Two of the younger followers attempted to steal food from the 
kitchens. They talk of dwindling food stores, of mistrust, of strange 
noises coming from below, though my great engine no longer turns. 
If we imprisoned them, the others would have protested. Instead, | 
go to the others, and tell them the young ones have run out in to the 
fog, intend to find answers. Not everyone believes me, including 
Eudora. Instead they go back to plotting in quiet. 


| worry for my flock. 


Day 6 

Now everyone speaks of sounds from below, of rattling pipes and 
grinding gears, though | assure them the machine has been shut off. 
To assuage their fears, | sent Danvers and Burtleby to investigate. 
We should hear back from them sometime later tonight. Or morning. 


No one questioned the fresh meat prepared for dinner. 


Day 7 
My wife is dead. | grew furious at her petulance, and pried open the 
doors with a pickaxe. She had arranged Simone for bed and then- 


Damn you, Clarice. You rotten whore. | wanted to SAVE my 
children. 


Danvers and Burtleby have not come up. The grinding noises come 
every hour now, louder and louder. The house shakes around us. 


| fear the worm may not be as dead as | hoped. 


Day 8 

Darkness has finally fallen, and with it came a terror | have never 
known, even in the trenches. Cold seeps in through the windows. 
Strange shadows move in the fog, and | hear what sound like 
footsteps on the rooftop. The house groans and shakes. The worm 
struggles . 


The courage of my followers frays. They want to go home, they want 
to be free of this horror and this damnable grey purgatory. 


Day 9 
They have taken Simon. Eudora rallied the followers. She declared 


that the worm spoke to her to her dreams and that she is the Voice 
now. The worm demands sacrifice, she said: The son of the man 
who trapped it. 


| fought them. | fought. | would not let them take my boy, the only 
thing | have left, but they were many, and they had gorged on the 
flesh of their fellows. | was but one broken man. | am no savior, no 
torch in the darkness, just a puppet to my own madness. | feel that 
every action | have taken, every vision and design | feverishly 
scrawled from half-remembered nightmares, was forced upon me by 
a cruel intellect that wished to test the limits of my sanity. 


They have taken Simon below. They will feed him to the worm. Let 
this be my prayer to the starless night, to a god that may not even 
exist: | will not let him be fed to the worm. | will hurl myself into its 
teeth, that my bones might clog its innards, before | let them take my 
son. 


I'm sorry Clarice. 


Day 10 
God, the noise! It is almost deafening. Wheels turn and pistons hiss, 
and from the deepest reaches | hear a low, mournful bellow. 


| have brought my journal, to give my mind something to focus on as 
| traverse the machine. Looking upon it with my sane eyes, | realize 
this maze is no work of logic. The tunnels bend and twist without 
reason, stairwells lead to solid walls and doors open to gaping 
chasms. The transference to this grey world may have warped the 
machine, or maybe | never truly saw it for what it was, and just built 
according to my deranged whims. 


| have heard and seen nothing of Simon or his captors. Doubtless 
their steps are guided by the same madness that has abandoned 
me, guiding them with fluid ease towards the worm's waiting jaws. | 
hasten my step, but | seem to be running in blind circles. If nothing 
else, at least | have a sturdy lantern and plenty of oil from the work 
crews that toiled down here. 


Day 11 
Day and night are meaningless in this limbo, but down here there is 


even less to measure the passage of time. My journey has taken me 
deeper, into some kind of processing factory. These automated 
devices gather grey sand from the bare rock, heat it into a sickly- 
looking glass, and fill the created vials with foul-smelling chemicals | 
cannot identify. Against my better judgment | crept close to inspect a 
completed vial, and to my horror a fully-formed set of teeth began to 
take form. Another jar held an eyeball like nothing found in man or 
nature. What is the purpose of this factory? What does it build and 
for whom? Is this the result of my design, or some mechanical 
cancer, spread by the worm to twist the machine's function? 


My quarry seems to be in dispute now. | hear them arguing through 
the ventilation ducts and empty pipes. Eudora has taken my son 
deeper, leaving the others behind to harass my progress or simply 
abandoning to the whims of the worm. | have my pickaxe and my 
training, but | must move with stealth. | have not eaten in nearly two 
days. Still, Eudora's men still carry strips of meat... 


| also saw something odd near the lathe room | have hidden myself 
within. A painting of exquisite taste. It is the work of a master, but | 
cannot recall when | purchased it or what possessed me to leave it 
down here. The image shares a remarkable likeness to Clarice, 
smiling as though in happier times. It casts my thoughts to decades 
past when | was a different man, a smaller man, yet infinitely 
happier. 


