The sun rose to mark the start of the new day, its light bleeding out onto the expanse of trees visible from the high-rise window. Slowly, the light inched its way across the landscape until it brightened even the darkened room at the top of the concrete facility eking its way above the forest. From this darkened room the silhouette of a woman took shape: tall, upright, and clad in a suit as black as space. The sun illuminated a solemn frown below a narrow nose, finally brightening two eyes, dark and piercing. Many who saw these eyes would later say they were cold, unemotive. This was only partially true.
Her office was sparse, but perfect in that regard. A smooth black desk, a picture on one wall, a wall of cabinets on the other. A large window covered the wall opposite the door. A nervous knock came from this door, followed by the click of the same door opening. There was no time for waiting, apparently.
"Lieutenant Dean reporting, D.C. al Fine," came a voice from the door.
"Status report. Now," the haughty voice demanded.
"The countermeme has been, um, detected again. An anartist project displaying the countermeme prominently was identified about 20 minutes ago." The smaller voice stated.
A moment of silence. You could feel the smaller man's apprehension. You couldn't feel the sober woman's creeping fear. Her back remained turned as her eyes wavered across the pines. They weren't cold. They were calculating.
"How many infected?" There wasn't a single sign of fear in the firm voice asking the question.
"Unknown. The anartist threat has been on display for an unknown period of time, assumed to be about 2 days, in which the countermeme has entered the civilian population. Infected civilians have been identified and detained in every continent."
She knew that something would happen. Had known ever since the countermeme was detected that this would be a global threat. Somehow this didn't make hearing it any easier. More silence. More calculations.
"Then we must execute that procedure." Fine's words, heavy and grim, expanded and filled the room.
"Do you mean…?" Lieutenant Dean left the question to linger, afraid to even say the words.
"I do. We are out of alternatives." Fine turned from the window, looking Lieutenant Dean in the eyes. She saw a young man, naive and afraid.
She turned back to the window, back to her thoughts. The sun shined on her again. Were there really no other options? No. There weren't. This was the only chance. Humanity's only chance. The world weighed heavy on the shoulders of this woman judging the future of humanity. The next words were quiet. Still firm, but quiet.
"Execute Procedure Pizzicato."
The sun rose to mark the new doomsday.

From the PHYSICS division field manual:

Procedure

-Activate all sleeper units in rival agencies.

Procedure successful

The emptied hallways of Site-85 echoed with steady steps. Researcher Vongvichit hurried through a cold hallway, passing under a looming Foundation logo as she reached the front desk. The receptionist offered a tired greeting, falling on distracted ears as the researcher passed by, turning into another winding corridor. She too was tired, but fascination filled her mind much more than the need for sleep. Between identical doors and signs, the studious scientist was lost in thoughts.
Her site director had recently been handed a file displaying statistics from the nearby forest as a sort of test. She couldn't work on the SCP present there unless she identified the anomaly present in the data. Researcher Vong mentally recalled figures and charts as she marched swiftly to the office. All researchers with environmental science specialties had also received the same papers, but space was limited in the project. Of course, the threat of personal danger came with being accepted into it, but almost all of the researchers at Site 85 were desperate to get out of paperwork duty. Researcher Vong was no exception. It certainly seemed like a trivial process compared to just choosing researchers for the project, but it wasn't her choice. The office had only a few researchers at this time of night, typing away at computers or reading papers as she pulled into her desk.
The familiar packet lay in front of her as she took her seat, facing her as if in opposition. She opened it again, peering through the neon yellow highlights and scratchy annotations. If there was an anomaly, it should be obvious. A blatant mistake. But there was nothing out of the ordinary here. Everything was predictably constant. Plant growth and animal populations barely even fluctuated. Researcher Vong sighed, pulling back from the report. She knew that there were researchers who had already cracked the packet hours after obtaining it, so it must have been obvious. She prepped herself for another comprehensive read-through, purposely oblivious to the other piles of paper that would have filled her schedule.
It was mundane stuff. Researcher Vong had to actively fight off the urge to sleep at this late hour. But persevering, she got through the whole document a third time. As usual, there was nothing. Feeling less hopeful than ever, she pushed the papers aside.
A thought popped into here head. She pulled the papers back. It was the footnotes. She hadn't read the footnotes. Why didn't she ever check the footnotes? She mentally berated herself as she flipped through to the last page. Minutes of careful reading ensued, until Researcher Vong saw the line:

27. Interference with local plant and animal life can also be attributed to human development. In 2012, a zone including one-third of the forest's total area was demolished for housing.

Bingo. That had to be it. Throughout the reports, everything remained completely stable. If a third of the forest was destroyed, why wasn't it reflected in any of the data? How could this forest act completely unchanged after such an event? This is where the anomaly was in the data. A small chuckle came from Researcher Vong's mouth as she got up to report to the head scientist and, hopefully, get that spot in the project.
Dr. Adam was having a relatively easy day. He had just filled up his research project with talented new scientists, and all that was left to do in the day was complete the paperwork for it. Then the research would start and the fun begin. Somehow, he'd managed to gather some of the most important scientists in the whole area, all working on his discovery. In all honesty, Dr. Adam really did enjoy the discovery of a new SCP. The unexplainable marvels of the world were out there, waiting to be discovered and tested. It made for an interesting job, as long as they weren't dangerous. Dr. Adam hated the dangerous ones.
The paperwork-filling and thinking was cut short by a knock on the door.
“Come in.” He saw the door open and a short, upright woman come through. She looked familiar, he'd definitely seen her around sight. What was her name?
“Hello Researcher Vin,” he said cautiously. He added in an uncertain smile.
“Hi Dr. Adam. It's Vong, but that's alright. I've read the packet and believe I've identified the anomalous data.” Dr. Vong excitedly stated.
Dr. Adam's first thought was “Damn, did I forget to announce the project was filled?” His next thought was “Damn, do I have to tell this researcher she can't work on the project?" Dr. Adam let out a sigh.
“I'm sorry, but the project's been filled.” He could see her enthusiasm fall as he said the words.
“I see. Well, have a nice day.” Researcher Vong mustered up a little bit of warmth in the statement as she left the room.
Dr. Adam sighed again, pulling up the files on Researcher Vong on the nearby desktop. According to the files, she was good. A diligent scientist with a specialty in environmental sciences. If he didn't already have so many other talented environmental scientists, she'd be great for the project. It was a shame, really.
Dr. Adam was surprised by a single beep from the small digital watch on his arm. Peering down, the current time flashed on and off across the tiny screen. He snapped away from the computer instantly, standing from his chair to lock to the door with careful rapidity. His face was grim and alert. He settled back down and took the watch off his arm onto the smooth oak desk. His fingers went to work tapping the corners of the rectangular device.
He clicked each corner with the preciseness of a machine. Top left. Bottom right. Top Left. Top Right. Top Right. Bottom right. And so on. In time, the screen transformed into a black and green grid. Dr. Adam pressed his finger onto the new scanner. Thick black words flashed onto the screen.

PROCEDURE PIZZICATO ACTIVATED. GLOBAL THREAT ENTITY ELIMINATING COMMUNICATION METHODS. SLEEPER AGENTS REMAIN ON ALERT. DO NOT REVEAL POSITIONS. REPORT BACK TO COALITION FREQUENTLY.

They flashed once. Twice. A third time, and they were gone, replaced by a simple black-and-white 10:46. Dr. Adam unlocked his door and left his office. He had all the best scientists under his wing now, but he couldn't watch them alone.
Researcher Vong was on her way out of the facility when Dr. Adam intercepted her.
“Researcher Vong? I believe there may be a change in my project's lineup.”
“Hm?” Researcher Vong looked at him quizzically. This was a fast turnaround.
“I'm saying you now have a spot. Welcome to the project. Here are some papers you should be familiarized with. Work starts tomorrow.” Dr. Adam handed her a short stack of documents.
“Wow. Thank you. I must say I wasn't expecting such a quick change of mind.”
“Well, sometimes new situations can arise very quickly.”
The office was empty at this hour. Regardless, Dr. Adam pulled in close to Researcher Vong as he whispered the next words.
“Keep an eye on the others around you. Report back to me regularly. Stay vigilant.”
“Understood.” As Researcher Vong replied, she pulled up the sleeve of her coat just a tad. A small, black digital watch rested on her arm. The watch was identical to Dr. Adam's.

-Alert all allied government agencies and allied government officials.

