Termination Test Record: 


SCP-524 and SCP-682 introduced into testing chamber. SCP-682 
examines SCP-524 suspiciously, at which point SCP-524 begins 
gnawing on SCP-682's anterior right limb. SCP-682 jumps 
backward, bellowing. SCP-524 pursues SCP-682 for two minutes, at 
which point SCP-682 climbs four (4) meters up the wall of the testing 
chamber and is beyond SCP-524's reach. SCP-524 ceases pursuit 
and begins washing its face with its paws; it continues this activity 
for 15 minutes, during which time SCP-682 remains 4 meters up the 
wall and beyond SCP-524's reach. 


SCP-524 then crosses to the other side of the test chamber and 
begins breaching containment. Test aborted. 
Item: SCP-811 


Tissue Test Record: 
Sample consumed without incident. 


Weiss jerked her head sharply around, almost losing her balance on 
the rocky slope. Smithson was right behind her, pulling a face. 


"| know that's what you're thinkin’, girl, so stop pretendin’. Fact is, 
you need to get all that shite out of your head. And | mean proper 
out of it. You're not more of a Grinder just 'cause you've been sent 
out loads of times. Fuckin’ hell, look at me! I'm still stuck on Trooper 
and I've been out a few too many times for my liking, I'll tell you!" 


"It's not about promotion, though, Smithie. You know it's not." 


Smithson's expression softened slightly. "| Know, mate. But it's like 
we said back in the old lot. You can only take on what they put in 
front of ya. You ain't any less of a Grinder just 'cause we ain't had to 
use your skill set yet. Bang!" Leaping over an old river bed, 
Smithson easily landed where Weiss had stumbled a moment 
before. "There's just not been that much this last year that was 
gonna be difficult to contain. It's either been dead easy to deal with, 
or... the other." 


Smithson lapsed into silence, his mind somewhere else, running on 
autopilot. Weiss knew better than to ask more questions. 


"You wanted to see me, sir?" 


Paul Dimaccio looked up from his paperwork. "Come in, Weiss. 
Close the door." He gestured at an empty seat. "Do you know why 
you're here?" 


Weiss sat. "Uh... no, sir. | don't. Is there a problem?" 


"No, Weiss, there's not. At least, not with you." Dimaccio looked 
down, briefly, then back to Weiss. "You're buddies with Alex 
Petrosyan, right?" 


"Uh... yes, sir. | mean, we... we talk some." Weiss swallowed. "You 
know," she finished lamely. 


"Yeah." Dimaccio frowned. "I know a lot of things, Specialist. Like 
how we ain't supposed to... fraternize, with members of our own 
Task Force." 


"...Yes, sir." Weiss flushed slightly, but didn't look away. 


Dimaccio held Weiss' gaze for a few more seconds. Abruptly, he 
sighed, looked down and rubbed his brows. 


"That ain't why you're here. | wish it was." A pause. "Weiss, I've 
gotta tell you that Trooper Petrosyan was found dead in their room 
at 0800 this morning. Evidence suggests nobody else was involved." 


Weiss opened her mouth. Nothing came out. 


Dimaccio looked back up at her, something indefinable in his eyes. 
"I'm sorry." 


Weiss swallowed. "They... how did..." 


"I'm not gonna tell you that, Weiss. It's not gonna make you feel any 
better and it's not gonna help anything. And before you ask, we 
didn't see it comin’." Theta-90's commander shook his head. 
"Medical staff, chain of command, not even their own team-mates... 
not one single person saw this comin’. We shoulda, though." 
Dimaccio's jaw set. "/ shoulda. Petrosyan went out more times than 


almost anyone, and some of the shit they'd seen in the last year..." 
Dimaccio fell silent for a few seconds. "I'm sorry, Weiss." 

Weiss felt strangely faint, now, like Dimaccio's words were coming 
to her from far, far away. Somehow, she heard herself asking if Alex 
had left a note. 


Wordlessly, Dimaccio passed her a piece of paper. She unfolded it. 
It contained three words. 


Tired of running. 


« Friday, 2200, Paul Dimaccio's Personal Quarters | Hub | 


New Age - a Tale 


Tosui was the Zen master who left the formalism of 
temples to live under a bridge with beggars. When he 
was getting very old, a friend helped him earn his living 
without begging. He showed Tosui how to collect rice 
and manufacture vinegar from it, and Tosui did this until 
he passed away. 


While Tosui was making vinegar, one of the beggars 
gave him a picture of the Buddha. Tosui hung it on the 
wall of his hut and put a sign beside it. The sign read: 


"Mr. Amida Buddha: This little room is quite narrow. | can 
let you remain as a transient. But don't think | am asking 
you to help me to be reborn in your paradise." 


