First thing's first - for the record, we can both agree that your 
boyfriend is human garbage. There's nothing you did wrong there, 
despite what he might have told you. To think, he calls you the 
manipulator to avoid any responsibility for his actions. | know a 
hypocrite when | see it. 


| was sealed away by the biggest hypocrite of all. Called himself a 
hero before he even saved anyone. He didn't save any lives, all he 
did was kill things that were too big for him to understand. And the 
yelling. Good God, he could yell. His goons had no principles, all 
they did was do as he told because he could scream the loudest. 
You know how many wives he had? 307. He knew the names of 
about five of them, and he wasn't even in love. He bought them with 
his fight money. Ancient customs or no, it's still pretty fucked up. 


Kinda like how he expects you to stay with him out of pity. 


All his talk of morals and justice, and they still killed my wife and 
turned her body into my prison furniture. | was in the middle of my 
dinner, and | barely even had time to notice before they started 
drilling the hooks in my back. 


Of course that doesn't make sense. Hypocrites never make sense. 


What's your boy's name? Who cares. I'm calling him Dip the 
Wonder-Shit. Well, here's what you do with him: don't underestimate 
him, like | did with the other guy. Hypocrites can do some scary stuff 
when they're cornered - give him any leg room, and before you 
know it, you'll be buried alive in a salt flat while paranoid scientists 
kill chickens on your roof for some reason. 


Don't let that happen. Give him no quarter. Destroy him. 


| mean, not /iterally. You guys have more complicated laws than we 


did. But call him on his shit, shove him out of your life, block his 
accounts, and leave him crying on the pavement as people look on 
in horror, because they don't understand - they can't understand - 
that you're doing this to survive. People in your neighborhood just 
aren't used to seeing a short, 23-year-old half-Indian girl take things 
into her own hands - something you can change. 


| know it might be hard. You've got a good heart, which is rare these 
days. | admire that. But you'll still have a good heart if you get rid of 
this guy - if | were in your position, Dip would have been wiped out 
of existence from the moment of his birth. You've shown an inhuman 
amount of patience, and you can let it go now. 


And by all means, if you have to literally destroy him in self-defense, 
let me know how it goes! It's been a while since I've seen a good 
war. 


You're a good woman, Crusher. It's nice to have someone listen to 
an old fool like me for a change. 


On that note, | should probably warn you. Six of my chains are 
broken. The seventh and last chain is probably going to snap 
sometime next week. Generally, when one of my chains breaks, 
people die. But unless you have any plans to travel to Eastern 
Europe in the next week that | haven't noticed, you should be fine. 
Just stay where you are. 


Though | will say, some airhead lunatics (Same guys that keep killing 
chickens over my head, no less) are going to think this means I'm 
going to come out of my hole and devour worlds or something. 


Don't believe any of that. I'm old. | just wanna sleep, and watch 
smart young people like you learn how to become the gods they've 
always dreamed of being. 


| gotta go. Give him hell, Crusher. I'll be watching over you. 


...and if you meet some guy called Keshpeth, please kill the ever-loving fuck out of 
him. 


Uncle Teddy 


Uncle Teddy was always a strange old man. It's one of those kind of 
things that you don't think about when you're a kid, and you still 
believe that knights and pirates and wizards are things that could co- 
exist in the world you live in. But as | got older and older, and | 
realized that people in the real world don't live the way he does, | got 
to thinking more and more about it, and the more | thought about it, 
the less sense any of it made. | asked my dad once when | was a 
teenager if Uncle Teddy was crazy. He said to me, "He might be 
crazy, Charlie, but he's still your uncle, and he's the best crazy uncle 
anyone could ever hope for." 


He wasn't technically my uncle, really. He was far too old to be my 
dad's brother. He wasn't my dad's uncle, either. Best | can figure 
out, he was my great-great-great-grandpa's brother. Not that that 
makes much sense, either, considering that my great-great-great- 
grandpa died in 1896. Uncle Teddy doesn't look a day over seventy 
or so, and he hasn't changed in all the years I've known him. | found 
an old black-and-white picture of him that was dated 1907, and he 
looked exactly the same then as he does now. If all the things he 
says are true, then he'd have to be at least 200 years old, but every 
time | asked him how old he was, he'd only answer "I suppose | 
have been forty-nine for quite awhile now." | guess calling him 
"uncle" was just easier for everyone. 


