There was no date or anything on the photo, but written on the back 
there was a hand-written note. It said “Montauk Monster. He was not 
alone.” | was shaking so bad | could barely read it. | locked all my 
doors and just sat, staring at the photo. When my phone rang, | 
screamed. Tore it out of the wall. | looked up the name on the back, 
the Montauk Monster thing, and found a bunch of photos of some 
weird, rotten thing that turned out to be a young beluga whale. My 
photo looked a litile similar... but ten times bigger, at least, and with 
amore... definite shape. | suddenly thought of the news articles dad 
had collected, and wondered when this photo on the net had 
appeared. It looked just enough like my photo to be able to say that 
someone was just “overexcited” when reporting the dimensions of 
the creature. 


| started getting more and more afraid, more paranoid. Who the hell 
had sent this? | hadn't talked to ANYONE in weeks, let alone shown 
anyone my work. On a hunch, | did some probing around the time 
dad vanished, seeing if anything turned up. If | hadn't been looking 
for it, I'd never have seen it. Thirty-two scientists and researchers 
vanished within three weeks, my dad included. Thirty-two. And 
nobody looked up on it. There were some vague mentions of police 
searches, appeals to the public to report sightings... and then 
nothing. Forgotten and pushed away. 


It suddenly hit me, like a bolt, that for someone to know all the things 
| knew, they would have to be watching me. And closely, like from 
inside my home. | suddenly looked around, at the ceiling, the walls, 
everywhere, growing horrified that someone... someone could be 
watching me. | tried to feel stupid about it, silly... then | remembered 
my clicking phone... the fire, and the photo in my hand. That's when 
| moved to the basement. 


I'm getting a new laptop tomorrow, when I'm on the road. 
Cryptography has always been an interest of mine... time to put it to 
the test. I've never really encrypted a laptop very hard before, and | 


know | don't have much hope against... well... whatever I'm up 
against, the government maybe? Still, | have to try. | have a friend 
who does audio and video analysis and such out in California, plus 
being on the move might make me feel a little less... vulnerable. | 
keep thinking of that fire at the storage place... how long would my 
home stay in the news? Would it even make it? 


| need to sleep. | feel numb and wrung out, empty. God, | hope 
nobody finds this next to my charred skeleton. 


Time to panic? 
Work Journal 3 


or turn back to sanity... 
Work Journal 2 


Work Journal 3 


Day 56 


Stressful few days. To say the least. I've had to sleep in the car for 
the last couple days. I'm apparently wanted for questioning in an 
arson case. Go fucking figure. Saw my face on the news a couple 
days ago, shortly after getting on the road, and I've been trying to 
keep a low profile. Doing the speed limit, staying off main roads, 
trying to gas up at night and/or at out-of-the-way stations. The 
paranoia has set in hard, and | think it's more a survival impulse 
than an annoyance at this point. Every car that follows me for more 
than a few miles, | start getting nervous about. 


| should hit... my friend's location before too long. God help me, | 
can't even trust this book anymore. Should... something... happen, | 
don't want to drag in anyone | don't have to. Then again, if “they” are 
as far-reaching as it seems, then it probably won't matter... but I'm 
still going to do all | can to stifle those efforts. Lord, listen to me. 
Work, yes? Though | think it's starting to slide from work to 
survival... 


So | did as much digging as | could on the road. Apparently the 
researchers who disappeared all worked in at least one theoretical 
field, some with even out-there papers on stuff like theorized alien 
biology, non-euclidean geometric formula... dizzying stuff. | tried to 
widen the search, and turned up some other weird stuff. There was 
a spike of disappearances and deaths about the same time as the 
researchers vanished. Law enforcement, private security, even army 
recruits...a wave of AWOL, KIA, MIA and sudden “retirements”. | got 
worked up, but... it's possible I'm reading too much in to this. Seeing 
faces in the clouds. 


| haven't been sleeping or eating, really. Just enough to keep me 
mobile. I'm exhausted, but it feels... distant. Removed. Like feeling 
pain when you're heavily drugged. It's... a little upsetting, but it's 
helpful for the time being. | do need to try and sleep. | was 


convinced a helicopter was following me not too long ago. It peeled 
off a while ago, but it was following the road | was on for nearly half 
an hour. It got pretty low... | didn't think they could do that. | didn't 
really see any markings... even the glass was tinted... 


Bah. Sleep. 


Day 57 


I'm panicking. My heart won't slow down, and | feel so twitchy. At the 
same time, | have this cold core inside that just keeps thinking... 


