The world | had left behind was the axle. All | had to do 
was spin. 


Rao opened my eyes, and the last thing he ever said to 
me was, "You see but a fragment of what | see, and now 
you know what must be done." And I, in my blindness, 
understood. 


"| love you," | said, and drew the knife across his throat. 
He fell into my arms. | dropped the knife. | felt an 
immediate sensation in my heart, as if the knife had 
stabbed into my own chest - in reflex, | cradled him and 
knelt, begged for forgiveness, caressed his still features 
as if | could mold life back into his very muscles, his very 
bones, but there was no turning back. The deed had 
been done. It was a bloodless deed. He did not bleed, 
because there was no blood left to bleed - only the 
corpse of a god. 


| killed him. The most beautiful soul | had ever known, 
and | had killed him with my own hands. God... 


| returned to the world of the living in a half-dead state. 
Ziegler surrendered ourselves to the site, and | spent 
three days in a medically-assisted coma as the medical 
staff flushed my system clean. | woke up cuffed to my 
bed. I'm sure the rest is recent history. 


Yes, | still have dreams. Other dreams. Dreams of me 
killing Rao. Dreams of Rao killing the world. Above all is 
the dream - no, the nightmare - of the wheel itself, 
turning, endlessly, with my life bound to its spokes, 
crucified and inseparable. We're all bound to the spokes, 
every single one of us. It's because we have to be. It's 
because there's no other way. Just thank whatever 
powers that remain that it is not our place to know the 


manner of our bindings, or the other bindings of our 
possible choosing - because Rao did, and we've paid the 
price for it. 


| shall declare nothing further. If the committee finds me 
guilty, | welcome the verdict with open arms. Ziegler 
turned us in, because he knew we had done nothing 
wrong. And | assure you, sirs and madam, that | will 
continue believing in that until the day | die. 


| hope this has been sufficient. | have nothing more to 
Say. 


> VIEW ATTACHMENT: EXTRANORMAL EVENT #B38261 
RELATED DOCUMENTATION 


Archived testimony from [REDACTED], Archival Department 
Manager, Liaison to the office of O5-5, dated 1991/02/15: 


It was Indian intelligence that did us in - the Research 
and Analysis Wing. An armed takeover of that magnitude 
and severity - who else could it have been? While the 
contents and exact locations of our sites were only 
known to our contacts within the Indian administration, 
the fact that the sites existed at all would have been the 
equivalent of common knowledge to Indian intelligence. 
If they had wanted to find us, it would have been a 
simple matter of tracing logistics and extrapolating from 
maps. But we were assured that they were under direct 
orders from then-Director Saxena himself not to interfere 
with our operations. Until then, they had had no incentive 
to do so. Then after Saxena came S. E. Joshi and Anand 
Verma, and that's when our troubles started. 


It was clear as day that we could not have kept 
SCP-2498 a secret from them forever. O5-5 promised 
delivery to the Indians in exchange for safe haven - but 


they must have known as well as he did that the project 
would not bear fruit beyond what he already suspected 
R&AW was capable of. Regardless, aiding parascientific 
research for non-destructive purposes fell well within the 
ethical guidelines of the Overseer Council. The creation 
of 2498 threw all of that out of the window. When it was 
obvious to us that the project could not continue as it did, 
we consolidated our records and fed our partners 
fabrications to keep them at bay. But Anand Verma was 
not a gullible man. He must have had known through 
other means, and that was when he decided to strike. 


The attackers were far from incompetent. | must once 
again stress the level of preparation and covert 
knowledge it took to plan an act like this. Firstly, they had 
known the nature of the site's contents, if only vaguely. 
They had known of its location and the movements of its 
key personnel. They had known of the layout of the site's 
rooms. To all of that, | also add the element of luck: a 
mere week or two later and we'd have finished moving 
the project out of the university entirely. 


Just as they were far from incompetent, so were we far 
from unprepared. We had contingencies in place for that 
day, and those contingencies were executed with 
flawless aplomb - but they simply weren't good enough. 
By the mid-1970s, our covert infrastructure had the 
capacity to send a reaction force to any site in distress 
within the hour, track the assailants, put them in the bag, 
and retrieve or neutralise any objects they might have 
taken. What we didn't count on was that in the case of 
Adjunct Site-2498, the men didn't matter. All that 
mattered was the plan. All they needed was half an hour 
to crash that plane - with no survivors. 


Extranormal Event Report #B38261: 


Date of occurence: 1988/08/17 


Location: Bahalwapur, Punjab region, Pakistan 


Description: After witnessing a demonstration of M1 Abrams tanks 
in Bahalwapur, Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-al-Hagq boarded a 
Hercules C-130b aircraft to return to Islamabad. On board this flight 
were 37 other passengers including close associates General 
Akhtar Abdur Rahman and Brigadier Siddique Salik; Arnold Lewis 
Raphel, the United States Ambassador to Pakistan; and General 
Herbert M. Wassom, the commander-in-chief of the US military 
effort in Pakistan. The flight departed from Bahalwapur Airport at 
1335 hours. 


