Anabasis will save us all

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Anabasis Site Director please
Start here
Eat more of my SCPs. Eat them all.
Also please eat some of these

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

The plane carrying Dr. Marlowe and Dr. Kohn touched down in northern Virginia, stopping short of Washington D.C. while en route.
"The president doesn't want us near him." They were told.
"We're not infected with anything, there's no risk of anything here."
"You try getting that in his head." The representative said derisively. No one took the president seriously anymore when it came to foreign policy issues. They'd all been numbed and conditioned to just nod whenever he was done working himself up into a racist lather, then leave and ignore what ever orders he issued. By the time he came around to realizing no one was following his orders, he was safe and sedate in his ranch in Louisiana, gone out in the bayou for days at a time without any contact with the outside world. Secret Service was supposedly with him at all times, but many had started to suspect they were leaving him out in the swamp on his own and praying that one night he wouldn't come back.
"Why am I even here?" Marlowe asked Kohn before they'd landed.
"You're the Site Director."
"But I don't know anything about the weapon, or the Foundation selling weapons, or anything about war or politics—"
"You are the Site Director overseeing Anabasis."
"So?" She suppressed a coughing fit, "It's just— I'm not— I'm just a Site Director. A painfully, painfully average Site Director."
He shifted in his seat to face her across the narrow aisle, "You are the top of the chain for SCP-1856. You alone are responsible for every aspect of its maintenance, containment, testing, and you are responsible if it or anything made by it gets loose. I'm not saying you're to blame for what happened in China, but when something like that happens, bearing all the hallmarks of Anabasis, you get involved by default. We don't make separate designations for two subsets of the same anomaly, we bunch it all together. That's basically what's happening here."
"What about you?"
"I'll be meeting with some of the O5s and discuss some strategies involving getting some people into China to try to get ahold of their Anabasis, if the Jinyiwei can get it to us. It's most likely a total waste of time; the Qing have pretty much wiped out the Jinyiwei by now."
"You won't be meeting with the Chiefs of Staff with me?"
He shrugged, "I'm an associate researcher, I don't have anything to say that you aren't already going to cover. I work with you, not over you, and you can kick me out any time you want. You're in charge of everything Anabasis-related. The fact that we didn't let you in on the old business in China was just politics. Not even the SCP Foundation is immune from politics."
She drew in a deep breath, "You're kicking me upstairs to deal with this on my own."
"You're the Site Director."
"I don't care, I wasn't in charge when we started out, and you withheld information from me up until a few weeks ago! Why aren't they including Baines or Tzu or anyone else who came before me?"
He sighed again and gripped the armrest of his seat, leaning over it slightly and repeating in the same tones, "You're the Site Director. Everyone else has been interviewed and spoken to. Everyone else has told the feds what they know. It doesn't matter if you have nothing new to add, you're the Site Director, they want to talk to you. If anything comes up that you can't answer for any reason, just say it's classified, and that revealing any further information puts both Foundation assets and US government UIU assets in serious danger. The only one who can overrule them is the president himself, and we can handle him."
"What do you mean handle him?"
He quirked a brow at her and sat back in his seat, "We're the Foundation."

Priscilla Locke stayed home, not wanting to venture out in the heat and humidity while people started panicking and flooding the streets in their cars, stocking up on gas and supplies as if a war with the Qing Empire meant actual combat coming to Miami. It wasn't even the Qing Empire at its full strength; the nation of a billion was in a death spiral, prolonged solely due to its massive size and population. Australia had almost completely gone, its government eviscerated and anarchy reigning amongst the hundred thousand or so still alive under the muck of red death that had swarmed them. By the time a Chinese fleet even reached the mainland United States, there'd be no China left for them to report to.
All of that was just too much for her to fully process. Seeing images of people writhing and dying en masse in China or Australia was horrifying and traumatic, but the thought that so many people were dying that entire nations were being wiped out within weeks just didn't seem to register in much the same way.
Her hand swung out and slapped the back of her cell phone, just as it began to vibrate. She opened it and reclined on her couch, laying it against the armrest and pressing it to her face.
"Yoooo, what the fuck is up?" It was Aurianne Sharpe, with a cacophony of street noises behind her.
"You're not at work?"
"No one is! I mean, not no one, they've still got people on-site and all, but no one is. They've shut down all operations for the time being. Nothing important for us so we get some vacation time before we all die. Everyone's saying the red stuff is coming for us next. Like, it'll just blitz across the ocean, skip over Panama or something, then sit its cloudy ass down directly on top of us, out of every other place in the world. You believe that? That'd be awesome if it did."
"Wait, so what are you doing right now?"
"Living large, bitch. Living so large."
"Why did they shut down operations? Don't they still need us? We should still be there; they'd tell us if we were being put on leave."
"I don't know. Do you know? I don't know. Who knows? Who cares? Give it a rest, Priss. The world's ending."
She sat upright on the couch, turning on the television and holding the phone to her ear, "No it's not. They've got people on it, haven't they? I've heard they know what it is and they know what to do and they're working on using a thing what does a thing to wipe it out." She obfuscated her words easily, always sure never to mention anything even remotely Foundation-specific over the phone, no matter what Foundation front company owned the wireless carrier.
"Whatever. I don't know. Do you know? I don't know. Who knows—?"
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
Priss coughed and lowered her phone, flipping it shut as a sudden migraine took hold of her. She pulled her legs up on the couch and rested her chin on her knees, staring blankly at the television screen, where images were showing Qing officials, heads shaved save for their braided queues, making announcements with broad sweeps of their arms and vigorous hand gestures, all under the headline of war. War with the United States over Anabasis.
The ramshackle device she had found in a moldy school basement, small enough to fit in a duffle bag, inscribed with the word "Anabasis" in Greek, was now supposedly responsible for bringing about a world war and possibly the death of over a billion people. The dank closet it was found in, with the man-shaped pile of ground meat beside it, was opened by a custodian, and the device itself could have been taken in by any other Foundation agent. But it hadn't been any other agent; it had been her. She couldn't help but feel responsible.

Marlowe sat across from some two dozen prim and proper suits, shining with a multitude of military medals and pins and ribbons and stripes of all sorts. Seven generals (though one they seemed to affectionally called "Colonel" Umber, in a beret and with a thin mustache and goatee) accompanied by seemingly four or five aides or attendants each. She had only two with her. They had crammed three different desks together in the briefing room, and Marlowe was lodged at the crevice where two of the desks met, the rounded edges of both desks jutting in to her stomach any time she tried to scoot in closer. Everything was rushed, it seemed. No one seemed to care.
They'd asked her a question, and she leaved through the bundle of papers nestled on the desk to her left, pretending to be looking for an answer that sounded different from the half dozen others she'd given already, and failing.
"It's not a black hole." She ended up repeating, trying to keep her expression casual and her lips together, and coming out with an unintentional smirk.
"So what the hell— Why are you, what are you saying about this gravity well thing and uh, uh, uh, collapsing uh, planes and the like?" The Vice Chairman stammered, more flustered than angry.
"All I can say is it's not a black hole. Any conclusions we draw about the mechanism of the device is pure speculation at this point, and for the time being is going to have to be put on hold. Our own scientists have detailed all they can in the report we sent to you all earlier this week. What it does, basically, is… Imagine you have a page from a book that's falling apart. You want to save that page by transferring it to a new, blank book. Anabasis is basically the scissors and the glue that lets us cut out the page from the rotting book and place it onto the brand new blank book. We can do that with the entire continent. If we work fast enough, we can send it back and use it again on Europe, Africa, South America, and what's left of Asia. We could find a different universe where it's just like ours but there's no people, so then we can basically colonize it."
It was clear none of them had read it, or had someone more intelligent read it to them. Why did it matter? They were in the midst of a biological catastrophe, a seemingly sentient mass of bacteria flying at ungodly speed throughout the South Pacific and mass murdering millions. Australia's government had collapsed. Hardly any US military personnel stationed there had gotten out in time, and those that had were being held off from re-entering the mainland until they'd been thoroughly cleared of the bacteria. Those few Joint Chiefs who were aware of the Foundation were expecting a miracle device to come about; a giant non-Euclidean vacuum cleaner to suck up the bacteria and lock them in a ten by ten by ten lead-lined titanium box. And now the Foundation had sent a Site Director to them talking about a multi-dimensional, multi-universal device to evacuate people to cut and paste a continent into a different universe?
"Why are the Chinese so certain it came from you?" Colonel Umber asked in a cool, measured tone. He seemed to be the only one focused on China. All the other Joint Chiefs were worried about America first, then Australia, as if it still existed.
"We don't know why they think that. Whoever or whatever caused the Red Death did so on their own. Maybe the Vietnamese, maybe some people in the Qing court, or some dissidents. Anabasis is a failsafe if nothing can be done quickly enough about the bacteria."
Umber leaned over and used a single finger to flip open his own binder of documents, quickly getting to the page he wanted with ease, "I'm seeing here some CIA-UIU intel regarding the Jinyiwei communications leading up to the bomb going off. Supposedly they were aware of the existence of this bacteria in a laboratory setting."
"That's entirely possible, it may have been that whoever sold the bomb to the Vietnamese had stolen it from the Qing."
"I'm seeing here that they reached out to us for help with this bacteria, and also to the Foundation and the GOC. One Jinyiwei agent called Shi Mingxia indicated it was urgent, and reached out to the Foundation first. By the time the UIU was able to respond, she'd died as a result of exposure to the bacteria."
Marlowe lifted her hands from the binder and shrugged, "I can't say what, if anything, was discussed between the Jinyiwei and the Foundation. I'm just in charge of Anabasis."
"So they bring you here, with your device, because it's the best thing they've got to save us all? There's nothing that can be done that doesn't involve dimension-hopping a few continents?"
She nodded hesitantly, "Yes. Undoubtedly there will be some physical, geological issues once it takes place, but…"
Umber kept staring her down, looking more and more amused by her increasingly flustered tone, "Why bring you in on it? Why not dispatch the device to people in the know about the bacteria? Or are you suggesting you were in the know about the bacteria?"
She shook her head, "I knew nothing about it."
He gave out a loud barking laugh, like a motorcycle engine revving, "Know nothing. You know, back when we were occupying China, any time we tried to get any intel out of civvies, no matter if they didn't speak a lick of English, they'd always tell us 'know nothing'. 'Know nothing', that's all they would say. That's all they knew. We figured the insurgents were teaching everyone the phrase just to mock us. Some of the more paranoid started to think maybe everyone who used the phrase 'know nothing' actually did know something."
Marlowe kept smiling lightly, blinking every so often, not responding.
Umber leaned over a bit more, putting his elbow on the desk, "Do you really 'know nothing'?"
The aide beside her gripped her shoulder gently. But the words were already out of her mouth by the time she felt their grip, "Like I said, I knew nothing about it."
The aide gripped her arm firmly, tightly, sending a dull pain up her arm that would soon be matched by the dull pain in her head, their whisper barely audible amidst the din of concerned voices now leaping to the forefront, "You fucked us up. You fucked us. We need to get the fuck out of here now."