Procedure successful

In an important building, far away from modern society, rows of tables created a vast semicircle around a raised platform at the center of a large room. Suits filled with aged men and women shuffled around the area, finding seats and speaking with each other. There was an oppressive, gloomy silence that filled the hall, stifling most conversation. There were not many smiles. There were many grimaces.
The small sound of conversation died down as a tall woman in a suit as black as space took the podium. She stood silently upright as the blue Global Occult Coalition logo appeared on the screen behind her.
“If you are here, then you know our organization. You may not all be on the best terms with us, but you know who we are, and you know the paranormal, parascientific and paratemporal threats this world has. Some of you are from established nations. Others, from paranormal organizations. All of you, however, are important people who run this world. Now, we need you to protect this world.”
The slide changed to a graphic of a head with an exclamation point covering the mouth. The black shapes carved heavy figures on the yellow background.
“In response to a rapidly-growing, uncontained memetic agent, we have indeed activated Procedure Pizzicato. Everyone in this room should have the proper documents regarding what this means. This memetic agent can travel across visual and auditory forms of information, infecting individuals and robbing them not just of the ability to understand all forms of communication, but also to convey any information themselves. Any form of contact with this ‘countermeme,' as we have called it, will result in infection and communication failure. As we have said earlier, this countermeme is not only uncontained, but also rapidly spreading. We estimate there are currently infected individuals in every country.”
A chorus of raised voices filled the room. Worry and anger presented itself in myriad ways across a variety of voices. They crescendoed to a peak before the stern amplified voice of D.C. al Fine broke the panic.
“Settle down. Settle down!”
The severe voice boomed across the hall, ushering a wave of silence. An aged figure clad in white vestments remained standing. On his head rested a miter clad with a red cross. He spoke in eloquent Italian, which a younger, similarly-clad man next to him translated.
“With all due respects, D.C. Al Fine, we seek further understanding. The Holy Order of Knights Templar must inquire as to the origin of this entity.”
“Patriarch Gallo of the Knights Templar, please be seated. We currently understand that the anartist group Are We Cool Yet? is the originator of this countermemetic invasion.”
More hushed talking across the hall. Another person stood, this one a brown-skinned, balding man clad in a white achkan.
“Is there any more information available pertaining to the countermeme threat? How many has it infected? Where is it concentrated?” He spoke in a thick Indian accent.
“His Excellency Ra-“
“What does Are We Cool Yet? seek from this attack? Do they have conditions?” A suited man with a French accent interrupted. More individuals joined in, throwing questions into the air. The chorus of confusion returned to drown the room in sound.
D.C. Al Fine's next words were loud and acerbic.
“Silence!”
The audience in the hall obeyed. The words that followed were sharp and exact.
“We understand that this situation is regrettable. More than anyone else, we do. We would not have called this meeting if it weren't absolutely necessary. Now, let us establish the necessary procedures to contain and eliminate this world threat. We are certain that the countermeme is uncontrollable, and that elimination is the only possible solution. Being the foremost authority on both parathreats and their destruction, the Global Occult Coalition will require a higher degree of freedom in order to establish global safety. Every person here should have a document on their desk regarding the exact requirements needed of you.”
Silence again. The shuffling of papers soon filled the room. More silence. Whispers to secretaries and assistants. As fearful as it was, this was indeed the calm before the storm.

-Mobilize all PHYSICS teams.

Procedure successful

"Shit, I'm itching all over."
Ten figures in black combat suits sat in the dark. The sound of an engine droned in the background as the seated soldiers bumped to the rhythm of an unsteady road.
"New suit?" Asked one of the seated figures. He was tall and well-built. A large rifle rested in his dark hands.
"New operative." Replied another. She had a mouth shaped by constant scowling and a face covered in scars.
"Shit. They're seriously bringing you here for your first operation?" Asked the tall one.
"Yeah. What's the problem? It just looks like we're stuck with some quarantine duty." Said the original speaker. He was skinnier and younger than the others, and had a pale complexion.
The tall one sighed.
"What's your name, son?"
"Bradley Jones."
The scarred soldier turned her attention back to the conversation.
"I recognize you. Sap, wasn't it?" She remarked with a mocking tone. Jones looked down and sighed reluctantly at the statement.
"I'm not going to outlive that name, am I?"
Seven other soldiers remained silent. Some of them were too afraid of their future. Some simply didn't care.
"Sap? What's that about?" The tall one asked.
"Skinny and pathetic. He had a hard time with the training course." The scarred one answered.
"Dammit, I finished the course! I passed my training, didn't I?" Sap yelled.
No one responded. The air in the back of the truck was heavy. One soldier with a large mole beside his eye was whispering a prayer to a cross on a necklace. That, and the roar of the engine, were the only sounds for a while. Sap broke the silence.
"Well, while we're all sharing names, who're you?" He directed his question to the tall soldier.
"Mark."
"Mark?"
"Yeah, as in I never miss mine." A slight smile played across his lips. The scarred soldier called him out.
"Bullshit, Your name's Goat." She turned to Sap. "As in, his e-goat's bigger than anyone else's." Sap didn't get it.
"Like, his ego. Look, I didn't choose the name. They call me Scarface. At least I've accepted it."
"So what are we actually doing?" Sap asked.
"Lesson one of PHYSICS: always read the damn briefing.” Goat said. “Basically, there's a thing out there that'll make you forget to how to speak or read or write. You lose the ability to communicate. The doctors are saying it's not a disease though. We're going in to cut off the infection and take care of the citizens."
"Huh. What do you mean by 'taking care' of citizens?" Sap unsteadily asked.
"I think you know what he means. We don't have a cure for this thing. We gotta get rid of it." Scarface filled in.
There were a couple seconds of uneasy silence.
"I don't wanna kill innocent people." Sap quietly said.
After another pause, Goat spoke.
"Not our choice."
"Either we kill these people, or we let this thing kill every person on the planet." Scarface added.
"But this disease or whatever, it doesn't kill people! Why don't we just hold them and wait for a cure?" Sap loudly asked, holding back anger.
"Look I don't know, greenhorn. I don't call the shots and neither do you. No matter what you say, we're still here and we're still required to follow orders. Get used to it." Scarface resigned herself with the last few words.
She sighed. More quietly, she spoke again.
"I don't wanna kill innocent people either."
And with that, a truck full of Coalition soldiers drove off into an uncertain fate.

-Publicly acknowledge existence of Global Occult Coalition, rival agencies, and Threat Entities.

Procedure successful

Words and calls filled the air as people rushed around the camera-laden site of the Global Occult Coalition's film set. At the center of the commotion, a well-dressed man adjusted his tie and waited, patiently. An array of cameras surrounded him, staring him down. An antsy makeup artist toyed with his hair, her nimble fingers brushing through smooth, greying locks. She threw a worried look at him.
"You got this?"
His mouth transformed into a steadfast smile as he looked at her.
"More than ever."
A tired, frantic director rushed around the set. He called for a final announcement, quieting the room.
"Listen everyone. We're right about to film, so I want to make one final announcement. In a matter of moments, we'll be going live in what will be one of the most important transmissions in history. Anyone trips up, and the whole world gets to see it. Not trying to scare anyone, but this is going live out to the whole world. And more than anything, this is a warning. The world needs to know of this global threat. So let's get rolling and save the world!"
Sporadic clapping broke out among the gathered crowd as they took positions. A call broke out in a matter of moments, silencing the set.
"Pictures up!"
The well-dressed man shooed away the makeup artist as everyone cleared away from him. A while wall inscribed with the Global Occult Coalition logo stood behind him, dark cameras making an arc in front of him. He adjusted his hair and looked at the central camera with a steely gaze.
"Rolling."
Across the world, screens lit up with the same steely gaze. A wizened yet sturdy face graced with a shock of silver hair filled televisions across the glove. The authority-filled face appeared in televisions in the corner of bars, in sets at homes and in massive screens attached to crowded skyscrapers.
"Hello world."
"What you are seeing is not a fake transmission, nor is it some form of trick. What you are witnessing is an emergency broadcast, made in cooperation with governments across the world. First and foremost, a primary statement is required for all citizens of Earth:"
"The paranormal exists."
"We live among anomalous dangers. With the support of the United Nations and the Council of 108, we, the Global Occult Coalition, have been combating paranormal, parascientific and paratemporal threats for decades, protecting the human population from the unknown. Our main mission has been peace and survival for the human race, and thus we stand above any single nation's agenda. Our interest lies only in the protection of humanity."
"There are other organizations like us, though not all of us share the same goals. More information on these organizations and the paranormal threats of the world will be explained in future broadcasts. Currently, our main focus is a threat that, if left unchecked, has the ability to eliminate modern society."
"An information-based entity with the power to eliminate communication on a base level is currently present on a global basis. Any person, once infected, will lose the ability to speak, write and understand speech and writing. This countermeme, if left unchecked, can cause a worldwide loss-of-communication scenario, destroying society on a primal level."
Though his face remained unchanged, the confident voice began to slur as he continued.
"It has come to a point where it has been deemed impossible to continue with our current path of secrecy. Thus, we must warn all of-"
A slight pause. The steely gaze wavered as confusion rose in his eyes.
"Thus, we mist warning all of-"
The confusion grew. A struggle was apparent in his rising voice.
"We are to wan all oven pemp that the ers is-"
Confusion gave out to panic. The feed cut out as screens across the world turned to black.
In the studio, panic gave away to terror. The man, once confident and proud, began to fall to his knees, gibberish spewing from his mouth. Someone grabbed a phone off the wall and urgently spoke in to the other end. In moments, combat-ready operatives filled the room, dragging the struggling man through double doors.
The director got off his chair and looked at the assistant director. They said nothing, but the fear and devastation in their eyes gave everything away.
"Good lord, what have we done?"

-Request for global martial law & worldwide protective curfew.