At 1340 hours, the plane was enveloped in a column of light 
originating from the sun. It remained completely motionless for two 
minutes, after which the wings of the plane detached and the 
fuselage fell to the ground, still enveloped within the column of light. 
No human remains were ever found at the crash site. All passengers 
aboard were presumed killed. 


Follow-up actions taken: Though Foundation agents were unable 
to edit the memories of all witnesses involved, they were able to 
acquire and suppress all film records of the incident. The incident is 
publicised by international news sources as a non-anomalous plane 
crash undergoing investigation. Neither local nor international media 
ever reported the true nature of the incident, suggesting the 
presence of a parallel cover-up. 


Archived testimony from [REDACTED], Archival Department 
Manager, Liaison to the office of O5-5, dated 1991/02/15: 


Though the Geneva Accords were signed in April, 
Pakistan still maintained a sizeable stockpile of 
parascientific weapons courtesy of the United States, 
eager to arm their allies against the Soviets up north. 
General Zia's death changed all of that. The change of 
regime and souring of US-Pakistani ties after the crash 
led to the eventual withdrawal of the 388th Independent 
Special Company from Peshawar. Existing parascientific 
weapons soon proved difficult to maintain without outside 


expertise. Research hit a dead end. By the end of the 
following year, Pakistan's forays into weaponising 
extranormal phenomena had all but ceased. The 
Foundation moved in, just like we had with India - small, 
discrete sites, under chemical plants and garment 
factories - and cleaned up the mess. The remaining 
stockpiles of anomalous assets were eventually seized 
and destroyed. 


It was not an easy ride. Shortly after the plane went 
down, our covert sources immediately picked up on 
mention of the incident within NATO and Soviet 
intelligence - | tell you now that our Foundation had 
never been closer to complete confrontation with a 
military force than that one point in the war. Reagan was 
furious. Admiral Kelso was chomping at the bit. We at 
the office feared a repeat of El Dorado Canyon - even if 
India would be harder to bomb than a Libyan tent. But 
we had no idea when or how they would strike, we had 
no clue. To make matters worse, we had just learnt 
through our department's channels that the attack on 
2498 had rendered it all but neutralised. Meanwhile, 
unbeknownst to us, the USS Vincennes had received 
direct orders from Central Command to depart from the 
Andamans and encroach into Indian waters. For fifteen 
excruciating minutes in the Bay of Bengal, there were 
four Harpoon RGM-84 anti-ship missiles locked straight 
onto the INS Viraat, with a thousand men on board. God 
only knows what might have happened if they had armed 
and fired. It is nothing short of a miracle that Captain 
Rogers and his men made the choice that they did that 
day - never in my career in this office has it been more 
apparent that discretion, above all things, is the greater 
part of valour than all others combined. 


For most of the world, the war ended at Malta, where an 
embittered Bush made peace with weary Gorbachev, 
vowing never again to repeat the tragedies that had so 
defined the recent past. For us, the war ended in Cairo, 
as Directors Stillwell and Aktus negotiated our eventual 


return from exile. To identify the individual factors that 
led to these successes for peace is a business that | will 
leave to the historians of the new age; regardless, it 
cannot be doubted that the events of the time - the death 
of General Zia, the near-destruction of the Viraat, the 
bitter conclusion of the Afghan war, the GRU-P activation 
of 1984 - had presented the world with a general malaise 
that deeply pervaded both sides of the conflict. The world 
had seen leaders at their best, but overwhelmingly also 
at their worst. Parascientific weaponry had laid bare to 
mankind the terror that lay at the heart of war. Faced 
with its sins, war-fatigued America had no choice but to 
back down. Perhaps the incidents in India had something 
to do with it. Speaking as one of the few who have had 
the privilege of the regional theatre's front-row seat, | like 
to think that it had. 


Do | believe the testimony of Jocasta Simos? | don't 
know if | do, at least in its entirety - but | believe that she 
acted in good faith. Did she do the right thing? Perhaps 
her actions did play a part in saving the world from full- 
blown occult war. Or perhaps they didn't, and she'd 
destroyed one of the most powerful anomalous assets 
that we've ever harnessed in the history of our 
organisation. | don't know, and | don't think we ever will. 


And | think, all things considered, that that is for the 
better. 