With a declaration of war, no matter how unlikely it was to even happen, people would panic. Gas stations and grocery stores and supermarkets became packed. What was worse, Fats realized, was that much more people weren't panicking at all, which meant the flood of residents congesting the streets going to and from work were mashing into the flood of residents congesting the streets stocking up on gas, wooden shutters, and bottled water. The former group often loudly derisive of the latter. She'd held off on visiting the house in Brickell and now it took her hours to get there, as inexplicably all the trains, buses, and metro movers had gotten bogged down all at once. The city's transit system absolutely sucked.
She'd already made plans to go there that day, so she went ahead and got there, sweating from the mid-afternoon sun and humidity. The house itself was across from the Metro Rail station, tucked in between two apartment buildings. There was barely any traffic coming down from Southwest 2nd Avenue, and the Metro Rail neatly cut through the residences and the shopping area, dividing Southwest 1st Avenue and Southwest 1st Court. There was no way to cross except on foot. Despite the activity going on close by, the neighborhood around the house felt deserted.
She met the landlord waiting on the patio, sitting in a chair with a straw hat sunglasses. He got up and shook her hand, speaking with a heavy accent.
"Upstairs, you want to see? It is upstairs."
She pursed her lips and followed him in. The house looked abandoned and dank. The wood floor was oddly stiff underfoot, and didn't creak. The staircase was narrow, and the landlord's bulk meant his hips slid along both sides of the stairs' railings. She had to keep her hands close in front of her, not wanting to touch the railings.
"Aqui, mira." He waved his hand across the hall on the second floor, where a large empty room encompassed much of the floor. The remains of old walls indicated where there used to be separate rooms. Crusty brown splatters coated much of the floor, reaching out from the center of the room where a big bucket of blood had likely been poured over a group of people. The relentless heat and humidity, along with the wooden floor being unfinished, meant the blood had melted into the wood. She could feel where it had lain thick enough to scrape some bits off, but for the most part the floor was wrecked.
"I call police when I see it. They take some blood, find it is animal, sangre de un cerdo. They find it is animal blood, no one committed crime, they leave. No hicieron nada, pendejos, they did not do anything. They leave me with this, what I can do with this mess?"
She crouched down and ran a nail along the crevice of the wood, scraping away some of the dried blood. No one had tried cleaning it, it seemed. Dust and leaves from the partially opened windows had started to creep across part of the floor. She didn't think anyone had been killed there, but if they had, the potential crime scene was almost completely destroyed.
She looked up at the nearest window. It had been cracked and was stuck half-open, about wide enough for someone of her small size to fit through. She looked over at the other windows, all of them closed, then back up at him, "Did you see anyone who was here? People running away, or jumping out the window?"
"I was not here. I was at my house. Solamente, el chico eso, I forget his name. He live across from the pharmacy, the police talk to him, he say he see the people who come out."
Something caught her eye over to her right. A small pile of dried leaves and garbage nestled between two unusually dry spots of floor. It could have been a closet or a tiny bathroom.
"Did you remove the walls afterwards?"
"No, I did nothing. They did destroy the walls. Before the night, everything was fine, and after the night, they take away the doors, the walls, todo eso."
She crept closer to the pile and spotted a streak of orange. She carefully put her fingers on it and pulled. It was stuck to the floor. She nudged some of the leaves aside and saw it was a rather thick chunk of orange hair, fused to the floor through a mass of something almost black. It merged seamlessly with the surviving layer of dried blood. She set down her purse and dug through for a pocket knife and a small plastic bag. She carefully sliced under the black mound and found the blade of her knife smeared with brownish-red crumbs and streaks, still moist from the humidity. She probably should have called the police but it was too late now, and either way they had already botched any possible investigation of the house. She sealed the hair in the plastic bag and grimaced. It was starting to look a bit as though Rhiannon Locke was dead.

Priscilla Locke faded in and out of consciousness for hours. Months of uncertainty and an impending sense of extinction led her to finally make clear to herself what she'd known long before Key Biscayne: Rhiannon Locke was gone. Gone from her life, possibly gone from life itself. She hadn't let herself move on from that time last year when Rhiannon left the apartment for the last time. Her whole life had been in stasis since then, waiting for the next bit of news to start the next few minutes of her life. She had thought everything would be at a standstill until Rhiannon Locke came back home, on her feet or in an urn.
She'd spent almost a full day fading between sobbing into her couch, and daydreaming Rhiannon was still here. "You idiot", she used to say to Rhiannon with regularity. It seemed to give her joy to be called an idiot, under any circumstances. Even when she was in real trouble, a single "You idiot" would lighten her mood, and in turn lighten Priss's mood. It was almost five months since she last saw her, almost three months since she was last in contact with her. Even if Rhiannon were still alive, Priss had the sense that the world would end before they'd ever find each other.
Looking down at her phone again, she saw Aurianne had been calling her, texting her incessantly. The most recent one was just a minute ago. Then she realized the knocking and muffled thudding sounds were coming from her door and not from her head. She pulled up her pants and went to the door, opening it without looking. Aurianne swept in with a burst of energy, throwing herself onto the couch and spreading her nearly seven foot frame across it, gazing down her legs over at Priss as she drifted over.
"I'm sorry, I probably should've asked how you were doing first."
Priss sat against the armrest of the couch as Aurianne pulled her legs back and sat upright. She reached over to close shut her laptop then dropped herself onto the couch beside Aurianne, "I came to a decision."
"Decisions are good. On what?"
"Rhiannon. I've decided she's gone. Out of my life. She's not coming back."
Aurianne quirked a brow at her, keeping her tone gentle and cautious, "What did you hear?"
"Nothing. I just realized… I realized I've been holding my breath since last August, expecting life to continue once she came back. Everything in my life got put on hold on that date and ever since then I've just been waiting. Doing nothing. It didn't even really hit me until now that, even if she's still alive out there, she's gone. Even if she came back, my life wouldn't be the same. Our relationship wouldn't be the same."
"Well, she's kind of a criminal, I mean…"
"That's not what I mean. But… I mean, you're kind of right. I've been distancing myself from her all year. She dropped off the grid and joined up some cult that started doing I don't know what and culminated in a massive shootout with cops and militia. I've been keeping myself apart from her, and, and she hasn't been directly targeting me or hurting me, but she has. All of this she's doing, whether it's with Anabasis or something, it's all coming down on me. And I've been just… quietly taking it. I don't know if it's her fault or just circumstances, and I don't even know if she's doing what she's doing because she wants to taunt me or hurt me, or if she genuinely believes in what she's doing."
Aurianne said nothing, pinching the fabric of her pants on her knee and twisting it side to side, knowing she couldn't say anything to help her. Just being there was enough, she suspected.
"I spent all of yesterday crying over her. Over us. Even if I do see her again, it'll never be the same. She won't be the same. I don't know what to do from here on out. Maybe I don't have to do anything. Like you said, the world's ending."
Aurianne shrugged and smirked, "Maybe. Marlowe's coming back tomorrow with a big Anabasis-related announcement. People are already saying the Foundation's gonna save us all. For real this time. It might be alright, Priss."
Locke sighed and sat back on the couch, crossing her arms over her chest, "Please… don't call me 'Priss' anymore. She always did. It was her who started that nickname for me. I loved it. I love being called Priss. Just please… not anymore."
Aurianne nodded and reached out hesitantly, hand gently resting on Locke's shoulder and feebly dropping onto the couch, "Okay."
Locke drew a sharp, shuddering breath and tried to smile, nostrils flaring as she tried to lighten the mood, "Do you think I look like Jaime Marlowe?"
"What kind of question is that, are you trying to trap me?"
"Just… Do you think there's any resemblance? Or anything like that?"
Still uncertain, Aurianne stammered, "I don't— I… Well… I mean, Marlowe's kind of like, conventionally attractive… She's got amazing eyes and lips, pretty strong cheekbones. You, you're… more ruggedly handsome. I mean, in like a, you're undoubtedly attractive in a rough sort of way. A bit of makeup and you'd be a knockout, but even without it, you're very pleasant to look at."
Locke restrained a grin, gnawing at the inside of her lip as Aurianne rambled, before leaning over and resting her head against the woman's shoulder, "I didn't ask if I was hot, I know I am, I just mean if I look anything like her."
Aurianne tensed and started to blush, "No… I think you look better than her. Nothing like her, though."