Uncle Teddy lived in Cornwall, in a huge manor house in the country 
that he said he inherited from his father. It's an ancient place, at 
least a couple hundred years old, and it doesn't look like it's 
changed in over a hundred years. See, when | say Uncle Teddy is 
strange, it's not who he is so much as how he behaves. There isn't a 
thing in that house that was built after the end of the 19th century. 
No running water, no lights, no phone, no TV, no radio, no 
computer, no heat, no cars, not a thing. The place is like a museum, 
and that's how he lives his life. It's like he doesn't even know the rest 
of the world exists - he never goes into town, writes all his letters by 


SCP-982: Chicago Loop 


Item #: SCP-982 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-982 is to be kept ina 
negative-pressure climate-controlled facility, and must remain closed 
and bolted except during approved exploration. 


A perpetual chronometer is to be mounted on the wall alongside 
SCP-982, counting down an interval of 26 (twenty-six) hours and 15 
(fifteen) minutes. SCP-982 must be closed no later than at 0 hours 1 
minute 30 seconds, regardless of whether all exploration team 
members have emerged. 


All exploration team members must receive dialect coaching and 
full-spectrum vaccinations before entering SCP-982, and undergo 
decontamination upon emerging. 


Items extracted from SCP-982 are to be considered potential 
biohazards and contained as such. 


Description: SCP-982 is an antique casement window, recovered 
from a Marshall, Carter, and Dark auction, and originally taken from 


the abandoned business offices of , a 19th-century patent 
attorney in Chicago, IL. No matter where it is mounted, SCP-982 
opens onto the street outside 's third-story office, as it was 


between 8:30 AM on Friday, March 26, 1875 and 10:45 AM on 
Saturday, March 27, 1875. Personnel exiting this window find 
themselves in what is apparently 1875 Chicago; however, at the end 
of the 26-hour interval, the city 'resets'. Any external objects or 
personnel within the city at that time are lost. 


The size of the area accessible via SCP-982 is not known; 
exploration teams have been able to send telegrams to in 
England, and receive responses. 


hand, and every time we came to visit he'd ask if we sailed across 
the Atlantic or took one of the new steamships or zeppelins he'd 
heard so much about. | never could tell if he actually didn't know the 
world had moved on, or if he just preferred the "good old days" to 
the world outside his little slice of it. 


He was an unbelievably wealthy man. "Old money," dad always 
said. He was generous with it, too - every couple years he'd pay for 
our whole family to come out and visit him for a few weeks or so. He 
always said he loved to keep up with what the rest of his family was 
up to. The first time | met him was when | was six. It was just around 
Christmas. Imagine how surreal it must have been for me to come 
all the way to England on a plane, only to get dressed up in an old- 
fashioned little suit and put on a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow up 
to the gate of his manor. The first time | saw him standing in the 
door, tall, wrapped in furs, with his long white beard stretching down 
his chest, | thought he was Santa Claus. He just laughed when | 
asked him if he was, then reached into my ear and "pulled out" a 
coin, an old silver sixpence with Queen Victoria's face on it, and 
gave it to me. | was amazed. 


Going back in time from the 1980s to the 1880s is quite an 
experience for a boy that age - imagine how grossed out | was when 
| learned about the chamberpot! - but it was an adventure all the 
same. Back at home, half the kids would call me a liar and the other 
half would be jealous. | didn't care - I'd already be looking forward to 
the next trip. | could spend hours just sitting at his knee, listening to 
his stories about how he'd acquired one or another of the curios that 
hung all around the place, his adventures in far-off corners of the 
world, his war stories, so on. As | grew older he taught me how to 
hunt, how to ride a horse, how to dress a wound, pan for gold, read 
Morse code, and all kinds of other things most boys only read about 
in books. Once, when | was fifteen, he pulled me aside after 
everyone else had gone to bed and gave me a lecture about how to 
kill a dragon should | ever find myself in a fight with one. | can't say 
the opportunity has ever arisen to test his suggestion, but if it ever 
does, I'll make sure to go for the femoral artery. 


| didn't get to see him as much once | was grown up, but we kept 
writing letters back and forth. When | told him | was joining the Army 


to pay for college, he went on and on about his time in the Second 
Opium War. When | told him | was getting married, he insisted on 

inviting Amy and | out to get married at the manor. When | got my 

MBA, he told me never to accept a job offer from something called 
"Marshall, Carter & Dark" or he'd disown me. But it was the letter | 
got about six months ago that turned everything upside down; 


My dearest nephew, 


| have never in my life begged another man for succor, 
but | find that | must now ask for help, and | know of 
none | can turn to in my hour of need but you. | have 
been taken prisoner by a group of rogues and 
confidence men who play at science, calling themselves 
‘the SCP Foundation’. They have seized our ancestral 
lands and my entire lifetime's worth of works and 
collections, and imprisoned me in a tiny cell like an 
animal. | held out hope at first that | could free myself, or 
convince them to release me, but | fear there is now no 
hope of that. Lest | live out the rest of my days in this 
place, | shall have to be rescued. 