Traditional 
New Age: 


* Book I—'Cells' 
* Book II—'Mr Brightside’ 
* Book III—'Gunning For The Buddha’ 


SCPs and Tales referenced, derivative elements and 
Author's Notes—spoiler-heavy: 


Spoilers 


SCPs used as plot devices: 

SCP-554, SCP-1447, SCP-1552—written by the author 
SCP-722—moved over from the old board by far2, 
original author unknown 

SCP-773—used with permission 


SCPs unambiguously mentioned but which do not 
appear: 

SCP-287 

SCP-432 

SCP-1199 

SCP-1728 


SCPs alluded to: 

"No, | mean 882. 554 is what the reactionaries call it, 
because they don't have the original 554 any more. 
That's because we got it back in the 70s. It's a mirror that 
swaps you with a duplicate from a dimension with 
reversed chirality, for reference. Utterly fucking 
useless.'"—the former SCP-554, replaced by the 
author's 'The Perfect Murder’ 

"Then the reactionaries suckered in most of our forces by 
leaking evidence they were going to (...) use this thing to 
destroy human consciousness—everywhere—unless we 
showed. They keep it in Pyongyang now in co-operation 
with the North Korean government..."—SCP-1427 

"Let's just say Her Majesty got an up-close-and-personal 
experience with a rather extreme outbreak—some sort of 
self-help book gone literally viral"—SCP-1425 

"He went to Maggie, who of course had been involved 
with the Ronald Reagan thing and knew a fair bit'— 
SCP-1981 

"Really? Is that what they said it stands for? Heh." He 
suddenly looked awkward. "| mean, that sort of makes 
sense. Wouldn't want people to know what racist fucks 
they are.""—SCP-1851-EX 

"stupid fucking junket to Jakarta'—the author's 
SCP-1251 

"A universe without guilt! No Chaos Insurgency, no 
Foundation at all, unfounded—"—a nod to the 
Unfounded collaboration, at time of writing featuring 
Tales by Dr_Clef, Fantern and Pig_catapult 

"microscopic Germans from an alternate timeline have 
just nuked the break room'—the author's SCP-1235 
"They're making a last stand in the American Midwest. 
They have someone or something there who's keeping 


me out. But they can't last much longer."—"We keep the 
God you're talking about in a secure containment facility 
in Kansas."—SCP-343 


Tales alluded to: 

The author's 'Acquisitions—A Marshall, Carter & Dark 
Tale' 

Chazzk's 'D-1243' 

pooryoric's 'black white black white black white black 
white black white gray ' 

Dr LosER's 'D-Class Orientation’ 

name's 'A Man At The Top Of His Profession’ 
Hornby's ‘Briefing on SLATE THUNDER (Chaos 
Insurgency Orientation)’ 

Roget's 'First Seed' 

DrEverettMann's 'Grasp on Reality’ 

DrClef's ‘Transcript of Dr. Clef's seminar, "Reality 
Benders and You: How to Survive When Existence 
Doesn't." 


Other: 

"taking orders from a tree"—certainly possible to 
understand as a one-off skip-in-the-wild making fun of 
the Deep Ecology movement, but in actuality a skip | 
hope eventually to publish, the first draft of which was 
actually the genesis of Mark Renton and Professor 
Skinner. Ostensibly just a talking tree that gives bad 
advice, it is actually a malevolent psychic entity that 
takes over the mind of anyone who communicates with it 
and uses them to create a cover story for itself. 
Professor Skinner's meteoric rise in Sector-25 postdates 
his contact with the skip; by the end of New Age he/it has 
been uncovered and subjected to Procedure 552- 
Hepburn, a destructive interrogation by 'psycho- 
epistemologists' to determine if someone is genuinely 
who they say they are and acting of their own free will. 
Renton was also for a time under the control of the tree 
and used to act out a drama with a group of 
environmentalists to further its cover. 

Update: This Tale has now been so long in the rewriting 


that this skip has leapfrogged it again and is now up as 
SCP-1421, the Unreliable Oracle. 

"a certain key fob'—a AWCY skip which will appear in 
the upcoming Tale 'The Cool Manifesto’. A key fob 
shaped like an ICBM, the cap can be twisted like an egg 
timer; when it goes off it will explode with the force of a 
large car bomb, but will itself be unharmed by the blast 
and is ready to use again if it can be recovered from the 
rubble. 

"a small bell'"—a reference to the Bell of Entropy; | 
leave it to the reader whether the Chaos Insurgency O5s 
are using it to freeze time while they talk, whether it is 
being used in a non-anomalous fashion or even whether 
it has degraded to the point where it has no significant 
anomalous properties; in my Cl-associated skip 
SCP-1477 | promote the idea that the Cl's best-known 
skips are beginning to show signs of overuse, with the 
result that they are stepping up their campaign to subvert 
Foundation personnel. 


Credits: 

The prison scam owes a debt to John Grisham's 'The 
Brethren’, which similarly depicted a politician 
blackmailed by one or more inmates on the basis of 
compromising correspondence with a (fictitious) young 
offender. Sir Malcolm Urquhart himself has his origins in, 
of all things, Marvel's 'Captain Britain' comics, and 
specifically the 'Jaspers' Warp' storyline of 1982-1984. 
The main villain in this arc, 'Mad Jim' Jaspers, is a 
politician who argues strenuously for regulating and 
incarcerating superpowered beings in Britain, but 
ultimately turns out to be a mutant himself, with the 
power to warp reality to his will. 


