There's some music playing. Over from Chibi's phone plays some 
song or another, irrelevant to the goings-on of right now. It's 
probably something from one of the few aloums she has, because 
Chibi isn't too well-versed in music. It's what happens when one 
stops driving a car and having the radio on, and Chibi hasn't driven 
a car on the regular since junior and senior year of high school, 
driving to and from school. Chibi scans the document and erases a 
few passages, unimportant to the task at hand. 


"Quite a lot that's not important..." 


Indeed, there is. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't quite 
mean much what exact document Chibi Yamagusuku is typing in at 
the moment, nor does the specific music being played from her 
phone, or what kind of phone it is (an iPhone 6, for the curious), or 
the fact that Chibi is wearing socks that are a different shade of 
black and not quite a pair except that they do look almost the same 
when one is rushing and yanks open the socks drawer at 8:02 am 
with the lights off and the curtains closed. Speaking of the time, 
Chibi glances at the clock; it's 9:49 am at the moment. This doesn't 
quite matter either, the specific hour and minute alignment of this 
moment. 


The document, however, is exorbitantly long, and Chibi spins the 
scrolling wheel on his mouse with a flick of the middle finger. It 


makes a Satisfying whirling noise, although the screen only scrolls a 
few pages and doesn't go flying down to the bottom. 


"How long is this gonna go on?" 
For as long as it will. 

"Do you have any idea?" 

Who knows? 

"You're the one writing it." 


This is true. But none of this does have any meaning unless given 
such; the lengthiness of the document serves to guide into this 
section, but the exact page number or word count has no such 
meaning. 


"You're still talking in your narrator voice. You're no third-person 
narrator right now." 


Am | not the same third-person narrator you are? 
"Nah." 

Oh. 

"What are you doing here, anyway? I'm a bit busy." 


You're only as busy as is convenient for me; | might be bound by 
what readers find plausible or a reasonable suspended disbelief, but 
| only need to make you busy to fit my needs. 


"| could absolutely just blank this document on my screen right now 
if | wanted to." 


Sure, you could. You've always had that bit of power. But | need to 
write more for your sake. You know how things are. I'm driven by my 
need to write, and you're driven by whatever you say you want to do 
while I'm thinking about you. Stay away from that bit of 
characterization, no | said put that down you fuck never did work on 
you. 


"Or any of the others." 


Right. Ghost was always especially bad at that, too. But you're the 
author avatar, you're going to be a bit more bound to me than the 
others. 


"Does that mean you'll be more amenable to not throwing me to the 
wolves?" 


| don't intend to throw any of my characters to the wolves. But you 
have the unfortunate property of being me, just with all the 
modifications that come from being a Foundation junior 
psychologist. 


"You don't like psychology anymore. Why did you never change 
that?" 


Perhaps you wouldn't have lost interest in it. 
"Hmm. Too much suspension of disbelief there, but sure, whatever." 


We're straying from the original point. Like | said, you're the author 
avatar, and I'm always going to be a little more personally obliged to 
not go as wild with you as much as the others. 


"Does this not count as 'go as wild?" 

No. 

"Do you like me?" 

Much more than | like myself. 

"That's a paradox." 

It really isn't. Maybe it would be more accurate to say | envy you? 
"That doesn't make much sense either." 

Hmm. 


"Yeah, hmm." 


Was there something you wanted to ask of me? You don't come 
poking at me to write something like this. Despite your claims of 
busy-ness, you prompted this yourself. 


"Can't you love yourself a little more?" 

Excuse me? 

"Okay, that joke failed. Sorry. Yourself as in me. | was being witty." 
Insinuating that | don't really like you already? 


"Just like- all of you. All of us. | know what you've got in store for us. 
And | know it makes for some good storytelling, and you need good 
storytelling for us to even stay here in the first place, but, y'know. 
You don't like constant pain and suffering in stories. You don't have 
to write all of that for everything you write to be successful. You've 
made a small name for yourself off of writing happiness." 


In a massively different context with a massively different readership 
and a massively different level of expected quality. 


"So? You don't think people like that don't read this too?" 
I'm in the business of misery, | feel like. 

"Do you like it?" 

No. 


"Then don't write misery, you stupid asshole. Everyone else has that 
covered. You've never really written misery anyway." 


| know | don't. | don't write good misery. 

"Gee, wonder why." 

Suspension of disbelief can only go so far though, you know. 
"I'm just saying," Chibi says, spinning around once in their rolling 


chair before catching himself on the desk and going back to typing 
something away on her keyboard. "We appreciate the nice things 


but it has a less pronounced effect on titanium, no effect on acid- 
resistant glass and [DATA EXPUNGED]. This substance displayed 
the ability to destroy teeth, bones, hair, nails, clothing, jewellery, and 
some kinds of equipment in under an hour. 


