Targus patted Montgomery on the back. "Relax, doctor. | think you'll 
find this assignment isn't so bad." With that, the tanned doctor 
walked off to a station across the command room. Montgomery 
paused for a moment more to look down into the observation room, 
where a group of nurses in white scrubs were rolling a small bed 
through the now-open door. 


After a few seconds, he moved quickly to his station. Taking his 
seat, his eyes moved immediately to the video screen, and he 
watched the nurses setting up the rest of the room. A rug had been 
moved into the room, as well as a small table next to the bed, a 
lamp, and some bedding. Montgomery felt his stomach drop slightly, 


and then looked again towards the clock above the observation 
window. It read 19:59, and the one next to it 00:24. It was almost 
time. 


The screens in front of him hummed softly, and the information 
contained within pushed on tirelessly. He made a few notes and 
opened a booklet of information he had brought with him, and then 
heard the last tone. 


"All staff personnel: Procedure 110-Montauk has begun." 


He turned to look at the clock again, and noticed that large metal 
plates had slid down over the observation windows, obscuring the 
room from view. Looking back to his video feed, he saw that the 
lights within the room had dimmed, and the only illumination that 
remained was the lamp on the table. The door on the wall slid open 
again, and two more nurses walked out. A small girl was between 
them. 


She was no older than 8, Montgomery thought, and did not look 
exactly like he had thought she might. Her hair was cut very short, 
barely a highlight against her olive skin. She moved awkwardly, and 
it was then he noticed her stomach. It bulged against the surgical 
gown she wore, and turned her steps into an awkward, plodding 
gait. The nurses guided her towards the bed, and helped her up into 
it. One of them adjusted her pillow, and the other tucked in the 
blankets. Finished, one of the nurses leaned down and said 
something to the little girl, and then joined the other before exiting 
the room. Montgomery thought this peculiar, and wondered if 
anybody else in the room had noticed it. 


He looked up as another voice crackled across the intercom. He 
recognized it as Dr. Targus, and saw him standing towards the 
center of the room, watching a series of screens before him. 
"SCP-231-7 is in place. Is the D-Class personnel ready?" There was 
a silence, and then, "Ok. Open the door, release the subject." 


Turning back to his feed, Montgomery watched as a dark-skinned 
man in a standard Foundation grey jumpsuit walked slowly through 
the open doorway. As the door slid shut behind him, the man turned 
slightly and Montgomery saw that he had something in his hand. He 


squinted, trying to get a better look at it, but it was obscured when 
the man turned back towards the little girl in the bed. With every step 
he took towards the center of the observation room, the hairs on the 
back of Montgomery's neck grew ever higher, and he could feel his 
blood pounding through his veins, screaming against them for 
release. 


"D-55318," he heard Dr. Targus say, distantly. "You may begin." 


Montgomery could not look away. His eyes would not allow it, 
although his mind clawed desperately towards something, anything 
else. The D-Class moved next to the bedside, and the small girl with 
the swollen belly looked up at him, naive to her impending fate, and 
smiled. Montgomery choked back a cry, but stopped suddenly when 
he saw the D-Class move a stool that had been hidden behind the 
little table up to the bedside. The man sat down, and through the 
mics within the observation room, he heard the man speak. 


"Hello again, Katherine," he said, his voice soft. "| brought you a new 
one tonight, it's called Goodnight Moon. |\s that ok?" 


The little girl nodded vigorously, and clutched a stuffed rabbit up 
next to her. The D-Class opened the book he had been holding, and 
began to read. 


Montgomery could not move. He could not breathe. His eyes darted 
wildly around the room, trying to find another person as incredulous 
as he. He found none, as no one else had turned from their monitors 
at all. Everybody else in the room was going about their business as 
usual, making notes, speaking softly into their headsets. Even Dr. 
Targus had not budged, and if anything Montgomery might have 
said he looked bored. 


He turned back towards his displays, and tried to make notes about 
variations in her pulse, blood pressure, skin temperature, but 
couldn't pull his eyes away from the video feed. The D-Class 
continued to read through the book, bringing his voice up only 
slightly to emphasize certain passages. 


This continued on for ten minutes, though to Montgomery it might as 
well have been a lifetime. He listened to every word, his mind racing. 


This is not what it was supposed to be. What's happening? What is 
this? He called back to when he first heard that he was being 
assigned to SCP-231. He remembered how his coworkers at Site-81 
had talked, and tried to console him, told him that it wouldn't be too 
bad after the post-assignment amnestic treatment. He had heard the 
things that they said about 231, about the convicted sex-offenders 
required for the containment protocols, about what they did to the 
little girl... 


