0200: Sixteen eggs made of camouflaged polymers and lightweight metal streak across the sky. Each had launched from micro-submarines idling off the East Coast of the United States, and each now sheds confounding chaff that would only survive for scant minutes in the air. Following their successful launch, each submarine turns back toward a small French port.
0203: Two eggs painted midnight-black explode above infrastructure critical to a certain subsection of the United State's sprawling defense complex. Two charred corpses careen from the sky, each bearing the remnants of heavy armaments, and fall toward the UNTGATE array that was originally built to smack dangerous payloads out of the aether itself.
0206: Three eggs burst above the Appalachian Mountains. Cumberland Valley is graced with more plummeting corpses and their accompanying debris, as is the ANCOMB sphere inverted below its surface. Disrupting the Pentagram's vast effort to track and identify the world's more powerful thaumaturgists is but a happy side-effect of the operation.
0209: Six pods suffer what will later be identified as a microglider failure above a long stretch of I-76 and plummet into five miles of concrete and cars. The bodies within each are far more intact, though critically wounded by impact, and forensic analysis will later identify them as members of a certain terrorist organization.
0210: One pod touches down in the courtyard of a signless compound otherwise protected by high fences and armed guards. The man who bursts from its shell kills three soldiers tasked to protect USAMPCOM. He does not possess the capacity to enjoy success. Fortunately for him, death swiftly follows. Yet another sacrificial pawn to suggest a far larger scheme.
0213: The four remaining pods crash through the walls of the Predictive Technology and Atemporal Armaments Research Division (PTAARD, for anyone who could bear the acronym's folly). Each vehicle pulses along a disruptive electromagnetic gradient upon landing, but not hard enough to scramble the hardened cameras lurking in every corner of the classified facility. Despite this, all fail to record the passengers' faces as they exit their pods.
Each bears a halo of static and wields tools of death.

"I refuse to believe we are best suited to this," said Munru. Indeed, none of Tau-5's members bore their usual arms. Appendages or weapons. Most had been stripped, repaired, and repurposed from battlefields elsewhere, and bore unfamiliar forms even beneath flesh.
"I agree," said Onru. "Our… armaments are sparse. We may miss something in this state."
"What's done is done," said Irantu. "There is no sense in bringing tools that exceed the mission requirements."
He slapped the nearest pod's smooth surface. All four vehicles pulsed again. Light bulbs in the wide hallway trembled, whined, and popped. Glass fell in a tinkling rain around the four cyborgs, echoing out across the corners and behind closed doors. The surviving pods fizzled and burst into hissing flames. Hot, but not enough to destroy critical pieces of evidence. Nearby, a woman emerged from her office. Clutching a coffee mug, rubbing one red eye, she had clearly stirred from a long night in front of a computer. In the light of those flames, they must have looked monstrous.
Irantu shot her with his sidearm. Targeting suggestions charted out an array of bullets just sloppy enough to look like merely well-trained aim. She topped backwards, and a second bout of gunfire caught a second scientist still napping at his workstation. He slid down to the floor into a mushy pile.
"We may be in danger if a ghost appears," said Nanku. "We are not currently equipped for even the smallest bit of busting." Her reference was met with resounding silence.
Tau-5 followed their planned path down the hallway, pausing only to execute sheltering employees. Thermography arrays and sound-visualizing overlays were enough to surpass human ingenuity. Incendiary grenades were plenty to handle the rest. Orders to optimize terror across the broadest spectrum more than made up for reductions in weaponry.
"Probability does favor a spectral emergence," allowed Munru as they pushed through a hastily fortified barricade manned by security officers who had no idea what they were facing. Three died before they fired even one bullet in return.
"Why do you say that?" asked Onru.
"Some percent of all humans must be haunted."
"Agreed." She fired her short rifle down a side-passage after a fleeing researcher. Two bullets to the head. One to the spine. Three strays to disguise the rest.
"And we have observed ghosts with a wide range of… dispositions."
"Also agreed." She fired again, this time at a guard escaping from a burning room. Her uniform was already alight, but lead proved a surer end than flames.
"As the number of deceased increases, so does the chance of releasing a spirit that bears affection toward its host. We would be likely targets for revenge."
"Ah." Onru turned to punch through a cracked plaster wall, grabbed something fleshy on the other side. She squeezed until it popped. "I was right. We are under-equipped."
"We are equipped to suggest an ongoing threat," said Irantu. "Ghosts were not included in the mission profile."
"Hm," said Munru, stooping in one alcove to reload.
"Hm," agreed Onru, peering around one dark corner.
"Ghosts often appear in cemeteries anyway," said Nanku, "so there may be a… fermentation period."
"Ah." He placed his empty magazine in a deeper part of the crevice, where it might later be found unscathed, pilfered fingerprints still intact.
"Agreed." She fired at a doorway where someone was desperately trying to wave their white lab coat in surrender. The bullets drilled through thin plaster and hapless victim alike. The garment went unscathed.
"We are all agreed on not worrying over ghosts then," said Irantu. "Our secondary objective remains. Proceed to the central laboratory."
Their passage mandated less caution than usual. Indeed, modulated efficiency was one of the primary reasons for their tasking. Blind angles went intentionally ignored. Cover went intentionally unchecked. Doors were kicked down, then passed through with scant inspection. Each blunder could have been fatal if they weren't so aware of their surroundings, and to the security cameras, each would look like nothing but fervor-invoked blindness. Rome's razings had been so thorough that civilization never forgot its fear of barbarians breaking down the gates.
"What do you imagine the fermentation period of a ghost is?" asked Munru.
"I thought we agreed to not worry," said Irantu.
"We are supposed to appear reckless and dangerous!" said Nanku. She cheerfully stuck her fist through a pane glass window. "Talking loudly about… unrelated matters will help."
"I suppose."
"How long does the process take then?" insisted Munru.
"I do not have any point of reference," said Nanku.
"Nor I," said Onru. They walked in near-silence for a few long minutes after that, punctuated only by the sounds of wanton violence and calculated destruction.
"I have heard that beer typically ferments for two weeks," said Irantu.
"Then we do have a baseline," said Onru.
"I was not suggesting they should be… conflated."
"What do you suppose ghost beer tastes like?" asked Nanku.
"Do not conflate them."
"A graveyard of wheat." Munru nodded solemnly.
"A morgue of grain." Nanku shook her head.
"Stop," said Irantu. "We are almost there."
A fortified laboratory lay nestled deep within the PTAARD facility. Its whitewashed walls were pocked with bullet holes now, and uniformed guards had splattered against one set of security shutters. It stood proud all the same. Classified blueprints indicated that a heavy metal barrier encased its surface in full. No vents emerged. No power lines converged. It was a tomb inside a tomb, built to keep something truly precious away from the world's grasping hands. Naturally, the Foundation believed that the Pentagram was unqualified to do so. It also believed others should bear responsibility for proving that point.
"Cutting charges," ordered Irantu. He and Onru stood watch as Munru and Nanku attached elongated pustules to the chipped stonework.
Steel-toed boots thudded in the distance, audible only to those with enhanced hearing. Authoritative barks mixed with dark jokes. Gun stocks tapped against body armor. One of the Pentagram's highly-trained EEL teams had no doubt entered the building, intent on preserving the American government's treasures. Their progress through the ruined halls was slower than Tau-5's had been, but they would meet soon enough.
"Fire one." Munru primed her explosives' detonation.
"Fire two." Nanku did the same.
"Fire all," said Irantu, still staring down the long hallway. Gloom gathered at its depths, thick even to him, and keen senses meant nothing if not steadily applied. The ring of pustules placed around the security shutter alighted, burning bright in that dark place. They burned hot too, singeing the closest cyborgs' backs.
Though quiet, the charges were sharp enough to chew through metal and stone. Munru and Nanku pushed the severed door inwards. It withstood momentarily, but such construction wasn't truly prepared for bundles of enhanced muscle and cybernetic amplifiers. The solid mass teetered precariously and fell inwards, knocking up a blinding cloud of dust in the process. Tau-5 moved through and were immediately cut off from access to the outside world. The bronze-lined room was a black hole of knowledge, even with one entrance gaping open. They had crossed the horizon line, it insisted, and enjoyed no hope of ever escaping.
All four siblings fanned out around the sprawling chamber in pursuit of their prize. Onru leafed through stacks of files, relying on automatic detection of keywords to flag anything worth reading or destroying. A few of particular note were set alight even as she sorted the rest. Names and numbers. More names and numbers. Projects with cute names, then so many more numbers.
Irantu and Nanku examined long tables covered in half-dismantled assemblages of intricate machinery. The Foundation rigorously protected its monopoly on stabilizing reality's fundamental components, so the Pentagram was forced along other avenues of research. Useless to Tau-5's secondary objective, but more than relevant to their primary one.
"Quartz arrays?" asked Nanku. The tiny spheres glowed dimly in their casings. Their lights flickered, as if to convey some discernible message.
"Crush it," said Irantu. His sister's reinforced fist proved insufficient, skin tearing on metal, so she took the butt of her rifle to it. The faint tinkling was even gentler than that of shattering light bulbs.
"Biological components," she said, continuing down the table. "Fungal."
"Burn them."
"Biological components. Human."
"Burn them."
"Urn. Hm… sealed shut."
"Break it."
"But what if a ghost is ins–"
"There is no ghost. Break it." They continued in that manner, crushing progress and burning knowledge.
Munru fired down the hallway at the encroaching EEL team. They struck back with more than bullets. Dizzying patterns of light had no effect on eyes that automatically shifted to safely perceive them though, and noxious gasses had even less on nasal cavities prepared to clog themselves. His precise rounds found chinks in their armor instead, sliding up under helmets and along inner thighs. More precise than their fiction should have allowed, perhaps, but achieving their secondary objective seemed worthwhile enough.
"I have found it," declared Onru. She punched a combination of numbers into one of many storage safes lining the walls, then wrenched open its door. Gray light crept out. It coursed forth in gentle tides, advancing and receding in calming waves, but always progressing in sum.
A jittering stream of bullets fired down the hallway from an empty point in the air. None of the filters Munru's vision flickered through detected any source, not even those that scraped along the borders of reality. No possible movement allowed for total evasion either. He shifted such that one projectile merely blew two fingers off.
Both digits tumbled through the air as more bullets smashed against his helmet's face-plate in a quick beat. Not even the finest technology could perfectly deflect such force, and they were equipped with far worse. Munru pulled back behind the corner, head shaking and ears ringing. He readied one last incendiary grenade with his bleeding hand and tossed it back down the hallway.
"The ghost issue has become pertinent," he shouted to his siblings, who were slowly withdrawing the glowing mass from its dark vault. Though small, the lump of ore bent their knees with its weight.
"There may be a graveyard nearby," said Nanku. "I did not search the wider area during our descent."
"Do not worry about graveyards or ghosts right now," said Irantu.
"This structure may be built on a graveyard."
"Then should the ghosts not be angry with them?" asked Onru.
"Stop," insisted Irantu. They did. More pressing concerns persisted, despite the many interesting implications of ghost law.
New spectral attackers within the hallway fired on Tau-5 from additional points, all while the first continued applying suppressing fire toward Munru. The dim figures on the other end of the hallway struggled to approach the laboratory, uniformed bodies slowly passing through open air. None reacted to the firefight in the least. Still, they had come close enough.
"We're done," barked Irantu over the din of battle. "Converge and execute. For Delta Command!"
One other member of Tau-5 sighed at that. One snickered. One almost giggled. "For Delta Command!" they shouted, loud enough for the distant soldiers to hear, though with a decided lack of zealotry.
Munru edged around the room as his siblings held positions near the glowing mass, all firing back into nothing at all. Their bullets flew through the air in starts and stops. Halting, then racing for no discernible reason. Returning fire emerged closer to Munru than before, beating a rhythmic pattern into his armored back, pushing his body faster along the perimeter. Blockers for his pain receptors marshaled themselves as he scrambled. Chemical stimulants battled to keep his legs moving.
Behind him, the sluggish EEL team finally reached the first ghostly gunshots' origin and brought up their weapons. One in particular aimed at where Munru had taken cover, though no bullets burst from their rifle this time. Munru himself saw little of it. Not as he dived deep into grating white light.
The four cyborgs huddled over the tidal ore even as bullets pecked at their bodies, some finding chinks in subpar armor. They clutched each other even as the furnaces built into their guts worked churned to a furious heat. They perished as four blasts burned away every last scrap of flesh, bones, and most importantly, the glowing ore beneath them.
That the other soldiers went unharmed by the explosion may have seemed a miracle to some, but it shouldn't have. Witnesses were required to seal their facade's wax.