SCP-906 is predatory and highly aggressive: when hungry, it will 
swarm over any living creature within its path and coat them in its 
acidic secretion, thereby breaking down the matter into a liquid 
slurry which it then consumes. Attempts to remove or disturb 
SCP-906 during its feeding have proved fruitless. When a 
designated prey is nearby, SCP-906 will alter its form into that of a 
flowing "carpet" and move across any surface in order to pursue its 
target until the prey is captured. Due to the small width of SCP-906 
component organisms (two (2) centimeters wide), barriers will only 
slow its advance. Obstacles that cannot simply be passed will be 
destroyed by the acidic substance SCP-906 secretes. SCP-906 has 
also displayed the ability to take alternate routes to reach its prey 
such as drainage pipes and ventilation shafts. 


Through methods currently unknown, SCP-906 appears capable of 
mimicking animal like sounds and "parroting" human speech in what 
is described as "a raspy, hoarse voice" while in its humanoid form. 
SCP-906 appears to use this ability to lure prey into areas that are 
difficult to escape, such as deep pits or maze-like corridor networks. 
Eyewitness reports from containment breach 906-2-10-01A detail 
SCP-906 "taunting" prospective victims and even emitting a sound 
"something like laughter" before attacking its prey. This behaviour 
suggests a kind of rudimentary sentience, but it is unknown how a 
creature comprising several thousand individual organisms is able to 
achieve this. 


SCP-906 specimens, when removed from the larger "body", will 
attempt to move back toward the central mass and have been 
known to dissolve through any obstacles in their way. It should be 
noted that individual specimens do not show the same level of 
navigation skills as the full superorganism. Specimens of SCP-906 
have the ability to reconstruct into multiple versions when damaged 
in a similar manner to common earthworms, i.e. splitting one 
SCP-906 specimen resulted in each half growing into separate 
organisms. 


too. 


The screen flashes for a moment, then blanks the text document 
entirely. Chibi pushes three keys, leaving a heart on the page. 


Medical Seminar 


So you've all been selected to be doctors for the Foundation. Heads 
of your fields and all of that. Well, I'm here to tell you that none of 
that matters. Here, you're just one of the rest. We have on staff over 
nine hundred and seventy four doctors among the eight primary 
sites alone. Why so many? They're necessary. The Foundation 
racks up a body count like it's going out of style, and it's your job to 
get that number as close to zero as you can, while not getting 
yourself wiped off this rock. 


My name? Doctor Christopher Zartion, MD. Yes, | know you've all 
got your MDs, and probably a few PhD's. You're all world renowned 
surgeons and pathologists et cetera. | don't care, and neither do 
your superiors. You're here to do a job, and to be honest, it's going 
to suck. 


The good news: The forefront of medicine? It's here. Right here. 
This is the place where you'll work on superviruses, strains of 
staphylococcus that would make your head explode, and viruses 
and bacteria which you'd never heard of before. We work with 
technologies and methods of treatment that are deemed too 
dangerous, and too experimental. If you think you can't handle that, | 
suggest you leave now. 


What? Hey— What are you doing?! Sit back down. That was a joke. 
This isn't voluntary. 


What you'll see here is going to make or break you, in some cases 
quite literally. Now | know you're probably wondering what I'm 
getting at, but | can't tell you. If | told you, in some cases, you'd risk 
exposure right there. I've been working here for less than five years, 
and I've seen pathologies that would make you shudder to think of it 
happening to you, or even any other human being. 


That being said, it's going to be your job to log all of what you see, 
so that it doesn't happen to your teams, and your friends in the 


containment division. Believe me, they'll be your friends. You'll 
certainly have to patch them up enough. Yes, Doctor? Of course 
you're expected to keep accurate records. See this? This is a 
standard case file for a D-class that the research staff were 
exposing to one type of virus. You'll notice it's over eighty pages 
long. That's from one experiment. We perform hundreds in a given 
month. It should be noted that paper copies are only kept for 
experiments that are deemed too vital to be left to electronic 
storage. So you write up this extremely meticulous log, and you 
might be given a one line mention about the results in a distilled 
format on the database. Sucks, but it's what happens. It's your job, 
and you don't get to call out. 


The D-class. You're going to feel bad for the D-class, you really are. 
They're all terrible people, but they're still people. You'll patch up the 
spine snappings, and the lacerations of the throat. You'll remove 
rock candy from mucus membranes, and send them back to have it 
done to them again. This is horrifying, yes? No, it's your job now. 
The Foundation runs on, whether we like it to or not, and we are the 
ones who keep it on its feet. Not the researchers, not even the 
containment staff. We do. Without us, everything would go to hell 
around here. 


