SCP-3772, Rating: 68 
SCP-3373, Rating: 56 
SCP-3224, Rating: 46 
Headache, Rating: 30 

This Year, Rating: 19 


| Am Ready 


There is a man 

In my attic 
Walking around 
With a soft patter 
With a loud clatter 


They brought my cat back 
With an espionage bug 
So | wrung its neck 

With a harsh crack 

And a soft snap 


There is a man outside 

In a lab coat 

Talking into a cell phone 

In German 

And he uses words like 
‘Eindringen’ 

‘Geheimnis’ 

And ‘termination’ 

And | know what that means 

Oh yes, oh yes 

| can see his cigarette through the dark 
And the smoke 

Of the monkey 

At his side 

Who peers in through my window 
When he knows I’m looking 


There are at least a thousand men in suits 
All over town 

Waiting for me to pass by 

And to look down 

They have a laser device 


To scan my eye 

And a pill 

That will make me forget 
Everything 

That | have learned 

About them 

And their evil 

Their experiments 

And unwarranted merriments 
They throw people to the lions 
For science 


But | know words, my dear 
Words that they fear 
Words like 

‘Gears’ 

‘Kondraki’ 

173’, ‘231’, 343 

And ‘682’, too 

And | chant 

While | wait 

For them to leave 

They know that | know 
And | know 

That they know | know 

So | will pray and pray and beg 
For them to go 


They’re digging a tunnel up through my basement 
| have heard them, down there 
| have put down caltrops 

And a Winchester rigged to fire 
(| hope they feel lucky) 

If they try to come up the stairs 
They will be in the crosshairs 
Of my Ruger 

And my Luger 

| have a knife 

Oh 

How did you guess? 


its construction have been inconclusive. No attempt to remove a 
sample has been successful, and spectroscopic analysis has shown 
no absorption spectra that can be attributed to the object. Because 
of its anomalous properties, its refractive index can only be 
estimated. 


The object is transparent, but only 50% of photons entering the 
sphere will emerge, while a variable percentage of photons 
emerging from SCP-873 originate from SCP-873 itself. (This has 
been confirmed using quantum entanglement and a coherent light 
source.) The photons emerging from SCP-873 appear to originate 
from light striking an identical object displaced in both time and 
space from SCP-873. This object has been designated SCP-873- 
Prime (or SCP-873’). The anomalous effects of both SCP-873 and 
SCP-873’ seem identical, in that an observer of SCP-873’ will 
perceive 50% of photons striking SCP-873 as being emitted from 
SCP-873’, whereas SCP-873 emits 50% of photons striking 
SCP-873’. 


In addition, while the light emitted from SCP-873 shows no 
anomalous properties in and of itself, the images provided are 
presented in strict reverse chronological order. To an observer of 
SCP-873 it appears that SCP-873’ is moving backwards in time at a 
rate of exactly one second per second. The effect is mirrored for any 
observer of SCP-873’, who would perceive their images from 
SCP-873 as progressing backward in time at the same 1:1 ratio. 


Despite the differences in perception of time between observers of 
SCP-873 and SCP-873’, written communication has been possible. 
Unfortunately, information transfer is often hindered by quantum 
interference rendering messages illegible. It has been theorized that 
the interference is a form of paradox censorship. 


Current observations and experiments are recording images from 
SCP-873’ in the possession of Dr. lvan , a physician to the 
court of Tsar Alexander!in18 . 


Addendum 1: 


+ Acquisition Notes SCP-873 


It's the one they used 
To kill my wife 
She knew too much 


There is a man across the street 
He has a moustache 

And a sniper rifle 

| painted the windows black 
And | hid in my bathroom 


But | am safe nowhere 

A man with tattoos 

Was peering up from the bottom of the bowl 
| slammed the button, listened for the flow 
And wished he would go 


| can hear them 
Walking around 

Above and below 

And outside 

But | will no longer hide 


What | did is for the best 

And the people must know 

Of these men and their doings 
They can come in, slow and steady 
| have my gun 


lam ready. 


Agent McPhelty washed a few splatters of blood from his night- 
vision goggles in the sink. He shook the droplets off his hands and 
toweled them off, turning around. The living room in the stairway 
where clearly visible through the open door. His partner on this 
specific operation, Agent Konnicker, was standing over the prone 
corpse of the man he had taken down, his heavy sniping rifle slung 
over his shoulder. Blood and splinters of skull were alternatively 
splattered over and embedded in the fine oak planks of the stairs, 
and the stink of freshly-sheared copper hung in the air like a cloud of 


miasma. 


"Hey Tom," the hefty Texan sniper mumbled through his impressive 
mustache, "check this out." 


He was waving a sheet of A4 paper around. McPhelty snatched it 
from him, frowning as he looked it over. 