In the aftermath of that night's events, two messages were sent from wildly different places to wildly different people. The first, from one grim bureaucrat to another:

TO: vog.su.margatnep|nostennet.p.h#vog.su.margatnep|nostennet.p.h
FROM: vog.su.margatnep|nix.q#vog.su.margatnep|nix.q
SUBJECT: Update
Harry,
Our fair-weather friends in the west were less open than I hoped, but they said enough. Everything about this 'insurgency' checks with what we've learned so far. I'll brief you in full as soon as I'm back in town. The President will likely need to approve our next steps. Until then, I recommend preliminary activation of EEL teams in Europe. Speak soon.
Xin

The second, from shadowed prophets to blind underlings:

TO: Dropbox 6, Dropbox 16, Dropbox 28, Dropbox 55
FROM: pmud.nibhsart|932yawaworht#pmud.nibhsart|932yawaworht
SUBJECT: Bloody Nests
All,
Open every operated blackbox in the Americas. Disclose their contents to your superiors immediately. Bring questions to your wayward colleagues, who wear masks as faces and have forgotten their true names. Loyal soldiers, find us the fool who ordered the eagle's young eaten.
– Command


Little Hisao was born into a family of hunters. For thousands of years, fathers would pass down to sons the way of the bow and the way of the horse.
Now, it was Hisao's turn to receive the honor.
His father pulled on Jun's reins, stopping the horse in its tracks. He turned around and tapped Hisao on the shoulder. There, he said wordlessly, nodding at the bushes in front of them. The vegetation rustled as their target revealed itself: a brown-coated hog rubbing its snout in the leaves, searching for the nearest berry to gobble up.
It's time, Hisao's father seemed to say to his son with an intense look. Hisao's fingers tightened, Jun's dark coat rubbing against his fingertips. His father pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocking it and raising his bow. The man was a force of nature when he was hunting - Hisao was always captivated by how the muscles in his arm tensed right before the shot, always transfixed by the sheer power that he held in his hands.
Perhaps one day, it would be his.
As his father closed his left eye, Hisao closed his left eye.
As his father took a deep breath, Hisao took a deep breath.
As his father shot, Hisao watched.
The pig went down with a thud. “Oh no,” Hisao's father whispered, his feet hitting the ground as he rushed towards the fallen animal. The poor thing was still squirming, quiet, pained whimpers clawing their way out of its dying mouth. Blood spurted around the arrow sticking in its neck with every weakening beat of its heart. Hisao's father unsheathed his knife from his belt, a glint of sunlight striking Hisao's eyes as it reflected off the blade. Little Hisao took one last glance at the pig's dying eyes before his father plunged the knife into its neck. It went limp.
The forest was quiet except for the rushing of creek water and the rustle of swaying branches.
"Ka—" The words caught in the hunter's throat. "Kamis of the forest, forgive me." Hisao's father dislodged his knife from the pig's bleeding throat with a wet noise.
"Come over here, boy." Hisao's father gestured, and the little boy was by his side in an instant.
“Listen to me.” Hisao's father put a hand on his son's shoulder and stared him in the eyes. “One shot if possible, always. Never cruel. Always kind.” He plunged the knife into its flesh again, cutting its abdomen open and soaking the soil with gore. The odor of guts and viscera was sharp and pungent, but Hisao and his father paid it no mind.
Behind his father's back, Hisao shot an imaginary arrow at a goose flying overhead.
“Maybe next time we will hunt enough to sell,” Hisao's father said as they trudged through the vegetation, hog now gutted and slung over his shoulders as Hisao rode Jun. “Today we must make do with what we have." Meanwhile, Hisao was daydreaming about what he was going to have for dinner. He salivated at the thought of cured pork belly with rice.
"Keep up, boy. The night is upon us, and I don't want you to get cut off by a nurikabe. Annoying things." Hisao tensed, squeezing his legs around Jun to quicken his pace. A part of him wanted to stay, stay and watch the black skies come alive with spirit lights as the forest's yōkai painted the darkness with every color the eye could imagine, just as they did every summer solstice before.
"Not too much pressure, boy. He doesn't like that." Hisao sighed. The horse was still frustratingly enigmatic to him. Soon the outline of their house came into view, its paper walls and darkened wood illuminated by the last vestiges of the evening light. Hisao hopped off Jun and wrapped his hands around the hind legs of the hog as he helped carry the thing inside. His arms trembled as he bore half the weight of the pig, but he masked his discomfort as he stepped through the stone gate and into the courtyard.
“Let's butcher this in the kitchen," Hisao's father grunted as he hefted the pig up the stone steps. "We can cook dinner with the loin and cure the rest for later.” After the pig had been put away, Hisao's muscles breathed a momentary sigh of relief. Yet his job was not over yet - there was daikon root to cut and mustard spinach to wash.
A soft grunt of pain interrupted Hisao's father as he butchered the hog. Without speaking he turned around and seized Hisao's right hand, noticing the thin stream of crimson trickling down from a small cut. The boy hung his head in shame.
"Boy, don't stick your fingers out like that when you were cutting. You are bound to hurt yourself." His father sighed. "Well… this looks like a shallow wound. It shouldn't get infected. Here, I will get some gauze to cover that up." Hisao stared at the ground. His face was pink.
Soon the kitchen was dense with steam and fragrance, the pork loin stir-fried with cabbage and green onion, and the other vegetables in an array on the dining table. A heaping bowl of rice sat in the middle, and the fragrance of green tea rose from a terracotta teapot.
"Thank you, son," Hisao's father said as his son poured him a cup of tea. The two ate as they sat cross-legged on the floor, eating bits of meat and vegetables with chopsticks in between sips of tea. The window to the valley below loomed above them like a watchful guardian. Outside, Jun whinnied.
"Why did you stammer today, Papa?"
Hisao's father froze mid-chew, the tip of an amaranth leaf still sticking out of his mouth.
"Why did you stammer? When you were speaking to the kamis? You never stammer, ever." Hisao was staring at him, his eyes round and dark with inquisitiveness.
"I… I was nervous."
"You're never nervous, even with the spirits."
"Well, today I was nervous."
"Why?"
"I don't know, son."
"Where were the spirits today?"
“In the forest, Hisao. Like they always are.”
“Are they gone?”
“What makes you ask that, son?”
“We didn't see any today, Papa. The tengu in the mountains are gone. And so are the kodamas by the west valley. Is that why we didn't have a good hunt?”
“I'm sure they're still out there, Hisao.”
“Baba, what's going on?” Hisao's father sighed. The little boy watched in shock as his father did something he had never seen him do before: stick his chopsticks in his bowl of rice.
Hisao stiffened.
"Something's… happened to the spirits, son. They've been going away.” His eyes stared out the window, losing themselves in the vista of the valley below. He couldn't see the yellow glare of incandescent lights, couldn't smell the foul musk of smoke and grime, couldn't touch the smooth walls of concrete and steel, yet their presence was felt hundreds of kilometers away.
“Our world is changing. The time of gods and spirits has passed. Perhaps through the lens of comprehension, everything else is blurred beyond recognition.” A muscle in his jaw tensed.
“I'm… going to find work in the city.” He stared down into his bowl of rice, unwilling to meet the youthful eyes of his son. “I hear they have jobs in construction.” Neither of them spoke for a long time.
“Why can't you keep hunting?” Hisao broke the silence. His voice quivered.
“The spirits have left this forest. With none of their energy left to nourish the trees and the animals, sooner or later it will die. I will disturb it no longer. The forest ought to spend its last months in peace.”
The little boy's eyes grew moist. His father reached over.
“Hey, hey, what do we always say? A hunter…”
“Always survives.” Hisao wiped away tears from his cheeks, stifling a sob.
“There we go. That's my boy.” Hisao's father got up from his chair and moved over to his son, pulling him into an embrace.
He looked out the window. He saw nothing but black.


