The four huge propellers coughed, then roared, spinning up and 
reaching speeds so fast that Joey couldn't even see them anymore 
through the cameras. He looked ahead through the cockpit window. 
Gold Street was, unusually, completely clear of cars or wreckage. 
And just wide enough. 


He let go of the brake, and the huge airplane, the massive, absurd 
work of a restless year, thundered down Gold Street. It lurched, it 
juddered, it creaked and complained, but it held together. Joey had 
poured all of his determination into this machine, and he could feel 
that it wanted to scratch the sky as badly as he did. This was going 
to work. This was going to work. 


Sample 887-0094: Five hundred and eighteen pages of episode 
synopses, dialogue excerpts, annotations, critical reception, and 
"bloopers", for seventy-two episodes of the animated comedy The 
Simpsons, in the format used by popular Simpsons fansite —.com. 
Analysis indicates that the episodes are predicated on the Simpsons 
characters having aged in real time beginning in 1997. 


Sample 887-0908: One thousand six hundred and eleven pages of 
messages posted to an Internet mailing list dedicated to writing 
"slashfic" (amateur romantic/nomoerotic fiction) about the past and 
present members of the United States Supreme Court; content 
includes critiques, unfinished drafts, and analyses of judicial 
decisions in terms of erotic value. 


Sample 887-0944: Sketches of human dental records, labeled as 
belonging to the members of Jimmy Carter's presidential cabinet 
(identified by birth name and cabinet portfolio), dated to the last 
month of Carter's administration. Names and portfolios are 
misspelled, but sketches have been assessed by Foundation 
forensic dentists as plausible extrapolations of known medical data 
for the individuals in question. 


Researcher: Dr. Sampi 


Sample 887-6510: Thirty-one pages, in English. An extensive bio- 
ethics paper from the University Philosophy Department, 
condemning the practice of transplanting the brain from one's dying 
body into the body of one's youngest child. 


Researcher: Dr. Edison 


Sample 887-2310: Scripts for a Japanese dub of the first season of 
"| Love Lucy". 


Sample 887-1810: A report on the founding of the Panama Canal. 
The report is written with a style and vocabulary consistent with an 
11-year-old child. 


Sample 887-3132: 500 pages of pure source code, seemingly 


He pulled up. 


The wind and air swept over and under the great steel bird's wings, 
and it left the earth behind. It shattered the chains that held all things 
hard to the ground and roared in defiance against gravity. It rose, 
higher and higher, the buildings and crumbling ruins falling away 
below. 


Joey saw the wall that the men in the white coats had built. And for 
the first time in his life, he did not care about it at all. 


The one they now called Joey Steelwings rose above it all, and flew 
on toward his destiny. 


Addendum 3885-03: On 2 May 2018, an 
unmarked makeshift aircraft visually resembling a 
World War 2-era B-17 Flying Fortress took off 
from SCP-3885, using the town's main avenue as 
a runway. After investigation, it was determined 
that personnel assigned to Subsite 3885 had 
noticed this vehicle periodically during its 
construction by a single SCP-3885-01 instance, 
but did not take action, citing disbelief that 
SCP-3885 instances possessed the mental 
capacity to successfully construct a functional 
aircraft. Subsite 3885's administrative staff have 
been formally disciplined on charges of gross 
negligence leading directly to a containment 
breach. 


The aircraft in question was observed flying due 
northeast. Foundation recovery assets have been 
dispatched to recontain the SCP-3885-01 
instance or instances onboard. 


No other SCP-3885-01 instances within 
SCP-3885 have cooperated with Foundation 
investigative personnel, and as a result, the 
aircraft's destination, and purpose, are unknown. 


« Joey Fucknuts Builds a Flying Machine 
Joey Fucknuts Takes to the Skies 
Joey Fucknuts Believes In Himself » 


John James 


In my opinion, the whirlwind of rumours and false reports 
surrounding the role of D-Class in this institution has 
created an increasingly poisonous, and frankly 
unprofessional, atmosphere over the past few years. For 
any staff members who may not be aware: D-Class are 
not to be requisitioned for the exploration, testing, or 
feeding of dangerous anomalies. Barring exceptional 
circumstances, in the course of their regular duties D- 
Class should not be permitted to come in contact with 
anomalies of any kind. They are not soldiers, and they 
certainly are not human pawns. Interruption of the D- 
Class’s duties interferes with vital Foundation 
contingency efforts and will not be tolerated. 


Any researcher requiring an expendable research unit for 
testing of anomalies should request the use of a 
Simurgh-class autonomous mobile drone from their local 
Requisitions Department. Anyone who attempts to use 
D-Class in testing at my site will be subject to immediate 
disciplinary action. 

