The door creaked open, and in stepped an ageing alchemist the 
entire Bazaar knew by sight. He was the Ed of Ed & Al's Alchemist 
Emporium. His greying blonde hair was held back in a ponytail, his 
face adorned with a pair of spectacles and an angular beard, and he 
still wore his heavy leather apron over his work clothes. 


"Someone send for an optogram?" he asked, setting his satchel 
down on the gurney. 


“Thanks for coming at this hour Edward," Morose said with a solemn 
nod. "We're security guards, not detectives, and we need to finger 
the lunatic who did this ASAP, or someone else might get hurt." 


"Well | can't guarantee the last thing she saw was the killer, but it's 
worth a shot at least." 


Ed gently pulled back the tarp to reveal the girl's blood drained face, 
still frozen in horror. 


"Oh... I, ah... oh Jesus." 
"You alright there Ed?" Grindle asked. 


"Yes, |, I'll be fine. Thank you,” he said, taking deep breaths to keep 
himself calm. "I apologize, | don't deal with cadavers myself that 
often, especially not young and innocent murder victims. Has the 


ferryman been paid at least?" 


"Spectral Affairs is already making arrangements on her behalf,” 
Morose nodded. 


"Good. Good. If there's any sort of fund my brother and | would 
gladly... I'm sorry. This is not the time or the place. Let's get this 
over with." 


Ed opened his satchel and removed a device that looked like a large 
syringe with a bizarre suction cup attachment on the end. Opening 
the girl's left eye with his fingers, he carefully positioned the device 
over it. Once he had a good seal, he pulled back the plunger until 
the vacuum was strong enough to pull the eye straight from the 
socket with a horrid sucking sound. 


"There. That's the worst of it." Gingerly removing the eye with gloved 
hands, he placed it on the table and sliced it in half. "We'll save the 
front half for the mortician. Hopefully, they can make the body 
presentable." 


He reached into the satchel and pulled out a small jar. 


"This is one of the finest optographic philters known to Alchemy. It's 
a family secret, of course, but it will fix the bleached rhodopsin in the 
subject's retina and produce a crystal clear negative of the last thing 
she saw." 


Picking up the rear half of the eye with a pair of surgical tongs, he 
set It to soak in the solution. 


"In just a few minutes, we'll have the image." 


Morose respectfully pulled the tarp back over the body, and they 
quietly waited for the optogram to develop, the only sound the 
ticking of the pendulum wall clock. 


After what felt like hours, Ed reached back into the jar and removed 
the half-eye. Picking up a jeweller's monocle with his other hand, he 
made a careful examination of the retina. 


"Well?" Morose asked impatiently. 


"Yeah, you're going to want to take a look," Ed replied. Handing 
them the monocle while retaining possession of the eye himself, the 
two guards took a look at the last thing their victim had seen. 


"What the hell?" 


The Utterly Bazaar was far older than most of its current residents 
realized. Buried beneath the century-old streets and buildings were 
millennia-old catacombs. Who had built those? None knew for 
certain, not even the vile Aristocrat who now called it home. He had 
stumbled across the ancient Way in quite by chance during his flight 
from the disgusting peasant jailors who had sought to contain him. 


The catacombs were a perfect abode for a noble such as himself; 
vast, ostentatious, dark, and amply stocked with the preserved 
remains of peasants to feast upon. 


Still, there were occasions when only fresh meat would do, and the 
Bazaar overhead had proved to be ample hunting ground. Had he 
been concerned with practicality, he would have eaten the whole 
body, or perhaps have used her as a broodmare and begat his own 
dynasty. 


But practicality was for peasants, for inferior beings forced to make 
do with what little they had. He was of noble birth and heir to a vast 
abundance too great to count. He could pick and choose what he 
pleased and leave the rest to rot. 


The Aristocrat knew that the womb of a whore would have sold for 
an exorbitant price at the Flesh Market. That only made its presence 
on his dinner plate all the more decadent. 


Tales V 


Bug Report: VM727BNYUSE 


Bug Report: Vending Machine is deleting concept of value of 
individual dollars 


Issue: A vending machine on Earth is removing concept of value 
from money inserted into it. 


Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States of America, Earth, Sol 
System, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe #727 


Expected Result: Machine accepts money, and then ejects it if it 
does not register as money. 


Actual Result: Machine accepts money, removes the concept of 
value from money, and then ejects a piece of paper. 


Steps to Reproduce: Create a vending machine with the current 
code for the vending machine at the specified location. 


if (dollar.value = null || dollar.wrinkled) 


return dollar; 


} 


else 


{ 


currentvalue += dollar.value; 
return null; 


} 


phoebtheweeb logged in 


<phoebtheweeb> hey guys, i just saw the report on the value 
deleting vending machine, and | can’t for the life of me find the 
issue. Can somebody help with this real fast? 


<billybobjoe> so i found this crazy thing right? One of the groups 
on the Earth somehow made half a million physics engine breaking 
concepts and put it on one notecard. ONE! 


