Emma is doing well. She seems to be finally respond to the 
treatment with some sort of positive effect, and that all by itself 
brightens my day considerably. Maybe someday soon she'll be able 
to control her abilities to the point where she can help me put the 
finishing touches on the Olympia Project. 


Actually, speaking of the Olympia Project, | got some help for that 
from a rather unusual source. The good doctor, Herr Chirurg, has 
been sent here ever since some roughness involving Agatha. He 
wouldn't tell me exactly what, but he did mention that he quite liked 
her eyes. 


Still, once you get past his appearance and "mild" dementia, he's 
quite a likable character. A wealth of knowledge in fact. He's actually 
aided me in several little asides in regard to the project. He was 
quite interested in the whole thing. He see's me somewhat as a 
kindred spirit, and while he does find my physiology interesting, he 
told me that he's "skilled with the biology of humans...not hounds", 
and so won't be cutting me open to find out how | work. 


So | see it as a fair trade. He helped me with my project, | taught him 
a little of what we know about the disassembler, despite the fact I'm 
not allowed to. Let's just not tell the higher ups about that, shall we? 
As a sort of an extra "thank you" present to the man for his help, and 
for not eviscerating any of my staff, I'll be getting him a bottle of 
peppermint schnapps, which Agatha said he quite enjoyed. 


And yes, the Olympia Project. Finally, | have begun the integration 
phase. And to see her there, in the flesh, to hear her twin hearts 
beating... It was breath taking. I'd liken the experience to becoming 
a father, although I've never procreated unfortunately, so | wouldn't 
truly know. 


That little hiccup at the end there though, that made me worried. For 
a few moments | was afraid she was going to die before she had 
truly lived. It was horrifying. I'm still not exactly certain as to what 
caused it, but it was worrying nonetheless, despite the fact none of 
us have seen a resurgence of the event. Still, her body is going 
through some changes, adapting to its new organs. It'll be a few 


days before she fully stabilizes enough for us to risk implanting Zero 
herself. 


Sixteenth Wondertainment Donation 


Graciously donated by the Doctor Won 
through the usual che 


Of Interest: user-friendly, communication, portable, free agents, 
limited time of use, donation. 


Asset Summary: Documentation issued along the first batch 
of Sixteenth Wondertainment Donation units follows: 


Hello, hello, hello! Thank you for buying the Doctor Wondertainr 


You see, these are not your normal, run-of-the-mill wooden toys 


Fantastic Wonde 


the latest and coolest of ways to talk to your pals that live the « 
Moon! With a Fantastic Wonderbird™ in your hands, you an 
matter where you are! And no matter how hard your folks try 1 
your Fantastic Wonderbirds™! It's not radio, it's not telepathy 
entirely! 


It's friendship! 


Reload charge after every use. | 


Note: Thirty units of the Donation wrapped in bright red paper with 
the previous print were issued through flash materialization during 
the 23rd Yearly Review Meeting between the British Prime Minister 
and the European Branch Secretary of the Manna Charitable 
Foundation (at the time Blanca Castillo). 


Wondertainment Enterprises 
PR Department of 


Doctor Wondertainment 


Hello, Charitable. As usual, another project that did 
exceedingly poorly with the intended target groups. 
Fortunately for both of us, those very same surveys have 
made it abundantly clear that we should focus on 
producing more plastic space robots that can be used as 
untraceable walkie-talkies, so at least it wasn't a 
complete waste of our time. 


The Doc was really sad when we heard about it failing so 
miserably, by the way... we really loved this idea. There 
is no justice. 


Anyways, we'll send you our surplus as they keep 
popping out of their eggs. Give them a good life, okay? 
And keep up the good work! 


Yours Sincerely, 
Padrig Banes 


PS: | hope you don't mind the interruption, Prime 
Minister. It's for a good cause! 


Note: A single printing of the card above was delivered with the 
mentioned batch. 


Doctor Wondertainment Enterprises has been one of the 
most generous Benefactors the Manna Charitable 
Foundation has ever had the pleasure to receive 
donations from. While the identity, lawful standing and 
metaphysical status of the Doctor Wondertainment 
Enterprises and their employee(s) remain an unknown 
quantity, most of their gifts to the Manna Charitable 
Foundation have been a tremendous help to its cause. 


Maintenance and Operation: 
¢ MAINTENANCE: No maintenance concerns noted. 


¢ OPERATION: 1) Open ‘battery slot’. 2) Introduce piece of 


edible food — preferably, unwrapped candy, as it seems to be 
the intended ‘power source' — in ‘battery slot'. 3) Establish a 
pattern of iterative thoughts related to the desired receipt or 
receipts of the communication until the Asset establishes said 
communication. 4) Reload 'batteries' as necessary. 


