After modifying the past so that $E'$ occurs instead, we wish to in- 
stead revert the change to $E$. Unfortunately, when we measure 
the thread potential: 


(5) 
\begin{align} \nabla*2d(E')=0.1 \end{align} 


Computing the relative probabilities: 


(6) 
\begin{align} \frac{P(E)}{P(E')} = \frac{\nabla*2d(E’)}{\nabla*2d(E)} = 


\frac{0.1}{1} = 0.1 \end{align} 


Since $E$ is only 1/10th as likely as $E'$, it will be much more diffi- 
cult to return to $E$ than it was originally to get to $E'$. 


No Exercises 


Chapter 2: Time Loops | Chapter 4: Aperiodic Loops and Chaos 
(Coming Soon!) 


The UIU Series With No Name Hub 


"On the Whole, the Unusual Incidents Unit is a 
superfluous organization. If not for its relative 
usefulness during the Cold War under J. Edgar 
Hoover, it would not be around today." 


-Foundation Liaison Howard Packard, 2005 


"The Unusual Incidents Unit is, at best, occasionally 
useful. However, the majority of their agents are 
inexperienced with paranormal matters, and as a 
result, we do not believe that fully integrating them 
into the Veil would be an appropriate idea at this 
time." 


John Lewis, S.R.S.G On Paranormal Activity, 2012 


"There are three things you have to know about the 
USA if you're one of us: 1) Fuck the SCP. 2) Fuck the 
GOC. 3) Laugh at the UIU. Those fuckers couldn't kill a 
mammoth with a bazooka at point-blank range." 


-Anonymous 


Over the years, the Unusual Incidents Unit of the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation has been the subject of several kinds of 
mockery, from being compared to sub-par but influential 1990s 
television programs to being outright called "UlUseless". 


This is the story of two agents in this much maligned 
organization, and their adventures in a far-off land 
known as the Midwestern United States. 


. Unusual Happenings - In which we are introduced to our 
protagonist. 

. Another Boring Night - In which nothing happens on a 
stakeout. 

. Taproots - In which something becomes ingrained into the 
psyche of our protagonists. 

. Of Portals, Plasma Cannons and Other Boring Things - 
In which nothing of substance happens. 

. Come Rest Your Head A While- In which our heroes return 
home, and things begin unraveling. 

. Midnight Plane Going Anywhere - In which our heroes 
realize something alarming. 


Taproots 


The trouble started with a supposed "gas leak" at a bank all the way 
across the state. 


Quinn was too busy to wonder why the Skippers had such an 
uncreative cover story, because she was driving, through the night 
trying to stay awake. Darnell was next to her, rubbing his forehead. 
It wasn't a long drive across Ohio, but Darnell wondered aloud, 
"Why can't the Cleveland Division take care of this?" 


"Because they're stuck in a bare room with an open door." 
She wished she was kidding. 


Several hours later, they were in Sandusky, Ohio, at a bank branch 
which looked like it had been nuked. Quinn shivered as she looked 
upon the wreckage in the light of the rising sun. There were charred 
tiles everywhere, and a smell of burnt meat about the whole place. 
Standing at the center of it all was what looked like a scrap-metal 
sculpture, vaguely in the shape of a human skeleton, twitching 
about, with bits of charred flesh falling off of it. The whole thing was 
coated in a blue slime, and stood there, fused to the tiles of the 
bank. 


Surrounding the wreckage were cars that had been driving past the 
(presumably closed) bank during the night. 


"Christ alive," Quinn said, wrinkling her nose at the sight of it. "What 
is that?" 


"We believe that it is at the center of the discharge," said someone 
in a blue coat and jeans, with an FBI logo on it. The man had brown 
hair, and was wearing dark sunglasses, fiddling with a tablet 
computer. His stance showed he was either a professional at his 
job, or that he had a stick up his ass that had grown into an entire 
tree. Probably both. He extended a hand to Quinn and Darnell. 


"Agent Adams. I'm the Foundation liaison for the Cleveland division." 


"...fight," Quinn said, shaking his hand. "So... discharge? What, was 
this an EMP?" 


"Multiplied by a factor of... well, multiplied by a big factor." He 
looked at the sculpture. "Witnesses report that there was a very 
large, very loud lightning strike here." 


"Casualties?" 


"None that we can see. A few cars got wrecked, but the civilians 
involved are unhurt." 


Quinn frowned. "You know, you could have said "lightning strike" 
and nobody would have been suspicious. "Gas leak" after a lightning 
strike seems suspicious." 


"Agent, don't tell us how to do our job." Adams pushed his glasses 
up his nose. "We believe the sculpture here was the nexus of the 
anomaly." 


"Any new art installations put in?" Darnell asked. "It could be an 
AWCY-" He pronounced it "Aussie"- "thing. We had trouble with 
them in Milan; they made origami Tesla Coils and set them around 
the Edison museum." 


"We've been monitoring the local cell. They call themselves 
"Specification Station". This doesn't fit their MO." 