Procedure successful

“Now, everyone.”
The attention of many dignitaries and officials returned to the dark-suited D.C. al Fine. Her sharp, precise voice was amplified to echo in the vast hall the meeting was in.
“It should already be clear that the Global Occult Coalition is the organization best suited for tackling this global problem. We lack time to argue this fact. No other organization has the same history or experience in dealing with the paranormal. It is possible to eliminate the countermeme completely, but we cannot do this without everyone's cooperation. I'm sure you can all understand that it's hard to run an operation which requires multiple wings to be in agreement in order to get anything done. Similarly, the reaction time we have to a dangerous event is minimized when a majority of our time is spent appeasing and negotiating with opposing sides.”
The speech was cut short by a tan, silver-haired man.
“Al Fine, please get to the point. What does the Global Occult Coalition need?”
An irked D.C. al Fine cut a searing glance at him before turning back to her papers.
“We would hope that you can understand that in order to ensure the survival of mankind, the Global Occult Coalition will require global martial law.”
And with that, chaos broke out. Throughout the hall, men and women stood up to object. Others rapidly turned to their assistants or to each other. D.C. al Fine stood back from the podium for a moment as the room decided how to react. She waited for a moment, purposefully oblivious to the barrage of questions and accusations before returning to the microphone.
“I cannot answer every question at once!” It was too formal to be a yell, yet the statement carried the ferocity of one.
“There are 198 national leaders in this hall, as well as 108 more in the Council. We cannot eliminate the countermeme if we have to appease over three hundred different organizations. It is impossible. The Global Occult Coalition requires your unquestioning loyalty and trust to accomplish this.”
While the chamber had died down for the most part, rogue voices still ran rampant throughout it.
“We already have plans to establish a safer world. First, a worldwide protective curfew will be established for all civilians so we can account for our people. Second, we will establish safe zones for individuals who are confirmed to be free of memetic infection. The list goes on, but the idea remains: we will only establish measures to destroy the countermeme. Nothing else.”
D.C. al Fine allowed a pause for the audience, letting them recuperate and decide their path of action. Minutes later, she spoke again.
“We will now vote on this measure. I hope we can all agree to do what's best for the world.”
Everyone turned from the speaker to their tablets, each screen lit by three digital buttons. The red urged “Against.” The grey advised “Abstain.” The green advocated “In Favor.” D.C. al Fine stepped off the podium and approached a group of assistants off to the side.
“Damn, am I talking to the established world powers or a zoo? So much for international cooperation.” Al Fine's irritation was clear in her voice. The group nodded along to her.
One of the members spoke up, asking, “Do you think the vote will work?”
“It has to," she said. "The world is behind us on this. If we fail, so does the world."
Another asked, “What do we do if it doesn't?”
“Then we'll have to carry on. It's still possible for us to save the world without their help, it'll just be a hell of a lot harder.” She looked at her watch and sighed. “Alright. Let's see what happens.”
The screen behind the podium displayed the votes:
IN FAVOR: 117
ABSTAIN: 5
AGAINST: 186
D.C. al Fine walked back to the podium.
“I see. I hope you all understand the gravity of your choices. The Global Occult Coalition will continue to act on the world's behalf.”
She turned to walk off, but threw one last statement to the crowd.
“And if we never hear from each other again, I wish you all the best of luck. It's a mad world out there.”

-Establish and/or refresh KTE termination triage sequences for all Threat Level 2 and 3 entities.

Procedure successful

“Like hell you're gonna override my orders.”
The butt of an iron cane aggressively tapped the floor as Dr. Wythers yelled at the man cowering behind a clipboard in front of her.
“You know damn well that you have neither the authority nor the willpower to deny my command. Now get the hell out of here.” Though she held a cane, in this moment Dr. Wythers stood fully erect. She wasn't taller than the other person, but he still backed away as she spoke.
He cleared his throat and said, “I just, I just can't in good faith authorize these thaumatic weapons. It's not safe. Most of the things on this list are untested. Some are even prototypes. It's just a bad decision no matter how you look at it.”
She stepped towards him, repelling him back into the steel door behind him. The room was sterile and white, with a variety of strangely-shaped objects covered in symbols held on counters on the walls. A couple of men and women in coats also covered in symbols discreetly tinkered with some of the objects. Though they didn't turn around, they were listening to Dr. Wythers' tangent too. Her voice rose as she continued to speak.
“Really. Because the way I look at it, the whole damn world's going to shit right now, and you're worried that these weapons are untested? There are threat entities out there that will kill hundreds of people, and bullets sure as hell don't work on them. You bring them these thaumatic weapons or you let innocent people die. So go through that door and ship those fucking weapons!”
“No.”
“No?”
He held his head high and repeated, “No.”
Dr. Wythers held his stare for a second before pushing past him.
“Then fuck it. You're fired. Get out the way I'll do this myself.” As she spoke, she yanked the clipboard out of the other doctor's hands and pushed the door back.
“Wait, stop! You're not doing this!” The other doctor yelled as he chased after her.
“Oh yes I am! Now go take a hike, you don't work here anymore.” She dismisses him with a wave of her hands. She stopped, caught with a thought. Dr. Wythers swiveled around on her cane to face the other doctor.
“And one last thing. We're fighting a war right now. If everything was fine and dandy, yeah, there's no chance in hell I'd authorize these. But if everything was fine and dandy, would we be refreshing these termination sequences? If everything was fine, why are we choosing to kill the lesser evils now?”
The other doctor didn't answer the question.
“Because right now, we're fighting an evil that could let them escape, could let them cause destruction out among the normal people. If we were winning the fight, we wouldn't have to stop them now. But we're not winning the fight. We're not.”
Dr. Wythers let out a sigh, holding her cane still. She looked tired, resting on the iron cane.
“Listen, kid, you're not fired. But if I hear so much as a word that you're disobeying me again, you will be. We need all hands on deck right now. So go find some way to be useful."
The other doctor reached out to take his clipboard back. Dr. Wythers snapped it away from him and turned her back to him, continuing her march down the hall.
“I'm authorizing these weapons myself.”
And she did.

-Execute termination triage sequences.

Procedure successful

Emily Davis had a way with weapons. Well, to be more accurate, Emily Davis had a way with lead. Bullets went whichever way she wanted them to. They tended to work very well with her, and not so well against her.
She first learned of this affinity for bullets when she went shooting out at the islands in her teenage years. She never missed her targets, and her affinity soon became local legend. There weren't many people on the islands, so word about her traveled fast and she became a celebrity. Shooting wasn't just a hobby, it became who she was. It was a gift.
It was also a curse. One morning, after a night of drinking and partying, Emily awoke to her house riddle in bullets. The walls were covered in deep, small holes, with broken items shattered below. In one wall, the holes made a smiley face. Another read, in small dots, “JIM IS A DICK.”
Around this time she found that her uncanny ability with firearms went beyond that of a regular person. Videos she found amazed her with recordings of her shooting a gun, only to have the bullets go straight backwards. A couple of tests on the shooting range proved this unnatural power to be real. More nights of drinking and bad decisions also proved this power to be real.
So impulse control might not have been her best trait. Big deal, right? Though her thoughts rested along these lines, the reality of the situation proved to be more serious. In a couple years, interspersed with more incidents of a similar nature, she managed to catch the attention of larger powers.
She had not the slightest idea she'd been followed. She may have lived on island, but she certainly didn't know every face. So the new ones that appeared meant nothing to her. That is, until she found herself woken in the middle of the night, surrounded by men in tactical wear.
Her first reaction was surprise and fear. She was taken away before she had time for another reaction. Bounded and carried away, her next memories involve her waking up in a sterile facility. Here she remembers testing, trials ranging from inconvenient to excruciating. All centered around her abilities.
It was months before she was returned home. She was only freed with the strict promise to never touch a firearm or speak of any of her experiences to anyone again. For all intents and purposes, she had run away for an extended vacation.
They frequently checked up on her. She developed a sense of paranoia as she gained a better sense of when she was being followed. She knew they wouldn't be done with her. It took years until her fear was proven real.
It was when she woke up bound and gagged in the forest that she realized the day had come.
At that moment, four men dressed just like the ones who had kidnapped her years ago stood in front of her. She was on the ground, her back to a tree. Her hands and feet were tied, and a gag covered her mouth.
They were talking. She screamed. No one reacted. She screamed again. The gag hurt her jaw and the ties scraped her wrists and ankles. One of them pulled out a pistol, and another seemed to reprimand him. He put the pistol back in its holsters as the first one said some more muffled things. The agents finished their chat and directed their attention to Emily.
An agent reached into his backpack and pulled out a strange object. It bore a resemblance to a large, chrome speed gun made of a shiny metal. Rows of fine markings were inscribed down the barrel, though Emily couldn't see what they were. The agent brandishing it pulled down the dark cloth covering his mouth as he pointed it at her head. He spoke for a while in a language Emily didn't know, and the markings on the gun glowed a whitish-purple. The end of the gun lit up in a reddish hue, almost blinding Emily.
“Is there anything you wish to say before you die?” Another agent said, with a slight Eastern European accent. One of the agents cautiously approached her, unclipping and removing the gag from her mouth.
“Why…why are you doing this?” She said, her jaw sore.
“To protect the walld.”
“To protract the wild.”
Confusion shot across his face.
“To priddick dawald.”
One of the soldiers tackled him as another shouted orders at the others.
“Keep him down! Cover his mouth, dammit!”
One of the agents just looked at the tackled soldier, tears running down his eyes.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” He repeated, over and over.
The agent with the glowing gun changed its direction towards the grounded soldier. In the chaos, Emily wrested with her restraints. Nothing came loose, but she managed to struggle away from the tree. A pistol lay on the ground, freed of its holster after the tackle. Emily inched closer to it, twisting her tied arms over head and in front of her. She grabbed the pistol.
An ethereal sound interrupted the process. Turning to look, Emily saw the weird gun's glowing lights fade away. The soldier at the receiving end of it was frozen with a horrified expression. He moved again to scream loudly. Parts of his suit seemed to bubble. His whole body was squirming and moving.
A black bubble rose out of the suit, leaving behind a patch of bare peach skin. The bubble rose and popped, disappearing into air. More bubbles followed. More screams also followed. After the suit ran out, the bubbles turned peach as skin left the body. They went from peach to red to white, and there was nothing left after that. Just plain ground where the agent once was
It was time to take action. Emily held the gun's trigger in her struggling fingers. She couldn't stand up, but she didn't need to aim.
Three loud bangs, one immediately after the other, and the remaining agents slumped to the ground. Two more, and speeding bullets broke Emily's restraints. Freed, she stood and stretched out. Then she vomited. She had never killed anyone before.
Shakily, she walked away from the scene. She was safe. She was unharmed.
The world was in danger, but Emily was safe.

