My tongue twirls around my mouth, feeling for the mysterious thing 
that is still inside. It feels soft. Probably another piece of paper. 


Eventually, | spit it out. A squarish shape appears on the otherwise 
stale floor, coated in my saliva. Despite its condition, | can make out 
the yen symbol on that shape. 


Ah yes, so that is the compensation — as they have mentioned a few 
days ago — in the form of a postal stamp. 


But the stamp consists more than the denomination. The image of 
the banana tree. The words "Dai-to-a — Malai Baru". 


"That is..." 


"Stop, Miyafuji." Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto ordered. 


/ still remembered that day clearly. Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto 
invited me for a stroll in a park, even when the Americans' 
bombardment were increasingly common in the cities. Our feet trod 
upon stone pavements, islands in the sea of grass. In front, two 
paths lied ahead — left and right. 


"Yes sir." | obeyed the Lieutenant Colonel's orders. 
"Look at the paths. Which one will you take?" 


"| will follow the path you take, sir." 


Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto was silent, shaking his head grimly. 
Perhaps he did not desire that answer. 


"Sir, | express only loyalty toward-" | was cut off by him. 


"| did not ask you for elaboration. But it appears | must guide you 
again." 


"My apologies, sir." | bowed at Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto. 


"This crossroad is the fifth we've crossed within this park, the 
outcome of the paths we have chosen. Here, we are to make 
another choice." Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto explained, "Choices 
are important, Miyafuji. They defined the present moment and guide 
us to the future. Most importantly, choices require actions. Do you 
understand all of that?" 


"Yes sir." 
"So, what will be your choice?" 


| stared long and hard at the two paths. Both looked so similar to the 
other that they felt like the same path, regardless of what | chose. 


"Corporal, we are at war. The Americans will bomb us any minute! 
We do not have the luxury to contemplate!" | exited my deep 
thought. 


"That way!" | cried, my finger pointing out to somewhere. It was on 
neither paths, but out into the grass and another divergent stone 
path. 


"Yes. The current situation is not preferable, yes? The empire is in 
dire situation." Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto mused to himself, "We 
desire for a better present. But to do so, we must redo the choices 
already made. So Miyafuji, how can you reach the direction you 
pointed at?" 


"Walk there directly." 


Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto smiled, and stepped upon the grass. 
He then rummaged his pocket, and produced a bank note. The 


image of a banana plant was printed onto said bank note. 


"A souvenir during my previous assignment in Malaya." He 
explained, handing the bank note to me, "! will be away for some 
time, to find a better situation wherein the choices made resulted in 
the empire's continuation. And the Anomaly Agency hopes that we 
can seek help from those situations." 


"Yes." | paused briefly, "Sir, may | help you in your mission?" 


"No. | need you here. You have to protect your mother. | heard the 
Americans enjoy the taste of the women of defeated nations." 
Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto cautioned. 


"Do not worry. No one will ever harm the Lieutenant Colonel's 
sister." 


"Good. Then, farewell." 

"Did he even find it in the end?" | pick up the stamp and clean my 
saliva off of it, "Unlikely. What is the likelinood?" 

| pocket the stamp away, continuing my cloistered existence under 


the Foundation's internment. 


Some days later, | while my time at the library in the internment 
area. After all, there is little to do beyond reading up on English. At 
least | can improve my grasp in that language. 


While flipping through a book on English grammar, an unusual 
thought pierces through. 


Dear Miyafuji, 
"Very few people whom | know would call me that." 
And before | know it, the next thought manifests. 


Sincerely 
Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto 


"Uncle?" 
And like a river, more thoughts stream in. 
Found appropriate reality. There, empire exists. 


"I can tell." | recalled that stamp, which | surrendered to the 
Foundation nurse when they asked for it. After all, they have power 
over me entirely. It is unwise to oppose them. 


Sent the stamp as validation. | planned the design. 
"Seriously? What about the world you're in now?" 


Empire still exists. Humans there possess stronger 
digestion. Can dissolve even cellulose. History and 
culture is similar to ours. Society mostly disinterested in 
inter-dimensional travel. 


"That explains their unusual methods... Uncle, how is your 
mission?" 


Travelled long to find appropriate reality. Only Robinson 
Tou Liz interested in inter-dimensional travel. But can 
only transmit words and small objects. 


"Like that stamp." 
Sent the stamp as validation. | planned the design. 


"| Know that already." My voice pierces the silence of the library; 
those around stare at me. | then bury my head into my book, 
pretending to be reading it. 


"But how do you know to reach out to me?" 


So | worked for Robinson Tou Liz. Saw client list. Your 
name and address are on it. 


"So you sent a letter to me. Thank you, Uncle." 


Sincerely 


Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto 
"| know. About mum... wait, I'm not actually speaking to him." | sigh. 


| have placed myself in client list too. If you intend to 
contact me, my address is... 