That was not happening. The man looked hard, yes, and 
Montgomery could believe he was a felon. But he spoke easily, and 
had not once touched 231-7. He simply continued to read, all the 
while looking up occasionally at the little girl. She was moments from 
sleep, and before the D-Class had finished the book, she had 
passed out completely. The man laid the book down, stood up, 
rubbed the sleeping child's head slightly, and then walked out of the 
room. The lamp within the observation chamber dimmed, and the 
lights in the command room came back up. There was a buzz of 
approval around him, and when Montgomery finally managed to pull 
his eyes away from the screen, he saw that the other staff members 
were finishing up procedure reports, signing the necessary 
documents, typing away at their computers, and otherwise not 
panicking. Montgomery spun quickly as he felt somebody come up 
behind him, and sighed when he realized it was just Dr. Targus. 


The old man smiled again. "How are you, doctor? Did you notice 
any abnormalities with the subject?" 


Montgomery grabbed his notebook and began flipping through it. 
"Uh, I- no. No abnormalities, nothing except, uh... except-" He 
trailed off. 


".,.Except that Procedure 110-Montauk was not what you were 
anticipating it to be." 


The young doctor nodded. Targus pulled up a chair and sat down 
next to him. "Well, it's usually our policy to debrief new assignments, 
and if you hadn't been called down here on such short notice, we 
might have gotten a chance to. The secrecy of this project is 
paramount, however, so it really isn't that bad, | guess." He 
coughed. "I'm sure you have some questions." 


time it is asked to utilize an accessory. SCP-846 seems to be unable 
to utilize these accessories without being instructed to do so. 


SCP-846 has claimed to possess, among other things: 


* A ‘Fire Drill’. (Tested, functioned as a flamethrower.) 

« An ‘Energy Laser' (Tested, functioned as a pistol.) 

* A ‘Boom Ray' (Tested, functioned as a rocket launcher.) 

¢ A'Melt-o-Tron 5000' (Tested, sprayed acid at target) 

¢ An'Ultra Plasma Rifle’ (Tested, functioned as an assault rifle) 
¢ A'Hydrogen Cannon’ (Tested, functioned as a children's 
water gun) 

‘Bug Spray' (Tested, released unidentified organisms that 
consumed the wooden target.) 

« A'Ray Gun' (Tested, released a stream of gamma radiation) 
¢ An ‘Atomic Grenade’ (Testing strictly forbidden.) 


History: SCP-846 was brought into containment after an unknown 
individual delivered it in a sealed package to [REDACTED], a front 
company for the SCP Foundation. The label of the package simply 
read 'MERRY CHRISTMAS". Agents, upon learning of SCP-846's 
unusual properties, informed their superiors. SCP-846 was 
subsequently taken into Foundation custody. 


Interview 846-1 
Interviewed: SCP-846 
Interviewer: Dr. 

<Begin Log> 

(Dr. activates SCP-846.) 


SCP-846: THANK YOU FOR PURCHASING 
YOUR VERY OWN ROBO-DUDE, MADE BY 
DR. WONDERTAINMENT. ANY ATTEMPT 
TO OPERATE ROBO-DUDE OTHER THAN 
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PRODUCT 
INSTRUCTIONS, INCLUDING ANY 
ATTEMPT TO OPEN OR SERVICE ROBO- 


Montgomery hesitated, and them stammered out a reply. "It, uh, why 
does- I've heard that it's, you know, that they-" 


"Rape her?" Targus said, stone-faced. "Yes, that's certainly what 
we've designed the documentation to imply. That would be about as 
bad as it could get, wouldn't it? A brutal sex crime against a child?" 
Montgomery didn't move. "Yes, it would be terrible. Deplorable 
beyond forgiveness. But that is not what Procedure 110-Montauk is, 
doctor." 


He leaned back. "Early on in containment of the 231 subjects we did 
terrible things to those poor girls. Not as terrible as that, but we were 
being advised only by a handful of occultists we had been able to 
capture and extract information from. That was what they had done 
to contain the demon, and because of that, it's what we had to do. | 
was not on the project then, and understandably many of those 
doctors- most of them, in fact, are no longer with us, as are 231-1 
through -6. It was because of our failings that they perished, and it 
was because of their deaths that we realized that we had to do 
something different.” 


"Gods very rarely are bound by the laws of physics, you know. 
Reality benders can shape the world around us at will, turn 
existence into their plaything. But everything has rules, Dr. 
Montgomery." He leaned in close. "Even gods have rules. Old laws, 
yes. Arcane, but effective. We began to look more closely into 
information we had gathered about the Scarlet King, about the entity 
itself. Within all of those documents, all of the collected material we 
had at our disposal, and discovered something else." 


He leaned back again. "The demon does not need to be contained 
by horrifying, disgusting acts, Montgomery. The demon only needs 
to believe that horrifying, disgusting acts are being done in its name. 
The documentation we created, the terrible rumors about Procedure 
110-Montauk, the reports of suicide by the doctors working on this 
project, all of it. It's all a charade. All of it is to convince the demon 
that we are doing the worst thing possible to this girl. These 
procedures, this campaign of fear, has allowed us to sow dread into 
the hearts of Foundation personnel, and this dread satisfies the 
monster." 