It only seemed to get more humid as it got darker. Fats continued to suffer as she made the journey ten blocks to the nearest pharmacy, across from which lived the only witness to the aftermath of the apparent blood orgy in the abandoned house, Nate Phillip.
The traffic getting there was almost violent, as street signs were apparently deemed optional and more than once while waiting for the final traffic light to turn, a car had ignored a "Right Turn Only" sign from out of the pharmacy and almost gotten smashed by another car from the opposing lane going left. Someone else held up traffic at an intersection to let a pair of chickens move off the street, and a driver behind them sped across the wrong lane to cut ahead and nearly rammed into Fats on the sidewalk. No one seemed to care. She couldn't tell if it was a sign of the times or just how Miami was.
The house itself was rather nice, laying just on the outskirts of where Little Havana unofficially ended and West Brickell began in earnest. Nate Phillip was tall, well-groomed, possibly Caucasian and fluent in English.
"The police didn't seem interested in the house until they found the blood inside. Before that, they were walking all around it, stepping on grass, kicking rocks aside and such. I'm not even a cop but even I know, like, you get a call like that and people covered in blood are running out the house, it's a crime scene."
"They weren't interested until they found the blood inside, but the people who ran out were covered in blood?"
"That's what I told them, I told them everybody was bloody like they'd just killed someone. I told the operator and I told the cops when they got here. They didn't seem to care."
No one seemed to care about anything, it seemed. She could feel her trail on Rhiannon Locke starting to fizzle out, "Could you make anything out in the dark? Heights, weights, ages, anything?"
He shrugged, "I had a flashlight. I flashed it on some, saw they were bloody, then they ran. It was some big black guy looking back at me. Other people with him might've been black, I couldn't tell. It was guys and women, maybe like ten of them."
"Could you tell who was covered in blood? All of them or just the black guy?"
"I didn't get a good look at all of them, but it looked like they were all bloody. There was a girl behind him in a white tanktop, her arms were shiny from blood."
"Did you get a decent look at her head? See if she was bleeding anywhere?"
He shook his head, "No. Nothing. I might not even be remembering it right, it might've been a guy."
She wiped at some sweat under her nose and made one last desperate reach, "Did you see anyone with red hair? Anyone at all, with red hair, not from blood but naturally red, or orange?"
He shook his head again, "I don't know for sure but they all looked, like, black or Hispanic. No redheads. No gingers, if that's what you mean. I mean, not that I could tell. I might be wrong."
"What about inside the house?"
"I didn't go inside the house. It was locked, anyway, and the police didn't let anyone inside. They said they didn't find any bodies inside. Then in the morning they get a call saying the blood is all pig's blood and they just left. The guy who owns the house, he locked it then, told everyone to go home."
"What about since then? Have you gone in or know anyone who's gone in or seen anything?"
"Nah. I heard one guy tried climbing up to look inside but there was nothing there."
"Who was this guy? Did you get a name?"
Again he shook his head, "Nah. I heard it was some neighbor or something, got up to the window for like a second before he let go. No one saw anything."
"What about the people who ran out of the house? Did you see where they went?"
"They cut through the backyard and went over the fence, to the other side of the block. I didn't go after them but I saw one of them running to the metro station."
"You sure it was one of them?"
He shrugged, then looked doubtful, "I mean, they were all covered in blood. This guy wasn't, but he was high-tailing it out of there so I thought he must've been involved. I could be wrong."
"Alright. I see. You wouldn't happen to know anyone else who was there that night, or maybe who might've seen anything related to it?"
He shook his head again, "No one. I wouldn't have even been there if I wasn't going to the supermarket. Then I called the cops and they told me to stay there and I was standing there all night. No one else came close to the house between then and when the cops showed up."
She thanked him and started back to the house, so she could backtrack to the metro station and ask about security footage. She already knew she'd have to contact Miami-Dade Transit directly, but hopefully she could make sure it wouldn't come as a surprise when she did contact them. It usually turned out to surprise them anyway. Until then, the last lead she had was wrapped in plastic at the bottom of her purse.

Dr. Marlowe didn't want to talk to anybody or look at anybody the whole flight back from Virginia. For the most part, people were willing to oblige. Dr. Kohn was not, and despite officially being under her, she came to rely on him like a mentor, and broke her silence as soon as he sat down in the aisle seat across from her.
"I fucked us up. I fucked us. That Colonel Umber guy led me into a, a, a verbal, linguistic trap and I fucked us all up."
"No you didn't, and no he didn't." Kohn said flatly, leaning a manila envelope against the armrest of his seat and writing on the back of it, "We are not talking about that right now, anyway. I talked to the O5s and went over everything and you've got the go-ahead to start using Anabasis to find us a new home."
"You were serious about that plan?" She furrowed her brow, while he handed off to her the envelope. It was surprisingly light.
"No one's time is being wasted here. Two MTFs are being deployed to the Pacific to see if anything can be done to stall the bacteria. If something works out, great! If we find a cure, even better! But until the O5s say otherwise, you keep searching. Anabasis is out of the bag and no matter what happens, people are going to remember you, and no one will ever call you 'painfully average' again."
Kohn always managed to be absolutely steady throughout any situation and any issue. She'd never encountered him being as upbeat as this. It calmed her significantly. No matter what the MTFs ended up doing, she had something to do. And if their world was saved, she'd still be a pioneer, leading the way to conquering an untold number of different Earths in different universes. Anabasis was out in the open, there was no going back from that. And she was in charge of it.

