* SCP-907-D: Terrestrial planet approximately 3 times Earth’s 
mass, orbiting a K-class star. A trace atmosphere of carbon 
dioxide and nitrogen is present, as well as a single moon. 
While liquid water is present, the environment is self-sterilizing 
due to severe ultra-violet radiation from the planet’s sun. 


Lt. Moroz interrupts my listening. 


"Hey, Lemur, wake up, or you're gonna freeze. We don't have the 
equipment to ford the river. Plan B is to move south along the 
banking. Get your whistle out and make your chicks lay a road for 
us." 


My lips and fingers are numb. Maybe it's the cold, maybe it's fear. 
Eventually | get the right melody out of the copper flute and "chicks" 
happily start terraforming, making the destroyed dock ravel out, 
paving the way for us. 


"Cool," says the lieutenant in a deep voice. "Can they conjure me a 
fire? | wanna smoke, badly, and I'm out of matches." 


KKK 


Memories are fading, melting like ice. | can no longer remember how 
we got out. Only the most recent memories remain. Rebuilding Kiev 
took about nine months. People got their share of sights to see, 
including SCPs used in construction. My "chicks" were there as well, 
saved through very serious effort. People saw a lot of miracles, but 
now it's time to bid the miracles goodbye. 


"Why do we need this?" | ask, nodding towards the plane passing 
above. A contrail of amnestics is spreading behind it. "Why do we 
need everyone to forget? Maybe it would be better if they were 
prepared next time?" 


"It wouldn't" grumbles the lieutenant. He's irritated, he wants to take 
the hazmat suit off and get a smoke. "It would not. People are not 
meant to know about things like that." 


"Why not? We do know, after all." 


"We are cleared to know, Aurevoir. That's why we work for the 
Foundation - we are eligible. But you have no idea how many 
jackals are around." 


"Jackals?" 


"Twenty-five percents of people, maybe more. The very people we 


are supposed to save. There are those who'd burn their mothers 
alive so as not to be hurt themselves. Should they know about such 
a threat, they'll start fearing. Start thinking that humans are doomed 
to fail. They will try to appease the victor. Will cooperate with the 
enemy, worship it, make sacrifices... We had stuff like that dozens 
of times already. Heard about the 'Moloch'? 089 or something. It's a 
memento from a cult like that. And do you know how many traitors 
were caught this time?" 


Of course | knew. They will have new memories implanted, 
corrected versions of the murders they committed. And recruited to 
Class D, along with the marauders. We too will have to "forget" 
about something. About the "Bookworm Project" for example. This 
information is usually meant for oh-fives, but we were given a 
temporary clearance. After we provide cooperation, our memories 
will be erased. Right now there are myriads of invisible creatures 
bred in the Foundation's labs. It is said they are some kind of "Fred" 
clones modified with SCP-410 genes, SCP-732 memes and 
something else. | don't know how incorporeal creatures can be 
cloned, or how memetic units can be combined with living creature 
genes, but these quick, almost sapient creatures work excellently. 
They infiltrate books and clean up history. They turn historical facts 
into myths, redraw geographical charts. And, having fulfilled their 
program, they die. 


KKK 


Last pieces of memory have dissolved in the fog. Now the fog will 
clear and my own mind will fill in the blanks. Maybe I'll read the fake 
diary that | recently wrote, saying that nothing out of ordinary 
happened. That's the trick with amnestics - they make a human 
mind seek false memories, and people gladly believe whatever our 
specialists tell them through mass media. Something is hard to 
forget, but that's what fiction is for, for a person to think "that's what | 
saw in a horror movie". Even the deaths of close relatives is eagerly 
justified, and two different minds come to a mutual agreement, 
having discussed the death in question. 


| gladly took the amnestics. | had the option to selectively erase 
parts of memory, but I'd rather not remember anything - the privilege 
of my pay grade. Soon, | will believe, like the rest of the world, that 


the Earth only has six continents and seven billion people. Walking 
around my hometown | will remember that this cavity near the 
House with Chimaeras was always there, that the Chain Bridge was 
destroyed in 1920s and that there were only three subway lines 
built. A couple of minutes more and | will know that it's not 19th of 
November 2014 but 22th of December 2012. And in the end of 
March I'm going to wonder why it still snows like February. 


| am almost sure that 21st of December 2012 was a regular 
weekday which | spent composing an utterly boring year report, 
swallowing coffee by the liter, melting at my skips' shenanigans and 
telling my lab assistant jokes about "those unwashed Mayas fooling 
the whole world with their Apocalypse". 


