Heaving a sigh, Doctor Parker lifted himself out of his chair, and 
walked across the room to the mirror hanging on the wall. He was 
determined to stay alive, but he could feel himself slipping. Having 
never archived an SCP, he had lost nothing to the decay. But that 
wasn't true. He had lost friends, he had lost family, he had lost the 
entirety of the world he lived in. 


And now he was losing himself. Bits and pieces of his memory were 
fading, even though he was only in his late twenties. Even here, with 
a smaller version of the device protecting him, the last remaining 
part of the world he knew was vanishing. Anger tried to cloud his 
thoughts, but there weren't any left. 


Turning towards the door, he hoped against hope that opening it 
would reveal something. The day before he had done so, and found 
nothing but an infinite whiteness. But maybe he had just been tired. 
Maybe now, with a clear head, there would be something awaiting 
him on the other side of the portal. 


He opened the door, and he saw madness. 


There was something outside his office, but it wasn't anything like he 
knew. A whole new universe was making itself outside. Even though 
it was only in its formative stages, Parker could tell right away that it 
would be done soon, and when it was, it would be nothing like the 
one he knew. There would be no room for Doctor Parker, or the 
SCP Foundation, or anything sane and right from the one before. 


Doctor Parker stood there for the longest time, letting all of this sink 
in. He could fight on. He could fight and make his own niche in the 
new universe. It could try its hardest to reject him, but he could 


survive, and he could make a living. Hell, he could even rebuild the 
whole of his universe, with enough time. 


Then, he stepped out into the entropy, and let it swallow him. 


Envying the Dead 


He stared at the opaque glass of his visor. It was nothing he hadn't 
seen before. Every single day, he looked at nothing but the misted 
over surface. He had wept the first few months. By now, he didn't 
feel like mustering the energy to cry. Most days, he couldn't muster 
the energy to do much of anything. Not that there was anything to 
muster energy for. 


His eyes traced the spiderweb of cracks in the glass. He knew it 
better than he knew his own face. He recalled being handsome, 
back in Russia. He had attracted a wife whom he vaguely 
remembered being beautiful. Of course, there was no telling just 
what his face looked like now. He knew it had been years, but just 
how many he couldn't guess. 


The accident though, that he remembered quite well. It had all been 
going so perfectly. They had told him he would be the first human 
being in space. And perhaps he had, before the explosion. He had 
been the only one actually wearing a full suit when it happened. His 
friends, they had been lucky. At the time, he had mourned for them. 
He had gone through years of training with Sergei and Andrei, and 
watching them be torn apart by fire and shrapnel had been the worst 
moment of his entire life. Now, though, now he envied both of them. 


In the beginning he had prayed to God to be rescued. The air in his 
suit was only supposed to last a day, maybe two, without resupply. 
At first he had counted off the seconds in his mind. When he 
reached three days, he stopped, the burn in his throat made sure of 
that. After what he guessed was five days the gnawing pain in his 
stomach took up all of his attention. When he went for almost a full 
week without asphyxiating, his prayers slowly turned from rescue to 
a far more desperate wish. 


In his grief-stricken state, the ramifications of his continuing 
existence were slow to occur to him. Eventually it dawned on him 
that, even if he had continuous oxygen, he would have long ago 


died of dehydration. At first this seemed like a miracle. He was so 
hopeful, certain that the motherland would not leave him here in the 
empty void of space. 


When the thing had first attacked him, he had prayed for death. He 
had prayed to die rather a lot over however long he'd been stuck in 
this suit. God hadn't been sitting by the phone, it seemed. The Devil 
hadn't been especially receptive either. None of the old gods had 
bothered showing up. Perun, the god of thunder and lightning, the 
one his wizened grandmother used to whisper about in front of the 
hearth, well, apparently he wasn't in a prayer answering mood 
either. When the second attack came, he finally gave up all hope of 
being rescued. /t had him now. 


That had been a long time ago. He had stopped praying to anything 
before long. 


After the praying had ceased, the screaming had started. He had 
screamed and screamed for days. Once, his throat had become so 
damaged that he had choked on his own blood. That had been the 
last time tears welled up in his eyes. For a moment, a brief, shining 
moment, he had hope, hope that he could finally die. He really 
should have known better. 


For what felt like weeks he begged himself, God, anything, to let him 
just die of dehydration, of starvation, of asphyxiation, anything. 
There was no way he could be alive anymore, not after floating in 
space without supplies for this long. Yet, he stubbornly remained 
breathing, breathing and suffering. 