"No. I'm effectively a prisoner here. | have to get by the Foundation if 
| want a letter to be sent, and they will know something's off from the 
address alone. How?" 


Amidst my thoughts, | feel the urge of nature's calling, specifically of 
the ink and paper processing inside of me. | left my book for medical 
assistance, wherein | continue pondering for a solution. 


In the end, | think that there may be a way. 


The following day, I'm once again in the Foundation's interrogation 
room — by my request. The Foundation doctor — Dr. Cohen — is my 
interrogator. 


"So Mr. Miyafuji, you have requested for me. What is the issue?" 


"My uncle wrote to me. He's IJAMEA Lieutenant Colonel Ryusei 
Sakamoto." 


"IJAMEA?! But that group is..." 


"It's not dead, or at least parts of it. That stamp is evidence. They 
have found a world where the Axis won the war instead." 


"What do you know about that world?" Dr. Cohen's face stiffens. 


"Not much, but here's an inference." | reply, "If they are willing to 
send in trivial things like stamps and letters, what else are they 
willing to send across?" 


"And you're telling us this because..." Dr. Cohen pauses, waiting for 
my response. 


"| want to help you. Allow me to have correspondence with my 


uncle, and | will feed you the information you need." 

"And why should we trust you?" 

"| requested to meet you, instead of running off." 

Dr. Cohen stares at me briefly, perhaps pondering over my words. 


"| will bring this matter to my superiors first. This conversation is over 
until further notice." Dr. Cohen left the room. 


"At best, maybe we'll have a few last exchanges before my ruse falls 
apart." 


Damnatio Memoriae 


| once knew Aaron Siegel — a mathematician, a physicist, so many 
more in his brief flare of a lifespan — and yet at the end of it all he 
was a teacher, a man attempting to spread the fire he stole among 
the branches before he burnt out. He was the man who found the 
first loose thread in the laws of physics and we were left behind to 
pull at the tear, revealing an entirely new cosmos of gears and 
levers behind the patchwork tapestry we'd held sacrosanct for so 
many years. 


His gift was an endless appetite for exploration, for experimentation. 
Other men might have found the path and reserved it as a curiosity, 
blamed it on a trick of the imagination, turned it into a cheap novelty 
for cash: instead, he experimented. He took it apart with pendulums 
and compasses and theodolites, akin to conducting surgery with a 
flint knife and a burning fire. Yet at the end of it all, he came away 
with equations and observations and a mind unparalleled until its 
death. 


A match can start a fire, and | will admit there was no other man who 
could have bootstrapped the Foundation around himself as he did. 
But it burns out too fast to sustain, and years before he died we 
found ourselves loose and adrift, the kind of absent wandering that 
too many resources and too much time breeds. We'd started with 
goals to reshape normality and had settled for mundanity, taking our 
wonders and horrors and hiding them away, afraid of the public eye. 


| was surrounded by people with the power to sculpt destinies, yet 
they had grown so enamoured with the clay that they forgot what 
they were constructing. So | created goals for us. It was blindingly 
simple — you always start with small goals. We were an unstoppable 
force only so long as we preserved our monopoly on this 
information, and the root of the anomie | detested so much was this 
omnipotence. 


So | created an aggressor for us to fight. In the summer of 1915, | 


went to Detroit and gave Aaron's papers to a young man named 
William Boeing. 


In retrospect, perhaps it was a bad idea to let the group know about 
him so early — Boeing had neither the time nor the resources we 
possessed, and his own research was limited. Still, there was a kind 
of genius to his work that James and | came to admire, a single- 
minded devotion to his work and his cause — a cause we lacked in 
our flighty pursuits. 


By the time the rest of the group took him seriously, James and 
Carlos had started to doubt their allegiance to the group, and were 
this close to joining Flyboy (or Prometheus, really, a matter of 
semantics). On the other hand, Thomas was furious that we'd 
allowed an outsider to not only take our research, but profit off it. We 
convened in New York. Me, James and Carlos voted against the 
plan Thomas had set out. The rest sided with Carter, and our first 
motion as the Overseer Council passed 9-3. 


| watched from Staten Island when we sent him hurtling into 
purgatory, New York. 


From then, | knew what my goal was — to provide one for the 
others. Thomas had grown embittered with his fortunes as Boeing 
prospered, and it was a simple matter to engineer his defection with 
Jeremy as they formed their old boys' club. Carlos wanted more 
from our group, wanted to return to the old aspirations of happiness 
and scientific progress, and | wholeheartedly (and perhaps 
sincerely, though | no longer deserve to use that word) supported 
him in his venture. He died in Laascaanood a happy man, with 
James by his side at his last moments. 