« Red Death | Site Director | The Beginning of All Things To End »
Anabasis Hub


The Reconstructed Temple of Kythera-On-The-Lake
Approximately Half a Mile above Southern Russia
January 2019
Robert Bumaro stood in front of his anvil, a hammer clenched in his hand. This was, admittedly, mostly for the sake of show— the item he was forging could have been molded just as easily with his own two metal hands. Though they had a spidery appearance, his enemies knew all too well of their strength.
Upon the anvil, he placed a white-hot ingot, and raised his hammer. "We are beings of three ages." The hammer met the ingot with a clang. "Bronze." Clang. "Brass." Clang. "Silicon." Clang. "All among us have rejected the material— the world of Sin and Flesh. All of us have chosen to ascend into Her light." Clang. The head of a hammer took shape upon the anvil.
"We have our differences— ideological, technological, generational." St. Hedwig of the Church of Maxwellism now spoke. From the tips of her fingers, filaments formed themselves into a structure that would join the hammer's head and its shaft. No printer could accomplish what her fingers were doing, joining together strings of material atoms thick. "Some of us view WAN as being in the aether, others view her relics as parts of her. But we are all in agreement that this is the year the Flesh overtakes the world. Unless we do something to stop it."
On a lathe, Legate Trunnion, her face covered by a large brass mask, machined the shaft. "And do something we shall. Mekhane's summoning last century ended poorly, because she was assembled by a fraud whose name we have…" She looked towards Bumaro, the chains that were her hair rattling. "Re-purposed."
Bumaro resisted the urge to give a wry smile.
"Now," Trunnion put her hand around the shaft as it spun, her palm a hair's breadth away from its turning surface, "Bronze, silicon, and brass join in order to make Her weapon. The Cogwork Orthodoxy offers a shaft of tungsten-brass, strong enough to support the head, much as industry has supported humanity."
"The Church of Maxwellism offers the link." St. Hedwig broke the filaments, revealing a sturdy joint of silicon. "Though it is small, it represents that, for better or for worse, technology connects us all, and we of Maxwell are connection incarnate."
"And I, the Prophet of the Broken Church," Robert Bumaro held his hand aloft. "Offer forward the head of beryllium-bronze. A slayer of magic and mortal, capable of sundering sin from flesh."
The three components levitated towards Bumaro, and floated in stasis, spinning. Then, Bumaro clenched his hand into a fist, and the shaft, link, and head were joined, a brilliant burst of light blinding the congregation.
Bumaro took up the hammer, feeling more whole than he had in centuries. "We have the anvil. Now, the Hammer— Wan-Mekhane's Sfyrí —is ready to strike."
Before the three prophets, hundreds rose from their seats, offering displays of adulation in the way only Mekhanites could. The Orthodoxists revved engines and let gouts of fire burn forth from their mouths. The LCD skins of the Maxwellists showed electricity arcing across them, forming the sigils of all the Mekhanite sects. And those of the Broken Church erupted in cheers.
"We will be arriving at Lake Baikal in six hours. Partake of your rituals, and prepare for battle."
With a flourish of his robe, Bumaro turned away and walked off of the platform, hammer in hand, looking at his two equals. "Don't give me that look, Trunnion."
Trunnion removed her mask, which was concealing a soft scowl. "Wan-Mekhane? That was not part of the rehearsal."
"The Egyptians did it all the time! Amun-re, Ra-Horathky…" Hedwig flexed her digital wings. "Even our misguided Greek ancestors got in on it. It's just tradition."
"I had to appease St. Hedwig's congregation." Bumaro put up a hand in an attempt to placate Trunnion. "Objectively speaking, they have the most powerful weaponry, and we're going to need it."
"Why not just let the Foundation be devoured?" St. Hedwig frowned. "Wan knows there's no love lost."
"Book of Disassembly, Chapter 52, Verse 19."
Trunnion sighed, her brain ticking as she remembered the passage. "And it shall come a time when Kythera-on-the-Lake falls once more, and the Eye of the Blind Idiot opens. During this time, opposing hands will fall on the hammer to gouge it out and blind it for another forty days."
"Kind of a short time, don't you think?" Hedwig was half-paying attention to the conversation, one eye clouded over with the internet, checking to make sure the passage of the Temple was not detected by any below.
"It's metaphorical— something we borrowed from when we hid among the Hebrews. It just means 'a very long time'. Forty days and forty nights of rain, forty years going through the desert… something to do with Abrahamic numerology." Bumaro waved it off. "It is not immediately concerning. The point is: if we succeed, we will have time."
"But to succeed…" Hedwig's voice filled with frustration. "We need to help them. Jailers. Slaughterers."
"But they wish to save the world, all the same. And who knows?" Bumaro rolled his shoulders. "We may even change a few minds."

The night that the temple flew through the sky, thousands around the world dreamed.
The dream of a man in Utah, filled with blood and fire, was replaced by the sight of him running a marathon, a pair of sleek, silver legs replacing the imperfect steel ones he had to operate every day.
A woman with an insulin pump sleeps fitfully in Mexico, having visions of an angel putting in a pancreas made of gold, and she tastes cake properly for the first time in decades.
In Japan, five sisters dream of the connectivity they have shared since their birth being shared with the whole world, and that world being full of more adventures than ever.
In England, a boy with a pacemaker woke up to find that the sheets which he clenched so tightly, in an effort to ward off the things that strode through the shadows, were singed around his fingers.
Each of them knew that something was different about the world when they woke up. Something in the world had Broken, and somehow, they were responsible for fixing it.
In a room in an undisclosed location, three sets of eyes watched as the apocalypse began around a lake in Siberia.


Of all the pleasures that had abandoned her over the years, Dr. Wythers still had whiskey. The USSR killed her country, and her parents. A round from the rifle that killed her husband was still in her leg, inextricably bound up in scar tissue. The cane didn't much help with that anymore. Her eldest boy was dead, her youngest might as well be, and her middle son probably still called her “Bookburner”. A lifetime ago she'd danced under a yellow sky with black stars, and would have danced again a thousand times had she not beheld the god-shaped hole. She'd flourished in Three Portlands, and lost her heart. She'd trod the path through the woods where names have power, and lost her innocence.
But whiskey? Whiskey didn't care. Whiskey still loved her. Couldn't kill whiskey. She took another swig from the flask and opened the door to the bar. The man next to the door said something to her in Korean and motioned for her to give him something.
“Do I look underage to you, musclehead?” Dr. Wythers tried to push past him, but the man put out his arm and repeated the same phrase. She sighed and continued speaking English. “I'm turning sixty-seven this year. Isn't the drinking age in this country sixteen or something? Do I look like a stupid teen trying to sneak in for shots?” The bouncer didn't speak, but flexed his fingers again. “Fine.”
Dr. Wythers fished around in her coat for a moment before digging out her passport. Forty-odd years ago she could have just batted her eyelashes a few times and skipped this part. She flipped to the page with her picture on it. The bouncer looked at it, then at her, then back at her photo. The woman pictured on her passport had the same narrow brown eyes, but that was the only similarity. She didn't need glasses, her hair hadn't started greying yet, and her face was clear of those old people spots she hated so much.
“Satisfied?” Dr. Wythers pocketed her passport as the guard waved her into the bar. She began to mutter under her breath. “Jesus, I thought South Korea was supposed to be the less oppressive one.”
The bar was dead, but then again it was nearing 8:00 on a Tuesday night. Dr. Wythers saw an assortment of barflies, but one in particular stood out. A chubby man, who the doctor eyeballed at around two-fifty, was arguing with a girl half his size wearing a newsboy cap and a stoic scowl. He pointed a reddened finger at her and shouted something in Korean. The girl responded by grabbing a fistful of his hair, slamming his face on the bar, and twisting his arm into the small of his back. He cried out in pain and she let go of him, shouting in angry Korean as the drunkard stumbled towards the exit. The two women locked eyes, and Dr. Wythers could tell she was trying not to panic.
“Hello, Claire,” the woman said in English as the patron stumbled out the door.
“Hello, Hoya.” Dr. Wythers hobbled over to the bar, the flared iron tip of her cane thumping rhythmically against the wooden floor. She eased herself onto the barstool, grimacing at the pain in her leg, and hung the cane on the edge of the bar. The young Korean woman continued to eye her suspiciously, rubbing a bar rag across the rim of an already clean glass.
“Relax, I'm not going to call a Strike Team,” Dr. Wythers continued. “Or High Command, or anyone else. They don't even know I'm here. In fact, as far as they know I'm in my office reading an exceptionally dry academic paper on how to redirect Ways for improved security.”
“Your thaumaturgy must be coming along.”
“It's probably closer to science, actually. Some project one of our moles got his hands on that lets you literally be in two places at once. My attention span is cut in half, however, so you'll have to forgive me if I appear distracted.”
“You are the last person to tell me I have to forgive you,” Hoya retorted. “I guess I'm not that surprised to see you just waltz back in here. You were always pretty ballsy. So what do you want? I don't have any teleporting chairs left but I'm sure I can find something for you to set on fire.”
“Eighty years protecting mankind from things that go bump in the night, and all people remember about us is that fucking chair,” Dr. Wythers lamented. She took another swig from her flask. “Think you could make me something?”
“Whiskey sour, on the rocks?”
“That is my drink of choice.”
“Oh, sorry Claire,” Hoya said. “All I've got is one hundred proof soju. I'd pour you some, but I'm afraid your frail old body would give out.” Wythers glanced at the patron to her left, sipping from a tumbler full of ice and an amber liquid that was probably Jack Daniels.
“Fine,” the doctor said, screwing the cap back on her flask. “I'll say my piece and get out of your hair.”
“What did you come here for anyway?” Hoya asked. “You never said, and there's no way you found yourself in Seoul by accident.”
“I came because I wanted to,” Wythers began, and then she stopped. She took a deep breath and pursed her lips before she finished her thought. “I wanted to apologize.”
Hoya raised a single eyebrow and put down the glass she was pretending to clean. Her face was largely unreadable but her scowl had softened to a frown.
“Don't look at me like that,” Wythers snapped. “This is hard enough already without you judging me or looking for some memetic bullshit.”
“Just garden variety mistrust,” Hoya replied. “And out of all the people who deserve an apology from you, why come to me?”
“Most of the people I should apologize to are dead,” Dr. Wythers said with an uncharacteristic tinge of melancholy. “Either that or they're no longer speaking to me. I haven't seen or heard from Alexei since Peter's death.” Claire Wythers had not spoken either of those names for a long time. There was a silence between the two women until the door of Hoya's bar creaked open.
“I assumed you were going to apologize for jumping ship to the Bookburners.”
“I really fucking hate that name,” Wythers snapped. “You know just as well as I do that any of your bleeding heart, tree-hugging friends would burn a book if it was trying to eat them. But I'm not here to argue that. I'm getting up there in years, and there are plenty of things I've left unfinished.
“I always thought that if I acted decisively, if I really believed whole hog in what I was doing, if I didn't question and overthink things like I used to back in my Hand days, I wouldn't be lying on my deathbed looking back at a bunch of mistakes, but here we are.
“I'm an old woman full of regret, Hoya,” Wythers finished. “I don't want your forgiveness, and I probably don't deserve it, so you don't need to do or say anything. I just want you to know how sorry I am; about getting Adam killed, about revising that stupid book, about the things I said to you when I left the Hand-”
“You called me a ‘thing', Claire,” Hoya said. She slammed one hand down on either side of her former friend and colleague. “You compared me to my mother. We don't become our parents! If we did, Alexei Wythers would be a condescending shithead with a continent-sized chip on his shoulder!”
“I know!” Dr. Wythers became aware that she was standing when the pain shot down her leg once more. All three of the people in the bar were staring at them, and the bouncer at the door rose from his stool. “Sit down, meathead. I'm not going to hurt her.”
“It's okay, Jin,” Hoya assured him. “I've got this.” He leaned back onto his stool and Hoya pulled away from the bar. There was another silence as the number of patrons decreased to two.
“I've done and said a lot of things I'm not proud of,” Dr. Wythers said, keeping her eyes on the woodgrain of the bartop. “You were one of the first people to accept me into the Serpent's Hand, and one of the last to let me push her away after the Foundation took Jack. You deserved to be treated better, and I'm sorry for that.” Hoya remained speechless. Dr. Wythers shifted her weight and slid off her barstool.
“Alexei is still alive,” Hoya told her. “Last I heard, he has a place in Three Portlands. Has a wife, and a kid, I think. You could go visit them.”
“I can't,” Dr. Wythers said as she picked her cane up from the bar. “I've made my bed, and now I have to die in it. I won't darken your doorstep again. I've said my piece, I'm finished. If you see Alexei, tell him his mother misses him.” The doctor turned her back on the bartender and took several laborious steps towards the door.
“Claire, wait.”
When she turned back, Hoya held one hand outstretched. There was a bottle of Johnny Walker in her other hand. Dr. Wythers fished in her coat pocket and pulled out her flask, and the foxgirl filled it to the brim.
“Here. One for the road.” Hoya screwed the cap back on the flask and handed it back. “See you soon.”