"What is their MO?" Quinn asked, stepping closer to the police tape 
surrounding the sculpture. "Robotic art?" 


Adams frowned. "...'Specification’ as in 'changing species’. As in 


‘forcibly creating animal-human hybrids’. 


"Think | saw that movie..." Quinn ducked under the tape, putting on 
a pair of purple gloves and a mask that she produced from a blue 
jacket similar to what the liaison had on. She started to inspect the 
liquid, which she saw as crackling with electricity. "It's live," Quinn 
said. 


"Yeah," said one of the Foundation techs next to her. "We're making 
sure nobody touches it with bare skin, but we set up a chemical 
shower just in case." 


Quinn nodded, and started to look over the statue. It looked like a 
skeleton jutting its hands out towards something, as if attacking 
something... or shielding itself. Darnell crossed the line next. "| take 
it security camera feed isn't an option?" 


"The cameras in this bank were fitted with Faraday protection, but 
that can only get you so far," said the tech. "Most likely, the nearest 
surviving camera landed in Lake Michigan." 


Quinn raised an eyebrow. "...you mean Erie, right?" 


"We found one part of the bank's sign on Ambassador Bridge. On 
the Canadian side." 


".,.ah." Quinn took out a pocket flashlight and started looking over 
the statue's head. "Aren't you a piece of work... who made you, eh?" 
She peered at the eyes; they were very good ones, looked 
untouched by the damage, and looked realistic. They gazed 
aimlessly into the distance, fixed at some point in the sky. "We sure 
that this isn't AWCY?" She called over to the Liaison. 


"Positive!" he called back, fiddling with his tablet some more. "No 
message has been sent from their groups yet, and they usually 
arrive within six hours of something like this." 


Quinn frowned, and looked at the statue's eyes. She waved a hand 
in front of them, just to make sure of something. 


When the eyes followed her hand, she started. "Jesus! Darnell! We 
got a live one!" 


"Wha-" Darnell ran over, and Adams followed with him, staring as he 
ran up to the statue. With a series of gruesome squelches and 
cracks, it turned to face the two of them, eyes focusing on them. 


"Oh shit," Quinn said, taking out her pistol. "FBI! Stand down!" 


The statue spoke in a rattling groan. Quinn wasn't sure, but the 


voice sounded feminine. "Puh.... puh.... Pull..." 


Darnell had drawn his gun as well by this point; half of the on-site 
crew was aiming at the statue with varying degrees of weaponry, 
and Quinn swore she saw a Sniper scope glint on top of a nearby 
hotel. 


"Pull what?" asked Adams. 
"Puhhhll... ihhhht...." 
"What is it? What do you want us to pull?" 


"Pull... it... up..." The thing creaked, and its legs gave way as it tried 
to turn. "By.... the.... roots..." 


The sculpture hit the floor of the former bank with a loud clank. As it 
did so, its head, barely supported by a wire-thin neck, rolled off and 
came to a stop at Quinn's feet. The casing cracked open, and 
showed what was inside. 


The opening had revealed a pulsing, living brain. 


Harley Sterling woke up alone in bed, for the second time in a week. 
She sighed and got up, going to the kitchen, seeing that Quinn had 
once again left her flowers and a little note. 


Got called to Sandusky; got a lead on an art theft. Will 
Skype @ hotel. 
-Q 


Harley sighed, and started making herself breakfast, which was 
made up of an undercooked egg, Froot Loops, and almost included 
the last slice of bacon; she saw it was moldy, and down the garbage 
disposal it went. 


She then went into the living room to watch the morning news, 
passing by several pictures on the way there. There was her and 
Quinn at their "wedding", which was sadly a purely symbolic affair; 
one of her, Darnell and Quinn at Cedar Point, prior to the two of 
them getting into the FBI; one of her at graduation from Culver 


into buttons. Dissections have revealed that during this 
process the victim's organs will begin to convert into 
stuffing of various materials, including but not limited to 
cotton and polyester. Through the use of EEG it has 
been noted that the target is still conscious throughout 
this process. 


Stage 3: Full Transformation 

Subject transforms fully into a doll within twenty-four (24) 
hours. At this point SCP-747 will treat them as any other 
doll. It is currently theorized that the subject is no longer 
conscious or ‘alive’ in any sense. See Document 747-B4. 
Dolls produced though SCP-747's influence are to be 
kept in SCP-747's containment room and removed only 
for examination or repair. 


Footnotes 

1. Blue crayon written in neat cursive. Contains a short story 
involving a mother looking for her son in an unspecified afterlife. It is 
notable that the mother of the entity holding the note had died in 
childbirth. Investigations to its source are ongoing. 


« SCP-746 | SCP-747 | SCP-748 » 


Military Academy. That one had been put back together with 
masking tape on the back, and looked like a jigsaw puzzle more 
than anything. She usually kept that one hidden. 


Harley turned on the TV to see the local news focusing on 
something up near the Lake. "...not sure what happened quite yet, 
but reportedly, the FBI is investigating, despite local sources 
reporting a lightning strike. We have yet to get any photos of the 
scene, but there have been reports of a strange statue standing in 
the wreckage of the bank. For WKRP in Sandusky, I'm Michelle 
Collins." 


