No matter how many may have screamed and kicked in the process. 


Attention, all citizens; ArControl is glad to report that | 
casualties. 


Alone in her small, dark room, B-Class citizen Tessa Lee, 
herself. "The Stars are dead. The Stars are silent. H-how « 


The feelings are gone, leaving her truly alone for the first t 
"The Fifth i-is over!," she whimpers, her eyes wide open; it 


It feels true. 


The Administrative Emergency State is being revoked 
ArControl. It was designed to be motherly and comfortable 
wrong. 


She grabs her head and shakes like a chem addict in with 
this, that she has been hopping on Signals for too long, th: 


Tessa doesn't care. She can no longer feel anything. She 
overload... perhaps even the random sex would at least ci 
fool who just wants to be useful. Anything but the growing 


Lockdown orders will cease momentarily. Please hold 
midnight sky... filled with stars. 


And they were not stars. 


"B-but it's all-all of it!" she shouts, throwing herself at the w 
you? Who do you think you are!? Fake! Fake! Lies! Blatan 


She runs up and down the apartment. 


Tessa knew what she was doing last week, when she was 
Infinite Border, searching for that small push that every hic 
she is on the run. All because she was supposed to take tl 
past month! How could they ask her to do such a thing, aft 
grown!? 


The makeshift silent alarm connected to the floor auto-mal 
Force is right outside, the grey-on-grey uniforms surround 
way out. 


Lockdown orders will cease momentarily. Please hold 
There is none. 


Desperate, Tessa reaches for her transcript of Star Signal: 
her Esoteric Research Area. She always thought it wantec 
freedom from the Federation. It taught Tessa a life in the c 
promising her she would lead humanity to a better truth, to 


Then she remembers. She remembers that the Border ha 
skies are blank. 


And blank the pages themselves become before her eyes. 
through them, unbelieving. "But... T-the signs... | know th- 
slipping from it into the ground; at first, she is filled with fee 
they |-loved me back! | know it all meant something, it all n 


Lockdown rescinded. You may now resume your sche 


As the perfectly trained SSTF anti-sectarian specialists bre 
eyes, her heart and her hands before she can even under: 
instructing their handlers to not look at the pages of Star S 


Which slowly soak on the last Fifthist's blood, and thus bec 
They will be burnt to ashes later, and another mystery will 


Thank you for your patience. 


For now, the SSTF soldiers bag Tessa's corpse, careful to 


The few threats that remain are simple puppets, manufactured 
boogie men to keep the populace scared and trusting... plants and 
false flag operations are everyday business. Such lies are justified, 
as justified is the liberal application of force to make certain these 
harmless threats remain harmless. 


And it works. Tonight, the universe died, and humanity will be none 
the wiser. 


One by one, my now awkward homologues, of whom | know little 
beyond number and rank, congratulate each other and humanity on 
this achievement. A few, probably choking on their bullshit, are 
silent; whether they have killed themselves or chosen to go and 
sleep well, | have no idea. | do not really care. 


One of them laughs at the bland joke another one makes. Idiots. We 
killed the universe tonight. No amount of levity would compare to the 
grandiosity of the crime, so there is no point in chastising them... 
again, | cannot even grasp it. 


How does one compare it? To what? What Ethics Committee 
hearing would consider to judge this, never mind the fact that they 
always supported the program? 


| ask the foodprinter for cold wine. Any wine, in copious enough 
quantities. The auto-manager replies that it can only serve me 
amounts insufficient for becoming drunk. Such are the duties of an 
Overseer that | must remain lucid, capable and sane. 


It suggests | have some fresh soy milk instead. 
| kick the dumb machine. 
| scream at it. 


| use every object | can find, my body included, to pound against it, 
scream against it. My muscles are weakened after living here for so 
long, and | do not realize that the damned thing stays unscathed 
despite my best efforts. The internal security system warns my 
memeticist, who makes sure the unknown A-Class personnel living 
in this unmarked, modular bunker is not insane with the madness of 
a thousand dark gods. Just merely furious. 


Why? Well, none of their business. 


| then keep hitting and hitting. | take the keyboard out of the screen, 
and smash it against the machine, the softform denting with each 
strike. | keep doing it, savage, angry, sad. 


Empty. 


| now know why Phase three was necessary. | envy the masses. | 
envy those of us that will no doubt choose to forget this night and 
live their lives in peace. | envy my fellow Overseers, who laugh and 
sing and dance and pray. 


Pray. My prayers are bleeding hands and a seething semblance. 
And | do need to pray. 


