shapeshifted into a giant anthropomorphic parachute with the 
bazooka tied up in his safety harnesses. He was moving fast 
enough that he was able to catch enough air (or whatever was 
floating just above the Not) to lift him up by several dozen meters. 
As he gradually floated back down, he was able to manipulate his 
position by blowing until both he and the bazooka gently landed 
back inside the lifeboat. 


“Guess we should have secured it to something, huh?” 


After they had completed the inventory of everything in their 
pockets, Pius decided to try his luck at fishing with a rod he had 
found. 


“And what exactly do you hope to catch? It’s not a real ocean, 
remember?” Eugene asked, busying himself with trying to create a 
pivoting holder for the bazooka out of a unicycle and a few rolls of 
duck tape (not a typo, actual analogue tape rolls of numerous 
documentaries about ducks). 


“Well, it’s the Not, so Not a fish,” Pius explained as he hooked the 
popped kettle corn kernel onto the fishing line. “Not a crab, Not a 
squid, Not a polyp, Not a sponge, Not a slug, Not an eel, Nota 
starfish, Not a jellyfish and Not a sea turtle. But at the same time, 
Not nothing.” 


Casting his line, the popcorn kernel splashed into the Not with a 
good solid ‘splunk’. At the same time, a giant popcorn kernel 
suddenly appeared, dangling in front of them while held by only a 
hairsbreadth of thread. 


“Ah...Eugene, do you see that?” 
“| see it, Pius. ls that yours?” 
“I’m not sure. Let me try something.” 


Pius tentatively moved his line back and forth, only for the large 
kernel in front of him to mirror his movements. 


“Eugene, can you see what it’s attached to?” 
“No, the string just goes up for as far as | can see.” 


Pius lifted his line out of the water, causing the giant kernel to 
disappear, only to reappear as soon as he let the lure drop below 
the surface again. 


“| hope it’s not another pattern screamer. That last one was so rude, 
hanging up on us like that.” 


“Wait, what?” 


“Hey, bring it a bit closer. | want to try something,” Eugene ordered. 
Pius complied, manoeuvring his fishing line so that the giant kernel 
hung within reach of the boat. Eugene jumped and grabbed it, giving 
it a sharp pull. Just as expected, Pius felt a tug on his line. 


“That is truly perplexing,” Pius said with a furrowed brow. “I 
wonder... hey Eugene, hold on tight!” 


“What? Oh no, no, no, no!” 


Eugene screamed as Pius reeled in his line, causing him to shoot 
into the sky and reappear bursting through the surface of the Not, 
dangling from the end of the lure. 


“See Eugene, | told you | wouldn’t catch nothing!” 


As Eugene huddled under a blanket and sipped Clown’s Milk in an 
attempt to calm himself after his brief Not exposure, Pius (who had 
made himself a tricorne hat out of an old newspaper, irrefutably 
making him the lifeboat captain) read aloud from Dr. Clef’s Survival 
Guide. 


“Did you ever think about how weird the terms Humes and Kants 
are? Most scientific phenomena are named after the people who 
discovered them or Greek letters, but we named these things after 
Enlightenment Era philosophers as... what, a joke? 


“Anyway, Say you're in a region with a low Hume level — or low Kant 
level, whatever, | never learned the damn system — you'll know 
because a) the number on your Kant Counter will be low — | don’t 
know how low. Again, | never learned the system — and b) 
EVERYTHING WILL LOOK LIKE YOU'RE TRIPPING BALLS! 


“Now, it’s possible you are tripping balls and reality is actually 
perfectly normal, so you’re going to want to do a little field sobriety 
test. First, stare at your hands. Keep staring at them. If your hands 
don’t look normal, then you're tripping balls. Get yourself someplace 
safe — not a hospital — and enjoy. If they look normal, then that 
means you're in a low Hume/Kant region and are probably fucked. 


‘I'll be honest, getting yourself unfucked ain’t going to be easy. 
Talloran managed to do it though, so there’s some hope, right? Best 
advice | can give here is not to count on Scranton Reality Anchors. 
Hell, those things didn’t even help Scranton in the end, you know 
(You probably don’t know since this is all highly classified 
information)." 


“Can you please just skip to something that might actually be 
helpful?” Eugene asked. 


“I'll try. Let’s see, next is a rant about how he thinks he might be ina 
nuthouse somewhere and all Reality is his delusion, making him 
God. Then he speculates on how Gears can be a robot and the 
Black Queen’s father at the same time, talks about some stuff from 
his Geo Sea days... yeah, I’m starting to think this isn’t an actual 
survival guide.” 


“It’s probably not a good idea to take survival advice from a guy who 
would kill us if he had the chance in the first place. Where’d you get 
that book anyway?” 


“| found it in a Bargain Bin at The |kea that time we were there. The 
review on the back said it was must-read TV.” 


“What?” 


Ring Ring 

Ring Ring 

Ring Ring 

“The phone's ringing again Eugene.” 
“| hear it.” 

“Should | answer it?” 


“No.” 


