hidden in the underbrush. The elders with the least hunger, or least 
status, sat around the edge of the hill watching the grasses and 
brush beyond. The hungriest and most respected of the elders bit off 
shafts of grass or sappy twigs and skinned them down to their cores. 
The elders dipped their twigs into the holes of the hill of food and 
waited. 


The food within the hill did not like being poked and so angrily bit the 
twigs. Some of the food hissed in rage; some tried to climb the 
twigs. The elders were unafraid and nibbled the food as it protested. 
Some shared with each other, those nearby or those watching the 
grass. Food was to be had. All was well for the family. 


The young were curious. Soon some had left the underbrush, 
emboldened by the contented sighs and hoots of the elders. They 
began themselves to poke the hill of food. Sometimes the food bit 
them causing cries of distress. Sometimes they managed to eat the 
food before it escaped or fought. The elders shared with the young 
and the young imitated the elders. The family was learning. 


Movement. 
A hoot of alarm. 
The family tensed, seeking a direction to flee. 


Out of the underbrush another family emerged bearing stones and 
heavy branches. The other family approached a coula nut tree. The 
young climbed up into the tree and shook the branches in 
excitement. While below the other family's elders gathered the best 
nuts. The other family braced the nuts against the stones and swung 
the sticks against the nuts with all their might. A chorus of excited 
hoots arose over the percussion of delicious crunching. 


The family on the food hill was at first perplexed with these 
interlopers. What was that other family doing? How could they put 
those tree stones in their mouths? A few more nervous hoots 
passed through the family. 


At this point the interlopers ceased their nut cracking having taken 
notice of the family on the food hill. The interlopers were stunned. 


There was a family sitting on the hill of horrible, stinging, insects, 
consuming the little monsters with reckless abandon. 


They are us but they are not us. They are strange. Emotional 
consensus was building among the respective families. All of them 
were covered in fear-smiles and danced threat displays. Danger. 
One of the more aggressive males found a stick covered in the 
angry, stinging inhabitants of the hill of food. As he raised his arm to 
heft the stick | became aware of my own existence. As the stick 
landed in the middle of the frightened, confused nutcrackers | slid 
behind their eyes. | instinctively stuck my fingers into their 
hypothalamuses and twisted. 


By the time | was finished the two families had scattered. One 
elderly male lay concussed on the ground, felled by a rock hurled in 
fear. | lingered until the predators found him and then woke him. | 
hovered over him as his brain pieced together that he would no 
longer exist. When just before he died | clutched at his memories 
and followed their trail into the jungle. | lived among his family for 
many years, always at the edge of the sleeping grounds, waiting. In 
time | would spread to their extended family and follow them out of 
the jungle. | was the predator lurking within pareidolia in every 
shadow and every pattern. 


Through your fearful eyes | have watched as you crawled onto the 
plains. I've seen lions take your kills, take your children. Your 
migration north, east and west spread me across the planet. | 
stalked you in the winters when you learned of the snow. | laughed 
when you drove your cousins to extinction. | wanted to kill you when 
you befriended the wolves. When the ice creaked beneath your feet 
as you crossed the sea | ate your worthless prayers. When your 
families reunited | swam in your mutual ignorance and drank of your 
arguments. 


Now | live in the moments just before sleep. Will you wake? | 
frequent hotel rooms. Can you trust those before? | walk behind 
travelers on foreign roads. Have you made a wrong turn? | delight in 
the daily failures of weathermen. Will the snow ever stop or the rain 
ever come? | bask in mistranslation. What did you say? | will be 
happy when maps are covered with 'here be monsters' and none 
dare explore. Why risk it? | long for the death of trust, of certainty. 


Who knows? 


Words must fail. 


The Tale of the Library 


It began with a word. Eventually it would swell to become something 
greater. It would envelop reality and become the heart of all 
universes. It would join world to world and unite people in its halls. 
But it began with a word, and a man. 


The word was carved into a rock. The man stood above it and, in the 
bottom of his mind, felt something stir. He did not know that he had 
just changed the course of all worlds, but he could feel something 
was different. The world had become a bit more orderly. 


He began to carve more words. The rocks surrounding him became 
a dictionary. Soon, the man was surrounded by language. The 
words stretched for miles in all directions, and he was still not 
satisfied. He began to look for more things to carve. He wrote words 
into the sand at his feet. He inscribed them on trees and in fields. All 
thought him mad. To them he was a crazed man drawing symbols 
with no meaning everywhere he went. And he was. But he was also 
something more. 


