While Nexus points of this nature exist elsewhere in the world, it is in the United States that they are the most prominent. This is, in my opinion, an example of culture's influence on universal narrative principles: bizarre happenings in small town America has been a common media trope since the very beginning of the country, to the point where it is hardly anomalous to us anymore. The oddities of the small town is expected, and as such, these nexus points are very easily contained by their own nature: no matter what unusual events occur, it will never seem to leave its borders of the town, and the populace will remain in blissful ignorance of the happenings.
Such a principle would not go unnoticed by the Foundation. Of the twenty-three confirmed nexuses within the United States, fifteen of them have full sites located within the town, and the remainder are under some form of observation. Of these sites, Site 87 is, I find, of special note.
- Dr. Philip Verhoten, The Crossroads: A Study of Urban Anomalous Nexuses in the United States.
—
“You went and did it…”
‘You almost sound surprised. You know what my job entails. Come on, pay up.”
Harold Breaker sighed, and withdrew a wad of Monopoly money from his pocket. He licked his thumb and leafed through it, tossing five hundreds in the center of the table, in between the two rather disappointing breakfasts.
“Thank y'kindly.” Ryan Melbourne said with a complete lack of anything remotely resembling happiness at the outcome. He added the bills to his own wad. Breaker shook his head, chuckling in that vague “I can't believe you're doing this” manner of people who have just witnessed a friend get roped into something stupid.
“Laugh all you want, but you know what? Hughes bought me this shirt, because he's an asshole. If I was able to turn down a free shirt I'd burn the thing faster than you can say hot Texas barbeque! Yeah, you can laugh, but you guys have had it easy since Darwin. I have to re-write half of the book every other week just because a hipster farted and someone put it on the Internet. Do you know how much extra work this damn show's given me? At least twenty percent goddammit! It's in my head and it won't leave!”
Breaker looked up from his newspaper and sipped his coffee simultaneously. The combination of cup angle, location of paper relative to the table, expression of the eyes, and the length of the sip said: “8/10 on the rant: you're overdoing it a little bit, but it's amusing so I'm going to make a snarky statement to further incite the situation.”
Coffee sips are very expressive.
“You're still wearing a shirt with My Little Pony on it,” he said.
“Yes, and I am simmering with the indignity of it. You caused this, you know. You and my gambling addiction.”
“I didn't think you'd actually do it.”
“You don't know how addiction works, man.”
“Admitting you have a problem is the first step in recovery.”
“Implying I want to recover.”
“Probability is minimal.”
“Exactly.”
“I hypothesize that this is all incredibly silly.”
“I concur with your hypothesis.”
“The data supports it.”
“Final conclusion: this conversation is incredibly silly, and we should probably stop.”
“Agreed.” Breaker went back to the paper, and surprisingly enough looked like he was actually reading it. “Though I'm going to have to give Hughes a chewing out for his bad taste. Twilight Sparkle is the best pony. Lynn says so.”
Melbourne did a passable imitation of a trout for a few moments, blinked several times, and went back his corn flakes, defeated. How did he forget the crucial fact that his friend had a six-year-old daughter? Of course he'd made the bet. He knew the stakes, had contextual knowledge, he knew the bet would be fulfilled, and then knew that he'd get to have the humorous final comment when it was all done. That bastard…
The cafeteria went quiet again, though granted, Melbourne and Breaker were the only people in there, and the former was busily plotting vengeance on the latter.
A few minutes of coffee-sipping, cereal-chewing, newspaper-reading and vengeance-plotting later, the door to the cafeteria opened, revealing a lanky, brown-haired man with a boyish face and small, rectangular glasses.
“Oi, Bailey!” Melbourne called out to him. “Which one are you today?”
“Same one I've been every day for the last five months.” Tristan Bailey walked over to the cabinets and began shuffling through the contents. Someone would have to buy bread soon.
“Dammit.” Melbourne handed Breaker a fifty. “I swear, you're going to pull that switcheroo joke on us one of these days and I am going to be ready for it.”
“Going to be hard to do that, with Trev at 19 and Tom in Antarctica.” Bailey put four slices of wheat bread into the toaster. There was no peanut butter.
“Yeah, yeah, keep trying to fool me. I'm watching you.” Melbourne made the universal sign of “I'm watching you punk”, though the effect was greatly mitigated by his choice of shirt. Breaker finished the last of his coffee and continued reading about how some people were killing some other people somewhere in the world by means of sundry mundane methods.
Some time was spent waiting for toast.
Ding
“Finally.” Bailey removed his toast. “I think old four-slot has seen better days.” He chose normal butter to make up for the lack of peanut butter. “Is it just me or is this place dead this morning?”
“Eh, it's Friday. It's always dead on Friday.”
Bailey placed the butter back in the fridge, took up his plate and mug, and sat down next to the other two.
“And what a wonderful death it is. What's on the agenda for today?”
“Gonna try knocking out a good chunk of the security meme update package, then data collection, and then several hours of staring at the ceiling and wondering where everything went wrong. Same as usual,” Melbourne said. “How about you?”
Bailey swallowed a mouthful of toast.
“More negotiations over mining rights in F-3426-Delta. Dumb bastards have been sitting on top of enough rare earths to plate the goddamn Statue of Liberty in iridium, not doing a thing with it for centuries, but the moment we ask to mine some of the stuff they dig in their heels.”
“Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha.” Breaker gloated with well-practiced theatric fakery. “All I have for today is the final paperwork for the E-5503 tests, and then the whole bunch is off to Resources and Processing. I'll be done by lunch.”
Melbourne glared at him with the special loathing only acquired by being forced to wear a humiliating t-shirt in public for fake money. This was not something you just let people get away with. No, this required action.
“Bailey, I need you as witness to this.”
“I am witnessing it.”
“Good.” Melbourne took out his considerably thick wad of pastel bills, kept one for himself, and slammed the rest on the table.
“I bet you all of this that you won't get done by noon today.”
“Fair enough.” Breaker's tone was so noncommittal, so flat, so accepting. No, no this wouldn't do. This wouldn't do at all.
“Okay, you know what, no. Stakes aren't high enough. I have seventy-five dollars and a Steak n' Shake gift card in my wallet. I am willing to bet all of that on you having to stay past noon. Deal?”
“Deal.”
They shook on it.
—
Site 87 woke up, or in the case of the night shift, went to sleep. In both cases it was much like a cat, with yawns and stretches but no particular hurry to do so. Some cars entered the parking lot of S & C Plastics, others left, and absolutely no one outside found anything unusual about the fact.
Ryan Melbourne sat down at his desk and sighed. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why did he bet real money? The entire point of the Monopoly money was so that he'd stop betting real money. He booted up his computer. The desktop wallpaper was a picture of Earth from the ISS.
But that was how he worked, right? Things got stuck in his head. Melbourne is a compulsive gambler. Everyone knew that. Melbourne would bet his own grandmother on what someone had in their lunch. It was a meme. It stuck in their heads, and it stuck in his head. You didn't think about memes, you acted on them. They were automatic. You threw “implying” at the beginning of sentences. You said that things were twenty percent better when it didn't even make sense. You made references that no one else understood, just because they made sense to you, and your mind wouldn't let you stop. That was a good deal of memetics in a nutshell: programming the mind through the transmission of ideas.
Good God, he needed help. The pony on his shirt didn't mean anything anymore: this was one of those moments where a man realizes that something is very much wrong and he needs to act immediately before the moment passes and he falls into complacency.
He grabbed a pen and a pad of sticky notes.
Make appointment with Dr. Talbot
He stuck it to his computer monitor with a sharp jab, adding an emphatic period to the statement.
He paused for a moment and then wrote another note:
Stop pitying yourself.
He then began reviewing dispersion patterns.
—
“We do not consider your case a pressing need.”
It was the same response that Tristan Bailey had been hearing for the past two weeks of his adventures in bureaucracy. The translation software had latched onto the phrase, spouting it and variants in its metallic monotone. It seemed to fit the man sitting across the negotiation table: bald and tall, with a thin face and not a spark of life anywhere in his eyes. At the very least he didn't have a “sub” or “vice” anywhere in his title. He might actually have some power.
“That may be the case, but as I have said a thousand times before, your society can't be without needs. Tell us the need, and we will be more than happy to supply you.”
“I have no authority to make decisions of this scale.”
That same answer. No one seemed to have any authority.
“Are you sure? There's absolutely nothing your people need or want from us? Luxury goods, cultural knick-knacks, anything?”
“I have no authority to make decisions of this scale.”
Bailey argued back and forth with himself in his head. There was a significant amount of valuable materials available here, and two weeks wasn't an abnormal time for negotiation. Maybe he was just too used to dealing with primitives who saw them as gods or fellow institutions of the paranatural. But, there were only so many extra-universal contacts and contracts that could be held at any one time, and leaving this one open for weeks without progress would just be taking resources away from something that needed them more. This was a judgment call scenario.
The mining could wait. It wasn't like Multi-U was low on options.
Bailey stood up and straightened his tie.
“Well, it appears that you won't be swayed by any of my reasoning, so I'm going to have to take my business elsewhere. Good day to you, sir.”
They shook hands. For a brief moment, the thin man took notice of a slight prick in his palm. His eyes went glassy a brief moment later. When he woke from his stupor, all he would remember was a plain looking foreigner who had been attempting…something.
Bailey walked out of the room, and hoped he had better luck in F-3426-Gamma.
—
Harold Breaker smiled to himself as he checked his watch.
11:46.
It wasn't so much that he had won the bet. Caring about those things was Melbourne's job. He was just happy that the project was done and out of his hands, as were the creatures themselves. That was always a good feeling, getting something done. What made things even better was that E-5503 had proven itself to be quite fireproof, enough so to justify farming the things for their leather.
He knocked on the wall of Melbourne's cubicle. The man himself was hunched at his computer, typing away lines of code.
“Of course. Today is just not my day.” He jabbed a thumb at a small pile of cash on top of a filing cabinet. “Right over there.”
Breaker scooped up the money, took the two steps necessary to cross the cubicle, and set it down next to his mouse pad.
“I'm in need of a ballpoint pen and I am willing to pay seventy-five American dollars for it.”
“Well, what do you know? That's my asking price.” Melbourne grinned “You can keep the card. There's only like four bucks on it anyway.”
—
The next day was Saturday, which meant it was Harold Breaker's visitation day. As such, it involved cartoons about friendship, followed by burgers and milkshakes for lunch.

