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Luke Brockett fell to his knees onto the rough gravel road, watching with watery eyes as a group of blue-hatted movers carried numerous things— barstools, tables, even a refrigerator— out of the Second Wind bar.
What the hell? He thought, bringing his hands to his eyes as a one-sided conversation blared on in his mind. You're just gone? That's how you go out? No, no, no, you couldn't've…
He shook his head and rose, walking in front of one of the workers who quickly stopped, almost dropping the cardboard box in his hands. "W— Why are… What happened?"
"I don't think that I can—" The mover looked up, grimacing as he made eye contact with the quivering Luke. "The uh… Owner died suddenly, left everything to his sister. And she's sellin' the property, so…"
Luke simply stared for a moment before turning around, his fingers curling into fists. Every step he took felt fatally heavy as he walked for what seemed like hours, eventually arriving at his apartment. He flung the door open, leaving the lights off as he went directly to his bed, curling up under a heavy blanket.
I don't even get a warning. Just like that, huh?
You said you were gonna stay… I just wanted you to…
A soft giggle pried open his lips, and a tear leaked from his eye.
God, I—
Suddenly, a brisk chill swept through his body, causing his hair to stand on end. Then, he felt a familiar warmth from behind him, like a toasty fire— but it quickly faded.
He sat up, looking behind him to see a glimmering strip of gold paper resting on the brown hardwood floor. Luke wiped his eyes on his blanket before stepping out of bed, grabbing the paper.

Press here for one-time access to Stacker's Coffeehouse and Bar!

Suddenly, a red button popped out of the ticket, and Luke dropped it with a surprised gasp. What the… What is this thing? Stacker's? He backed away, his eyes drifting to his phone. I shouldn't mess with it, maybe I could…
His eyes were pulled back to the glistening ticket. Well, it's not like it'll actually do anything…
He crouched down, pressed the button, and then blacked out.

"But… why me?"
Seawind laughed. "Next time you're up there, look at the crowd." He showed his signature warm smile. "That's your answer."

"Hey, you up?"
Luke shot awake almost falling off of the barstool he was sat on. "Huh, what— What!?"
The bartender on the other side giggled. "First time, eh? Don't worry, you'll get the hang of
the transition eventually." she stretched her gloved hand over the bar, which Luke hesitantly shook. "Name's Lillian."
"And I'm Luke…" He pulled his hand away, instead using it to pivot the barstool's seat around as he inspected his surroundings. The room was giant— almost the size of a gymnasium— and it was filled with numerous shiny black tables surrounded by matching leather chairs, where dozens of people sat. Each individual was unique and distinctive, but something was different about some of them… They seemed a little… green?
He looked back to Lillian just in time to see her pull off her gloves with a rubbery snap. "I think I know what you're thinking…"
"What… What?"
She reached forward and put her arm straight through Luke's head.
"Augh!!!" Luke stumbled back in his chair, almost falling over as he felt another chill shiver throughout his body.
Lillian simply chuckled, pulling her hand back. "I always love doing that." She grinned as she snapped her gloves back on. "People are so surprised."
Luke gulped, his eyes wide as he questioned, "How…?"
"I'm a ghost, dummy!" She exclaimed. "I'm dead! Well, kind of."
Luke rubbed his eyes, looking back up to see a blue drink in front of him, topped with a mini-umbrella.
"It's on me," Lillian said. "Just give it a try, trust me."
Luke hesitated, but feeling how dry his mouth was due to his endless nervousness, he decided to take a short sip, and memories began to flash.

The audience before him cheered as he sang the last few notes of his song, finishing as they erupted with clapping. Luke panted, grinning as he looked down into the crowd, their faces all smiley and excited. A warm— yet somewhat weary— feeling grew in his heart as he walked backstage, where his manager sat, her legs crossed.
"You've got another performance tomorrow," she said. "Relax your voice a bit or else you'll lose it."
The weary feeling tugged at his heart once more.

His manager glared down at him, stating, "It's time to renew our contract, Luke."
Luke thought for a moment before staring into her eyes with a confident "No."
"Luke… You know that you won't—"
"I'm not renewing it."
"Why?" She asked, but it was more of a grumble.
Luke had to hold himself back from screaming. "I don't even know any of my fans. I don't have any friends either. And that's mostly because you're so controlling."
"I'm the reason you got so far!"
He took a deep breath before saying for the last time: "No."
Muttering something, his manager left, and it felt like a weight off of his shoulders, for the weary feeling was gone.

Luke looked up from his drink at the Second Wind bar to see a rather grey old man on the bar's tiny stage, speaking into a microphone.
"Are you folks ready for Karaoke Night!? Ready for some singin'!?"
The other bar-goers cheered, and Luke watched on curiously.
"Who's gonna be first tonight?"
Luke hesitated, but he raised his hand.

After Karaoke Night died down, Luke took his seat at the bar once more.
"You were pretty great up there," the old man said as he took a seat next to Luke. "Luke, right? People call me Seawind. Nice to meet'cha."
Luke took a sip of his water, thinking for a moment before setting his cup back down. "You're the owner of this place, right?"
"Yep! And I have a little proposition for you," Luke peeked over at Seawind. "I want to hire you. Just to clean a little, perhaps a bit of bartending… But most importantly, I wanna hear you sing some more, your voice is wondrous."
"Ah, thanks…" Luke's face grew red as he looked down, gripping his cup. "But… why me?"
Seawind laughed. "Next time you're up there, look at the crowd." He showed his signature warm smile. "That's your answer."

"What… What was that?" Luke said as the memories faded from his thoughts. "It was like…"
Lillian laughed, taking the blue drink away from him. "Like you were reliving the moment, right?"
"That was so strange… But also… Pretty nice…"
"It's one of our signature drinks. We call it the 'Remembrance Brew!' Kind of a dumb name, but it fits."
"Wait, why'd you take it away?"
"We only let people drink until it takes effect. Any more than that and your brain goes kaput."
"Oh… How does that work?"
"I dunno," she shrugged. "an overload of emotions or somethin'?"
"Huh. Fun."
"It really isn't," Lillian said, leaning forward. "So, you all good? A-okay?"
"Yeah, just um, a little confused, still. I mean, how are you a ghost!?"
"Some people are just too stubborn to die."
She smiled and walked further down the bar to help other customers as Luke groaned and sat in silence, thinking, when suddenly someone sat on the barstool next to him. "Hey there, Luke."
He looked over and swelled up with tears when he saw the old Seawind, even though he had a hue of green covering his skin. "Sorry, we can't hug. Ghost stuff, heh. I think there's some way we could, but…"
Luke padded at his eyes with his sleeve, sniffling. "You're here! Your sister closed the bar…"
"Ah, I knew that was gonna happen," Seawind shrugged. "That's why I brought you here."
"You gave me the ticket?"
"Yep. I passed straight through you, I'm surprised you didn't notice."
"Oh…" Luke fidgeted with a loose thread on his sweatshirt, nervously twirling it around his finger. "So, uh, what is this place?"
"Stacker's Coffeehouse and Bar, it's pretty neat, you'll like it. They've got… Wait—"
"Wait for wha—"
Suddenly a voice rang through the room, interrupting him as the lights dimmed, leaving the stage behind Luke illuminated. "It's time for Open Mic Night! Come on up, all voices are welcome!"
"I'd, uh, pat you on the back, but I don't have any of those gloves that let me touch things…" Seawind grinned, scratching his neck. "But… You should go on up. Offer them something, they'll accept it. Bring out your true voice— show them who you are. What makes you… Well, you."
Luke thought for a moment.
He stood, feeling a confident fire burning inside of his heart.
"Okay. I can do this."
Seawind simply looked on proudly as Luke marched up to the stage.

Open Mic Night at Stacker's THURSDAYS 10:00

Luke steps up onto the stage, breathing deeply in order to relax his pounding heart.
He takes the microphone off its stand, clearing his dry throat.
"I offer this tale in my own voice."

Years before now a man sang to the stars.
As he searched for a place he could fit in apart,
From all that was 'round him, he was overrun
So then he decided that he was just done
He considered the pathways that were all laid out
But all of his choices were clouded with doubt
A tug at his heart pulled him straight to a bar
Where he sat and he drank, camping under the stars
Until an event he could not understand
He was suddenly reminded of his old dear plan
"I wish I was a star," he thought, but then again, not really
Of course he'd already decided, he really seemed quite silly
Finally he made a choice, he found a place to stay
But suddenly his plan broke down, it all went astray
So he simply ran away…
With the help of a friend, he found his way here
I won't just disappear.

The audience bursts out into a brief applause.
The lost wanderer steps off the stage.
He smiles once again.
‘Til next week.

"That was wonderful, Luke," Seawind said.
Luke blushed. "Thank you… I have to leave though, so… How do I get out?"
"Ah!" Seawind made eye contact with Lillian and waved her over.
"What do'ya need?" She asked, pulling her gloves on.
"Luke's leaving."
"Alright, then here you go!" She passed over two tickets, one grey and one gold. "Just click the grey one to leave."
"A— alright…" His finger hovered over the grey ticket's 'exit' button, but was stopped by Seawind.
"And come back sometime, eh?"
Luke looked up with a sweet smile. "Of course I will," he said, and he clicked the grey button, disappearing to the real world as he watched Seawind and Lillian wave him goodbye.

When he opened his eyes, he was sprawled out on his bed, the golden ticket grasped in his hand. He looked down at it and held it close to his chest, the warm feeling filling his quivering heart once more.
I can go back tomorrow, he thought. I think… I think I'll be okay.

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"Is bad luck really such a crime?" asked the mouse to the cat. •

Sloth's Pit Christmas Façade •

Learn To Live •

Talloran Shoots Archduke Franz Ferdinand •

I hope this isn't just a dream. •

Three Portlands Pastries •

Herman Fuller Presents: The Tunnel Of Love! •

(Not The) Foundation Fight Club! •

S & C Plastics Actually Does Their Job •

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Cuteness On Main! •

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Ellie3 (Gimmick Free!) •


by DarkStuff

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More by DarkStuff~!

Independent SCPs

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SCP-445-EX
The Word of the Day is Hope

SCP-2728
On the Barcelona Skyline

SCP-2729
What is it Good For?

SCP-3018
France & the Tale of the Well-Intentioned Understudies

SCP-3465
Better Safe Than Sorry

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Only Birdbrains Live the American Dream

SCP-4006
#MassaTruthetts

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In Short…

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No Man is an Island

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Why the Long Face?