You shall have to come at once. The current place of my 
captivity is in London, off Marylebone Road in 
Westminister, this much I have determined from the 
loose talk of my jailers. On the back of this page | have 
sketched a map of what parts of the prison | have been 
allowed to see. | shall not be here forever, for they have 
moved me several times. Take the fastest ship you can. 
If you can, pay a visit to the manor, in secret of course, 
for | am sure they keep it under guard. From the clearing 
in the woods where | taught you how to shoot, walk half 
a mile northwest into the forest and you will find a cave 
hidden in the brush. There is a hidden chamber within 
containing some of my old ‘tools of the trade’, as it were, 
that you may find indispensable in achieving your 
mission. The signet ring | gave you when you were 
twelve is the key. 


Please hurry, for | know not what grim fate these 
mountebanks have in store for me. 


Yours in Christ, 
Uncle Teddy 


My wife thought I'd lost my mind when | told her all about it. She 
thought he was a crazy old man who'd finally snapped, and that | 
was Crazy for believing him. I'll admit | had my doubts as well. But as 
far-fetched and ludicrous as everything about Uncle Teddy seemed 
to be, | never in my entire life felt like he had been lying to me. | told 
her | had to do this for his sake and mine, so that when next 
Christmas came and they were old enough | could take our kids to 
visit Uncle Teddy and they could experience what | had. She told me 
I'd better keep that promise. | had some vacation time saved up and 
some money in the bank, so | told my boss there'd been a death in 
the family, and the next morning | was on a flight to London. 


| rented a car and drove out to the town close by Uncle Teddy's 
manor, and right away | could see he'd been telling the truth. There 
were lots more cars in town than usual, and lots of people with 
American accents in the pub. Something was amiss. | didn't even try 
to take the main road up to the house - | crept into the brush and 
made my way through the woods, careful not to so much as step on 
a twig, just like he taught me. | sneaked a peek towards the front 
gate - there were two men dressed all in black, with SMGs in hand. 
Their uniforms definitely weren't Army-issue, and they didn't look like 
the kind to ask questions. The chill winter air was still and silent that 
afternoon, and it took me forever to find the cave the letter 
mentioned as | worked my way through the thick of the woods. 


It was a good thing I'd always held on to that old ring he gave me - it 
fit right into the "keyhole" | found in the cave he mentioned, and the 
rock wall slid away effortlessly. | shone my flashlight around and 
saw dozens of artifacts, the purpose of which | could only guess at. 
Between the multiple suits of armor, and the rolled-up Persian rug 
with a tag on it that read "A.C. Chakrasangupta of Bombay, Fine 
Retailer of Magic Carpets", and oil lamps that looked like they 
probably had genies living in them, | obviously couldn't grab all of it 
and stuff it in my backpack and hope it'd turn out useful. | settled on 
three things, things | saw that | recognized from some of the stories 
he'd told me years ago. 


The first was a gun - a massive thing that looked like a blunderbuss, 
kicked like a mule, and had more stopping power than an elephant 
gun. A "particle destabilizer", he'd called it when he let me shoot it a 
few times years ago. The second was a huge old "skeleton key" 
which looked like something out of a video game. The third, an old 
Metropolitan Police badge which, according to his stories, would 
make sure that anyone who looked at me thought | was supposed to 
be there. | tested it out as | made my exit from the grounds, stepping 
out of the woods into clear sight of the guards at the front gate. | was 
ready to use the gun if | had to, but the two of them took a look at 
me and went on with their business without saying a word. 


It wasn't until a day later that | stood in the middle of London, 
Madame Tussaud's to my back, gun in one hand, key in the other, 
badge on my chest, that | realized | had absolutely no idea what to 
do next. There are hundreds of buildings along the road. How was | 
supposed to figure out which one hid the secret prison Uncle Teddy 
been taken to? This was always the point in his stories where he'd 
have some genius flash of inspiration and know right away what to 
do - but then, Uncle Teddy had never explored any place as strange 
as 21st century London. | found myself walking up and down the 
street for hours looking for any sign of something unusual. 
(Fortunately for me, the badge | was wearing meant that nobody 
thought the man walking up and down the street carrying a large 
firearm was unusual.) After three or four hours | found myself sitting 
at a table in front of a Starbucks, despondently sipping on a latte, 
wondering what to do, when | heard a faint voice in the distance.