-Establish cooperative relations with allied occult agencies.

Procedure successful

D.C. al Fine stood at the end of a table in a nondescript room. Her dark black suit bore the marks of being worn for too long without being changed. The table stretched across the room, allowing ample space for twenty people to take a seat on it.
At this time there were only seven characters seated, each one spread as far apart from the others as much as possible.
D.C al Fine turned to one of them, a man in a cheap three-piece suit lounging behind a plaque that read “MANNA CHARITABLE FOUNDATION”.
“Mr. Johnson. Any word from the Serpent's Hand?”
He looked at her with a weary gaze.
“I'm afraid they won't be coming.”
D.C. al Fine cursed quietly and moved towards the head of the table.
“Hello everyone, I'm glad you could all make it for this meeting. Even if your top brass may have been busy, we appreciate the representatives.”
A suited woman, younger than the others in the room interrupted.
“Cut the crap. This is about the countermeme, isn't it?” Her plaque read “CHAOS INSURGENCY.”
“Right. We are in the midst of a crisis. And I don't just mean the Coalition. I'm referring to all of us, including the organizations who didn't appear today. I am speaking, of course, about the countermeme.” Al Fine stated.
A dashing man with slicked hair spoke up from behind his “UNUSUAL INCIDENT UNIT” plaque.
“We are aware of the current predicament. However, we lack information about this threat. Could you please share your knowledge with us about the countermeme?” His phrasing made the question sound more like a command.
“That's why we're all gathered here, isn't it? We all have different information, different resources.” Al Fine continued in a consistently formal tone.
“You're proposing an alliance?” The man who said this emanated an aura of power. His accent was Canadian, and though he was forty, he appeared ten years younger. “SCP FOUNDATION” was emblazoned the plaque in front of him.
“Like hell you are.” The Insurgency representative shot the sentence more at the Foundation leader than al Fine.
“I ask that you all consider the possibilities. This threat is more than capable of wiping us all out. With limited cooperation, we can all be better off. Listen, everything is negotiable at the moment. Currently, we need to focus on eliminating this countermeme.”
“That you made.” The Insurgency representative added.
“Culpability is not the most pressing issue at the moment. We need to stay focused on the most important issue.” Al Fine forcefully said.
“Well that's easy for you to say,” said a large man in a white button-up shirt in a thick southern accent. His plaque read “THE FIFTH CHURCH.” “You've got all to gain from this. What are we gettin'?”
“At a minimum, mutual protection. At a maximum, well, we're open to discussion.” Al Fine said, with a tinge of irritation.
“Nope. This won't work. I'm leaving.” The Insurgency representative said, as she stood from her seat. “You created this mess, you're gonna deal with it.”
Al Fine turned around, visibly angered. “Oh no, you're not pinning this on us. We destroyed it. Sure, we created this thing, but we got rid of it. And we're going to do it again.”
The Insurgency representative watched al Fine, amused.
Al Fine continued, “It's this one who let the countermeme break out.” She pointed at the most unusual figure in the room. The Insurgency representative remained standing near the door.
Clad in a bright blue and red suit reminiscent of a bus seat from the 80s, a man with greying hair simply smirked. He had brought a plaque that matched his suit, reading “ARE WE COOL YET?”
“Please. Who broadcast an infected transmission to the entire world? That's not on me. I don't even know why I'm here. You're all bureaucrats anyways. I'm leaving too. See ya.” The eccentric man stood up and left the room as the arguing continued, taking his plaque with him. A sharply-dressed man spoke up afterwards.
“I've abstained from speaking so far, but I don't find this meeting to be particularly productive. Judging from the Coalition's lack of competency, the Insurgency's lack of agreement, and everyone else's lack of interest, it would seem that nothing effective will result from any agreement in this meeting. My time would be better spent elsewhere.” He left his “MARSHALL, CARTER, AND DARK LTD.” plaque as he departed from the meeting. The Insurgency representative followed behind him.
Al Fine continued her speech, saying, “I already knew that not everyone would be agreeing with this proposal. We don't need them. What we do need is each other.”
Al Fine continued, but she knew that she'd already lost this battle. In time, she concluded her speech and shook hands with the remaining four people in the room, each one leaving with vague promises. The room seemed especially dreary with only al Fine in it.
None of the representative and leaders contacted the Coalition about that proposed alliance again.
They'd fight their own battles.
Without cooperation, none of them would win.
A long, silent night was falling.


Note: This is Part 6 of a 7-part story. It is recommended that you start from the beginning with SCP-3475 - Our Shifting Foundations.

Annette chose a school. Of course they chose a school. The final insult.
The nuke jumbled some sense back into me. I can feel the Foundation conditioning again. With it, it is hard to see the light. With it comes the guilt and the shame, and now, the school. Damn.
"Why did you choose this place?"
NEEDED QUIET PLACE. THIS WAS EMPTY. ABANDONED BUILDING.
I nod glumly. Annette is out of battle mode, at least. Those things are no threat to us. No threat to anybody. They are happy. I decide to probe further. To pick at the scab, to poke the bruise.
"Do you know what this place was?"
S C H O O L?
I need to tell someone. I can't. Maybe it will come out? I remember the blurs in the car, trapped in something they could no longer perceive, could no longer experience. Dying alone, together. I shake my head. It still aches. Everything aches. The deconditioner is almost done. It is a nice little box in my head, waiting to be opened. It cries to be opened. It promises blackness. The scene will go like this:
We will enter the school. The dashing Doctor Williams will be on a bier, surrounded by medical equipment, serene and sedated. Annette will grab me by the shoulder, begging me one last time not to do it, not to go through. I shake them off and continue unfazed. I will lean down to ear level and, in one breathy whisper—
I do not want to enter the school. The school is bad, the school is guilt.
We enter the school.
Empty corridors. Annette holds out a hand. The disc is off.
SMTG HRE
They take off down the corridor, skittering up the wall. I try to make myself small in a corner of the entryway. I swear I can hear little feet patters, but that is impossible, because if anyone was here, I would hear nothing at all.
Annette rounds the corner at full speed. They slam into me, picking me up off my feet and hauling me towards the door. I manage to reach out and tap their shoulder:
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
We reach the door. They stop.
"S KCO"
They drop me and reactivate their wrist.
WHT R U TRNG SY
"Stop," I say. "I know what they are."
I pull myself up to my full height and look up at Annette. Their eyes meet mine, on what must be reflex.
"Please take me to Williams."
She is nothing like I expected. Annette has her on a haphazard altar of desks, more functional than aesthetic. One leg is bent off at a hideous angle. Red stains surround her mouth. A half-empty IV bag drains into her arm. What was once her face is now pitted and rotten, covered in a black mold.
Annette, seeing this, lets out a keening moan. They rush over and do something. My head hurts.
"Do you see them?"
YES.
"How do humans reproduce?"
Silence. They walk over to me, kneel down, and look me in the eye.
WHY?
The words come spilling out of me now. They vanished, one day. The children. Anyone under the age of 18, the beginning of the end.
What is the medium of humans but ideas? There is a river through human history, an ever-wheeling flow of memes. And then, one day, it shifted. Rivers in some places will naturally reverse direction—buck and break their banks in a titanic gallop, until what went one way now goes another. I think that was what happened with the ideas, and what happened with humanity—one day it just changed course, to something new.
Some things cannot be removed, not entirely. You can never hold back a river. We were running out of amnestics. Too many disasters had happened too fast. The stars had gone. 'Leave it to the memeticists,' they said. Hah! Memetics is the poisoned craft, and we the poisoners. But they dumped it on our lap and amnesticized themselves—amnesticized the whole Foundation, leaving us alone in our guilt. And there are some things you cannot remove, some things embedded too deep in the human psyche. And we were asked to remove something not even amnestics could touch?
And so I took that impulse and re-channeled it. Me, and me alone. I was the only one that could do it—not the skill, the will. Like the stars. Everyone knows stars are in the sky, so you put in new stars and no one notices. Their children go, you make new children. Or change the impulse, the drive. Redirect. Transform. Their children are the grass and the breeze and the stars in the sky. All of those things and more.
And what about the children? What happened to them? How many starved in front of parents that could not see them? How many babies cried unanswered until they cried no more? When I made people forget, did they stay people? Did I do a good thing? Then why do I feel so bad?
Annette stares at me.
"Well?" I demand. I stand up tall, puff out my chest. "What are you going to do?"
Their eyes meet mine. I know, suddenly, that they pity me. That they have always pitied me, that they have always pitied memeticists more than I have pitied myself. They walk away, and there is no catharsis.
Somewhere in the room there are children.
"I'm sorry," I call, knowing they cannot know or care.
Somewhere inside of me, the last piece slides into place.
How to forget what I have done? I know of one way, at least. The box is taut and sleek. It cannot explode on its own but it wants to, I can feel, wants to so badly. As I sit I feel my body become heavier. It becomes harder to breathe. Something is on my chest. Something must be on my chest. My head is pounding. I feel flushed. Too late I realize what is happening. I look to Annette. What never were eyes stare back.
"Are they trying to kill me?" I whisper.
NO.
I am a fool. I start to cry. I cry for a long long time, not for them, but for me. They seem to understand.
The river may shift, but it does not go away. Maybe there is something on the other side. What I saw in the city could hardly be human, but it was alive. There can be light in darkness; what else are stars?
I jerk upright. I do not know how long I have sat on the floor. My head is about to explode. I stagger over to Williams, and take one last look at her ruined face.
"You can survive the deconditioner?"
NO CONDITIONING.
"Decide what to do with it."
I WILL.
They pause.
GOODBYE.
THANK YOU.
They mean it.
I lean down, to the level of the ear. A hole to the brain. I take a deep breath. The box never wanted to be opened. It was always me. Maybe things will change. Maybe things have to change.
I whisper: I'm sorry:

The dam breaks. There is light. I see Williams for the first time, as Annette must. She smiles at me. In the light I see Annette, as they always are.
There is music. I do not know who is playing it, but there is music. All around me are children. They see me and laugh.
There are stars. There are children.
In their eyes are stars.

« It Takes Two | Children Will Listen | Birth of a New Day »


This was it. No more fucking around. The squad clanked behind him, battle suits shimmering in the desert heat. SCP-3396 hung overhead, a second moon trailing a net of glowing blue across the horizon.
Ahead, 3731 poured out of the hotels lining the boulevard.
"Prime ghosthrowers." Spectral emulsifier was too clunky for voice command. Gears ratcheted up and down the left arms of their suits. The ghosthrower's battery was powered by a human heart built into the exoskeleton somewhere; its pounding mixed with Garrett's own, drumming wildly at his temples.
He swallowed, tasting sweat on his lips. The blues were closing in. The suit beeped as it shot him up with something that made sharp warmth ooze through his body.
"Loudspeakers on. You still have a chance to cooperate. Go home and wait for agen-"
A woman with bone spears jutting through the tiger fur over her skin leapt at him, snarling. He leapt back, boosters firing in the legs of his suit. A rifle popped to his left, and lightning struck her out of the air.
All hell broke loose. Mang's rifle spat round after round, bolts cracking down from the sky wherever they hit. The rest of the squad opened up, beams and waves ripping through space alongside bullets and grenades.
A person-shaped hole in space bulged and stretched toward their formation and Garrett twisted his hand in its gauntlet. The stream burst from the nozzle with a sound like a chainsaw cutting through desperate wails. Faint blue light swirling with pained faces washed over the attacking form, ripping away bits of the void surrounding it until blackened bones showed underneath and the figure crumbled.
An alarm chirped in his ear as bullets pinged off of him. The suit held as he swept its arm to the right, arcing across half a dozen of them - a dense, shifting cloud of birds, a tall man in a suit with a knot of gears where his head should have been, a many-armed beast that seemed to be made of plush, and three that just looked like people with guns - the hungry spirits devoured them all, bulbs bursting in the streetlights as the remains collapsed.
The squad had spread out to his left, falling in behind Guittierez with his belt-fed rig; the barrels churned, but the machine made no sound except the tinkling of shells hitting asphault. Wherever he pointed it, though, gnashing mouths bloomed and chewed themselves mercilessly. The crowd of 3731, now running, fell in swaths as countless teeth devoured them from inside.
Tucson would be reclaimed, in the name of humanity.

High up in the clouds, Armando sat on a floating spider web of arms. He looked out at the shimmering orange and purple of the sunrise as the morning broke over the desert sky.
About two hundred helium-filled arms nestled against each other, locked in a complex, crossword-puzzle-shaped kinetoglyph keeping the whole structure stable.
Armando had time to reflect, up here. Arms he left down below with his companions would alert him to danger, but they had been quiet recently. The Foundation's pestering had grown more and more infrequent, though no one was naive enough to think they had completely given up.
Armando tried to remember a time when the Foundation wasn't at the forefront of his mind. He went further and further back, until -
A scared fifteen-year-old boy sat alone in a derelict garage, shaking.
Stupid!
Stupid!
The fossilized pile of toolboxes, car parts, bicycle chains, and assorted junk had collapsed on him. His arm was stuck, possibly broken. Elbows didn't extend like that, he was pretty sure.
He struggled to free himself. If he could just get his arm out, he could start putting the pile back together, and then maybe no one would get mad. He wasn't bleeding anywhere, so at least he had that going for him.
No blood. The rusty box shifted slightly. OK. One, two, three
what
He was free, sort of. The arm wasn't. Still no blood. Armando looked at the stump, growing and stretching into a new arm like toothpaste coming out of the tube.
He vomited at the sight of the fresh new arm, its freckled red skin blending into his own brown skin at the shoulder.
He threw food and toys and a picture of his family in a plastic grocery bag, and he ran. And he didn't stop.
He wasn't really free, back then. He had tried pulling the new arm off, crushing it, hacking it off. All it ever got him was a new arm and a little more desperation.
The new arms felt foreign, gross, invasive. They weren't him. He couldn't even control them, just 'suggest' what they should do. He barely felt anything through them, just vague sensations of heat and pressure. Every new one that appeared was a cruel surprise. Human arms of every color gave way to arms of metal, and popcorn, and wood.
It took him a while to accustom himself. Every new day he could move the arms a little faster, a little more delicately. Even so, they would twitch and jerk on occasion, as if being moved by someone or something else.
After hundreds of attempts he eventually lucked out and got two arms similar to his own skin, and buried the rest. He tried to live normally, or at least as normally as a runaway with no home or education could.
He ended up falling in with the wrong crowd, as his mom would have said. They welcomed his arms, gave him a home, but he still wasn't free. Just another tool in a toolbox. Though he decided a roof over his head was worth letting go of any imagined destiny.
The stereotypical "one last job" went south.
Bullets flew through the air. A weird purple fog filled the air, probably from the "mystery candy" catching fire. The buyer had apparently gotten spooked and ratted them out, hoping either corrupt cops or Los Milagros would kill them over the anomalous guns and drugs.
Armando hid behind the stack of crates, trying to find an escape. He was not going to die like this.
The black vans pulled up. Agents in all black tactical gear appeared, and cleared the area. A stray grenade exploded near Armando, deafening him and shredding his right arm.
He felt the cells regrowing. Not now, you damn arms…
The agent shot the man who threw it, then approached Armando, whose new right arm was now made of tire rubber.
The agent spoke into his comm, and Armando woke up in a concrete cell.
He definitely was never free in the Foundation. Endless tests prodding and poking and pulling at his arms. Endless gray. Endless tasteless food and neutral, muted rehearsed lines from the researchers.
He almost broke out, once.
He fought back against the people keeping him there. But he lost control. He didn't own the arms, he was a slave to them, a host. A victim of their unpredictability.
The rush of a chance to escape weakened his hold on the monstrous arms. Their unpredictability killed an innocent and cut his escape short. What would he do even if he escaped? He had realized then, that he could never be truly free. So he let them take him back. And there he stayed.
Armando had learned the value of eavesdropping at a very young age. He saw fewer and fewer people working at the site. Hushed communications, letters and numbers that meant nothing to him. Something something 96. Something something T-P-K.
The evacuation came soon after. Every "SCP", every doctor, every janitor, every folder was picked up and thrown in transports. He never got to see what the facility actually looked like from the outside.
Sirens, followed by explosions. The truck holding his cell stopped abruptly, then began to melt. The wall of Armando's chamber sparkled and turned into salt, which cracked and crumbled and was blown away in the breeze. A four-eyed woman with translucent white hair and skin lowered her goggles, and smiled.
"You coming with us? Or you want us to drop you back off at that Site?"
He took her hand, and walked toward his new future.
The magical blue matter they had offered him made him feel like he was being baptized. He was in control now. Every arm sang along with his soul. They moved like water at a single thought. He could feel the texture of reality through them. Whatever had been moving them before was either dead, or had fled in fear at the blue-green that now filled him.
His new friends spoke of the future, of a new era dawning. The world had been dipped in this blue matter, they said, and it was only a matter of time before it soaked through completely.
Still not fully free, with the Foundation doing everything humanly and inhumanly possible to catch them, but Armando felt he was finally on the right road.
It had been almost four years since then. The great Tree had awakened, and Armando had watched it rise and branch from his cloud perch. Even now the beautiful fractal of blue and green could be seen off in the distance, stretching into the heavens.
He exhaled and closed his eyes, feeling the breeze envelop him.
Look at me, world.
And for the first time in his life, Armando felt like he was truly, undeniably, free.