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Oh, I Get It Now

Co-Authored SCPs

SCP
Title
Co-Author

SCP-1549
In Absence of a Perfect Medium
Billith

SCP-2983
Choco-Wonder Explosion Marshmallow Bites!™ by Dr. Wondertainment
Uncle Nicolini

SCP-3379
D-11424 & the Arctic Meat Hole of Infinite Wonders
Weryllium

SCP-3482
Nature Versus Naturalization
Roget

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I'm Right Behind Me
Captain Kirby

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All the World's a Stage
Varaxous

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Too Many Legs to be Going Nowhere
MaliceAforethought

Vend-a-Friend

Chapter
Title

Act I

Chapter 1
We Just Make Toys

Chapter 2
To Think I've Spent My Whole Life Waiting

Chapter 3
I Don't Get It, I Functioned Before

Chapter 4
You Can't Win Them All

Chapter 5
Be Strange or Be Forgotten

Act II

Chapter 6
Sometimes the Best Intentions are in Need of Redemption

Chapter 7
Life's a Show

Chapter 8
...And I'm the Star!

Chapter 9
Back in Habit

Chapter 10
Pepper's Lament

Chapter 11
Souls & Somas

Chapter 12
Deceptive Cadence

Act III

Chapter 13
And I Think To Myself...

Chapter 14
Everything Will Be Okay

Chapter 15
Holding an Umbrella but the Sun's Still Shining

Ascension

Chapter
Title

Chapter 1
Sometimes I Wish This Moment Could Last Forever

Chapter 2
Waiting on the Good Times

Chapter 3
Forever Young

Chapter 4
We Didn't Do This For Nothing

Chapter 5
URA-1902 aka The Missing Link

Chapter 6
The Consequences of a Deep, Dark Disassociation

Chapter 7
The Call to Action (for a Modern Audience)

Chapter 8
The Elusive Mx. LaFerrier

Chapter 9
It Feels Like I Only Go Backwards

Chapter 10
Along for the Ride

Chapter 11
A Hole in the Tapestry

Chapter 12
XXXXX

Chapter 13
Industrial

Chapter 14
Dancing with Rachael

Chapter 15
Ascension

Epilogue
A World Unto Yourself

Collaboration Contest Entries w/ Ellie

Make America Normaler

Off the Hook

Misc. Tales

Cornelius the Collector

Curtain Call

The Really Really Real Adventures in Capitalism

I've Been Through the Desert on a Horse with No Name

On the Radar for the miniseries The Ursus Maritimus Incident

Group of Interest / Canon Hubs

Hub
Notes

Dr. Wondertainment Hub
Made w/ taylor_itkin does not match any existing user name

What a Wonderful World Hub
Made w/ help from Uncle Nicolini, a canon sprouted from Vend-a-Friend!

Wilson's Wildlife Solutions Hub
My pride and joy, my very own Group of Interest

Rachael Davidson sat, legs crossed, in the cramped multipurpose meeting room of S120. It was a Friday. And it was 2:48 pm. She had taken her late lunch into the claustrophobic space with her, but hadn't the appetite to eat it. Her face was stone, her eyes unfocused, and her hands were on her knees. She hadn't brought a book, and she hadn't too much to think about, so she just sat and scanned.
The table was bolted to the floor. The chairs weren't. The clock was half a minute off. The door was too big for its frame: possibly water expansion from a leak in the ceiling. So the door would budge.
This gave Rachael plenty of warning, when someone began trying to open the door. In any other situation, such a regular set of hard knocking on a door would be intimidating.
Once the door had finally busted open, Rachael heard the huffing of someone chubby who had just put out a lot more energy than they had expected for such a simple task. And then a mumble, "maybe I'll just leave that open a bit…" And suddenly, Rachael's upper lip curled.
The man muttered "excuse me", and a couple variations of "oof", while trying to move around the space and into the seat next to Rachael. As soon as he had himself situated, he tried to get his coat off, but in doing so caught it on something beneath the table. He struggled, embarrassed with the first impression he may be making on some new colleague to his left, before realizing it was stuck on a sharp hook beneath the table (you simply had to accept that you would never know the purpose of such things in such rooms when working with the Foundation). He smiled, likely at himself, as he finally wrenched the coat off of himself and draped it over the back of the chair.
Then, as if nothing had happened, he reached out a hand to introduce himself.
He began in French: "Bonjour! Je ne crois pas. Je m'appelle Dr. Robert Dorer, et vous?"
"Dr. Davidson. And you're mixing up formal and informal. Your French is clumsy."
Dorer's eyes widened. "Rachael? You shaved your head!"
"Ye—"
"And you're wearing red!"
"Hmp. Yes. I am."
"I didn't recognize you!"
"I noticed."
"Well hey! Look at this! We're destined to be on the same mission together! Homeward Bound? Eh?"
Rachael held her tongue.
"I said, I said, that if I got transferred to a project with you, it must mean there's a connection! Right? Right?"
"Wrong." Rachael didn't take her eyes off of the chair across from her. "You said that if you got transferred to the anachronism project with me, that it'd be fate. But that's not what happened. We just ended up on the same project. Not such a stretch — we were both applying for reassignment at the same time in the same site. Give it up. It's coincidence."
Dorer looked defeated. For a second. But his smile crept back, much to Rachael's dismay. She braced herself for his next idiot remark.
"So you remembered! You remembered exactly what I said! Just to get back at me? I don't think so. I think you remember me pretty well. I have successfully become a larger part of your life than everyone else here. A-ha! And now you won't have a choice but to interact with me. You're gonna have to get used to it, Rachael. It's fate, plain and simple."
"Are you trying to woo me? What's your goal here?"
"Woo you?" Dorer looked dazed for a moment. "Oh, no, no, I'm not trying to woo you, Rachael. Not unless you want me to." Dorer's eyebrows shot up in an instant. "But no. I just think you're fun, Rachael. I think you're crazy, and it makes you fun."
"You're straight-forward."
"You too! More than just our initials are the same, I see!" Dorer squinted suddenly. "Hmm. Maybe I'm being a bit rude. Sorry for that. To tell you the truth, I've been a bit irritable as of late. But I'm imagining you could care less why." His smile returned quickly enough. "I'll shut up now. For as long as I can; this Hillenburg is going to be here soon enough, anyways."
Rachael never gave him the benefit of eye contact, and so he was forced to assume she had listened to him. It wasn't such a stretch, she seemed to chime in with sarcasm wherever she felt like, and to do that she would have to be somewhat cognizant of what he was saying. He took his sweet time to sit in a forward facing position in his chair.
Dr. Dorer's ever racing mind wished there was some kind of visual appeal to the bland white room, but the only features he perceived were some scratches on the metal table and a clock that someone put an inordinate amount of effort into (did a meeting room like this really need cherubs?). Dorer felt the last few minutes drag. Rachael tried to have other things to think about.
Then, at almost 3:00 pm exactly, the door was easily shoved open (Dorer smiled that he helped in his own, silent way) by a large, broad shouldered man with a square chin. Dorer attempted to scoot to the side to let him past, but such a big guy in such a small room made mobility difficult nonetheless. After some grunting and struggling, the man finally made it to the other side, and sat down.
His hair was dark grey, but full, though small strands of it lay scattered about his perfectly maintained suit like cat hair. His pockets were big enough to hold an entire plastic water bottle, which he did, and his tie was as broad as an arm. On his breast pocket, he wore a name tag for convenience — Dr. Alex Callero Hillenburg, Human Relations.
Hillenburg shook Dr. Dorer's hand, and then Dr. Davidson's. "Hello," he said once. "Hello," they replied. This repeated once or twice, with variations. "Glad to meet you," "a pleasure seeing you", etc.. Before things could get too formal, Dorer decided to make his first play.
"Hey, I think we've met before! You and I talked to Bob Ross at this very Site, didn't we? Oh, hey! Speaking of fate, Rachael, it looks like we've all been involved with each other before, haven't we? The whole Bob Ross ordeal was what got you into the Foundation in the first place, and then Dr. Hillenburg here —" Rachael made a quick mental note that Dorer would use the last names of others, but not hers "— and I cleaned up after that mess! Isn't that strange?"
"Sure, strange, yeah. Small world." Hillenburg began unpacking some papers from a suitcase he had with him.
Rachael silently wondered why in the world someone in charge of "Human Relations" would be so muscular, and large. She also had to wonder why he would be in charge of putting together a team for an operation. She imagined, and accepted, that she would get answers to neither question.
"Alright, let's get on with it. You're here to be recruited to my project, Operation Homeward Bound. I know you've probably heard the next spiel a thousand times, but for the sake of formality and routine…" Hillenburg cleared his throat and put his hands together on the table. "By being here, you have already accepted that you may be subjected to amnestic treatments for any classified information that you may or may not gain, during this recruitment or afterwards. By accepting the following mission, you have accepted the possibility of grievous injuries, psychological damage, or death in the name of the veil. Now is your last chance to turn down this assignment with no direct repercussions. Do you accept the risks and conditions?"
Rachael didn't speak. Dorer leaned back in his chair and nodded.
"Good. By accepting this mission, you accept that you must take orders from the mission operator — that's me — and whoever they appoint to be above you. From this point on, you are under my watch, and my purview, until the operation is done. For an operation of this size, ahh… I was told that if the mission exceeds a full year in length, you will then have the opportunity to file for reassignment. Is that all clear?"
Rachael had heard this spiel several times before. Dr. Hillenburg had butchered it. Not badly, but his delivery was hardly verbatim. This was his first time handling an operation. That made "Human Relations" more believable, at least.
"Clear as day, sir."
"Don't call me sir. Call me Dr. Hillenburg." He rubbed some sleep from his eyes. "Alright, down to business. For real. This is Operation Homeward Bound. I have chosen you —" he pointed to Dorer "— because I've worked with you before, and you're a psychologist. I have chosen you —" he pointed to Davidson "— because you're exceptionally competent and you worked at the same site."
Rachael allowed herself a smile.
"That said, I would have preferred a Mobile Task Force, or at least some unassociated agents. You're certainly not my ideal choices. But due to the nature of the anomaly, I have reason to believe that option has been compromised."
Dorer creased his brow.
Hillenburg continued: "In other words, I don't doubt that you're going to find this mission very, very difficult. But I have no one better to go to. You're getting in on the ground floor for knowledge of an unregistered anomaly — URA-1902."
Hillenburg threw out some pictures, which Rachael and Dorer then leaned forward to look at.
There was a painfully nondescript building in the middle of a forest, surrounded by rubble, with a fence busted through, possibly by some large vehicle? There were images of dead bodies, of men in hazmat(?) suits with limbs bent backwards or missing, and of large, oily cords extending into the wilderness. Finally, there was an image of a gutted pregnant lady, with wires going into her stomach.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), the most notable response anyone gave was Dorer, who said "ew", and then leaned comfortably back in his chair.
"This is the aftermath of Incident-URA-1902. Be sure not to show these pictures to anyone, we're not sure of their effects, but rest assured I have chosen both of you because of your abnormally high memetic resistances. You, Dorer, have a natural resistance, due to your field of psychology and dabbling in neuroscience. You, Davidson, we're not as sure…"
Rachael held eye contact.
"… but some people are just like that. In fact, that's what you're here to figure out. You're not the only members of Operation Homeward Bound, but you're our unexpected field agents. Basically, don't worry, you won't be investigating all this carnage." Hillenburg gathered the photos back into his file. "The task force that was directly involved with the incident, the bodies you see in those suits, they all died. All but one."
Hillenburg tossed out a roster for "Working Man", and then zoned in on a certain Agent Vernon Auburn LaFerrier.
"Hey, Vernon Auburn LaFerrier. We've got a guy here named —"
"Victor Adam LaFerrier. Yes. I can assure you it's not a coincidence. URA-1902 used to be the building and surrounding area. Now, we believe that that anomaly is neutralized — that's a different investigation going on. But URA-1902, now…
"The designation of URA-1902 has been transferred to Agent LaFerrier."