Ok, so | made it to my friend's place. He does audio-video analysis 
for various companies and even some government contracts. | 
met... that's not important. Anyway, | managed to snag him away 
and got him to look the picture over. He was kind of confused, but 
after he worked it over, he said that, while it's very strange, the 
picture itself hasn't been tampered with. It's a genuine image of a 
real object, but he was quick to say the setting itself may be the 
fake. | asked for any more information on it, and he said the film 
itself is rather old, but in good shape. It's some kind of army surplus 
stuff, no color but known for super-high contrast. It's still used in 
some sectors, but the military stopped using it twenty years ago. 


He couldn't pin down what kind of camera took it, but he said it's 
probably a modified military camera from around WWII. | asked him 
modified how, and he said that the marks and resolution, while 
consistent with the older camera, were irregular and more advanced 
in some ways. | asked him why people would be taking black-and- 
white photos in this day and age, and he kind of grinned at me. He 
said that black and white is less real, and more detailed. Less like 
real life, and more like a blueprint or a drawing. Some people like to 
use it to record things, while still keeping a degree of separation. 
Going by what was in the picture, assuming it's real... that makes 
sense. 


He said he needed to get back to the labs for a bit, but said he'd do 
some more tests, tell me anything else he could dig up. | went out 
and got a coffee. At least my face hasn't hit the news here yet. | 
keep waiting for it to show up on a TV, and people to suddenly start 


well as signals from various recorded media. 

3. The actors and roles may change upon repeat of the same input 
signal. 

4. Little is currently known about the beliefs of this group. Evidence 
suggests various Christian, Gnostic and New Age influences. The 
few writings recovered refer to a deity known as “The Light-Bringer,” 
“The Morning Star,” and “He-Who-Made-Light.” 


« SCP-718 | SCP-719 | SCP-720 » 


staring at me. | keep thinking every look, every glance is another 
one of “them”. I've started using that now, the great, paranoid “they” 
for... whatever it is that appears to be against me. 


It was a couple hours, and | started getting a little antsy. | headed 
back to my friend's office, and | felt very... cold. There was a gray 
van parked in front of his door. No marks, no sign... no license plate, 
tinted windows. | didn't even park in a space, just slammed the 
parking brake and started running. Nobody was around, front desk 
empty, no sound... but it reeked. It reeked of gas. 


| got upstairs and hit the door to the labs hard... God. He was there, 
part of his head blown away. He was slumped over a desk, a bunch 
of papers and bottles bashed around. There was someone over him. 
Black suit, gloves, a thing over his mouth... like a hazmat mask, but 
not over the whole face. He was sloshing gas all over everything. He 
looked up when the door opened, and we just stared at each other 
for a second. His eyes were so huge... it's like I'd walked backstage 
and caught an actor undressed. | don't know why, or how, but before 
| knew what was happening, I'd grabbed a bottle off a shelf near the 
door, and thrown it at him. | think it was developer or something... it 
smashed on his head, and he started screaming and screaming. 


leg 
| was scared. | didn't... | wasn't thinking clearly, I... 
| killed him with a pipe. 


It was sitting near one of the desks... | don't know what it was for. | 
just watched my hand pick it up, and then walk over to the man on 
the ground. His face looked so red, and bleeding... | think he was 
blind. | just... | knew, | couldn't leave him here. Even blind, he'd try... 
something, | don't know. | really don't know. It just... | hit him. Three 
times, and his head looked dented, and he stopped... 


God. 


The gas fumes were so bad, but | leaned down and went through his 
stuff. A wallet, couple cards, a phone, and two odd things. A little 
ear-piece he had in, that came out when I... anyway, it was tiny, pill 


shaped... it looked really odd. And a thin glass card, tucked ina 
padded, metal-plated sleeve. The fumes started making me really, 
really dizzy, so | headed out. As | was driving away, | heard some 
kind of dull thud. There must have been some kind of ignition timer 
or something. | drove for two hours, until | saw the bits of blood and 
hair on my hands, then | pulled over and threw up. 


Part of me is terrified, but | also feel... sharper. I'm not crazy... there 
is something going on. God help me, someone wants me dead. The 
wallet had a bunch of stuff. Almost a thousand dollars, cash, four 
different driver's licenses, two government IDs... no personal stuff. 
The earbud-thing | tossed out. Seemed too suspicious, even if it 
might be a contact to... whomever or whatever is after me. | almost 
tossed out the card, too, but it seems important to me. Laser-etched, 
it's rather pretty... more cut crystal than glass. There's a stylized bat 
on some kind of heraldry on one side, and the other has what 
sounds like the name for a law firm or something. I'm going to start 
digging tomorrow... assuming nobody blows up my car or anything. 
Ha ha. | half-think I've heard the name before... maybe on a funding 
application... 


Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd. 


The Coldest War 


The Foundation knows no ideology but containment. The rest of the 


world, on the other hand... 


The Tales 


The Woodvale Incident — "The radioactive wasteland that 
they're so scared of will be the Elysian Fields compared 
to what the United States will unleash." 


Voices Unassailable — "Here's what you have to keep in 
mind about the Cold War." 


Matryoshka — "A man, smiling and terrible, his hands 
reaching to strangle the life from her, each one of her 
lives coming to the same place. But it isn't death that he 
is after." 


Cleon — "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot!" 


Misnomer — "The bias is transparent for what is 
supposedly an apolitical organization." 


In the Shadow of a High Wall — "Twenty-Thirty knew we 
could never follow it over the Wall. We had to try and bag 
it then and there." 


Audio of War — "...may need to detonate the warhead 
prior to evacuation." 


SCP-2350 — is a weaponized memetic agent transmitted 
by sound that manifests as the idea of a swarm of 
mosquitoes. 


« SCP-2664 — "Once we were confident with our 
methodology, we began to look for children - more 
malleable and easily trained." 


¢ What the Spybird Saw — "You can't bring civilians on 
missions that officially don't exist." 


* They Will Leave Us With a Shaken Earth — "My beloved 
Dorothy, there is a whole new war here, a new type of 
war..." 


* SCP-2498 — "Listen very carefully. In the best of all 
worlds, | am twice-dead." 


* The End of History — 11/9/1989 


The Universe 


Introduction to the Canon 


Hello! Welcome to The Coldest War, a tumultuous landscape of 
subterfuge and violence set against a backdrop of clashing 
ideologies and the last embers of romanticism. Across forty years 
and seven continents, the Foundation struggles to keep the 
anomalous from bringing humankind even closer to destruction at 
the hands of overzealous ideologues. 


Before you jump in, read through what's been written so far to get a 
feel for the universe. Then, figure out how you want your piece to fit 
in with the rest of the collection. There's plenty of eloow room — 
Cold War lasted forty years and involved almost every country to 
various degrees, so don't feel you have to reference existing 
characters or events heavily just to be consistent. 


The stories of this canon cover the whole length of 1945 to 1989, 
and much is left to your discretion, though we ask that you add new 
events to the timeline in pencil — bear in mind that other writers may 
want to use the same countries and figures in their own tales. 


In such a period of great espionage, the governments involved 
developed extensive cultures of secrecy and obfuscation. The right 
hand won't always know what the left is doing, so don't worry about 
duplication of roles between, say, the African and Asian branches of 
the Foundation, and so on. That being said, the Coldest War is an 
interconnected world, so linking is highly encouraged! 


Our canon holds tremendous potential for growth and recurrence — 
a SCP captured by the Russians in 1962 may be unleashed as a 
powerful new weapon in 1986. As you write, consider what seeds 
you are setting, for yourself and others. This canon is about 
compromising principles, about the gap between politics and reality, 
and about the power of technology to overwhelm the intentions of its 
wielders. What would America do with the Foundation's resources, if 
it meant stopping Communism in Asia? How would the Foundation 
decide what to save and what to abandon to the superpowers? Just 
how wrong could all this go? 


Good luck, and enjoy your stay in the Coldest War! 


Writing for The Coldest War 


The Setting 


The ashes of Berlin have scarcely cooled when the wartime Alliance 
shakes itself apart. After alienating Stalin with crude threats at the 
Potsdam Conference, inexperienced President Truman can only 
watch as struggles of every scale and dimension spread from the 
mountains of Afghanistan to the jungles of Peru. Ancient ambitions 
and treasured grudges — not to mention the Communist/Capitalist 
squabble — are bubbling to the surface in Africa, Asia, and the 
Balkans. Millions are ensnared in the clash of ideologies or 
manipulate the warring powers to their own ends. 


World War Two dragged a reluctant world across the Rubicon. Nazi 
science may have led the charge in turning the supernatural into 
weapons, but their example has been picked up by numerous 
others. The leaders of the US and USSR have recognized the 


critical role to be played by what the Foundation calls the 
anomalous, and what the world knows as the parascientific. Though 
the cat is at best half out of the bag, there's no going back. 


Seeking to ride out the flood, and evade those who would loot the 
Foundation for the next great weapon, the Foundation has 
temporarily relocated the most sensitive and destructive of its assets 
to the non-aligned nations of the world — Egypt, India, and 
Indonesia — but enough has been left behind to set the 
superpowers down a very dangerous path. 


The Players 


The Foundation