<arealpainintheash> phoebtheweeb ill take a look, it can’t be that 
hard to find. 


<phoebtheweebs> thx, | feel like its really simple but | just can’t find 
it 


<lovelyfuckery> so how is the sim still running Imao 


<arealpainintheash> this bug has been around for 4 years? Jeez i 
cant believe noones dealt with this. 


<phoebtheweeb> wait i think i found it, in the comparison in the 
value check. that needs to be 2 equal signs. 


<arealpainintheash> goddammit the easiest one. This is WHY i 
advocate yoda comparisons 


<billybobjoe> well, they made the notecard so that the activation 
took 5 years. So what | did, is i made a concept-deleting machine in 
plain view of the public so that the scip guys will find it and use it to 
delete the concepts on the notecard. It was gonna be terrible, all 
sorts of shit, like changing water properties and removing gravity 
and changing how light travels 


<billybobjoe> and everything interacting to collectively break 
physics woulda just made it so much worse 


<lovelyfuckery> yeah that sounds p bad. Are you sure you couldnt 
have just fixed the bugs? 


<phoebtheweeb> no FUCK yoda comparisons. | dont see any proof 
that they CHANGE jackshit 


<arealpainintheash> YODA COMPARISONS ARE ONE OF THE 
BEST HABITS ANY PROGRAMMER CAN ADOPT BECAUSE IT 
FORCES THEM TO THINK 


<billybobjoe> heck no, there were so many potential bugs the 
debugging run couldnt simulate it for more than 10 years are you 
kidding me? 


<lovelyfuckery> ouch, yeah i dont really wanna deal with that 


<phoebtheweeb> NO THEY DONT THEY JUST LOOK STUPID 


<lovelyfuckery> what machine did you make into a concept deleter 
anyhow? 


<billybobjoe> a vending machine in brooklyn. That way, they would 
have HAD to take it in, too exposed to the public. and by my 
calculations, their leadership should vote to use the machine on the 
paper aaaaany second now. 


<billybobjoe> it was easy too, just had to change a comparison in 
an if statement 


<arealpainintheash> wait 


<phoebtheweeb> ? 


<arealpainintheash> was it the vending machine referenced in 
report VM727BNYUSE? 


<billybobjoe> uhhhhhhhhhh yes? | thought we deleted that report, 
it was contained by the skip guys 


<phoebtheweebs> shit 


<arealpainintheash> did you see our chat at all? 


<lovelyfuckery> yoda comparisons? | personally think they’re p 
good 


<billybobjoe> you fixed the vending machine didnt you 


<phoebtheweeb> how many issues was that going to cause? 


<billybobjoe> seeing as it takes effect right about now, check the 
main build on your screen 


<arealpainintheash> my god 


<lovelyfuckery> its over 9000 


<phoebtheweebs this isnt the time for memes 


<billybobjoe> it IS time to get to work 


phoebtheweeb logged out 


Who. 
Flee. 
Flee now. 
Who. 

No idea. 
No. 


Notes: This section has been transmitting since 1998. Since 
11/02/2010, short bursts of between ten and fifteen characters of 
text have manifested in SCP-986 every 36 days. 


Footnotes 

1. Willoughby Sanitorium closed in 1929. Foundation operatives 
have seized all patient records related to the Sanitorium and 
demolished the former grounds in 1978. 


« SCP-985 | SCP-986 | SCP-987 » 


Vertigo 


(another true story) 


1 Jan 2012, 5:54 PM 
US Airways flight 
Somewhere over western Ohio 


| always request the window seat when | fly commercial. The view 
out that little porthole just never gets old. Maybe | look like a little 
kid, craning my neck to peer out the window and smile in wonder; if | 
do, I'm too caught up in the loveliness of it to care. 


"| can see my house from here" really doesn't begin to cover it. As 
the ground falls away, familiar things turn into minutely exquisite 
models. The grey and brown of an Ohio winter merge into intricate 
patchwork beauty, and the orange glare of the sodium streetlights 
separates into a million discrete points of glitter. 


The clouds are best of all. As we climb off the runway, | always lift 
myself against the great soft weight of acceleration to watch, 
because to climb through the cloud cover is to loft into another 
world. The jet's speed lends me parallax and perspective, turning 
clouds from a painted backdrop into a landscape in their own right. 
I've seen traceries of cirrus become a wispy maze of floating cotton 
ribbons, like something a Moorish dancer would twirl through the air. 
One summer afternoon, the looming thunderheads turned into the 
very Pillars of Creation, without a single light-year between us. It's 
magical beyond anything in a fairy story. 


This time, as we climb away from the airport, the flat sullen gray of 
an overcast December is transmogrified into a rugose plateau. The 
clouds lie mercilessly level, their flatness enforced by some 
atmospheric thermocline; to me, they look like a rocky tumbled 
moonscape stretching to the horizon. The last glow after sunset 
lights them in ethereal slate and faint gold. Their plain is broken here 


and there by rifts and ravines, mere gaps in the cloud that would let 

the people below glimpse blue sky. From up here, though, they are 

black crevasses: the last evening light does not break through to the 
ground. | gaze through the widest ravine and glimpse a scattering of 
streetlights below. They glitter brighter than the stars. 


