In Kit's home, Blake was somewhat disgusted by what his brother 
lacked. The water ran cold, and his oven wasn't connected to 
anything. He found Kit's phone neglected on the kitchen counter, 
and picked it up, beginning to flick through it. There was a couple of 
messages which he deleted without viewing — either not wanting to 
know or not caring what his brother was up to — but otherwise it was 
as sparse as Kit's house, without a locking mechanism on it, so 
Blake shrugged, and pocketed it. It would be good to have a spare 
phone, after all. 


« The Duvet Queen | Hub |That One Time Kit Tried to Kill 
Himself» 


Tales L 


Lab Induction 


"Welcome to the Level 1 Research Staff Laboratory Induction. My 
name is Dr. Eisenberg. Now, all of you are probably asking yourself 
‘Who the hell is that?’ and 'Why isn't someone like Dr. Gears 
introducing us instead, being that he's head of the research site?’ 
Let me put it this way. That monkey you saw down the hallway? 
That's Dr. Bright. Like Dr. Gears, he is Level 4 Research Staff, 
which means he is considered about as important as two-three 
roomfuls of you here... including myself. It also means they get to 
ehm, relegate administrative tasks, so do level 3's, the shit falls 
through... you'll see. But it isn't so bad. 


"Now, all of you here folks joined the Foundation because we pay off 
your college debt, pay you a decent salary, and allow you to get 
your doctorates done. We're kinda like the army, just that we don't 
make anyone march uphill like an idiot. 


"Now, good news is, we don't care what college you went into, as 
long as you have a working head on your shoulders - for one, as you 
probably heard, what we got here doesn't only fuck with physics, it 
makes porn of it, so there's hundreds of experiments that need to be 
run, and that's what we need you for. And for two, you will be 
working as assistants to other researchers, who will outline your 
tasks in a way that doesn't require you to go through tons of theory. 
You carry out the experiments, you write down the findings carefully 
and anything unexpected even more carefully, and that's pretty 
much it for 90% of the time. 


"However, it isn't all that easy, and I'd like to say a few things to help 
you survive until it pays off. See, you might hear essentially 
everyone else bitching about how hard and risky their job is, but it's 
a matter of fact that the researchers aren't any better off. Intel just 
watches stuff from afar, if an MTF sees something they don't like, 
they get to 'retreat', but we, not only have nowhere to go if shit hits 
the fan, we have to take whatever they bring in, and prod it until we 


find out what exactly does it do, and how to prevent it from doing 
that without control. So, listen carefully. 


"Now, first, SCPs... they probably told you the gist of what we do 
here on the main briefing, with all the other folks there - the 
supposed House MD's and James Bonds and John Rambos, so | 
don't need to go through all that shit. Now, if you're in direct contact 
with a Keter class object you're likely fucked, and well, pure Euclids 
you'll meet only during initial containment, and there's little advice | 
can give you for that. What I'll speak about are the 'Safe's'. The 
bureaucratic cunt who thought up that name probably never seen 
one. 


"Do not fuck about with a safe SCP, and mainly, do not let your 
guard down. The most dangerous times when researching an object 
isn't the first time you're around it, it's the umpteenth time you've 
been asked to collect a bunch of data, think you know exactly what it 
can do, and get careless. Might seem odd now, but you will begin 
thinking like that, no matter how weird or dangerous the item you 
work with is. It's human nature, something about psychological 
baselines but I'm a metallurgist, not a shrink. | guess it's so since in 
most of the world, if something does A for five hundred times, it 
won't do B for the five hundredth one time. 


"Here, not so much - it's how half the stuff in containment gets their 
‘Euclid’. For example, the two staff that died swilling their own shit 
because of one nine eight - shapeshifter cup from the devil's mother 
we thought we had contained. One of them was a researcher like 
you, and all he did was reach for what he thought was his own 
thermos on the desk in front of him - turns out the bloody thing 
teleports every so often. 


"Second thing. D-Class. Disposables. The folks in orange jumpsuits 
recruited from death row inmates. Their main official purpose is to 
manipulate Keter class objects so that we don't have to. That much 
you heard on the briefing. They are also used for human testing of 
SCPs. Now, listen well, and you back there, try looking a bit less 
freaked out - we aren't fucking Schutzstaffel. 


"Now, the official documents say they are terminated at the end of 
each month, and so will die anyways. Now, | seriously doubt that, 


given the amount of them even | use, and since you aren't brain 
dead, you will probably doubt it too. You might even get reluctant to 
terminate D-classes that you have run a set of experiments on. 