I can still vividly recall the first time I met them.
I was absentmindedly wandering the wilderness as usual and barely even noticed the two of them. They were so small and so fragile, looking as if a meager wind could shatter them into pieces at any moment. Unmoving, with fear painted across their faces. Compared to me, they were like ants. Yet, they did not attempt to flee or strike, as one would expect when faced by a being, a god, of such superior might. Instead, they simply held each other in their arms, seeking to comfort and protect each other. It was a selfless compassion displayed against what they could only imagine to be their demise. Like a gentle flame standing in the face of a hurricane.
You could say that it was love at first sight.
Back then I was so much younger. So much younger and so much more foolish. But even in those days, I was alone, so some things stay the same I guess. Unlike now though, I chose my own loneliness. While my fellow divine brethren were fascinated by the Old Yeren, showering them with gifts and fortune, I never found them to be of much interest. Oh, they were certainly great, have no doubt about that. Greater than any who came before or after. Yet, perhaps it was that magnificence that I disliked, so dull in their greatness that they were tiring.
And thus I retreated into the wild, seeking for entertainment in the insignificant. For years I would simply watch as the world around me grew and changed. I witnessed the growth of individual leaves, studied the shading of insects, followed the journies of waterdrops. I would compose beautiful poems of the small wonders I witnessed, sharing them with the others during the brief times that I emerged from my self-imposed exile. Pangloss of the Woods they would call me, a trickster of a thousand songs.
And then I met the two. Then I met humanity. I was charmed beyond belief. Such insignificant creatures, barely more than monkeys, who dared to emerge only during the day, when the Yeren slumbered. But in spite of their meager existence, they would laugh and dance and sing and weep all through their lives, which to me seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. And that pure joy in their humble existence, lacking any higher purpose or meaning, overwhelmed me and overtook my every waking thought.
Their lives held so much potential. A loving future, filled with wonder and laughter. So much promise for a future I knew they would never see. After all, while some of them had formed their own communities to defend themselves, most were fenced away by the Yeren, carefully kept under their strict watch. I knew that, in their current state, that future they could one day reach would remain forever unkindled.
And so I decided to light their fire.
I helped them burn away the old world. I helped them turn the magics and technology of the Old Yeren against their own creators, until not even the memory of their existence remained. All for a faint dream motivated by nothing else but a selfish desire of curiosity.
And here I still remain, watching over the children that I helped rise up so long ago. I had imagined that they would bring an age of wonder, an unparalleled joy never before see. Yet they have only drenched the world in the blood of their own kind, fighting each other in meaningless wars. All that potential dashed away by hatred and jealousy.
But who am I to blame them? I, who slew my own to fulfill my foolish dreams. I, who have witnessed countless more of my brethren killed or locked away. Most of the surviving ones shun me, cursing the name “Pangloss” with their every breath. And as I witness the suffering and death caused by humanity, who can I blame but myself? I gave humanity a role that was never meant for their kind. I lit a fire that has consumed the entire world.
I truly am Pangloss of the Flame, of a wicked flame that even devours itself until nothing remains.
And still, as I look upon humanity, I cannot bring myself to let their flame die. Looking at them, I still remember that compassion I witnessed so long ago. Among the acts of hatred and jealousy, I can occasionally spot an act of kindness, a small gesture of compassion and love. And even as I see and learn more, I cannot help but hope that maybe, just maybe, they will eventually grow tired of their endless fighting. That they will learn to love each other as I love them all.
I can only hope and dream.


by DarkStuff

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More by DarkStuff~!

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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