A few hours later, the alarm rings again; twinkle twinkle, little star, it 
goes. | grunt. | have pending work and too little time to do it. 


| decide to get up and ask the machine for a full meal. Life goes on, | 
think to myself. 


| must fix this. | must fix her. And if there is no way to do so, | must 
at least make certain there is something else for humanity to 
discover, something else for humanity to marvel at. 


| cannot stand that there are no other suns under which new things 
may be, just counterfeit starlight. 


| cannot stand that, in our zeal to protect humanity, we placed it ina 
box. 


In related news, a series of Arcology Control alerts have 
been announced all over the planet this past afternoon, 
Universal Time. While the specifics are not clear, an 
institutional source reports that Federation task forces 
may be soon conducting assaults on suspected 
sectarian holdouts in Mars and Europa... 


|, Autarch 


My name is Frank Carson, Autarch of the Enlightened Republic and 
Free Association of Wyoming. | have overseen the Universal 
Dominion of the State of Wyoming and its citizenry for four 
thousand, nine hundred and seventy-eight years, four months, and 
nineteen days. | am the only ruler this universe has ever known, or 
will ever Know. My authority is omnipresent and absolute. 


From my capitol in the Palace of Black Tooth Mountain, | alone 
control all facets of the government of this realm. In the last five 
millennia, | have developed the technology and the mental ability to 
be in thousands of places at once, enmeshed in every possible 
public institution that may touch the lives of those people left in this 
enclosed universe. No human to have ever existed has wielded 
more power than | do. | am the absolute pinnacle of humanity's 
ability to exert control, refined to the outermost limits of mankind's 
capabilities to achieve my purpose of ruling over my domain. 


Somebody, please shoot me. Right in the head. Please. 


| wasn't always the Everlasting Autarch, All-Encompassing in His 
Name. | used to be Frank Carson, Director of Site-643, Foundation 
Subdirector for Geopolitical Anomalies, North American Sector. | 
don't know what we did to screw everything up, exactly. But 
thousands of years of thinking about it have convinced me that that 
asshole Russian from External Affairs had something to do with it. If, 
in the infinitesimal chance someone at Site-78 actually receives this 
and reads it, | hate you all. Come over into my reality. I'll make you 
Emperor of these clowns. See how you like it. 


We had time to evacuate all the staff. When the alarm sounded, | 
had no clue what had just breached, or what even could breach a 
site where we studied vote records from Podunk County, USA all 
day. But someone had to go back in and retrieve the failsafe codes. 
|, like an idiot, assumed responsibility for someone else's 
monumental mistake, not wanting to put any of my subordinates at 


risk. One of my selves is laughing at the irony of leadership putting 
me in this situation. That one's a real jerk. I've never liked him. 


Whatever it was that occurred, Site-643 caused two things to 
happen. The entire observable universe was erased from existence, 
except for a small, isolated mass of physical matter that used to be 
the State of Wyoming. The universe literally ends now at the 
boundaries of the least populous political subdivision in the US. The 
other thing? People now live forever. And not in the horrifying way 
that | always feared people could live forever, but eternal life, free of 
aging, senility, physical deterioration. Don't ask how me how we 
whipped up that one. | always forbade cross-testing in my facility. 


| didn't mean to even be spotted by the civilians. | swear | didn't. But 
the Site was in downtown Cheyenne. The emergency exit came out 
right on 24th Street. Next to the Capitol. There must have been a 
reason for that. Maybe. But after sheltering in place for three days, 
the locals had plenty of time to figure out that a few things had 
changed, mostly having to do with the fact that it was no longer 
physically possible to leave the state anymore, and that things like 
"nighttime" no longer happened. The Laramie Consortium of 
Wisdom later figured out that we somehow trapped a simulacrum of 
the sun in with our universe, capable of generating the same amount 
of energy. | digress. 


So horrible, mind-breaking things are happening. Riots in the 
streets. Panic everywhere. And out emerges this stranger, right from 
the seat of government. Dressed in a labcoat and armed to the 
teeth. Why did they make me their leader? | guess | looked like | 
knew what was happening. | was mosily relieved that they hadn't 
decided to eat me. Then | remembered about the research outpost 
in Crook County. | led a team of twelve people equipped with pickup 
trucks and shotguns to keep that business from being stuck in a 
universe with us. When we returned, that was that. | was The 
Leader. 