We have, in containment, right now, several viruses that if 
unleashed on the world, wouldn't be an epidemic situation. It would 
be pandemic, guaranteed. I'm sure some of the pathologists here 
would be assigned to researching them, and developing 
countermeasures. Of course it goes without saying that all those 
procedures you learned back in medschool about cleanliness and 
disinfecting go double while you're here. Hell, some of those won't 
work either, so you'll have to follow the containment procedures for 
the specific object you're working with. 


The best case scenario for you who will be working in actual 
medical? Severe lacerations, or bullet wounds. Hopefully it's only 
physical trauma. God help you if something infectious gets in to your 
lab. Some of you might even be assigned to site resident shifts, and 
get it easy. Keep in mind researchers aren't as scrupulous about 
disinfecting after experiments as we are. You'd be amazed what 
passes under your microscope. 


Maybe if you get a little less lucky, you'll deal with someone whose 
arm spontaneously exploded. Then you'll have to report what 
exactly the patient is going through, secondary symptoms, etc. If 
you're assigned in a research capacity rather than called in to treat 
the injury, your first job is to report anything that is off, or anomalous 
about the trauma. That's your job now, the patient comes second. If 
you're kind of lucky, you'll deal with someone whose blood is boiling 
out of his eyes as you speak to him. These are standard cases, of 
known SCP's. These aren't fabrications to scare you. 


What if you're not lucky? You become the patient, doctor. 
Something gets out, gets inside of you, and we study you. 


Let me give you two major pieces of advice. 


One, we're here to treat, to heal, and to do as we're told. 
Sometimes, that might involve breaking the Hippocratic oath. 


Oh sit down, | know, first do no harm. This, however, is the 
Foundation. If anything gets out, it's more than the patient who will 
suffer. Remember, we're responsible for the lives of countless 
thousands. If one has to suffer for it, they will. Besides, if you don't 
do as you're told, you'll probably end up in front of an inquiry. 


Two, if the patient is violent, or carrying something; don't try to 
contain it yourself. Call a containment team immediately. Don't risk 
your own life. We have precious few doctors now, and believe it or 
not, training a doctor takes more resources than the Foundation is 
generally willing to expend without a damn good reason. For those 
of you who thought joining the Foundation turned you into Doctor 
House, or James Bond, think again. You're here to do a job, keep 
that in mind at all times. 


For those of you who work outside of medical, assisting in the field, 
keep your heads down. Yeah, you with the Bill Nye bowtie. Of 
course you'll be in danger. You could get shot at, exposed to a 
memetic hazard, anything. The idea is to keep your head down, 
follow the instructions of the field agents, and try to come back in 
one piece. 


Yeah, you with the— Is that a top hat? Why in the hell are you 


wearing a top hat? Never mind. You're all dismissed, try not to get 
yourselves maimed on your first week. | don't want to see any of you 
in the medical bay. 


Mementos 


It was a simple, plain-looking door with the words "Archival Storage" 
on a faded plastic plate next to it. Some wag had put up a hand- 
written sign reading "FreeBay" underneath it, aping the logo of a 
famous online auction house. Even that sign had turned sepia with 
age, its corners curled and its ink bleached by the light. 


She knocked on the door, and was greeted with a pleasant, "Come 
in!" in a voice with an odd accent she couldn't place. The door stuck 
a bit, and she had to give it a solid thump before it opened. 


Sitting cross-legged atop a steel desk was a tall man with olive skin 
and short, curly black hair. An ancient symbol that looked like it 
could have been made with a reed stylus on clay glowed faintly on 
his brow. His hands shone like polished steel, and thousands of tiny, 
intricately interlocking servos were visible through the gaps at the 
joints. 


She gulped in surprise. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered. "| must have 
the wrong roo-" 


"Please, do not worry," SCP-073 said. He unfolded himself from his 
sitting position, flowing off the desk with a dancer's grace. "You are 
looking for something.” It was not a question. 


"Um... yeah," she said. She held a slip of paper to the man, upon 
which was written a hastily scrawled list of items. "I'm new here, and 
there's nothing in my office. | was told that this would be faster than 
going through Requisitions..." 


"And who was it who told you this?" Cain asked. He raised a hand 
interrupting her answer. "No, do not tell me,” he continued, "but in 
the future, | would not trust that person without reservation, if they 
sent you here without telling you what this place is." 


"That figures," she said sourly.