"Davidson, I think your name is?" Rachael only stared, and regained her breath. "Here, Rachael. Come here and take a seat."
Her breathing became more regular, and she sat herself up on the floor.
"At the table, like a lady, please."
It took another twenty seconds for her to reclaim her composure, and full control of her lungs. In that time, she studied Howard's complexion. Now, the problem wasn't that the light was too low. In fact, this was the best lit room that she had been in (the staircase had been bright, but the brightness had been sheer; here the light was warm and inviting). It wasn't that he was faceless either — yet again, he had everything everyone else had. He had two eyes, a head of hair — or, if it was bald, it wasn't unnaturally so — a nose, a mouth, two ears… it was only that the dimensions and colors of all of the above were difficult to discern. Were they hazel? Blue? Grey, green? Were the whites yellow? Despite prolonged and deliberate eye contact, no information came to light. It was as if the air between them had thickened into fog.
Rachael finally stood up, and slowly walked towards the seat he had been motioning to. Out of her element, and so shaken from before, she struggled to put on her usual: slight glare, straight back, tall, intimidating stance. It usually came so naturally. But she was feeling unnaturally small.
She tried her best and settled for halfway. When she was confident she could keep the face, she sat down. Next, she needed her voice back. There was unfortunately no way to know when she had regained that, except by speaking. It needed to be dark, terse, and biting. She tried to focus on calming herself.
Now. "Why did you bring me here?" That sounded alright. Not as assertive as usual, but workable.
"Why did you come here? I feel like that is a better question. You're a guest in my house, or am I wrong?"
Rachael stone-faced.
"Ah, ah right. That's what I expected. Well, I know you weren't sent here. You're not nearly prepared enough." Rachael didn't budge. "Well, I can't let you leave. And I can't let you keep exploring. As you can imagine with my house, I need my privacy. So." Howard looked off towards his left.
The nondescript room went silent.
…
Rachael looked to where Howard was looking. No, nothing interesting. For a moment, their eyes met, but Howard looked away immediately. Rachael's eyebrows raised.
"So," Howard repeated.
After another few seconds of feigning a respect for Howard's authority, Rachael turned in her chair to look behind her. When she returned to a front facing position, Howard was gone. "What?" Rachael said under her breath.
Rachael still wasn't fully convinced that she had avoided the battle she'd expected. She waited, invisibly poised to strike if provoked, but no such provocation came. For a whole minute, no such provocation. Slightly more sure of her ability to search undeterred, she stood from her chair. Doubt slowed her movements, but she had nothing else to do.
Rachael strode to the wall on her left, and pressed her hands against it. It was uncomfortably cold, and felt far smoother than it looked. She tried to search for a wire in the wall, or an electrical outlet of some sort, but even the light in the middle of the room seemed to be entirely isolated, powered from an untraceable source. Sidling along the walls, she began to knock. According to her memory, you could tell when there was an open space behind a surface if you knocked, though she'd never tried it herself. Unfortunately, her untrained ear didn't pick up any difference along the walls. After five minutes she stopped trying. Either everywhere was solid, or everywhere was hollow. This included the ceiling, which she stood on her chair to reach, and the floor.
Her movements became sudden and jerky. Her breathing became harder, and a scowl set upon her face. She had been trapped. Was this to torture her? Someone as powerful as him, she had to wonder why he didn't kill her himself. Was he too cowardly? Too cowardly to look someone in the eye and murder them? Did he not understand that this way to die was longer and more painful, or was he just that malevolent? That wasn't the impression she got of him. She got the impression of someone who didn't know what to do. Perhaps he was keeping her here until he figured out his next move.
How long that would take, Rachael had no idea. She didn't know his abilities, she didn't know his motives. She only knew that she couldn't assume that he was coming back. The longer she waited, the less energy she would have as she starved to death.
She sat at the chair once more, and tried to summon him. "Mr. Scott? I wish to negotiate with you."
Though she'd dehydrate first. She had lacked the foresight to pack food and water. When entering an unknown place? How could she have been so shortsighted? Her nose and mouth started to twitch.
"Howard! What do you want from me?"
She thought of just how unprepared she was for this mission. She had brought with her someone who was only a liability. Why? Why had she done that? She didn't know the answer herself. What had overcome her?
She tried not to think about it.
What else was there to think about? Was she strong enough to punch through the walls? No, they were like marble, not drywall. If she couldn't get Howard's attention, she was going to die here. That's what it was. That's what there was to think about. When did she last eat? When did she last drink?
…
When did she last drink?
…
Rachael grabbed at her throat. When was the last time she ate? She searched her mind for a hint of hunger. Just then, but only then, did her stomach growl. But hunger sneaks up on you, it doesn't care about whether you're aware of it. Neither does thirst. The truth was, she wasn't hungry, and she wasn't thirsty. She was just scared. With time, she could make that go away too.
Rachael's tension relieved. Her scowl disappeared. Her back straightened, her fists opened. She looked for an opportunity to test her new knowledge. She sat in her chair, and tried a mind exercise.
She imagined that she had just ended an interview. She'd made peace with another URA-1902 instance. The room's walls were white, the table was iron, there was a chair on her side and a chair on the other. When she got up, she would turn around, and be greeted with a door, where it would usually be, because that's what happened after interviews. You left.
Rachael opened her eyes. Rachael pushed the chair back. Rachael stood up. Rachael drew a breath. Rachael turned around.
No door.
The walls were just as textured as they were before. Grey, not white. The table was still wooden. The room's dimensions hadn't changed. Nothing had changed.
Was she wrong?
Her throat started to hurt.
No, she thought. I can't be wrong.
The ache went away as soon as it came.
Rachael sat back down. It wasn't that she had finished an interview. She simply had to convince herself that every room had a door. There was no room that Rachael had ever been in that didn't have a door. How was she supposed to have gotten here? There had to have been a door. She opened it, stepped inside, and talked to Howard. How did Howard leave? Simple, he had walked through the same door. There was a door. A room does not function without a door. A room's function necessitates an entrance and exit. It didn't even have to look like a typical door. Some rooms had a ladder that led upwards, or downwards, into a portal to another room. Or outside. Some had airlocks. But none, not a single room, didn't have a way in and out.
She thought back on every room she had ever been in. Every room she'd entered and exited. What the fuck would this room be if she couldn't leave it? She'd be an idiot to believe there was no door.
And Rachael wasn't a god damn idiot.
Rachael pushed her chair back.
Rachael stood up.
Rachael drew a breath.
Rachael turned around.
And then.
Rachael walked.
Out the door.
Rachael stood in the very same void that she had come from — of course she would, this was where she walked in the door — when she had fallen (no, walked) into the room. The yawning, wheezing abyss, weightless… but she wasn't scared. Not this time. Of course, a door has to lead into another room. Another room, or a hallway, which is a type of room, she supposed. She hadn't stepped out into an abyss. That would be a ridiculous place for a door to lead to. She'd clearly stepped out into a hallway.
With this in mind, Rachael began walking down the hallway. Like most hallways she had walked down, it was lit with somewhat cheap annoyingly fluorescent lights. And also like most hallways she had walked down, it had doors peppered along the walls. Doors that, of course, must have led to other rooms. She only had to pick the right door.
Right door for what?
She opened one, and saw a room exactly like the one she had left. No, not that. What rooms would be here? She opened another one, and saw the same room room she had met Vernon in. No, she didn't want that one either. Where did she want to go?
Well.
The only place a door can lead that's not a room is to the outside. Of course. Every building — and she was most certainly in a building — had an exit. It was the way she came in! She just needed a frame of reference. Somewhere she had been before.
So of course she came upon the elevators. Was she on the first floor? No, she'd gone up plenty of stairs. How many, she wasn't sure. But all she had to do was get in an elevator and press for the first floor. Unfortunately, the elevator shaft was empty. Just like she remembered.
Rachael slowly walked to its edge, and peered up and down. An elevator shaft? Without an elevator?
…
That would be absolutely ridiculous.
She pressed the button to summon the elevator, and found that it wasn't lighting. Like a normal elevator button would. She creased her brow, and pressed it again. The phenomenon repeated, and no noises came from the elevator shaft. Were these elevators an exception to —?
No. That would be stupid. Maybe, the elevator button was broken, but that was it. She could fix that. She closed her eyes, and reached her mind into the mechanism. Of course, she noted, she only had to remember how elevator buttons worked. How elevator buttons worked… how elevator buttons worked…
Had she never explored an elevator button? No, she must have. She had explored many, many things. To think she had never engaged with an elevator button, now that would be unheard of. She knew how they worked. Of course she did.
So she fixed the problem, and pressed the button again.
It lit up.
And a horrible screeching noise rose out of the elevator. Of course, it would make that noise, because there wasn't an elevator door. It was just a natural consequence of the door being broken. Of course.
An elevator rose into the door frame, and opened. Rachael took another deep breath, and stepped into the elevator. The button panel… only had one button. "G". For "Ground Floor", Rachael assumed. Assumed? Knew. She pressed the button, and the doors closed.
The elevator was still. Unmoving. Was this button broken, too? She tried to press it again. Nothing. This place… must have faulty wiring, she thought. Nothing to be afraid of. That doesn't affect the mechanics of the… no, it must have? Rachael struck the doubt of not knowing how elevators worked out of her mind. If she could fix the button, of course it would work.
She was going to need to fix it again. She closed her eyes.
And Rachael felt her stomach elevate into her chest. The screeching came back, stronger than before, and the light in the elevator flickered on and off. Rachael pressed herself against the side of the elevator. The button was not the problem at that very moment. Her eyes darted from one side of the elevator to the other, and she noticed the floor beginning to lean. Elevators weren't supposed to lean. It couldn't have been leaning! That would be…
It wasn't working. Despite her best efforts, the elevator's dimensions continued to be. Was there an exit on the roof of the elevator? Most elevators had that. She looked up, and found a red square outline and the words "exit" printed in one corner. Alright, next problem, how to get up to it.
She looked around for

/ / /

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Rachael gasped awake, before noticing that she hadn't intook any air. She was once again in the yawning, wheezing abyss. How had she gotten back here? Where could she have been? Her head hurt, but only by hurting had she gained a head. Slowly, the rest of her body came into existence, just as she remembered it. What had happened? Last she remembered, she had been in an elevator, which… fell? She wasn't entirely sure what happened.
She thought she had figured it out, why hadn't the elevator worked? Perhaps this place was more solid than she knew. In any case, the elevators were clearly out of the question. What was another landmark she knew, one that could go down? Oh, of course.
A loud, echoing clang met her ears as she suddenly stood in a brightly lit, white, metal stairway, with a strange lack of doorways on each level. She winced as she… "landed"… but it was even worse than she had feared.
It was not only the clang that met her ears, though she had to wait for the echoing to cease before she noticed the second sound. Somewhere, deep below her rose a low, howling sound, animal-like yet unmistakably human. Stuck in place, she listened closely. Could it really have been…?
The nasal tone, the almost feminine pitch. It was. Rachael squeezed her eyes closed. There was no other way down. Not to her knowledge. To descend, the descent had to make sense, and an elevator was out of the question. She had to go down the stairs.
Rachael breathed deeply through her teeth, and didn't hesitate a second longer. She began to rush down the stairs, hoping to get through the nightmare as fast as possible. As expected, the further she descended, the louder and louder the howling, screaming, tearing voice became. Rachael tried to keep to the wall, and look only at the very next step. Maybe she could avoid looking.
Was it her imagination, or was there a wind coming from below? A wind, like a draft through a cave, whistled in waves with the stream of agony. No, it was real. As real as anything else in here. She had to raise her head, to keep the wind out of her eyes as it crawled around the steps in the stairs and forced itself into her face. Rachael's nose curled. It was warm, and smelled like breath.
She breathed deeply through her mouth and continued her journey, now leading only with touch. Her hands followed the walls, and each stair was carefully found by her foot. As her elevation lowered, and as the moans became louder, and as the winds became stronger, the walls became rougher. Almost sharp, in places. Squinting her eyes open, Rachael tried to make sense of what she felt. All she saw were more white walls… but as she scanned around herself she saw, though blurred by watery eyes, that the stairwell was round. No longer the square, hard-angled well with landings it was before, it had become a full spiral. The clangs had ceased to come with her footsteps, as the material had transformed away from metal, and into… something else.
Where was she? This couldn't have been the stairwell she was in before. Was continuing down worth it? Did this lead where she thought it led?
She remembered the rules she thought she knew. It had to go where she thought it went. It definitely went there. It wouldn't make sense for a stairwell not to lead to the ground floor. Of course it led to the ground floor.
That's when the pain came.
Deep in her lower back, and all throughout her guts, an explosion of pain threw her off her feet — except she couldn't feel her feet. In fact, she couldn't feel anything below her waist.
She hurled forward, hitting her elbows, head, and neck on crooks in the stairs. Her own screams of pain joined the now overwhelming winds and howls. She tumbled down the spirals, hitting ribs, her jaw — everything under the sun, including her legs, which despite her struggles she could not feel nor control. The tumbling combined with the salty, iron-smelling winds created an environment in which it was nigh impossible to see, let alone grab at anything. All her attempts ended in bumping her wrist, or more pain to her arms. With panic, she realized that the stairs were getting smaller and smaller.
The steps seemed to be receding into the walls, slowly taking away the room on which she fell. Finally, the worst had happened. With a new lack of railing, Rachael rolled over the side, but she had found a handhold just in time.
Her hand bled on the sharp, pointed edge of the stair, sticking out of the wall like a knife. Finally stable in some inevitably temporary way, she was able to look above her. The staircase wasn't completely circular, but had strange ridges and drops along the side. The inside curved strangely, like a… like a…
Spine.
Fighting against the pain, Rachael tried to form words.
"Dorer!!" she screamed.
The howling, the winds, subsided. "Dorer, listen to me! You're not dead, I can save you! You just have to let me!"
The hair on the back of her neck rose up, as if by some electric air.
"Dorer?"
Looking up, a wave of flashing lights came to

