You are correct, continuing experimentation along these 
lines will necessarily alter the course of history, and 
perhaps in unpredictable ways. However, as 
demonstrated in previous attachments, there is sufficient 
reason to believe that the interactions between SCP-664 
and SCP-2400 have already caused such an alteration. 
Whether this was done intentionally by an alternate 
iteration of myself or occurred naturally is irrelevant. 


The purpose of this proposal is not to give myself or the 
Temporal Anomalies department carte blanche to run 
amok about time flipping switches and pulling levers. The 
mission of RCT A-t will remain unaltered from that put 
forth in our previous discussion, until such time as 
sufficient evidence is collected to warrant a re-visiting of 
those goals. 


All I'm requesting is that you allow me to create a stable, 
static causality, immune from the effects of causal 
tampering. From this external time-line we will be able to 
meaningfully measure the rate or frequency of historic 
shifts, as well as allowing agents on temporal retrieval or 
research missions to have a stable home base to which 
they may return. The genie is already out of the bottle, so 


to speak. If we ever mean to put it back in, we have to be 
able to track its movements first. 


Thank you for this consideration. 
Thaddeus Xyank, PhD. 


Temporal Anomalies Department Chairperson 
thaddeus.xyank@foundation.net | Ext. 1780 


From: 05-12@foundation.net 

To: thaddeus.xyank@foundation.net 

CC: athena.anastasakos@foundation.net; 
marcus.kitterman@foundation.net; 
bertrand.tomlin@foundation.net 

Subject: Re:Frame of Reference Proposal 


This request has been approved by a 7-5 decision. 


Do not make me regret my vote, Thaddeus. 


05-12 


Part Three: Erstwhile and Again | Part Five: 20 GOTO 10 


Exit Interview 


When they finally came for her, it wasn't a black bag over her head 
in the middle of the night. It wasn't an MTF snatching her off the 
street on the way home. It wasn't tranquilizers in her coffee, or a 
subliminal command through her workstation. It wasn't even a Site 
Security officer, one gloved hand guiding her to the holding cells, the 
other resting lightly on a holstered taser. When they finally came for 
Ellen O'Connor, it was a balding, hunched man knocking almost 
apologetically on the open door of her office. 


"Agent O'Connor, my name is Doctor Brian Parkes. We'd like to talk 
to you about some, uh, irregularities in the use of your Foundation 
access codes." 


It was so innocuous that her first thought was, who wears a brown 
tie? Her second was, wait - who is 'we'? 


"Perhaps we can talk about this in my offices, Agent O'Connor?" 


In the lift, Dr. Parkes swiped his access card and pressed the 
buttons for the two lowest floors simultaneously. The lift started a 
slow descent, mirroring Ellen's sinking feeling. She'd known that this 
was going to happen - one day, any day, soon. You can't look for 
the Foundation's secrets and expect them not to notice. She had 
kept going anyway. She'd needed to find out. To know. 


The lift stopped, doors opening onto an unfamiliar level. The 
corridors seemed older, the decor slightly behind the times. But 
Ellen could hear the hum of processor cooling fans through the 
office doorways. Through one she glimpsed the server stacks - 
hundreds of slim layers, scores of towers. Whatever this place was, 
they had plenty of tech. 


Dr. Parkes stopped, turning to usher her to a chair in a small office. 
Not an office, Ellen realised as the door clicked shut, an 


interrogation room. 


"So, Agent O'Connor. Shall we begin by recounting your 
employment history? For the record, you understand." 


"Uh, sure. Where do you want me to..." 


"Your time in the FBI showed a high degree of skill in analysis, but 
you became fixated on patterns that only you perceived. Eventually 
you gave a briefing to your Assistant Director in which you insisted 
that certain terror cells must be communicating with ultra-modern 
technology, beyond even the NSA's ability to intercept. This did not 
go well, and your reputation was shattered. Fortunately a new 
Director approached you, from a department you hadn't heard of 
before." 


Dr. Parkes looked down at the file in front of him, the manila folder a 
sickly yellow in the room's fluorescent lights. 


"Again, your early days at the UIU were characterised by strong 
results. But once again, you pushed too far. You saw investigations 
going cold, explanations that sounded convincing until you looked at 
them in concert. Not just yours, but other agents’ cases, historic 
files. You started outlining the evidence for another organisation 
interfering with UIU jurisdiction and removing evidence for its own 
purposes. You speculated that your superiors must know of that 
organisation, and be liaising with it. But before you could finish your 
report, you were dismissed from the FBI for reasons we both know 
are false. Now you work for the very organisation you were 
investigating." 


Dr. Parkes held Ellen's gaze. 