ATTENTION: Communication can be established 
between any pair of units; however, batteries will run out 
faster if the receiving unit is not charged, and 
communication will not happen if attempted from an 
uncharged unit. 


WARNING: Repeated usage of the Asset invariably 
results in malfunction. A period of ten to thirteen hours of 
‘rest’ between uses of ten to fifteen minutes, maximum, 
is advised. 


Safety Concerns: Safe for all. 


Security Restrictions: Since no interception is possible 
when using the Sixteenth Wondertainment Donation to 
communicate, it is safe to say that this item does not require special 
Security Restrictions, as long as it is not identified as a means of 
long-range communications to persons unrelated to the Manna 
Charitable Foundation. Free agents and Executive members of the 
Manna Charitable Foundation Work Groups should be given 
individual items of the Sixteenth Wondertainment Donation, as 
Programme requirements state. 


ATTENTION: Since there is no fixed schedule on the 
delivery of new batches, the International Board has full 
authority on the free agents and/or executive members 
that receive the Sixteenth Wondertainment Donation. 
Remember: this is a prized, rare asset with a noticeable 
impact in our global activities. If you find one, report 
immediately to an Executive member. 


173 


He stands 

king 

over all he has ever wanted; a shadowed corner 
in a fetid cell. 

Life 

is nothing to stone. 

Mountains erode. 

Hillsides crumble. 

To him, they go as whisper fast as men 
whose eyes 

have 

failed 

them. 

Offal spreads from his feet, 
stinking, harsh, 

making unprepared eyes water- 
so much faster, 

stone. 

Stone does not care for life, 
and this stone cares yet less 
but for the quick, 

subtle 

delicate 

erosion 

of the snap of bone on bone. 
"Abandon all hope ye who enter here. 
Stone does not care. 

Don't blink. 


1914 


We've been playing this game recently — the Game, | should say — 
called 1974. Hell of a thing. 


My buddies Kyle and John, we love history. It's sort of our thing. So 
when Kyle dug the Game out of his father's closet, we thought it'd be 
a hoot to try out. An unplayable board game from the seventies, two 
hundred little cardboard squares marching across a grid of 
hexagons tracing all the rivers, mountains, and cities of France. 
Each counter has three little numbers on it for attack, defense, 
move. There's tables of numbers for moving, for combat, resupply— 
endless columns on dozens of dusty papers. 


John and me, we're the Germans. Kyle takes Frenchies; he's the 
only one who can make heads or tails of all the numbers, so we 
follow his lead. 


The game starts slow. Set up takes three hours and the pieces 
move about half an inch a turn if you're lucky. Still, it's a blast. 
Belgium goes under real quick. Holland never stood a chance. 
Deutschers strike towards Verdun and the Foreign Legion leads a 
charge to surround Metz. Just a bunch of squares shuffling, though. 


Around session four things start to get a little weird. French infantry 
encircled outside Antwerp are running low on supplies and Kyle tells 
us he's going to start eating the horses of his cavalry division — to 
keep the front line troops fed. Says he gets a bonus if they eat the 
riders too. We try to laugh that one off but he cracks open the 
monstrous rulebook and sure enough the “cannibalism efficacy 
chart” says it plain as day, though God knows how often that 
particular contingency was expected to come up. 


That discovery put a whole new spin on gameplay — we started 
seeing what other optional rules we could dig up. The Osirian 
Appendices — right after the "Play by Mail" section — changed my 
whole Brussels Offensive. It's amazing what the hoisted ribcage of 


an enemy does for the morale of your troops — at least according to 
the designer's notes. 


Turns out there's all sorts of mechanics that'll give you an edge, for 
the right price. Blood sigils let you add +1 to your rolls, but only if the 
blood is fresh. “Hallowed gore” gives you an experience bonus — 
Marshal Foch swore by it. Barbed wire is tougher when woven with 
bone. Who knew the First World War had so much to do with arterial 
logistics? 


We weren't happy about sending the second line troops off to the 
slaughterhouse. But | think the improvement of our positions around 
Flanders more than justified that particular decision. 


By now | hear the armies marching at night, but Kyle's the one who 
gets real into it. He doesn't just address the day's sacrifices by name 
— we all do that by now; it negates a bunch of debuffs — he's 
begun tracking the turns on his skin. And eyeing John's vertebrae. 


He announces the construction of a pyramid of skulls large enough 
to encompass Paris and visible from the moon. Keeps producing 
page after page of optional rules in a frankly suspicious red ink. 
John just sits and hums. Hasn't been the same since we ate 
Bucephalus. 


We're on to something special. 