Can knowledge so damn a soul? In a universe of such cosmic evils 
that | have witnessed, is ignorance truly the only bliss one can 
enjoy? 


Day 12 

My dreams returned, not of prophecy but memory. | am with Simon 
in the London Museum. He pulls me along, eager to see art and 
history, the beauty of all created by man and God. But | cannot see 
the beauty. | see only bloody mud and blackened skies, the ugliness 
of man and a callous God. Simon walks on with out me while | sink 
into a bench. The day fades away to night, and | sit in an empty 
museum of man's atrocities, the last living thing on a cold earth, 
overwhelmed by the weight of it all. 


| wait for death or oblivion to take me, whichever could stomach so 


pitiful a morsel. But instead | feel the presence of another. | feel no 
light from this being, no warmth, yet | sensed that this was as close 
to God as any being could be. It looks like a man, but there is a 
weight to him, as though something greater, and stranger, were 
squeezed into his skin. 


"The child wants, and doesn't know why," the gentleman speaks to 
me. "The child grasps, and doesn't know the danger. They burn their 
fingers and know they are not ready. Someday they will be. 
Someday they will give voice to the soul and sing with the essence 
of the universe. What gods they will be then. What galaxies they will 
weave with dreams and care. But now they are children, and 
children are selfish. They know only what they want." 


And then | awoke back inside this machine, on a grey planet. So far 
from the world of my memories. It burdens my bones just to think of 
the inevitability. But | forced myself to stand just the same. 


Simon cried out to me, | heard him far below. | called back to him 
but | heard no reply. Eudora's zealots hound me relentlessly, and | 
fear some horrible change has come over them in casting their lot 
with the worm. They speak with slurred, reptilian voices, or gargle as 
though choking. Some have even turned on their fellows. As | crept 
about the darkness | saw one such rebellion. A man | had tried to 
lead to paradise fell upon his companion in an argument over faith, 
and | felt the heat of his lifeblood splash across my astonished face. 
The teeth! Gnashing and ripping, so big and sharp, like the fangs of 
a wolf, yet also serrated as the blade of a saw. Animal and flesh, yet 
also machine. 


My surroundings have been affected by the same mutation. Rooms | 
do not recognize bleed into one another like spilled paint. An office 
with plush green chairs merges with a warehouse filled with crates 
that rattle and bang with some unknown, stinking occupant. Ladders 
descend into pools of viscous liquid that have flooded what appears 
to be a school. Statues of marble and reliefs of brass decorate the 
ceilings and form the very walls. Rattling belts spew ammunition into 
neglected piles, shells the size of my head clatter to the floor in 
automated factories, producing the tools of death. | could not have 
made this! | could not have wanted such devices! And yet here they 
stand! And always the shrieking, the tapping of heating and cooling 


metals, the groan of pressurized hydraulics! | cannot remember 
what silence sounded like! 


Day 13 or 14 

Eudora's followers no longer heed reason. The demented growl and 
spit and scavenge for food, their ramblings the stuff of Bedlam. 
Others have become something... else. Feral, like the lycanthropes 
of myth. They crawl on all fours, their eyes adjusted to the gloom 
and shining red, twin pinpoints of demon light. | can startle them with 
my lantern, but they always return, trying to surround me from all 
sides. Hunters they are, and fast as wolves, but their howls are the 
shriek of tearing metal. 


Eudora's voice taunts me now. It echoes up through the network of 
plumbing, from every open ventilation shaft. She announces her 
glorious ascendance, of her devotion to the worm, and | hear true 
lunacy in her desperate laughter. It ripples through this whole 
machine, as if she herself is a part of it. 


| have found respite in a room filled with hospital beds, and windows 
that look out into an abyss. It reminds me of the hospital | awoke 
from the war within. But | must pry my eyes away from that dark, for 
my mind cannot tell if | look into lightless cavern, or starless void. 


Day 15? 

| have found Eudora. Pursued by her followers-made-monsters, | 
came upon a great cathedral made from organ pipes, marble, and 
the very flesh and bones of Eudora herself. Now | see how she 
could speak to me through the pipes, for her body has been torn 
asunder and stitched upon it. Her organs are pulled straight and taut 
though the tangled plumbing, her skin stretched and inflated with 
gases, her blood sizzling and steaming from the hydraulics. Only her 
head remains whole, wide-eyed and cackling, seated on the pulpit of 
this temple to dementia. The monsters refuse to set foot into this 
"hallowed ground," so | alone approached to speak with her. 


| demanded my son's return, but she spat her own broken teeth at 
me and said he had been taken by the worm, delivered to the heart 
of the machine where its mouth sat waiting. Furious, | fell upon her 
with a vengeance, tearing what remained of her body from the brass 
organs around her. She died screaming, and at last was quiet. 


bathroom. 
Photo Result: No change. 