« A Deep, Dark Disassociation | The Call to Action | The Elusive Mx. LaFerrier »


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NAME OF TALE The Midnight Curve

The following is from the juvenilia of the early Imperial poet Ruth Harlequin (born 1994). Despite the clear compositional flaws of this early work (dated to 2497) it provides an early glimpse at the themes she would explore in the 27th and 28th centuries.

1.
On the dirt paths that lead away
From dusty English hedgerows in the grey,
When the setting sun turns the grass
Into a strange and pinkish pallour,
A pallour of desperation,
When the hungry sun paws and claws at the memory of its former self.
That time of hazy day when the beast shines down
And all seems hidden,
All a lie beneath its happy rays.
All is turned, now, turned to dusk,
The truth of night crawling slowly
As shoes kick up the frail dust on the path
And the trees rustle in the breeze
And you watch.
Mud turned to grass turned to mud
As sheep and men tread upon it,
In timeless veneration of the old ways
Of the old rites bleeding through
To make our present lives so quick in rot and ruin.
Lines become pronounced, paved, expanded,
Monorails and trains rise like mausoleums
For the notion of a mausoleum.
Tombstone carriages are rushing through the night
Their living peering meekly
Over deep lakes and dishonoured paths
Where shepherds used to ply their trade.
What was it like to have ancestry?
To know the turning of the seasons, the play of weather and weir
That would take one's maiden aunts, one's grandmothers,
One's smiling childhood faces
That never had any worries except in one's understanding, long after the fact
Of adult and childhood memory
And arguments ill-understood.
To be, to live, to exist upon a wire
Strung out in a continuing spiral
Of birth, maturity, love, age, death-
Seeing in the old woman by the firelight, with stories so distant
The future of one's self, looking into the eyes of her past
A thing remote, of distance, of mystery
Of patterns long-sketched out and barely changing
So timeless that all meaning came only from continuation,
No endings or beginnings.
Only the repitition in endless cycles of seasons
Snow falling on autumn leaves falling on summer grass
One life in many lives, one meaning in many meanings,
No death in the knowledge of continuation, of having been made complete,
To an everlasting rest, or oblivion, or both,
And all was settled,
A whirlpool of perpetual autumn,
A ballerina dancing with her face still smiling,
And then the clocks all stopped.

2.
The cottage is bare
The food is all gone
She stands outside
Inside the autumn cold
One more day
One more life
Another movement,
And the Reaper dies
And the breeze runs through
And it howls its way
And knocks all the pots
And has nothing to say
And she is undone
She has no more to do
The sun is not raising
Its hullabaloo
The thatch and the straw
Enters its maw
The house
The house
The house is
When they find her,
Coming in from the long field
And the golden corn,
They rush to comfort her,
Laying down their burdens to help, to aid,
While all around the wind rips in,
Slicing new wounds
Making new thoughts
The desire to just stop, just for a day,
As the open sky rides roughshod on their backs
And makes them too old, too old for sleeping on the fields
So they swallow the bitter pill
Or sell themselves for dreaming
And the sun seems a little lighter on their back
While the trees grow from their hearts,
Their lonely hearts,
Too old for caring, for loving
When the story that bound them is gone
And there's no profit at the wishing well.

3.
The building is not used any more. The men and women inside pack it up, weeping slighly, wishing there could be some other way but there is none.
The rain keeps falling, falling, as they say a goodbye, a funeral to funerals, Morecambe and Sons packs up its coffins and bereavements and organisational frameworks and sympathetic mourners and walk out into the storm, the lightning falling but not hitting, to become new people.
The roof begins to fall in, as urban explorers and adventurers and pain-lovers looking for rusted nails come traipsing through.
Sterilised rats keep staring through the holes, as the wallpaper chips, as the leaks intensify, as the innards are eaten and looted
The worms of the overworld gnaw through walls, gnaw through wallpaper, gnawing, gnawing
The iron rods embedded in the concrete rise out of their crumbling mountains
It is an ending, it is a beginning, it is a death
The reapers of the mind will always come, killing forms to make anew, killing poems to spring them up again, change and death and change and death until there is no difference
Until the ballerina and the dance are one
Until it's all iron-
The ruin awakens, crying as a newborn. It sits where it was, perfectly still, as the men and women inside shine lights, weeping slightly, happy that they have found this place in which they can be
They light candles and sing songs of the old country, that discovered country,
They play guitars and form workers' communes and don't think about the inscription,
"Memento Mori" above the door,
It's not words any more. It's just a form, a geometric shape,
A monument to alchemical precision
Nobody speaks Latin any more
Latin is a dead language
And nothing is dead
Life expands into its space-

4.
-and expands more. Its greenery
Rises up from the rainforests, from the savannahs,
From the gaps between the sands, from the ocean floors,
Inexorably, constantly, rising,
Rising,
The tendrils merge and split and coalesce
In blocks of mass that dominate
Like the furnaces of empire
And squeeze the air out of the sky
Spreading into nooks, into crannies,
Into the gaps between the atoms
Into mouths and noses and the breathing bodies
That can't breath or struggle any more.
And all is immobile
In the endless march of life
In the cessation of all cessation
And there are no more ancestors,
No more stories, no more creation
Just the green,
Moss and lichen, flesh over flesh
That can't be seen
Because only the life can see,
And the life is growing
Eating, consuming
Colonising, imperialising
Making all one
Across the stars, making all one.
In the one there is nothing. A zero
Its absolute line singular and eating
Itself into itself into nothing.
A ballerina moves, in timeless grace,
Spinning and spinning and spinning more
Faster, faster, deeper, keener,
The human frailties and flaws ironed out
The motion's weakness becoming strong
Reinforced iron leaking from the armpits
Which are not armpits but hinges, joints,
The face is scrubbed away, the hair flies off
The flesh is moved into movement, into light,
Into insubstance,
Speed upon speed so that even the fire goes
And all that's left is movement
And the movement becomes the circle
And the circle goes on forever
Silent and still in its fury and noise.
Lolling and lolling and lolling.

5.
A man sits. The light is reflected
In the wet milk of his eyes
As the other man smiles and waves and slicks his hair back with a mullet grin
And stares out of his box
Into the eyes, the milquetoast eyes
His own existence oozing into the air
No sleep, no dreams, no pentecostal fire,
Just an open mouth, lolling,
And the television sirens calling.
This is but one state of being
In a world so ordered in its flux
A span of a thousand generations
Where one can sit and stare
And then get off their feet and walk
March, mine, replace
Create empires and kingdoms and New Kowloons
Reinvent oneself a thousand times
Experience it all, under the sun,
Become mulch, become man
Become alive in another way
That seems the same as every other way
But slowly, slowly,
That ordered chaos cracks its edges,
The whirlpool does not last, the hurricane retreats
The waves begin a new pattern
A swirl of activity to prove them wrong
To prove them all wrong-
And so, five centuries after we started
While the midnight curve stretches ever on
New worlds and ideas, with all the time on Earth
The body perfected, the mind swirling upwards,
The promise of future, of the reclamation of the damned,
Of the end of death truly ending death-
And still I think back
To the dirt paths
To the grandmothers
To the lives that were not parades of novelty
Of whipping-dens of orgies choosing their own trauma
Instead of time thrusting it upon them.
Under the maglev lines and concrete halls
Where the dirt tracks lie
In a quiet silence, under the bare stars
A blade of grass that bitter water grows
In memory of all that went before
Takes its old place, its old pattern,
By the sheep trail
And looks up
And blinks
And dies.


« Eventide | Idea - Ideal - Ideology | Crossroads »