"...now what in God's blue heaven is this shit, Bill?" 


"| do believe he snapped and wrote hisself a little poem. Found it in 
his pocket." 


McPhelty looked down at the fallen corpse of Richard Daublin, the 
dead spy. Their hacker would later discover there was at least half a 
terabyte of sensitive information pertaining to the Foundation 
scattered on various hard drives through his five laptops, but right 
now, with most of the top half of his head missing, he didn't look so 
smart. 


"Wouldn't quit my day job, if | were him." 


| Am The Foundation 


"...80 there's that. And then | persuaded him to go to 078’s cell and 
covertly switched the power on. Several weeks after that he hung 
himself on a pipe in the maintenance." Doctor Bright smirked in 
satisfaction and leaned back, perfectly balancing his chair on its hind 
legs. 


Doctor Bright laughed. 


"What do you know, I'd almost forgotten this story. Now | remember; 
that's exactly how it happened." He scratched his three-day stubble 
in thought and slid his hand over his greying hair. "Makes you think, 
right?" 


Harsh midday heat was streaming into the cafeteria; the sun’s rays 
almost melted the glass, making every surface they touched 
scalding hot. It was stuffy indoors, and the doctor tugged at his shirt 
collar, trying to let some cool air under his clothes. 


“What did you expect?” Bright, the one that had been silently 
standing in front of the coffee machine and attentively listening to 
the conversation, finally spoke up. “We've been in these bodies for a 
long time now, each one has their own destiny, their own memories. 
We become more independent and start mixing things up. |, for one, 
remember this story differently.” He reached for the cup, which filled 
up with fragrant coffee and waited for him on the tray. Turning 
around, he accidentally brushed the ukulele on his back against the 
edge of the table and the instrument gave out a quiet major chord. 


“Shut your mouth,” Bright snapped at him and squinted his eyes, 
looking to the right and upwards, where the ever-vigilant red eye of a 
surveillance camera was glowing under the ceiling. “And quit 
dragging this fucking piece of wood everywhere with you, didn’t | tell 
you?..” 


“No one cares,” the Ukulele man smirked. “Who watches these 


cameras of yours? Who makes protocols? Who works with 
confidential documents? What can possibly leak and where, be so 
kind as to tell me?” 


Bright got off the chair and came right up to Bright. The second one 
sized him up with a mocking glare, even though in his present state 
he was half a head shorter than his ‘stable release’. 


“The whole outside world still has no clue as to what is going on in 
here. If you keep allowing yourself such lack of discipline, then it will 
become a habit of forgetting about such things.” 

While the two men were locked in a piercing gaze, the third one was 
calmly finishing his sandwich. 


“Would you stop that,” he drawled lazily. “Or have you forgotten how 
these ‘internal conflicts’ usually end? Do you need reminding about 
the events of three years ago? When one of us was just asking for it, 
and we had to...” 


Bright, without taking his eyes off the hack musician, made an 
imperious gesture, silencing the man. 


“That is still up for discussion. In much... cooler surroundings,” 
Bright finally let the Training and Development Director be and 
returned to his table. His face became a picture of melancholy 
again. “If it Keeps on like this, the whole thing is really going to 
backfire.” He took the first thing that his hand landed on — a paper 
napkin — and fanned himself with it. 


“There is something you’re wrong about, Alto,” Bright told him, 
chewing down the last piece of his sandwich. “I mean, that we are 
becoming independent...” 


He didn’t have time to finish his sentence because the cafeteria door 
flung open, and a young assistant appeared in the doorway. She 
was out of breath and holding protocol folders marked with yellow 
and red labels. 


“Doctor Bright, you are being expected in the conference room. 
Consilium started five minutes ago.” 


Of the three men, only one turned around. 


They were reading just another Euclid that required a revision of 
containment procedures. Bright was sitting at a huge oval table, 
wearily fanning himself with some protocols. Light was hurting his 
eyes, giving him a headache, and he squinted in irritation, turning 
his head this way and that way, but he couldn’t get away from this 
brightness. Light was everywhere. Finally, he attempted to hide 
behind the papers but he could feel the others throwing sideway 
glances at him. Running out of patience, he slapped the pile of 
papers against the desktop and interrupted the speaker, saying 
loudly: 


“Doctor Light, light is in your line. Do something about it already.” 


The room became dead silent. A heavily built woman with carefully 
done fair hair glared at the troublemaker. 


“Doctor Bright, the shutters are all yours.” 
“The shutters aren’t enough. Get some drapes.” 


The air in the room seemed to be rich with methane — just one 
spark would have been enough to blow it up. Bright leaned back 
again, sinking into his round ergonomic armchair and sizing 
everybody up with his hooded eyes. He knew each one of them 
loved to get up to things, and they all had had their times until they 
felt their mayhem was getting completely out of hand and had to 
take it under control. He also knew they were ready to tear him apart 
right now because every last one of them was him, and he hated to 
be interrupted. 