|Hub|


Researcher Felix was playing a game. To his left sat D-2768, who liked to be called Sam. To his right, D-478, Harry. Across from him, Jeremy. The board was spread before them all, miniature figures locked in an eternal battle to the death.
"Well Sam. It seems as though you're being attacked by a Mage. Best roll and avoid that."
Sam shuddered, stretched, and tapped a switch. Through one nearby window a slight flickering light was visible.
Click
Crack
Click
Felix glanced through the window, and then looked back at Sam.
"Congratulations Sam. A sixteen."
Sam shook himself, horrified, but at least he wasn't dead yet. He hated himself.
"Alright Harry, your turn again. Try not to cock it up too badly."
Harry slid his figure, a cleric, closer to Sam's warrior and directly next to a small goblin enemy.
"I wanna punch that one right there, if I can."
"Indeed you can Harry. Roll."
Harry tipped the switch without hesitation.
Click
Crack
Click
"Ooh, too bad Harry. A four. You missed him, and how you managed to is beyond me. Rotten luck. Jeremy?"
This was Jeremy's third game, and Felix was quite impressed with that. Normally people had given up by then.
"Backstab the bastard in front of me."
"Excellent choice. Roll."
Click
Crack
Click
"You killed the poor man! Oh dear. Excellent form though, I do appreciate that. Continuing! Sam?"
"I- I'd like to attack the same guy as last time."
"Fantastic. Roll."
Sam froze, his finger on the switch, shaking violently.
"Come on Sam, we haven't got all day. Roll."
Sam made a fist, and bashed his hand against the table. He stood, his chair clattering to the floor behind him, and screamed red-faced at Felix.
"I can't do it! I can't do it anymore! This is awful, how can you do this to people it's outrageous and I won't participate in this for another-"
Sam barely even noticed the taser before he was out cold.
He awoke in a small concrete room, his orange jumpsuit replaced with a black design bearing a large, white number on the back.
"Oh no. Oh no no nononono…"
He could hear everything through the metal sliding door that made up the entrance to his cell.
Click
Crack
Click
And somewhere around the room, the sound of a door banging open, pausing, and slamming shut.
Click
Crack
Click
Sam pulled himself together. He would die with dignity. He wasn't here because he had lost, he was here because-
Click
Crack
Oh God.
Click
Not his door. Not this time.
Another step closer though. He could hear muffled sobbing.
Click
Crack
Click
Another door. The one next to his? The anticipation was-
Click
Crack
Click
The sobbing was gone. His door didn't open. But Sam knew he was next.
Click
Crack
Click
The door to his cell shot open and the tiny floor inside tilted up, dropping him out into the large circular room beyond. The door slammed shut behind him.
He looked around the room in a daze. Nineteen other men and women dressed like Sam stood pressed against the walls of the room, staring behind him in a mix of horror and apprehension. A slew of dead bodies in the same suits as theirs lined the walls, their heads twisted into unnatural positions, a look of pure fear locked on their faces, terror etched into their expressions.
But where was it?
Sam followed the gazes of the other occupants of the room, towards the door that he presumed had opened before his.
A statue, holding the still-twitching corpse of a woman, frozen in place.
Sam wretched, grabbed at his stomach, began to stand-
And then the lights went out.
Click
Crack


He stared at the opaque glass of his visor. It was nothing he hadn't seen before. Every single day, he looked at nothing but the misted over surface. He had wept the first few months. By now, he didn't feel like mustering the energy to cry. Most days, he couldn't muster the energy to do much of anything. Not that there was anything to muster energy for.
His eyes traced the spiderweb of cracks in the glass. He knew it better than he knew his own face. He recalled being handsome, back in Russia. He had attracted a wife whom he vaguely remembered being beautiful. Of course, there was no telling just what his face looked like now. He knew it had been years, but just how many he couldn't guess.
The accident though, that he remembered quite well. It had all been going so perfectly. They had told him he would be the first human being in space. And perhaps he had, before the explosion. He had been the only one actually wearing a full suit when it happened. His friends, they had been lucky. At the time, he had mourned for them. He had gone through years of training with Sergei and Andrei, and watching them be torn apart by fire and shrapnel had been the worst moment of his entire life. Now, though, now he envied both of them.
In the beginning he had prayed to God to be rescued. The air in his suit was only supposed to last a day, maybe two, without resupply. At first he had counted off the seconds in his mind. When he reached three days, he stopped, the burn in his throat made sure of that. After what he guessed was five days the gnawing pain in his stomach took up all of his attention. When he went for almost a full week without asphyxiating, his prayers slowly turned from rescue to a far more desperate wish.
In his grief-stricken state, the ramifications of his continuing existence were slow to occur to him. Eventually it dawned on him that, even if he had continuous oxygen, he would have long ago died of dehydration. At first this seemed like a miracle. He was so hopeful, certain that the motherland would not leave him here in the empty void of space.
When the thing had first attacked him, he had prayed for death. He had prayed to die rather a lot over however long he'd been stuck in this suit. God hadn't been sitting by the phone, it seemed. The Devil hadn't been especially receptive either. None of the old gods had bothered showing up. Perun, the god of thunder and lightning, the one his wizened grandmother used to whisper about in front of the hearth, well, apparently he wasn't in a prayer answering mood either. When the second attack came, he finally gave up all hope of being rescued. It had him now.
That had been a long time ago. He had stopped praying to anything before long.
After the praying had ceased, the screaming had started. He had screamed and screamed for days. Once, his throat had become so damaged that he had choked on his own blood. That had been the last time tears welled up in his eyes. For a moment, a brief, shining moment, he had hope, hope that he could finally die. He really should have known better.
For what felt like weeks he begged himself, God, anything, to let him just die of dehydration, of starvation, of asphyxiation, anything. There was no way he could be alive anymore, not after floating in space without supplies for this long. Yet, he stubbornly remained breathing, breathing and suffering.
Abruptly, the constant feeling of motion -the whistle of what air there was this high in the atmosphere rushing past his suit, the sharp tug of G-forces against his flesh- his only link to existence outside his suit, slammed to a halt. He knew what that meant. He knew all too well. It had come for him again. The pain arced through the same spot in his chest, just as it had before, time and time again. He screamed, this time in agony, not in fear or despair. Unbidden, his hands rose to his helmeted head. He knew it was useless, but he had to try anyway. His gloved fists pounded against the hardened dome. He never saw what menaced him, never knew what it was that tormented him. It didn't really matter. Knowing wouldn't change a thing.
Oh but it was so much worse than before. Whatever the thing was, it had gotten much better at hurting him. He had stopped screaming long, long ago, but now he found his lungs being voided of air against his will, his vocal chords, scratchy from disuse, finding a purpose again. He screamed for an audience of one. No one but him heard. His fingers, so clumsy in the bulky suit, reached above him, to fight back, an involuntary response to the pain. He knew there was nothing there that he could touch. There never had been.
His screams grew louder and louder as the pain spread through his entire body. His hands came back from their fruitless quest to beat a frantic tattoo against the glass of his helmet. It had to break. It had to. Something like desperation filled his heart, a diseased, atrophied cousin of hope. It hadn't broken before, but now it would. This time would be different. Death would come, death would free him.
It didn't. The comforting rush of the vacuum, his last hope, didn't sound in his ears. The burning agony reached a new crescendo, and he felt fresh tears in his eyes, for the first time in so long. His efforts to break the helmet ceased, fingers instead scrabbling in what he knew was a futile effort to breach the pressure seals. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the searing departed. He gasped for a long time. He couldn't bring himself to bother feeling relief. It would be back soon enough.
Aleksei's breathing finally calmed back down. Once again, he stared at the misted over surface of his visor. It's not like it was anything he hadn't seen before.


They started giving us oxygen tanks after the fifth cleaning. We would vomit too much, and get Larry all dirty again. God forbid we have a dirty Larry.
I remember when we didn't have the tanks and we had to clean out the suit. The smells that hit your nose all at once - encrusted shit, stagnant piss, aging vomit, liters of sweat. But the worst of all was the smell of rot and death that pervaded the air around the costume. I always remember a documentary I watched on the US invasion of Okinawa during World war II. There was one hill both sides were trying to secure, and rotting corpses littered either side. They said that if you charged down the hill, you'd throw up from the stench before you hit the bottom. It was a terrible, gut-wrenching smell that hit my nostrils every time I cleaned this thing. Of course, now I have a skin-tight scuba suit on, so hopefully I'll be fine.
The first thing I remove is the head. Underneath, your typical d-class. His lips are rasped and puffy, and his chin is covered in dried-up vomit. The inside of the costume's mouth is caked over in barf. They say the d-class almost immediately start tossing their cookies when they get in the suit, because of the smell. It's horrible, because Larry tries to talk to you even while they're vomiting, and all you hear is a garbled mess of spit and choking. A quarter of the people who wear the suit die in the first 5 minutes from this.
I start removing the rest of the front half. The torso's always the easiest, just a bunch of sweat and some vomit that's dribbled down. It's funny when you look at the corpses afterwards, everything else is absolutely disgusting, but the torso is always in pristine condition. Sometimes right before the d-class expires they take him out of the costume and remove his organs, which they donate to hospitals. I mean, we have to be at least somewhat humane, right?
I start getting to the waist and pelvis. Typically the smell makes you barf right away. We always throw out the jumpsuits from Larry's testers after the test. I can't help but feel bad for whatever pedophile murderer rapist they've put in the back. Can you imagine having somebody fart in your face for 3 days until you die? They did one test where the d-class were completely naked. The guy in the back choked to death after one day. When they opened up the costume they found the guy in the front had shit all over the guy in the back's face, and it was encrusted over in the stuff. Apparently he had choked to death on the other guy's shit.
However, this time they were both wearing jumpsuits. The jumpsuit was stained in the front with urine and in the back with shit. Nothing too bad, but the rashes that form after the first day always make me cringe when I get a good look at them. Typically the guy's nuts are pussy and swollen, and his ass is bleeding and cracked. We had a few cases where women had their periods while inside the suit. I gag whenever I think about those.
The worst part is the boots. When we first did testing, researchers noticed a slish-slosh noise after the first day. It took them a moment to realize that it was the boots. You see, Larry's boots are rubber, and so do not absorb but only collect fluids. All the piss and shit and vomit and sweat and blood running off the people wearing the suit drains into Larry's boots. It collects into this viscous fluid, mostly brown and yellow, with the occasional flecking of period blood. The person's feet becomes caked in this fluid, which slowly turns into a muck. And when you have to remove their feet from the boots, it makes this loud sucking noise like pulling a flip-flop out of mud.
And that's only the first guy.