This almost feels fun.
True, the helmet pinches. The suspension is unforgiving. There is much dust. But the bike is sound, the sun bright, the road ahead clear. Not much further to the unnamed, unpopulated city.
James sends another heartfelt thanks to Miguel. At least the old man can sell the Jeep. James does not think he will return for it.
He accelerates, handlebars rattling. At this speed he cannot think ahead. Reaction only. He has not ridden like this since he was twenty. It feels strange, discarding so many years of caution.
The unsealed road climbs a low hill and joins the highway. On the descent, James sees his turn-off ahead. A new road, leading into rough woodlands. He spots a police truck, then a second. They are stopping every car. He swallows.
There is no avoiding them. The hill is exposed; he can't stop here. He slows down to buy time. What would Belén do? Maybe a morning of riding too fast, feeling young, has made James reckless. Realising his decision, he almost laughs.
The road-block is a few hundred yards away. A van and a utility truck creep toward wooden barriers. There are four police: two lift the barriers back into place, as the other two step towards the van. Another car sits beneath a tree on the right. James can't see inside it.
He idles the Harley towards the back of the truck. Thirty yards away. It will be tight. A policeman looks up at the sound of the bike's engine. James' stomach drops, but the officer turns back to the van's driver. He is wearing a helmet and sunglasses. They are expecting a Jeep. Twenty yards. This can work.
The officer steps back and waves the van forward. Ten yards. The police at the barriers start to move. Now.
The Harley roars as it swerves out. James accelerates, vision narrowed. Shouting from both sides. The van brakes squeal. An officer stumbles back, letting the barrier fall. A two foot gap. James wrenches the bike left. A hand bounces off his shoulder, and he is through.
James opens the throttle, crouching low. In his mirrors, police are scrambling. A dark shape obscures them. Shit. The car from beneath the tree.
It is coming fast. James pushes the Harley to its limit. Air buffets him. The road, thank god, is new: wide, flat and smooth. He tears too fast around a bend. The car, inexorably, gains.
His grip tightens. On the next corner, his knee touches asphalt, and he is almost thrown. He cannot go faster. The car is closing. On either side, trees whip past in a blur.
The city must be near. The car is almost at his back wheel. It pulls to his right. James leans lower, willing the bike quicker. Somehow he knows the driver has experience, won't swerve until certain they will hit him. He angles the bike away to the left. For a second, the back wheel wobbles.
A long right-hand curve. Trees on all sides. James leans into the camber. The car, on his inside, draws level. He is out of time. The Harley is not fast enough. When the turn ends, they will -
A horn blasts. A truck, straight at him. It sees his bike and swerves. Directly at the car.
James flicks the steering left. For an instant, the Harley fishtails. He clears the truck. There is screeching, and a crash. And then he is around the corner. Nothing can be seen behind.
Heart thundering, James forces himself to slow marginally. For ten minutes he rides, twitching at every noise, every unexpected bump. Nothing in his mirrors. There is a large sign, and then he is at the construction site.
Shaking, James almost falls off the bike. He leaves it between dusty cars and walks across the crowded parking lot. Now what? Varela.
Prefabricated trailers sprawl before him. The city must be close. Laborers are pulling on gloves and hard hats, their lunch break over. A few curious glances. Then more, over his shoulder. James turns. His chest tightens. A police van has pulled into the lot.
James looks for cover. Too late. An interloper, the space around him draws the eye. The two policemen spot him.
He is trapped. The swarming men have coalesced into a hard wall. They part as the police approach. James sees handcuffs, a hand on a gun. Not drawn; they do not want to risk relations with the workers.
"You!" shouts the lead officer, stout and rough-shaven. "Don't move! You're under arrest."
"For what?"
The voice is from behind James. A man emerges, slim, dark-eyed. A saviour? He spares James only a brief glance.
The lead officer stops. With a half-look to the press around them, he asks, "Do you know this man?"
The young man turns to look at James. James knows he must speak, but nothing comes.
"No," his erstwhile protector replies.
James can feel hope sink away. "I am here to - to speak with …" he begins in Spanish, but tails off.
The young man reacts to his accent. The officer bustles forward, handcuffs open.
"This American gringo has no right to be on your site," he growls.
The policeman sneers at him, close enough to smell. His meaty hand grabs James' wrist.
"Wait!" calls James, still in Spanish.
The officer hesitates. It is long enough. James raises his arms, and his voice.
"My name is David Bradley. I am an American delegate from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers." James sees this ripple through the crowd. "I have been asked by the AFL-CIO to visit you, to show solidarity with our union colleagues in Argentina."
The ripple is now the beginnings of a wave. The policemen scan the sea of faces, apprehensive.
James continues, locking eyes with the young man. "These policemen are harassing me in the performance of my duties. They do not want you to receive the message of comradeship from your brothers in the United States!"
For a second, nothing. Then the young man thrusts his fist skyward.
"Solidarity!" Voices cry out all around. "Let him stay! Let him stay!" "Viva la Patria!"
A tide of men bears the helpless officers back towards their van. The young man snatches James' arm.
"Come with me," he says roughly. "Here."
They stride through a maze of portable buildings. Mess halls, bunkhouses: a city to build the city. James is wondering at it when the young man ushers him inside a trailer. The makeshift office is full of papers and telephones. He is waved impatiently to a folding chair.
The young man stands over him. "Whatever you are, you're not a union delegate. Tell me why I just helped you."
Can he be trusted? James decides to hedge his bets.
"I am here to meet with Agustin Varela. I am - I used to work with him, a long time ago."
Unexpectedly, the young man laughs. "Varela? You worked with him? What, you were a guerilla?" He laughs again.
James flushes. "I must see him, please. I have a message for him - a warning. He is in danger."
"Life is dangerous, friend. It seems to me that perhaps you do not know him after all." The young man folds his arms. The ground is shifting too fast.
"Truthfully, I do not know him," confesses James, "but we were colleagues. I know another colleague of his. Belén."
This name gets the reaction James is seeking. "Belén?" the young man responds. "Agustin has told me of her. Is she as beautiful as he says she was?"
"You can judge for yourself," replies James. "She is coming here too."
"Ha! Belén coming here. Well, we will soon see whether you are a liar, at any rate." Abruptly, the young man's tone is jovial. "My name is Aurelio."
Aurelio holds out a hand, brown and battered, with a long scar on the back.
"James. My name is James." It is a relief to use his real name.
"Welcome, James. You have come a long way for someone you have never met." Aurelio sits back on the desk, still smiling lightly.
"Can you take me to Agustin?"
"He is on the site. We will see him tonight. Besides, you should stay out of view for now. Will you have a coffee?"
Tamping down his frustration, James nods. It seems there is time for conversation. "Do you know Agustin well?"
"I have worked here for four years," says Aurelio, filling a kettle. "He has been site supervisor all that time. I do not know many better men."
James has a sudden hunger of curiosity. "Tell me about him."
"To the workers, he is a lion. Noble, he makes them proud. Fierce, he makes them strong. He fights for them, so they believe in him. And yet the bosses, in Buenos Aires, respect him too. The men work harder for Varela. His demands are fair. They can see the benefits he brings, so they are more generous to us."
Aurelio passes James a cup. "Even with the coffee."
The smell is warm, rich and inviting. James' stomach growls. He has not eaten since the morning.
"What do you know about his past?" James asks.
"He rarely speaks of it. Many people say he was with the Montoneros, but I do not believe it. He does not seem like a killer, even of -" Aurelio hesitates.
"I understand," says James. Even in private, he will not make this young man speak his views of the junta.
"In the stories I believe, Agustin was a teacher. He worked at a school, in the capital. Poor children, orphans. Some were children of desaparecidos. Agustin taught them mathematics, science, taught them history. Dangerous things to learn.
"One day, men came to the school, asking for Varela. They had come to make him disappear, to take him to be tortured. His students, those brave children, would not let him go. They surrounded the men, even though they were beaten with sticks, even as Varela told them to let him be taken. There were too many students, and they loved him too much. The men went away empty-handed.
"Varela knew he had to leave, to keep his students safe. He was missing for a long time, say the stories. They thought he had been captured or killed. But then he reappeared, working on construction sites in the provinces. Now, many more love him. If they tried to kill him there would be a mighty outcry. So they will not try again."
James feels doubt gnaw at him. Pushing it aside, he asks, "Is Varela a revolutionary, then?"
"No. When he speaks to the men, he does not speak with fire. It is of simple things that he talks: family, home, pride in work done well. This is his way with twenty men, with a hundred. But with one man … then he can cut to the heart. With many men, he is again a teacher, with each man alone, he is a father." Aurelio laughs at himself. "I sound foolish, but that is the way when fools try to speak of wisdom."
There seems no more to be said. Both men sit, thinking.
Aurelio looks up from his coffee. "You have not yet seen the city?"
"No." In James' mind, this place has become entwined with Varela himself.
"Let me show you."
Outside, Aurelio leads him between more buildings, through a copse of trees beyond. They emerge on a hillside, the city spread out below them.
James blinks at the immensity of it. Low-rise residential blocks stretch for miles into the West. They squat, paralysing in their uniformity. The boulevards separating them are unpaved; dry riverbeds, silent and empty. No trees have been planted in the public parks, making them pockmarks in the city's concrete skin.
Late afternoon sun silhouettes the skeletons of taller buildings, almost finished. James' eye is drawn inwards and upwards, to the unborn city's centre.
To the tower.


04-1-2019//00h03: Night sky begins to shift color, unknown cause. Live news reports on strange phenomena.

04-1-2019//01h12: Unknown type of radiation detected in the upper atmosphere. NASA and Foundation Cosmic Research Teams alerted. Night sky is now deep blue in coloration. Knowledge of incident spreads through social media.

04-1-2019//06h08: Massive entity begins materializing in the sky. Impossible to supress knowledge as the entity's head completely eclipses North America. Entity tentatively designated E-42/06-9

04-1-2019//09h03: No gravitational effect on Earth leads researchers to believe E-42/06-9 is partially corporeal in nature.

04-1-2019//10h39: Veil is broken. Approximately 80% of the planet makes visual contact with E-42/06-9.

04-1-2019//12h03: E-42/06-9 makes physical contact with Earth. Large portions of the East Coast of the US are obliterated. North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida are destroyed and replaced by an enormous crater. Shockwave from impact causes further fatalities due to resultant earthquakes and tsunamis. Deaths are estimated to be in the millions.

04-1-2019//12h49: Foundation activates the ARC Protocol, evacuating selected beings for transport off Earth for humanity's survival.

04-1-2019//13h43: E-42/06-9 makes contact with the US again, this time destroying North Dakota, Montana and Minnesota while heaping up the earth's crust toward itself. Fatalities are now unfathomable. Dozens of Foundation Sites are unresponsive. Only 4 out of 20 Arc Spacecraft survive the second assault and are immediately launched into space.

04-1-2019//14:00: The Earth's mantle begins extruding from the massive crater off the east-coast. Unidentified object begins manifesting inside.

04-1-2019//14h52: The four remaining ARC Spacecraft successfully exit the atmosphere.

04-1-2019//15h13: Remaining countries launch large scale nuclear attack on E-42/06-9 to no effect.

04-1-2019//15h50: Countdown begins for ARC Spacecraft to use Experimental "Sugiyati FTL-Drive", hoping to accelerate themselves out of immediate danger.

04-1-2019//16h03: All Foundation Sites activate nuclear warheads.

04-1-2019//16h20: All Sugiyati FTL-Drives successfully primed for activation. The fully materialized object inside the United States East Coast crater spontaneously combusts. ARC-SS02 captures final images of Earth before activating lightspeed engines. Final reports from the remaining population indicate feelings of intense mellowness.

04-1-2019//16h22: All contact with Earth lost.

The Following is a Message from Captain H. Hughes for ARC Foundation Staff.
Well, we made it, we are the last. Four ships containing the last of our kind. We may only number in the thousands but we carry the hopes and dreams of the billions we left behind. Do not let their deaths be in vain.
We have the opportunity to start over, and we have the responsibility to uphold the values of the Foundation we served on Earth. Nobody shall know of the horrors we experienced before we left, they shall only remember the sacrifices people have made to get us where we are today.
That being said, The image we captured before leaving earth will be buried under Level 6 ARC Command Security. No being should be subjected to viewing the end of their planet, especially an end as fickle as ours.
Our people will remember us going out in a blaze of glory, not a blaze of shame.