Why didn't | just lead them all into a volcanic geyser somewhere? | 
guess | figured | had to make the most of it. Maybe | hoped in the 
early days someone from Overwatch Command would come fix our 
mistake. That hope ended sometime after the first thousand years, | 
think. God forbid, maybe | wanted to actually help people. | forget 


SCP-629: It was some church, the same one 
you guys picked me up from. They apparently 
thought | was some part of their god, so they 
just gave me anything | wanted. It was pretty 
nice. | had safety, food, a warm bed and plenty 
of amenities to keep me occupied. For awhile, 
it worked out just fine. 


Dr. : Then what happened? 


SCP-629: It just got... boring. Being 
surrounded by all these guys who constantly 
fawn and adore over you, and give you 
anything you want. | mean, saying it now | can 
see how it might sound nice, but in reality it 
was extremely dull. So | told them, | said "| 
think it's time for me to move on." 


Dr. : You said previously that they had a 
negative reaction? 


SCP-629: Yeah, they totally started to flip out. 
They basically locked me in my room, pushed 
food through the little slot, the whole shebang. 
| could hear them moving some big heavy stuff 
outside my room. Eventually they pulled me 
out and took me into the big altar they had at 
the center of the church. 


Dr. _: It was at this point that they attempted 
to integrate you into the other objects? 


SCP-629: Yeah, it was kind of... well... awful, 
to be honest. They were just jamming 
everything they had to me, and it was hurting 
me a lot. | think that if you guys hadn't shown 
up when you did, they might've added more to 
me than | could handle. That would be... bad. 


Dr. _:1 believe that will be all. Security, if you 
would- 


now. 


Then | found out what happens when you have forever to do things. 
The human mind is an incredible mechanism, turns out. Freed from 
senescence, you have forever to get good at things. To think about 
things. To consider yourself and your surroundings. The citizens of 
Wyoming granted me the power of a king, to protect them in their 
strange, new universe. And | did. | worked tirelessly to set up new 
systems of government, appointed mayors, counselors, officials. | 
learned about sewer systems, tax codes, probate law and housing 
policy. | did such a good job they didn't bother with elections. | was 
satisfied because people weren't killing each other. Ha. Anahaha. 


Blessed with immortality, the citizens of Wyoming became scholars. 
Almost all of them. They all had time to learn now. First they wanted 
to know just what the hell we were living in. Oil workers, cowboys, 
waitresses and farmers all studied up. First they mastered 
astronomy. They became self-taught doctors of geology, 
climatology, topography and quantum physics. With all the time in 
the world, the people of Wyoming were a race of intellectuals, 
spurred on by curiosity. They built observatories, drilled deep into 
the crust of what once was the Earth, and confirmed that we all lived 
on a big (almost) flat rectangle floating in a sea of nonexistence. The 
telescopes couldn't find any stars, any signs of anything beyond 
what used to be the atmospheric thermosphere. Well duh, | told 
them. I've been saying that for decades. But scientists that they 
were, they needed to confirm it independently. See for themselves. 
They had already placed me in my inescapable role, nagging 
governmental parent of Eternity, only to be minded when a new 
skyscraper needed to be built or the stray dog population got out of 
control. | should have killed them all then. 


Their scientific discoveries led them to be introspective. Now, the 
people must be philosophers, they all said. And philosophers they 
became. Great halls were constructed just for thinking and debate. 
All essential tasks were automated (and guess who needed to write 
15,000 pages of regulations governing the construction of these 
automated task-robots), so that everyone could add to the effort of 
Understanding. And these learned citizens Understood, all right. 
New discoveries in the nature of self, answers finally reached about 


the existence of the soul (by the way, it's more like eight thousand 
souls), God forever placed in His correct role of The Great and 
Mighty Casual Annoyance. Men whom | remembered centuries ago 
passing their time shooting at highway signs with buckshot after 
downing a case of Coors Light, were now pronouncing their 
inescapable theorems on the nature of human suffering from the 
shining dais of the Academy of Universal Advancement. 


| shared in their knowledge, and paired with their technological 
progress, | became greater and greater. My mind expanded into the 
aether of the Internet, and now my electronic presence, apart from 
but also entirely within my being, could render judgments at the 
Court of Ultimate Appeal. Another electronic self now could review 
birthing permits even more expeditiously than the modern genius | 
had previously appointed. This, of course, freed up ever more 
Wyomingites to go and join in the increasing development of their 
peers. More and more, | was The State. Me, personally. | remember 
feeling quite proud of that achievement. That makes me want to 
punch at least eight of my selves in the face.