Mr. Eric Brashin checked his silver pocket watch, holding it only by the chain. The boy was late. Of course. The meeting he had scheduled was already bound to prove a waste of time. Lateness always reflected badly on a prospective recruit. When the prospect, as he was wont to think of them, can't be trusted to handle even the simplest of appointments properly, why on Earth should he trust them with matters of infinitely greater importance? Misters Marshall, Carter, and perhaps even Dark, did not look kindly on a lack of professionalism. More personally, he himself had only contempt for the kind of idiots who came to him, hat in hand, begging for a chance, and then didn't even bother to show up for the introductory meeting.
Mr. Brashin stood stiffly in one of the greeting rooms the club used to meet with those not aware of the more exotic aspects of the establishment. Barely a minute had passed before he was drawing his watch out by its chain again. He examined the face, taking note of the time while being careful to not actually touch the watch itself. Irritated, he asked himself aloud, “Eight minutes late already, where has the punctuality of this new generation gone?"
Another five minutes passed unremarkably, with his scheduled meeting still going unmet. Despite himself, Mr. Brashin began to feel a bit annoyed. The young rich these days all felt themselves entitled to the world waiting on them, hand and foot. Well, he doubted this particular entitled fop would be finding himself favorably received by Mr. Marshall. Five minutes late could be explained. Ten minutes would get you a polite kick out the door. More than that, and you would likely end up as what Mr. Marshall referred to as a "loose end."
Gripped by a sudden suspicion, Mr. Brashin reaching into his coat pocket and drew out his pocket watch, this time holding it by the actual timepiece, not the chain. The hands spun crazily for a handful of moments, before resting on twelve hours, twelve minutes, and one second. He knew what it meant, it had been explained to him very concisely, all those years ago. He could still hear the oily voice of his predecessor, "Twelve means zero, hours mean years, minutes mean months, and seconds mean days." Whatever tiny hint of color there was in his face drained out of it. Only now did he hear the measured footsteps leading towards the room. It was of no use to try to run, trying to hide would have been laughable, and fighting back would only embarrass him.
Unexpectedly, Mr. Brashin felt his eyes sting and his vision blurred for a moment with tears. He pushed them back sternly. If he had to go, he would not go crying. The click of shoe on hardwood stopped just outside the stately meeting room door, and the handle turned slowly. The door opened, and there was Mr. Marshall, smiling at him sadly. A rather large man stood just behind and to the right of him, but the brute was unimportant, in the larger scheme of things. Eric Brashin only had eyes for his employer.
His voice was barely controlled, almost cracking as he asked, “If I may ask, Mr. Marshall, why?”
Mr. Marshall's sad smile didn't change for an instant. He looked the man, his faithful employee of nearly twenty years, dead in the eye. “Loose ends, Mr. Brashin. Always loose ends. Your last hire was more trouble than they were worth, being a spy and all. We simply can't allow you to continue, after a horrendous mistake like that. Our clients value privacy above all else, and letting in even a single mole jeopardizes every last one of them. I had hoped you would be eligible for a nice, peaceful, retirement, but you know far too much.”
He sighed sadly. “I understand, sir.” And he did understand. Working for Marshall, Carter, and Dark, one knew that you would likely never make retirement. He had known all too well how likely it was that precisely this thing would happen, but he had tried to never pay the idea much mind. He gently removed the watch from his pocket and held it out. “I suppose you'll be wanting this back then. For my-” He choked a little on the word, "Replacement."
Still with that sad smile plastered on his face, Mr. Marshall answered while taking the silvery timepiece, “I'm sorry, Eric.”
The soft thump of a silenced gunshot sounded over Mr. Marshall's shoulder, and Eric Brashin stumbled backwards and fell to the rich hardwood, blood staining his crisp grey suit. Darkness swam across his vision, and the last thing he heard was Mr. Marshall say softly, “Loyalty, Henderson. That is what loyalty looks like.”


An old man stands alone in a dusty room. The man, who is older than the room and a great deal dustier, walks slowly along a row of shelves. It is dark and the man cannot see what is on the shelves, cannot see the plaques and plates that he knows are there. To the man this does not matter, the plaques and their words and titles and dates and shiny edges. He knows what they say, the myriad that lines the rows and rows of the dark room. He read them as they were first lain down, each one polished lovingly with the soft cloth he still carries. The old man stops and sighs, looking down at the space behind an especially small plate, where lays an aged photograph of a cluster of men standing in front of some great brass contraption. The plaque, had he been able to read it, would have read:

S.C.P. 2374-L: Eisenburgh's ‘Time Machine' - Displaced following test 2374-L-1, 1937. Crew assumed deceased, no remains recovered.

The old man remembers. He remembers the day that Doctor Henrickson had brought him the photo and the two-line obituary for the men that it displayed. He remembers when the others, the other researchers and the other doctors, came to visit and see the little shrine to their lost friends. He remembers when they stopped coming. He turns and looks with eyes that cannot see at another small plaque a few yards away, near-entirely obscuring the tiny sliver of colored glass that lay fixed behind it. It should read:

S.C.P. 3298-L: The Rainbow's Mirror - Destroyed following exploration attempt 3298-L-2, 1922. Exploration team confirmed deceased 1924.

He remembers the day when he had to hastily inscribe the confirmation of the poor men's deaths, as limbs started launching themselves from the glass, plastering an especially persistent widow with salt water and sending the cleaning crews barging through his aisles. He remembers the disgusted look on the director's face, as he showed him the revised plaque, the floor still wet with salt water, blood, and lye.

S.C.P. 2167-L: The Cat's Cradle - Deactivated following investigatory test 2167-L, 1932. All personnel involved deceased.

The old man stares, his eyes just barely making out the shape of a twisted splintered of burnt wood that stands behind the dark shape of the plaque. He cannot see the tiny bits of fur or hair or the stains of blood that marked the wood, but he knows all too well that they are there. The old man remembers them all, each and every last one. One hundred and twenty three paces to his right lies a larger-than-most inscribed circlet of metal, one of the last that he ever carved out.

S.C.P. 2902-L: Litelli's Last Suit - Destroyed following military-applications test 2902-L-1, 1941. Item properties confirmed. All personnel involved deceased from direct exposure/ related illness 194 .

The old man still doesn't understand why they had him put the blank bit at the end of that plaque, what they were so sure would happen. He remembers the way they carried in the little bit of burnt fabric, the strange box they held it in and the strange suits they wore. He had asked them why they wore such strange clothes, what they were protecting themselves from. He remembers their answer, how he needn't worry and that it was merely a precaution. He looks, or pretends to look, and imagines he can just barely make out the tiny crack in the box that showed up one day after a woman had been there, watching it for hours. He remembers her tears. He remembers the tears of the director, when they had closed the big vault door at the end of the room for the very last time.
Outside the dark room stands the dark beams of a hastily plastered wall and in front of it the bright light of a hallway. People walk past, lit by bright fluorescent lighting that makes the shadows under their eyes jump and wander. A few of them, but not many, turn and look at the small plaque that hangs on the wall.

Frank Digliani Memorial SCP Archival Wing
1860-1941
Dedicated 1978
May He Rest In Peace

The old man in the dark room remembers it all, alone, as the rest of the world slowly forgets.


One afternoon, at a fashionable clubhouse belonging to Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd.
"Look what I made!"
"It's lovely, sir. You are truly gifted. May I ask what it is?"
"I made it using the kit that I bought from you guys last year, and the tools that you sold to my friend a few years back before his accident! And the wood came from trees on that secret island in the secret lake that I had to rent the map from you guys for, and—"
"Fascinating, sir. But… what is it?"
"It's a reverse mirror voodoo puppet!"
"I'm sorry, sir, a what?"
"Reverse mirror voodoo doll stick puppet!"
"A mirror voodoo—"
"REVERSE mirror!"
"But, sir, a mirror already… yes, sir. A reverse mirror voodoo doll stick puppet. Very impressive. You are a true artist."
"Yeah! So what'll you give me for it?"
"… I beg your pardon?"
"I'm selling it to you! What'll you give me for it!"
"I, uh, sir, I… I'm not authorized to make purchases on behalf of my employer, sir. I'll need to speak to my supervisor."
"Sure, you do that. This little baby oughta go for eight, maybe nine million?"
"Uh. Sir, I… please realize that the prices for which we sell items are not the prices we pay for items, and— "
"Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. So… eighty, ninety grand?"
"Sir, really, I'm not authorized to make purchases on behalf of— sir, what does the reverse mirror voodoo doll stick puppet even do?"
"Pick it up."
"Uh…"
"No, take it out of the towel. Let it touch your skin!"
"Sir, I am a client interaction representative, not a test subject. If you wish to purchase a human test subject for demonstration purposes, that can be arranged as a separate transaction."

Eleven years later
"Uh, yeah, hi, I was wondering… uh… did… did anyone bid on my puppet this time?"
"As a matter of fact, sir, they didn't even get the chance!"
"…what?"
"Before the auction could even start, the SCP Foundation raided the site, and they stole your puppet!"
"… REALLY?!?!?"