Calibold

Chapter One - The End

Calibold's Mega Cool Author Page

A woman stood in the center of the dim amphitheater, far beneath the surface levels of the Temple. Her dark hair was in a tight ponytail, her eyes glowing green, the color of confidence shining through the metal-and-glass applications. She was laden with a suit of plate armor, the steel matching the hue of the pipes and gears of her arms. A scythe rested upon her back, its intimidating form somehow only enhanced by its gilded handle.
However, the thousands of eyes in the seats around her were focused on something else that moment, the same thing she looked upon.
The guards wheeled a massive steel cube down the aisle of the amphitheater. Twelve locks rested upon the side facing the woman. Her expression remained unchanged, but the scythe on her back quivered ever so slightly.
The Grand Artificer stood on the pulpit behind her. The steam rising from his back smelled of incense, which permeated the entire theater.
"At long last, the day of our Savior is nigh."

A figure ran up the stairs of the Temple. Before the guards could even react, the intruder crashed through the stained glass doors and sprinted down the hallways, looking for the theater as though the world depended on it.
Because, of course, it did.
The figure ran down the stairs. Looking at the signs on the wall, she picked up her pace.
Eight more floors.

Miles away from the city were mountains, and at the peak of one stood a man. He faced the city naked-eyed. Despite the events he knew would soon transpire, his face was calm, bored even, as though the experience was a familiar one.
Another, younger man rode up to him. The horse he was on, like most of the world's animals, was composed of more mechanical parts than organic. He dismounted and walked towards the elder one, gears and pulleys in his legs clanking and whirring.
"How will you know if we did it?" he asked.
The elder remained silent for a moment. He looked at the patch on his chest: three arrows, guided by a fourth into a mighty star.
He looked towards the city. "We'll know."

Click.
The first lock opened in her presence.
"For three years, our young soldier has toiled."
Click.
"She braved the farthest reaches of evil."
Click.
"And did what no other before her could."
Click.
"She found the keys! The Messiah's keys!"
Click.
"THE KEYS! THE MESSIAH'S KEYS!" shouted the crowd.

The figure opened a set of doors and came face-to-face with a pair of guards.
"HALT!" shouted the one on the left. His voice was concussive, rattling the intruder's skull. In response, a knife - a beautiful tool, engraved with flowers - became implanted in the shouting guard's chest. At the same time, the figure pulled out a flintlock pistol and shot the other guard.
The intruder moved past, leaving the knife in the guard. He could be one of the few in this world to have seen flowers.

Click.
"And she will be remembered in the eternities!"
Click.
"As the greatest of heroes!"
Click.
"And in her presence! The final key reveals itself!"
Click.
"The Bible of Life!"
Click.

A woman rode up next to the two men. She dismounted her steed, nodded at the elder, and laced her fingers with the younger.
"She must succeed. For our sake." she said.
The elder scowled. "For your sake."
The woman glared at him. "Foreman-"
"For your sake. Not mine."

"And our God is summoned! To save us all!"
Click.
"I hereby name him!"
Click. BANG.
At the same time as the final lock opened, a door into the grand room burst open, and the figure sprinted in.
"JEHOVAH PRIME!"
"No," said the intruder, having failed the most important mission of this world.
The cube opened, revealing nothing less, nothing more, than an empty chamber.
The crowd murmured and exclaimed, until the Grand Artificer shouted "Behold!" and pointed towards the woman, who held an ancient book in her hands. She smiled briefly, feeling as though her mission was completed, until she began to scream, and was consumed by an intense light.
The crowd began to scream, turning away from the harsh glow. Winds began to whip around the theater.

I DO NOT CLAIM YOUR FALSE GOD.

The members of the crowd began to run for the doors.

YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED.

The winds swirled faster and faster.

YOU CANNOT BE SAVED.

And the Church, its god absent, was wiped away.

The end of the world had begun. Already, human life had ceased within the city, and the waves of destruction were quickly spreading.
On top of the mountain, Foreman turned to face his two comrades. The wind roared through their ears. Even though he was right next to them, even his yelling voice could barely be heard.
"This is it!" He pulled a device from a pouch on his belt and began to adjust it. "I'm moving on now!"
"Take us with-!" The younger man was interrupted by a blast of wind. He and the woman fell violently to the ground. Foreman was able to hold firm; he'd learned how to deal with the oncoming chaos.
The younger man tried to rise, but to no avail. He turned towards the woman, but she remained still. He looked back towards Foreman. "Please! Take me with you!"
Foreman tossed the device into the rocks. The ground around it began to shimmer. Foreman faced the younger man.
"You were a valiant soldier, I'll tell you that! But you knew this was coming! It wouldn't be right if you didn't stay with the rest of your world!"
He turned away and shouted, "Time to move on to the next one!"
And with that, he jumped into the shining ground.

"So what do we know?"
Dr. Erren sat at her desk, facing Aaron Ymir, captain of Mobile Task Force Lambda-5, or the "White Rabbits". He'd just given his report on a dimensional anomaly - a report which was almost totally empty.
Ymir shrugged. "Like I said, judging from the Hume spike and the signature, the guy who came through there was from another dimension. Ended up in a McDonald's parking lot in Prescott. Beyond that," he shook his head, "Whoever he is, he's good, especially considering he's from another reality."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Erren.
"From my experience, most entities that come from other universes have trouble keeping their head low; they don't know our culture, our laws, even what we look like sometimes. This guy has been able to completely blend in with the general populous, and two days of searching brought us absolutely nothing. Either they've had experience here before, they've planned this out beforehand, or they're simply extremely clever when it comes to stuff like this."
Dr. Erren nodded her head and looked at the report again. "But they're staying low, correct?"
"Yeah."
"Then that's good. At least he's not doing anything Veil-lifting. We have time. But even so," she turned back to the captain, "I want a squad in Prescott for a few days. Look out for anything weird. Hopefully we got lucky and this was just some guy passing into the wrong dimension by accident, but I doubt it."
"Should we prepare for the worst?" asked Ymir.
Dr. Erren rolled her eyes. "This is the Foundation, Aaron. And as cheesy as it sounds, we're always prepared for the worst."

Foreman sat in a bar. He liked it here, it was quiet. The town was basically the retirement home for every old white guy on this world, so the loudest it got was two folks fighting about their president.
The bartender handed him a coffee. Foreman didn't drink; alcohol from any world had never sat well with him, especially with all of the unusual travel he did. He took a sip.
"Never seen you 'round here," said the bartender, "You from anywhere?"
Foreman set down his drink. "North." It was technically true. His home reality, he'd been raised as far north as you could get.
The bartender nodded. "You visiting family or anything?"
"Nah. Just passing through," as would most likely be the case, considering how all the previous universes had been.
He set a wad of money on the counter - he'd pickpocketed it off of a fat guy sleeping a few seats over - and began to walk out.
"Sir, did you want your change?" asked the bartender.
He stopped at the door and turned around. "I won't be needing it."
As crazy as they could be, every version of the human home he'd been to was easy to learn about. How exchanges worked, human nature, all that. No matter how diverse their cultures were, each reality always became utterly predictable after a short time.
Foreman didn't intend to waste his time, he was a busy guy. Finding the Thirds, evading whatever Enemy was here. Oh, and recruiting some new Riders. The works.
With his arrival began the end of the world…

…and in a child's home, there was no contention. All were sinless, against their will.
And thus began the end of souls.

…and in a rubbish dump, there was destruction. The least intimidating figure within would slowly emerge.
And thus began the end of life.

…and in the Foundation, the Enemy, a toy was discovered. Its intelligence was great, but even it did not know its greater purpose.
And thus began the end of thought.