Abruptly, the constant feeling of motion -the whistle of what air there 
was this high in the atmosphere rushing past his suit, the sharp tug 
of G-forces against his flesh- his only link to existence outside his 
suit, slammed to a halt. He knew what that meant. He knew all too 
well. It had come for him again. The pain arced through the same 
spot in his chest, just as it had before, time and time again. He 
screamed, this time in agony, not in fear or despair. Unbidden, his 
hands rose to his helmeted head. He knew it was useless, but he 
had to try anyway. His gloved fists pounded against the hardened 
dome. He never saw what menaced him, never knew what it was 
that tormented him. It didn't really matter. Knowing wouldn't change 


SCP-835, Uncensored 


NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND 
INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 


This document requires Level 4 Clearance and authorization for 
Need-to-Know under CODE TRITON VICTOR BLUE. If you do 
not possess the necessary security clearances, please close this 
document immediately and report the security breach to the 
Records and Information Security Administration. 


Thank you. 


— Maria Jones, Director, RAISA 


SCP-835 
Object Class: Keter 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-835 is to be monitored 
and checked daily for new growth. In the event SCP-835 becomes 
hostile, Suppression Tactic A-A6 is to be immediately implemented 
until aggressive action ceases. Containment area must be 
maintained in open ocean, due to the highly aggressive response of 
SCP-835 to confinement for any length of time. 


Waste issued by SCP-835 must be immediately collected and 
contained. Feeding of SCP-835 is to take place twice daily, to 
consist of any form of local aquatic species. Feedings should be 
supervised at all times, and no unscheduled feedings of SCP-835 
are to take place for any reason. Should SCP-835 enter a “rage” 
state, higher level mammals may be issued as a food supply, up to 
and including Homo sapiens. SCP-835 has shown high levels of 
docility when digesting higher level mammalian life, and 
recommendation for the issuing of this form of food has been 
approved for use during testing phases . SCP-835 may be moved to 


a thing. 


Oh but it was so much worse than before. Whatever the thing was, it 
had gotten much better at hurting him. He had stopped screaming 
long, long ago, but now he found his lungs being voided of air 
against his will, his vocal chords, scratchy from disuse, finding a 
purpose again. He screamed for an audience of one. No one but 
him heard. His fingers, so clumsy in the bulky suit, reached above 
him, to fight back, an involuntary response to the pain. He knew 
there was nothing there that he could touch. There never had been. 


His screams grew louder and louder as the pain spread through his 
entire body. His hands came back from their fruitless quest to beat a 
frantic tattoo against the glass of his helmet. It had to break. It had 
to. Something like desperation filled his heart, a diseased, atrophied 
cousin of hope. It hadn't broken before, but now it would. This time 
would be different. Death would come, death would free him. 


It didn't. The comforting rush of the vacuum, his last hope, didn't 
sound in his ears. The burning agony reached a new crescendo, 
and he felt fresh tears in his eyes, for the first time in so long. His 
efforts to break the helmet ceased, fingers instead scrabbling in 
what he knew was a futile effort to breach the pressure seals. Then, 
as quickly as it had appeared, the searing departed. He gasped for a 
long time. He couldn't bring himself to bother feeling relief. It would 
be back soon enough. 


Aleksei's breathing finally calmed back down. Once again, he stared 
at the misted over surface of his visor. It's not like it was anything he 
hadn't seen before. 


Epistula 


The following message was intercepted by a Foundation Special 
Intelligence Team in September of 2012. The original source has yet 
to be identified. 


To my Brothers and Sisters: 
Greetings, and the peace of God be with all of you. 


| have heard stories of disarray in our midst of late, and they have 
troubled me. This organization was meant to be a work of unity 
between our faiths, and yet we have begun falling back upon our old 
prejudices and ancient rivalries. Already we descend back into 
darkness and fear and fanaticism, running from the light of unifying 
truth. 


| hear of brothers fighting against brothers, of sabotage and lies, and 
worse, a brother sent to a pointless death in the hands of a group 
that is not even our enemy. Have we already stooped so low to 
become like the followers of the Machine, to spray our innards at the 
slightest provocation in so-called service to God? Am | to believe 
that we are no better than the fanatics? 


This madness cannot be allowed to continue. 


A fractured organization is no organization at all: rather, it is a horde 
of competing factions, too busy trying to wring the neck of their 
brothers to notice the enemy at their door. This cannot be allowed to 
continue as it has for these many long centuries. We must be 
strong, stronger than we have ever been. Was that not why we 
unified? To become stronger by aiding each other? 