Site Director Marie, open letter to all employees 
concerning D-Class 


John James opened his eyes and got out of bed and put on his 
orange uniform with the white letters on it. 


The white letters were on the back and the top of the right-hand 
sleeve and on the left breast, right where a shirt pocket would go, 
and they all said D-23984. That was what the guards called him, and 
what the speaker said when it told him which room to go to, but 
inside the testing room the doctors all called him John James. 


Up above him on the second bed, a big bald man with a little bit of 
beard climbed down the ladder to the floor and put his own uniform 
on. That was Stephen Reyes, his bunkmate. The white letters on his 


uniform said D-23886 instead of D-23984, so John James guessed 
that Stephen had been here longer than he had. He’d asked him 
about it once, and thought it was kind of funny that Stephen didn’t 
know. 


“| had a dream about my family,” said Stephen, his eyes glistening a 
little in his big bald face. “Their names are Betty, Mary, Annie, and 
Sam. They all smelled like strawberry jam.” 

John James nodded. “My family lives in a house just outside of 
Simbsury,” he said. “The house has a real white picket fence.” 


“| hope I'll see them again soon,” Stephen said, and for a moment 
John James felt a twinge of annoyance, because he’d just been 
about to tell Stephen all about his own family and the house they 
lived in and how the white picket fence had actually been built by his 
great-grandfather, who also lived in the same house, but just then 
the speaker asked for D-23886 to please report to room 21 and 
Stephen got up and went out of the room. 


So John James took a pencil and a sheet of paper from the dresser 
against the wall and drew a floor plan of his house just outside of 
Simsbury, with the round window in the right top corner and the little 
three-sided porch. It was a very detailed floor plan, and almost all of 
the lines were straight. John James was very proud of it, and he left 
it on top of the dresser at a favourable angle so that Stephen would 
see it when he walked in the door. 


“A round window, you say?” asked Dr. Carter, smiling. The speaker 
had called his number and told him to go down to room 18 where Dr. 
Carter was, and she had seemed very happy when he’d told her all 
about the drawing of his house. “But John, your house doesn’t have 
any round windows. Try and remember that.” 


John frowned, and in his mind’s eye the round window in the right 
top corner shimmered and changed into a regular square one. 
Maybe he had been thinking of his neighbour’s house. “But it does 
still have a real white picket fence,” he said, with a sinking feeling in 
his gut. “Right?” 


“Of course you have a white picket fence,” said Dr. Carter, and she 
picked up a stack of papers. “Now, John, let’s talk about your 
grandparents. On your mother’s side — what were their names?” 


John James frowned and tried to concentrate. Their faces were a 
hazy blur, their names right on the tip of his tongue. “E...El... 
Eleanor,” he finally said. Yes, that sounded right. “And Jacob.” 


Dr. Carter wrote something down. “And how long did they live?” she 
asked. 


John James was silent for a long while. “I knew my grandma — 
Eleanor,” he said at last, and as the words left his mouth he knew 
that they were true. In fact he could remember her now, a little 
shrivelled figure in a big brown bed. He must have been very young 
at the time, or else he wouldn’t have forgotten it so easily. “My 
grandpa died before | was born,” he said, and this he also knew to 
be true. “Grandma never talked very much about him.” 


“And on your father’s side?” 
“My grandparents?” 
“Yes, John.” 


John James frowned again. “My grandpa’s name was Bill, and my 
grandma’s name was Mary, like Stephen’s daughter,” he 
announced. “They lived in Simsbury, and we visited them every 
Wednesday.” 


Dr. Carter smiled and wrote some more. “Very good, John. That’s all 
the questions | have for you. Do you know what day it is?” 


John James did not have a watch, though he thought he’d probably 
owned one at some point. “No,” he said. 


“Today’s the thirtieth, John. Your month is up. Tomorrow you'll go 
home.” 


John James smiled. Then he frowned and smiled again and blinked 
and rubbed his eyes. “For real?” he asked. “For true?” 


“For true,” said Dr. Carter. 
“My family,” said John James. “Have they... missed me?” 
“Very much,” said Dr. Carter. 


John James was so preoccupied that he hardly noticed when they 
sent him back to his room, or how he got there. Late at night, as he 
stared at the scratchy metal belly of the cot above him, he realized 
that Stephen had never come back. Eventually he decided that the 
doctors had sent Stephen back home to his family too, and was a 
little upset that he had never gotten to show Stephen his drawing of 
his house. 


He dreamed that he had done something very bad and was looking 
for somewhere to hide. The police were closing in, but just before 
they got to him some men in black suits drove up in a car and took 
him away. The man he had been in the dream had looked like him, 
but his name wasn’t John James and anyways he was much 
younger than John James was. 


