dodger vaulted over to her, grabbing her by her hair and yanking her back away from the water.
"What's wrong with you? Didn't they tell you not to drink the water?" She looked in the girl's face. She was cute, though not as young as Dodger had thought. Her skin was red and pink, broken out like a typical greasy teenager.
"They did, but- but then the others, they said 'Get Stoneface' — that's what they call me, by the way, Stoneface — 'to drink it! She'll drink anything!' and so I went and did."
Dodger leaned in closer, clasping the girl's face and examining her skin, "Why do they call you 'Stoneface'?"
"It's because of my face. It gets wet and bumpy, and when I scratch the bumps, they start bleeding. Then the blood turns to stone and I can peel it off like ice but it don't hurt any."
Dodger smiled, "That's called 'acne'. You just have to wash your face more often and it'll go away. What's your real name?"
The girl squirmed, "I don't know. I been called 'Kitt' before, but that's all."
A voice howled in her direction, sounding like the braying of a large animal. Dodger let go of Kitt and slowly turned to see a tall, imposing figure bounding towards her, dressed all in metal and black leather. She smiled sweetly, then stopped as she saw it was a woman; near seven feet tall, she figured, close-cut dirty blonde hair, and eyes so dark as to appear black from so far down as Dodger stood.
"Why are you harassing the peasants?" The woman asked in a surprisingly wispy, throaty voice.
"Familiarizing myself with the girl, and dispensing advice," Dodger smiled, bowing politely to the tall woman. She fished into one of her pockets, and found a small pack of antibiotics, precious few in existence, able to be spared only due to the recent influx in panacea she'd managed to get a hold of. She knelt down and handed it to the girl, "Swallow one of these with every meal," She hesitated, noting how small and skinny the girl looked, "Actually, swallow one in the morning, and another at night. Should help you with your stone face." She smiled and patted the girl on the head.
The woman grabbed Dodger by the armpits, easily hoisting her up to her feet and turning her to face the woman, "Are you a Dark? Darks are banned from Whore's End. If you've got to lie, I recommend you lie well, or it could be I wear your panacea-laced head on my shield as a trophy."
Dodger furrowed her brow, "Such violence. And racism, too."
"Marshall. Carter. Dark." The woman snarled nastily, her grip on Dodger tightening.
"I was just teasing you. I don't work for money. I serve Manna. My name is Dodger. What about you?"
The woman let Dodger go, and said nothing for a long while. Dodger broke the silence, "You must be a Foundation Knight, then? Who'd you serve before Number Eight?"
The woman grabbed Dodger by the shoulder, and started to pull her along.
"I'm not a spy, if that's what you're thinking! If what I hear is correct, I might actually know Number Eight from another time —"
"Good. Then you're less likely to die in the next few hours. If you've got to lie this time around, I recommend you lie well."

The way up the tower smelled heavily like chlorine. Somehow, the smell of sulfur was entirely gone. It was almost pleasant, like living in an above-ground aquifer tainted by chemical waste. She pitied the peasants having to stay outside with the sulfur. Maybe there was some manner of design in this tower that kept out the sulfur? She didn't know anything about engineering.
Finally she reached the top floor, sweat beading along her hairline. The towering woman behind her hadn't slowed, and hadn't changed her easy breathing in the slightest. The room looked carved straight from stone, without any décor beyond a few seats and tables, and the vast open window carved on the opposite end of the room, using preciously rare clear glass to allow a view of the land around them.
The Eighth Overseer stood on a dais extending towards the windows. The windows extended like a bulb, offering a view straight down below as well as straight up and all around. Pre-Fall construct, it had to be. Dodger could easily see the rot starting to set in around the edges, where the glass had been fused together and rammed into stone. Like every other braggadocious castle and fortress in the land proclaiming grandeur and terror, it was falling apart.
"Speaking of falling apart," She muttered aloud as the Overseer turned and started moving towards her. It looked like she had gotten to the panacea too late to save her face.
"Hey Anna," Dodger waved casually, knowing better than to try and flatter someone like her.
The Overseer smiled, then tilted her head slightly, putting Dodger on edge before those coy words left her lips, "Do I know you?"
Dodger was sure the knight behind her hadn't moved, yet she could distinctly feel her presence far closer than she had upon entering. Dodger spread her arms slightly, innocently keeping her hands visible and open.
"Dr. Anna Sobotka. My name's Dodger. 'Spiffy Dodger', technically. Real name… doesn't matter anyways; everyone who was anyone only knew me as 'Dodger'. We used to work together a few times… After the Fall."
The Overseer smiled, eyes still blank and expressionless. Dodger twitched, anticipating the knight's hands coming down on her shoulders to whisk her away to some manner of dark horror involving iron, stone, and possibly fire. Then the Overseer stepped closer, reaching out to touch Dodger's face.
"I do remember you. What was it you told me? That you were a 'last light of life and love in a land lacking leisure'?"
"I may have been a bit boastful back then."
"What do you want?"
Dodger had hoped for at least a few more moments of small talk, "Pick up where I left off, hopefully."
Anna shook her head, but before the towering woman behind Dodger could wring her neck, she spoke again, "I can offer you a position tending to my flock…"
"No."
"Teach them to read and write, teach them discipline — "
"No."
" — Train them to use proper spears and shields, maybe."
"Hell no," Dodger stood her ground and waited for the woman behind her to kill her at any moment. Anna frowned as much as her porcelain jaw allowed her to. Dodger broke in quickly, "I happen to know where you might find some useful anomalies."
Anna's face remained fixed in that frown. Dodger continued, "We're close to at least three I know of. A hole; used to be in a building. Leads somewhere… anomalous. Still has things we can loot from them. Desks, chairs, tables, maybe some weapons. Other things. I've also managed to track down some a few hundred miles away. Very long journeys… could take years."
"You want to be sent to fetch things for me?" Anna asked incredulously. By reputation, Dodger was always the sort to want to see action, even if it was digging latrines and polishing armor by the front lines, "There's a war coming, you know."
Dodger squirmed a bit, clenching her porcelain teeth tightly together, "I know."
"You love war."
Dodger looked down sheepishly at her chest, "I love a good war… a liberation, annexation of a failed-state, crushing some petty warlord. This one you've got coming… It's dirty. Confusing. Political, even."
Anna grinned, "You only love when there's a clear-cut 'good' and 'evil'."
Dodger didn't look up, "Only the perception of 'good' and 'evil'. I know there's no such thing as 'evil' in the world."
Anna smirked, and reached out to take Dodger by the hand, "No. Of course not. Let's talk."