Merrily, Merrily, Merrily 


The smothering ennui of an awkward situation cannot stand in the 
face of an onrushing waterfall. One moment, they had been boating 
calmly along the Bresque. Papa sat at one end of the boat, stroking 
the river with his paddles. Chantrell leaned against the other end 
and thought of their room at La Relais, mostly empty, like her room 
at his house. Cascade Sillans had surged up on them, like a squirrel 
up a tree. We should not yet be upon the cascade, Papa had said, 
glancing over his shoulder. She had taken an oar to help fight the 
current, not that her arm was any match for his. 


The next moment, they were sailing over the cascade and the park 
below in defiance of gravity. The river rose up into the air like a clear 
ribbon. Don't stop rowing, Papa said, and Chantrell tried not to think 
about how fearful he sounded. 


The river twinkled, lifting them up and up, the Provengal countryside 
disappearing below. She thought of hot air ballooning in the Loire. 
Such outings made a broken family seem so small, so insignificant. 
Her problems fit inside an empty house; they were nothing 
compared to the size of a country, or even a département. When 
Céte d'Azur came into view, she stopped thinking and started 
rowing. 


Don't look down, she said. Papa nodded, mute. 


They climbed into a sky colder than the Bresque's summer alpine air 
but did not shiver. Water drained from the river, to be replaced by 
stars. Soon, they paddled on nothing but a shining road paved in 
night. Papa stopped rowing and leaned back in his seat, wiping a 
hand over his brow. He chanced a look behind them. 


There's the Earth, he said, as though this had been their destination 
all along. 


Chantrell's eyes grew and grew as she looked around. 


The star-river carried them smoothly past a red planet and a band of 
small rocks floating in the blackness. The spheres passed them in 
seconds. Papa, grinning, pointed up, and Chantrell nearly leapt from 
the boat as a comet flashed by overhead. She could not keep from 
smiling as they sailed past Jupiter's red spot and the rings of Saturn. 


Out, out into the blackness the river flowed. They left the confines of 
what little they knew about the solar system through a kaleidoscope 
of tiny crystals that tickled their cheeks. The blackness glowed and 
warmth suffused them. Chantrell, steps unsteady, moved to sit by 
Papa, and he wrapped an arm around her as they watched outer 
space unfold. 


A school of kite shapes made of green gas floated past them like 
fish. The smallest one broke off, looping around and around the 
boat. Chantrell reached for it, and her fingers passed through, 
leaving them pleasantly cool. 


The kite pumped its wings to rejoin its school, when from their right, 
a sinuous ribbon, long as a wish, darted across their prow and into 
the kites. A soft, wide mouth opened at its far end. The kites made 
tinkling sounds and veered away from it, escaping its bite. Chantrell 
cheered and clapped, and Papa shouted like he was watching a 
football match. They stilled when the ribbon abruptly altered course, 
breaking against a looming behemoth. They peered up at it, and it 
took their breath away. 


A human heart larger than a planet drifted beside the river, serene 
as it was majestic. It pulsed with yellow light, both cold and warm at 
the same time. A second joined it, and a third. They pirouetted over 
the boat in a Gordian dance, and Chantrell and Papa exchanged 
smiles at the whalesong they made. 


Walls of stars parted before the hearts. Through lenses made of 
pure, bent light, a myriad of suns stretched out across the universe. 
They glowed in reds and pinks and blues and greens and yellows, in 
ones and dozens and hundreds, a rainbow of incandescent 
welcome coruscating across creation. 


In a patch of black sky, a large spot lurked, even darker than the 
surrounding space. From the blackness a line of ghost light emerged 


and widened to become an eye rimed in crimson, with a pupil the 
shape of across. It turned toward them, and for an instant, their 
blood chilled. 


A constellation of tiny sparkles spun from the center of the pupil. 
They whirled into lines like neon tubing, red and blue and green. The 
bottom lid of the eye curved upward, the neon lines formed into a 
four-fingered hand, and it waved to them as it watched them pass. 
They laughed and knelt against the boat, waving back as though the 
eye were the conductor of a passing train. As they moved beyond it, 
the hand turned back into sparkles and the eye slowly closed, 
leaving that section of sky perfectly dark once again. 


Presently, their travel slowed. The river intersected with another, 
and another, and still another, each bigger than the last and all 
shimmering with more lights in a single drop than could be counted 
in a lifetime. At the center of the confluence stood a headless titan 
made of stardust. The hearts seemed as mice as they skittered from 
it. 


In the giant's hand was a galaxy. Chantrell gripped Papa's shirt 
tighter as the giant brought the galaxy down upon a black hole with 
unfathomable power, casting a spark as big as the Sun. Planets 
shot from the collision, flakes of metal from a blacksmith's hammer. 
Again and again, the galaxy slammed into the black hole, throwing 
off suns and planets that soared to all reaches of the cosmos. 