Harley blinked as she heard the last part, and frowned, getting out 
her smart phone, finding Quinn's number, and calling her up on it. 


231 miles away, Quinn MacAllister was rudely awakened in her 
hotel room by the sound of her phone going off. She groaned, and 
sat up from the bed, still fully clothed. Darnell was out getting coffee, 
and hadn't gotten back yet. She frowned at her phone, and 
considered chucking it at the wall- and then she saw who was 
calling. 


She tapped the answer button so hard the screen almost cracked. 
"Harley! Hey!" 


"Hi." Harley had a tone in her voice that Quinn had heard before. It 
was her suspicious tone. 


"Uh. | got up to Sandusky fine, staying at a hotel for the foreseeable 
future... how are you?" 


"How's the art thing going?" 


"Good, good..." Quinn's voice tried not to waver. She could already 
feel her throat closing up as the temptation to talk about her job 
came up. 


"Anything to do with the lightning on the news?" 


Shit, Quinn thought, almost vocalizing this. "Uh, we were just in town 
when that happened. They were short on men, so we stopped by to 


help up- er, out some." 
"All right." Harley paused. "Is Darnell with you?" 


"He's out getting coffee. Probably fell asleep at the Starbucks or 
something." Quinn swallowed dryly. 


"All right." Harley sighed a bit over the line. "Just... stay safe, okay, 
Quinny?" 


Just tell her why you're really here, Quinn thought. Tel! her the truth. 
Tell her that you've seen things that science can't even begin to 
explain, that defy reason, that prove every conspiracy theory in the 
world right in so many different ways. 


Instead, Quinn simply said, "I will. Love you, babe." 
"Love you too." 


With that, the line died. Quinn put the phone down on the nightstand 
and sighed, shaking softly. She looked at the lock on the door 
turning. Darnell entered, carrying coffee. A frown crossed his face. 
"Everything all right, Mac?" 


"Fine." Quinn swallowed. "Harley called. She saw the... thing on the 
news." 


"Oh, hell." Darnell put the coffee down on the table. "She didn't say 
anything about... y'know... the A-word?" 


"Wasn't brought up this time, no." Quinn bit her lip and sighed into 
her hands. "She'll probably give me an earful when we get home, 
though." 


"It'll be okay, Mac." Darnell patted her on the back softly. "C'mon. 
Mr. Lee-ay-sonn is in the conference room. Something really top 
secret, apparently." 


"All right. I'll be down in a sec." Quinn stood up and made her way 
over to the bathroom, looking in the mirror, breathing in and out, 
focusing on the redness of her eyes. Soon, she was calm enough to 
proceed out the room. 


"From this point on, everything said in this room was never spoken. 
Every document handed out for this briefing never existed. Each one 
of you were never here, or if you were here, it was on unrelated 
business. Understood?" 


The room, which was mainly made up of Foundation lackeys, gave a 
general assent. Quinn frowned softly at this whole thing; usually, the 
Foundation just told the UIU to shut up about it, not their own men. 


"This is Level 4 Information, gathered through a joint effort between 
the Foundation and the Unusual Incidents Unit.." The lights dimmed 
in the conference room as Agent Adams turned on the projector. 
"I've only just been given the clearance to tell you all about this." 


"In the 1950s, the US Government began working on a secret 
project known as Cloudseed." The first slide clicked on, showing a 
heavily-redacted document. "USGov destroyed the majority of the 
documents in 1954, but this is one of the few recovered ones. The 
aim of Cloudseed was to control, and weaponize, the weather, 
particularly lightning storms." 


"| don't like where this is going," Darnell whispered. 


"Project Cloudseed was scrapped when all of the scientists working 
on the project defected from it, destroying the main testing facility 
and stealing all experimental weaponry from the project." He clicked 
to the next slide, showing a black-and-white photograph of a man 
with dark hair, a long nose, and a beard. "This defection was led by 
Dr. Ainsley Kerrigan, who is now believed to have been a part of a 
larger organization that is an... enemy to the Foundation." 


One of the Foundation agents in the room started, "The Chaos In-" 


Everyone but Quinn and Darnell glared daggers into this person, 
and he shut up immediately. The UIU agents just looked confused. 


"In any case, Dr. Kerrigan and his team went on to found a terrorist 
organization that would carry out several attacks throughout the 
1950's." He clicked through some slides, which showed a house that 
had exploded, an apartment building in flames, a department store 


in rubble, with bodies strewn about, and finally, a photograph of the 
US Capitol Building, looking like it was on a post card, with the 
words "PULL IT UP BY THE ROOTS" written over it in a dark red 
substance. "This was the first sign the US Government got of the 


existence of this group. They called themselves "Grassroots". 


A Foundation member with blonde hair and sunglasses raised his 
hand nervously. Adams pointed at him. "Yes, Agent Spender.” 


"This was almost sixty years ago... are you saying they've 
resurfaced ?"