By 1918, things have...escalated. This next offensive is the big one 
— we've been preparing. What was Belgium is painted red, the 
dykes retaining human viscera instead of water. That's crucial to our 
success — the viscera, | mean. Our armies of millions are long 
gone, just a few hundred thousand now, but what thousands! The 
femur of your closest friend strikes more true than any bullet; vests 
of Belgian tendon are as good as kevlar in the hands of our tailors. 
Supply problems are a thing of the past; easier to keep our food on 
the hoof, or rather, the boot. Each German carries a hundred souls 
within his gullet. | don't want to think about what the French carry 
there. 


All but the best have been expended. Our modern soldier is 


human body are present in SCP-763, located in a relatively even 
distribution throughout the system. The lungs are fed by a number of 
mouth-like round holes in SCP-763's skin. The feeding tubes pass 
directly into SCP-763 as though the flesh grew around them as its 
mass expanded. 


Researchers believe that the blood vessels and organs are 
essentially a support system for what has been designated "the 
cluster". The cluster is an interconnected network of thirty-seven 
(37) human brains of varying sizes, connected by chains of cells 
resembling neurons. This array is enclosed by a multi-layered 
arrangement of bone growths. The bones most closely resemble 
ribs, though they exhibit offshoots that allow them to interlace into a 
tighter structure. Initial analysis revealed a far higher than normal 
amount of neurotransmitter activity. Over time the individual brains 
each enter a "resting" state with neural activity consistent with REM 
sleep, in time periods consistent with a polyphasic sleep pattern. 
This resting state lasts approximately forty-five (45) minutes. At any 
given time there are five (5) brains in this resting state while the 
remaining thirty-two (82) brains are in the active state. 


A collection of bone and nerve fibers resembling a spinal column 
approximately three (3) meters in length extends from the cluster to 
join with the spinal column of SCP-763-A. SCP-763-A appears to be 
the body of the facility's former owner, Klaus _ . The body is only 
partially absorbed into the rest of SCP-763, retaining all its 
(presumably) original organs and general shape and structure. To 
date it has shown no signs of movement or further absorption. It 
should be noted that other absorbed subjects have been completely 
integrated into SCP-763 within three (3) months. When SCP-763 
was discovered, SCP-763-A was in a seated position, in which it 
remains. There was a table in front of SCP-763-A with a sheaf of 
papers on them, completely decayed from the warm, damp 
conditions of Sub-Basement G. SCP-763-A's hand held a pencil, 
apparently poised to write. Any previous writing has been lost with 
the degradation of the paper. SCP-763-A's facial expression is one 
of intense concentration or perhaps pain, with features contorted 
and eyes closed. Unlike the rest of the muscular tissue in SCP-763, 
SCP-763-A is not atrophied, despite having exhibited no movement 
to date. Researchers assume that SCP-763-A remains unabsorbed 


frightfully effective, but requires a lot of ingredients. 


Summer of 1918. Kyle sits atop the Parisian Ossuary and mocks us. 
There isn't going to be a 1919. 


1st - 12th December 2008 


02/12/2008 

| got nearly no sleep yesterday. | was so consumed with the 
extractor that all my previous appointments | either forgot, or simply 
blew off. Unprofessional and immature, | know, but | couldn't tear 
myself away from it. Now that I've exhausted myself and managed 
to break away, | now see what else | have to do. 


Emma was a little upset that | had "flaked" on our little lunch, but I've 
promised her that I'll drop by either today or tomorrow to talk to her, 
and that I'd bring her even more little snacks. | realise this is spoiling 
her a little, but the girl has been through figurative firestorms, not to 
mention what she was like when we found her. She deserves a little 
spoiling every now and then. Of course, ever since Clef went on 
his little rampage I've been a little nervous about her safety. 
Granted, she's a maelstrom of energy, capable of warping life to 
degrees we cannot even fathom, but beneath that, is a small, lonely 
little girl, who really just wanted some friends. It's just | feel kind of 
bad for her. | know that's not very unbiased, but | have a soft spot 
for children. Besides, | think | made very clear to Clef exactly what | 
thought of his little "outburst". 


I've received a clear estimation of when those new tools will be 
ready for the excavation. They've told me Friday, but that's if they 
push it to the limit. I've agreed with that, and added a bonus to their 
fee for being gracious about my demands. Still... | hate to leave this 
project alone for that long. But, at the very least, no accidents can 
happen there till then, so | guess some good can come of it. 


| had put the dispersal of D-Class personnel here on hold for the 
past two days, until | choose the ones | want, making the rest of the 
site coordinators rather snippy with me. | had forgotten completely 
about it, due to aforementioned reasons, but I'll try and get down to 
it later today or tomorrow, before | speak with Emma. 


I've applied for official project status regarding my working for an