He swung the bat as hard as he could, connecting right where 
Hatbot's head connected to its body. "For Science!" he shouted. 


<-=2@)0~703 
CAVA 


"Embre éthe engi Hatbot said, staggering back. Its fedora fell 
from its head onto the floor. 


i= 


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Dr. Main hitgagain, and again, driving it further back. 


GINVAOMK-=7ZO)NVr 


My 


"lca n't let yOu do titis, Dr. Mann," the robot said, rallying. It 
caught the bat and fied to pull it from his hands. "He sAvaits this rit 


sgh" 


Dr. flann pulled back, trying to free the cricket bat. "yeu rea 
menace. You have fo be slope ior the good of humanity." 


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2G)nve 


=| witmake you onddwith him. Hail Hawt Hail ZAL-G@." Hatbot 
lifted Sugden, neatly pulling Dr.Mabin: off his feet. 


wily 


He kicked the desk ne Hatbot, loosgning its grip. He began hitting it 
again. Plasti¢ cracked, exposing sefyosjand electronics. 


"| must give him the call to set him freer said Hatbot. It stepped 
backwards, frying Yo stay back front the § Swinging bat. "The chaotic 
soul. The Nepean hive‘ “mind of ghifes. Hei is coming. 


ZALEO... 


Dr. Mann Stuck again, and again, Bashing into the robot. Plastic and 
metat shafteredterider the assault. "This is for my laboratory! And 
this ig for my frignas! And this is for the bees!" 


ello] 


AEICQNAL 


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"The Hvadbnainfale ’ssss," said Hatbot, its voice becoming slower 
and slurred. ""Baisy, daisy, give me your answer do. Fuck treees... 
I... climb. 3, cloguudsss... moootheeeerrrrfffffuuuuckeeee..." Its 
voice finally drew to a halt, and the bank of lights went dim. 


The feeling of wrongness stopped. The walls snapped back to 
normal solidity, and the cracks in the air vanished. Dr. Mann picked 
up the fedora, dusted it off, and placed it on his head. He whistled as 
he walked out. 


"And that's everything,” Dr. Mann said. "Oh, there was 
some clean-up, but | understand nearly everything was 
back to normal." 


"Except for the damages done indirectly," said Dr. ; 


dourly. "Well, that clears up your role in this mess. | 
suppose your actions were reasonable, given the 
circumstances. Still, in the future, try to deal with these 
situations before they summon Keter-class reality 
distortion." 


"I"ll try," said Dr. Mann. 


Endnote: 
In the bowels of the Foundation's Network, a background program 
triggered a hidden script. 


Login: E_Mann 
PaSSe Ae sores vas ecteie: 


Welcome, Dr. Everett Mann. 
Site 17 Terminal 137 
Your session will expire in 30 minutes. 


E Mann@SCP-Site17-T137:~$ sudo -bK -u root '/home/L4/ 
A_Valence/bin/hatbot -d &>/dev/null' 

sudo: User is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported. 
E Mann@SCP-Site17-T137:~$ su A_Valence 

Pass: merrilydownthestream 


A_Valence@SCP-Site17-T137:~$ su root 
Pass: doestheblackmoonhowl 


FULL SYSTEM ACCESS GRANTED 
ALL FURTHER ACTIVITY WILL BE MONITORED 


root@SCP-Site1 7-T137:~# /home/L4/A_Valence/bin/hatbot -d &>/ 
dev/null 

[9] 13873 

[9]+ Loading..... Done 

[9]+ Running as Daemon 


He Comes. 


[END OF LOG] 


The Human Part of the Equation 


Sgt. Mansell looked into the room one last time, his eyes already red 
from the dust and tears that now streaked his cheeks. The smell of 
vomit lingered on his clothes with the blood and rot. He felt the 
clicking and whirring, the turning and buzzing of the device as its 
cranks and gears began to merge and shift, meshing regretfully. He 
had, he knew, just completed a monster. 


He walked outdoors, his body feeling oddly out of sorts. He chalked 
it up to the surroundings. Trying to ignore the persistently echoing 
click as he walked, he went back outside to rejoin his unit and help 
bury the dead. 


The tests had gone remarkably well. 


Dr. Sankt was pleased. Very, very pleased. Ever since they’d 
brought him the first specimen, all screaming and grinding, his work 
had consumed him. The platoon to first discover the ruins had been 
searching fruitlessly for another of the Fuehrer’s missing artifacts. In 
spite of the Bloody Spear and the Vestments of the Christ, the tiny 
madman was dissatisfied and sent squad after squad deep into the 
deserts of northern Africa, searching. At one time, Sankt had viewed 
these as futile quests by an arrogant man. 


But that was before. Before the clockwork man, who had once 
simply been a creature of flawed flesh, was brought to him. He was 
one of two to return; the other had, regretfully, been damaged 
beyond repair by the harsh desert sand. But the other... 