Others began to carve. They followed his patterns, observed his 
technique, and began to create an alphabet for themselves. Soon 
there was not a spot in the world untouched by the wordsmiths. One 
had the idea to join two words together, and a phrase was formed. 
Sentences followed, paragraphs next, and pages and stories. 


But all works were temporary. Rocks were eroded by wind and rain, 
sand polished flat by ocean tides, and wood was burned to ash. The 
followers despaired to see their work destroyed, but the man kept 
writing, so they kept writing. Stories lengthened until they became 
beasts eating away at entire mountainsides. Still the man was not 
satisfied. While his disciples created epics and poems, he continued 
to carve one word at a time. He traveled, never stopping except to 
lean down and scratch the earth. His followers, if they could be 
called that anymore, saw this as folly. They had all the words they 
needed to create beautiful prose. They could bring a man to his 


a written journal. 


Report: In his first entry, D-7 describes green pastures 
and a cool breeze. This is followed by a rambling 
discourse on his feelings of his "newfound freedom". The 
second, third, and fourth entries continue in a similar 
vein, describing the sights and sounds of what appears 
to be rural Switzerland and involving several more asides 
on various subjects, including freedom, atonement, and 
forgiveness, each entry being of deteriorating quality. 
The fifth entry was illegible, and was D-7's last. Dr. 
requested that SCP-691-INV-10 be ceased at 1427 on / 

/_, citing that no more useful information could be 
yielded. 


[CLASSIFIED. O5 CLEARANCE REQUIRED] 
SCP-691-INV-15 

Date: / / 

Time: 1000 

Subject: D-691-12 


Procedure: Standard experimental procedure was 
followed. D-12 was allowed full access to SCP-691-0 for 
seventy-two hours. After this period, D-12 was denied 
access to SCP-691-0. Daily interviews were conducted. 


Report: D-12's reaction to SCP-691-0 was similar to 
those of D-class personnel in previous investigations. Dr. 
hypothesised that D-12's reaction to deprivation of 
SCP-691-0 would lead to textbook withdrawal symptoms. 
Instead, Dr. encountered considerable difficulty 
when interviewing the subject. D-12 was not responsive 
to Dr. 's questions. Other than requests for access to 
SCP-691-0, D-12 was uncommunicative. An MRI scan of 
D-12's brain showed minimal response to visual, aural, 
and physical stimuli. An MRI scan taken whilst D-12 was 
listening to SCP-691-0 showed signals consistent with 


knees with a sentence. What need had they for new words? 


By now, they had wrought the earth bare. There were no more 
forests or mountains or beaches. There was only a dry, stone page. 
Men spent years carving into miles of rock their masterpiece. When 
finished they would erase their work and begin anew. Each strove to 
top the other, to master their literary skills. All were devoted to the 
words. Only one, however, was devoted to the Word. 


One hundred and thirty years after the man etched the first rock, he 
stopped, laid his tools at his feet, laid down, and died. No one 
noticed. He had long ago left their thoughts. Those who 
remembered him did so as a tittering fool stuck in the past. No one 
appreciated his true genius. 


As his final act, he had made a carving in the stone. Like the rest, it 
was only one symbol. Three lines, four curves. And yet it was the 
most powerful of them all. 


The ground around it began to crack. It expanded and pushed out, 
swallowing great swathes of earth, the stories contained on them, 
the storytellers. Rock gave way to void. The skies burned black and 
descended to feast. Millions died by fire and fear and hate, and their 
prose died with them. And when all was finished, when the skies 
rose back up to their rightful place and the earth calmed itself, the 
world had become a word. The greatest word, one that would ring 
out through all of creation. It had become the Library. 


There Was One, There Was Not One 


"What happened to the boy?" The children started intently at their 
older brother over the fire. 


"Why, he was eaten by the Lion that Stalks the Night, of course. 
Each of his limbs was eaten by one its mouths and the rest of him 
was split between the sixth and the seventh," the brother answered 
with a smile. 


The girl gave a shriek and drew her hands to her mouth. Her 
younger brother started to cry. The elder brother looked on 
impassively. It would be a week before his younger siblings would 
be able to sleep peacefully. He doubted that they would be able to 
leave the hut after sunset without thinking of the Lion that Stalks the 
Night. That would teach the little bastards for throwing cow dung at 
him. 


In a place that wasn't a place, the lips of the Lion that Stalks the 
Night twisted into seven monstrous smiles. 


It had existed long before Homo sapiens sapiens, finding its home in 
the night and other dark places. For a long, long time, it had existed 
as only an inarticulate idea, unthinking and unnamed, banished with 
the coming of the dawn. But that had been before the story. The 
story had changed everything. 