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SCP-6579-D — The Detective Killer
SCP-6900-D — The House of Stars
SCP-5277 — What Can Go Wrong
SCP-5363-D — Controlled Containment
SCP-3482 — fine mayor posters campaign by dado
SCP-5156 — monke
Director Bold's Proposal-J — "Guys, please don't read our SCPs 🥺"
SCP-2693 — Fell Into The Well, Fell Into The Well, Fell Into The Deep Dark Well
SCP-5559-D — The Great Ambrose Bake-Off!
SCP-3448-J — Should Have Taken Him Sleeping
SCP-4456-D — No One Expects The Spanish Decommission!
SCP-4745 — Spooky Scary Snowman
SCP-4645 — Blackmailing Computer

— Tales —

OpusConfidant Wiki - SCP-4645 - Threatini
Diary Of An Existential Kid
Responsible Promotion
Friends Of Us Never Die
Truth Lies
A Team You Can (Maybe) Trust
Happy Father's Day
Mission: Decommission
A Bold Choice
I Am Become Death
Ulysses B. Donkman and the Heinous Hitman
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Eldritch (Sung to the tune of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas")
Chapter One - The End

— GoI Formats —

Manifest 476: Vanishing Galleon
The Book Of Mathisi, Chapter 1: The Parable Of The Three Princes
LTE-8686-Yellow-Kewpie
UIU File: 2001-023

— Other —

Mega Cool Customizable ACS Add-On Ver. 1.8.0 Guide
Decommissioning Department Hub
Fortune Favors
Decommissioning Dept. Theme
Mega Cool Customizable ACS Add-On Ver. 1.8.0
Mega Cool Author Page Tool Ver. 1.4.0
Calibold's Mega Cool Alternate SCP Logos Page
Calibold's Mega Cool Art Page (It's Mostly Just Icons, But Whatever, It's Still Mega Cool)

— Co-Authored —

Abraka David's Proposal — A Peak Behind the Curtain (feat. Ralliston, Placeholder McD, Guaire, Guezma, Jack Ike, Sherf, Yossipossi, Dr Balthazaar, Grigori Karpin, LORDXVNV, Lt Flops, Uncle Nicolini, Metaphysician)
SCP-7400 — Your Honor, League of Legends (feat. Sherf)
I, Hub (feat. many other authors)
Resurrection: New Faces (feat. Grigori Karpin, Nagiros, and redredred)
SCP-5545 — 𝙰 𝙱 𝙽 𝙾 𝚁 𝙼 𝙰 𝙻 𝙸 𝚃 𝚈 (feat. Yossipossi)
SCP-194 — Thank You For Your Cooperation (feat. CityToast)

— Foreign —
Director Bold's Proposal — Language
SCP-LA-II — Fruit

The End | Chapter 2 - ??? »


Raddagher

More by this author | Find Us Alive Hub

“Beautiful day today,”
She was right. It was a beautiful day.
One pink, semi-translucent petal floated down through the open sunroof, white around the edges from the sunlight. As Sanjana caught it between her fingers, she noticed the browning rip at its corner. She never would have spotted that with the sky behind it.
The worst part was the empty familiarity of the silence. Like your childhood home hollowed out before your parents finally move. She wished for tension. Or noise. Or something, something other than the mocking quiet. A ritual so familiar, so comfortable and calming, shifted just enough to become a dulled parody of itself.
God, it was so quiet.
Sanjana couldn't bring herself to turn her head toward her girlfriend, lying back in the fully-reclined driver's seat. So instead, she reached back for any memory that might trigger the same flash of something bright and glorious that they used to have, before Cindy's reassignment.
The paperwork, the recommendation letters, the sheer number of hoops the two of them had jumped through to secure Officer Cindy Nash a new position on something nearby, something that wouldn't physically tear her away from Sanjana. In the end, their work paid off. But in the end, it wouldn't matter. Sanjana wasn't allowed to know which one Cindy was guarding, but that wouldn't matter either.
Sanjana examined the petal between her fingers. It was soft, except at the torn edge, where it was dry and a little crunchy. Atrophied, she thought. “Scabbed” might have been a better word, but that wasn't the one that came to mind.
It was so quiet.
The worst part was that Sanjana thought this would help, somehow. Three years ago they had started doing this, parking Cindy's car under one of the cherry trees on a back road a few minutes' drive from the site, tipping the seats all the way back, opening up the sunroof and all the doors and letting spring and summer and fall invade the cabin. Letting the branches drop their petals down through the sunroof. When they first found each other it was a special, sacred escape; a place they'd run off to when work gave them a second of free time.
It was the silence that Sanjana liked best. The lack of need for conversation. The two of them never wanted for small talk and idle chatter. Just one another's presence, the open doors, the pink and white cherry tree branches above the sunroof.
Now they drove to the cherry trees and opened all the car doors almost every weekend, because maybe with enough petals in the backseat, maybe with enough twigs stuck under the windshield wipers, maybe things could go back to the way they were.
They wouldn't, though.
It wasn't trauma. Or if it was, Cindy did an impeccable job hiding it. But Sanjana didn't think so. She'd seen fellow researchers pack up the emotions accumulated by what they'd seen, and this wasn't like that. And she knew Cindy. She knew Cindy wouldn't keep that from her. Even after it all, she knew Cindy so well.
The Foundation changed people, though. People grew, and they grew into the world and rank and position that molded them, for better or worse. Often for worse. Sometimes for neither. Maybe most times for neither? Most times people just… changed, in ways that weren't noticeably bad or good. Just different. Just different enough not to fit into their old molds.
You could anticipate it all you wanted. You could journal and track and brace for it, but the growing pains always hurt. It didn't matter if you were ready or not.
Sanjana, not knowing what else to do with her hands, and too paralyzed to take Cindy's, began surgically cutting around the brown, ripped piece of the cherry blossom petal with her fingernail. The whole thing could be pink and soft if she could remove the torn bit.
The worst part was the lack of anyone Sanjana could blame. Herself, for working so hard to have Cindy assigned close to her? How could she have known? Cindy, for letting whatever she had experienced change her? That wasn't her fault. The both of them, for joining the Foundation in the first place? Their careers were what brought them together. The Foundation, for reshaping them both into different people? Maybe as much as she could blame time for making her childhood so short.
The worst part was there hadn't been a fight. There hadn't even been an argument. Just civil, open communication between two adults in a supportive, loving, dying relationship. Communication that grew shorter and quieter with the dawning realization that whatever they had before had already faded and the obligations of comfort and routine were the only thing keeping them together.
Sanjana wished it hurt less.
She wished it hurt more.
Her fingernail slipped and cut the petal right down the middle.
It was okay. It was just one petal, after all.
The worst part was the quiet.
“Yeah. It's beautiful today.”
And she was right. It was a beautiful day.


Coauthor with myself and SCP Illustrated.

▸ More by this Author ◂

{$comments2}

F.A.Q.

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It wasn't new, mind you, but it hurt just the same. A small child sat at the base of a tree, surrounded by hundreds of laughing, pointing children. The child's face was buried in its hands, its body bunched up with the knees held close to the chest. The small child rocked forward and back against the tree.
The tree itself was oily black, with thousands of branches reaching far up into a bone white sky. The tips of the branches pierced the pale white veil and small drops of blood leaked down to the base of the tree. The roots of the tree drank up the blood as soon as it touched the ground.
Still, the children laughed.
Then there was a sudden change. In the distance someone new was approaching. Someone else to judge him. Someone else to laugh. The child looked up at the approaching pair of eyes, hidden themselves behind a mask.
The children, the tree, and the bloodied pale sky all fell away. They were both in a cold white containment chamber, the creature that used to be a child rocked in the corner, sobbing to itself and shaking. It was all bones and skin, with little muscle under the pale flesh that covered its body.
The man who had just entered was shackled. The chains that bound him continued back into a hole in the door itself. Suddenly a red light beeped on the side of the neck shackle, and all of the chains fell to the ground. The chains were pulled back into the door, and SCP-049 looked down at SCP-096.
Its soft cries reverberated off the walls around the doctor. All loneliness and pain. The doctor walked over to the monster and laid a hand on the top of its head. It stopped crying and its breathing slowed.
The doctor looked perplexed, as if he'd expected another reaction. The doctor recovered quickly, and looked down at the creature while stroking the top of its head.
“Child you do not have to fear me, I am here to help you, please… let me see.”
With his free hand, the doctor moved its hands from its face, and then moved his hand to its forehead. The thing let out a mournful cry as the doctor looked into its eyes.
"I cannot save you,”
Fresh tears began to stream down the creature's pale cheeks.
“But I can help you.”
With this the Doctor pulled a bag from his robes and produced a syringe.
“You'll feel a slight pinch but it's nothing to fear, trust me.”
The sounds of shouting and metallic locks turning echoed from the containment cell door. He allowed the creature's head to go limp as he gripped its arm and positioned the syringe right on top of the Median Basilic Vein. With a slight application of pressure, the syringe slipped into the vein to deliver the medicine.
Suddenly they were both beneath the tree.
The laughing children were gone. Hanging from the oily black tree's branches were hundreds… maybe thousands of mirror shards. Each one had a reflection of his own eyes, all staring at a single crying child. SCP-049 walked forward on ground covered in ankle deep water. The slow drip of red into the water left clouds of pink behind, swirling as he stepped forward.
The child's crying grew louder and more intense. The doctor reflected on his own life. Curing the great pestilence was his grand purpose, but here was someone suffering. Was he not a doctor? Was this not his higher calling?
As he drew closer to the child, he noticed it was covered in shallow cuts, with blood leaking out all across its body. He reached into his bag for something to staunch the flow, when the child's head suddenly snapped up to look directly at him.
The child's eyes were red and swollen, as if he'd been crying for hours. The child slowly stood up, its sobbing still the only sound outside of the dripping blood from the tree branches. Then, as if a dam had broken it sprinted at the doctor with its arms outstretched.
For a moment the doctor was taken aback, and then the child ran into him at full force. It rocked him in place. The child embraced him and sobbed into his robes. The doctor shook his head and tried his best to comfort him.
In the white room, the plague doctor sat down with the creature until the security forces dragged him away.
For just a little while, it rested.
For just a little while, it was content.
For just a little while, it was loved.
Somehow it cried even harder.


white space (HUB) » AFTERLIFE OPHIDIAN /// The Foundation Over Heaven

by Nagiros

Contains themes of suicidality.