« They Will Leave Us With a Shaken Earth | Hub | The End of 


History » 


Footnotes 
1. GONDOLA WISH was the first civilian-military joint research 


programme initiated by the DIA and the Stanford Research Institute 


in 1977. Its purpose was to investigate and reproduce the 
phenomenon of remote viewing for use in ANINT (anomalous 


upsetting the population of D  . However, if [REDACTED] fails, the 
city is to be put under a Level- lockdown. Attempts to maintain any 
pretense that Dis not being closely monitored will be discontinued. 
As it is a relatively small town, the process of [DATA EXPUNGED] 
ought to go smoothly. 


-Dr. 


LEVEL 5 SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED: Recently, a 
researcher who has a notable history of [REDACTED] noticed an 
odd distortion in a picture of SCP-279. After considerable 
concentration, the doctor was able to see a similar distortion in all 
files depicting SCP-279. 


Dr. then discovered an effective method of [REDACTED] an 
extremely elaborate and convoluted process, after considerable 
time, [REDACTED] was able to achieve the desired effect. 


An extremely subtle memetic hazard had affected SCP-279 and 
nearly all examinations it was involved in. Since then, SCP-279 has 
been confirmed to be decidedly not human. DNA re-testing is 
impossible due to the nature of SCP-279, but it appears to be 
[REDACTED] 

[REDACTED] testing confirmed that Agents claimed to be grasping 
SCP-279's arm when, as viewed with the aid of Dr. __'s methods, 
the Agents’ arm appeared to be [DATA EXPUNGED] up to the 
elbow in [REDACTED] is unknown. [REDACTED] researchers were 
reminded that despite the admittedly unsavory aspects of allowing it 
to interact with civilians, [DATA EXPUNGED] use of Foundation 
resources, coupled with the fact that very little is known of 
SCP-279’s motives, requests to evacuate D have been denied 
along with requests to [DATA EXPUNGED] 

Researchers are reminded to maintain a professional calm. 


As per mutual agreement, the Containment Procedures regarding 
SCP-279 have been updated. Agents tasked with monitoring 
SCP-279 have not been informed of its nature, as the information 


intelligence) and ANPSYCH (anomalous psychology) operations, 
following their breaking off from existing PASR (parascientific 
research) and PASD (parascientific deployment) departments. 


« SCP-2497 | SCP-2498 | SCP-2499 » 


SCP-2499: Harmony of the Spheres 


Item #: SCP-2499 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: Given SCP-2499’s location, 
physical containment of the anomaly is considered impossible. 


All global observatories capable of monitoring SCP-2499 are to be 
infiltrated. Any observations of SCP-2499 from these observatories 
should be explained under the de Bort protocol. Should any outside 
personnel persist in their belief of SCP-2499’s anomalous 
properties, limited use of Class-M amnestics is approved in order to 
maintain operational security. 


Primary containment of SCP-2499 consists of monitoring the 
anomaly for any changes in the established pattern of movement. In 
addition, the 400 GHz radio frequency should be under constant 
monitoring for renewed transmissions. 


Description: SCP-2499 is the designation for an extrasolar anomaly 
located approximately 13 parsecs (42.4 lightyears) from the Earth. 
Visually, the anomaly resembles a group of 14 Cepheid variable 
stars! and possess regular periods of higher and lower luminosity. 


The anomaly itself (sub-designated SCP-2499-1 through 
SCP-2499-14) does not exhibit normal properties of stars. Notably, 
the 14 instances are spatially divided into 7 groups, with each group 
featuring 2 stars that move in a manner similar to that of binary 
stars.2 Two of the instances, SCP-2499-1 and SCP-2499-2, are 
noted to be larger than the rest of the instances. 


The pulsation periods of SCP-2499 instances resemble that of RV 
Tauri Class II Cepheids.3 Higher luminosity periods last for roughly 
36 months, followed by 96 months of lower luminosity periods. 
Given that most pulsation periods are far more frequent, the 


extremely long and infrequent pulsation periods of SCP-2499 were 
what brought the anomaly to Foundation attention. 


Upon further investigation, it was found that pulsation periods 
corresponded with a series of seemingly erratic changes in position 
of the anomaly itself. This anomalous movement led to SCP-2499’s 
designation, and also prevented Foundation astronomers from 
properly calculating SCP-2499’s distance from the Earth, due to the 
irregular stellar parallax of the anomaly itself. 


Monitoring of SCP-2499 has established the following pattern of 
movement for SCP-2499 instances during the pulsation periods of 
the anomaly. In all, there are 7 main stages of SCP-2499’s pulsation 
period. 


Stage Number Characteristics 

Stage 1 SCP-2499 instances demonstrate 
the second highest luminosity in 
this stage, at 2.89 on the 
apparent magnitude luminosity 
scale. The movement of all 
instances can be traced ina 
repeating pattern of assorted 
geometric shapes, such as figure 
eights, squares, and circles. 
SCP-2499-1 and SCP-2499-2 are 
always the first pair to begin 
movement in this manner. The 
average velocity of the anomaly in 
this stage is 400 km/s.