The square of gold-shielded men came to a stop near the edge of the vast bowl-shaped pit, where smoke still rose from the fires set weeks prior. Tracks indicated thousands of people moving to the southwest.
A young woman ran up to Overseer Seven. She was unarmored, lightly garbed, with a satchel hanging from her hips. Scar tissue on her thighs and legs marked her a survivor of the Upland Mine Riots six years prior. A former slave turned traitor, one of many who opened the gates to the Overseer's assault force, and was granted her freedom for her troubles.
She dropped to her knees before him, hands out and splayed open, "My lord. I've found a note from your servant."
At his nod, she reached into her satchel, and withdrew a rolled bit of parchment, sealed with a ring of stone, likely made from blood spilled on the field before it could petrify. He pulled the ring off, and unfurled the paper.
"Have I done well, my lord?" The woman asked, trembling.
He looked down to her, then glared at his men. He tolerated no abuse of women in his service, regardless of their status. None of the men looked away in guilt. He trusted these men enough to accept that alone.
"You have," He responded gutturally, and withdrew a bronze flask from his satchel, prying off the top and pouring a small handful of sticky golden syrup onto his outstretched gauntlet.
The woman started to whimper, and lunged at his armored hand as he lowered it, smearing the panacea on her face as she devoured it all, licking each metal finger clean of the precious substance, while he continued to read the hastily written letter left him by Hagne-Allon.
"Eight is alive." He drew a sharp breath. He still remembered Anna Sobotka, the way she had been; long blonde hair, shapely little nose, always with an over-shirt or a jacket of some type. Quick to wit and quick to forgive, always able to project a perpetual sense of calm and bring out the best in her coworkers. The Anna Sobotka he remembered didn't exist anymore. He wasn't even entirely sure that Anna Sobotka ever existed.
He turned his hand over, watching the woman stiffen and stop lapping like a dog as he pointed right to her face, "Find the redhead. Do not talk to her. Watch the people around her. Don't leave them; I will send messengers for you to report to."
"Ree… Recon? Conner Sense?"
"Reconnaissance" He confirmed.
The woman rose to her feet, and turned around, starting after the tracks at a jog.

« A Monolithic Species | Slay, Cure, Protect | »