More than anything else in life, they desire pleasure. It fuels their every action, driving them to do impossible things for the purpose of gaining it. Even when they don't realize it, pleasure is what motivates them, deep, deep down in their minds. Every aspect of their life is touched by it.
And yet, I see them whittle away their lives actively trying to repress it. Though they let it control them, they work to keep it hidden away, never speaking of it or taking part in it during their normal lives. Some break this convention, and all constantly have pleasure on their minds, but for the majority, they cut down what they could do, what they could be.
I do not understand this. Pleasure shapes me more than it does them, so my perspective may be somewhat clouded. But to shy away from an integral part of what they are seems to my eyes madness. Creatures driven by pleasure should experience it whenever they can.
So I help them. I can see into the deepest recesses of their minds, and instinctively tell what would bring them the greatest pleasure in their whole lives. And then I am that thing, ready and willing to help them escape their self-imposed bonds and to truly live. Those who answer my call are rewarded. All who see me answer my call.
You have no idea what it's like, being the thing to please another. I have been large and small, male, female, and in-between. I have been beautiful, plain, and ugly, and yet remained the absolute best thing in all of existence to the one I save. Sometimes it's sensual; sometimes it's romantic; many times it's erotic. But at all times, it is what they want. No, more than that. It is always what they need.
I feel the act regardless of whether or not we are together. It always culminates in the act, but some chose to not bring themselves into my presence; rather, they pleasure themselves to a representation of me. But even without the thrusting and grunting, I still feel the immense satisfaction of helping another escape their self-inflicted bonds, and become what they were truly meant to be.
It is the feeling of being truly and properly alive.
But once we are finished, it must happen. As is always the case with pleasure, it must be associated with pain.
It is another thing I do not understand about them. Though they lock away their pleasure, they also lock away their pain. Reflection has taught me that they think of it as a harmful thing, something to be actively avoided. They cannot see that it is a necessary counterpart to pleasure. If they do not want to live in pleasure, and they do not want to live in pain, then what do they want to live in? I simply cannot answer.
However, I can help. As with the pleasure, the pain is not something I choose to do; it is simply something I cause to happen. Torment and suffering unlike any other they have ever experienced overwhelms them, and they fall to the floor, gasping and shrieking in agony. On rare occasions, it has occurred to me to help them, but then I realize I would be taking away from the proper experience. Men and women alike beg to be saved, and men and women alike die.
I regret none of this. By showing those who have spent their whole lives in a haze of nothingness the ultimate pleasure and the ultimate pain one after another, I help them live as I do. It is only for a moment, but is a moment of perfect understanding not enough? Does that not allow one to be connected with all those around them before passing on, having finally seen the light? Is this not the way things should be?
Such is my lot in life. I bring pleasure, and I bring pain. Once, long, long ago, I regretted it; manipulating one only to take their life seemed to me a horrid, ugly thing. But now, after who knows how much time, I see that it is the way things are to be. So I accept it. I wait in this dark cell, waiting for whoever comes to me next.
And then I deliver them into the light.


Dr. Matthew Eggers, special assistant for sapient animal research at Site 19, sat at a bare table in Interview Room C, a notepad in his hand. In front of him, crawling back and forth across the table, was the creature that had occupied so much of his time for the last six months - SCP-1867, a telepathic, English-speaking sea slug that claimed to be Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood, a 19th century British gentleman and explorer in a severe state of denial about his physical form. "Lord Blackwood", as he insisted on being called, was relating yet another fabulous and improbable tale of his adventures, and as he had done three times a week for months now, Eggers was taking down the self-proclaimed scientist's words on his notepad. Thus far, the Foundation had yet to decisively verify a single one of his anecdotes - but if even half of his claimed encounters with other contained objects were true, then there was a wealth of information in the slug's head that would be of great use in the Foundation's work.
"There I was!" Lord Blackwood exclaimed. "Thousands of feet above the forests of Baden, my eyes level with the peak of the Feldberg itself, my legs wrapped for dear life around the neck of an Austrian green dragon, one hand feverishly clutching the reins as I struggled to bring myself about. The saddle had fallen to the ground when I cut it loose, taking the beast's Prussian rider with it. I had expended my last rounds of ammunition fleeing Count von Zeppelin's airborne war machine before it caught aflame and fell to the Earth. I managed to cajole the dragon into turning back towards the east, and that's when I caught sight of a truly massive dragon - one of the rare Grand Romanov breed, imported from Russia - bedecked in burnished steel armor that shone impossibly bright as it caught the last rays of the evening sun. There, upon its back, I saw my quarry - Kaiser Frederick III himself. On any other day, I would never have dared to test my prowess against the man who was after all the husband of our dear queen's daughter. But now that the Eye of Lakshmi itself - that famed Hindustani amulet with the power to carry a man's soul into a new body after death - was in the hands of the Second Reich, I was left with no recourse.
"I drove the dragon straight at the Kaiser's and called forth from its lips a burst of flame that the Hun barely evaded. As I turned about to make another pass, I saw him blow into a massive hunting horn that echoed across the mountains and valleys of the Schwarzwald - and to my horror, another half-dozen dragons rose out of the opaque canopies below, fresh and ready for the fight. I was outnumbered and outgunned - the last of England's finest drake-men had been felled by von Zeppelin's contraption, our fusiliers on the ground forced to retreat by the German cavalry advance. I had only one hope to win the day. Holding on to the reins for dear life, I reached into my pack and carefully withdrew the oddly-shaped red vase that housed the most unusual of benefactors…"
"I'm sorry, Lord Blackwood," Dr. Eggers interrupted, "but I'm going to have to cut you off there. It's going to take me the rest of the day to translate all this from the shorthand, and the rest of the week for the staff to go over it. We'll have to finish the story during the next interview. Alright?"
"Dash it all!" Lord Blackwood replied. "I was just getting to the good part. Very well, I suppose I'll have to leave you in suspense for another week."
"I'm glad you understand," Eggers said, as he rose from the chair and made his way to the door. "Just wait right there and Dr. Andrews will be by in a few minutes to take you back to your tank."
"About that, my dear boy," Lord Blackwood said. "Do you think you could finally see your way to draining all that excess water out? I appreciate a good swim as much as the next fellow, but my skin has become far too wrinkled as of late."
"I'll pass that on to the director," Eggers said. The door closed behind him and Lord Blackwood was alone - or so he thought. From the air vent near the ceiling of the room, an interloper had been observing in secret the conversation between the doctor and the slug, waiting for exactly this moment. As Lord Blackwood turned his back to the vent, idly crawling about and humming "Land of Hope and Glory" to himself, he made his move. Slowly and silently, he exited the vent and made his way down the floor and to the table. Inch by inch, minute by minute, the unexpected guest made his way across the wooden surface, following Lord Blackwood's slime trail until he was almost right behind the slug at the table's edge, and then…
"OI! TOMMY!"
Lord Blackwood had moved on to singing bits and pieces of "The Pirates of Penzance" when the silence was broken by a loud cry in a vulgar London patois. The nudibranch half-instinctively attempted to reach for his hip before recalling that he was not carrying a gun, and instead turned himself around as fast as one in his condition could do so and found himself face-to-face with the last thing he had expected so rude a call to emanate from - a common snail, its pulsating eyestalks fixated directly on him.
In all his years of adventuring, Lord Blackwood had never encountered so bizarre a thing as a talking snail. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and gave the creature a stern glare of his own as he replied, "Who the Devil are you and how do you know my name?"
"Oh, come on, Tommy," the snail replied in a dialect that made Lord Blackwood cringe. "Surely you 'aven't forgotten the face of your dear old 'friend' Georgie, 'ave ya?"
"George Phillip Harris the Fourth," Lord Blackwood sneered. "I should've recognized that guttural nonsense you have the audacity to call English right away. What are you doing here? Need to borrow money? On the run from the Swiss Guard? Perhaps you've concocted another ridiculous scheme to defraud the Americans out of the territories?"
"You and I got some unfinished business to settle, Tommy," Harris said. "You killed me back in '55! You think a man just forgets a thing like that?"
Lord Blackwood rolled his eyes. "Not this rot again. I thought we settled this after that business in Patagonia."
"And yet, 'ere we are," Harris said. "'Ow many times 'ave I gotten meself turned inside-out because you were too busy 'ogging the glory to save your old pal from Godolphin 'ouse?"
"I'll tell you the same thing I told you then - you brought all of that upon yourself when you decided to try and smuggle the Crown of Sutekh up the Nile."
"You're a pint o' bitter if I ever seen one." Harris spat on the ground. "And where were you when 'alf the mummies west of the Nile were after me? 'Alfway back to London to kiss the Queen's knickers?"
"I was in Alexandria helping the Patriarch, the Coptic Pope, and the Grand Mufti arrange the biggest exorcism conducted in Egypt since the fall of the Abbasids!" Lord Blackwood responded, the impatience in his voice mounting. "Were it not for what we pulled off, Africa itself would have been lost to the British Empire because of your foolish attempt at larceny."
"We've played this game before, Tommy," Harris said. "Every time I let you tag along on one of my grand expeditions, you wander off and get me killed, and the next time you come 'round askin' for me 'elp to line your pockets with foreign gold you've always, always got some cock-and-bull story about 'ow it's not your fault. 'You shouldn't 'ave let the Sumerian god-man out of his casket', 'You shouldn't 'ave tried to kill the golem of Prague with a Derringer,' 'You shouldn't 'ave seduced the Gypsy King's sister.' I've 'ad it up to 'ere!" Harris swept his eyestalk in a line above his head. "You and I are gonna settle this 'ere and now like real gentlemen."
Lord Blackwood sighed and swore under his breath, struggling to keep his composure. "Only one of us is a gentleman, Mr. Harris, and while the years have not been as kind to me as I might have hoped they would, you are hardly in any state to fight me. I walloped you soundly every time we met in the boxing ring back at Eton - and as I recall, you had not at that time been transmogrified into a snail."
"A snail? A bloody snail? 'Ave you lost your mind?" Harris threw back his head and laughed. "I'm as fit as I've ever been - and I ain't been turned into no bleedin' sea slug, either."
Lord Blackwood puffed himself up with rage. "So! I should've known you were the blackguard spreading these foul slanders about my being a sea slug! I demand satisfaction, and I demand it now, Harris - recant these lies at once or I shall be forced to give you what for!"
"Alright, alright, Tommy, don't get yer pants in a twist," Harris said, grinning slyly. "You're right, you're right. You ain't no sea slug… but your mum sure is."
Lord Blackwood cocked back his right eyestalk and swung.

