"Art demands the best,” Jakob replied. “Of everything.”. 


The artist gave Jakob a fistful of crumpled bills, hugged Hank, and 
left the shop. 


Her next stop was three stories above one of the main streets. As 
she climbed up the fire escape, she saw the sign that said 
“Biological Components and Alterations.” The storefront windows 
were barred from the inside, and the door was a solid piece of metal. 


Opening the door, she saw Frank talking on the phone. She shut the 
door as quietly as possible. 


"For the last time, no! I've already told you, | can make the zygote, 
but you're going to have to find someone else to implant it." 


Frank looked at the artist and rolled his eyes. 


"No, | don't know anyone who can do that because nobody's ever 
done anything like this before." 


He held his hand to the mouthpiece. "This might take a while. You 
got a minute?" The artist nodded and sat down on a whale vertebra. 


He turned back to the phone. "Look, I've been far more reasonable 


with you than any sane person should be. What you're doing is 
dangerous, irresponsible, and quite frankly, doesn't make any 
sense. The only reason I'm doing this is I'm reasonably certain this 
won't kill you, and also because you're paying me." 


The artist stifled a giggle. 


"Honestly, | don't care. You either pick it up when it's ready, give me 
my money, and leave me alone; or tell me now, and we can skip 
straight to the leaving me alone part." 


Frank paused. 
"Fine, I'll see you on Friday. Goodbye." 


Frank hung up the phone and put his head in his hands. "| swear to 
god, you people are going to kill me. | mean, an in-utero art project? 
Why would anyone in their right mind do that? | try to talk her down, 
and she's like, 'no, | already booked the gallery space nine months 
in advance.’ | swear, sometimes | forget why | moved here." 


"The rent's cheap." The artist pointed out. 
"Yeah, that's probably it. What did you need?" 


"| need some kind of sedative for that clock you sold me. It keeps 
gaining time whenever anyone bangs on the wall." 


"You do realize it's not meant to be an accurate timepiece, right?" 
"| Know, but it's getting out of control, and | can't re-set it." 
Frank shrugged and grabbed a small phial from under the counter. 


"A drop of this should slow the heartbeat enough to let time catch 
up. You'll have to experiment with it to get the correct dosage. Don't 
give it more than five drops in twenty-four hours." 


"Thanks," the artist said, handing him a handful of money and some 
change. 


"Anything else?" 


"Has my order come in yet?" 


"No it hasn't," Frank replied, scratching his head. "It's too dangerous 
to ship it here, so they've decided to take it through the Ways. Even 
then, they're really worried that something might happen. Are you 
sure | can't talk you into something less potentially world-ending? 
I've got a couple things in stock that should do what you want." 


"No thanks," the artist said, "the potential disaster is central to the 
theme." 


"| would tell you you're making a huge mistake, but you wouldn't 
listen to me anyway." 


The artist walked to the door. "Good luck with that zygote," she 
called back as she returned to the street. 


"Thanks. | really need to stop selling that girl stuff.” 


Outside, the sky had changed to a golden yellow. A girl was doing 
backflips down the sidewalk. A couple was waltzing in the middle of 
the street (nobody owned cars in BackdoorSoho, and no one really 
knew why it had streets). The artist smiled to herself. 


But there was no time to dwell on that. The artist started making her 
way toward the gallery space. She had a lot of work to do. 


Project Proposal 1964-238: "The Eater of Worlds" 


Title: The Eater of Worlds 
Material Requirements: 


* Schematics and components for an implosion-type fission 
bomb 

* 6.2 kg of weapons-grade plutonium lead 

* One pair of Hi-Fi stereo speakers 

¢ Duct tape 

¢ Live brain tissue surgically extracted from Edward Teller, 
Robert Oppenheimer, Eugene Wigner, Leo Chazdwick, Ernst 
Goldberg, and/or any living US or Soviet head of state or 
national defense director 

¢ One transistorized positronic cognition matrix (consult with 
|.A.) 

¢ Solenoids salvaged from pinball machines constructed after 
July 16th, 1945 

* Acrylic paint and brushes 


Abstract: The Eater of Worlds is a functional replica of the "Fat 
Man" atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan near the 
end of World War Il. Per the safety guidelines established after the 
incident at the 1954 Expo and the recommendations of the 
Submission Committee, the exploding-bridgewire detonators and 
plutonium core in the version to be displayed at the 1964 Expo will 
be replaced with inert analogues. The trigger and other internal 
mechanisms remain active but are incapable of producing an 
explosion. 