He inhales and exhales at a pace and intensity not unlike a buffalo mid-coitus. Of course, it isn't like anyone can hear him, given that the building is screaming while red lights strobe the corridor. The thought briefly crosses his mind to calm down- and then the signal from the squad leader pushes the thoughts out of his mind. They burst into the room. Objects are strewn around and smoke is filling it from the corridor. The squad locks gazes with the hideous beasts cowering in the corner, behind overturned desks and tables. Some of the creatures whimper, staring fearfully at the squad. One squadmate retches inside his helmet, staring at the hideous abominations. He himself is barely keeping his breakfast down staring at them. Where is their flesh? Where are their arms?
They're missing so many limbs, and so much flesh, and yet they aren't bleeding… he can even see their organs through what little remains, hidden beneath stolen coats. One of them reaches into their coat- it's pulling out a weapon! He immediately pounces on it, ripping its head from its shoulders. The other creatures scream, a cry to action for the rest of the squad. They fall upon the fleshless abominations, peeling away limbs, ripping out organs, crushing bodies between their hands, butchering the creatures and painting the room in bodily fluids as the lights flash in fear and the building wails. The rest follow his lead. The sirens and their screams are deafening him and then it's all over.
"Good work", he hears, and he accepts the adulation quietly. He looks back at the bodies with a small amount of empathy for their plight - and finally the sight of oozing, candy-red liquid, spreading towards his boots, gets him. He's a trained killer, a remorseless slayer of monsters, a Knight of the Flesh, a decorated MTF member, and he vomits, barely pulling his helmet off in time to splatter the floor in pasty brown sludge. Looking at these grotesque bodies that attempt to masquerade as humans, he knows that the world will be much safer without them. He begins frisking the creatures.
One stirs, and he quickly crushes its skull within his four palms. It slumps without a sound, and its coat falls aside to reveal an ornate golden necklace with a beautiful ruby. He smashes a sacred boot down on the cursed object, caving in the creature's chest. The necklace is unscathed, sending pain shooting up his foot, so he carefully kicks it deeper into the pile. The amulet can burn with its damned owners. Outside, he watches as the building is blown to bits, incinerating the bodies and damning them to eternal clockwork torment. Its death cries ring in his ears.
-
She watches keenly as the ceremony begins. The Keepers of Flesh are chanting the words of the Sacred Cleansing Process, smacking their bellies to produce the beat, and circling the purification altar while the music thumps and throbs in her skull. Fireflies flash, illuminating the clockwork demon, whose kicking and swinging from the ropes that suspend it provide a demented rhythm.
Red-blue-drumbeat-green-purple-
kick-yellow-green-drumbeat-
blue-kick-red-drumbeat-
kick-blue-yellow-green-
drumbeat-drumbeat-kick-
and she writhes and spasms in a horrific mockery of dance, lost in the crowd and swaying to the beat. Somehow it attracts another, whose arms fly everywhere in tune with the explosive drumbeat and then the music switches over to the final crescendo and suddenly they're -are they tangoing? -
yes, they are tangoing, and she barely even knows
what a tango is, much less how to do one,
but this other woman is calling all the shots.
They spin and spin and the lights are whirling around and she is radiating heat and the demon is being lowered into the cleansing pit to the roar of the crowd. It keens and suddenly candy-colored liquid is raining from the ceiling but nobody cares because it is time for purification and suddenly they're lying together and she is on top and feels the soft touch of her body and her lips and then the hard shell of a pill.
It dissolves on her tongue and she savors the familiar tang. The club begins to swirl, and then it gets warmer and warmer until the woman starts to melt.
She whispers about being cold,
but the heat is collecting on her skin,
milling on it and buzzing on it and
sopping up the sweat seeping from her pores.
It reforms into flies, swarming around her
and clinging to her skin and scrabbling
and making her itch and it burns!
Oh god it burns! She's bucking now, and the demon finally stops keening at the bottom of the pit. It screams as the Great God devours it whole, cleansing and purifying its soul. The crowd roars in envy and ecstasy, a wave of sound that strikes her eardrums at the climax. Bolts of lightning pierce the sky and now she's barreling down the road, hoping to make it home before falling unconscious in the middle of the road. Out of the corners of her eyes, she can make out the buildings around her leaning away, nervous that she will vomit on them.
She dashes down the street, which twirls around itself and makes her dizzy. The lampposts are growling and rippling. She skips around one, giving it a sharp rap. It whimpers and the rest of the lights quiet down. Now she's running and running but it's like she's stuck in one place and then that place is in the grasp of two Flesh Guardians.
"Out after curfew?" they rasp. "Explain."
Their voices are oozing and striking each other in a cacophony
that makes her head pound and she desperately tries to say something
but the words are tripping over each other and blocking her mouth
and suffocating her. "B-bad," she chokes out, " bad soma,"
and they release her and she falls hard onto the pavement.
It squeals in protest while the Flesh Guardians snicker, their batons out and ready to dispense a beating. Their disrespect is infuriating; can they not tell who she is?
As she gasps for breath, she raises her hand to display the insignia of Mobile Task Force Gamma-2 engraved in it, and the Flesh Guardians have enough brains to immediately hoist her up, tripping over their own words in an attempt to apologize for their stupidity. She waves the goons off and stumbles down the street while they sweat to themselves, terrified that tomorrow they and their wives and children will awaken for cleansing.
-
It's two in the morning when he is awoken by the screaming of a family downstairs. He attempts to return to the sweet embrace of sleep, but the calls of the Great God beckon him to work. He gets out of the bed, uttering a short prayer to answer, and steps foggy-headed into the bathroom to cleanse himself. Standing in the middle of the room, cleansing tendrils probe him for impurities, popping the crust from his eyes, shaving excess flesh, and evacuating his bowels before pushing him out. Once he is certain that he is properly cleansed to receive the teachings of the Great God, he sits down at the desk and begins to write. The Great God teaches him the history of the universe, injecting it directly into his mind through the Great God's power, and he studiously copies the teachings down. During a lull in the sermon, he scrutinizes the work. Everything that he has written down contradicts what he was told the previous night.
Clearly he was not listening properly the previous night; but to write it all wrong is a grave error. The children must learn their history in an unbroken chain, and this is the second time in a row that he has had to revise his own teachings. Penance is in order to apologize to the Great God for failing to deliver his message. He steps into the kitchen to pick up a peeler from the drawers. Returning to the desk, he places the peeler to his arm, and begins to shave his flesh as an offering. Strips of flesh are cleaved from his arm and fall to the desk, where they are quickly absorbed. He winces, but does not cease his efforts, uttering a prayer of apology to the Great God. Mid-prayer, he sneezes and his arm twitches, and severs a nerve and several blood vessels.
He lets the blood drip onto the desk, positive that the Great God will appreciate the extra sacrifice. It burns, so after several minutes, he jams the useless arm into his mouth and down into his stomach, gagging at the acrid taste, accepting it as punishment for failing to complete the prayer. The sermon begins again, and he continues writing, breathing through his nostrils to avoid embittering the arm, careful to ensure that he writes down exactly what is taught. When the sermon is over, he tucks the writing away into a folder. He can see the rising sun, illuminating the deep crimson sky, indicating that lessons will begin within the hour. Picking up the folder, he walks to the door and steps out.
One door over, some Keepers of Moloch demand that the family next door surrender their child. The father and mother keep their mouths shut,
but the baby is bawling, even though
it has been born, raised, and
pampered for this moment its whole life.
He just wants the damn thing
to shut up because its incessant wails
are ringing in his ears.
All he wants is a drink, any kind of drink to shut it up.
But it doesn't matter. He has the words of the Great God to strengthen and enrich him with the knowledge of their illustrious history. His sacred duty is to enlighten the children, so that they may grow up as proud devotees to the Great God. The sun is shining bright, the sidewalks and buildings are humming, and his arm is starting to taste sweet. He nibbles on the elbow thoughtfully as he prepares the lesson plan for the day.
-
One-two-hurl-prod.
One-two-hurl-prod.
One-two-hurl-prod.
One-two-hurl-prod.
The teeth gnash. The belly rumbles. She continues to feed it, walking one step back to collect the body and one step forward before throwing it into the mouth and prodding it in-between her two teeth. It lows in satisfaction, blasting a putrid odor and hot air over her. She is almost overcome by the heat and the stench, but solders on, collecting it from the esophagi that ferry bodies from the crypt to the Great One's abode. Occasionally they scream. As always, she walks one step back, one step forward, hurls it into the mouth, and prods it in-between the teeth, where it is quickly pulverized into paste. Occasionally a fire breaks out from the grinding of unsatisfied teeth, providing illumination and a death sentence to the acolyte in charge of feeding it. The two teeth next to her ignite, and the warmth is comforting. Her fellow acolyte makes a short prayer before diving over the railing into the fire. His blood extinguishes the flame and spatters the catwalk, which sputters in surprise. She idly observes that it will make things more slippery for the next acolyte.
At that moment, she notices another acolyte snapping to attention. She follows suit, sinking to her knees to pay the appropriate deferences to the High Flesh, She Who Listens. Much to her surprise, She Who Listens grasps her by the shoulders, lifts her up, and sinks to her knees instead. It is in this manner that she, a mere fourth-class acolyte, learns that her child is the Destined Oblation, the greatest gift imaginable to the Great God.
She is ferried out of the chamber, through the pulsating corridors in a magnificent procession. Music. A golden, jewel-encrusted palanquin. Hundreds of overjoyed, onlooking citizens and buildings, establishing a thruway several hundred cubits long that leads to her domicile. Before she has even stepped through the door of their home, her husbands know. They lock eyes and nod their heads solemnly, eyes welling with pride. In the next room, the infant is bawling from hunger pains. Its eyes are bloodshot, and its throat sore. She caresses the infant and lets it suckle, as they are returned through the streets, which vibrate with joy, to the chamber of the Great One. Together, she and the infant peer into its gaping brown maw. A wave of hot air escapes the pit that is the gnashing teeth, and far, far below she can make out the gleam of a lake of digestive fluids. Together, she and her son bask in the glory of the Great One. She can taste the bond that exists between the three, that of mother and child, flesh and blood, sweat and tears: nothing less than a portion of her soul.
She tosses the child into the mouth. Its wails are cut short by the gnashing teeth, and she looks in on envy before collecting a body from the esophagus and feeding it to the Great God.
One-two-hurl-prod.
One-two-hurl-prod.
-
This has no ending. This has no story. This has no context.
Great God help us all.