“Go on, doctor,” the woman, whom Bright had called Light, broke the 
silence. The speaker coughed and started reading from where he 
had been interrupted at. 


“...SCP-213 was moved to intensive care after being observed 
having a seizure in its containment cell. Examination of SCP-213 
shows an additional ten nodules have appeared on its back. A 
perfect distance of 5 cm separates each one. SCP-213 continues to 


report no pain from the lesions...” 


Bright shivered despite the heat. He recalled his own bouts which 
with time came more often and lasted much longer. Before he could 
just convince himself that it was all just a side effect that he could 
just wait out, bear with it, and it was like a payment for his gift. But 
time and again, he was becoming more afraid that one day he 
simply wouldn’t recover from it. 


“... The source of SCP-213’s effect appears to be a parasitic 
infestation of unknown origin inhabiting its body. This life form has 
not attempted to communicate, but does observe any persons in 
SCP-213's presence through the lesions present on SCP-213’s 
body. SCP-213 has exhibited panic over this development and 
requested several times the entity be removed from him. Any 
requests of this nature from SCP-213 are to be denied.” 


The doctor took off his glasses, wiped his eyes, and put the glasses 
back on again. 


“The only option in subduing the parasite activity we might have at 
the moment is to put the subject into induced coma.” 


“Even considering all the escape attempts from the subject, isn’t it 
easier to review the terms of his containment based on his weak 
points? As | see it, his powers of disintegration have their limits,” an 
academic looking man with a clipped beard noted. “The study of this 
guy has strategic meaning that goes beyond the interests of the 
Foundation. | bet our friends will soon be interested in him. I’m not 
sure O5 will approve of this coma idea...” 


“Oh, they will,” Bright said and smiled. 


The concilium finished at 1 PM, and the members started to leave. 
Bright was sunk in his armchair and throwing a pen into air. He 
didn’t want to go anywhere. A fair-haired smart-looking man also 
stayed behind without any visible reason. He was slowly gathering 
his papers, clearly buying himself time. 


“Doctor Gla-a-ass,” Bright called out, drawling lazily. “It’s been a 


long time since we've had a heart-to-heart talk. It strikes me as 
strange. Has it ever crossed your mind that | might need 
psychological help more than all your patients?” 


Doctor Glass was one of the last among the senior personnel that 
had been converted. There were two reasons for that. Firstly, Bright 
tried not to start his expansion from the people whose specialty 
differed so much from his. It could cause difficulties while he still had 
to actively hide from the members who retained their personality. 
Although psychology wasn’t a science one had to waste half of their 
life on mastering, its methods and views were still vastly different 
from the medical ones. 


Secondly Bright wanted the psychologist to remain himself longer. 


“Doctor Bright,” the man he had called Glass replied. “It’s good that 
you've stayed behind. | wanted to talk to you about staff 
recruitment.” 


Bright dropped the pen onto the table and covered it with his palm. 
“I'm all ears.” 


‘Glass’ circled him and sat down on the chair to the left. He tilted his 
head to the side, watching Bright’s face. Jack frowned — when did 
he have time to get all these psychological antics? 


“You don’t look so well,” ‘Glass’ noted. 


“It’s the heat,” Bright spit back. “You are a terrible psychologist. Let’s 
get straight to business.” 


“Anyway, | was thinking how we could improve our recruitment 
system. If you plan to keep... using the amulet so actively, then 
certain matters of psychological diagnostics become moot. Maybe 
instead of this you would like to offer some other parameters that 
are important for you. How would you like to see your new 
personnel?” 


“Look through their medical files. | don’t want any hemorrhoids or 
prostatitis. Take women; | want there to be at least one woman per 
every male member. Two of every kind of animal. Maybe then they'll 


start doing something useful. And request thicker shutters in here. 
And chairs. | want chairs like this one in every conference room. 


‘Glass’s’ face showed a familiar expression that was already getting 
on Bright's nerves — it was like he was looking into a mirror. 


“You know those questions don’t concern me. And no, | will not pass 
them on. And no, | was not reading your thoughts. And no, neither 
do | now.” 


Bright stared at the other man. 


“What makes you think you know what’s going on in my head?” 
Bright didn’t even notice how he switched to a less official tone. “You 
think if you are in a shrink’s body, you’ve been served all his tricks 
on a silver platter? You think you can see through anybody, huh?” 


“| think, doctor,” ‘Glass’ straightened up and squared his shoulders, 
“that | know perfectly well what’s going on in your head for the same 
reason you know what’s going on in the head of each Overseer. As 
you have unequivocally hinted today.” 


Jack bared his teeth venomously.