Caldmann grew shaken in the wake of his friend's death and began 
sinking his research into what lay after that — he dug up Boeing's 
old cryonics tanks, began mounting expeditions to recover 
fragments of holy artifacts from Gods mechanical or otherwise, and 
found himself at the center of an Initiative a decade later. Stimson 
retreated to America with a briefcase full of papers and amnestics, 
his life in the FBI spent chasing after spirits he couldn't convince 
anyone else to believe in. 


SCP-826: Draws You into the Book 


Item #: SCP-826 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-826 is to be kept ina 

25 cm x 25 cm safe with a numerical keypad lock. The combination 
for the lock will be given only to those with Level-2 clearance and 
will be changed on a weekly basis. 


Description: SCP-826 is a 20 cm x 15 cm pair of bookends, molded 
in the shape of two outward-facing dragon heads. Scrapings from 
the surface of SCP-826 revealed a composition of 99% Sn, 0.5% 
Cu, 0.3% Sb, and 0.2% Pb, consistent with high-grade pewter. 
However, it is unclear whether SCP-826 is solid pewter or whether 
the pewter is merely a plating for some unknown element which 
gives the SCP its properties. 


When a subject places a book between SCP-826, touching both 
ends, and leaves the room, SCP-826 will, in an instantaneous 
process, convert the interior of whatever room it is currently located 
in (a room defined as an enclosed area) into the setting of the 
contained book. Any form of entry into the room will instead open 
into a random location within the book's setting. During this 
transformation process, SCP-826, along with the contained book, 
will relocate to another part of the book's setting, showing a 
preference for places where books are normally found (libraries, 
studies, etc). To reverse the effects of SCP-826, a subject must 
remove the book from SCP-826, then exit whatever room SCP-826 
was found in. The subject will find themselves outside the original 
room of SCP-826's containment, while SCP-826's containment room 
will be restored to normal. 


In addition, the subject will find themselves at a random temporal 
location in the book's plot, ranging from the beginning to near the 
end of the book. If the subject does not find SCP-826 within the 


The Foundation continued, even as it fell apart from the inside. 
Redundancies were there for a reason, and ready employees filled 
the places of the ones that came before, Lights and Manns and 
Masipags alike cycling through the great machine. But | remained — | 
had bodyguards to take care of the outside, 500 to fix my body's 
failings and 006 to ward off time. 


Years passed, as they do, and | find myself once more at Aaron's 
laboratory in Essex. As | look back on my career as the 
Administrator, | find that there is only one redundancy in this 
machine: namely, me. The Foundation believes it has a purpose, as 
does the Insurgency, as did Prometheus, and as the Arcology will, 
yet I've grown disillusioned over the years maintaining this very 
illusion. 


So this is my final letter to myself. When | found Aaron's body on the 
path, lying somewhere between the n and the (n+1)th rotation up the 
hill, | found his last words. He claimed that everything required a 
sacrifice, and maybe he was right: his life for the amnestics, mine for 
the Foundation. 


But sometimes there's nothing to receive the sacrifice, no god up in 
the clouds — there's only ever been nothing, nothing we haven't 
created. And | intend to change that today. 


You gave up your life, Aaron, and now | give up my control over it 
all. Let's hope something out there's willing to take it. 


Damnation 


Note: This is part twelve in a multi-part story based 
around the events leading up to the containment of 
SCP-2982. It is recommended that you read the previous 
entry Deliverance first, or start from the beginning At the 
Library. You can take a look at Golan too, for a tale 
based on one of the tests of the SCP object. 


Official SCP-2982 documentation. Level 4 access required. 
¢ Date: 2015-02-17 
¢ From: Site Director David Runeberg 


* To: Subsite 23-Delta-K6 Chief Security Officer 
Frank Onegra 


* CC: Site 23 Affiliated Field Operations Controller 
Sandra Chaperone 


¢ Subject: Alexander Lazarus 
Frank 


Some bad news. Chief Global Suppression Manager 
Alexander Lazarus will be joining us on 2015-02-19 for 
two days. Be careful. He is both absolutely loyal to the 
Foundation and entirely dispassionate towards the 
humanity it protects. 


He is to be given unhindered, solo access to both 
SCP-2982 and SCP-2982-02 (the former Agent Paris). 
Yes | know. I'll send you the full approval documentation 
tomorrow. Orders come from the O5 council. They're 
very very skittish about what she knows and what might 
get out. [REDACTED] 


SD David Runeberg 


On 2015-02-19, at the insistence of CGSM Lazarus, all testing on 
SCP-2982 was discontinued, and further testing, research or 
evaluation was prohibited. 


On 2015-02-23, Site Director Runeberg committed suicide. An 
encrypted email sent from his personal account to the Foundation 
SCO work email account read, 


[REDACTED]