Heat.
There are too many, TOO MANY!
Heat unimaginable. No flame, there could never be flame here, but more heat than almost anywhere. Surging plasma and searing vapour, springing from the surface of the great yellow sphere.
That one! That one! Keep turning!
And beyond the heat… nothing. Nothing but the endless expanse of void.
Sauel! Help me, Sauel!
There were too many threats. To her, to the planets, to Sauel… So many creatures wanted to eat him. Or worse. Dozens of faiths, hundreds of beliefs, thousands of half-remembered notions… they all had a promise of eternal night to uphold, and most were going straight to the source.
I can't warn them all! I can't do it!
She didn't even know if anyone was watching at this point, let alone heeding her warnings. It was too much, there were too many…
But it was all she had left. Sauel was fighting off a thousand thousand monsters, and whilst Sauelsuesor doted on her big brother she was under no illusions as to his ability to survive this assault.
It's coming apart, isn't it? It's all coming apart…
Far, far above her a titanic red snake the size of Neptune broke through Sauel's final line of defence and clamped its jaws into his surface, hungrily sucking the plasma from his form. He flailed at the creature with a wave of unimaginable force and it screeched in the thin atmosphere. The volume of the roar could level a city through the shock waves alone, tear a mountain to the ground with its vibratons, but here it just rippled across Sauel's surface like a stone in the universe's largest pond as he crushed it to a pulp. Eventually Sauel turned it into so much blood and pseudo-reptilian skin, but now it was too late. A legion of beasts streamed through the gap in the corona provided by the great serpent's smouldering corpse, each one hungry for a star on which they could feast. There was a…
I told you you were lacking.
An enormous wave of manipulated gravity washed over Sauel, easily enough to wipe him from existence had it not been so finely tuned.
I said you would be next.
It was wielded with an incredible finesse- the pulses spreading and coiling around the surface of the star, causing millions of pockets of neutron matter to burst into being as each of the invaders was destroyed utterly, rendered into a state from which naught could survive by forces unimaginable.
But I never said it would be me that killed you!
Creatures that had lived for untold millennia fled Sauel's surface or hid in whatever brief holes in his skin they could find, but it made no difference. The force found them, and one by one it destroyed them.
And you thought it a threat? An attempt at intimidation? More fool you!
Sauelsuesor cast her gaze into space. A great star could be seen far, far below her, but still close in astronomical terms. It was smaller than Sauel by a factor of a… A hundred? Perhaps it was more, perhaps it was less, but either way its gravity was a lot stronger than her brother's. Its light flickered rapidly, pulsing in a morse code stream she realised translated to French.
You thought I would kill you, you thought I would crush your pathetic world, and it is this fear that brought me here.
The next wave of creatures was already coming, undaunted by the grisly fate of those that had preceded them. The forces split before Sauelsuesor's eyes, half splitting off to assault the newcomer.
You saw me as an end, an apocalypse in myself, and all such beings have arrived now.
Plasma spiralled from Sauel's axes, twisting and coiling through space as the great clouds bloomed like scorching flowers. Below Sauelsuesor the newcomer began to manipulate the incandescent mass, twisting it into titanic shafts and walls.
You are pathetic! All of you, worse than humans- skulking, scavenging, miserable creatures! You will not harm us! We. Are. STARS!
In the void, the searing, freezing, endless void, SCP-179 laughed as SCP-1548 wiped the horde from existence.