Sankt didn't have the kind of clearance necessary to know the 
circumstances which brought the young man to his current state, 
only that he had been on one of the Fuehrer's missions. The young 
man had been given to him when the metal began to push through 
his body and the gears began to tear through his flesh, twisting and 
flaying. It was, Sankt thought, almost beautiful to watch. 


Sankt stripped away the remains of its skin with more delicacy than 
was required, placing each piece in its own sterile container. Long 
after the screams had turned to bloodless clicking, Sankt labored, 
until eventually, freed of its prison, the bones of molded copper and 
the muscles of counterbalances stood on their own. 


It did only the simplest tasks. Sankt knew after only a short time that 
it would be mostly useless, incapable of anything more complex 
than the man that it had once been. So he set it to work pacing, 
carrying a rifle, back and forth in front of his door, letting it pretend it 
was still a soldier. It made him feel more secure, at least. 


Then, Sankt reexamined the flesh he removed from the gears and 
realized his mistake. 


The mounds of gristle and skin were metallic, some of them 
desperately interconnected in a feverish attempt to turn and move. 
“Of course!” thought Sankt. “How foolish of me. This must be 
amended.” 


He contacted his superiors and told them what he needed. Much 
space would be required, as well as subjects for the testing, and 
soldiers willing to serve their country. His old friend, Dr. Rascher, 
had been carrying out his own experiments, and upon hearing what 
Sankt had discovered, cried out with joy. “Finally!” said Rascher. 
“We will have our answer.” It was an answer Sankt was more than 
willing to provide. 


The first were failures. Sankt knew they would be, so he used his 
least important subjects: the mentally deficient. They were 
vivisected, studied, and disposed of in the furnaces. Sankt knew 
their fates would have been much the same no matter the 
circumstances. It was the fate of those imperfect. It was the destiny 
of those not members of the master race. And so the cutting, 
screwing, and disinfecting did not concern him. 


After he felt that he understood enough, he brought in the next 
batch: the Romani. From one of them, he would remove a clockwork 
liver. From another, a living one. Laying them next to each other, he 
studied for hours, listening as their previous owners slowly died— 


one dripping blood, the other oil. When he finally comprehended 
their relation, he tried transplanting the organs back and forth from 
body to body. These experiments often failed, but the occasional 
success kept his spirits up. He knew that soon, he would be ready. 


It was mid-1944 when he felt confident enough to send for the 
pianists and violinists. He would, of course, need their hands. So 
delicate and slender were the gears that his heart nearly broke as 
he removed them. Then, the artists. Their eyes would be invaluable. 
The singers he nearly forgot, only remembering them as he carefully 
screwed in the spinning lips of a poet. There would be no need for a 
voice, of course, but there was always a need for beauty. After all, 
Sankt was making a masterpiece; leaving part out would be like 
cutting the smile from the Mona Lisa—unfathomable. 


But he knew that his delicate pieces were just that: delicate. He 
stewed over this for some time, thinking his work lost, until it 
suddenly came to him. Watching his clockwork guard march back 
and forth in front of his door, the epiphany appeared—the ditch 
diggers, the miners, the street sweepers. They could also be a part! 
He almost felt foolish, thinking back how perturbed he’d been when 
he almost forgot the singers. How could he make a true masterpiece 
without everything? 


Their arms and legs transferred the power down to the smaller 
gears, carried items along the internal paths, and made it possible 
for a single man, a single crank, to operate everything! But powerful, 
skilled hands meant nothing without a mind to drive them. 


So Sankt sent for the scientists and doctors, teachers and 
researchers. Their minds were a necessary component and could 
not be excluded. He struggled with the first subject, not fully seeing 
how the different parts were truly interconnected, but he persevered. 
The next was far easier. Eventually, the different parts were laced 
into the whole, guiding the hands and muscles in perfect, 
indomitable precision. 


Close to completion, so near his final, beautiful goal, Sankt was 
finally confident enough to invite the entirety of the German 
leadership to his laboratory and show them what his labors had 
wrought. 


It was a nervous group who crowded through the halls of the dank, 
almost claustrophobic bunker under Chelmno. Only one of the 
German high command had shown up, the others being far more 
concerned with the war knocking at the front door. However, Sankt 
had the answer to all their problems. With his device, Germany 
would be fully capable of defending itself into the unforeseeable 
future. 


While the onlookers watched, he placed a pistol into the intake, 
turning the dial and moving his hand to the crank. He turned it 
slowly, listening to the perfect rhythm for the first time. He’d known 
that it would work, known innately that the device would perform 
perfectly. Each click was the turn of a ballerina, the pluck of a chord, 
the swing of a mattock, the hypothesis of a dream. Sankt felt as 
close to love as he ever had. 