"Let me run with a practical example. One of the memetic SCPs we 
had on site, relatively harmless thing, a jingle or a song of sort. 
There, with the suspenders? What's a meme? How can | put it... 
memes are malicious ideas. They break your mind's programming if 
they are read in, from any source. Sort of like the computer viruses 
bored Bulgarian youths write - no matter if it's from a floppy or email 
attachment, it does the same, whether it's displaying a silly 
message, or making your hard disk plow. Over there? What? That's 
a cognitohazard, not a meme? You're probably right, | don't work 
with these... either way, what it does is more important to what it's 
called. 


"Either way, researcher who did the testing was ‘humanistic’ - he 
didn't know better. Returned the D-class he used to the pool, not 
even with a note about what's been done. A few days later, we 
contained another memetic SCP, one that killed people, it was an 
image. Another researcher who ran tests on that one, by incidence, 
took in the same D-class. In his mind, the two memes merged 
somehow. From what the camera feeds show, the man started 
babbling, then tore his own trachea out, and so did the researcher 
and the two security staff present. 


"So yes. There's a reason why their papers contain a short summary 
of what they were sentenced for, beyond selecting a fitting 
psychological profile for SCP testing. Read it through. And any time 
you get the urge of returning a used D-class back to the pool, think 
to yourself: 'ls prolonging the life of a rapist worth risking the life of 
my colleagues and friends?’. 


"Now, that's all of me, really. Questions? 


"You with that look? Demotion to D-class? Ah fuck, who told you 
that? | thought so... see, that, and Keter duty is one of the pieces of 
bullshit we scare the greenhorns with. Now, see... most of the ways 
you can fuck up here, we'll have no one to punish, and taking out 
sensitive information, they'd kill you for that everywhere. 


Date: / /2009 

Male Parent: ( ) 
Female Parent: ( ) 
Gestation Time: 280 days 
Number of Offspring: 1 
Notes: [DATA EXPUNGED] 


« SCP-888 | SCP-889 | SCP-890 » 


"Next one. Why do you have to stay on site? Probation period, 
really. For the next six months. Those who go through it, you'll get 
your level 1 permanent clearances, and will be able to spend their 
time off wherever. Those who don't... you'll get class B amnestics 
and forget everything you ever experienced here. Which isn't as bad 
as it sounds - we'll still give you the salary. 


"Guy in polo shirt? Where's the best place to meet women in here? 
The Internet... Joking. Try Bio section's staff break room, lots of cute 
girls there, like Rights. 


"You there, girl with glasses? Why don't we research the objects so 
they can help mankind? Well, | could say that... Screw it. Know 
what? You can. If you succeed, and develop a theory that explains 
and reproduces an object, it'll get reclassified as SCP-EX, leaked to 
the public, and you might get a promotion out of it. So far, | have 
heard of about five people succeeding... in the last century. Hell, I'm 
still trying to work out what triggers structural cancer, and the six of 
us have been messing with it for two years by now. 


"Go on. What do you need to get promoted? Ambitious, aren't we? 
Well, goes like this. You finish your degree, and then you either 
leave with the civies, or you stay with us, sign a permanent contract, 
and get level 2 clearance. After that, it's a matter of luck and 
arseclimbery, and since | have neither, I'm still stuck as a 
Researcher. 


"Another girl? A dog somehow got into the on-site showers? That'd 
be Professor Crow. Next time he does that, steal his glasses. 


"Anyways, you're all dismissed - in a while, security personnel will 
escort you to the researchers that you'll be working for. In the 
meantime there's some coffee and donuts here too, so help 
yourself." 


Labyrinth's End 


He disengages his straps and punches in a sequence into the 
armside interface tablet. He sees his hands bathed in red, flashing 
light as several alarm systems trigger, warning him of his imminent 
death. He does not hear; the screeching of Manu's interference has 
deafened him for the moment. Bracing himself against the back of 
the pilot's chair, he uses his legs to lever open the hatch, designed 
to keep the fantastic atmospheric pressure from outside at bay, but 
not to keep unwilling occupants inside. 


The way into the darkness is open. The leader of the Cythereans 
clambers down out of the SEB into nothing. Kumaran notes that he 
has not been instantaneously crushed into a pulp by the hostile 
difference in compression. He is not roasting alive. So far, so good. 


Nothing is discernible. His feet do not touch any semblance of 
ground, and he sees nothing save his own body. He turns backward, 
and as he suspected, the SEB is no longer in sight. The sensation of 
floating is absent; this is not a zero-G environment. He simply...is. 
The thought comes to Kumaran that this state of being might 
resemble what the Zen masters back on Earth were searching for. 


The thought stirs something. Faint glowing from in front of him, a 
soft, white hue infusing the nothingness. Now there is form. 
Kumaran thinks, and Qasim appears before him. She is larger 
somehow. No relative point of view exists here, but to Kumaran she 
appears twice as tall as he envisions her in memory. 