As time moved on, they relaxed. Though the giant's appearance and 
the primordial fury of its craft had startled them, the continual soul- 
shaking thump of those mammoth blows worked its way into their 
beings, a rhythm born from God Himself. It was soothing and 
enlightening and they felt at one with reality, as no two humans had 
in thousands of years. 


After a few more strikes, the giant wiped the back of its free hand 
across its shoulders and turned to them. The hand raised toward 
their boat and, with a flick of its fingers, created a wind that would 
have reduced an ocean to steam in a heartbeat. Yet it only sent the 
boat sailing back the way it had come. 


Faster, ever faster the little boat travelled back down the river of 


starlight, and never once did it jounce. Galaxies, stars, and planets 
passed by in the blink of a thought. Down, down to the little blue and 
green ball they hurtled. That ball grew, encompassed their field of 
vision, subsumed their every thought. 


Beneath its waters, they sank. 


They broke the surface, still in the boat, to the roar of the falls 
behind them and the confused cries of a tourist before them. 


Hey, what're y'all doin’ out thar? he shouted. Had they paid his 
words any attention, they would not have understood them. 


They embraced, laughing, checking themselves and the boat and 
the river and the cascade, and finding all wet but otherwise as it 
should be. 


Did that really happen? asked Papa, laughing like a child and wiping 
tears from his eyes. 


Yes! said Chantrell. Vanished was the ennui, the awkwardness, the 
knowledge that each of them was trying very hard to do something 
neither knew how to do. In its place was the sense of a fading dream 
that had felt more real than the wood beneath them. 


She said, breathless, | shall never forget that, Papa! 
Whatever it was, he said, neither shall |. 


When the townsfolk of Sillans-la-Cascade pulled them and their boat 
from the lagoon at the base of the cascade, they were laughing still. 


Message of the Relic 


SCP- Observation Log 

Forward: A total of _ transcriptions have been made from SCP- 
Each has resulted in similar narratives in the subject's native 
language, using vocabulary appropriate for their education level. 
The following notes were written as they were perceived by Dr. 
Begin Log: 

Dr. (spoken): SCP- has begun to [DATA EXPUNGED]. 
Taking it in my hand, | feel the same compulsion reported by 
D-1589. Memetic precautions are in place, and | will now proceed to 
write as directed by the object. 

Dr. (written): 


There were so many against us. So many lies from so 
many liars. The non-believers argued with us, they 
taunted us, they laughed at us. It never stopped. My 
family grew smaller and smaller as the years went by. 
Those of us who remained dedicated were becoming 
fewer and fewer. Everywhere we looked, the temples 
were closing and the dear followers of The Gods were 
abandoning the faith. The endless hordes of putrid 
faithless, reveling in their blasphemy, assaulted our very 
essence. Their existence was an insult to the Divine. But 
we are not unreasonable people. While the heathens 
chanted their propaganda of "progress", we raised no 
hand in anger. The faithful knew that, in time, it would be 
Their hands raised in anger against the vile ones. And 
this would be all the justice our battered community 
could hope for. But the Elders knew that time was 
running out. The Truth was clear to some of us, but it 
had begun to fade in others. 


The strident grew older, and the younger ones were 
being seduced by the heathen filth. The heathens took 
credit for the "miracles" of science and technology, and 


the young ones believed them. It is through The Gods 
that all miracles are possible. It was through Them that 
our solution was made possible. 

Praise be to They who are Divine, for granting us reprise 
from the heathens! Damned are they in their ignorance! 
Those with the financial means to make a difference 
looked to us, the Elders, for guidance. Surely, said the 
faithful, there must be a haven. Our prayers were many 
and desperate but our faith held strong. Finally, we were 
granted a vision of our blessed future. A paradise 
awaited us! Our children would finally be free from the 
barrage of filth the non-believers tried to visit upon them. 
The stench of moral decay could not follow us to our new 
home. 


The faithful of means had discovered a place of safety, 
and the arrangements were made. The heathens agreed 
to leave us alone forever. Never would their feet, their 
words, or their signals get to us. Their lies would never 
reach our new home. And as we claimed our new land, 
free of the tyranny of the heathens, we destroyed 
everything that might remind us of that terrible past. We 
destroyed everything but this. This Holy record is for you, 
my dearest descendant. May it be passed on to each 
High Elder in turn, so that our final struggle for paradise 
might not be forgotten. May our kind live out all of our 
days in Holy isolation on this beautiful new world. 


All glory be to The Gods, for ever and ever. 


Metafiction 


Dr. Northrop scratched his ear nervously, and tried not to wonder 
whose mannerism he was imitating.