Perspective abruptly upends itself. 


It isn't a moonscape I'm seeing: it's the roof of a cave, or the 
underbelly of a titanic Laputa. Stone blocks out the sky. Where 
earthquakes rip it open, the glimmer that wins through is not 
streetlights but ancient, livid constellations. As long as | cower in the 
safe grey caverns, the malevolent gleam of the stars stays at bay, 
but through these rifts | can stare down the Things Outside. For a 
moment I've locked eyes with something vast and terrible, and my 
wild stare is the only thing keeping it away — 


— The girl in seat 22E coughs. 


| blink, and perspective rights itself again. Clouds roll by below the 
window. The last of the gloaming is fading down to night, and the 
streetlights glow orange far below. Small children chatter and whine 
two rows up. | suddenly need to pee. All the banalities of air travel 
have reasserted themselves as abruptly as they vanished. 


It's getting dark out there now, and there's not much to see, so | go 
back to my reading. If | keep glancing sidelong out the window for 
the rest for the flight, though... Well, can you blame me? 


Someone ought to be keeping a watch. 


Victims 


Note: This is part seven in a multi-part story. It is 
recommended that you read the previous entry Webs, or 
start from the beginning At the Library. 


The police officer barred her way. “I'm sorry, you can't go in there.” 


Helen stood her ground. “That's my house. What's going on?” 
Everywhere, activity. Uniforms scurrying like ants inside and out; 
house to house enquiries; cars and vans arriving and departing, 
synchronising to make the best use of space. Vehicles with blue and 
red lights flashing, and vehicles with just red lights, all clustered 
around each other like little chicks seeking safety in numbers. 


The officer raised her hand and gestured towards somebody behind 
her. “Name?” 


“Gwandoya. Helen Gwandoya. Are you going to tell me what's going 
on? My daughter's in there. What's happened? Is she okay?” 


Panic rising, gaining momentum. Rationality and reason giving way 
to dread. 


The officer gestured again, this time with more urgency, and there 
was the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching from behind. 


“Helen Gwandoya?” 


She turned to face a large set male in a cheap suit. “I want my 
daughter,” she said. “Is she okay?” 


“I'm Lieutenant Dimitri, SAPD - “ 
“Where's Angela?” 


“Come with me,” the man said. The ants in uniform - those that were 
within earshot - turned away so that they wouldn't see her face. And 


in that way, she wouldn't be a real person with real feelings whose 
life was about to collapse around her; and they willed her out of their 
thoughts, for empathising with her would make their duties 
unbearable, and they reminded themselves to stay detached and 
cold, lest the horror of what they'd seen should overtake them. 


ooo 


Helen Gwandoya sat in the interview room and cried and cried until 
her tears ran out. All the coffee in the station could not help; all the 
sympathy in the world could not help. Everything was over. 


“Here,” said Lieutenant Dimitri. He slid another coffee over the desk; 
she saw the straw and smiled sadly. “Is there anyone you can call? 
Maybe stay with you tonight?” 


Helen shook her head slowly. “No,” she said. “Only her.” She was all 
| had. 


Lieutenant Dimitri studied her. “Okay. We'll arrange something.” 


Helen took a deep breath and steadied herself, knowing she must 
ask the question, no matter how painful the answer might be. 


“Was it quick?” 


Dimitri looked down at the desk and opened the buff folder. He was 
careful not to let Helen see the photographs. Over the course of an 
hour or more he told her, in as calm and detached manner as he 
could manage, about her daughter's last moments. 


There were signs of a prolonged struggle in her bedroom. Toys 
smashed, soda spilt on the carpet, bedding soiled and torn. 
Wallpaper scratches consistent with those of fingernails. Deepest 
along the wall parallel to the bed, becoming shallower as they 
reached the door. Smears of blood and black hair near the handle 
where - forensics guessed - she had been slammed in order to stun 
her or knock her out. 


She was found in the master bedroom. The autopsy report detailed 
multiple lacerations covering her chest, arms, legs and thighs, all 
indicative of self defence. Further injuries caused by implements 


unknown; gouges, slashes, puncture wounds, blunt trauma, crush 
trauma. Forensics couldn't determine or find any one likely murder 
weapon. And then the worst parts, the details of which Dimitri tried 
to protect Helen from as much as he could. 


Angela Gwandoya had been raped before being murdered. 


Helen felt the world lurch on its axis. Understood that everything had 
changed forever. She looked up towards Dimitri slowly, with raw wet 
eyes. “Where was Aidan? He was meant to be looking after her.” 


“He's our top priority right now. He wasn't at your home. Dont worry. 
We've got everyone looking for him.” 


“He wouldn't hurt her. | know him, | trust him. You don't understand. 
He wouldn't -”