Instinctively, he attempts to clear his conscious thought as his 
trainers in previous units had instructed. The thoughts of past 
associations stir further illumination, and from a single point of 
thought a network of webs begins to pulse into being, winding 
through nothing, becoming something. His mind reels, the feeling of 
grasping at a million points of light overtaking his consciousness. His 
perception shudders, images and sensations flooding through him. 
His self bleeds into the world around him, and now an overpowering 


thought of trying to stuff his loose entrails back into his body seizes 
him. 


Qasim calmly raises her left hand in front of her, attracting his 
attention. He is breathing hard. He is back in the simple 
nothingness. Now there is ground; white marble. 


"Defensible space," she explains. "You are with me now. You can 
think." 


Kumaran pats himself down. The gray suit and the body armor are 
intact, he is unhurt. Relief only lasts several moments for him. 


"This isn't understanding. It's annihilation." 


The white marble floor extends out in all directions, an infinite plane. 
The distance between the two points of Kumaran and Qasim, 
however, has increased. A growing line segment. 


Qasim maintains her placid expression. If disappointment exists 
within her, Kumaran cannot perceive it. "It's transformation. The two 
things are hard to tell apart from our perspective." 


"This doesn't matter. Where the hell is Spline?" 


She raises her right hand now. The line extending out from the 
direction in which her hand is pointing races outward. Impossibly far, 
and also three paces. A skeletal, brass construct has joined them on 
this plane. Its piercing blue gaze is fixed on Kumaran. The three 
figures transcribe a triangle onto the surface of this place. In the 
area bounded between Qasim's outstretched hands and the 
distance between Spline and Kumaran, a geometrical space of the 
prior nothingness has returned. A triangular absence separates 
them. 


"We aren't enemies, Kumaran. | want you to see that." Spline 
speaks with his former voice, broadcast from somewhere within his 
true, metallic form. No movement accompanies his speech. "This is 
for all of mankind. It was meant to happen." 


Kumaran's fists clench. "| saw what it does. It drove one of my 
people mad, and then killed her. It killed Whitlock, Nisa. Did you 


know that?" He looks back to Qasim. If the triangular void between 
them was a hole, or a chasm, something deep within it appears to 
pulse, faint red light. 


"She killed herself." Spline interrupts the exchange. "Her mind was a 
system of defenses, designed against the Confici. She chose to 
stand against progress. Is that really what you're prepared to do, 
Kumaran?" 


He advances on Spline, one step at a time, his tread heavy and 
echoing on the infinite marble expanse. The triangular space 
between them shrinks as the vertices of the figure begin to 
converge. 


"I'm a scientist. I've met a lot of people who call all sorts of things 
‘progress.’ Doing what you did to Sarah, to the entire world? No. 
Fuck your 'progress.' The thousand people in the station over our 
heads right now, that's progress." 


The man and the construct are now face to face. The diminished 
triangle is now a bright red line, connecting the two to Qasim. 
Spline's eyes glow slightly brighter as he speaks. 


"This would have been easier with your help, you know. We could 
have worked together. Without conflict, we could have eased 
everyone into this. You're keeping something apart that was meant 
to be unified." 


Spline sighs, his brass shoulder blades heaving slightly, a leftover 
affectation from the time when his body was flesh. 


"Well. It doesn't matter. This is going to happen. It has to. This is the 
next step for us. You can't say | haven't tried to be reasonable." 


Qasim now steps closer. "Surely there's a more controlled way to 
explore this than to unleash it in its pure form." 


Spline waves a brass hand in dismissal. "Pointless. Look at the 
resistance there is." He motions to Kumaran, only a hand's reach 
away. "It's not just the Foundation either. Dr. Qasim, I'm not a 
monster. But I'm not a fool. This is the gateway meant for 


MEKHANE. For greater understanding. | act now, or | don't at all." 


Kumaran has silently unsheathed his combat knife. Qasim has time 
to gasp, her composure finally shaken by the suddenness of the act, 
before Kumaran has locked an arm around Spline's neck from 
behind. He begins plunging the knife into any components that look 
vital, over and over, the screeching sound of metal scraping against 
metal filling the expanse. The red line between them pulses 
violently, acknowledging the events unfolding now. 


Spline struggles, the human voice replaced by static and garbled 
tone bursts, clutching at Kumaran and trying to get a hold of the 
knife. Servos whine at a high pitch as the brass construct fights for 
its life, and a particularly loud static burst goes up when Kumaran 
stomps violently on Spline's right leg, neatly snapping it off at the 
knee joint. Hydraulic fluid begins leaking onto the marble.