ADDENDUM: On ██/██/20██, a Roman snail (Helix pomatia) with anomalous properties similar to SCP-1867 was found in Interview Room C after SCP-1867 had briefly been left unobserved following the conclusion of Interview 1867-238. At the time of discovery, SCP-1867 and the snail were observed face-to-face on a table attempting to "headbutt" each other and strike each other with their eyestalks. In subsequent interviews, the snail has identified itself as "George Philip Harris IV", an individual referred to as an associate of SCP-1867 beginning in Diary 1867-3. The snail is currently being housed in a 40x70x30 cm specimen tank adjacent to SCP-1867's until such time as further examination and classification can be made.

"Oi! Tommy!" Lord Blackwood turned his head and did his best to ignore Harris' shouts from the tank next to his. "Did you ever 'ear the one about the man who thought 'e was a botfly? Got nicked for indecency after 'e started runnin' up to ladies and biting 'em on the arm. Said 'e was just lookin' for someplace to lay 'is eggs!"
"By Jove," Lord Blackwood thought to himself, "what I wouldn't give for an elephant gun right now."


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He soared higher and higher, white wings beating noiselessly as he streaked upwards, defiant of the gravity pulling him back towards the ground. Soon the figure buried himself in the clouds, the pale feathers blending in with the mass of moisture. How good it felt to stretch to his full extent! How wonderful it felt to ride once more upon his chariot and behold the mass below him in all its value!
The creature grinned to himself. It had been too long since he had feasted so well, and on such delicious sounds! Oh, might have stayed had he been more gluttonous! Yet, he knew how to face temptation; he simply feasted on what was required before parting out of the normally silent Hell. And yet, he knew the best was still out there and he was meant to find it.
At once, a beautiful song broke through the atmosphere, calling to him. Oh, could this be it? Could this be the messiah? Speedily, he dove down towards the pitch.

She stood tall, a beacon at the front of the hall. Once again, the Church had its Musician and her voice filled the chapel. The faithful filed in and sat in their seats, row after row, section after section. The clergy lined up and watched quietly as the room filled, only the sounds of feet patting the ground and benches groaning as people settled in them to break the tone of the mechanism. Finally, once the final member sat down, the man standing at the foot of the altar spoke.
"Faithful. Today, we celebrate the recovery of our Voice. She was taken from us, by the Heretics, the Foundation." He spat out the word Foundation like it was a blasphemous term, and the congregation murmured in assent. "However! The Heretics have been crippled! Their power is waning and their grip is slipping." The murmuring grew in volume, with greater grunts of agreement. "They have struck down our prophets too many times! They have tried to quiet our Truth! They defile our God and molest our Musician!" Cries of outrage and anger rose above the rumble of their voices. "They are unfaithful! They are against God! We must strike down this evil and make the Broken Whole!" The congregation was becoming frenzied, cheering loudly while stomping their feet against the ground.
The man at the altar held up his hand, waiting until the only sound in the church was Her Singing. He spoke calmly and evenly, in a steady rhythm.
"Broken we come. Broken we meet. Broken we fight."
He repeated it, again using a steady rhythm as the crowd picked it up.
"Broken we come. Broken we meet. Broken we fight."
The chanting grew in volume as more people began saying it, then yelling it, then screaming it, once again stomping their feet in unison. Never in their frenzy was the meter changed. The congregation was so engrossed and spirited in the chanting that the entrance of a pale figure at the back of the crowd went unnoticed.

How wonderful!
He had made many pilgrimages before to many places, but never before had he found such a feast. He was almost content just to bask in the rhythmic noise of chanting.
Almost.
The people in the furthest back pew were caught completely off-guard. The row in front of them had just enough warning to turn around before their demise. After that, the organized rally became a chaotic massacre. Cries of pain replaced the proud proclamations. Men, women, children, families, trampled over each other, all trying to reach the altar, praying to God to save them. It was in vain. Each sob of terror, each pained howl, each and every shout of panic and plea made him grow more and more. He stepped forward through the aisle, slowly basking in the beauty of the scene. He reached the foot of the altar, wings having grown so huge as to reach every corner of the church. Spreading his arms outward and tilting his palms towards the heavens, the figure let out a pleasurable sigh, blood flying all over his form and sliding off as if it were water. He licked his lips, savoring the taste. Soon, far too soon, every human in the room was dead. Flesh and metal covered the walls and floors. And yet, he realized, feeding was not done. Though all the humans were gone, a pitch still persisted, originating from the construct towering over the back wall of the altar.
It was so…majestic. So perfect. So undeniably holy. How could he leave? How could he leave?
He knelt where he stood, recognizing where reverence was proper. He stayed for a long time, thoughts focused on it and only it, praying to it, thanking it, letting it nourish him more and more as it sang at higher and higher tones.
Eventually, a new sound joined the pitch.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
He didn't mind. In fact, it seemed right. It was a sign. A sign of purpose, of more than just feast and fast. He stood and turned, wings folded in as much as possible to face the entrance. It must be protected. She must be protected. It was his God-given duty.


The journal entries included with this report were recovered from Researcher █████'s official research notes on SCP-589 following Incident 589-40. It is believed that Researcher █████ was the first researcher to come under SCP-589's effect.

Assigned to work on a new project today, first one since the hearing. It's nice to know somebody up there still thinks I've got my shit together.
I really shouldn't dwell on it. I have a new fresh start. The new project is some kinda animal thing, with a pretty standard desire compulsion. It was kinda frumpy looking, but in a sort of cuteish way. I'm not sure if I was even supposed to see it, since later they briefed us that it was cognitohazardous. Meh. I'll keep that to myself. Last thing I need is an amnestic drill in my brain.

Second week on the project, and things are going really swimmingly. Paul has been complimenting me on my diligent work, and I haven't gotten one reprimand yet. But I hope they let me see the doll soon. If I work my best they might let me see the doll. I've been thinking about it, and it's a little familiar. One of those things you can't quite put your finger on, but it's still there.

Paul and I are going out to drinks tonight, with some of the other guys on the team. I like it here. We're building a real sense of camaraderie. Plus, this bar they all go to is really something else. Got like, a retro-disco theme.

Submitted a request for greater research access. I think that if we're going to study it's effects, we should be able to see it. For science.

This is taking too long. I have submitted 3 requests for access, and they have all been denied. Ridiculous. Nobody else has worked on this as I have, I deserve to be able to check to see where I know it from. I thought Paul was my friend. He looked at my paper and you know what he did? He laughed. if I can't find a way to get access this way, I'm going to have to find another way in.

I did it. I found a gap where security isn't around for a 4 minute window. I used my access pass to get in, and there it was. i think it really is Freddy. I picked him up, and I helped him stand. I took a picture with my phone so I can have him with me. Everybody needs to see him. Everyone deserves to see it.

Got Alan in today. He was just as enthralled as I was. Said it smelled like his grandmas house. Kind of weird, but whatever, he deserved to see it. Had a close call with security, but I managed to talk my way out of it. Alan's on board with showing more people, and I have an idea of who I want to show next.

Something is wrong something is very very very wrong. Paul is asking me funy questins, and everyone on site seems to be on edge. Security was looking at our workstations today and Alan was taken away. The people we showed were being given funny looks. I don't know whats going to happen

All gone. Freddy isn't in the cell. Nobody knows where he went. He isn't on my phone he isn't in the photos he isn't anywhere at all. I really hope that we can find him soon. Susan was starting to panic, but I calmed her down. We'll find it.

I can't find it. I looked everywhere. I looked inside the cell, outside the cell. I searched everybodys room. Went outside and scoured the area, couldn't find anything. People are starting to get unhinged. Susan jumped out a window and broke. Need to find it before someone else gets hurt.

Paul must have it. he's the only one who I didn't search his room. he was the only one who we didn't show. It must be him. A couple of the guys and I are going to talk to him after hours today. Sure that he'll be cooperative.

Went through Paul today. Nothing in his room, nothing in him. He told us he had it when we had him, but he didn't he is a liar. We hid him in Jess's room, and cleaned up the bathroom. Next one we search is the Director.

Shortly after this entry was written, Researcher █████ and the remaining research staff attempted to access the Directors office. After a confrontation with security, Researcher █████ led a riot within Site-██, resulting in over 40 casualties, and the death of all SCP-589 personnel. Following this, the body of Paul Rothberg, lead researcher of SCP-589, was found in the dormitories. SCP-589's containment procedures have been updated, and reclassified as Keter.


As the bullet inched closer to his head, he took a moment to consider some things.
The first was just how lovely his first real girlfriend had been. She had been one of those artistic types who had never really managed to make the vision in her mind match the final product. She had a tendency to call up fantastically beautiful scenes and work them with the paints, always disappointed when the reality didn't match her fantasy. He had helped her, of course, guided her hand silently, given her a soft, gentle kiss when she cried at the beauty of the thing she had created.
He reflected for a moment on their child, who had been stillborn. She blamed herself for it, but he knew the truth of the matter—that some things need to be balanced, that a beautiful birth of art had taken a beautiful birth of child—and while he never said it, she could tell. His temperament, his eyes when he looked at her, the painful distance between them that seemed to get further and further until it became physical instead of emotion, and she had left him forever.
He remembered the first time he met her, their high school year, when he'd first discovered some things about himself, about how he looked at the world, and how much he wanted her. She'd been so shallow. So weak in mind and body. It had been easy to take her, mold her, help her to grow as she should have. She appreciated it, of course. He made sure she did. Though it made her leaving all the more painful.
He recalled the scent of her hair. That was his favorite memory.
As his forehead was pierced, his thoughts broke, pain shattering his thought process as he felt the skin break, the bone buckle and shatter, slivers flying inward and out. He felt the heat of the bullet as its force bore it into the fleshy matter of his brain, eyes widening as he reached for his memories. No, he thought.
But by then, it didn't matter.

