Mr. Smithson scoffs and smirks, but smiling hurts his 
tender skin. "I'm not looking for compliments." He stands 
up out of his chair and walks over to the window. "I do it 
because it's simple. | could be out there dying like all 
those agents and researchers and test subjects, but 
instead I'm in here. Where it's safe." 


His secretary shifts her feet. "I'm not sure what you want 
me to Say, sir-" 


"You don't have to say anything. I'm just talking. Do you 
think you'll want my job after I'm gone?" 


"| really couldn't say, I'm afraid. Site management told 
me this is a temporary position-" 


"All positions are temporary. Life is temporary." 


"Well, you'd know better than | on that topic, sir." She 
laughs slightly, but rescinds it with a downward glance. 


"What's your clearance level? Zero?" 
"It's one." 


"Right, so you... have access to what they call 'sensitive 
information’, but you can't do anything about it." 


"Sensitive information like death records, | assume." 


"Depends. There are a lot of options for secretaries here. 
Tell me, what do you envision when you think of the 
word 'secretary'?" He coughs into his hand and feels 
phlegm come up. He gulps and swallows, looking out the 
window over the Site's barren yard and heat-distorted 
perimeter fence. A team of onsite response personnel 
are driving around beside it, waving at each other. He 
wonders what their names are, and how long it'll be 
before he's writing their death reports for some accident 
or other. 


"| guess | think of... sitting at a desk?" She laughs 


nervously again and shrugs. "| don't know. To be truthful, 
| don't quite remember how | got here, other than 
receiving some mysterious letter in college-" 


"Right, so at a desk?" Smithson turns from the window 
and sits at his. A new report just came in from Site-42. 
This one is a genuine accident, which he hasn't seen in 
far too long. He reads it while he talks, pulling his 
thoughts from its subject matter. "What if, on the 
computer monitor of that desk, you were watching a 
video log of a violent interrogation? Interrogations are 
necessary things, you know, no matter how unpleasant. 
Sometimes, they're our last defense against lies 
constructed to hurt people — you, me, the people on the 
street miles down the road — so tell me, would you 
transcribe the audio? Would you be willing, or would it be 
uncomfortable?" 


Her gaze shifts downward again. "I'm not sure why 
you're asking. That doesn't sound like my departm-" 


"Oh, but it is. The agents doing it don't want to sit down 
afterward with a Word doc open and type out all the 
nasty shit they were saying. That's emotionally taxing. 
But you can; you're a secretary. Your job is the grunt 
work of low-clearance information." 


"Sir, I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but | don't want to talk 
about this and | have no idea why you're dumping it on 
me." Her knuckles are white against the door frame. 


Smithson sighs and glances back at the email in front of 
him. He doesn't want to type this one up. "Sorry." He's 
quiet. "You can go now. My old ass ought to leave that 
sort of thing to your hiring supervisors. I'm out of line." 
His attempt at humor is as lost on him as it is on her. 


She licks her lips concernedly and scurries out of the 
office. He puts his head in his hands and starts reading 
the Site-42 Intelligence Department's email. 


The hour is 2300. 


Officer Roberts is pacing a white-walled room. His phone 
is buzzing. He's not allowed to look at it, so he lets it 
vibrate in his pocket until his leg is numb. It rings for too 
long. It must be an internal call. He wants to go home 
and go to sleep, but there's a drugged and uncooperative 
Chaos Insurgency operative groaning and twisting in his 
restraints on the table, and Roberts knows that neither of 
them is sleeping until that man talks. 


! don't really like pain, he had told him when he began 
the first round of intravenous morphine and amnestics 
administration, now two days ago. /t's not effective. A 
reaction to pain causes the body and mind to build up its 
barriers, when what we're trying to do is get them down. 
So, how long will it take to get yours down? How long 
would you like it to take? | have all week. On the wall by 
the examination table is a printed placard in black text: 
RECITATION OF AC-3423 MISSION PLANS IS 
NECESSARY FOR RELEASE. It is the only text in the 
room, the only thing for the subject to look at. Roberts 
doesn't think it's working, but he wishes it would. Roberts 
isn't even sure what sort of event or events the placard is 
referring to in the first place, he realizes. 


"I'm coming back in an hour. We hope you'll be ready to 
talk by then." He walks out and slams the door with a 
sigh, waving to the security guard with a vacant 
expression. As he walks toward the stairway, he checks 
his phone. It's his coworker. Tried calling you. You need 
to give up on whatever bullshit they have you on down in 
Intelligence. The Ethics Committee doesn't let you get 
shit done like they used to. There's no point anymore, 
you'll never get anything out of people with Valium and 
orgasms or whatever the fuck they mean by "ethical 
coercion" these days. Come down to the block before 
you Clock out, | need your help with something. Roberts 
rolls his eyes and adjusts his glasses before starting 
down the stairs. He's still looking at his phone, and he 


misses the first step. Then he misses the next one, and 
the one after that. Panic doesn't register in his mind until 
his head collides with the railing. As his keys clatter to 
the ground and searing agony erupts in his skull and his 
limbs, he chooses not to open his eyes. 


Loss of Personnel Report: 04.05.17 


Affected: Rance Roberts, Intelligence 
Collections Officer and D-Class Cell Block 
Guard 


Most Recently Assigned: N/A 


Cause of Death: Spinal fracture and 
subsequent brain stem hemorrhaging, caused 
by blunt force trauma to the head, lower back, 
chest, and pelvic regions sustained during a 
fall down several metal stairs. 