It was calling them home. It was calling them to Thrive.
Tilda Moose and the collection of beings that were once Mobile Task Force Sigma-3 stepped out of the Way, leaving the sanctuary of the Library's halls. Once, the land on which they stood was called Chicago. Now it was a desert of obsidian, with not a structure in site. It was beautiful. It was empty.
Moose considered going back one final time; there was nothing forcing them to do this. But curiosity was what had defined their life. If it defined their death, then so be it. The truth of humanity's nature, its purpose, lay just ahead. Moose could no more turn back than a drowned man refuse air.
The group began to rise in the air, half willing the action themselves and half being cradled by the force above. Moose dimly felt the impact as their physical body was ripped asunder by the detonation of the Foundation's final weapon. It was pathetic, really. Bathed in the light above, they were so far beyond this now. The so-called true remnants of humanity had only harmed themselves.
As they approached what they knew to be the source of their power, the old worries returned once again. Would they be enslaved to this being's will? Would their identities be stripped away and fused into a mockery of life? What was the catch? What was the price?
"Why are you doing this?" they whispered with lips of Aether. And then came a bolt of understanding. Humanity was never the beneficiary, the purchaser of this power. This fate, this godhood, had been determined long ago by whatever forces had borne humanity to begin with.
And who were they? There was always another secret to learn, and now Moose had all the time in the Multiverse to find the answer.

O5-8 looked out at the burning Pacific Ocean and smiled sadly.
An errant thaumic wave had washed into the sea and had done something to its chemical structure. Turned it into gasoline, or something similar. From there it had only been a matter of time. Heat was everywhere these days, after all.
Literally, as it turned out. A stray flow of magma from a nearby tectonic shatter flowed past the eighth Overseer, coming within inches of his shoes.
He felt nothing. The shoes weren't even real.
He looked up, and saw the mutants there, hovering in space and looking down at him. Or at least looking down in his direction. He doubted any of them were paying attention enough to see him specifically.
But he could see them, through the planet's thickening atmosphere. And he was very proud that so many of them had survived. In truth, it was all that he had ever wanted, and he considered himself lucky that so many had been saved to carry the species to new heights.
Or distances, he supposed. Space was funny.
He had spent so many thousands of years taking care of this absurd little species. Watching them grow up. Taking their first steps out of the oceans to live under the hot sun. If he was being honest with himself, he had always been more partial to the oceangoing species, but in a surprising twist, they'd turned out to be less smart than the primates. Or way, way smarter, he guessed, looking at the senseless destruction all around him. It was hard to tell.
But in time he had grown to love them. He bore their sorrows upon his great shoulders so that they could keep going without being crushed. He watched from the depths as they built great cities, and pushed the darkness back with their every breath.
He'd seen great promise in the Foundation since its inception, but was concerned at the outset that they were a touch… zealous. Useful, but after a while, necessary. An absolute requirement for human life to go on. O5-8 could have done the job on his own if he'd put his back into it, but greatly appreciated the Foundation making his mighty burden less heavy over the years. So he chose to watch them, from the inside, to steer them in the right direction when he could without toppling them over.
He realized now that he had failed hilariously in this pursuit, but thankfully it didn't matter anymore.
For the first time, humanity was truly free. And that meant the thing that called itself Overseer Eight could finally let go of the weight it had carried for so long.
So he did.
And in that instant, he could hear the horrifying unified roar of thousands of starving abominations from across space, now immediately aware of the Earth's existence. They began to tear through space like a machete through pudding toward the defenseless and exposed planet, intent on consuming this next meal in a long line of planets devoured that stretched back to the beginning of time.
“Are you sure this is how you want to play it?”
A woman materialized next to the Overseer, in a wash of seawater that splashed upon the nearby lava and sent up clouds of steam. She was incomparably beautiful, clothed in corals and shells and seaweed, with hair as red as blood and skin of alabaster. She smiled in a way that failed to be anything other than predatory.
She was the single most violent, barbaric, and disgusting thing that Overseer Eight was aware of, and she was also his sister.
He replied, “Really? After all this time, you express doubt?”
She laughed daintily. The Overseer heard it echo through the thousands of mindless creatures that lived behind her eyes, until it became a howling cacophony of bestial hunger.
“No, dear. I have no doubts. Merely surprised at your sudden… laxity.”
He snorted, and brushed some ash from the lapel of his charcoal suit. “I have no reason to keep holding you back. There aren't anymore people for you to devour and enslave, if you haven't noticed already. You and your spawn are free to do as you wish. You have everything you've ever wanted. Freedom. A legion of fanatic servants that you've twisted beyond recognition. An entire cosmos to gnaw on. Go nuts. But I'd leave soon, if I were you. There are some disagreeable things on the way, and they'll try to kill us if we're still here.”
She seemed pensive. “Drawn by what, I wonder?”
The Overseer looked up. The last humans were gone.
“Us, I think. Or perhaps just curious about an active and energetic planet appearing out of nowhere. Either way, they're coming, and not for polite conversation.”
She regarded him with unconcealed curiosity. “But what will you do, my oh-so-serious brother? No more of your so-called innocents to keep safe from bad old me. No more Foundation to prop up on your shoulders. Are you going to guard the rocks now? You're doing a terrible job; I think most of them are on fire.”
He smiled, and began to gather his essence around him. “I might, actually. What's left of them, anyhow. What purpose do I have, now? I've been defined by death and pain and sacrifice for my entire existence. I've spent millions of years trying to stop you from munching on the life that gave us our very reason to exist.”
He chuckled. “I am the sorrow of all humanity. I am their pain, their endurance, their memory. Their mind, and honor. The one who stopped them from being animals, who watched them, taught them, and ministered to their better nature while keeping out the things that wanted to eat them. Our elder brother in his wisdom has decided that their time has finally come. They don't need me anymore. And they don't need you, either. If they ever did. They're beyond us now. What am I going to do? My dear, I'm going to do what I've always done. I am going to endure. I will shoulder a burden most heavy.”
The Overseer pulled from the air a colossal anchor, as long as he was tall, covered in rust and barnacles and twisting nearby space with its sheer cosmic mass. The sum total weight of all humanity's pain, sadness, anguish, and determination to exist through it all. The burden they had left behind.
It entered realspace with a subtle boom that extinguished every fire in a hundred-mile radius.
He hefted the great weapon and laid it across his shoulder, where it had always belonged. He looked to the stars, where unknowable predators from the far reaches of reality shrieked down toward them.
“Will you join me?”
The woman, the hunger, lust, ferocity, and rage of what had been mankind, grinned wide, showing teeth that had bitten through continents in ages long since past.
“This once, brother, I will. Let us teach them how to fear.”
She disappeared.
An ocean of pale flesh, rotting and shrieking, made of the corpses of thousands of years of the planet's most furious dead, exploded from beneath the bedrock of North America. The avalanche of wrathful corruption ground its tendrils into the bones of the earth and yawned its many maws, reaching upward toward the sky in desperate need of the violence that gave it its heart.
The man who was not the Foundation's Eighth Overseer armored himself in plates of the purest stone, hewn from the agony and valor of Earth's most sacred and worthy dead. He gathered what remained of the planet's oceans around him and rose. The last knight, the eternal guardian of the soul of humanity, ascended to fulfill his oath.
And together, they waged their final war.

O5-1 strode out of the ruins of his bunker, his face a mask of rage and grief. He… they, had protected humanity for so long. Humanity was imperfect, it was chaotic, and it was the only thing he'd ever loved. And now he was finally alone. A truth that had been figurative for over two thousand years was now literal. The irony was bile in his throat.
He stared at the new blue star and let out a roar of frustration. He poured every sacrifice, every tragedy, every Montauk, and every victory into his voice. When he fell silent, little of him remained.
"I'd do it again. All of it, one thousand times over. Even if I knew I would still fail." He straightened up and began to pace. "I see you in the sky, rising to a final betrayal with a being that is nothing more than a mockery of true life. You abandon everything your ancestors have built, everything we have shed blood to protect. I know this is the end, I can feel Life itself leaving this world. But had you stood with us rather than against us we could have won. We could have endured as we've always endured, survived as we've always survived. But you were seduced by power. You may have become gods, but that is something less than human, not more. The present isn't worth the loss of the future and the past."
O5-1 stopped, and turned to face someone who wasn't there. "Hello Fritz, did no one ever teach you that it's rude to interrupt a soliloquy?"
Nobody said nothing.
"You always stood with us. But when I needed your guidance more than ever you were gone. Why?"
Nobody said nothing.
"We'll both be dead soon. Just tell me why. For the sake of everyone we've sacrificed on the altar of our ideals, tell me why you abandoned them."
"Joseph. It wasn't the greater good anymore."
Neither being spoke again. The Wanderer had ended his journey, and Nobody was never no one.