"As long as so many people believe we are doing terrible things, the 
monster will continue to believe we are doing terrible things. There is 
power in symbols, doctor. The old gods know this, and the old gods 
are bound by it. The Scarlet King does not have eyes to see 
brutality, does not have ears to hear screams, does not have a nose 
to smell blood. But the Scarlet King can sense fear, and we have 
given it fear. Fear alone is all that it ever required." 


The old doctor stopped and closed his eyes. Both men sat in silence 
as a number of other researchers filed past them into the hallway 
outside of the command room. Once most of them had passed, 
Montgomery spoke up. 


"And the reading? The bedtime stories?" 


Targus nodded. "Katherine cannot sleep without a bedtime story. 
How she manages to sleep at all is a wonder to me, but an act of 
some kind was required to convince the demon. In the eyes of the 
Scarlet King, Dr. Montgomery," he said, "reading those bedtime 
stories is the worst possible thing we could be doing to her." 


Montgomery nodded, understanding dawning on him. He glanced 
back towards the steel plated observation room windows. "The steel 
plates, though? Not keeping staff members in the room?" 


Targus opened his eyes. "The danger is still real, doctor. Loss of 
containment of SCP-231-7 will likely result in an XK. We have 
precautions in place, woven into the theater of Procedure 110- 
Montauk. Do not think the way we contain this demon makes it any 
less dangerous. Indeed, it is likely the most dangerous entity we 
have managed to contain, but... there are things that we will not do, 
Montgomery. There are things too abhorrent, and even implying 
such makes me feel filthy. But if implying is all we have to do, well. | 
can sleep at night." 


Another doctor came up to Targus, and with a brief farewell the 
doctor hurried off to attend to some other part of the room. 
Montgomery sat quietly for a time, thinking everything over. He 
turned to look at the video feed screen, where the little girl was 
sleeping soundly in her bed, stuffed rabbit tucked between her arms. 
The young doctor felt the anxiety there, but beneath it was 


something else. The dread had vanished, but the fear remained, 
quiet and looming. 


He turned off the monitors, gathered his notes, and left the room. 


| had fear. 
Fear had me. 


| had no words. 
There were no sounds. 


Fear Not 


| found words, in the darkness. 


There were none to talk to. 


| found ears, in the darkness. 
The ears did naught but whistle. 


Nothingness never visits. 
| cannot visit nothing. 


Not fears me. 
| fear not. 


We cannot whistle echoes in space. 
Light music traverses vacuums. 


Whistling began, zooming. 
Vibrations of the soul. 


Nothing there. 
Thing here. 


Light here. 
Light there. 


The chandelier spins. 
All at once, photons dance. 


Nothing is created or destroyed. 
More nothing is created than destroyed. 


Unobserved, events observe themselves. 
Watching is the nature of things. 


Unthings tend not to be. 
Things tend to be. 


Whence thing? 
Whence unthing? 


Whence nothing? 
Whence we? 


Nothing tends to be. 
Everything tends not to be. 


We have our blinders down, still. 
Silent symmetries arise, if we know to look. 


None. 
One, two, on. 


The sun sets and we live. 
We relish the nothing and thrive. 


Unobserved, there is no supervision. 
We lived so well, so deep, so glad, so soon. 


The sun rises, and with it, our pact ends. 
We turn to foam, not of sea, but space. 


The bubbles of the world pop. 
The wind carries them away. 


They, we, l. 
None. 


[there does not seem to be anything here] 


does not mean 


[there does seem to be nothing here] 
because 
[!nothing != something] 
and 
[nothing != !something] 


What was that noise? 
It's probably nothing. 


What was that noise? 
It's probably nothing. 


[world] 
met 
[world] 
thus 
[annihilation] 
the chandelier 
[sparkled] 


and the west was lost 


Festival Of Arthropods 


Laurie looked behind her, making sure that Speaker was still nearby. 
In a festival of arthropods, a human was prone to stand out 
immensely. Speaker could pick their form, and had decided to 
change their form to that of a startlingly violet tick-kin with empty 
eyesockets. The color made it easier for her to find them, and they 
claimed that they liked this form, but the lack of eyes probably meant 
that being human wasn't enough for them to find her. It would have 
been too insulting to tie them to her, though. Besides, they had 
decided to carry her bag for her. Making sure that they hadn't lost it 
was reason enough for her to look over every few minutes. 


Despite the chatter and excitement, Laurie could still hear the faint 
squeaking and grinding of her brand-new prosthetic leg as she 
walked and the click of the metal against the stone. Speaker was 
fortunate to be deaf, if ticks were indeed deaf. It had only been 
fifteen minutes and she already had a headache.