I spiral towards the ocean floor, latent salt cauterizing my wounds along the way. In all places but the sea, fire laps at the strongholds of mankind, and there is blood on the hands of the Foundation.
Beneath the sea, the serpent's eyes pierce through her darkened lair.

When I was a child, a day came when shadows lengthened and the moon no longer rose. It seemed like the end of all things to us, in our ignorance. It was war — bloody war against the anomalous.
"You see that, sweetie?" the woman beside me said. "That's the Foundation."
Her finger found its way to the window, leaving a spiral print on the glass. Framed within was an army intersecting the horizon, backed by animate steel and inconceivable memetic hazards. Their numbers flowed over plains and hills, led by a shadowy colossus — the voice of The Administrator emanated from its lips.
"Do not fear, civilians," said the titan. "We are here for your protection. We are here to bring peace through conquest."
The very weight of God rested beneath his words. He was a man brought to the brink of the ultimate, striding unimpeded over mountains and trampling ancient land under the gravity of his personhood. The Administrator's insignia shone bright against the crimson sky: three inward arrows and a ring, branded onto moving flesh before his ascension. It was what they called a necessary evil, before the Ethics Committee was immolated.
The woman beside me fractured in tandem with the window. As gunfire engulfed the town, her fingerprint remained on the broken glass beside her.

In movies, she came to the ones who had no more purpose, who were tossed away like worn ragdolls. It makes sense she came to me.
Gravity breaks down between her fangs, emanating oblivion. Half an eternity passes before her teeth supersede me, half my sentence served before I pass through the metal gates. I should thank her.
My body floats through her sea of corpses, and I recognize this place. It has no color, no variation, no shambling trickster god. I know this place well.
My body floats forever, the perfect anti-Talloran.

For a year or so, containment was hypothetical. Between cities and mountains walked everything ancient man had feared and hated. For a year, everything happened at once.
"Don't move." The gun's barrel pressed against my throat. "Don't say a single word."
He and I observed the reason for my silence: the breaker of that Final Masquerade. Overhead, a mechanical giant loomed and wandered, glass eyes observing a glass world. Landscapes shattered beneath its unthinking march towards a never-end. Bullets would never hurt it.
The giant passed by, and the sensation of death against my throat returned. I fell to the ground as he let me go, waves breaking against a weathered cliff beneath us. I stayed still, my ears following the machinations of my captors.
"Can we secure it?" one said.
"No, we can't ess-sea-pea that thing," said another.
"So what do we do?"
"We ess-sea-pea what we can," said the last.
Three inward shots rang out as I spiraled off the cliff edge. The murderers recited a prayer, and I listened on the way down.

"O World, O peoples, O Mankind:
Hear now our words of love to you, mere utterances from the dark.
Accept us now in your time of peril, though we are but men of insubstantial shadow;
Allow us to be your firmest bedrock.
Chain yourself to this stone, and no war will ever come.
Appell us as your steadfast Foundation,
And you will never again stumble into the dark.
O Clef, O Cimmerian, O damned Kondraki:
May this foundation bring peace to Mankind."

The cliff rock shatters beneath my feet, and I fall into the glassy sea.

Eventually, they found a cure. Order was officialized, doctors were promoted, and there was a great silence upon the earth. The faces of the men around me say as much.
Beneath a silent moon, an operative from a recovery team walks past my broken home. His foot stamps on a shard of glass, and a spot of grease is shattered. The nameless woman who died one year ago ceases her mourning.
Inside the serpent, my eyes close, and I join the peaceful dead.

| 1 | 2 »


No, this isn't a prank. The Department of Miscommunication does, in fact, exist. Those joking letterheads still floating around are fake. They don't bother us much for the exact reasons I suspect you of suspecting.
We're real and terribly important.
Please, have a seat. Feeling up for a cigarette? Oh, yes, I know. My doctor was actually asking me just the other day why I keep smoking, you know what what I say? I'm smoking because… I like it.
We, the Foundation, have been learning the health risks of smoking since they were packing cancer sticks with baseball cards. You're working among a pack of geezers like me these days, right? A smart guy like you probably wonders why there's so much more smoking here than other facilities you've worked at.
They're not being cavalier. It's all they know, preserved in amber. We've never lied to our loyal workers. We've only… made sure they're learning only what's necessary. Careful, controlled omission.
We don't create disinformation here. Not in charge of scrutinizing all those incomprehensible addenda, either. As a matter of facts, there's nothing new coming through our hands. Only everything that is already being told.
Oh, the actual infohazards? That's the smokescreen. Keep people worrying about what outsiders might be trying to slip in and they'll be tripping over themselves to hand over their data. Identifying and processing dangerous materials is all done by bots. Just make sure you're reading the memos I send out each week for office cooler talking points. Our lives may be depending on it.
Anyways. Start thinking about the avenues through which information flows. Back in the old days, we had to scrutinize a lot of doctor's handwriting. Technology is making it easier and harder. Phones, computers, mail tubes, telegraph lines, we've got our eyes inside watching what goes where. You won't even be sending smoke signals without us knowing.
Oh, no, that's impossible. I never even started trying. Us, this whole thing, it's going to be possible to hold back the world forever. We're compartmentalizing. The deeper into the Foundation you go, the less access to the outside world you're getting. Most of the time people stop looking on their own. Too much worrying about the muggles keeps the mind off saving them.
Bringing us to the ultimate mission, why we exist, what we're going for. Just to have enough, a critical mass of skilled people to keep the very most important lights on when everything else is falling.
We can't have the researchers dumping millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere worrying about climate change. If they start forgetting that their work is keeping a thousand world-ending wonders at bay, there's no climate agreement to stop that.
If there's word of the instability of the political system, we might not keep perpetuating despotism for the sake of keeping the masses free.
Discovering exactly what is going on in Site-13, well, that Overseer Council might just start shuttering this whole project.
Oh, we're not working for anybody else in the Foundation. This is sort of what you might call… a self-creating and self-perpetuating department. If people say they haven't heard of us, start laughing along to the joke. If they're laughing at the name, less likely to look into funny business.
Come on, I'll show you around.


Wren rolled out of bed at 9:39 with the grace of a falling anvil. This was deliberate. Their alarm hadn't gone off, and without drastic measures, the entire morning would be lost. Instead, they were out of bed and on their feet at 9:40. Sore, disoriented, but moving with purpose.
Mx. Wren Masterson123 gazed at themselves in the mirror. Today, it was a face they recognized: doe-eyed, round and soft, save for faint traces of stubble. They kept their hair curly on top (a stylish compromise: brush and forget) and short on the sides (no maintenance needed). They had slept in a tank top, so their sole tattoo — an ouroboros inscribed with their personal motto — peeked out from their upper chest. They read it to themselves under their breath and grinned. Then they brushed their teeth.
Binder. Band tee. Vest. Leggings. Clompy boots. Mission control, we are almost ready for takeoff. Wren pulled a long black duffel bag out from under the bed, unzipped it halfway, and fished out a tiny homebrew computer with a cheap LCD screen. There was still time to check notifications over breakfast (or whatever passed for breakfast in this dump) before checking out.
Oh, new DMs.

bluntfiend: Hey, steakshift, are you okay?
bluntfiend: Your "insurance policy" went on/off/on.
bluntfiend: Several times.
bluntfiend: Still going!
bluntfiend: You done?
bluntfiend: @steakshift you alright?
bluntfiend: Helloooo?

"Oh… fuck."
Masterson screwed their eyes shut and tried to focus. What happened yesterday? Went to the swap meet. Sold and traded some stuff. Brought it back. Went to sleep.
No. Wrong. Wren always found energy to check their new acquisitions, even if it just meant plugging something in and falling asleep with it in the background. Yet yesterday's spoils were all set aside, next to the TV, and the room was pristine. Everything was where it was supposed to be, which meant that something was definitely amiss.
steakshift tried to claw through the fog of caffeine withdrawal and and retrace their steps. How did I get back to the hotel? They came up with nothing. Not even a hazy recollection, like their typical dissociative episodes. Instead there was just… missing time.
Blank tape.
"Fuck," they repeated.

steakshift: @bluntfiend uhhhh sorta?
steakshift: we should talk
steakshift: where r u

The nearest ReTerminal was thirty minutes away by bicycle. Wren fought the temptation to rush — Sudbury wasn't as dangerous as Toronto, but biking in urban traffic always felt like flirting with death, particularly with a large bag on their back. Instead, they took their time and signaled every turn, which actually made it a lot easier to spot the black sedan trailing behind at a cautious distance. MxMasters waited for an opening, then made two abrupt right turns, jumped the sidewalk and darted through an alley, going three blocks in the wrong direction before circling back again. No more tails. Nice try, officers.
Eventually, they made it to their first stop, which was (currently) a liquor store on Lasalle Boulevard. The signage was garish and overpowering, but didn't do much to disguise the architecture: the owners had set up shop in a former Blockbuster Video. Masterson didn't go in. They just circled around, approached the rear service door and knocked three times.
Nothing.
Wren cleared their throat and murmured, "I have to return some videotapes."
The lock disengaged. The door swung outward, releasing a wave of fetid air and exposing a dark corridor that was, very clearly, not part of the liquor store. This was something older. A rotted-out relic from a bygone era. The ReTerminal.
Mx. Masterson walked inside, bicycle in tow, and the door swung shut behind them.