Project Crossover » Dial S For SCP

"…This is an actual item?"
"Yes sir."
"… An actual item to be kept and contained on Site. Not one of those random weird objects we have, like the ducks?"
"Sir, it took us two MTF teams and some of the heavy artillery just to contain it again after initial discovery of its effects."
"Vines, it's a rotary phone dial!"
"A Keter one, yes sir."
Senior Researcher Rob Reed sighed. "This is your first day isn't it, Vines?"
"Sir, its effects would pretty much make this Keter!"
Reed and Vines stared at the harmless looking dial through the bulletproof glass. It looked so mundane, a plain old rotary phone dial, separate from the rest of the phone. It sat on the table in the observation room, doing nothing.
"Alright, let's do this thing. Send in the D-Class!"
A light by the observation room door flashed and a D-Class entered. The D-Class looked around and then towards the dial.
"D-6175161, please approach the table and pick up the item."
D-6175161 picked the dial up and inspected it. "What's this one do? Call the dead or something?"
The two researchers jotted down some notes.
"Please enter the following numbers into the dial. 0, 7, 2, 7."
The D-Class did as instructed, the dial making a pleasant "sssshhhclick!" noise as the dial wound back. After entering the last digit, a blinding light filled the observation room. As the light began to diminish, a new shape took the place of D-6175161. It was still humanoid, however its arms ended in what looked like MP5K machine guns and a smooth black sheen covered its entire body. There were hardly any curves, giving the being an almost machine-like appearance, as well as a third larger cannon-like protrusion in its head.
The researchers stared at the creature inside the observation room. Vines buzzed the intercom.
"D-6175161? D-6175161, please respond."
The being in the observation room raised its head, "I am Orgun!" came a voice from the cannon's bore. It echoed and sounded nothing like the D-Class who picked up the dial.
Reed and Vines both drew a blank.
"D-6175161, can you tell us anything about what you're experiencing right now?"
The creature tilted its head quizzically. "I'm afraid, I don't understand your question."
"D-6175161, you have Machine guns for hands. Does this not disturb you?"
"Why on earth would it? It's how I was made!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"As far back as I can remember, I was made like this."
"D-6175161, you recall you are taking part in an experiment for The Foundation?"
"Yes sir!"
"And yet, you've just told me you remember being made like that?"
Vines leaned in, "Sir, perhaps it's part of the effect?"
"Perhaps. D-6175161, your… artillery. Is it functional?"
"Yes sir. Would you care for a demonstration?"
"Vines, those walls are bulletproof, right?"
"I believe so, sir."
"Very well, D-6175161, you may proceed."
Without hesitation, the creature turned to face the opposing wall and fired a brief burst into it. The security cameras zoomed in on the bullets embedded in the wall. Or what should have been bullets. The monitors the two researchers were looking through revealed what looked to be human teeth.
"That's… interesting…"
"Sir, isn't that similar to what 126 can do?"
"What?"
"Well, it's a machine gun which is also part organic.
"…"
"Can't say it doesn't…"
"You have got to be fucking kidding…"

Vines and Reed had a thick pad of documents in front of them. In the observation room, a new one, without teeth stuck in the back wall and reinforced to study the more dangerous side of Euclid-class items, was the rotary dial.
"So, this dial somehow turns people into super hero-versions of SCPs?"
"Yes sir, it's like something out of those comics which keep showing up…"
"What, those 'Foundation Force' ones?"
"That's them."
"I saw some of those, the art in some of the later issues were weird…"
"Can we concentrate please, sir?"
Alright, send the D-Class in!"
A D-Class entered the observation room. She picked up the dial.
"So, what am I doing?"
"Please dial the following number, D-4144445. 0 7 2 7."
Sssssshhhhhhhhhclick!
After the light had returned to normal, in place of the D-Class was a scrawny man in tattered winter clothing. There were icicles hanging everywhere off the man and he appeared to be shivering.
"D-4144445, please state your name and any ability you may have."
"I a-a-am, C-c-c-creep-ping Cold!" The man replied between moist sounding sniffs, he then proceeded to extend his frostbitten fingers out towards the observation window. Ripples in the air caused the window to vibrate slightly. With nothing apparently happening, the man called Creeping Cold put his hand down.
"I repeat, please STATE any ability you may possess!"
"Hrrmm… I can inflict Frostbite upon my enemies."
Vines consulted the pad, "Seems more than likely either, 532 or 649." He studied the being in the room.
"Let's go with 532."
"Great stuff, thank you, D-4144445. Please return to normal, dial 7 2 7 0."

Vines' hand was still shaking.
"Okay, no more random dialling. I don't need to see another… thing which looks like You-Know-What calling itself 'Grandma's Footstep'!"
"I agree, we're lucky we've not dialed anything Keter yet."
"Shall we try the number followed by the item number?"
"Vines, what on earth did this thing conjure up when we found it?"
"Not sure. I heard off of one of the surviving MTFs it looked like a man shaped version of one of the 111s we have. Said it was confused and screaming about 'The Doctor's Wonder-Dome' or something."
"Let's stick to humanoids for now…"
"Is that wise, sir?"
"One of the cooperative ones."

"Alright, D-7164343, pick up the dial and enter the following numbers. 0 7 2 7 0 1 0 5."
Sssssshhhhclick!
In the D-Class' place was a young woman with long blonde hair, a skin tight blue costume and an elaborately designed Polaroid camera. She didn't seem shocked by her situation.
"Name, D-7164343."
"Photomancer!"
"D-7164343, would your current civilian identity be Iris Thompson?"
"I'm not at liberty to say, sir."
"Why not?"
"Firstly, that would defeat the entire purpose of the mask I'm wearing, sir. And secondly, that information is restricted. If you want any more info regarding me or anyone else in Project: Pandora, you may wish to contact the Security Commission for Powers Foundation."
"…What?"

"We have a whole universe out there, where another Foundation acts as a god damned security force using SCiPs as costumed heroes, and not one of them knows about this dial?!"
"They weren't all from their world's Foundation! According to the paper-kid, Wondertainment's got his own team of home-made heroes. Then there's that speaker-faced guy who said he was from the Church…"
"Vines, this is insane."
"Isn't that all we deal with, sir? I mean, we've had an anthropomorphic rabbit astronaut, a sentient hole in the universe and an un-dead, rotting dinosaur from hell. And that was just today!"
"Not what I mean, Vines."
"And quite frankly, sir. I could have done without a tank-man-thing telling me how to do my job better! I don't care how many qualifications it had."
"No, Vines. I mean why is it classed as Keter?"
Vines stared blankly for a moment and pointed at the results. "It says so right there, sir! If this thing's used it could potentially destroy the Earth!"
"And if it's not used?"
"…"
"I thought as much…"
"I'll just mark it as 'Safe'."