/ / /

ROABCEHRATEL MAXRIMAUS DOARVEIRDSON

woke up and vomited blood into a yawning, wheezing abyss.
"You're not deaAaAAAAA AAAAAA" they interrupted themselves by screaming.
Rachael Davidson tried to stand up on the stairs.
Robert Dorer fell back down due to having no control in his legs.
"Our — your body's not real, you KILLED ME"
Their mind replayed the pain of an explosion in their back, and they were sitting back down on the stairs, right where Rachael killed them
"Rach— Robert! Listen to me! You're alive, you're get out of my HEADeheheehhhheheheh"
Robert(?)'s idiot grin took over Rachael's face, and shehethey couldn't stop themselves from laughing in pain. Rachael tried to scan their body, and only found a torso. Her eyes flashed unceasingly between the black void and the bright, cold stairwell, on which Dorer laid bleeding.
And dying.
Forever
"DORER!" The howling, screaming winds came back. "Dorer, you're alive! You're alive! Can't you hear me? Isn't that proof enough!?" Rachael lost her form once more into the fat, unwieldy body of Dorer, the legs of which were entirely functionless fully functional, because Rachael never would have killed Dorer.
And the evidence was right here.
"Look at your hands, Robert!"
But strands of pain shot out of and through them like strings. The nigh unbearable suffering made reality impossible to make out. But all Rachael needed to do was make him look at his hands. "Dorer, listen to me you insufferable oaf!" Anger began to overpower the sensations of pain, and Rachael found herself taking form. Her own arms, her own face — but they came in and out of existence as strobingly as the stairwell did. She pushed, she pushed, to be able to have her own form, her own body — she tried to connect to everything that made her her. Her shaved head, her unapproachable demeanor, her dark skin, her white shirt, her Honduran heritage, her black pants…
Slowly, things came into frame, but…
…
Why was she resisting?
Rachael lost herself in the sea of Dorer's consciousness.

« XXXXX | Industrial | Dancing with Rachael »


It was snowing again. Slamming the rental car's faulty door shut, Ralph Roget could feel chills sneaking underneath his jacket as snow softly crunched underfoot. Luckily she'd been moved to the first floor to be closer if emergency services had to come again. Pausing briefly, he knocked on the door.
A now-familiar face answered. Lis Boyd was his half-sister. Presumably on the same side as himself and grandma. They had never really been close before Gillespie's condition. Now this was all there was left to speak about.
"Come on in. I'm glad you could get here on such short notice." Lis took his coat, hanging it on the wall beside hers.
Ralph slipped off his boots, wiping the watery snow residue on the carpet. "What happened?"
"I don't know. They said she fell in the night. Now if I'd have been here we'd have run every test in the book but it was 2 am and the hospital was full-up. Holiday traffic." Lis wiped her eye, smiling as she did so. "Eventually we just had to come back. Nothing to be done. After that was when her legs gave out on her."
Ralph slowly stepped past Lis and into the main room. There was a couch, television, and one occupied seat.
Shirley Gillespie is sitting in a large felt reclining chair. The television's flickering light revealing impossibly thin limbs neatly folded over a thick black blanket which covered her from the waist down. A thin line of drool was dripping off her chin. Beneath her skin black and blue veins crisscross everywhere, occasionally gathering around sores and bruises.
Ralph couldn't stop looking into her eyes. Where once there had been incredible sharp light there now persisted the dull glow of a blown-out lightbulb. There would be no recognizing him from someplace deep in her shattered consciousness anymore. Bags underneath those empty eyes were like tree rings of a felled redwood standing as a monument to what used to be.
"I think this might've been her last Christmas." Lis touched Ralph on the shoulder, guiding him gently to the sofa.
Nodding slowly, Ralph was unable to take his eyes from his grandmother. "That's… that's probably for the best. She wouldn't have wanted to live like this."
Lis sat beside him. "Do you remember before her faculties left her, those last few Thanksgiving dinners? Rob, you, and me, and Gillie, talking in turns so the cross-talk wouldn't overwhelm her."
"She didn't want to believe what was happening. Kept her mind active. Do you think that prolonged things?"
"Well… she really thought that with a busy mind it would be impossible to go demented. I'm glad she doesn't remember that now."
"I hope you're right."
"I… don't want to break into this too quickly Ralph but what are we going to do with her when… the time comes?"
"… The time came a long time ago."
Lis Snapping her fingers drew Ralph's eyes away from Gillespie. "Listen, we've still got her resuscitate on file. But… I don't know if she would have wanted that. Your call as the executor of her estate."
"So that's why you called me here? To sign a death warrant?" Ralph stood rapidly and began pacing the room. "No way. No way. I'm not signing anything like that."
"Sit down! You're going to upset her." Lis' expression wrinkled on itself. "This is bad enough without a meltdown."
"You're acting like she's not already dead inside. I can't even remember the last time she actually responded to me."
"When was the last time you talked to her?"
Turning, Ralph got on a knee at eye level with Gillespie. Taking her withered hand into his and looking directly into her eyes, he spoke. "Grandma… I love you."
Gillespie's salmon-pink lips pursed briefly.
"I love you too."
Ralph's hairs were all standing on end. Picking himself up before he could sink to the floor, Ralph's voice stood on the verge of cracking when he spoke. "I've got to go have a walk. I'll be ready to talk when I get back."
Lis nodded, patting Ralph's indentation on the couch. "We'll be right here when you get back."
Ralph couldn't remember anything between then and when he shut the door behind him. Hot tears began melting in with the snowflakes falling from above up and up to greater and greater heights until nothing was left but thin air.


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NAME OF TALE Starlight for Cannibals

In a world without death, acting takes on a new meaning. In one sense, everyone nowadays is acting. The endless movement of brains into new and unfamiliar bodies changes one's experience of life so many times that you have to remember how to be, move, act. And all this as you pass through new genders, races, new ways your hands and feet are set. It's been compared to a dance; knowing how to change your step at a moment's notice at precisely the right moment.
Nadia has thought many thoughts like this before, but right now, she doesn't have the time. She's staring into the mirror, fixing her hair and makeup to be more precise than everyone else. Lightbulbs frame her image, stretching into a row of glass that bends around the places her friends and colleagues sit. Each has the same look of intense concentration. They have to be perfect.
"What will you do? If you get the part, I mean," says the woman next to her. A small thing, with mousy brown hair and glasses. Not the kind of look that would ordinarily fit the part, but Nadia can just about picture it, if she stretches her mind a bit.
She smiles blandly down at her. "I don't know." It is kindly meant, but so short an answer seems to deter the mousy girl, who returns to her makeup with a sullen look. Nadia inwardly sighs, and stares at her reflection. Weary. A slightly lined face, high shoulders, long neck. They will all have to go, of course. It was not the fashion to allow the neck to be seen. A long, pointed chin, descending past the shoulders; that was what was in right now. Tiny eyes the size of beads. "Victorian Dollhouse", they were calling it, a new look for the mid-century. She stares into her whites, willing them away.