"'Do you believe the condor is really an endangered species?'"
There was silence from the intercom. Then a burst of static. "Okay boomer, was I supposed to get that reference?"
"You fucker, we watched that tog-" Wren stopped mid-sentence and sighed. "It's steak. Get off your ass and buzz me in."
The voice on the other end cackled and hung up. Suddenly there was an electric thrum in the air, and both locks disengaged: the conventional lock, and the other lock, which unbound the spatial coordinates between Door A and Door B and opened the real safehouse. Anyone trying to bust through the regular entrance would get flung right out the back, straight into the trash cans. (Wren suspected that any janitors, tankfuckers or feds would be professional enough to breach from both sides of the house simultaneously. Would they plow into each other Three Stooges-style? Flashbang each other? That would be rad. Another one for the cop fail compilations.)
The rowhouse seemed bigger on the inside. They'd just traveled between Sudbury and Pittsburgh in ninety minutes, so Mx. Masterson didn't give this discrepancy a second thought. They propped their bike against the nearest wall, started to kick off their boots, then reconsidered; the place was a mess and they didn't want to step in anything wet. They scanned from left to right — a den layered with meme art (nothing juicy; no magical boobytraps in this safehouse yet), messy kitchen, mercifully clean bathroom, stairs — and saw no one.
"Hello?"
Then they heard the distinctive roiling bubble of a bongrip, and a noxious pink beanie bobbed into view between TV and couch. Jude Kriyot straightened up in his seat, leaned back, and kept leaning, tipping his head back over the couch to make upside-down eye contact with the new arrival and raise his eyebrows in silent acknowledgement.
"Hey, man," steakshift ventured. "You're looking great."
"I'm feeling great," bluntfiend wheezed. He exhaled an improbably massive cloud of smoke, giggled, then broke into a coughing fit. "You?"
"I mean, I thought I was good." Wren used one foot to clear away some of the surrounding debris, then set their duffel bag down in the empty space. "It was a busy month. Found some new/old stuff for the collection. Then…" They touched their temples and pantomimed an explosion. "Poof. Here I am."
"Here you are." Jude maneuvered his tall, soft frame off the couch, rose unsteadily to his feet, then hefted the bong and wiggled it encouragingly. "You want a hit off this thing?" If he was at all self-conscious about the faded, stained, torn shirt (three-wolf-moon, lmao) he didn't show it.
"Later, maybe. After we get this sorted."
"Suit yourself. Got your gadget right here." Kriyot set the bong on the coffee table, then picked up and offered Wren a familiar device: their old Sony DCR-TRV17 Handycam, wrapped in its A/V connector. Scribbled across the top, on a strip of red duct tape, were the words "HAN-DY SEE WHAT I SEE".
steakshift handled the camera with something approaching reverence. It felt… warm. Like cupping their hands around a candle flame, but for the heart. They had reunited with a little piece of their essence. "Thanks again for helping me with this," they said. "Not just for holding onto it. I don't think I could have made it work long-range without you and JJ lending me some juice."
"Don't thank me yet. Linking up to this thing to snoop on yourself was a neat idea, but…" Jude pulled a face and shrugged expansively. "I don't know whether you actually caught anything."
"You didn't check?"
"Nah. Figured I'd wait, in case it was mundane. Respect your privacy."
"Such a choirboy. Bless you, Jude." Wren laid a palm over the Handycam and concentrated. A moment later, their eyes snapped open. "Janitors!" they exclaimed. "Janitors got me off the street."
"Oh shit! Swept up and tossed out." Jude clapped them on the back reassuringly. "Welcome back, fellow trash."
"Hooray. Only slightly mindfucked."
"I'd say 'been there', but… I haven't, really." Kriyot shrugged awkwardly. "At least you got something out of it, right?"
"Guess we're gonna find out." MxMasters walked back to their duffel, rummaged around, and produced a stack of DVD cases bound together with elastics. "Quid pro quo. For services rendered, Papa Smoke: the first Jojo OVA. It's not a perfect set; no box, no cards, but the discs are in good shape."
"Holy shit. Aren't these super rare? How'd you find them?"
Masterson grinned. "That's the power of my Stand."
"Sick. Uh, I have food… somewhere?" Jude cast an uneasy glance towards the kitchen. "Pretty sure there was pizza, earlier."
"See what you can find. I'll hook this up to the TV."
"Movie night!"
"blunt, it's not even noon."

SCENE: INTERIOR, DAY. The image resolved into a fuzzy white hallway, with bright directional arrows painted on a concrete floor. The camera tracked forward at a walking pace, flanked on either side by vague shadows.
"Looks pretty bad," Jude observed.
Wren smacked their forehead with an open palm, feigning dismay. "Aw, shit! I should have set my eyeballs to 1080p! Gotta remember that, next time I try streaming my visual cortex to MiniDV, eight hundred klicks away, thanks dude."
"I'm just saying, far as spy video goes, this… this is not great."
"Look, it'll get better. Worst-case, I'll zoom/enhance some choice frames. Now hush."
As the perspective reached an intersection, the camera began to lurch and sway from side to side. A voice that sounded an awful lot like Wren Masterson's rang out: "So, uh, I get a lawyer, right? You'll let me call my lawyer?"
Faces swam in and out of view; the shadows on either side were both men in suits, but since the focus was on the background, their features were indistinguishable. Their laughter, at least, came through nice and clear. "You'll have to ask Tipper. I'm sure she's real eager to meet you."
"'Call my lawyer', that's cute."
"Yeah, what was I actually looking at?" Masterson stabbed the pause button, then advanced frame-by-frame until the blurry signage in the background became legible.