Subject: SCP-066 

Photographed Activity: In the process of transference to a new 
containment unit. 

Photo Result: Inside the opened thoracic cavity of an unidentified 
individual, with the other organs removed. SCP-066's "eyes" and 
tendrils are rearranged to resemble a "smiley face". 


Subject: SCP-073 

Photographed Activity: Eating in the Site-17 cafeteria. 

Photo Result: Tending to an assorted range of plants on a small 
farm, some of which are not native to Earth. In the background are 
various domesticated animals wandering around. 


Subject: SCP-079 
Photographed Activity: Testing denied by O5- 
Photo Result: Testing denied by O5- 


Subject: SCP-085 

Photographed Activity: Tinkering with a drawn car. 
Photo Result: Engaged in the same activity, however, the 
photograph depicts 085 as a three-dimensional human. 


Subject: SCP-086-1 

Photographed Activity: Sitting on its desk with its receiver off the 
hook, as Drs. Margrave and Kosciuszka discuss recent studies into 
its anatomy. 

Photo Result: A human male (identified as a younger version of Dr. 
[REDACTED)]) is engaged in the same activity while dissecting 
SCP-086-1 and -3. 

Notes: SCP-086 has stated that any malevolent entity capable of 
emulating Dr. [REDACTED]'s behavior well enough to deceive the 
Foundation might also have the ability to deceive SCP-978, in 
addition to possessing scientific curiosity. 


Subject: SCP-096 

Photographed Activity: SCP-096 is seen sitting in its containment 
chamber, faced away from the camera. 

Photo Result: Picture of SCP-096's containment chamber, taken 


But then a great bellow erupted from the machine, and a new voice 
spoke to me through the mangled organ. 


"lam what you have made me. | am then and | am now. | am choice 
and | am tyranny. | am evil and | am flesh. | am beauty and | am 
chaos. | am the worm." 


Stricken, | fell to the blood-stained floor and wept. | cowered, 
screaming, not because of the words it spoke. 


But that they were spoken with my voice. 


At last | beheld the truth | had tried to bury so deep. The worm, the 
machine, the madness that guided my hands. It was me. 


| am the worm. 


| do not know what compelled me to stand. | did not feel hope. | 
didn't feel despair. Like an automaton, | could only move forward to 
face revelation. 


Day ?? 
When | came upon the core of my great machine, | found my son. 


The machine was not a weapon to trap the worm. It was not an ark 
to carry us to salvation. | had sought to exile myself from a 
monstrous existence, and in my cowardice and fear, | became a 
monster. | became the worm. | built a shell to hide within. An engine 
to spirit me away from the pain, the despair that had claimed my 
sanity. To abandon creation and God's cold distance. But it would 
not run without a catalyst. 


Simon. 


So full of hope and faith, so full of love and dreams. How | envied 
your strength. How | envied your ignorance. | yearned to wrap 
myself up in that goodness and hide from the world. | threw the 
switch of my great machine, and it drank the heartsblood from your 
lifeless body, pumping it into every pipe and piston. | believed your 
love would carry us to paradise. 


But it was tainted by my madness, by my act of murder. | dreamed 


of peace, and it brought me to unchanging limbo. | demanded 
paradise, but | deserve only perdition. 


And | was so horrified by what | had done to you, | could not bear to 
face it. | spoke as if you were there with me, smiled as though | 
could see you smiling at me. When Clarice realized what | had done, 
what | was, she took Simone away before... before | sought her out 
as well. 


This place is filled with your memories, Simon. Are they the last 
tattered shreds of love you have for me? Or are they here to taunt 
and punish me, as the man-beasts that stalk the hallways surely 
must be? 


| do not know if any of you can forgive me. | only know that | 
promised to save my son. | promised to slay the worm. | leave this 
journal behind, in the hopes that someday, somehow, someone will 
know what | did, and remember the men and women | damned with 
my selfishness. My fear. 


| hurl myself into its teeth 
that my bones might clog its innards 
lam the worm 


and Ouroboros must eat itself 


The Young Man 


Nobody could like Corporal Lawrence. That's not to say that nobody 
tried, or that he was somehow unfriendly, merely that he was one of 
those few that seemed to be “wired” differently. However, in the 
trenches of World War I, normalcy was at best a relative term, and 
one that had minimal relation of life, such as it was. Lawrence 
fought, listened to orders, and didn't disrupt the other soldiers, and 
that was all that was required. So what if people felt increasingly 
uncomfortable around him? In a place where the flesh rotting off 
your bones while you were still alive was the base-line of concern, a 
little personality conflict ranked several levels below a paper cut.