FINAL MESSAGE SENT: 163 YEARS AGO

SCP FOUNDATION STANDARD COMPUTER TERMINAL

WELCOME TO YOUR NEW AUTHORIZED FOUNDATION COMPUTER TERMINAL. TO ALLOW FOR AUTOMATIC REBOOT OF SYSTEMS PLEASE INPUT THE PROPER CREDENTIALS

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INPUT LEVEL 2 PRIMARY SECURITY CREDENTIALS

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Command:\users\personnel\Issac_Holland>_ 491412248-009342555

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AUTHORIZATION GRANTED. PRIMARY MEMETIC KILL AGENTS DISENGAGED. GOOD EVENING, DR HOLLAND

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ACCESSING FILES…

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ACCESSING DATA LOG. PLEASE INPUT EVENT DATE AND EVENT DETAILS

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Date: █/██/████
Event Data: I'm not exactly sure how to use this thing, but I hope you get this dad! Hi! It's been so long since you left us, I hope you get back to me soon. :)

Date: ██/██/████
Event Data: I'm not sure how far you at this point or how the time delay works in space but I hope you can respond soon! I've just made a boyfriend and Lily keeps making fun of me haha. Hope your journeys going well, we miss you.

Date: █/█/████
Event Data: HAPPY NEW YEAR DAD! If I find a way, I could hopefully send you some pictures of the drawings Tommy has been making for me. They're so cute. Please get back to us when you've found mum! Love, Kim. :)

Date: ██/█/████
Event Data: Hey dad, I've been fiddling around with that old Pontiac you had in the garage. I think I can start it up again. A lot of electrical stuff has been starting to work like normal but it might take a while before things are back to the way things were before the fold. Maybe that's why these messages aren't being sent to you. I'll post what David thinks. See ya.

Date: ██/█/████
Event Data: David said that this computer was made in the 80's . Europa hasn't left our skies and these "memetic anomalies" (or whatever you used to call them) keep popping up over the states but it hasn't reached Aus yet - maybe they're afraid of the spiders? ;P Anyway, good night dad, I'm goin' to bed.

Date: █/█/████
Event Data: Hey dad, I've been pretty sad lately and Tom won't talk to me. I just really need a hug.
Night.

Date: ██/█/████
Event Data: Okay so Europa is purple now ahahaha. Thought it couldn't get weird enough. David said it might have something to do with the Earth's reflection. It was very beautiful nevertheless. Tommy and I had a picnic the other night where we slept underneath the stars. Not sure if romantic or cliche but i'll give him another date so see how good his taste really is ahaha as mum would say. ;) I can't wait for you to meet him!
BTW this "event data" thing is pretty annoying… Do you know how to turn it off?

Date: ██/█/████
Event Data: David has been rummaging through some old shops that have spare parts and old computer stuff. I asked if he could lend me a scanner so I can send you some drawings. Hopefully the drawing Tommy did of me should be on it's way, drifting through the universe.

Date: █/█/████
Event Data: David was asking about the computer today so I showed him your card and the password and stuff. I was going to ask you not to be upset until he told me that these messages aren't even being sent to you. They're just data logs on an old office computer. I'm such an idiot. I'm sorry.

Date: █/██/████
Event Data: Tommy opened up to me about his depression today. Apparently the tidal shifts in the Earth's oceans from Europa's gravitational pull is causing this. I'm not sure what to make of this. Some of my friends think that he's gaslighting me but several articles online have been mentioning the same thing so i'm not too sure anymore. I don't know the science like you did.

Date: █/██/████
Event Data: Happy birthday dad! I hope you're having a good time up there. David asked me why i'm still logging on here but I feel like it'd be fun to read these with Lily and Amy when you get back. :) Anyway, see you later.

Date: ██/██/████
Event Data: I can't stop thinking about certain things sometimes. Just sad or absurd things. Tommy said these were symptoms but I don't want it. I don't want to think like this. If this is what caused mum to jump into one of those folds. I don't know.

Date: ██/██/████
Event Data: David was scared today that our universe is gonna collapse because of the folds. It's why we ended up near Jupiter. Is all that true?

Date: ██/██/████
Event Data: Why do you have to be so far away?

Date: ██/██/████
Event Data: I fucking hate you dad! You selfish fucking cunt! I saw the photos and the backed-up diary entries that were on this fucking thing and I know exactly what you were doing! WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU ABANDON ME JUST TO FLY INTO SPACE AND FIND SOME ASTRONAUT CIRCLING AROUND SATURN'S ORBIT???!!!!! I don't give a shit if it's some Foundation dickhead! You still left me here you fucking coward!

Date: █/██/████
Event Data: Were you even looking for mum?

Date: █/██/████
Event Data: I don't know what to do. I've never dealt with depression before and it's just nothing. Nothing that fills your lungs and eyes and cripples you. I just want to die but I want to keep Amy and Lily happy. I don't know where Tommy is. Nobody works. Nobody eats. Nobody sleeps.

Date: ██/██/████
Event Data: I'm sorry for being mean to you a few weeks ago… I just need you so badly right now. Tommy says that I should be emptying out my emotions to him rather that you but… I'm scared dad. Please come home. I miss you so much.

Date: █/██/████
Event Data: Please come home.

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Command:\date\log_search\prompt>_

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RECOVERING DATA…

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FINAL EVENT LOG: 163 YEARS AGO

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Command:\override\file\script>_65553423-1243409

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ACCESSING PHOTOS…

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++ ACCESS ALL IMAGES ON TERMINAL ++

-- HIDE FILES --

It looks cute doesn't it dad?

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ACCESSING DATA LOGGER…

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PLEASE INPUT EVENT DATE AND EVENT DETAILS

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Date: █/█/████
Event Data: Happy birthday Kim. Daddy loves you.

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Command:\users\personnel\Issac_Holland>_ logout

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YOU ARE NOW LOGGED OUT.