"Are you seeing a pattern here, Agent O'Connor? Your skills, such 
as they are, have a history of getting you into trouble in your place of 
work." 


"| can explain," Ellen began. 


"No you can't," said Dr. Parkes, cutting her off. "I will explain. You 
will answer my questions. Tell me, from your time here, what do you 


see as the Foundation's purpose?" 


"Uh, its purpose is, uh, to obtain anomalous items and entities, to 
ensure that they remain secured, and to protect the wider public 
from their effects." 


"Spoken like a true naif. Drop the training video act, Agent O'Connor 
- what purpose does the Foundation serve?" 


Ellen wasn't sure how to react. Why such general questions? If they 
already knew what she had done, why not sanction her 
immediately? The interrogation felt unreal, like play-acting. But if she 
was done for already, there was no reason to hide her opinions. 


"Its purpose," she said, "is to ensure that reality stays normal." 


"Stays normal?" Dr. Parkes sounded incredulous. "Many anomalies 
have existed for far longer than the Foundation itself. Who decides 
what is real, what is normal?" 


"The Foundation decides. Which | guess means the O5 Council 
does." 


"And what gives them the right to do that?" 


"Well, nothing. The Foundation wasn't given the right, we assumed 
it. No-one gives us permission, no-one controls us except us." 


"Are you comfortable with this - having someone else, someone 
utterly unaccountable, define your reality?" 


"Not entirely. But | can see how the Foundation works, the good it 
does. | support what the O5 are trying to achieve." 


Dr. Parkes rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up, 
then looked back across the table. "And your idea of 'support' 
involved a breach of information security across hundreds of 
containment files, did it?" 


Ellen could feel the sweat on her palms, her heart rate increasing. 
She tried to focus. 


"The first thing you should know is -" 


"No. We know you didn't act alone. Your contact in InfoSec has 
already been disciplined. We know how you did it. We are interested 
in why." 


"Okay." Ellen took a slow breath. "You know that | am on the MC&D 
taskforce, right?" 


"Your file suggests that you and the other analysts have had some 
success in predicting their activities." 


"| was looking at some of their items we'd recovered, and something 
didn't fit. Eight sixty-five and Fifteen seventy-one are both MC&D 
objects, but we didn't obtain the gun until a few years ago, and 
we've had the wallet since the eighties. Why number them that way 
around?" 


Even in this room, with this man, just talking about the problem was 
like the first hit of caffeine in the morning. "It was such a small thing, 
but no-one could explain it properly - they told me that SCP numbers 
were assigned by the system. But a system should make sense - it 
should operate to a set of rules. | needed to know what the rules 
were." 


"And what did you learn?" 


Ellen's face fell with a sudden thought. "Wait, is Sam okay? You said 
‘disciplined’, but what -" 


"Agent O'Connor, answer the question.” Dr. Parkes was implacable. 


"Okay. | learned that there isn't a system, not like people think. Sam 
got me the access to look behind the text, at the page sources, the 
editing history, all of it. There is another department within the 
Foundation - not on any of the lists I've seen. And | think you must 
work for them." 


The man across the table from her blinked slowly, his face placid. 
"You're saying that there is a department that assigns SCP 
numbers?" 


Ellen could feel the warm rush of an idea expanding. She pressed 
forward with the thought. 


"Not just numbers. It looks like they - like you - can re-categorise 
SCP files within the database, influence their level of research 
priority, even alter the re-assignment of D-Class personnel and 
researchers to particular items or entities. You must be able to track 
access and cross reference it, which is how you knew what | was 
looking at, how close | was to figuring it out. The processing power 
in the offices here means you must be running algorithms over some 
pretty huge databases. Does the O5 even know about this?" 


"Of course they know about us. It was 05-10 who established us. 
You are currently in the offices of the Department of Analytics. 
Whether you leave, however, depends on your answer to my next 
question. A question which | think you might be able to anticipate." 


Ellen nodded slowly. Understanding was tantalisingly close - she 
just needed to talk it out slowly and calmly. 


"You already know what | did, and how | did it, but you brought me 
in for questioning anyway. And not with security, so whatever your 
plans are, they're off the record. You ask me philosophical questions 
about the Foundation - that must have had a purpose, but it wasn't 
to understand why | breached security. Ah - you wanted to know 
more about me. And you wanted to know how much I'd learned 
about your division - what I'd been able to work out." 


Ellen's mind was racing, and her voice started to betray her 
excitement. "So it was a test! You wanted to see if | could work it 
out, whether | knew what was going on. And the pattern you talked 
about, it's not just that | push too far in my job and get in trouble. It's 
what happens after | get into trouble. So when you say ‘whether | 
leave’, that's not a threat. You're going to ask me whether | want to 
work for you." 