On the first of the month, the speaker came on and told John James 
to walk to the very end of the hallway and go into a room that he had 
never seen before. The room was full of other people in orange 
uniforms with white letters, and some people in bulky black uniforms 
with scowls on their faces. There were letters on the wall that read 
“RECONDITIONING,” and every few minutes the speaker would call 
out a number and a scowling man in black would walk one of the 
men in orange away down a hallway. John James tried to look for 
Stephen in the crowd, but before he could find him the speaker said 
for D-23984 to report to reconditioning room 3, and one of the men 
in black marched him off to a new room and shut the door behind 
him. 


Dr. Carter was in the room with some men in glasses and button- 
down shirts, and behind them was a big metal chair with 
complicated-looking machinery coming down out of the ceiling 
above it and lots of computer screens on a little stand. 


“This is your last test, John,” Dr. Carter said with her usual smile. 
“Then you'll get to go home. Sit in the chair, okay?” 


“Okay,” said John James, a little uncertainly. There were straps on 
the chair for your legs and your arms, and when he sat down in it the 
scowling man in the bulky black uniform snapped them shut so he 
couldn’t get up again. One of the men in glasses came over and 
fastened the machines coming out of the ceiling to different parts of 
his head, and when Dr. Carter began to press buttons on the 
computer screens John could feel them buzz a little. 


“| want you to concentrate on your family now, John,” he heard Dr. 
Carter say. “Your family, and your house with the white picket fence. 
Can you do that, John?” 


“Okay,” he said. 


“Mental snapshot in three, two, one,” Dr. Carter said to the men in 
glasses, and then the machines did something funny that John 
James could taste in his mouth. Lots of little pictures and lights 
started blinking up on the computer screen. 


“Perfect transfer. Everything’s here,” said Dr. Carter, with a hurried 
thumbs-up to John James who was giving her a questioning look. 


“Good, wipe him clean,” said one of the men in glasses, and before 
he lost consciousness John James could only visualize a flash of 
white light and the memory of himself screaming. 


Martin Kendall opened his eyes and got out of bed and put on his 
orange uniform with the white letters on it. 


The white letters said D-23985, but his bunkmate’s said D-23887. 
His bunkmate’s name was Billy Smith, and he was a big bald man 
with a little bit of beard on the bottom of his face. Martin thought that 
maybe he’d met him somewhere before. 


Martin had had a meeting with Dr. Carter the day before, and he 
was telling Billy about how he used to have a family, but they had 
died in a tragic car accident and now he lived on his own in a little 


three-room flat. 
“| miss the place,” he said. “I hope I'll see it again soon.” 


Billy Smith didn’t say anything to that, so Martin asked him whether 
he had a family too and if they had died in a tragic car accident. 


Billy thought about that for a long while. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I 
don’t know.” 


The man without a name had been grown in a tank, and had never 
seen the outside world. 


Even now, the task force that was transporting him kept him in a 
long metal tank, asleep in the dark. His tank and many others were 
loaded together on the back of a big truck, and the only way to tell 
them apart were the numbers printed on their sides. The numbers 
on the tank of the man without a name were D-23984. 


Off in the distance the members of the task force could see the 
enormous corpse of whatever it was that had destroyed America, 
the sun rising through the spines on its back. 


“Jee-sus,” said one of the men in black. 


“They’re bombing it soon,” said another. “Just watch.” He was 
staring at his wristwatch, a fancy metal plate with an extra panel that 
showed the day and the month and the year, all back-to-back. Right 
now the panel read 27/0/0. 


The two men stopped the truck and waited until they saw a 
mushroom cloud rising off the thing’s back through the dirty window, 
and the sun gleaming through a new hole in its ribs. 

The man in black started the truck, and they drove off with the man 
without a name and the others like him. Over the next few weeks, 
the bombs steadily turned the thing into little piles of meat that 
turned into dirt soon after. Crews with construction cranes set up 
and dropped the thing’s bones into trucks filled with vats of 
chemicals that melted them right away. The men in the truck drove 
around the countryside, taking the nameless men out of their tank 


and propping them up here and there, and through their little 
dashboard radio staticky voices squawked from around the world 
that men with trucks and cranes there were doing just what the men 
in America were doing. They estimated that cleanup efforts would be 
over by the first of the month, and they were right. 


On the first of the month, John James woke up in his car. 

He yawned and stretched himself. He was in his driveway, and up 
on the little three-sided porch of the house with the little square 
window in the right top corner his family was sitting, waiting for him 
to step outside. They looked a little different than how he had 
remembered them, but John James thought that was only because 
he had been gone for such a very long time.