Once, there was a rundown diner where two elderly men were sitting, waiting for a third to show.
It was dark out and the only light that could be seen outside was that single, dimly-flickering lamp post that illumined the parking lot. Every few minutes it would stop producing light, only to feebly wink on again and continue its dying existence. Under its watchful glow of gold sat two trucks, both of days long before nukes had burned away half of Canada; battered and broken were they, running on scraps of materials that long should have rusted away. Vehicles made these days belonged to the military, destined to be broken or smashed or incinerated or have its existence negated or some horrible event.
“I'm sorry to hear about Miranda, Hank. She'll be missed.” The older man at the table, Peter, spoke with a forced warmth in his voice which came from seeing scores of people broken or smashed or incinerated or have their existence negated. He'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time too many times.
The slightly younger of the two, Hank, shook his head slowly, looking up from his cup of cooling coffee. “It was just before her time- you know? She didn't deserve this. Especially not the way that it happened, you know?”
Peter nodded reluctantly and sipped from his own mug.
“I should have told her to get rid of that peacock.” Hank mumbled into his cup and he rubbed his eyes with leathery palms as tears sprang anew from already depleted reservoirs. “I should have told her to get rid of that fuckin' bird.”
“What did you do- you know- when you lost Elaine?” Whimpered the other man and Peter thought back on his wife.
“I got mad, Hank. Really mad. I put six rounds in that farmhand and it didn't solve anything.” Peter tapped the revolver holstered at his side. These days, it was unsafe to go anywhere without a weapon.
“He just got up and laughed at me with the same laugh that he used to captivate Elaine. I couldn't do anything about it. I called the police and later some guys in suits took him away. They said they were sorry and they were gonna put him in an incinerator. I couldn't do anything at all.”
Outside, another truck pulled into the lot. Its bright headlights reflected off of the dull chrome finish on the bar and the dusty tubes where neon lights used to run. Couldn't waste power anymore, the pretty little waitress had explained. Even out here, where power plants were still running.
That pretty little waitress saw the truck pull in and approached the table with another mug of the steaming black shit that they called coffee. “Is that your third?”
“Yeah.” Peter gave her a nod and she set down the coffee.
Hank looked out the window as the waitress unlocked the door.
“Some goverment suits came for the bird too.” He sniffed, “They had a guy with them, some egghead in a labcoat running tests on Miranda. He told me that there was a shortage, but he could give me drugs that could make me forget her.”
Peter sipped his coffee.
Hank wiped a batch of fresh tears from his eyes and rubbed at his cheeks with a napkin, “I wish I had taken him up on it.”
Peter hadn't gotten that option.
The waitress at the door let their new companion in and locked it behind him.
Michael was a younger man than both Hank or Peter, come out to the family farm to help his ailing father in a world that had no mercy for the elderly. His father had grown up between both of them, “Hey guys.” He said as he sat beside Peter.
“Why'd you need us, Mike?” Asked Peter, holding up his mug for a refill.
“I think I'm in trouble.” Michael wasted no time, “There's something happening at my farm and I wondered if you guys had ever seen anything like it.”
Michael caught his breath while pulling a very old iPhone from his jacket pocket. He touched the screen and began searching through the files. Those days, even outdated tech like that was hard to come by.
“By the way, I'm sorry to hear about-” Michael looked up at Hank, but Peter gently touched his arm and covertly shook his head. Michael cut off and went back to his task.
Hank pursed his lips and sipped weakly from his coffee. With a cracked voice, he sighed. “It's a fucked up world, Mike. You had a good idea coming to us.” He glanced out the window with rheumy eyes, “How's your dad?”
“He's okay. He's pretty sick these days- some kind of flu. My sister doesn't let him off the farm much anymore.”
Michael found the file and set the device on the table for all three to see. “My sister's kid Eddy recently went over to Nepal or Vietnam or something for some U.N. Mission. Real big secret- won't talk about beyond a few things. He came back and mentioned that he had taken up this-”
“Get to it.” Hank muttered and Michael hesitated.
“Well, he'd been practicing martial arts in the barn and he said that the cows were acting funny. Look.” He pressed play on the device and sat back to watch his companion's eyes widen.
The sloppy video showed a man in his twenties performing a kata and beyond him, five cows were stumbling about upon two legs. As the man moved, so did they. He let out a punch and shifted his arm upwards and the cows mirrored his movement, attempting to perform it quickly enough before their balance failed them. There were many other cows within the barn and all watched, enraptured as Eddy moved.
“What the hell?” Peter mumbled.
“That's pretty fucking weird.” Hank agreed quietly.
“We thought the same, so I asked him not to practice in the barn anymore.”
Michael switched the file and hit Play on another. The same man advanced in a fighting stance in a courtyard of sorts, closed in by a large stone house and a small shed.
“Look.” Michael pointed to a tabby cat on the side of the screen, “The cat's been following Eddy around ever since he started doing this about two months ago.” Michael switched the file and played another while talking. “-Yesterday, the cat was doing this.”
The video displayed the same courtyard, but the cat was the only occupant. Without Eddy, the cat had preceded to enact the form and same movements.”
“That cat doesn't look-” Began Peter before Hank cut him off. “The damn thing looks like a fuckin' human.”
It was so. The cat's head had been enlarged and its ears had moved more towards the side of its face. Its torso was much thicker than it should have been and the movement demonstrated joints that cats should not have. Its tail had been shortened to a mere nub at the base of its back and its paws had elongated toes that moved like fingers. All in all, the cat stood more than a meter tall.
“I heard it talking yesterday.” Michael muttered and let the video play on repeat. “I shot 'im last night.”
Hank stopped the video. “Anything else?”
“The cows are doing it now. A lot more sloppy than the cat, but they're getting better. They can stand on two legs without support. The other ones that weren't doing anything the first time are doing it too.”
There was a moment in silence in which Michael looked as if he was going to speak, but didn't.
“Are you going to put the cows down?”
“We won't be able to get by without them. Food crops don't take in the soil anymore.”
"Do you still have a working phone?" Hank asked. "One of the normal ones?"
"Yeah." Michael gave a curt nod. "By the grace of God."
“Call the police. Chances are slim that they will but they might be able to help.” Peter advised and Michael sat back silently.
“It's this whole area,” Hank muttered sadly, “I should just move up into the city. Sell my farm and buy a house in the suburbs.”
Peter grunted. “Not a bad idea.”
“They're not letting anyone in anymore.” Michael said, mind elsewhere. “I went up there to look for another generator and these guys in black suits and gas masks run up to my truck with assault rifles and demand that I get out. They searched me and questioned me for twenty minutes before demanding that I leave.”
“What happened up there?” Peter asked quietly.
“Same thing that's happening everywhere else. Everything is going to Hell in a handbasket. My nephew says that cities in Nepal- or wherever- was all locked down by someone else and the U.N. was trying to trying to drive them out. The other guys ended up overrun by some shit and our guys bombed the place into oblivion.”
The waitress finally approached with a coffeepot after seeing Peter's empty mug, “Sorry guys. The coffeemaker's been straining it too thin lately.” She took their cups and filled them to the brim. Not making conversation, she then retreated behind the bar and set the pot on the chrome counter.
"Fuckin' media blackout." Hank muttered apathetically. "I don't hear about anything that happens outside the county anymore.
Peter sipped the hot fluid and watched the lightbulb dimly flickering. “I saw tanks up at the Meyer's farm last Wednesday. Just sitting there. You guys remember Danielle?”
“Which one is that? They have way too many kids.” Hank remarked.
“She's the little redhead that my grandson, Perry, was running around with. He brought her up to your place to help with the harvest two years ago.” Hank began to wear a grin for the first time that day as he remembered the young couple.
"Yeah, I remember her. She was a frisky little thing."
Peter mirrored Hank's grin, albeit more strongly. "She's been running messages for her family- says that she's got quite a few for my family in particular. Anything so that she can-"
“What about her?” Michael asked, coming out of his cocoon.
“Uh- she told me that her great grandma had gotten tired of all the soldiers passing through her land and so she told them to leave. Danielle said that the soldiers just vanished. Right out of thin air.”
“Even our own people are getting weird.” Hank groaned.
Michael leaned forward to the table and spoke in a low tone. “One of the guys up at the city asked me about that. They wanted to know if she'd done shit like that before. They were saying that-”
Peter finished his mug of coffee and looked up and around, trying to find the waitress. His keen eye noted the full coffeepot on the counter.
The waitress nearby saw him looking up and smiled, gesturing at the pot.
He returned the smile and shook his head gently. Reaching for his wallet, he thumbed out a ten dollar bill and placed it on the table. Michael stared up at him oddly, “You leaving?”
“We all are,” said Peter. Both Hank and Michael stood without question. Both knew that a man like Peter was not to be taken lightly when he acted. As he shepherded them towards the double glass doors, the waitress took the hint and ran forward to unlock it before them. “Thanks for coming!” She said with a smile.
“Thanks for having us.” Peter replied as they stepped outside into the brisk air. What should have been a warm summer evening was instead a frigid evening that had already caused small amounts of ice to freeze upon truck windshields. Dark skies above were a result of the bombs dropping on Canada and a million other things together amalgamating into a freezing world.
Their breath turned to mist as they walked to the group of vehicles.
“Why'd you rush us out of there?” Michael asked, staring through the large clear window at the well-lit interior. The waitress was removing their steaming mugs from the table and placing them in a bin that she had carried from the kitchen.
“They had a full pot of coffee on the counter.” Peter opened the door to his truck and sat inside. He fumbled for his keys, ever so often looking up at the window where the waitress was sliding the bin through a narrow window into the kitchen.
“So?” Hank demanded, “I was having a good time. Why'd you-”
“It was half-empty when she filled our cups. She didn't put it back in the coffeemaker.”
As he started the vehicle, he noted the sudden silence overtake his two companions; contesting his decision was no longer favorable.
Hank reached for a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and went for his truck, “Well, that's just fuckin' great.”
Michael shook his head and got into his own vehicle. The look on his face said that he was either going to call the military or put the cows down himself.
Peter just thought of the whiskey in the cupboard and telling his grandson to watch the farm that night.
Each of the three went their own way in silence and that day were neither broken nor smashed nor incinerated nor had their existence negated.
In those days, this was as enviable as ends could get.