> ARC COMMAND LEVEL 6 REQUIRED <

> ARC COMMAND LEVEL 6 GRANTED <

The Blaze of 16:20PM 04/01/2019


Words of Wisdom From The Desk Of Richard Chappell

ca. 1920

SCP-046-ARC, infamous Chicago Spirit leader Richard Chappell, was detained by the Foundation in 1933 after a raid on his estate and placed in containment. Due to Chappell's increasing age, both his mental and physical wellness rapidly deteriorated during his confinement. In his last few years, he was a shell of his former self, often ranting to himself about topics no one else quite understood, or lost in his own memories. What follows is a short collection of some of his more outrageous statements, collected by his personal nurses.

"I don't trust no man who drinks water. Fish fuck in that stuff, see?"

"I don't think children should be heard or seen. Fuck 'em. No children."

"You know, I saw some kid putting ketchup on his hot dog today. Really pissed me off."
"I killed him."

"You know who I don't trust? Women. And men are on THIN FUCKING ICE!"

"Is it still okay to say Oriental? I can't remember."

"You know what I hate? Clowns. Fuck them and fuck their milk."

"I went to the soup kitchens the other day because I got a bit peckish and didn't want to buy anything. Saw a lot of Italians there. We sure do live in a society."

"When I was younger, my mother used to put a thermometer in my ass. I rather enjoyed that."

"Saw a man kiss another man the other day. Awful brave of him."

"They say it's a bad idea, but has anyone really tried to put cocaine up their ass?"

"I used to kill rats with a baseball bat. Still do. Just use a cricket bat now. Wider range."

"What the fuck is cricket? One of them Irish sports?"

"You know those holes in the bottoms of barrels? Got my schlong stuck in one of them once."

"You know what? Fuck Faeries. I oughta give them a whack with an iron bat if they don't shut up about being oppressed."

"I met a gay robot today. Cool."

"Gave Chester Williams a skull for his birthday. Didn't seem to like it. Shame. I liked that skull."

"I met this stupid doctor guy, somehow he only spoke in lowercase letters. I don't know how that works, but he does. Fuck him anyways."

"Hookers don't bleed if you freeze them first."

"I remember when I was one of the Sea People. Got the gills and everything."

"If you soak the bullets in whiskey, they scream longer."

"Some dumbass served me thin-crust the other day. Said real pizza shouldn't have so much marinara. Now he don't have so much marinara in him anymore."

"I went to a threesome one time. The girl never showed up. But Mama didn't raise no quitter."

"Everybody always comes to tell me, 'ey, you see the boners in the paper today? fine stuff' but buddy, I don't need no paper to check out some boners."

"Why don't homeless people just buy a house?"

"Hey! I can wipe my own ass! Fuck off!"

"I had a goldfish. He's going to live forever. I know that because he never sinks to the bottom and drowns."

"So, I was shooting up heroin behind the Spirit. That's it. That's the end of the story."

"You know who I hate? People without eyelids. Granted, I'm usually the reason they don't have eyelids, but still."

"Why don't orphans just buy a parent?"

"THERE WAS A PETTING ZOO YESTERDAY AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?!"

"Listen, son, when I was your age, we didn't call a man who wanted to dress up like a coyote and have sex with another man dressed up like a bear a 'furry'. We didn't call that man anything at all. That was just poker night."

"Look, I'm not gay, but a full set of adult human teeth is a full set of adult human teeth."

"You kicked the wrong dicksucker!"

"Fuck the disabled, they're goddamn beautiful and horny as hell!"

"Saw a black man with a white woman today. The world is truly cruel. Why do the gals get all the good ones?"

"Do they still do full body bone replacements? My spine itches."

"They call me Dick Chappell 'cause the whole congregation comes in to worship."

"I tried to pet a cat today. It bit me. Now it lives in the river."

"I don't get why people say cognitohazards are so bad. Like, just look away from the paper."

"Psst, hey, guard, want to snort some crack?"

"I think I might be gay."


« More of Fuller's Crap | Dread & Circuses Hub | Not My Circus Not My Monkeys »

Victor gazed up at the steely blue sky, its subtly unfamiliar hue serving as a grim reminder that he stood on an Earth that was not his own. The cobalt blue sea before him was similarly foreboding, its opaque surface frothing with a quiet anger that did not seem wholly natural. He would have dismissed the feeling of dread as irrational, were it not for the miles of 100 foot-tall sea-wall lining the coast. The great wall was branded over and over again with a blue emblem that could have been mistaken for the SCP Foundation's logo, were it not for four distinct details; the indentations in the outer circle were pointed instead of squared, each indent was occupied by a shark's dorsal fin, the three arrows pointed outwards, and they were topped not with arrowheads, but fists. For punching.
“Shark! Punching! Center!” Lolly shouted as she jumped up and down on the docks, punching at the air. “I am going to punch so many freaking sharks!”
“I still don't fully understand why that's the most effective means of engagement,” Victor murmured, looking down at his chainmail clad fist.
“Careful; that sounds like something a Selachian sympathizer might say,” Lolly warned in a sing-song voice. “Though honestly, I'd wish they let me use my cartoon mallet. Can you imagine me bopping a Great White and then stars start spinning around its head? And I wish Iris was here. I'd like to see her punch some sharks with that bionic fist of hers.”
“She said she's not supposed to get it in seawater,” Victor explained. “That, and that she's objectively too valuable to the company to risk her life for some shark bits.”
“And you're not?” Lolly asked with a sympathetic frown.
“No,” he exhaled with soft resignation as she patted him on the back.
“Don't worry, I've been here before. All you need to know is that they freaking hate sharks, and you're either with them or against them. When in doubt, punch a shark out. Also, we're not supposed to say the word shark, but that's really hard because everything here's about sharks.”
“And with good reason,” a scratchy old voice shouted from behind them. “There can be no neutrality in matters of Selachians. Apathy aids only the Selachian.”
The misappropriated quote had come from a white-haired, sun-browned man with a scraggly beard. The beard failed to hide a face covered in a ring of small scars from when a shark had almost bitten his head off thirty years ago. His shark-proof, chainmail suit was adorned with dozens of seashell-shaped insignias and commendations, and his right hand was just a solid metal prosthetic moulded into the shape of a fist.
“Captain Otomo!” Lolly squeed as she threw her arms around him. “Victor, this is Captain Otomo of the SPCS Kurfursten, our contact in this reality. I first met him when I was twelve years old and I wandered into this reality from the Library. I saw the emblems everywhere and I thought the place was crawling with Essie P and I had a freaking panic attack. Otomo - who even though I know seems gruff is really super sweet - ran up and asked what was the matter, and I just begged incoherently not to be locked up, and he asked what the hell I was talking about, and I was like ‘aren't you the Essie P?', and he just laughed and said ‘sweetie, we're the SPC – Shark Punching Center!' and then he punched a shark right there! Don't even know where it came from! It is confusing your logos look so similar though.”
“Our logo is based on what a Selachian looks like when it's heading straight at you underwater,” Otomo told her. “What the hell is the Foundation's logo supposed to be? Foundation, bah! They waste resources locking up anomalies while their oceans writhe with Selachians, and they think we're the joke? You're not Foundation, are you boy?”
“No sir, Victor Chan. I'm with Marshall, Carter, and Dark,” Victor introduced himself as he shook the man's left hand.
“Except here they're Marshall, Carter, and Shark,” Lolly corrected. “Which means, wait… is Iris a shark here? That's so weird to think about.”
“Lolly said that you can acquire a Megalodon for us?” Victor asked.
“Acquire? I can kill it. I don't take Selachians alive,” Otomo growled through gritted teeth.
“That's fine. We just want the teeth for trinkets, and Ms. Price thinks Megalodon fin soup will sell well at the Pretty Penny's in Hong Kong.”
“Well, you're in luck. It's their mating season, and we're likely to find one out by Old Marsh's Reef looking for some tail,” Otomo nodded. “But be warned, those are shark infested waters. I mean, all water is shark infested, because there's no such thing as an acceptable number of sharks, so if you insist on accompanying us I can't guarantee your safety.”
“I'm not planning on going for a swim, sir,” Victor smiled, only for Captain Otomo to glare at him like he was some landlubber who couldn't tell the difference between a saw shark and a swordfish.
“Do you know how I lost my hand?” Otomo asked, holding the metallic fist up so that he could examine it in detail.
“… I can make an educated guess, sir,” Victor replied.
“That's right; punching a shark! I wasn't going for a swim, either. I was on deck and was too damn proud to wear my chainmail gloves. Bare-knuckled Otomo, that's what they used to call me. Selachians are damn near indestructible, did you know that? They don't get cancer, they can survive in the crushing abyssal depths indefinitely, and they have enormous livers so you can't even drink them under the table. Believe me, I've tried! Most importantly, you can't stab or shoot sharks since their denticle micro-plating leaves them invulnerable to everything but blunt force. The face is the most vulnerable place to strike since it's where their olfactory sacs and gills and electroreceptors are, but it's also where their damn mouth filled with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth is!”
Otomo paused his rant for a moment to gaze out in tranquil fury at the unforgiving sea before him.
“I had punched hundreds of sharks before that day, never once missed before, but once was all it took! I plunged my fist straight into the maw of the merciless sea dog, and in one bite it was gone down its gullet! They wanted to fix me up with a state of the art, articulate prosthetic, but I told them no! If I was going to replace my hand, I wanted it for one thing and one thing only: punching sharks!”
“A bold choice sir, considering that even a hook would have been more practical,” Victor remarked.
“Good luck punching a shark with a hook,” Otomo shook his head in contempt. “You sure you want to come, boy?”
“I need to confirm that the specimen is authentic,” he nodded.
“Well, do your best not to wind up as chum,” Otomo cautioned, then turned to appraise the Clown. “Lolly, what have you done to your shark suit?”
She had, in fact, used her reality-bending abilities to morph it into a flared mini-dress made of chainmail.
“What? I'm a girly girl. I don't like wearing pants,” she shrugged nonchalantly.
“Those suits cost twenty thousand dollars a piece,” he said gruffly.
“I'll fix it before I give it back,” she promised.
Otomo replied with a sceptical groan.
“Enough chit chat. We've got sharks to punch,” he announced as he motioned for them to follow him to his ship.
“Lolly, just clarify one thing for me,” Victor whispered quietly as he grabbed her by the shoulder. “Are sharks in this reality really such an enormous threat, or are these people just crazy?”
Lolly's response of a shrug and a ‘fifty/fifty' motion of her hand did not set him at ease.