The time for division is past. We are brothers and sisters in faith, 
followers and servants of the same God. Why then do we fight 
amongst ourselves? Do you hold on to your old ways so tightly? Are 
you afraid to let go? In the desert, we were as children, and we 


spoke as children, and so God spoke to us in words that children 
knew, in ways that children could understand. Now, we have grown, 
and we see the world through older eyes. We are prepared for the 
truths of adulthood. 


We three children of Abraham were given the truth of God, but it 
was given to us each in our different way. For each of us it has been 
worn and wearied by ages and the fleeting memories of man. It has 
been stained by the powerful and the corrupt, who desire 
reinforcement of their own beliefs rather than the knowledge of the 
truth that those beliefs sprung from. Through these relics, we may 
not simply protect and keep them in due reverence and weaken 
dangerous beliefs, we may also discover that truth that we have lost. 
It should not be that one man may discover an item or a passage 
that supports his preferred way of thinking, and then he discards the 
rest. Instead, all relics that may be truly Known as divine or related to 
the divine, even those that are challenging to our beliefs, must be 
considered. 


What we will discover will test us, and many of our number will 
retreat to the comfort of what we have been told that we know. 
Those who persevere will be shaken, broken, and reborn in glory. 


God spoke to humanity in the desert, and just now we are able to 
piece together His words. 


| hope that this message reaches wise ears, and if it does not, may it 
at least be the ears of an honest fool. 


Epitaph 


Dr. Iceberg wove his way down the hall on a makeshift I.V. crutch, 
with Dr. Gears limping alongside. Most of the security teams and 
cleaning crews had already passed, so they had the hall to 
themselves, which was probably for the best as neither was too 
stable. Iceberg had his hand clamped over his chest, and wheezed 
every few steps, flecks of blood dotting his tattered clothes. Gears 
stood straighter, but tipped hard to the right with each step, a slow, 
steady stream of blood leaking from a wound in his thigh on his 
tattered, scorched left side. They walked, two scorched, broken, 
bleeding men in an empty hallway, stumbling and weaving to the 
Infirmary and leaving small patches of blood and burnt material 
behind. The officer on the security cameras for that area took almost 
no notice, logging only “Doctors passed, injured.” 


The request form read “Application testing for possible military/ 
decommissioning via thermal and H.E. materials”. It should have 
read “Dr. Iceberg throws bombs at things”. Being as explosives, 
triplicate oversight reports, and chocolate bars were his three major 
passions, this shouldn't have been as bad an idea as it was. Things 
were going well while the conventional explosives were still being 
used, but when Dr. Iceberg started using his “home brew” devices, 
things rapidly started to go less well. Several explosions were 
forceful enough to receive complaints from Site Security, while the 
second-to-last device caused some major damage to the outside 
walls of the test chamber. 


However, much like throwing a football in the house next to a 
breakable vase, “blow things up” is a game that is fun right until the 
last time it's played. The last toss was an item labeled on the test 
manifest as a “Slowbomb’”. It seemed to be a dud at first, the wire- 
wrapped cube sliding harmlessly to a stop at the far end of the 
chamber. As the two men watched from what they felt was a point of 
safety, the device slowly started to distort, then rip apart, showing a 
white-hot mass of roiling plasma inside its structure. It expanded like 


a flower opening in a dream, moving an inch every ten or twenty 
seconds, a slow-motion explosion. It was as the rapidly swelling wall 
of flame started to march past the “safe beyond this point” line that 
Iceberg's manic grin started to fade. 


The next slice of time was hazy to both men. Dr. Gears was able to 
recall slightly more details, but most of it boiled down to flames, 
alarms, men in containment suits, and the strong smell of frying 
pork. Both were funneled out to triage, made capable of walking, 
then sent down to the infirmary under their own power. The Walk of 
Shame is a very different thing inside The Foundation, and Iceberg 
was especially glad that the hall was empty. Gears, as always, was 
impassive, and except for the bodily damage and limp, appeared 
basically unchanged from when he entered the testing room. As 
they approached the infirmary Iceberg wondered, for the thousandth 
time, if he really was some kind of robot. 


The infirmary admitted them with a minimum of notice, as they were 
dealing with the after-effects of a light bulb that, wnen powered up, 
emitted light that caused most bones to start to liquefy and extrude 
through the sweat glands. Neither of the two doctors were overly 
injured (by Foundation standards), so they quickly found themselves 
in hospital beds and nearly forgotten as the team rushed to deal with 
newer and stranger injuries.