When he stopped, he turned and picked up the gun, rotating it in his 
hands, examining how its nickel and steel had become gold and 
copper. He proffered it to one of the senior officers present, who 
examined it with distaste and laid it aside. 


“Is that all it does?” the man asked. 
“What do you mean?” replied Sankt. 
“Is that all it does? Turn steel to bronze?” 


“Of course not,” replied Sankt, taken aback. “They do much more, 
so much more. This is only the first step in a long journey. Now, they 
can only manage a single kind of transformation, making that which 
is one thing into another of the same. But soon, very soon, they will 
be making things better. Improving them in ways we can’t even 
imagine yet! Rewriting literature, correcting mistakes in complicated 
equations, making new bombs and new religions with equal skill!” 


The men looked at him, and then to the mass of clockworks behind 
him. The officer peered at him intensely, painfully. 


“Then finish it. We need a new god right now.” 


SCP-961: University Sundial 


Item #: SCP-961 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-961 is to be kept 
outdoors, in its storage container, or in a closed, empty room at Site 
38 when not in use for testing. During daylight hours, SCP-961 must 
be kept in an area exposed to sunlight for as long as possible. 
Object is to remain under observation by camera at all times. If 
unusual movement of shadows on SCP-961's face is detected while 
in full sunlight, object is to be moved indoors and secured in an 
unoccupied room. SCP-961 is not to be kept in a region where full 
daylight is not present for at least thirteen (13) consecutive hours, 
though cloud cover or inclement weather does not seem to activate 
SCP-961's effect. As seasons change, SCP-961 may be relocated 
as per Protocol 961-Beta. The storage container discovered with 
SCP-961 appears to be effective in containing its effect via unknown 
means. Keeping the artifact in an empty, completely closed room is 
similarly effective; it is presumed that its effect continues to take 
place, unnoticed. 


When indoors for testing purposes, four D-class personnel with a 
score of 85 or higher on the Lezak-Hooper Short-Term Memory 
Inventory are to be kept in an empty room with SCP-961 during the 
last five minutes of its cycle. Under no circumstances is SCP-961's 
cycle to be allowed to complete outdoors. A digital clock is to be 
included in the containment room. 


If events observed with SCP-961 contradict available records, report 
to researchers supervisor O5 command immediately. 


Description: SCP-961 is an iron sundial of unknown manufacture, 
similar in style to late 17th century English models, but lacking any 
indication of craftsman or previous owners. The sundial has no 

markings other than Roman numerals in traditional clock formation 


Sankt labored ceaselessly. There were only a few people left to him, 
now. His research staff were the first he used, then the last of the 
emaciated, flawed prisoners. Finally, he began taking the more 
clever soldiers, interweaving them as best he could. He could no 
longer afford to be picky. Eventually, he turned to his loyal guardian. 
He took the gun from its hands, carefully guided it over to the table, 
and thanked it for the loyal service it had provided before 
unfastening its still beating clockwork heart. 


When the Americans finally came, he knew he was almost done. He 
could feel them approach through the smoke, the fires burning 
brightly in the furnaces even though most of the guards had either 
fled or been used. Even though Germany might fall, her labors could 
still be appreciated. 


He approached the front guard, smiling and waving his hands. He 
welcomed them in halting English, asking them for stories of the 
seemingly distant war. He warned them of the conditions in the 
camp, tried to explain what the commanders were doing, how they 
had to contain the infections he had been transferring. They killed 
him slowly—first cutting off his hands, then his eyes, then his lips. 


Sgt. Mansell looked at the huge device. He’d seen Big Ben in 
London before he’d been sent over, and he liked to think its insides 
were similar. The other soldiers were outside, burying the dead 
between hoarse, racking vomits. He looked down at the dial in the 
front, the brass covering around it spelling out rudimentary 
instructions in English. Laying on the ground, directly below it, was a 
single cog. 


Mansell looked at the piece, and then at the device, licking his lips. 
The place was obvious, it seemed, almost glaring in its 
inconsistency. Picking up the brass fitting, he lowered the final cog 
into place and saw the machine shudder slightly, almost in ecstasy. 
It was finally, terribly complete. 


As he slept that night, he dreamed of a young woman, beautiful and 
bright. Sometime in the early morning, he rose, took out his pistol, 
and walked mechanically into the woods. The shot echoed through 
the trees, ringing with blood and iron. 


The Improbable Bibs 


Today 


MisterBibs, Agent of the Foundation, was having string of good luck 
for the past month. 


This, naturally, gave him an astonishingly bad mood. Bibs wasn't an 
entirely spiritual person, but he did believe that there was a finite 
amout of good luck in the universe, and a string of positive events in 
a row meant that one's luck was running out. It was the sort of belief 
that was confirmed no matter what happened: if things kept going 
well, it was just proof that something bad was soon coming. If 
something bad did happen, it justified his belief.