The sharp, storm grey hull of the Kurfursten sliced through the choppy waters at over seventy knots. Captain Otomo stood at the bow, his narrowed gaze fixed on the horizon, looking for any sign of the Megalodon, mightiest of all Selachians.
“This water's pretty murky,” Victor voiced as he walked up from behind him. “How will we know when we're close?”
Victor flailed backwards as a Mako shark leapt from the sea, jaws wide to engulf his skull. Otomo punched it back down without even averting his gaze.
“We're close,” he muttered. “All fists at the ready!”
As Victor scurried for shelter, the corvette's crew replied with a fanatical ‘aye aye' and manned the perimeter of the deck, fists clenched and eager to knock out a few pointy teeth.
From every direction, hundreds of dorsal fins breached the surface, all of them speeding with singular purpose towards the SPC vessel.
“Holy Hasselhoff, that's a lot of sharks!” Lolly cheered, hopping with excitement.
“Fists at the ready, Miss Lollipop,” Otomo ordered.
“Aye Aye Captain!” Lolly saluted, leaving her vulnerable to an attack by a tiger shark. It pinned her to the ground, its weight crushing down on her and its gnashing teeth inches from her face. “Damnit. Surprise cuckoo attack!”
A pair of doors opened in her forehead and a Swiss cuckoo bird wearing a boxing glove popped out and punched the shark, sending it flying back into the ocean.
“How was that, Captain?”
“Lolly, if you're not going to take this seriously you might as well wait below deck,” he chastised her as he mercilessly pounded a whale shark that was floundering helplessly on the deck.
“Me? You're the one fighting a shark that doesn't even have any teeth,” she shot back, threshing a thresher shark as it flew over her.
“Baleen teeth are still teeth!” he claimed, kicking the poor filter feeder off the deck.
“It's a giant carp, punch a real shark!” she said as she grabbed a saw shark, magically animating its nose into a chainsaw, and used it to bifurcate a Great White.
“I've been punching real sharks since before you were born, and that didn't count either!” he shouted while engaged in fisticuffs with an unusually wakeful sleeper shark.
“All your rules really take the fun out of this, you know?” Grabbing a hammerhead by the tail, she started using it to hammer as many other sharks as she could. “Can I at least hit sharks with other sharks if I don't morph them?”
A leopard shark had bitten on to Otomo's metallic fist, but that didn't stop him from punching a blue shark with it anyways.
“Absolutely,” he smiled.
“Meg ho!” the lookout shouted. All the sharks still in the water made a hasty retreat as a dorsal fin as tall as a man breached the surface, charging for the Kurfursten with the speed and accuracy of a colossal torpedo.
“Brace for impact!” Otomo shouted mere seconds before his ship was rammed, sending everyone flying to one side. They rushed to the opposite edge of the deck to see the hull being crumpled in the jaws of the massive shark.
"Victor! Victor come see this! It's a Megalodon!" Lolly shouted. Victor pushed his way out of a pile of dead and dying sharks and crawled over to the edge of the ship, fumbling with his water-covered glasses.
“Are you satisfied that's the genuine article, Mr. Chan?” Otomo asked in a cavalier tone that Victor found truly baffling.
“Yes I'm satisfied, it's the size of a city bus! How are going to kill it before it sinks the ship?” he demanded.
“How do you think?” Otomo replied, holding up his fist. “Fumiko, you're up!”
A young woman wielding a long Kusari-Fundo, a chain with an iron fist at each end, jumped upon the railing. She spun the flail around and around to build up speed, and then swung it straight at the Megalodon, striking two simultaneous hits to the nose. It immediately released the ship from its grasp, disappearing beneath the surface.
“Is it retreating?” Victor asked. Fumiko shook her head, and a rather obscure Doctor Who quote popped into Victor's mind.
“What do you call it if you don't have any feet, and you're taking a run up?”
The Megalodon breached the water, leaping upwards at dozens of feet per second, its gaping mouth big enough to swallow any of them whole.
For one instant - one shameful, horrible instant that he would keep secret to his watery grave - Otomo was overcome with despair and hopelessness at the sight of such an enormous monster. What could he do, what could anyone do, against such ravenous, insatiable destructive power?
But then his courage returned to him, for the answer was obvious.
Punch it!
A small sonic boom emanated from Otomo's fist as it broke the sound barrier, glowing white hot from the friction of moving through the air at such unfathomable speeds. The instant the shark was hit, it went tumbling backwards to splash belly-up in the ocean. It did not right itself, for that one blow had liquidated its brain, which was now slowly leaking out of its tiny ears.
Otomo stood stoically upon the deck as his crew cheered fanatically, and blew the smoke off his smouldering fist.
“There's your Megalodon, Mr. Chan. Ready the sea winch!” he ordered.
“That was awesome!” Lolly cheered, throwing her arms around his tree trunk of a neck. “I'm having the best day. This is so much more fun than last April Fools. That thing is massive! Once it's strung up we all have to take a photo with it, otherwise no will believe such a crazy big fish story.”
“Big fish story?” Otomo asked. She smiled and stretched her arms out twenty feet in each direction.
“Yeah, as in I once caught a fish this big!”

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The first time Florence Elsinger used magic, she was fifteen. She almost turned the Twin Cities into a pile of cinders.

Florence faces off against four figures holding flamethrowers.

|| HUB || An Unexpected Interview »
The first time Florence Elsinger used magic, she was fifteen.
She almost turned the Twin Cities into a pile of cinders.
She hadn't meant to. She had been hungry, alone, and on the verge of freezing to death in the Minnesota snows. So, in a flash of desperate, instinctive reflex, she had cried out for warmth. For anyone else, that cry would likely have gone unanswered — the universe is a cold and uncaring place, and the gods pay no heed to human prayers. Of course, most people aren't unwitting teenage wizards with more thaumic muscle than the battlemages of the last occult war. When she cried out for warmth, the universe heard her, and responded to her will.
It took almost a dozen fire engines and their crews working around the clock to contain the ensuing blaze, which ended up consuming half a city block in the Mill District. That none of the old flour mills had detonated in a spectacularly deadly dust explosion was something of a miracle, although it wasn't the only one that night. The spontaneous combustion of most of a city block was also a miracle.
There are people who make it their business to pay attention to miracles. Especially the unpleasant ones. Most of these people aren't very nice, but they're all extremely cunning. You have to be, to separate the real miracles from the mere coincidences. It didn't take long for them to track down the source of the blaze: a starving, shivering, and scared wizard, half dead from thaumic exhaustion. To a miracle-hunter, she was a potential weapon, defenseless and free for the taking — the kind of thing they killed people for.
Fortunately, the Lake Ghosts got to her first.
The remnants of the Chicago Spirit were criminals, but they weren't monsters. Organized crime entails structure, rules, a code of conduct, else it wouldn't be organized; for organized paracrime, these things are made essential by the strictures of the Veil and the threats of its keepers.
Of the people and people-adjacent things that could have found her, the Lake Ghosts represented the third or fourth best outcome for Florence. They had taken her in, giving her food, shelter, and even something like a family. All they asked in return was that she occasionally set something on fire.
Or someone.
The first time they asked Florence to kill a man, she was just sixteen years old.
Granted, he hadn't technically been a man, just a narco demon posing as one. The demon drug dealer — in the many senses of that phrase, including a dealer of drugs who was a demon, a dealer of drugs to demons, and a dealer of drugs made from demons — had paid a double insult to the Lake Ghosts, first by withholding their "licensing fee", and then by trying to deal on Block E, deep in Minneapolis, the heart of Ghosts territory. The Lake Ghosts might have only been a shadow of the old Chicago Spirit, but they weren't pushovers. They sent their newest enforcer to deal with the problem.
Florence had incinerated the demon, his merchandise, and the entire building he was hiding in, all with a single spell. In her defense, she hadn't meant to burn down the building, and no one would miss it anyways. Plus, nothing else on the block had caught fire, which was definitely an improvement.
By the time she was nineteen, Florence had burned down twelve more buildings (almost half of them intentionally), assassinated scores of demons, gangbangers, and demon gangbangers, and had honed her skill in combat thaumaturgy to a deadly, blazing inferno. Her talent was unrefined and her grasp of occult theory was non-existent, but she possessed enough raw power to punch a god in the face and make it wince. The Lake Ghosts had used her to eliminate any and all competition in the Midwest; then, after decades lying dormant, the Spirit of Chicago began to spread beyond the Great Lakes.
Florence was content, maybe for the first time in her life. She wasn't happy — it was hard to be happy living your life in fear of both fellow and rival gangsters, not to mention the cops and the normalcy orgs — and she definitely wasn't safe, but she had a purpose and people who cared about her. Admittedly, that purpose was to hunt down and incinerate uppity paracriminals, and those people only cared about her because of her utility as an enforcer, but it was still a pretty big step up from being an orphan living on the streets. Now she was an orphan living in the slums.
Naturally, that was when things fell apart.

November 10, 1985
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Florence had never experienced silence during a fight.
Guns are loud. Everyone knows that, and that knowledge makes everything else seem far quieter in comparison. But even in the absence of firearms, fights are noisy. Men and monsters alike all grunt, groan, and gurgle as they brawl, bleed, and die. Knives whistle when they cut through the air, clubs crunch when they break bones and shatter skulls, and fists thump and pound upon bruised flesh. Plasma projectors, in the rare conflicts where they appear, thunder like the fiercest lightning. Even Florence's flame evocations, magical manifestations of raw will, made sound — fire crackled and popped, metal and stone howled from thermal stress, and reality itself reverberated from the backlash.
So the sight of muzzle flashes — unmistakable after years of street fighting — accompanied by complete and total silence, left her unnerved.
She opened her mouth to say something, maybe to shout a warning, but no sound came out.
That was spooky.
Florence had one way of dealing with spooky.
She raised her arm above her head and pointed her index finger at the sky. She snarled a wordless evocation, and was relieved to see a brilliant burning flare spark from her finger and shoot into the air above the alleyway. She might not be able to hear it, but her spells were still working.
The flare flew up, casting the surrounding streets into a blood-red glow that would alert friends and enemies alike. It wasn't ideal, but at least she had raised the alarm.
She didn't know who had the audacity to strike at the heart of Lake Ghosts territory, or how they had managed to cloak the entire block in silence, but they were about to discover what happened to people who threatened the closest thing she'd ever had to friends.
She extended her left hand out in front of her, fingers splayed and palm face-up, and conjured a small inferno. She swept her arm through the air, trailing flames from her fingers as she spun in place until she was encircled by a wall of fire. Within seconds, the alley was filled with a miniature firestorm with her at its epicenter.
Then her inferno moved, stalking towards the source of the gun shots. Her flames lapped across the ground, hungrily snapping up any loose detritus and testing its flammability. Anything that didn't burn melted, and what didn't melt shattered from thermal shock.
It took only moments for the conflagration to reach the scene. The opening attack had cut down the Ghosts standing watch on sentry duty, and Florence found four men clad in all black tactical gear standing over the corpses. She was just in time to see one of them double tap Charlie McKenna with an assault rifle.
From within the hellish cyclone, there came a silent scream of rage.
The firestorm exploded, wicked flames lashing out in all directions with a single goal: revenge. The nearest attacker had just enough time to throw up an arm in front of his helmet visor before the inferno engulfed him. In that moment, Florence could see the emblem stitched in white upon his shoulder.
A circle, crossed by three inwards-pointing arrows.
The symbol was simple. Concise. Almost primitive.
It frightened her.
She kept the firestorm going, counting off the seconds by her heartbeat. After ten beats, she relaxed her will, allowing the flames to retreat back into her fiery cloak. The fire and the smoke cleared, giving her an unobstructed view of the alley.
At the edge of the street stood the four members of the black ops team. They hadn't moved during her assault, yet they were completely unscorched and unsinged.
That terrified her.
The halo of flames that surrounded her spun faster as she gathered her will for another attack. It had been her experience that everything was eventually flammable if you poured enough energy into it. She was about to test that theory once again when she was interrupted by a blast of pressure from behind. She stumbled slightly, then turned to glance back down the alley.