SITE-201
PARKING →
↑ INTAKE
↑ SECURITY
← ARRAY

"Do you think Foundation guys carpool?"
"Probably? I always assumed they lived in dorms, out in the country," bluntfiend mused, cracking his knuckles. "Like, uh, Commie scientists. I mean, putting their junk in cities would be mad dangerous."
"Yeah, can you imagine? 'Welcome to your eco-friendly habitation cube, adjacent to Weird Shit Central. Please observe the difference between the fire alarm and the self-destruct.' Pchoom. Goodbye Toronto."
There was a burst of static, and the shot changed. Then changed again. Again. Each time, the image got a little sharper, and the angle shifted a little bit. White walls. Mirror. High, dark ceilings. Suddenly, the camera was looking across a desk at an intense-looking brunette with a lab coat and clipboard. "Alright, Researcher Penelope Gore," Yesterday's Wren said, enunciating the name very precisely. "Ask your questions."
"Damn." Jude punched them in the shoulder. "Names right off the bat."
"How long have you been able to create these anomalies?"
"Since, uh, high school I guess. 2003, 2004-ish."
"O-M-G, secret origin time!"
"You've heard it already."
"Yeah but I love the part where you piss yourself. Seven days, steakshift! Seven days!"
"Ha-ha, shut up." Wren thumbed the fast-forward button, scanned ahead until the janitor started talking, then rewound and hit play.
"-not into random violence."
"Then why make SCP-4581?"
"I mean, I thought the label was pretty self-explanatory."
"You don't consider SCP-4581-∞ 'random" or "violent'?"
"What is… Wait a minute." Masterson leaned forward. "She couldn't be talking about…"
"Your infohazard."
"Oh, you mean the Loop. It's the Loop and the Jam."
"God damn it!" they exclaimed. "They've got my Dead Kennedys album!"
bluntfiend blinked confusedly. "I thought you lent it to PIC."
"Yeah, but he said he couldn't find it. Fuck! I was hoping it was in the back of his van or something, not with the janitors!"
"C'mon, steak, chill out. This is a win, remember? You've got something incredible here." He gestured at the TV. "We've never seen anything like this."
"Yeah. I guess. I just… really wanted PIC to return it." Masterson chewed on a thumbnail and fretted.
steakshift considered themselves an anarchist, and there was nothing they despised more than fascists. While they had no reservations about knocking a Nazi's lights out, that didn't actually shut them up long-term; pigs and propagandists would just keep on pushing poison. The "Anti-Racist Audiocassette"4 had been their solution. It was counter-propaganda chaff: Side One (the "Loop") would blast onlookers with music, tagging targets with an infohazard and flooding their accounts with copyrighted junk; Side Two (the "Jam") would blank out local audio recordings, erasing evidence and untagging affected creeps. The initial run hadn't gone perfectly, but it had been clean. There had been no loose ends… until polaricecraps groused about a similar problem one month later. PIC was a comrade and steakshift had offered up the tape immediately. It had taken a while for Masterson to realize that they had neglected to remove their mundane alias. You crossed the streams, dummy. "mxm bootleg edition". That's how they got your ass.
"…guns are designed for killing. But with training and safeguards you can use a rifle to hunt game, feed a family, protect a community. It's all responsibility and intent. Mundane cameras kill people too."
"Wow, look at Mx. Second Amendment over here."
"Pfft. I don't need guns, I've got the Restricted Shelf. You know what I mean, though. Daytime news does more damage than the Loop."
"…always read as neutral. Even when they're obviously not."
"That's an absurd reduction," Researcher Gore retorted, gesturing with her pen. "There are extremes, yes, but there is such a thing as an objective, scientific view."
Wren guffawed. "Yeah, that's some bullshit. She sounds like a Redditor."
"A mundane object doesn't blow someone's eardrums out and then wipe them off the Internet. That was you. You built a bomb, and then you sent it to a child."
bluntfiend gasped. "How could you, steakshift? So irresponsible. Sending a bomb to an actual baby."
"I'm gonna tell him you said that."
Kriyot snickered. "Do it."
"I will!"
"Good." He kept on giggling. "You're such a grumpy old theydy."
"No lies detected."
"You don't have to share that salacious gossip, or that video of a dude getting his head kicked in. You don't have to profit from their pain."
"Whoa, wait. Look at that reaction." Pause. Rewind. Frame-by-frame.
"She looks… concerned? Guilty, maybe?"
"Maybe." Play.
"I have a printout here… chat logs describing your use of SCP-4581-∞…"
Wren's face fell. They glanced around, stood up and started moving towards an adjacent door. "I need to use the bathroom."
"Sure," bluntfiend said, his eyes still locked on the TV. "Want me to pause it?"
"No, you keep going," steakshift muttered. They closed the bathroom door, sat down on the toilet, put their head in their hands and listened. Outside, Yesterday's Wren was still speaking. Their voice wafted under the door, rose like a gust of hot air, and their consciousness floated up with it, lost in a haze of mounting terror.
Jesus, what did I tell them?
"It's done. Closed Loop. You don't need to worry about that guy." True. "I'm a responsible human being, Tipper." False. You know what you did, Anna. What a fuckup you are. No, that's "When I built this weapon, and yes" no "I acknowledge it's" not my "safety."
Jude laughed in the next room, very, very far away.
His channel went down and I walked up and I "asked for directions" liar "he said" fuck off "fuck off, he didn't have" time for your dyke shit, Anna.
Mx. Masterson shook their head. "That's not my name," they whispered. They wiped their eyes, and when their fingers came back wet, they snatched a few squares of toilet paper. "That's not my name. That's not my name." Not… Not my… No.
"He used his platform to hurt people. Now he can't."
Not anymore.
They stood up, flushed the toilet, and ran the sink just long enough to rinse their face. Then steakshift took a deep breath and went back to the couch.
As soon as they emerged from the bathroom, bluntfiend pressed pause, then rewind, then play. "I know you said I should keep going," he said, "but you gotta see this bit."
On the screen, Researcher Gore set her jaw and glared at her prisoner. "It trolled me," she said, "with Lady Gaga and Rick Astley."
Yesterday's Wren and Today's Wren both started to laugh. "Oh my god."
"Congrats, steak. You rickrolled the Foundation."
"What can I say? Love the classics."
"Afterwards, SCP-4581-∞ overwrote files with Rage Against The Machine."
"Interesting. You should quit your job."
Jude busted out laughing. "Bold!"
"That's my advice for everyone, actually."
"…reflection of the operator. It's based on the circumstances that led you to make the mistake of uploading it. If I were to guess, I'd say you were… conflicted, about your place in a bigger system?"
"Is that true?"
"I mean… mostly? It extrapolates from the values I implanted, and I'm hardly neutral." They considered. "Call it… 60% operator. Maybe 70%."
"So I guess you're fucking with her, here."
"Well, y'all keep calling it trolling."
"Want to hear a joke?"
"Not particularly."
"Two Oscar Meyer guys are on the highway…"
A wide, earnest smile spread across steakshift's face, and they suppressed a pre-emptive laugh. bluntfiend cringed. "Oh Christ, here we go. I can't believe you named yourself after this dumb, obvious punchline. When did you come up with this, '72?"
"Hey now," Wren complained, "my dad told me this joke."
"Figures. It's a dad joke. You see it coming from a mile away."
"…says, 'I'm sorry to let you down, man. I drive an automatic. I can't handle a steak-shift.'"
For a second, the researcher didn't react. Then Gore's eyes twitched, ever so slightly. She tried (and failed) to stifle a laugh, then quickly covered her mouth with one hand and cleared her throat. "Are you done?"
Jude's jaw dropped. "No way."
Wren hooted and clapped. "I told you! I told you it was funny!"
"It is not! She's just old! Like you!"
"Whatever, sonny. I made a janitor laugh. This is going in the highlight reel."
"…additional questions about your history, education, anomalous abilities, projects, personal enterprises and affiliations, particularly your relationship with GoI-5869…"
"Nice," Jude and Wren said simultaneously.
"…and the members thereof?"
"Nope."
"You were mostly compliant, before. What changed?"
"'Fuck you, I won't'-"
"-'do what you tell me!'" steakshift cheered. "'Motherfuuuucker!'"
"Alright. Alright," bluntfiend conceded. He gave the coffee table three sharp raps with his knuckles. "Put it in the highlights."