Sir Malcolm's appearance is heavily inspired by Jaspers, 
and thus in turn by UK actor Terry-Thomas, as well as 
by real-life UK fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley. 
Some of Sir Malcolm's dialogue was also inspired by the 
character of Sir Miles Delacourt from Grant Morrison's 
‘The Invisibles’, whom | understand in his first 


appearance as leader of a band of bloodthirsty fox 
hunters chasing down vagrants on the streets of London 
in turn references an episode of UK 'spy-fi’ series 'The 
Avengers’ (not to be confused with its Marvel 
counterpart!). It should be noted that Sir Malcolm's 
position in the UK Cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio, 
alongside Kenneth Clarke, is real - he occupies the 
position held at time of writing by Rt Hon Grant Shapps 
MP. 


The testing with 773 overtly mirrors the Milgram 
shock experiments (particularly as fictionalised by 
Chip Kipp in his novel 'The Learners’), which | also use 
to inform my interpretation of name's 'A Man At The Top 
Of His Profession’, which appears in 'New Age' as a 
cautionary story told to new researchers. It should be 
noted my take on 773 differs slightly from the original by 
DrMagnus - in particular, if you fail to follow the rules the 
injury is suffered by the thrower, a detail | omitted for 
narrative purposes. There is, of course, another in- 
universe reason why Keagan might fail to suffer injury 
when throwing the blue-banded dart or embedding the 
control group, and it's interesting to speculate that this 
initial test might lead to an incorrect understanding by 
Professor Reeds of the object's properties. 


Keagan's escape from D-Class accommodation and his 
interception by site security in the administration offices 
is heavily inspired by SCP -— Containment Breach. 
You may recognise the description of the offices and 
special containment procedure files from that game 
(save that the skips referenced are all ones listed as 
being in Sector-25). The game's presentation of the 
Foundation's Mobile Task Forces also informs my 
portrayal of New Age's Sector-25 Bixby specialists, the 
‘Deifecators'. 


Author's notes: 
Just as a heads-up, this is a ~100,000 word novel, the 
first 20,000 words of which do not overtly relate to the 


universe. Accordingly, if you didn't like the first ~5,000 
words of ‘Acquisitions’ which chiefly dealt with the life of 
a City trader and his Machiavellian schemes to get 
promoted, this is probably not for you. Like that work, | 
intended this to be a ‘through the Veil’ story introducing 
the protagonist, and reader, to the Foundation and one 
Gol - this time from the perspective of a D-Class subject 
and the Chaos Insurgency. My hope is to eventually 
complete a 'Veil Protocol’ trilogy with a final work which 
will focus on AWCY. 


My intent with 'New Age' was to present a cohesive 
prison thriller which is hijacked by a supernatural 
conspiracy plotline. As with ‘Acquisitions’ | have 
generally attempted to ensure that it can be read as an 
introduction to the universe as a whole. It is arguably a 
sequel to 'Acquisitions' - taking place perhaps 18 months 
after Edward Gradley is taken into the custody of the 
Foundation - but doesn't require any knowledge of that 
story to read. Given what | feel to be the primary 
weakness of 'Acquisitions' as an introductory work (the 
brevity with which the Foundation is introduced), it may 
be that 'New Age' is a better place to start reading the 
‘Veil Protocol’ works. 


The genesis of 'New Age' was Chazzk's D-1243, written 
for TroyL's Birthday Tales to mark Dr Gears’ 29th - | 
wanted to do a story exploring some of the major 
contradictions around the concept of D-Class, perhaps 
the conceit which has given rise to the most divergent 
headcanons in the mythos. The core of the idea is as 
follows: 


D-Class is a designation referring to expendable staff 
drawn from the prison system. These unfortunates are 
told they will receive their freedom if they survive a 
month in the service of the Foundation, and carry out the 
most dangerous maintenance tasks as well as serving as 
guinea pigs in experiments on skips. At the end of the 
month it is strongly suggested that the Foundation 


executes any survivors rather than fulfilling their end of 
the bargain, to maintain the secrecy of the organisation. 


Opinions amongst SCP writers differ wildly on whether 
D-Class are executed, mind-wiped and moved to a 
different site, or simply told that they won't be released 
after all and cycled into the 'test subjects’ category. The 
most popular headcanon seems to be that D-Class are 
the worst of the worst - possibly even exclusively 
prisoners on Death Row for whom the offer is a one- 
month reprieve even if they are terminated afterwards. 
Of course, this throws up a lot of logistical issues - 
namely, at time of writing there are just 3,125 prisoners 
awaiting execution in the entire United States, most of 
whom will be there for years until they exhaust all 
avenues of appeal. If the SCP Foundation universe is 
our universe with a hidden underbelly - the premise | 
have used for my skips and Tales - then the number of 
D-Class in the United States (usually taken as the core 
of the Foundation) must surely be less than the total 
number the State thinks is on Death Row. And what of 
the countries where there is no death penalty? Some 
writers handwave this by having the Foundation use 
political prisoners and ‘ethnically undesirable’ groups 
from dictatorships, which | think is a gratuitous piece of 
black and black - rather than black and grey - morality; in 
any case, it's pretty well established that this is the 
practice of the Chaos Insurgency, not the Foundation 
proper.