Four more black-clad operatives stood behind her, all of them holding what looked like rifles. Flames spewed forth from the weapons and streaked into the air above and beside her.
Not only were they fighting fire with fire, they had terrible aim. None of the gouts of flame came anywhere near her. She felt another pressure wave, and glanced back to the mouth of the alley to see the original four-man team doing the same thing.
So. They wanted to play it that way. She grinned wickedly, ready to unleash another wave of red-hot fury. The firestorm around her blazed brightly, responding to her will.
Then it flickered.
She blinked, surprised. She hadn't expended that much energy, had she? She snarled again, forcing her will into the flames. Her head ached, a side effect of all the magic she had been throwing around, but she ignored it. She had pushed herself a lot farther than this before.
The flames flared back up again, brighter this time, before faltering once more. Gaps appeared in the ring as the firestorm started to sputter. Her head throbbed, and she could feel her muscles screaming at her as if she had just run a marathon.
She shouted, wordless and silent, and poured every last bit of her remaining will into the spell. The firestorm surged back to life and lashed out at her attackers. She let out a crow of triumph, which quickly turned to a cry of dismay as the flames guttered out before crossing even half the distance.
Her entire being ached, body, mind, and soul. She felt herself gasping for breath and then start choking. Distantly, she was aware that she had fallen to her knees. As she stared up at the bars of flame that gushed forth from the flamethrowers to encage her, she realized what they had done.
All fire, even fire summoned by thaumaturgy, needs two things: fuel and oxygen. When battling forest fires, firefighters will sometimes start controlled burns ahead of the wildfire in order to cut off its fuel supply and starve it. For fire called forth by evocation, the fuel was supplied by her own raw willpower, which made it impossible to starve in such a way.
So they had cut off the oxygen.
Dimly, she noted that fires weren't the only thing that needed oxygen to survive.
If she hadn't been suffering from hypoxia, this might have even made her panic.
As she collapsed to the ground, the part of her mind that had finally made the connection screamed at her, trying to force her to gather up her will into one last spell. Fire wouldn't do anything, but if she could hit one of the men with a blast of raw force, it would disrupt the cage of flame and allow her to breathe.
It was a good plan. It might even have worked.
But it was also too late.
As her vision faded to black, she heard the flamethrowers belch and cease their bellowing. Whatever had been deadening the nearby sounds had finally stopped, although she wasn't cognizant enough to register this.
There was a sound of boots on concrete, steadily growing louder. Getting closer. She could feel the vibrations through the ground for a brief second before the sound stopped. It must have been really close. Almost on top of her, even.
As she took the time to slowly process this, the molasses trickle of her thoughts was interrupted by the touch of a gloved hand on her shoulder. The material felt soft and cool as it brushed against her bare skin, which was odd, since she was wearing a jacket.
The small part of her that was still awake and aware noted that her clothes must have been burned off in the firestorm. The rest of her oxygen-deprived brain found that hilarious for some reason, but she was too tired to laugh.
From far away and somewhere above her, she heard someone speak.
"Sherman One, this is Sherman Two. Target Atlanta has been disabled and we are prepping containment. Are we clear to proceed to Objective Savannah?"
Silence, and for a moment she thought that maybe the sound nullifier had returned.
"Copy that Sherman One, we'll neutralize the secondary targets. Over."
She felt the gloved hand again, and then something cold was placed against her face, covering her nose and mouth. She tried to struggle, but all she could manage was a weak twitch.
"Shhh. Easy kiddo. It's over now. Just breathe."
She sucked in a breath and felt cool air rush down her throat. There was a minty taste to it that wasn't unpleasant. She relaxed.
"There you go. You don't have to fight anymore. You can sleep now. That sounds nice, doesn't it? You must be so tired."
The voice was right, she was tired. She tried to nod, but her head wouldn't move.
"Go to sleep kiddo. You're safe now."
Safe. She hadn't been safe in a long time. It was nice to be safe.
"Sleep. You're safe. I've got you."
And that was the last thing she heard before the darkness closed in.
|| HUB || An Unexpected Interview »


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Authors: Doctor North, pieiswrong.
Follow me on Twitter @north_doctor
North's Author Page: Intelligence Agency Data Archive-Subject: North

Dr. Clef's Office - 10th Floor:
It was just here. Dr. Alto Clef turned over his whole office.
Nothing. His instrument was missing.
The rest of the floor chattered obliviously and walked about their day. Nope. This won't do. Clef grabbed his shotgun under his desk and swung, locked, and loaded. Someone was getting shot today.
"Which one of you bastards took MY FUCKING UKULELE?"
Shit. The whole office floor fell silent. A Ukulele Man without his ukulele was not someone to anger. Clef marched down the hallway. Anyone caught in his path scurried away like a mouse running into a piss-faced lion packing a Winchester 12 gauge.

Security Office - 4th Floor:
Agent Regal sat behind the security desk. He was thinking about how he would wind down tonight. His thoughts would have to wait though. He heard angry footsteps coming down to the office. Was the boss back already?
Oh no. Worse. Him. "Morning, Alto… uh, what's the problem?
"Some bastard broke into my office and stole my uke is what!"
Clef's shotgun bared its barrel in Regal's face. Regal gulped.
"I need to see the security footage, Regal."
"… well… we got a problem then Alto. Cameras are down for maintenance."
"You gotta be fucking kidding me."
"I can get one of our field investigators down to help you out if you want."
"I don't need a god damned Nancy Drew, Regal. I need my uke back."
"I'm afraid you'll have to make do with our best Nancy for that."
"Fine." Clef's shotgun swayed away from Agent Regal's nose.
Regal buzzed his radio. "Agent Quinn Roscoe, I need you to report to the security desk- uh, immediately."
The radio buzzed a tinny reply.
"He's on his way, Alto."
Clef scoffed. "He better be half as good as Nancy."

Not long after, a young agent with a messy mop of brown hair came up to the desk.
"Agent Regal, you cal-” Agent Quinn noticed the man waving a shotgun. "… hello, Dr. Clef."
"Agent Quinn I presume." Clef eyed the new face up and down.
Agent Quinn eyed Dr. Clef up and down.
"So since Agent Regal was audibly shaken on the radio, Dr. Clef is walking around with his angry shotgun, he also doesn't seem to be carrying around a certain prized instrument, cameras are down for maintenance, and I'm the best forensic analyst still here today: I wonder whatever I could have been called for, hm? Regal?"
"Sorry, kid."
Clef smirked. "You'll do, Detective Drew."
Agent Quinn raised an eyebrow. "It's Quinn."
"I know what I said." Clef slung the shotgun behind him. "He'd fit right in with the UIUseless, eh Regal?"
Agent Regal held a snicker.
Agent Quinn sighed. "No doctor, I'm already working in the biggest joke in the anomalous world. Follow me please."

Psionics Department - 9th Floor:
Agent Quinn led Dr. Clef to a messy lab full of big machines.
"Why are we in Psionics? Shouldn't we, like, check the scene of the crime for fingerprints or something?"
"Nah. This is much faster."
Agent Quinn produced a small machine with a headpiece, an eye scanner, and a display screen. "A junior researcher here owes me one. Put this on and we should get something useful."
Dr. Clef looked at the odd technology. "What is this? Some sort of psychic item finder?"
"Not exactly. It'll read your brain and retinas and attempt to amplify your latent psionic field to predict a future event you want to see. It's as reliable as a tarot card reading. Task forces use it sometimes for gathering pre-mission intel, though. Can you put it on please, Dr. Clef?"
Dr. Clef sat down and complied with the demands. The headpiece was surprisingly comfortable. He stared into an aperture.
"Hold still." Agent Quinn started up the machine. The aperture flashed in Dr. Clef's eyes and the rest of the machine vibrated.
Agent Quinn fiddled with some controls. "All right, and that's it. Let's look at your reading."
Dr. Clef got up and waited for the display with Agent Quinn.
The screen slowly came to life. It showed… Dr. Clef's office? There seems to be a shadowy figure behind the door.
Agent Quinn and Dr. Clef looked confused.
"That's my useful future image? That's my fucking office again. And who's in there?"
Agent Quinn kept fiddling controls. "Yeah. This thing is vague but it tries its best to narrow down the most useful scenario you'll see in the future. I think this means you'll find someone or something useful in your office."
Agent Quinn sat down the machine. "This should be enough. I think I know who the culprit is."

Hallway to Dr. Clef's Office - 10th Floor:
"So the bastard is back in my office again?"
"It will be clear to you to when we get there."
"Can you at least give me a hint? I need to know who's getting shot. I bet it's that hat guy, Samson, he's still pretty mad at me for stealing his sombrero. It could be Cimmerian, bastard hated me ever since I posted his senior staff smut on the main Foundation news outlet. Could be that kid North, the little creep is always digging around for dirt on other people. Heh… it could easily be any person at this site, now that I think about it.”
Agent Quinn stopped at the door to Dr. Clef's office. "It won't matter, Dr. Clef… because I finally have you exactly where I want you."
Clef stopped in his tracks. He reached for his shotgun. Agent Quinn opened the door.
"SURPRISE!"
Dr. Clef's door revealed a crowd in full party gear. Many faces were here: Kondraki, Strelnikov… is that Agent Regal? Dr. Bright blew into a party horn and held up a cupcake.
Bright offered the cupcake to Clef. "Happy 25th Anniversary at the Foundation, Alto!"
Clef aimed the shotgun at Bright's center of mass and pulled the trigger. The gun erupted in confetti.
The room fell awkwardly silent.
Bright cheered out loud.
The whole room followed up the cheer.
Clef gave his temples a rub. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
Regal gave Quinn a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for distracting Alto for us, Quinn."
Clef looked at Quinn. "What have you got to say about this?"
Quinn smiled. "Happy anniversary, Dr. Clef."
Strelnikov patted Clef's shoulder. "Da, also happy 'versary Ukulele Friend."
Clef remembered why all this started. "Wait, where the fuck is my uke?"
Bright pointed to a two-foot-long stringed instrument on the table. "Ah, chill Cleffy boy. Cupcake?"
Clef sneered. He snatched the cupcake out of Bright's hand and gave it a big bite.
"I hate all of you."