In low Earth orbit, an entity was still, watching with its many steel eyes.
It glinted in the light of the faraway Sun. Spires of dull towering metal drifted in the cosmic wind, each with a glowing orange core, each the size of a small city. The constructs contained enough power to vaporize star systems. With one thought, the entity at the center of this grand iron cathedral could gaze upon lightyears of space and reduce them to a hot slurry of base particles. Its cannons, reactors, generators, armor, and power were infinite, in the truest sense of the word. Its disparate network of machines floated in the void, orbiting around one locus.
Nestled at the heart of this assembly of endlessly destructive engines was the form of a human woman. Small, and unimpressive. An afterthought, kept only out of a sense of vague respect for what the entity used to be. A nostalgic figurine. Skin of pure elemental iron, the entity's favorite. A gentle fiery glow could be seen between the plates. A hint of the furnace at its heart.
The small figure looked at its own hands, and wondered.
It was still known to itself as Monica.
She had more or less lost her humanity completely. She was no longer a person, and she knew it. Either that, or the definition of humanity had changed forever. She kept her name, and the memories of what she used to be. Her knowledge was as close to complete as it could have been, after devouring and integrating most of what used to be the Internet and the secure databases of the erstwhile United States, but she found herself incapable of forgetting.
And she didn't want to.
There were others near her. The survivors, who had ascended alongside her, who she had led to absolution.
There was the thing that once called itself Dozer. He and his engineers, who had always been fast friends, had elected to encase themselves in stone and fuse, becoming one mind. Now they formed a monolithic citadel of beautiful white and black statuary, with miles of carvings of people and houses and plants and bygone civilizations, which moved within the halls and spires and drifted in the solar breeze with life of their own. Memories of where they had come from, hewn from rock and given new life, to stand for all time.
Ogre and Violet were there as well. On their last day before leaving Earth, they had married, and wove their essences together. Now they existed as a great menagerie of plants and animals, across dozens of floating islands with their own pockets of breathable air and gravity. On the largest island were two thrones in which the two lovers sat and looked upon the lives they had saved with pride and affection, determined to find a place where Earth's treasured creatures could live anew.
And there was Norman. He was nameless now, a moon-sized mass of flesh swathed in a sea of luminous and rich blue-green water. Great leviathan shapes could be seen moving under the waves of its surface, creatures of Norman's own design which had taken on a strange and alien existence of their own. His mind unreeled for lightyears in all directions, hunting for minds to discover and learn, relentless in his quest for learning and enlightenment.
And there were many thousands of others, each with shapes incredible and unique, every one an expression of a human mind let loose from the constraints of mere possibility.
Below these gods, the planet they had once called home burned and shuddered.
Little life remained in the wake of the destruction that the Foundation had wrought. In their desire to remain the only true humans, they had cracked the continents with their bombs and boiled the seas in technological rage. The energies whirled and all the while, the Blue simply existed, uncaring and unmoving in the face of all their wrath. The tree had grown until it was no longer a tree. It became a sprawling ecosystem of its own; a huge network of glowing aquamarine tendrils that had sprouted and overtaken most of the western United States.
And once the world began to burn, it left.
It ascended into the sky, a massive aggregate of interwoven strands that glowed, indifferent to the suffering and destruction. It blossomed and writhed languidly in orbit with the ones that it had changed, reacting to nothing, simultaneously comforting and terrifying.
Monica had never had great love for the Foundation, but now understood what a purpose they had served. They had chained back thousands of humanity's unseen and immortal foes. They had been the bedrock upon which civilization rested. For so long, they had been salvation itself, and she knew that it was likely that without them she would not exist.
She supposed it was fitting then, that they had decided to die upon finally being rendered obsolete. Humanity no longer needed them, and in their rage at their loss of purpose, they had chosen to self-immolate rather than go on.
Before the end, she had spoken with some of them. She had become too powerful to threaten by that time, and wanted them to see reason. Surely eternity was worth letting go of some outdated principles and prejudices. Surely the definition of what was “anomalous” no longer mattered, and they could come to see that it was senseless to prolong such a futile struggle.
But they spat in her face, and chose the fire instead. They would rather normalcy be absolute, than live one more day sharing a planet with such unclean and abhorrent monsters. And so Monica saved who chose to leave, and left them to their blaze of glory.
For all intents and purposes, they had been humanity itself. But that no longer meant what it used to.
The future was so much larger than a ball of rock ruined by those that chose to burn eternity to salvage the past. Out there was possibility. Potential. The far bounds of reality failed to care that humanity yet existed, that they had come upon the cusp of their apotheosis.
But Monica swore that she would make them care. They would sear their sign upon the stars themselves. They would thrive, and quake the pillars of creation with their advent.
She shed one final tear, a droplet of molten metal that drifted into the expanse. A memento, for those that had fallen to ignorance and pride and pointless strife.
She signaled to her people. And they left the Earth behind, to seek their fate in the cosmos.
Alone in its orbit, the Blue, the Empyrean Parasite, the ineffable creature of secret inner fire that had been first among all of Life, saw. The results of its work were painted across eons, and this latest thread it had woven into the grand tapestry pleased it to no end. There had been such potential here, and now it was realized in full.
It would need to be, to withstand what was to come.
It laughed, a quiet sound that buckled the stars in their stride and twisted space itself in a paroxysm of primal joy - a victory well-won.
And it also left, to see if the grand defenses of this reality were yet strong enough.

SCP-3731

Apotheosis Hub

/


The air was dry, smelling of the unique odor that hot sand and dry flora carried from the long, drawn out hours of daylight in the arid region. The sun would bleach everything that it touched in the small isolated town, where the Arizona local time happened to just be striking seven in the evening for its residents. It was dusk now, the ending of a day for most and the start for others just as the noisy crickets and other such inhabitants came to life. The sky flowed with large strokes of dark orange and scarlet red in small amounts, all accompanied by the smallest of streaking cirrus clouds. A good omen, perhaps.
The sole sheriff of the sparsely inhabited settlement sat comfortably on his porch in a rocking chair, a cold glass of bourbon on the rocks in his hand - a gift from an old friend in law enforcement to enjoy a pleasant view with before he went to sleep. It was a view he had seen thousands of times before, almost memorizing it by now with all the time he had, as the town hadn't really needed a sheriff in quite a while. The only aspect that ever changed about this view were the plants that laid out past the dirt road his house was on. So, as the figure of a limping creature came over the horizon, it immediately caught the sheriff's eye.
It didn't move like any wild dog, it didn't look like one either as it slowly drew closer to the edge of town. It didn't take long before the creaking of the porch's old boards emanated as the sheriff stood up slowly, calmly put down his glass, grabbed the shotgun at his side and quietly strode across the dirt road. With slight puffs of dirt being dragged up as he went, he stopped right before the gravel curb as he merely watched now, gun lowered with a firm grip. Perhaps it was a wild dog or coyote, though if that was the case, he knew the whole pack would come along, so he wondered why this one was alone. It was only until the creature was about a hundred yards away that he started to realize what the animal really was, its limping form outlined in the light from the dying day, three legs strode with their dark shadows.
The sheriff's chest tightened in anticipation as the creature moved closer, he knew exactly what it was now, but it couldn't be right, it wasn't possible for him to conceive it as such. The creature in question was a golden retriever, the most friendly dog of a local family he'd ever met, but this dog didn't leave home with a quarter of their head and their left front leg gone. The missing sections looked like they had been cut off without a single sign of tissue tearing, most of the lower jaw gone with blood-stained bone exposed on the left side. Their tongue hung out the side of the hole with a straight slice cut out of it, while their precious coat of fur was matted with a dark shade of dried blood near the wounds. They were only five feet away before its shaking legs collapsed, a constant and low whine coming from it, before that and everything else then decayed into a absolute silence.
Nothing dared to make a sound at that moment.

It had been less than half an hour since the incident, the sheriff had stood in place for a longer time than he might have thought, before eventually wrapping the animal in a old tarp from the side of his house. Whoever or whatever attacked the dog was in his jurisdiction, being the law of the land in this place and all, but acting as such wasn't something he'd done in a while. This town was too quiet, too peaceful for such occurrences, and besides, he was becoming too old to deal with things like this.
Only after several long minutes of festering thoughts about what might have happened out past the horizon did the sheriff move from his spot, even then only slowly walking down the beaten dirt road as he made his way to the owner's house. Though as he went along the road, he shot a pensive glance towards the southern horizon multiple times, as if expecting for something else to come forth out of the encroaching night.
His boots tapped lightly against the bleached boards of the porch, his pace as casual as one could get after having seen what he had; there was no need to cause a stir by running over in a frenzy as no doubt there were others watching him. Whether it was from their faintly lit front decks or the family room window of their house, this should just look like a friendly encounter, neighbour to neighbour. With his thumbs under his belt, the tension in the air felt as if it could slap him, the faint sound of the old doorbell and the creaking of the door only worsening with the palpable aura of the bleak atmosphere.
He knew the particular family very well, as they were only a block's distance apart. He had come over for dinner many times and even played fetch with the dog on a mild afternoon every so often whenever it wandered over. Though not a mind reader, he was well aware about how they usually composed themselves, so when both the wife and the husband opened the door almost immediately, he knew something was up right then. There was a strong sense of expectation in their eyes from the sheriff, almost as if they knew that he was coming over, or perhaps they were about to be out the door coming to him if he'd arrived a second later. Though after the door was open, it didn't take long for them to freak out as the sheriff spoke. And it wasn't about the dog's death in any way, it was about their daughter who had gone out to get it after it ran off southward, away from the town.
They said that it wasn't out of character for her to sometimes take a while, that this was nowhere near her first time, that she was probably just staring at the clouds. They continued to say these things with different wordings repeatedly like freaked out parents would, as if trying to convince themselves. Through their thought process they drove on, almost manically as it quickly broke down as fast as it tried to start in a endless circle, seeming like they might asphyxiate from how fast they were talking. The sheriff might think of them as irresponsible parents if it weren't for their familiarity. His gut knew that this wasn't their fault, that there was something unholy happening around here.
The sheriff eventually rested his hand on the father's shoulder, wishing he had better words, better circumstances for the both of them, though the dark reality of it was much more grim than he originally thought. Hushed words of reassurance and a promise that they would form a search party immediately were given, as best as could be done at least. This only helped their outlook by a minuscule amount, with the sheriff's soft spoken nature doing little to help.
The internal sigh of relief that came as they didn't ask to see the dog's body helped the sheriff's overall outside composure. If they were to figure out how it had truly been killed, there would be absolutely no possible way to calculate the severity of their reaction. Even then, the incident still rooted itself in the sheriff's own mind while he spoke. There was nothing natural about it, it looked artificial in every way possible and the idea of it having been the supernatural or some crazed, yet medically certified serial killer didn't help in the slightest. All these cryptic ideas only helped to propagate one question in his collective thoughts. The question of what was going to happen when they went out there.