Bodies are, for a certain class of person, cheap. So why not experiment? When it came to aspects such as gender, size or shape- sure, fine, these things were quite normal to want to alter at the best of times, let alone an outstretched eternity. But some people decided to go further. In a land of such opportunity, why stop with convention, with typical signifiers of humanity? Why not push fashion further?
French designers in perfect suits, their hair tied back in perfect styles, began to gather their cameras, their ideas. Prometheus and their Chinese knockoffs began to recieve more and more requests, petitions, offers of money for very specific bodies, or for a particular fetish to indulge, a kind of poise deemed proper by men with pinched smiles. It took a little while for the "Fashion Body" to really get going, but once it did, the craving for novelty just wouldn't stop.
The first fashions were small, simple changes: a body with lengthened ears. Look like an elf! Or perhaps your eyes could become two gems of pure purple, letting you live your true imperial self in the kind of style you'd only ever dreamt of. Catwalks became inundanted with models sporting green skin, claws for hands, fur covering their bodies.
But it could never be enough.

The stage is lit darkly, with the light shining up in a way that accentuates her distance, her alienness. They blare at her like some grand interrogation, boring into her as she moves. She can't see who is in the audience, but she can see the old wooden stage, the red vaudeville curtains, the minimalist set. She smiles, the whole of her body contorting as she begins her lines.
She throws the whole of herself into it. The tortured, haggard mother. The dunce opposite her keeps on stammering when he should be domineering, but she knows how to dance rings around a man such as him. She uses his inadequacy to her advantage; her character won't be diminished through this man's dominance but by a lust, a need for something more than herself. A picture of Rodrigo, the gallant lover in the later scenes, is thundering through her mind. That is what she wants. Not this. Not a body like this.
She pirouettes, she preens, she cackles. She feels alive. She sees, in a glimmer, the future that lies ahead of her. The pointed chin of the doll-body. Maybe they'll let her have several, have spares; the Russian fur coat blending seemlessly into flesh, into bone, for those cold winter months beneath a face made of porcelain. Or ears with bones bent into her skull, forcing echoes of the most sublime forms of pain. What she could be. What she could do.
In the end, the knife slides into her without any resistance. She holds the pose for a moment, to accentuate the flourish, and the scene is over.
A voice rings from the audience. "Thank you. Next." Nothing else. No comment, no sign. Her partner smirks. His face is calm, confident; was his acting bad? Or just subtle compared to her overacting? He takes out a cigarette. She looks at the seats but can see nothing; the silence is starting to thicken. She turns away, and the set manager shoves past her as she staggers, bleeding, to the damp dressing room, its greying floorboards, its masked nurses.

There is always a demand for talent. There is always a need for more.
People didn't feel as much after so many centuries. There's only so long you can go before every emotion, artform, statement on the nature of humanity becomes rote and tired. The avant-garde had to shake things up a little; to make something new, something more shocking, something you'd never seen before.
The theatre companies are vast. The sensation of a screen was numbing; but to actually be there as frail bodies were ripped, cut, shredded live on stage was an incomparable sensation. To see murder! Ethics were no concern to a hungry audience; after all, the actresses chose to do it, and it's not like they actually died or anything. Bodies were being grown these days! Great clone farms! And surely they wouldn't really be feeling pain; they could do something about that, now, they heard, some new genetic whatchamacallit. Modification.
Whole lives, all dedicated to being able to tell St. Peter that no, they just didn't know, why would they think to ask?
Of course, the actresses and actors did feel pain. It was necessary for an authentic performance, and it would have cost an awful lot to implant that kind of modification into a mere actress. They suffered, and glowed for it. They would bleed out in real time twice a day, before being stitched up with a new body; cheap, frail, built for the sake of appearances, Victorian Dolls or Tantalines or whatever else was fashionable and fragile.
The actors told themselves a lot of things. That it was noble art they were performing, that they loved it for the craft of it. That it was giving them such adoration, such opportunities. There was no way to persuade someone whose entire identity was wrapped up in their own suffering that there was something more going on.
Try telling them that all theatre these days was just a cheap, pornographic thriller, with the same rote scripts rewritten night after night but with a shade more extremity. Tell them that all they did was indulge the emotional fetishes of hundreds of rich, old men, wiping greasy hands on wooden seats. Tell them any of that and they'd deny it. Their eyes were full of stars, of silhouettes, of the ballet shadows of shambling monsters. They had more than you. They were more. You couldn't even feel without them.

Nadia's flat is a one-room affair, a grimy hole with two mattresses and a broken sink. Her paint is peeling, her cooker is always one step away from explosion. The view is of a charnal-house.
Her grandmother lives with her. Nadia spends most of her time ignoring her and her occasional, rambling, half-lucid lectures. Most of the time she slowly, methodically, performs the same chores she's been grinding away at for centuries.
Shirin Bokhari was born in 1929, and had been in her 90s when it all happened. Nadia used to love her grandmother. She always had such stories of life under the Raj, of the migrations, of other fractured memories. She made lovely soup, once. Her husband, Nadia's grandfather, died a year before it happened; it's something that Shirin has always bitterly regretted, as the years with her granddaughter drag on and on.
Nadia was a successful enough woman in the early 21st century to keep them in healthy bodies for a good few centuries, but the money was running out. Nadia spent the last of it on her current form, but even that is getting on in years; it was a cheap knockoff from one of the Kowloons that's now in its late 30s.
Shirin, meanwhile, is inhabiting a hundred-and-seven year old sack of dust and bone. It revolts Nadia. As she enters through the door, she barely glances at the meal simmering in the pot. Shirin is always cooking. Nadia never eats any of it herself, despite the bowls her grandmother patiently puts in front of her; she always orders takeaways or grabs cheap street food.
She doesn't know why she lets Shirin live here. The constant, low mumble; the sound of clothes scraping one another; it sickens her. She hates the old crone with her aches and pains, her vacant mind, her sudden attacks of fear. She is destined for the sky, for the stars, for forever. A face, faces, a hundred ballet socks all dancing in light. Too many bones are already crawling on the ground.

The French designer Claude d'Aubree (1939-) once said, following the Catgirl phase of the 2290s, that "Fashion should not be about the image. It should be about something deeper, some inner craving." It was a brighter spark than he who first took this statement literally, of course, by selling bodies with a lust for raw meat. "A small alteration in glands", the adverts ran, "a little alteration in brain chemistry. Carné. For men. The new body by Greene Industries."
The bodies sold like wildfire. A whole new avenue had been opened up. The law laid down strictures against some of the excesses, but they were never enforced or paid attention to. And so fashion's boundaries were permanently altered. It was not enough to simply look like a cat, an angel, a Russian doll; you had to feel it, too. More and more, anything familiar was loathed and anything new embraced.
A body that felt a searing, burning pain in its heart at all times; quite harmless, but with so much more reality to it. Another that had its innards splayed across its front, blood coursing out for everyone to see, a permanent retching and heaving; all protected, of course, through complex procedures of oils and unseen skin constructs. We wouldn't want any of our products to suffer lasting damage, after all. There's a robust system of insurance and protection for such valued clients. The "Oedipus" was a popular look at one point in the 2600s. The eyes would be gouged out, a precise cocktail of hormones into the brain from new glands in gouged-out eyes, providing shame and regret which never ceased.
People spent huge sums, bankrupted themselves, for a chance at these new styles. Their eyes were full of greed in imagination of the envy, the style, the power they could project. Gone were platinum wristwatches, manicured nails, precise haircuts and grey suits. Now pure sensation, something they had less and less of each year, was a marker of taste, class, value and worth.
It would be easy to be dismissive. It would be easy to see these people as cranks, lunatics. It would be easy to critique along lines of gender, class, taste. But the truth was that all they wanted was to feel something, anything, as long as it was different. They would rock back and forward in front of TV screens, numbing themselves, forgetting their body payments, forgetting the younger and prettier people on TV talking about how they loved their new lives, new opportunities. They needed something, anything, to stay in a game where failure was permanent.
Because they'd seen what it was to be poor and forgotten, and if they tricked themselves long enough, they could pretend it wasn't there.

The phone rang at midday. Nadia, stumbling, jumps across the room. Scattered clothes, magazines, moth-eaten books litter the floor, but she doesn't care. She cradles the reciever to her ear, holding it close, barely breathing as she whispers, "Yes?"
"Nadia? Nadia Bukhari? Yah, hi hon, was just fab having you last week, just fab. Listen, doll, honey, we wanna give you the part, kay? 2 on Thursday. Your first body's a new Tantaline we just got in, yellow eyes and the red spines, ya know the one?"
She can barely breathe. "Yes. Yes, I- thank you, thank you so-"
"Yah, yah, great. See you Thursday."
Nadia sinks to the floor. Images danced in her eyes of dark lights and crowded theatres, of adoration and domination, of smiling images on a screen. Her grandmother, slowly, deliberately, moves laundry into a basket, but Nadia can't see any more. A reel is stringing its way across her eyelids. She stares upwards, silently crying, not seeing the mould as it spreads across the ceiling except as a silhouette of light and shade, mixing, transforming, oozing, paralysing her in ecstasy until the time came to change again, consume what she had been and regurgitating what she could be.

The cannibal laughs and grins, its chains crawling upward with no master, no puppeteer.