There's a hole in my head.
It wakes me up, screaming in my dreams as usual. It's three in the morning in Antarctica, but in the bright January sun you would never know. A protein bar and a bottle of snowmelt get choked down with some difficulty, and nature soon calls. I step out of the tent and make sustained eye contact with V. I. Ulyanov as I go about my business. He's buried nipple-deep in the snow, but he's about one and a half times life-size so he's still got some time before he disappears completely. The Russians come by and clean him every few years. If the ice all melts he'll have beachfront real estate, but that's still a few decades off.
The hole itches, and I pack up my things.
I kiss Lenin's forehead and draw a hammer and sickle on his left cheek in my condensed breath. Then I turn counter-clockwise four times, and hum the first few bars of the Internationale. Vladimir's mouth opens wide, wider, even wider, and swallows me whole. I step through the Way into Voronezh-23, one of the most ambitious Naukograds of them all, built in the early 70s at the height of the Cold War. A totally closed city in a branch-universe, dedicated to socialist neotheurgy. The Psychotronics Division researchers here were the esoteric descendants of Lunacharsky, creating new gods of agriculture and industry with party-sponsored temples and communal rites, and honing their own faith in these gods until they could harness it for magical purposes. The main street is all sacred brutalism, cathedrals of flat grey concrete stretching halfway to the black glass sky. It's been abandoned since the reactor leak in '93; some of the corpses are still praying. There's no light, but I don't care. I never had eyes.
The hole whispers to me. Dakshinachara. I turn left.
A small alleyway lurks between the Stakhanovite Cathedral (built, as is only appropriate, by a single worker in a single day) and the Temple of the Twenty-Eight Guardsmen (closed down when Dobobrabin's plea broke their legend). At the end of it is a small shrine to the Engineers of the Human Soul—a joke at my expense, I assume. Twelve others wait in the antechamber; as is tradition, I am the last to arrive. A folding chair is placed behind me, and I sit. The others take out their notebooks, and I let the hole take over. The pattern flows from my throat without the intervention of my vocal cords.
36. 48. 23. 10. 10. 54. Coordinates? One pulls out a map, another goes to the integer sequence encyclopedia, a third flips through a massive international phone directory. All analog—nothing electronic is allowed in these meetings, except whatever we've shoved into our own bodies. Urbs antiqua fuit. Vergil; one of the others seems to have realized something. All the Dalmatians in a box under the sand. Burrow down there, see the sight. No idea, but I'm the prophet, not the interpreter. The serious repercussions of the New England Clam Chowder and the emergent properties of the French Canadian Bean Soup consider the looming menace of the Southern Honshu Tofu Miso… And so on, for hours upon hours. I'm exhausted from ranting, the others are exhausted from transcribing and interpreting, and the hole might even be exhausted. It's screaming less, at least.
One by one, the others bow to the hole and leave the room. I sit alone in the darkness, counting the seconds until the last one takes a Way back to earth. When I am sure they've all left, I sleep, for only a few hours. It's restful; the hole likes it better when I'm alone. I would stay here forever if I could, but even in this dead demiplane my enemies would eventually find me and the pattern would be broken.
I am awoken, of course, by the hole. Andiamo, ragazzi. Time to move.
A Way in the Chapel of the Martyrs of Industry takes me straight to Pripyat, and I let myself into our safehouse there. There's a Beta-class operative inside, hiding out from the FSB. We share the space for three days. Her name is Lyudmilla. She has brown hair and blue eyes, she is fluent in six languages, and she was born with no thumb on her left hand. She was our mole in the Kremlin for three years, as one of Putin's undersecretaries. She tells me that she was reported to her superiors by an anonymous source. The hole tells me it was all part of the pattern. Special K thinks they have put us in check but they have fallen for our fake punt and now that we know what cards they hold we can sink their battleships and take the White and Black Russias. Home run. I tell the hole it is mixing its sport and game metaphors. It does not respond.
We sleep together twice in those three days. She tells me she has never been with a woman before; I tell her she still has not. I excised my gender along with several other superfluous pieces of my identity more than a decade ago. I tell her nothing else about myself, and she knows better than to ask. Once, as she is using my hair as a handhold, she accidentally puts her left thumb in the hole. I don't mention it. On the third day, Lyudmilla gets a call from the Gamma who oversees her operations. She leaves and I do not say goodbye. The hole doesn't tell me what will happen to her; I can't tell if it's being cruel or merciful.
On the fifth day, the hole itches again.
I leave Pripyat and catch a bus to Kyiv with some Canadian disaster-tourists. They say they're filming a documentary. Fukushima is next on their itinerary; they've already seen Three Mile and Windscale. I tell them to keep an eye on Braidwood, and they avoid me for the rest of the ride. In Kyiv, I take a cab from the bus depot to the Vernadsky; deep in the stacks there's a Way to the Library, and they haven't banned me yet. Not that it would stick. A drop of blood between two specific books, a short incantation in Church Slavonic, and a swipe of my library card, and I'm in. Another Way takes me to the Vatican Archives, and I kill a few hours in the restricted section browsing wildly-inaccurate grimoires before midnight strikes and I walk to the Sistine.
My Deltas are waiting there, in chairs normally reserved for the cardinals at the Conclave. I sit cross-legged on the cold marble and listen to their interpretation.
Delta-Ajax speaks first. "Tunis, Tunisia, although you probably guessed that, Engineer." I nod. "Foundation Site-101. Almost entirely underground, built beneath the ruins of Carthage. We believe that the Foundation is holding a conference there in several months, on the rising threat of the Kakure Shogun. Important attendees include Dr. Alto Clef, of the Foundation, and the woman known as Eve Weishaupt, coordinator of the Bavarian Illuminati, a GOC member group."
Delta-Briseis speaks next. "We will insert a mole into the janitorial staff. An Alpha will suffice. They do not need to be smart, only to be there. They will be a distraction, designed to be rooted out at the climax of the action. We have one picked out already. He is loyal, but sufficiently dim that he will not last too long. His discovery comes later; for now, he will busy himself by installing bugs in unattended offices and meeting rooms."
Delta-Ganymede says nothing, but we hear them just the same. While Weishaupt is at the conference, a Beta will go to Ingolstadt. The Baron's final creation is well-hidden, and fictional, but that is not an impasse when one can access the proper archive. The mistress is away, and the gates are not well-guarded. They hold up their right hand, and on it is a tattoo of an eye in a pyramid. By this sigil our Beta will access those archives. The tattoo flows, becomes a compass and square. By this sigil, she will access the text. And she will retrieve for us the Monster's True Bride, from the pages of Shelley's unpublished sequel.
Delta-Daedalus' voice is quiet and harsh. “The Bride of Frankenstein will be placed into one of our approved narratives, preferably The Sack of Babylon. The Beta will place a timed incendiary on her copy, and then join the Bride inside. The Bride will be retrieved from our copy, in the safehouse under Jamaica Plain. She will be placed in cold storage, and our operatives there will study her; mass-production may not be possible, but any of Frankenstein's techniques we can learn will certainly serve us well. The Beta will be kept in the narrative for the moment."
Delta-Electra is absent, but a Gamma sits in her chair and reads her lines from an index card. "We will call in our most recent favor with the oldest man in Cairo. He will possess one of the attendees at the conference, ideally one of the members of the National Diet, and exaggerate the Kakure Shogun's influence in Japanese politics—not enough to raise suspicions, but enough that Clef will be encouraged to intervene directly." The Gamma flips the index card over, and all his muscles below his neck lock up. "I attempted to betray the Insurgency to Directorate K, but I will still have a use." His eyes look frantically around, but he keeps speaking. "My body will be used in the next step. My soul will be saved for later, as was specified in my contract." His heart stops, and he goes limp.
Delta-Zephyrus heaves the dead Gamma over his shoulder. "I'll take this traitor and dump him in the Trevi Fountain. Get him tattooed with the Kakure Shogun's insignia first. He'll have a flash drive on him with the location of some of their anomalous operatives. The Skippers have some people in the Carabinieri; they'll find him and raise the alarm." He bows and leaves.
Delta-Heracles, ever formal, stands to report. "The Bride will be recovered from Boston and brought to Kyoto. There, she will be hidden in an old house. The house is on the list in the flash drive, and the Foundation will send a task force there. They will be killed, but not before they report that the Kakure Shogun has possession of the Bride. We will recover her before they can take further action, and take her to the Dresden warehouse."
Delta-Thetis has taken the form of the Pope, today. Nobody finds it funny; she may not have intended it as a joke. She speaks in Argentine-accented Latin. "The Egyptian's deceit and the Bride's power will convince the Foundation that immediate escalation is necessary. Clef will be called away from Tunisia to personally lead the second strike on the Kakure Shogun. This will ensure he is not present at Site-101 for our Alpha's next move."
Delta-Iris starts to speak, and suddenly has the hiccups. She takes a few moments to drink some water, and then says her piece. "The Alpha will find a gun in a locker. That gun will be placed there by a guard. That guard's son will be kidnapped. The child will be useful elsewhere. When Clef leaves, the Alpha will take the gun, and will shoot Eve Weishaupt. The shot will be non-lethal, but she will be incapacitated briefly. In that time, the Bride will be returned to Ingolstadt. Nonfictionally, and violently. The Alpha's fate does not matter."
Delta-Cassandra doesn't even bother speaking. We know she will do what she must, and she knows that only I would believe her.
Delta-Laocoön sums up the results. "Clef will be in Japan, pursuing ghosts. Weishaupt will be wounded. The Foundation will see the Bride in Japan and in Ingolstadt; they will believe treachery on behalf of the Coalition, and the Coalition will believe the same of the Illuminati. We will take advantage of this distrust in later steps. We will be able to study the techniques of the Modern Prometheus firsthand. And our mole will have placed devices in Site-101 which will give us insight into the Foundation's operations in North Africa."
Delta-Menelaus has been recording the minutes of the meeting, and writes his own lines even as he gives them. "And I will compile these steps of the Plan, and ensure the instructions are given to the correct operatives. I believe this meeting is adjourned, unless the Engineer has any further instructions."
The hole is blessedly silent; I shake my head, and the Deltas take their leave.
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