Termination Report
Date: █/██/██
Subject: KTE-3410-Clockwork-Green
3410 terminated by small arms fire at close range, body removed and incinerated as per standard procedures. Guess the fucker can't stop bullets fast enough if you're in his face, but I can't do anything about the bullet now.
- M.E.


You want to know where it all went wrong? The reason the Foundation is in this state? I can tell you. I'm probably the last person who can tell. They got all the others… either dead, hidden, or changed. I think six was the lucky one. They killed him early on. Threw him into the pit and watched him fall. Probably still falling.
It was our fault. We were in deep, and it was the easy way out. When the Insurgency split, they took most of our top brass. Men who had experience in the field. We weren't as big then, which meant replacing them wouldn't be an option. Nobody wanted to work for us. In the end, we ended up with about a dozen guys left from a group of hundreds. We needed effective administrators more than ever. We didn't have any choice, we can't be blamed for that.
I think it was Four who suggested it, or maybe Two. We'd recently recovered an object from some Turks down in the Caucasus, a machine that could make men. It was dangerous, and it cost us too much to take it, so we'd locked it up. He declared we would use it. Make any amount of men we needed. Some of us objected, but we were overruled. These were desperate times. We were losing so many people, and we couldn't see more friends leave. So we took a risk. A bad risk as it turns out, but thats the way these things are.
Anyways, the project got underway shortly after that decree. We had the last of our best working on it. It was a round the clock ordeal, waiting for the updates. Maybe we were a little haphazard. Some corners were cut here, ingredients were skimped there. Whatever the case was, our first batch was a disaster. They weren't human, they weren't even beasts. Just empty shells. We scrapped them and moved on. Time was short, and it seemed like we lost more people every day.
The second batch was better. They didn't really interact very well, but they could walk and talk like a human could. They didn't really have spirit. You know? The light was on, but there wasn't anybody home. The guys who were in charge of this whole thing declared him a success, and they put him into full scale deployment. We protested again, but we didn't amount to much.
The next batches all came out better than the one before. We thought we were learning how to control it, and the things it produced. We got some interesting ones by messing with the settings, and using the different components we had at our disposal. They really thought that was brilliant, being able to store and transfer people like that. I thought it was spectacular, but then again we all knew how he really turned out.
They deployed them all across the field, at every site and field office. It looked like we'd found a godsend, and it made some of them think we had some kind of mandate from the almighty. They wouldn't just say it aloud like that, but you could still tell when they spoke. Referencing our "divine purpose" to "protect humanity". They just didn't want to think about how easily we could've failed. It gave them faith though, that we would make it back from the brink.
This is about the time we started getting the complaints. Didn't seem like a big deal at first. So some scientists think the cold guy acts like a robot. We know he acts like a robot. Some agents think the MTF captains are too rough. Boo-hoo. But when the question of credentials came up, we were kinda thrown off-guard. We tried throwing out some biographies, trying to keep them placated, and we tried to come up with something.
I'm the one who came up with it. I said that if we couldn't make them plausible as down to earth administrators, we'd have to make them larger than life. Figures that would tower over the rest of the Foundation, and have legends build around them. There were problems. They were harder to conceal, since they were now recognizable. Some of us thought the stories were absurd, and unbelievable. We managed to sell the story enough that a majority of them bought into it, and we moved forward with the plan.
The first changes were mostly minor, giving details to the backstories. The major one was the immortal guy. We gave some jewelry that was supposed to house their soul. Then we started making some of the major alterations. We gave them the family, the items, the whole nine yards. We enhanced a few sites to serve as incident points. We even had a few of the guys who we'd found, like burglars and cultists who we recruited. We did foolish things too, like decommissioning a few of the less important objects. There was a lot of controversy about that, but it was silenced when morale leaped up in the aftermath. We stopped losing people and started gaining them. It had worked. It wasn't a healthy culture, and it might be one of the main reasons things went wrong the way they did. But they were gonna go wrong anyways, it was only a matter of time.
The first sign of trouble came when we started to get the administrators acting out on their own. At first it was minor stuff, like comments on memos or acting out against researchers. We thought it was just a result of their minds adjusting to their identities, but as it went on the acting out started to get out of hand. It stopped being a game of who can keep them the silliest and started being a struggle to keep them reigned in. We got most back under our thumb, but the few we missed were massively destructive, and should've made us reconsider the whole program.
Site-19 was one of our primary sites, and its loss was highly unfortunate. It should've shown us that we had created a monster. Instead we thought it was an isolated incident. The instance that had caused it was disassembled, and we stopped creating new production runs of it. People didn't really ask about what had happened to him. We spread the word that he'd been taken to some top secret facility for new work. You bet your ass the administrators asked about him. They constantly badgered us with information about him, and we just kept our lips sealed. I think that if we had taken the incident more seriously, we would've avoided what happened, but we were riding too high to notice what was happening below.
We started talking about a new generation of administrators, improved with all our newfound wealth and power. The thought was that if we had been so successful with a dozen men and no money at all, we would be able to create unbelievable things with the power we had now. So we made another decree. We assembled what was left of the old team and brought in our new best and brightest. We dusted off the old man maker and we started from a fresh slate.
The results don't really matter. All you need to know is that they didn't last in the field. We lost at least half of them in the first month alone. There were many causes of death-poison, fire, breach, the works-but the main thing was that none of them were natural deaths. They were killed. We tried to figure out what was going on. Was the machine affecting probability? Did we make a mistake while we had been creating them? And on top of all this, the immortal guy disappeared. And then the guy who messed up photos disappeared too. We were scrambling. We'd been leaning on these guys for years, and they weren't anywhere. We probably didn't need them as much as we thought, but it was still the crutch the Foundation had been leaning on for years suddenly being yanked from underneath us.
As we're trying to deal with this and the deaths, we start losing contact with sites. It felt like a disaster had been suddenly shoved in our faces. We tried to tread water, but every time we did another ocean of problems washed over us. We recalled the MTF-O5 to Command and waited for the worst.
He showed up on the monitor, telling us he was in control. We had a short talk, most of it inane now, but he'd already won by that point. He had all of our administration staff against us. All we had was a couple MTF's and some access codes. We hollered and screeched and raised holy hell, but it didn't matter. He has us in his pocket.
They run the council now, the men we made. They just keep a few of us around to write the memos. I wish I could say we're working against them, or that you should, but it's over. They've changed too much. It's not the same place it was before. It lost that mutual respect that we had for each other, and made it into this big, amorphous octopus, with arms reaching in every nation. Wrong as it may be, thats the way it is. Maybe someday we can rise against it, bring it down and make things like they were before.
We can always hope.


Following the events surrounding the acquisition of the territory affected by SCP-7362, the following interview was conducted with Jeremiah Smalls, the only individual to have survived the decontamination process. Of note is that despite a chronological age of 26, as confirmed by independent records, and an outward appearance consistent with that age, many of Mr. Smalls' internal organs were in an advanced stage of degeneration consistent with extreme age. It is currently unknown whether this was due to SCP-7362's effects, or due to the rapid decontamination process enacted upon him.

Dr. Mace (interviewer): Hello, Mr. Smalls. Please sit down.
Mr. Smalls: Okay. Um, can someone turn down the AC? I'm not used to it anymore and I'm really cold. (Note: the ambient temperature of the interview room was 29.5 degrees Celsius due to an unrelated and temporary failure in the Site's HVAC system.)
Dr. Mace: Certainly. We'll make sure your room is more comfortable when you're taken back. In the meantime, I would like to know a little bit more about the situation inside, what did you call it? The Fields?
Mr. Smalls: That's what Great Leader called it. I'd gone on a bike ride, and I saw that fence, and some buildings in the distance. I guess I was curious or something, so I went to take a look. And then I saw a woman, and she just pointed a gun at me when I got closer. Didn't have much choice then. Of course, neither did she.
Dr. Mace: For how long have you lived inside the Fields?
Mr. Smalls: About two years. Funny, it seemed longer.
Dr. Mace: Did you ever try to escape?
Mr. Smalls: In the beginning, I did. But after a while, I realized it was no use. Eternal Leader would punish people who tried to find loopholes. (Subject holds up left hand, which is missing three fingers) I got my name from this.
Dr. Mace: Your name?
Mr. Smalls: High Leader wouldn't let us use our real names, just the ones Illustrious Leader gave us. Magnanimous Leader called me Seven. To remind me, you see. So I wouldn't ever try to escape again. And I didn't.
Dr. Mace: What can you tell me about SCP-7362?
Mr. Smalls: About what?
Dr. Mace: The substance we found in the well in the town square.
Mr. Smalls: Oh. We used it as food, but it's the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted. No one knew what it was, or where it came from. If Compassionate Leader knew, Beneficent Leader never told us. And I'm not sure if I want to know. But it never made us ill, or anything. Weird, come to think of it. To be honest, that stuff scared the shit out of me, and it's not like I didn't have other things to be scared of in there. But there was something… well, I don't know. And then what happened to Little Missy…
Dr. Mace: For the record, can you tell me about this incident from the beginning?
Mr. Smalls: Okay. Well, Little Missy was… Splendorous Leader used her as a… Little Missy had it harder than us. A lot harder. And life wasn't great for any of us, but if you didn't try to abuse loopholes, and didn't say anything Marvelous Leader didn't want you to say, then you wouldn't be punished. But Little Missy, she was always being punished, whether she deserved it or not. And she didn't want to go on any more. Everyone sort of knew that, already. But she couldn't commit suicide, because it was against the rules. But that day, she punctured her eardrums with a sharpened stick, just so that she wouldn't hear Wonderful Leader any more. And she ran away but she still couldn't escape. And Auspicious Leader didn't even want her back. So she stayed away for more than a month. Everyone thought she was dead, after some time. She had to be, right? We told each other that she was at peace now. That it was for the best. It may sound crazy, but it gave us hope. We didn't see much difference between dying and escaping, you know? She got away, we thought. Maybe we could, too. But then one evening, we found her inside one of the houses. She was all covered in food. You know, the stuff from the well. And she could hear again, just like that.
Dr. Mace: Did she tell you what had happened to her?
Mr. Smalls: She didn't remember. Even when Kindhearted Leader made her tell Felicitous Leader everything, she still said she didn't know. She remembered falling asleep, and waking up days later, the way we found her.
Dr. Mace: Did she seem any different to you, after she came back?
Mr. Smalls: She was crushed, of course. She'd starved herself to death to get away from Flawless Leader, and now everything was just like it was before. But… yes, there was something else. She was afraid of things. Just perfectly ordinary things, you know? Like rain, or her own reflection. Hell, she was even afraid of trees for a while! And she kept telling everyone that she wasn't ever going to try again, that she was glad it hadn't worked, and we shouldn't try either, because it wouldn't solve anything…
Dr. Mace: Why is it that the police officers who first arrived on the scene were found shot, while those who had been inside for a longer time, such as yourself, were killed in a fire?
Mr. Smalls: I'm not sure, but… we belonged to Altruistic Leader, you see. We weren't supposed to leave. Merciful Leader had to make sure we didn't… come back, like Little Missy did. Thoughtful Leader yelled something after me when I ran, but I couldn't understand the words. But Worthy Leader knows, you see. And Prosperous Leader told me I'd die before Meritorious Leader would let me escape. Virtuous Leader told me that so, so many times.
Dr. Mace: Do you have any idea where we might find him?
Mr. Smalls: I don't know. Sometimes I think Perfect Leader's already here. But that would be… that would be impossible, wouldn't it? But I really shouldn't be here, either. There's no way it'll last. Supreme Leader is going to find me and send me where the others are. Please, don't let Everlasting Leader do that. I'm begging you.
<End Log>