Ring Ring 

“I’m going to answer it.” 

“Don't.” 

“Hello, this is Pius the Clown, whom may | say is calling?” 


“’m sorry, but the number you have dialled is imaginary,” an 
automated voiced replied. 


“| didn’t dial anything, you called me.” 
“Hang up. It's either a pattern screamer or a telemarketer.” 


“All of our operators are currently disembodied consciousnesses 
trapped in an eternal hell of their own existential despair. Please, 
stay on the line.” 


The phone began playing a dramatic if melancholic instrumental 
track as hold music. 


“Are you actually staying on the line?” 


“They said ‘please’ Eugene.” 


“Ugh.” 


“The Is is what was Nevermeant, the Not what should have 
Been,” a deep, demonic voice said as it suddenly broke the melody 
of the hold music. 


“Hello, who’s this?” 


“For all that Is, there is an Infinity more that could have been. It 
is not just. The Is hath no more right to Be than the Not. Some 
Not is Ought whilst most Is should be Not, yet the Is will rot to 
Not in time.” 


"How are you speaking in bold?" 
"Hang up!" 


",..THE KING SAT ALONE ON HIS THRONE OF BONE, 
CONDONED BY THE CLONES OF STONE. BEMOANED BY THE 
KNOWN, GROWN FROM WHAT WAS SOWN, and the world felt 
like nothing, amen." 


“I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.” 
Click 


"| told you it was a telemarketer." 


“Alright, that should do it,” Eugene said as he completed the final 
inspection of his cream pie jet engine rig. 


“Hey Eugene, what do you think these big monoliths are?” Pius 
asked, cocking his head at the peculiar protrusion of gleaming stone 
rising out of the sea. 


“It doesn’t matter. If this jet engine works, we'll be able to travel the 
Not until we find a whirlpool back to our Reality, then we can find the 
Library, and then the Circus, and then forget all of this ever 
happened.” 


“Do you think they’re just like some kind of iceberg or something?” 


“Next time Icky wants to travel outside all known Reality, I’m taking a 
personal day.” 


“This one’s getting awfully close.” 


“I’m telling you, I’m going to have to get Tinkles to up my dose of 
Clown Impulse Suppressant after this.” 


“The more | look, the more real it becomes.” 
“This is not where | thought I’d be at this point in my life.” 
“And yet, | cannot look away.” 


“Being shuffled across the Not just so that | can crawl out of a 
snake's ass.” 


“It's hypnotic.” 
“Pius, are you even lis — Pius, no!” 


Alas, Eugene’s intervention came too late. The Monolith had drawn 
existence from Pius’s mere observation of it, entrancing him and 
becoming more and more real the closer it got. As soon as it was in 
reach, Pius reached out to touch it. The act of feeling it was enough 
to make it fully real. Luminescent cracks formed in a grid-like pattern 
all along the Monolith’s exterior, causing it to break off into a million 
pieces and evaporate into smoke. In its place was an entity of some 
sort, composed entirely of radiant blacks and vacuous whites, of 
three-dimensional shapes that only made sense as two-dimensional 
drawings, of particles and forces which could only exist in the mind 
but drove mad any mind that beheld them. 


“Oh, it’s an egg or cocoon or something. That’s neat,” Pius 
remarked. 


The entity landed with a splash into the Not, generating a tsunami 
that sent the lifeboat spiralling away from it. Both Clowns screamed 
in terror and Eugene puked from a combination of terror and motion 
sickness, looking up in horror at the colossal entity before them. 
Their horror only increased when the entity seemed to take an 
interest in them, swimming towards them and opening a large orifice 
to engulf them. 


“It’s going to eat us!” Pius screamed. 


“The hell it is! Why fill up on Clowns when you can skip straight to 
dessert?” Eugene asked as he aimed the bazooka/jet engine at the 
approaching monstrosity. “Eat Lemon Meringue you son of a bitch!” 


Eugene squeezed the trigger and held it, producing a volley of pies 
at a rate of 700 rounds per minute (he had illegally modified the 
bazooka to be fully automatic sometime back when he realized the 
key to a good a pie throwing sketch was overkill). The inertially 
modified pies propelled the little lifeboat forward at fantastic speeds 
as it rode up and down the massive bow wave the creature 
generated in its pursuit. Though many of the pies disappeared down 
its cavernous cavity, they did not slake its appetite. The entity 
needed a conscious observer to ensure its continued reality. If it 
vanished from sight, it would cease to be all together, but with a pair 
of observers incorporated into its being it would become self- 
sustaining, free to go where it would. 


As the tiny lifeboat and colossal entity skidded along the surface of 
the Not, neither seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Eugene 
steered as evasively as the jerry-rigged pie thruster would allow, but 
the monster would not be shaken. As if sensing its preys growing 
sense of hopelessness, the entity widened its cavity, eager to 
devour them and become real. 


This, however, proved a foolish decision, as a beam of emerald 
green light was fired into its gaping maw, triggering a catastrophic 
explosion and blowing the creature into rapidly dematerializing bits. 
The blast was so powerful that the lifeboat was sent flying through 
the air. 