It came up eventually, of course. They were smoking some predictably excellent weed, and in the midst of their banter, bluntfiend asked an obvious question. "Does it feel weird," he said, "to see something you don't remember, from your own point of view?"
"No," steakshift replied, rather decisively. Then, "Not exactly. I feel like I'm just seeing life through a screen, sometimes. My mind wanders. That's probably why this Handycam trick works at all. It's manageable, but…" They shook their head. "Looking back on things I did or said, some of it doesn't seem real. So when I hear myself ranting on video, it's… embarrassing, but not unfamiliar."
Jude passed the pipe and exhaled smoke through his nostrils. "You mean the stuff about guns and cameras? The… gun-cameras? That was a little preachy."
Masterson groaned. "God, yeah. I think about that sorta shit all the time, but don't really talk about it unless I'm pissed off. Or stoned." They took another hit.
"You had a sort of fire-and-brimstone thing going on, near the end there. Asking the dude for directions was ballsy." Kriyot paused. Something shifted in his THC-addled brain. "Wait, you drive?"
Wren coughed mid-exhale and stared at Jude with red, bloodshot eyes. "What?" they wheezed. "Naw, I'm too gay to drive. You can borrow my bike."
"No, I mean — you said you drove to the guy's house. But I don't think I've ever seen you in a car, let alone in the driver's seat."
"Oh." Wren stared off into space for a minute, then sighed. "No. I don't drive. My dad died in a car wreck and it fucked me up real bad. Panic attacks." They let out a hollow laugh. "Turns out, I'm the one who can't handle a steak-shift."
"Shit. Sorry."
"Yeah." steakshift fell silent for a time. Then their head snapped up. "Oh no."
"What?"
"I told them that I drove. If you picked up on it, the janitors are gonna pick up on it, they're superfeds, they're gonna know…" Masterson jumped to their feet and started pacing. "…and they're gonna dig, they're gonna dig until they find her, oh fuck. Fuck."
"Who?"
"Me!" Wren exclaimed, a lot louder than they intended. "The… ex-me, before I was steakshift, before I figured myself out. God, I'm so fucking stupid. I can't believe I…" They collapsed back onto the couch and covered their face with both hands. "I never should have shared that tape."
Jude gazed over at his friend, clearly uncertain how to react. He tried to speak, coughed a few times, then tried again. "Hey… you know I'm not good at this personal shit, but… you can talk if you wanna. I dunno." Wren didn't reply. "Uh, for what it's worth, your opsec is good? Your spy tricks seem effective. I mean, it took 'em this long to find you at all."
"I signed that cassette twice, man. Once with my handle. Once with your 'Stephen King, hit by car' joke." Jude clapped a hand over his mouth to contain his laughter. Wren sighed. "I can't believe this. I only marked it because I thought I was gonna keep that tape forever. It was…"
They trailed off.
"…your dad's?"
"Yeah."
"Uh, this might be rude, but… if it was so important, why'd you use it for trolling?"
"Because I was going after his dad. My grandpa, Harold."
"Oh." Jude fidgeted in his seat. But he didn't say anything, and didn't look like he was going to leave.
Wren stared intently at their feet for a while. When they finally spoke, it was halting and awkward. "I went to live with Harold after my dad died. Barely knew him but it was okay at first. Misery loves company. We were both torn up, but didn't have much in common. He was retired. Cable TV, no Internet. Bitter old fart. He got bored and sometimes he'd take it out on me.
"I… was in a bad spot. Teenager with superpowers. Depressed, grieving, didn't understand. Didn't have the words. Hated myself instead. Found places online that celebrated self-loathing, turned it into a joke… God. So much hate in that house, and I told myself it was funny.
"Harold had opinions. Longer I stayed, louder he got. 'L-O-L, old-timey racism, who cares, amirite?' Got more important shit to do, like pranking people with Polaroids. Took candids, made 'em look funny or weird or scary. Fooled one guy into thinking he was haunted, then waved the picture around and quoted The Exorcist. Poof! Ghost disappears! He gave me everything in his wallet. Hundred eighty bucks. Blew it on weed.
"Harold kept getting on my case. I needed a distraction. So I gave him one of my old computers, and I showed him how to get online. That's where things really went sideways. The Internet didn't poison his brain; chalk that up to character and society. But suddenly he had a way to find people who hated the same things." Wren covered their face with both hands. "Fucking… guns and cameras, man. I didn't realize what I was doing.
"Went to college. Dropped out. Went to that other college, studied anart, dropped out again. Then underground. 2010, things finally started to click. Figured out I was genderqueer. Started readjusting my life. Eventually 2014 happened, and I realized how everything was truly fucked.
"Harold and I messaged each other on holidays, to be polite, but we didn't keep in touch. Sometimes he sent me links to his rant videos. I didn't watch them. Why would I? I thought I'd heard all his garbage already. How fucking wrong I was. While I was off doing, uh, other things, Harold got into full-on Nazi shit. Awful war stories about Korea turned into rants about Jews and 'western civilization' and sharia law. He started chasing people around, screaming at them, streaming it live. Eventually he got enough followers to make it a team sport. People got hurt. That's when I noticed what was up.
"Went back to my hometown and tried talking to Harold. That went nowhere, so I went up to my old room and dug through some boxes. Found the tape right where I left it, with the rest of my dad's cassettes. Dead Kennedys were always his favorite." Wren choked back a sob. "I spent a whole week tinkering with that thing. Put some juice into it. Then a bit more. The next time Harold and his buddies went out, I was ready. He was harassing people outside a Lebanese restaurant, calling 'em terrorists and perverts. I cruised by, on my bike, with my Walkman, stopped right in front of him, and hit record." Even through tears, Wren managed a chuckle. "Blasted him with Rock the Casbah. Harold was furious, but the music was louder than he could ever be, so he went home.
"Figured the Loop would take a while to kick in. Wrong. An hour later his channel was toast. Hell fucking yeah, I told myself, mission accomplished. I'd cooked up a hundred ways to chew him out. Then knocked on his door and, uh, choked. Harold screamed at me for destroying his work and I just stood there and made noises until he told me I wasn't his granddaughter. I told him he was right, I wasn't anyone's daughter, and he definitely wasn't my family.
"He slammed the door in my face. I just… reacted. I flipped the tape over and played the Jam. I closed the Loop.
"I fucked up.
"I lived on the road. Hid stuff here and there, but that was business. Magic shit. My dad's stuff was still in Harold's house. In my old room. I didn't just close the Loop. I nuked my dad's cassettes. All of them. Video, audio. Everything he left behind. Poof. Unrecoverable. Even for me." Masterson sniffed back a stream of mucous. "I wanted to go back in and grab the boxes. Get his old books, at least. But I couldn't face Harold again. So I left."
"With the tape," said Jude. He hadn't moved a muscle for a solid minute, which was probably some sort of record.
"Yeah. One last memento. Gone."
"Fuck. I'm… I don't know what to say, Wren. That blows."
Masterson sniffled again. "Yeah, it does, but it's done, right? It's in the past. Except. Now the janitors have the cassette, and they have me on video, and they'll start piecing things together. When they find that old fucker, and they will, Harold will blab, and when he runs out of dirt, he'll make some shit up." They shrugged helplessly. "Eventually the janitors are gonna figure out what I did, back in the day. Then they'll put me in a cage or drop me like a ton of bricks."
"What you — okay, wait." Jude removed the beanie and ruffled his hair. "steak… remind me, when did you meet JJ?"
"Uh… 2009? We kinda bumped into each other in a ReTerminal. He told me about y'all in 2014."
"Okay. Well. Not too long after you joined, I had to, uh… clean up some loose ends. I punished some very bad people a long time ago, and it was a reminder of everything I'd done wrong. I couldn't handle it on my own. So, uh." Jude coughed. "I called the janitors and I told them."
"You what?"
"Well, technically, I just talked into a phone, and they called me. But yeah, I tipped them off."
"…and they let you go?"
"Actually, their robot tried to fry my brain."
"Is this… supposed to be, like, a pep talk? Because it's not helping."
"No, it's a reality check. The janitors rolled me one time, let me go, and when they took another swing, they missed. They haven't come in for the kill yet, and y'know what? I don't think they're in any rush. Yeah, they've been hassling us, they're spying on our chats, but… we're young and weird and wild. We could be supervillains if we wanted to, but we don't. We've seen that act before and it sucked. Instead we clown on people who deserve it. Not the most disciplined or productive thing in the world, but at least least we're trying to be positive."
"From our perspective, sure, but-"
Jude shook his head. "Let me finish. I think the janitors have bigger problems than us nerds, and I think they know it. Even the biggest stuff we've done has been… well, relatively low-impact, globally speaking. Even with all the silly shit we pull, and daydream about building… if the rumors are even close to true, people like us have kicked up problems that could end civilization. The Foundation deals with that stuff. Like, every day. I bet you've heard those stories." He paused. "I originally thought they were bullshit, myself."
"I didn't."
"Clearly. You're always looking over your shoulder, for whatever reason, and I know that's a rough way to live, but… you're one of the most precise, level-headed people in our little family. You think everything through. You said it yourself, responsibility and intent. You saw a problem, you solved it. A little razzle-dazzle but nothing excessive. Nobody got hurt."
"That's not true, man," Masterson croaked. "Harold hurt people."
"That's on him."
"I gave him the computer."
"You were a kid," bluntfiend retorted. "You said it yourself, lots of pain in that house. You're better than that now. The lie you told them… it was an honest lie, you know? They might dig, but so what? You've owned your mistakes." He cracked a smile. "Hell, compared to all us kids in the chat, that Foundation dork might actually consider you the adult in the room. You were definitely trying to keep PIC in line."
Wren Masterson nodded silently and stared at the floor, trying not to cry. They could still feel the fear and anxiety rolling over and over in the pit of their stomach. They wanted to believe Jude, they really did. But the possibility of everything falling apart, the chance that someone would learn the truth, now that they'd finally gotten their life in order…
"Hey, steakshift."
"What?"
"Did you notice… they called her Tipper Gore?"
steakshift blinked. It took a second for them to connect the dots. "Holy shit," they whispered. "Researcher Gore. Tipper Gore."
"The Foundation versus Jello Biafra."
"Everything old is new again."
"Oh, that must be such a relief for you, old timer."
Wren Masterson snorted. Then giggled. Jude Kriyot joined in. Before too long, they were both roaring with laughter. "You think," steakshift wheezed, "the Foundation has 'parental advisory' stickers?"
"God, I hope so." bluntfiend raised his hands, as though he were placing a sign. "Containment Advisory: Explicit Anomaly."
"Christ. Incredible."
"You want to start watching that OVA?"
"Yeah, absolutely. Dubs or subs?"

Footnotes
1. Known in mundane circles as "MxMasters" or "mxm".
2. Known primarily as "steakshift" among anomalous communities like Gamers Against Weed.
3. They did not know that their Foundation designation was PoI-6966. At least, not yet.
4. Named after the Anti-Racist Action Network. True badasses. Track 6 forever, y'all.


A tale that's been kicking around in my head for a few hours. Thought I'd put it on the page.

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F.A.Q.

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WARNING:
THIS TALE'S CONTENT INCLUDES ADDICTION AND SELF-HARM.

The worst thing I ever saw? That's easy.
After I finished up with SCP-245, I didn't have a job, and I bounced around a bit while the higher ups tried to figure out what to do with me. For about a year in '07 I was working in human resources at Site-88.
We worked at an adjunct site in Bay Minette, with the daycare department. There were HR guys onsite as well, obviously, but we handled the bulk of the paperwork and processing offsite. HR has to deal with families more often than not, and childcare is a pretty great benefit for employees, so it worked out.
There was this one woman, I always remembered her because she had this haughty stance every time she came in. Puffed out her chest, came in to demand this or that and drop her kids off. She had two of them, an adorable 6 year old girl and 9 year old boy. She was never rude, but she was definitely proud and a little demanding.
Her husband was an MTF Agent at Site-88. He was 53, two years off optional retirement and seven off mandatory reassignment. I only met him a few times, at company functions, but it was like he was leaking sunshine out of his ears every time. Loud, boisterous, but never a bully. He'd been with the Foundation for almost 30 years, and he'd kept his good nature the entire time. No one ever had a bad thing to say about the guy.
Then he got reassigned to 110 Montauk. It wasn't a punishment, it was just a matter of accounting. My boss always used to call it that when a critical project was short on people. "Just a matter of accounting". Like that made it better. I remember the moment the guy got told, I saw it through the window. He didn't argue, or anything. He did shrink a little. I was used to seeing that. HR had that effect on people.
He came back a month later after a full course of amnestics but it was like he'd left something behind. I talked to him at the July 4th company event. He was with his MTF buddies and they were laughing about an old mission. The spark was definitely gone. If that was all… I think he might've been fine.
A month later he took a bullet to the knee in a firefight with the Insurgency. They stuck him on desk duty during his recovery and prescribed Percocet for the pain. Nobody thought too much of it. The guy was a drinker but nothing serious. And besides, he had a family. Even if it was unlikely, the guy was gonna work as hard as he could to get back into the field.
The problem with treating addiction like a moral failing is that you can't see how a "good man" could end up strung out on pills. We got better, because of stuff like this, but it was the mid-2000s and we just weren't there yet.
He failed a drug test two months later for Oxy and Vicoden. He ended up on supervised leave for a few months. And that was literally all we did. No drug treatment programs. No counseling. We just told him to take a couple months off and get his shit together. We also cut him off from the Percocet.
He came back just before Christmas, clean. My boss figured that was the end of it, guy was a good soldier and close to retirement. We'd just keep him chained to a desk until he hit 55 and make his voluntary retirement a bit more forced.
A week later he failed another drug test. Had heroin on him. We put him on leave again, this time without pay. And my boss started talking about how we couldn't keep this guy on the payroll. I believe the word "degenerate" was thrown around more than once.
The guy went home that day and tried to use the roof of his mouth as a pistol silencer.
My boss said the problem had solved itself. Then the guy's wife came in with her kids. I didn't hear what happened until afterward, but because he had violated the terms of his employment, he'd lost his pension, and his life insurance was voided because it was a suicide.
Let me just say that while I disagreed with the policy, I at least understood it. Suicide is serious, and for lack of a better word, contagious. Site-42 lost half a dozen people just last year before they got the situation under control. Back in '07, part of the policy was that if you killed yourself, your family got nothing. It was supposed to be a deterrent.
So there this woman was, standing tall and puffed up, and she just broke. It was like she'd been replaced by a smaller version of herself. She'd just lost her husband, and I would bet she still hadn't processed that, much less the rest. We got the kids out of the room and I stayed with the wife for the rest of the day while she tried to get herself together.
I put in for a transfer the next day.

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