It only took twenty minutes to round up a party of nine people from the town, but now if any of the residents weren't paying attention early, they were now. Mothers pulled their children away for a early bedtime as their father just had to help the kind sheriff with something for the night. This is what they told them as the party soon congregated at the town square. Some held varmint rifles and shotguns with others toting flashlights and lanterns, though the entire group was wary as rumors already spread about the child's disappearance. Though in the end, not a single word related to such subject was spoken out of a fear of it becoming true. The atmosphere was heavy before they departed, the wind carrying a slight ferrous smell northward, ebbing past the buildings to spread along the entire place.
All eyes were pointed south into the endless flat terrain ahead of them, the time soon approaching twilight with the waning moon seeming brighter than ever, the northern star Polaris seeming to overflow with its light as well. The quiet march of the party immediately gave way to a deep feeling of apprehension about the entire situation, there was no use spreading out or investigating anything as all could be seen for miles around them, there was no yelling or screaming besides the party's own.
It was only until someone had yelled the child's name only for the sound to decay into nothing across the flat ground that they realized, there was not a single cricket, not a single hoot or howl from any nocturnal animal in the valley. The only definite sounds was a monotone howl of the winds coming from where they were going which moved the thin wispy leaves of desert plants to create quiet natural wind chimes, all while the iron-like smell became more noticeable.
Time passed slowly from that realization of the silence, their attention pulled away from where they were going to merely listen before they realized something strange. The horizon almost seemed to have become higher than it was before, a dead stump they were using as a guidance point now completely out of sight as confirmation. The sheriff wasn't one to lose such details so quickly, while the others were all knowledgeable as well, so one of them reasoned that it was possibly just gases being released from the cracked soil. It wasn't the best explanation nor was it right in the end, but it was the delusion of such that kept them from mass paranoia.
Now, they were seeing abnormally large cracks in the ground when they started to walk on a gradual incline. While ground was known to be dry around here, it had never made such cracks as this, ones that could possibly catch a wrongfully placed shoe inside of them. The metallic aroma lingered in this area, barely moving aside for the party as they slowly climbed the cracked hill with a weary advance. It didn't take long to see a definite top to the incline up ahead the party's current position. It was safe to say that everyone had a drastic idea in their mind for what was on the other side of the top, some were extreme, some were minimal, but same or different, the reality of what they saw before them was too much for all of them.
The edge itself sat roughly three yards high with the steep hill down it being absolutely flat, after that the terrain past their position seemed like it had all lowered itself from its original position but none of it was flat nor similar in the slightest manner, it was absolute chaos. The ground was shattered and abnormally segmented, parts of it rose up at random with perfectly flat sides, precise cubic shaped pits and areas that bulged downwards into small ravines and upwards into hills like tectonic plates had met and crashed into each other. Though as they took this in, they hadn't been there for more than a minute before a scream that one might associate with a banshee emanated from the bottom of the steep hill.
As all faced the origin of the blood-curdling scream, their faces went white and cold as they realized that the voice was someone they knew, which was that of the pastor. But he was right next to the sheriff, the most terrified of all of them as they heard it - his skin resembling the lightness of the moon itself. The screaming was barely recognizable as human as it progressed, anyone could tell that the source of it was letting out a painful sound of death, ripping their vocal cords as their last act in a demonstration of the fatal pain they were experiencing.
It was eventually the sheriff who hesitantly walked to the side of the edge first, the placement of his feet hard as he could feel a lack of balance within himself, almost hoping the ground wasn't stable enough to let him see it. Everyone silently watched him peer over, and it was within mere seconds that his dread turned into absolute hysteria as over the edge lie the pastor, but not their pastor.
This pastor's mouth was wide open with his muscles cramped from shock, making a series of pained expressions rapidly. His eyes wide open staring straight into the sky as nothing more came out of his mouth now but a mere series of sounds that were his failed attempts at further breathing, his skin becoming a dark shade of blue in the moonlight. A massive amount of blood spewed from his legs and a puddle surrounded him while spreading through the soil's cracks, the legs appearing to be cut clear off at the bottom of the femur, just like the dog.
The whole group had come to the sheriff's side as he stood there without a word, it was the worse case scenario possible, his body could physically feel this fear in the form of adrenaline and pressure in his chest. A pseudo-sixth sense screeched at him there was no reason on earth any of them should be here, this was all was against all the laws of nature.
Meanwhile, the living pastor merely stayed several feet away from the edge with his hands covering his ears, the expression of his eyes could only be described to look like that of someone who had just lost their faith within seconds, tears of terror running down his face. Before anyone could try to console him, he was running full tilt towards the town without a care for anyone who called out to him, the beam of his flashlight moving up and down rapidly as he pumped his arms.
It only got worse from here, slowly but surely, houses started to suddenly materialize whether they embedded themselves in the ground or shattered from being dropped out of the thin air, the party watching in a continuous shock as it all unfolded before them. But it wasn't the structures alone that made the party frozen where they had planted their feet, it was the people.
With each materialized house, people they had known their whole lives or even themselves were appearing at random, being plunked from where they previously resided in a instant. Some choked to death as dirt filled their body cavities when their houses came in partially into the ground. Some snapped their neck and spine as they fell head first from three stories high. Some came cut in half or nothing but a lone pair of legs.
The smell of blood almost came over them as a shockwave with the corrupted town taking shape. The macabre scene fueled the reaction of morbid curiosity in all of the group as they struggled to comprehend seeing their own decapitated head or their loved one being bisected, unaware to the passing of time in their stupor. The aroma of it all penetrating their nostrils with the olfactory evidence of chaotic death and suffering.
It was the sheriff that started to run last, but he quickly caught up with the others initiative as his heart thumped against his chest, his feet barely able to keep up with his pace down the inclined hill. It was everyone for themselves now as screams and shrieks came from behind them like a portal had been opened for the souls of the damned, though a small percent of them now came from the search party members. They screamed of how screwed they were and about the things they had witnessed, everything else falling into a category somewhere between those two points. None of it made sense because the rabble that came out of their mouths only made them more determined to run faster from the horrors due to their own convictions.
The sheriff himself ran with his heart almost pushing itself to the limit, his throat felt like a rusted gutter filled with wadded leaves with how dry it was, his own saliva thick enough now to almost choke him as he gasped for oxygen. He kept up with the others, the topsoil making loud cracking sounds as the heavy footfalls came in rapid succession, but while they ran, no one dared to look anywhere but in front of themselves.
Everything seemed the same as the true town came into view, with all possible lights on now on as the pastor had arrived before them and warned everyone. The terrain was as flat as ever, a sight that some couldn't possibly love enough, though at the same time, a series of tire tracks seemed to suddenly start out of nowhere as they ran by it. It might have followed them home, but it was of little concern until they all arrived between the sheriff's and parent's house, where they found what had made the tracks.
In front of the sheriff's house was parked an identical police cruiser like his next to his own. Though exhausted and dehydrated, he walked towards the front of house without hesitation, the top of heads and nothing more visible with the cars in the way. And so, there was only five feet between them when the sheriff came around the car and met his alternate self.
The both of them stared numbly at each other as they were both still recovering from everything that happened, the others in the party stumbled over with all of them in a similar state of disbelief as they saw the scene. A awkward silence took a hold of everyone before the exhausted sheriff noticed the two prepubescent girls in wool blankets on the porch, their mother tending to them as the father walked up with haste as he noticed at the very same time.
A quiet sigh of relief came from the sheriff as the other one did the same, though they did so for different reasons. They both looked back to the horizon without a word, wondering why this had all happened, wondering about the deaths of all those from the other world's town, but most of all wondering how meeting his alternate self was far from the most shocking thing of the night.
The air was dry, smelling of the unique odor that hot sand and dry flora carried from the long, drawn out hours of daylight in the arid region as a light metallic scent came from somewhere beyond the horizon.