Notes By A Luddite - SCP Foundation

I spent my life afraid of change because I knew that a better world would have no need of me.

SCP-7994 refers to a collection of antiquated hunting equipment that predates the establishment of the Foundation. The pieces were thoroughly obsolete at the time of their internment and may contain substances or materials prohibited by the Ethics Committee. Any further use of these items is considered contrary to the interests of the Foundation.

By 1905, anomalies weren't a hobby for the nobility any longer. Civilization crowded against its borders and stirred up nasty things. More anomalies, and these more dangerous. Too many witnesses to silence, too many monsters and too few huntsmen. Too much for us to do, and too little that we could do. When the Administrator started talking about changing the game, all the old hands listened.

It's time to stop hunting, he said. Time to start preserving. Seekers scrabbling for trophies and riches — that time had passed. It was time, he said, to industrialize.

An obsolete military rifle unsuitable for fieldwork. Martini-Henry rifles, popular during the late 19th century, were withdrawn from service in 1914. Individual agents continued to use personal examples until the early 1930s. Though not itself anomalous, the weapon has been exposed to multiple Safe and Euclid class objects prior to retirement, and entered permanent storage in 1947.

My grandfather patrolled his farm with the same rifle for thirty years. My father passed it on to me. I killed eight anomalies with this rifle and wounded three more sufficient to capture. Today we order rifles by the hundred thousand. But holding this old thing, I remember how we used to chase the Headlight Beasts.

Give a headlight beast any kind of room and he'll break a hundred miles an hour easy. We used to take them from the backs of jeeps, engines straining, rifles cracking. Best damned game in the whole world.

Seventy, eighty miles per hour, bumping up against the limits of our engines before we get close enough to shoot. All throughout, the beasts kept up their synchronized gait, bright heads blinking distress to any others in range. I'll never forget the glow breaking through the darkness, nor the beams of our lamps nipping at their heels. Those moments, those thrills, made the job all worth it. But I digress.

The leather jacket designated SCP-7994-B is of ordinary construction, but has been augmented with concealed, experimental protective fibers proof against most conventional firearms and stabbing weapons. One hundred percent of operatives and civilians exposed to these fibers developed totally inoperable cancers of the skin and brain within twenty to thirty years after initial point of exposure.

Expensive to produce, and dangerous to deploy, Foundation researchers have designated recreating the materials of the jacket a low priority task.

There was no money for facilities or uniforms. In 1920, men and women were the only things that came cheap - we found our first teams digging in the scrapheap of civilization. People who, if not given purpose by the organization, would have simply disappeared from modern life. Mercenaries we called them, though what they planned to do when they got their money, not one could have told you. The Secure Containment Project offered these vulnerable people something to do in a world that wanted to forget them.

We didn't know any better, about cross contamination or cross testing. Radiation, toxic fibers and such. I know it's killing me. Killed me, I should say, the day I put it on. Still hard to say goodbye to it.

The third instance, SCP-7994-C, is a brass sextant of Russian origin that has been modified for use in anomalous item location and acquisition. After thorough review, the device was deemed unreliable and unsuitable for further fieldwork.

The sextant doesn't measure where the sun is or where you are. It points out where the game is, it leads you to trouble. There's a little bit of magic in it and not a lot of science - exactly the opposite of what the Administrator wanted to see in the new organization, which is why he had you all lock it up.

Containment - such a clean word for the world we made. I miss the good old days, until I think of the scars and the skulls and the godawful things we did for fun.

And suddenly, I don't.