Eugene and Pius thought for sure that this time they would plunge 


into the Depths of the Not, but they instead landed in the Crow’s 
Nest of the Nautilus. The pair looked up to see Munin staring down 
at them stoically. 


“Eugene,” he said, in as polite a tone as he could manage, but 
Eugene was sure he sensed the man’s anal sphincter tighten in 
memory of their recent performance. 


“Well, this is awkward.” 


“You morons!” Icky shouted as she crawled into the Crow’s Nest, 
right before throwing her arms around the two wayward Clowns in 
relief. “I really thought we might have lost you this time! You have to 
be more careful!” 


“Sorry Icky,” the pair apologized, slightly out of synchronicity with 
each other. 


“It was Pius’s fault,” 
“You're the one who jumped ship!” 


“You’re the one who caused a fire, making jumping ship the rational 
choice!” 


“Enough!” Icky ordered. “Next time we travel through the Not, I’m 
locking you two up in a crate.” 


“How’d you find us anyway?” 


“We detected a Monolith breaking on our scopes from 80 000 
grimnauts away,” Munin replied. “It’s a rare and calamitous 
occurrence that Icky assured us could only have been caused by the 
two of you. Luckily, we’re well prepared for Schrdédinger Krakens.” 


“Come on you two. | want you below deck and well secured before 
Nemo makes the dive back home.” 


“Sounds good to me. The sooner there’s dry land under my feet, the 
better,” Eugene said, slinging the bazooka over his shoulder. 


“| hope you two realize how lucky you are,” Munin said severely. 


"It wasn't luck, | broke open a Monolith." 


“The surface of the Not is not only vast but an ever-changing 
kaleidoscope, with distance and location having little meaning," 
Munin continued. "Anything, or anyone, lost typically remains so 
until it sinks beneath the surface and the very concept of existence 
ceases to —“ 


His melodramatic monologue was interrupted by a cream pie to the 
face. 


“Sorry. Hair trigger.” 


« Let's Get This Show On The Road!| Dread & Circuses Hub | 
Undead, Insane and Fully Loaded » 


Undead, Insane and Fully Loaded 


« A Circus Come To Not | Dread & Circuses Hub | A Vale of 
Tears » 


“Now we take both long balloons, tie them together like so, and... 
tada!” Lolly proudly presented the balloon butterfly to the small 
group of children gathered around her. As per usual, she was 
working the crowd in between the Matinee and Evening Big Top 
shows, making sure all the guests were happy and directing them 
towards the attractions they would enjoy the most. 


The children clapped in amazement as the balloon butterfly started 
flapping its wings and fluttered around its creator. 


“Butterflies are easy though. Who wants to see me make a 
monkey?” she asked. The children cheered eagerly in affirmation, 
but before Lolly could start she felt someone pulling at her skirt. She 
looked down to see a young girl with a disturbed expression. 
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” 


“Ms. Lolly, there’s a scary looking man over there who wanted me to 
take a big gun and kill monsters with it,” the girl said, calm but still 
clearly unnerved by the experience. 


“What?” Lolly asked bemused, looking up in the direction the girl had 
pointed. Sure enough, she saw an undead man in a leather trench 
coat, stahlhelm and combat boots trying to give away assault rifles 
and other weapons of war out the back of a truck. “Oh. Thank you, 
you did the right thing by telling an adult. Kids, | just need you to wait 
here for a moment. | promise I'll be back, but | need to go tell the 
Ringmaster about this, okay? Thank you so much.” 


Leaving the children to play with the balloon butterfly, she dashed 
towards the Ringmaster’s Tent. 


colonial organism: below ground, the trees are linked by massive, 
hollow woody stolons. These "runner trunks", which lie roughly 2 m 
below the soil surface, connect the base of each trunk to between 
three and seven of its neighbors. An average stolon is 2 m in 
diameter and completely hollow. Above ground, the trees never 
produce leaves, flowers, or fruit, although their bark is 
photosynthetic in summer (as is typical for P. occidentalis). The 
individual trunks are designated SCP-628-1 through -31. 


All major aboveground trunks have at some point been broken off; 
their truncated ends serve as openings to the trees’ shared internal 
cavity. Each member of SCP-628 is oriented geographically such 
that the prevailing winds at the site tend to blow directly across 
these openings, producing considerable Helmholtz resonance. 
Observation by remote camera has revealed contractile structures 
superficially resembling animal sphincters, located at numerous 
points inside SCP-628's trunks and branches, each capable of 
restricting or blocking airflow to a particular large branch. 


The trunks' internal diameters and wood structures differ enough 
that each resonance chamber thus created, when sealed off from 
the others and subjected to sufficient wind, produces a different 
pitch. On average, each tree has 3 resonance chambers; the copse 
can produce 93 notes in total. Its tonal range is equivalent to that of 
a pipe organ, although much of it lies in the low bass and 
infrasound. The notes correspond to a Western chromatic scale.