The shift whistle's shriek broke morning air like a porcelain plate. A crow that had been roosting atop the Dispensary took flight with an indignant cry of its own. The crow was fat. All crows were fat now.
The workers from the Collection Crew were sitting around the loading area smoking cigarettes in silence, yellow streaks on their coveralls vivid in the morning's ashen drear. On some days their work was light, but not today. It had been a bad one. Morale was low.
Over the loudspeakers, a strident voice brought news of inevitable victory, accompanied by a blare of drums and trumpets. The announcer called for hope, optimism, and a sense of civic duty. Together, humanity would overcome.
This message had not changed in more than a year.
The Eaters filed into the Dispensary, their gait like rusty gears, dragging and slow. It had been almost three years since Cake Day. Weariness was a way of life.
The smell, as always, was thick and sweet and noxious.
When the workers entered the Eatery, there was a collective sigh of despair. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman did her best to stifle her sobs. Another barked a hollow laugh.
A battalion of three-tiered wedding cakes stood at attention, one for every seat in the hall. Bright yellow, covered in flowers, gaudy and absurd, each cake was almost identical. The only differences lay in the bits of grit, dirt, and debris they had collected when they had suddenly appeared the night before. Flies danced among the towers of buttercream. A beetle blindly explored the geometry of a fondant daisy. Smashed windshield glass twinkled among the edible pearls.
The Cleaners did their best, but they couldn't get everything.
The moment passed. Everyone shuffled to their seats. They were all ages and races and genders, but they were as identical in their weight as the cakes were in their hideous, yellow glory. The hall filled with the sounds of eating. Someone made a quiet retching sound, but no one left their seat. An Eater who didn't eat wasn't eligible for weekly vegetable rations.
Outside, the smokers were finishing their cigarettes. An old man with gray hair and gray eyes took a final drag and brought his cigarette down to snuff it in a rogue clump of frosting on the concrete loading dock. The ember hovered above the sugary smear for a few seconds before the cigarette was instead flicked across the parking lot.
Mechanically, the man scooped the frosting up with his finger and put it in his mouth.