A positronic matrix based on the latest developments in synthetic 
consciousness has been integrated into the bomb's casing, 
rendering the device self-aware and capable of seeing and hearing 
events occuring around it. Brain tissue from several leading scientific 
and political figures involved in the development and deployment of 
nuclear weaponry have been used as the seed material for the 


bomb's artificial mind, effectively producing a gestalt consciousness 
representing the very concept of atomic warfare personified. 


Once functional, The Eater of Worlds should be displayed on its own 
in an isolated room with a laboratory motif for contextual purposes. 
Visitors are to be encouraged to speak to and question the bomb, 
thus allowing the bomb's responses to reflect its opinions as a 
weapon on the growing danger of global nuclear war, and allowing 
the visitor to be confronted with the reality of global annihilation and 
to challenge their own preconceptions about the matter. 


Intent: It was a muggy summer night when | first met Leo 
Chazdwick in a bar in Greenwich Village. | never thought to ask how 
one of the fathers of the atomic bomb found his way into that dive, 
but there he was - pushing sixty, acting seventy, deeply intoxicated, 
and looking like he was one ill-timed comment away from bursting 
into tears. He was shocked that | recognized his face (you can thank 
my Intro to Atomic Energy professor at MIT for that), and we chatted 
for awhile, the scientific genius and the second-year dropout, over a 
few pints of Genesee. He was a proud man - but the emptier his 
glass got, the more that pride changed to guilt and regret. 


"We won the war," he told me towards the end of our conversation, 
"put we damned the human race. We gave Uncle Sam a weapon 
powerful enough to destroy the world - of course he wasn't going to 
just use it once and throw away the plans! Now we've got thousands 
of them just ready to go, and so do the Reds. It's not a matter of if; 
it's a matter of when." 


| reflected on that conversation for a long time, and | had to admit | 
found it perplexing how differently people were looking at the Bomb. 
Chazdwick wished he'd never made that fatal discovery in '42 that 
set the Manhattan Project on its path to success, but men like Teller 
wanted to nuke half the world as an engineering project, and 
politicians were more than willing to threaten human extinction over 
petty international disputes. | wondered - what if we could ask the 
Bomb itself what /t thought about the matter? 


Getting a nuclear bomb was the easy part - a couple phone calls, a 
quick stop by 231 East 47th Street, and they hauled one up from the 
basement and loaded it in the back of my rented Studebaker. The 


hard part was getting it to answer me when | talked to it. 
Chazdwick's brain was too pickled from his addictions to provide a 
usable sample, and the piece of Einstein's cerebellum that | got in 
the mail wasn't fresh enough. | definitely needed material from a 
living person to stabilize it (so Fermi, unfortunately, was out of the 
question,) but the slices | could come by weren't enough on their 
own. It took another year and a half and about a dozen samples 
before the bomb had a stable consciousness that could hold a 
conversation, but | had to switch it off for fear that it'd trigger itself 
and instantaneously open up the entire west side to urban 
redevelopment. 


| worry that taking the core out will compromise the project. It's 
supposed to be the Bomb in living form - what good is a bomb that 
can't explode? But the 1964 Expo opens in a few weeks, and there's 
no other way I'm going to get this thing up and running, and safe 
enough to satisfy the Critics, if | want to have it on display this 
decade. Perhaps the existential crisis the bomb will find itself in will 
make for an interesting look at the psychology of one who is 
completely unable to do the one thing they feel like they were put on 
this Earth to do? 


Project Proposal 1964-301: "The Essence of Indolence" 


Title: The Essence of Indolence 
Requisition: 


* Suede Armchair, any colour 

* Approximately four (4) meters of matching suede material 

¢ A twenty (20) by twenty centimeter sample of grafted skin 
from one (1) of each of the following individuals: a Caucasian 
male, a Hispanic female (must be alive when sample taken, 
must own a television), and any male-line relative of either 
Philo T. Farnsworth, Vladimir K. Zworykin, or John Logie 
Baird. 

* One (1) Bos taurus, male 

¢ Rubber Cement 

¢ All equipment necessary to perform a skin graft 

¢ Asterile environment 

¢ Ten (10) kilograms of batting of cotton 

* One thousand (1,000) milliliters of transmorphic-laced blood, 
type O negative. 


Abstract: 

This work consummates in form of a suede armchair, defined with 
tactile illusionary properties. The furnishing, as it were, feels as if it 
has been constructed of living flesh, despite its visual 
characteristics. If an individual were to administer a medical 
examination upon the piece, one would find vital signs of life, 
including a heartbeat, breathing patterns, proximal fluctuation of the 
third soul, etc.. 