Now it had focus. It had names, more names than it could count. 
Pinyin Si, Nidab, Ariman, Shanem, Kadeeb, Angra, and many, many 
more which had been forgotten a hundred generations ago. With 
each story it was told through, it changed. Even from telling to 
telling, it never stayed the same. Sometimes it was a foreign warrior, 
village-burning, woman-stealing. Sometimes it found itself as a 
dragon, fire-breathing, hero-slaying. Sometimes it was a god, wrath- 
bestowing, death-bringing. Sometimes it was victorious, as a lesson 
to wicked children who wouldn't obey their parents. Sometimes it 


was defeated, as a salve to the fears of those same parents. In 
every story, it fought a different foe. Sometime it fought the Hero, the 
King, sometimes the Brave Village Boy. But every time, the story 
changed. 


It was what was unknown. What could be out there. Disease, 
bloodthirsty enemies, monsters, curses, death, many thing worse 
than death. 


"You're going to what?" 
"Write it." 


"You're going to put the miracles of Sudita, his conquest of Ur, his 
begetting of the lineage of the King, his slaying of Gilgali, onto 
mua’?" 


"Well, yes, I'm going to do that But more importantly, his name will 
be kept. Look in the archives some time. What do you see? Records 
of taxes, taken by men who have been dead for years. You can siill 
read them. This way, Sudita will still be remembered, long after you 
and | and the King are all dead." 


"Who's going to read it, anyway? Other tax collectors, checking 
grain returns with their reeds? Are they supposed to go out and tell 
the stories of Sudita to the people? Which of them is best suited, | 
wonder? Abumum? Or maybe Damurru could fart his way through? 
Oh, | Know, how about Nidita? I'm sure that the people would /ove to 
hear him stutter the begetting of the King's line! ‘And he I-l-laid w-w- 
with her for th-th-th-three d-days a-and nuh-nuh-nuh-nights...' The 
King will have you gutted for this, you know, right?" 


"You're missing the point." 


"Oh? Then please enlighten me, O soon-to-be-disemboweled cousin 
of mine! Please, share your brilliant plan of writing down Sudita's 
travels, like it's a gods-damned contracted!" 


"Writing it down means the story can be understood long after we 
died. What if, gods forbid, the story-tellers forget the tale of Sudita? 


What then?" 


"... You really have gone off the deep end haven't you? Fine. Write 
down the tale of Sudita. Present it to the King. Just don't expect me 
to help when he has your arms cut off and your eyes stabbed out for 
your disrespect." 


It was enjoying itself, insofar as it could. At the moment, it was a fat, 
bloated ogre, a wily python, a child-devouring beast with ten eyes, 
and many thousands more. It was triumphing, losing, destroying, 
stalking. In one story, thought by a small, frightened boy on a spit of 
an island, it was a large lizard devouring an entire family. It smiled, 
rather enjoying the story. It hoped that the story of the family- 
devouring, invincible monster would become a strong, powerful 
tradition, told again and again, each time gaining in ferocity. Then 
again, it liked those kinds of stories, the free-floating, idle day 
dreams, where it could move almost to its heart's content, almost 
devour everything. 


Suddenly, a part of it was Gilgali. This was odd, as it wasn't the Day 
of Strength, when the stories of Sudita and Gilgali were told, but it 
wasn't that unusual. People liked to tell stories of the slaying of the 
mad tiger. It didn't begrudge them their enjoyment. However, as the 
hero drew closer, Gilgali noticed something odd. Everything around 
Sudita seemed to get... actually it wasn't sure. Sharper, maybe? 
Buildings held their forms, trees stayed in place. The faces of the 
villagers begging Sudita for aid against Gilgali, The Tiger With 
Lantern Eyes, stopped shifting and became solid. Sudita, Lord Of All 
Men, Founder Of Imar, charged to the cave to destroy Gilgali, The 
Tiger With Lantern Eyes, as he had done a thousand times, where 
he would slay Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes, as he had done 
a thousand times. For the first time, though, Gilgali, The Tiger With 
Lantern Eyes was unsettled. 


The pain struck before Sudita, Lord Of All Men issued his challenge 
to Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes. It was yanked out of its 
many possibilities, jerked into one. This time, it did not hear the 
words describing it, only felt them. They fell like chains, binding it as 
Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes. "From atop his trove of jewels, 
Gilgali, The Tiger With Lantern Eyes," the chains began, "roared in 


response." It cried out in response, feeling each word -no, not word, 
shape- etched upon its sides, its arms, its eyes, like fire. "He swiped 
at Sudita, Lord Of All Men, Founder Of Imar, but was too slow."