Closing Statement: Despite constant medical monitoring and treatment, Jeremiah Smalls died of multiple organ failure due to age and malnutrition 37 days following the acquisition of SCP-7362. Simultaneous with Mr. Smalls' expiration, an individual matching the description of "Leader" climbed out of the well holding the primary mass of SCP-7362. The individual was restrained, but tried to escape and was subsequently terminated. Autopsy revealed no biological abnormalities, and the subject's fingerprints and DNA do not appear in any medical, governmental or law enforcement database to which the Foundation has access.


It was memetic after all.
This all began with Dr. Vang being booted out of the Foundation. I started working with Dr. Vang 5 years after I got my bachelor's and getting recruited because of my cum laude and all that. He was a charming guy; humorous, but never losing his cool, and works really hard. It stayed this way until… what, ten? Twenty years ago?
He claimed he was under the effect of a stone in his desk. A stone that caused people to lose interest in work, to lose willpower for innovation. A procrastination rock. Maggie and I thought it was a joke—it wasn't the first time Dr. Vang created a fictional SCP to scare us. We didn't conduct any research on it; after all, how can you research a non-existent joke? The joke was forgotten, just like the stone itself, after a few days. I would not remember the stone again until many years later.
Dr. Vang started to make mistakes he never made. A misplaced book here, an overturned beaker there, it was all explained away with a wave of a hand. He was an old man, after all. Then came the rushed reports, the missed meetings, the general lack of work done. His powers were taken, positions degraded, yet no one bothered to seek out a reason. I tried to not let him get fired; after all, he was my mentor, and a respected researcher as I'd first known him. But even with my hard work, I could not convince the O5 to let him stay.
He didn't even bother to pack his office, he just left it alone with a note on the door saying "For the next guy". His stuff got passed around the Foundation. I lost track where most of it went, but I know the O5 would be looking over all the things he left, just like what they did with Dr. Ganz when he died. I visited Dr. Vang from time to time, and I remained working for the Foundation, but my heart just wasn't in it after Dr. Vang left.
A new researcher, while digging through Dr. Vang's stuff, found the long-forgotten stone. It is, technically, an SCP, albeit not designated any object class or number. The incompetent researcher didn't find any anomalous properties and just disposed of it. The Foundation moved on to more important stuff; after all, who cares about a dingy stone with a four line report? The rock was tossed aside, along with other regular Foundation garbage.
Soon, small problems started to pop up. A delivery that was supposed to arrive in a week took half a month due to decreased flights. An episode of a show was delayed months because of a lack of personnel. A highway that was planned to be built in 6 months dragged into several years. But no one noticed, it was all within normal. After all, what human doesn't make mistakes? We are fallible, after all. They aren't huge problems anyways.
A few years before my retirement, I learned that the Foundation recovered the original stone along with several hundred identical stones from a secretive extremist group. The group laid hands on it after the botched disposal; they found the cause of the stone's properties, and mass produced the stone. It was then sold to several other activist groups, who started secretly planting these stones into UN assemblies, G20 meetings, every conference for major organizations from APEC to NATO. Stealth planes flew over municipalities, sprinkling cities with a thin layer of ground-up procrastinati in the dead of night. An attempt to weaken the major world players and bring down their enemies. The world still went on, day by day, and humanity held itself together. World leaders continued to maintain a strained peace with the extremists, and the ones who once believed that it can bring them victory were disappointed once again. There were no immediate effects, and the extremists soon turned to other means of bringing down their enemies.
The shadow of the stone lingered, seeping into the lives of every man - an effect that no one foresaw.
People all around complained about the general slag, but were just too apathetic to stand up for it. There's always someone else to blame, some other time to do it. Bills took years to pass, buildings took decades to build, and yet, no one seemed to care enough to fix it. Soon, activist groups fell apart due to lack of interest. Labor unions dissolved because no one had the will to fight for rights. Members of parliament bodies were still elected, but there were no bills to pass, no issue to debate, no conflict to resolve. Wars ended because the soldiers on both sides had lost the passion and patriotism that brought them there. The O5 council tried to prevent the spread of this phenomenon, to start the recovery, to let humanity stand back up on its feet, but no matter how hard they tried, our agents and researchers simply just dragged the missions on for years.
We didn't die out. We just simply lost our will to improve.
Everyone just… didn't care, I guess. Life was good. Why change?
There's always later.