Traces of a smile were showing at the corners of Dr. Parkes' eyes. 
"Very good, Ellen. Now, do you have any questions for us?" 


"Sam o" 


"Will be fine. Amnestics, of course, but otherwise unharmed. 
Anything else?" 


"How close was | to the truth - to what you do?" 


"Fairly close. We were tracking your investigation - many of our 
recruits start in a similar way. And we can manage the database as 
you suggested, but it's more than that. Based on our data, we can 
determine the likelinood, sometimes even the timing, of potential 
containment breaches, and act to prevent them. We perform risk 
analysis on potential cross-testing of anomalies - some of the tests 
we've suggested have given us new containment methods and field 
tech. Not much of the Foundation knows about us, but we're closely 
engaged with the Ethics Committee - our recommendations on D- 
Class assignments have reduced casualties by four percent over the 
past two years." 


It felt like Dr. Parkes had been waiting to give this speech. His voice 
was warmer, his shoulders less tense. "We have huge amounts of 
information, Ellen, but what we need are people to interpret it. 
People who will question what's in front of them, and find counter- 
intuitive answers. People like you, if you'll join us." 


"Thank you, Dr. Parkes. | would be delighted. Although there is one 
more thing." 


"Of course." 


"Sorry, it's so pointless, but it's how | got here. What is the process 
for numbering anomalies?" 


"You said yourself, there is no system." 


Ellen's brows furrowed. "But that doesn't make any sense. If you 
have the amount of data you seem to, it would be easier to manage 
if the containment procedures were rationally ordered." 


"Ellen, it's not something that has to make sense. It's actually a 
holdover from the early days of the Foundation." 


"Sorry, but can that be right? Surely you would have overhauled it. 
So if we assume that there is a rational basis for numbering non- 


(particularly those containing pump and valve systems), the flow has 
been known to redirect to other outlets, contaminating natural bodies 
of water, storm drains and fresh water piping. Where material is not 
able to be ejected or disposed of, especially where large items 
unsuitable for being disposed of via sewerage, the system may 
become blocked. Several recorded incidents show that in these 
circumstances SCP-840 will induce emesis (vomiting), through a 
series of large contractions and the relaxation of sphincters. 


SCP-840 was first observed on // ,in : , United 
States, when a resident suffered second degree burns while 
attempting to recover a lost ring from the bathroom sink by hand, 
presumably from contact with digestive acids, and the house was 
subsequently placed under investigation. After several meters of 
piping were removed, tearing part of the tract in the process, it was 
established that the colony was present in almost every drainage 
and pipe system in the house, after which the house was declared a 
biohazardous area by local authorities. While an operation to 
remove the house's piping was underway, a second incident 
occurred in a house on a neighbouring block where a resident, for 
reasons unknown, had been using their toilet to dispose of large 
volumes of plastic, ultimately causing a blockage in one of the 
chambers. As a result the SCP-840 colony was induced to eject the 
partially digested material not only removed from the second 
residence, but also from neighbouring buildings, flooding several 
homes. The Foundation was alerted to the outbreak of a potential 
SCP, and soon after established the growth having covered 
[REDACTED]. A media blackout was enacted shortly after. 


Incident Log I-840 


Incident report I-840A-1: 
Date: / / 
The first known instance of SCP-840 colonising a natural 
environment was observed in , Australia. The 
colony was discovered by a group of four cavers, 
investigating an unexplored section of Caves in 

. In an interview the cavers stated that the colony 
was discovered as one member of the group attempted 
to crawl through a narrow passageway, approximately 


consecutively..." Ellen stopped cold, and she felt her brain start to 
spin with a sudden kick of adrenaline. 


"Ellen, I'm afraid that information is classified Level 4," Dr. Parkes' 
smile was fading now. "Should we discuss your new terms of 
employment?" 


"You're deleting them. Aren't you? You're deleting files. | don't know 
how many, but based on the gaps between the MC&D items - there 
must be thousands." Ellen was staring, disbelieving. 


"Listen to what you're saying. We have to work with RAISA. We 
would never take the risk of deleting containment procedure files." 


Ellen's hands slumped to the table. "No. No, you're right - you 
wouldn't delete the files. You're destroying the skips." 


"Agent O'Connor!" 


"It's the most rational explanation. You number the files in sequence 
as the items are brought into containment, but then you de-classify 
some skips - hundreds of skips - leaving gaps in the numbering 
which are filled with more recent acquisitions. But you aren't just 
removing the containment protocols from the records, you're 
destroying the items themselves."