When any being, be it sentient and currently alive, is defined as 
"sitting" in the furnishing, and concurrently "watching" a television of 
any build, powered on, the transmorphic plasma injected in the 
piece activates. Over the course of thirty-two (32) hours, the 
organism is converted into a furnishing similar in design to the 
original piece, with considerations made to the organism's overall 


size and skeletal structure (if any). This new furnishing will be a 
living, breathing furnishing, with the same properties as my original 
piece. For this, display will be restricted, and some sort of barrier 
must be erected to keep patrons from experimenting with it. 


While working with an experimental throw pillow of the same design, 
| have discovered that these pieces experience hunger, and must be 
fed foodstuffs appropriate to their species at regular intervals, if one 
wishes to keep their art alive. After the piece has expired, it enters a 
form of rigor mortis, in which it stiffens to a solid furnishing, as well 
as preserving itself. Dissection is still possible. 


Intent: 


"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not 
the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But 
when television is bad, nothing is worse. | invite each of 
you to sit down in front of your own television set when 
your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, 
without a book, without a magazine, without a 
newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating 
book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set 
until the station signs off. | can assure you that what you 
will observe is a vast wasteland. And if you think | 
exaggerate, | only ask you to try it." — Newton N. Minow, 
1961 


The television. It was an invention originally intended for mass 
media and the entertainment of people across all differences. And 
yet, what was meant to improve life has done nothing but fail. | have 
seen naught but the masses with their eyes trained to a screen, 
ignorant of friends and family, adopting slovenly hours into their 
already full schedules. The once fascinating new idea has become 
an outbreak of rapid devolution into what can only be known as an 
inferior of the working man — the “couch potato”. 


This piece was created in the sole influence of exposing the 
erroneous invention and what it has made of us. We are becoming 
no more useful than the furniture upon which we lounge. In that 
essence, why not be the furniture? We are seats and pillows upon 
which those who work rest, an ideal that allows them to work as to 


are becoming suspicious that something’s not right. —Dr. 


A resident of SCP-587 remains oblivious to foreign objects unless 
they make contact with the diorama’s surface. Items that do contact 
the surface are perceivable by inhabitants and often excite interest 
or confusion. Thus a camera placed centimeters from the town 
center has gone unnoticed for years, while the momentary presence 
of an insect within view of inhabitants could be a major disruption 
(and has been on several occasions). 


Other disturbances caused by negligent attention to containment 
protocol include numerous earthquakes (caused by jostling or 
impacting the model), climate swings and unexplained eclipses 
(resulting from malfunctioning climate control equipment), a burning 
flood (when an assistant spilled hot coffee down Main Street), and 
strange rains of rope and white flakes (hair and dandruff; 
researchers must now don level 1 isolation wear in the containment 
area). Careful observation confirms that SCP-587’s population is 
aware of these “mysterious” phenomena, and that a number of 
beliefs and rationalizations have arisen to explain them. 


Addendum 587-01: Following repeated incidents exposing 
SCP-587’s populace to strange occurrences, the project’s research 
priorities have been shifted from investigation of the artifact’s 
properties to psychological experimentation with its inhabitants. 
Future incidents will be carefully designed and introduced to study 
mass reactions to unexplained and threatening events. 


Response to mysterious appearances and disappearances: 
[ACCESS DENIED] 

Response to persistent unexplainable predation: 

[ACCESS DENIED] 

Mass psychology in religious cataclysms: 

[ACCESS DENIED] 


XK events: 


avoid lowering to such a level. It is nothing but a motivation and a 
rock bottom from which the working man starts and rests. 


In our society, then, there is truly nothing more worthy of disgust 
than the man who cannot do more than provide a seat and a 
television for his home. The television is nothing but a false life and 
for those who cannot live their own. 


Project Proposal 1994-103: "A Song of Hope and Home" 


Name: Adebowale 
Title: A Song of Hope and Home 


Material Requirements: 
For the creation of the piece: 


¢ One guitar, electric 

* One drum set 

¢ Three flutes - one of African Blackwood from this dimension, 

one of bamboo from Universe X-519, one of Elderwood from 

Universe X-162 

Two triangles - one of steel and the other of beryllium bronze 

* One pipe organ 

* One theremin 

* One rainstick, made of a cactus from X-736 and filled with 

sand gathered from around the cactus 

The recorded roar of a dinosaur or another animal non-extant 

on this plane 

The bird song of the tillikana, from Universe J-057 

¢ A waterphone, filled with water from Universe X-218 

* A full choir singing the following: Ave Maria by Schubert, 
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, and Africa by Toto 

« Acannon 

¢ Music recording and editing equipment 


For the performance of the piece: 


¢ 20 chairs, modified to have arm/leg straps 
* 1 speaker 

¢ 20 blankets 

¢ Hot chocolate, coffee and tea 


| would have liked to perform this live, but any attempt to 
do so would instill the same vision in the performers. As