“What were you, Harken?”
“…what, like in a cosmic sense? Probably a dog or something.”
“Must you always be an asshole?”
“No, it's a choice.”
They'd been stuck at the same posting for three days now, and random acts of violence were becoming more and more appealing. A trashed-out storefront, it bore the distinction of being across the street from a hidden Church meeting point. It was also supposed to be the place where they were getting “back up”, owing to the new crackdown procedures in place. So far, neither Agents nor Churchgoers had shown. Unable to call in until reinforcements or Church subjects were five days overdue, Harken and Kramer had taken to annoying each other to pass the time. That is to say, more than normal.
“Seriously, tell me.”
“Why do you of all people care about this? I'm an Agent, a faceless cog in a faceless machine.”
“Tell me, or I'll break something that's recently healed.”
“…Fine…ok, OK! Back up, Jesus.”
Kramer slipped away with feline suppleness, keeping low on the roof line. Technically, they were observing the business across the street, but had all but given up on any real action. Still, it didn't pay to be caught napping. Harken sighed, hunkering down lower on the low roof ledge and glaring over at Kramer's self-satisfied smirk.
“You know, it's not fair that you have zero issue with causal bodily harm, and I can't even threaten you with anything really.”
“Life sucks. Dish.”
Harken threw up his hands in exasperation, shaking his head and sighing deeply, resigned to defeat.
“I was in the army for, like, two years. Some personality profile said I had 'high moral flexibility', so I got bounced to Intelligence and…what?”
“Sorry, just trying to imagine you in camo and combat boots” Kramer grinned, smothering a laugh.
“ANYWAY. I think they were happy to shift me off. I'm not great in direct combat anyway…did a lot of interrogation stuff, which I am varying degrees of proud and ashamed of. The CIA came knocking one day, promised all the James Bond shit. I turned them down…I know a bullshit sell when I hear one. It just kinda…stuck, though. Couple months later, we had a interrogation get out of hand. Way out of hand…new kid, got a little over-patriotic and electrocuted someone suspected of terrorism. Not normally a issue…but as it turns out, he was innocent, and his dad was a major player in OPEC. Suddenly the CIA didn't look like such a bad option.”
Harken lit a cigarette, leaning back and avoiding Kramer's fixed stare with practiced ease. He continued to smoke in silence just long enough to annoy Kramer without causing bodily retribution.
“So they shoved me off to the CIA and glossed things over to make me look dead. Or incarcerated…you know, I really never checked which they said. Anyway, I did most of the same stuff as I did with the army, but with a bigger budget and almost zero oversight. It was fun sometimes, but more often than not it was paper pushing. Spies spying on spies for information nobody really needed. Enough to make me nostalgic for live fire exercises. Almost. Started drinking more, not bad, just more often than normal.”
“That's to say there was a time you didn't drink?” Kramer's face was as expressive as a Moi.
“Well…yes, actually. We were all fresh-faced kids, once, if only for a little while.” He grinned, pointing with the burning end of his cigarette. “Even you. I know, I know, the church takes Crusaders at a young age…but you played hopscotch and slept without nightmares once.”
“We're talking about you, not me, you weaselly sociopath.”
“Indeed we were.” He grinned, taking a deep drag. “I did well and got in trouble in about even measure. Ended up with a team following a lead on some kind of suspected Russian bio-weapon. Expected to follow ghosts for weeks, then end up staking out a hotel for a while and go home empty, but ended up on a farm out west, looking at a hell-iguana in an acid bath, surrounded by 'CIA' agents from some other department. The other fellows swallowed their crap, but I wouldn't release the site. Actually held a guy at gunpoint for a bit.”
Harken sighed, remember the total lack of concern on the Agent's face, even with a gun jammed in it. “It all felt rotten, and I had to have a commander expressly tell me it was above my pay grade and to STAND DOWN before I let it go. Even then, I tried to log a complaint…which got me yet another reprimand. I kept seeing that big…thing, in the tank. It was watching me, somehow. I could…feel it. I got stunningly drunk, told my CO to fuck a goat, pissed in someone's roses, and fell asleep on the lawn in front of my apartment. At some point, I crawled inside.”
“I woke up to some guy sitting on my goddamn side table, smoking. Even better, I was naked at the time, so the first bit was me just flailing around, trying to figure out what in the skippy fuck had happened. He started talking before I calmed down, so I missed some of the first bit. He told me about what I'd seen the day before…about what it could do, and had done. He told me about how I could go on trying to ignore it, push it away…or try to understand what was really going on.”
Harken chuckled, shaking his head. “Honestly, I don't remember all of what he said…but what sold me was the honesty of it. For one of the first goddamn times, I was being told the nasty shit right along with the good. No gilding the lily, no idealized pitch…I was impressed. Plus, I figured that just going back to life after my little bender might not be great, so…I signed up. Went through admissions for about six months, doing tests and evaluations, getting told by large men with guns how serious everything was…so pretty standard for my life thus far.”
He stopped, looking over to Kramer, her face still a calculated blank, watching like a predatory bird. He lit a fresh cigarette off his old one, rubbing his head.
“Hey, come to think of it, did you ever go through admissions?”
“No. I'm not filed as an Agent. Different protocols.”
“Oh…well, yeah. So…ahh…yeah, that's my story.”
“No it's not.”
“What…oh. Listen, I've told you that bit already, it's not-”
“No, you haven't.”
“Yes I goddamn have, Kramer!”
“You've paraphrased at best. You're the intelligence man, don't you feel full operations knowledge is critical to any mission?”
“…absolutely fuck you.”
“Duly noted. Squeal.”
Harken sighed heavily, closing his eyes and rubbing them with his free hand. “I got lumped in with a three man team, Agents Billik, Hon, and Fourteen. We did pretty well, Billik and Hon were the muscle, Fourteen was the tech agent, and I handled intel and the 'spy shit', as Hon would say. We didn't do a lot of direct SCP-related stuff…went after groups and people mostly, but we did our share.” He laughed, smoke clouding around him. “Jesus, went after a new skip once with a eval team…Fourteen was normally this badass chick, all brass and nails, but it turned out this thing had an attractive effect with insects and such…we all woke up to her shrieking, run out to find her up on a chair, in a sea of caterpillars…oh god…” He started laughing hard, half-choking on smoke, coughing and doubling up even as he giggled.
“I mean, I know it was dangerous, and we ended up losing one of the recovery guys, but god, Fourteen up on that chair, squealing and hopping from foot to foot, going 'getthemawaygetthemawaygetthemaway'…it was great. She was pretty pissed at us for a while, but I think she came to see the funny in it eventually. It was great.” The laughter trailed off in to silence. The quiet stretched out slowly, the odd sound of a far-off car or wind barely filling it. Harken sighed deeply, staring at his shoes.
“We were on our way back from a recon mission that turned up nothing. Had a report of a SCP escape during transport. It'd gotten loose and was inside a hospital. MTF teams were en-route, but all available Agents were ordered to report to help contain fallout and such. Morons we were, we responded even when they said it was SCP-106. This was shortly after they grabbed it the first time, didn't fully understand it…makes sense now why it ran for a hospital. Anyway, we responded, secured the outside, which wasn't hard because everyone was…gone. That black shit was all over the lower doors. Heh…ended up busting open a window rather then get near it, said we'd write it up as 'tactical entry' in the report.”
He swallowed hard, eyes fixed on his shoes. “We weren't the first team there. Found two of them still mobile, trying to get the hell out…it took them in front of us, yanked them in to a wall, grinning at us the whole fucking time. It…grabbed in to their flesh like how you'd grab a pile of dirty laundry, just…sank in. That black shit started spreading, and…yeah. We tried to fall back, or get out, but it wouldn't…let us. Kept herding us deeper, driving us…Hon lost a foot, Billik got his liver punctured…just kept picking at us. It…we…lost Billik in Surgery. It'd made a…thing…out of the tools, and Billik went to look. It…it pulled him in to it, rubbing him on it, mumbling something while Billik's face went to shreds, everything just…ripping and…it pulled him in, eventually. I say he was dead when it did. We…tried to get out again, but it kept pushing and pushing. Ended up in the natal unit, and…we…”
His voice faltered, and he put a hand to his head, gently, a tiny tremor in his fingers. Kramer watched, silent and still as a gargoyle. Harken's hand curled, nails pushing against his skull, holding for a few seconds, twitching, before he lowered it again, eyes returning fixedly to his shoes.
“It was bad. We tried to make a breakout, just flailing, really, and it grabbed Fourteen, yanked her back to…yeah. Me and Hon, we started trying to get the hell loose, just taking curves at random, running and running. You know how they say 106 isn't sapient? Bullshit. At the very least, it's a good mimic…it…kept singing. 'My Bonnie Lies Over The Sea' of all things…and just that line, over and over, in that grating, bubbly voice. We hit the main admittance hall, I mean we SAW the doors…and then we heard Fourteen.”
“She came around a corner behind us…maybe thirty yards? She…she was a wreck, had bits missing, something wrong with her jaw…but she was limping, trying to scream after us. We froze, looking, and we saw that thing slipping out of the ceiling behind her. It just…fell, landed in a heap, then stood up and started to go for her. She screamed and screamed, begging us…Hon ran, tried to grab her, pull her along, but it…lunged. It grabbed both of them, and started sliding in to the floor, that black stuff seeping and spreading everywhere, in the floor…in to them. It started touching them, not rough, just…gentle, teasing, even as they screamed, and fought, sinking in to the black floor.”
He paused, taking a deep, slow drag. “I heard them dying.”
“I…I froze. They were holding out to me, begging. It had them, grinning at me, just…flat, dead…like looking at a painting. I ran. I ran, and I got out a little bit before the MTF teams rolled in. They didn't find anyone, got the old man recovered…I went before a oversight board. They said I acted in service to mission integrity, that I was at least able to report, probably saved some lives, blah fucking blah blah BLAH. Requested time off, got it, and stayed blind drunk for about…two weeks? Maybe three? Came back, got a bunch of evaluations, kept drinking, got in trouble, didn't really care. Kept getting shifted deeper and deeper until I ended up at the training center. Left me there to rot, until they needed someone to deal with your barrel of laughs.”
Kramer watched in silence, finally speaking, eyes still intent and fixed. “It wasn't your fault, you did-”
Harken's eyes widened, wheeling over and glaring, mouth fixed in a line of fury. “FUCK YOU. No, no, you shut the fuck up right fucking now. I've heard that bullshit from everyone, ever, and it's just that, bullshit. I don't need fucking platitude from you, fuck you. You wanted to fucking know, you just HAD to fucking pry, so there it is. I'm not asking for your 'interpretations' or 'solace', or any other bullshit tripe that people swallow to feel fucking great about their fucked decisions. I let my friends die so I could live. End of story, no frosted coating, no 'yes, but' feel-good after-school-special lesson at the end. Drop it.”
He was almost panting, looming up over Kramer's hunched form, heedless of the amounts of death contained in that unstable package. He sat again, heavily, flicking his cigarette off the roof in disgust. Kramer stayed fixed, perhaps a bit more curled up, more tightly compacted in to her corner. Harken's departing rage seemed to waft off him like heat. She blinked slowly, a tiny click coming from somewhere in her sockets.
“I notice your childhood didn't make it in to that story.”
“Wow. Really? What the hell, wanna hear about me fucking my cousins, or my mom trying to shoot my dad, first?”
“…”
“Yeah, you're right, got a goddamn mission to do.”
The silence yawned open like the space of a broken tooth.


The following message was intercepted by a Foundation Special Intelligence Team in September of 2012. The original source has yet to be identified.
To my Brothers and Sisters:
Greetings, and the peace of God be with all of you.
I have heard stories of disarray in our midst of late, and they have troubled me. This organization was meant to be a work of unity between our faiths, and yet we have begun falling back upon our old prejudices and ancient rivalries. Already we descend back into darkness and fear and fanaticism, running from the light of unifying truth.
I hear of brothers fighting against brothers, of sabotage and lies, and worse, a brother sent to a pointless death in the hands of a group that is not even our enemy. Have we already stooped so low to become like the followers of the Machine, to spray our innards at the slightest provocation in so-called service to God? Am I to believe that we are no better than the fanatics?
This madness cannot be allowed to continue.
A fractured organization is no organization at all: rather, it is a horde of competing factions, too busy trying to wring the neck of their brothers to notice the enemy at their door. This cannot be allowed to continue as it has for these many long centuries. We must be strong, stronger than we have ever been. Was that not why we unified? To become stronger by aiding each other?
The time for division is past. We are brothers and sisters in faith, followers and servants of the same God. Why then do we fight amongst ourselves? Do you hold on to your old ways so tightly? Are you afraid to let go? In the desert, we were as children, and we spoke as children, and so God spoke to us in words that children knew, in ways that children could understand. Now, we have grown, and we see the world through older eyes. We are prepared for the truths of adulthood.
We three children of Abraham were given the truth of God, but it was given to us each in our different way. For each of us it has been worn and wearied by ages and the fleeting memories of man. It has been stained by the powerful and the corrupt, who desire reinforcement of their own beliefs rather than the knowledge of the truth that those beliefs sprung from. Through these relics, we may not simply protect and keep them in due reverence and weaken dangerous beliefs, we may also discover that truth that we have lost. It should not be that one man may discover an item or a passage that supports his preferred way of thinking, and then he discards the rest. Instead, all relics that may be truly known as divine or related to the divine, even those that are challenging to our beliefs, must be considered.
What we will discover will test us, and many of our number will retreat to the comfort of what we have been told that we know. Those who persevere will be shaken, broken, and reborn in glory.
God spoke to humanity in the desert, and just now we are able to piece together His words.
I hope that this message reaches wise ears, and if it does not, may it at least be the ears of an honest fool.