Notes: / have recommended in the past and | 
will continue to recommend in the future that 
interrogations be transcribed by someone 
other than those personnel conducting them. 
Statistics have shown that not doing so is 
putting too much on the shoulders of the 
personnel directly conducting investigations, 
which leads to psychological stress and — yes 
— accidents. 


-Roland Smithson, Coroners' Records 
Management 


The hour is 0000. 
"Sir? You've been up since-" 


"| Know, | know. | just finished today's batch. The last one 
took forever." 


"| saw." The woman hesitates. "Well, I'm going to go 
ahead and clock out for the night. I'll see you tomorrow." 


"Come in as late as you need tomorrow." 
"Oh, uh, sure. T-thank you." 
"Yeah." 


Only when her heels no longer clack on the wood floor 
and the door is closed does Smithson exhale the breath 
he'd been holding. For several minutes, he stares into his 
computer screen, eyes blurring from age or stress or 
both as he absentmindedly straightens his stacks of 
paperwork. 


When he finishes, he stands, coughs a few times, and 
walks out of his office, making sure to leave his jacket 
hanging by the door for the following morning. 


Everybody Needs Somebody 


« One Trick Ponies 


MTF-Lambda-9, later known as the Foundation Animal Assets 
Division, was established in 1924, reached peak performance in 
1946, and has been significantly downsized since. As dissolution of 
the Foundation Animal Assets Division is currently under vote, a 
timeline of events, along with excerpts from relevant documents, are 
assembled below. 


Review of documents detailing the history of the division from 
founding in 1924 to peak performance in 1946 is suggested, but not 
required. 


Part Two: Project-A-099, beginnings 


12/12/1946: 

At its peak, the division consisted of four animal trainers; 
two Foundation agents, including one former field agent 
and one Foundation psychiatrist; various caretaker 
personnel; forty-two canine assets, with fifteen on 
containment units, ten on search-and-rescue unit; six on 
retrieval units, five on morale-boosting projects, and six 
designated for Project-A-099; one chimpanzee; and four 
equine assets. 


It's not a large wing, for what it's supposed to be housing. The office 
space is separated into three sections by thin walls that shake if 
someone sneezes too loudly. They form a "T" shape, meaning that 
to get to the deepest section, one has to slip through one of the first 
two rooms. 


It's better to go through the left. That's where Moore and Moore 
work, but search-and-rescue is rarely ever at base. Peggy Moore, 
the wife, short and deceptively plump, wears the kind of rose water 


that makes the whole place smell sweet for weeks after she's been 
there. Bob Moore, a tall man who waxes his beard and talks 
constantly of things he read in the newspaper, nests. He drags in 
exotic potted plants, clippings of papers he's found interesting, quilts 
and paintings to hang on the thin walls... They keep pictures, too, 
one of their girl that died and one of their girl who didn't. 


It's more home in the little office for them than anyone else in the 
division. 


Passing through to the back, that's Agent Harrison's space. It's 
workable. He's got a picture up on his desk of the team when he'd 
first started — before his time, even, when it was Agent Nelson and 
Rose Emerson — and another one of his nephew Bill who died in 
the war. He doesn't like the pictures. 


There was a thing he was assigned to back in '33 which could pull 
its skin into shape of people. It never quite got it right. He couldn't 
always place exactly what it was — the jaw bulged out wrong, or 
maybe it didn't, maybe it was the nose or the eyelids or the teeth, 
which never seemed to change very much — but he always knew, 
quicker and surer than any member of his team, that it was wrong. 


It's the same thing for the pictures. He'd never seen Rose quite so 
young, but he remembers that her skin wasn't supposed to be white 
like that, a smudged blur in front of the dark background. He 
remembers the spots and the rough tan and the scratches and the 
blemishes. Bill, who he'd rocked on his knee, is as much a ghost in 
the picture as anything else. The picture didn't take correctly, he 
guesses, or maybe it just couldn't keep up. Bill's hair is both too 
wispy and smudged, and not wispy enough. He'd slicked it back, 
too, to look good in the photo. 


He keeps them around not because he admires the miracle of 
technology or because he feels some sort of connection to them. He 
keeps them there because it reminds of one thing — Bill and Rose 
were human, before they died, and they're not. At best, they don't 
exist. At worst, they're the pictures, twisted and wrong. That's how 
it's going to happen to Harrison and everyone else, and he thinks it's 
something that's worth remembering. 


On the other side of Harrison, in the office he doesn't walk through 
to get to his own, is Dr. Clarence Frost. 


Dr. Frost isn't a substantial man. He looks too old for forty-three, too 
old for the kind of cutting-edge thing he's supposed to be doing. Yet 
he's too young to have earned the salt and pepper sprinkling of his 
hair, the deep, sullen crow's feet under his eyes, the air of elderly 
venerability with which he holds himself. His face is too old for him, 
and his eyes are too young for his face, and it leaves him 
unimpressive and unsubstantial. 


That's not the only reason Agent Harrison doesn't like him, but it's 
the easiest one to name. There's something creepy to him, too, 
though, something wrong. About the jaw, maybe, or the eyes, or the 
nose or the teeth. 


01/07/1947 
Launch of Project-A-099 ("Everybody needs a pal"), the 
Foundation's first full service and therapy animal project. 


Dr. Frost's wife packs his lunches. He eats them neatly at his desk, 
sometimes slipping small cuts of meat down to the long, fat 
dachshund that he brings with him to work now. Those are the kinds 
of dogs he's working with — it's four toy Cavvie spaniels, and two 
French Bulldogs on Project-A-099. 


The dachshund comes to the office ostensibly under the pretense of 
socializing the other dogs, but really because Frost wants it there. 
Everyone seems okay with it. Harrison doesn't know why he isn't. 


"Albert," Dr. Frost says, peeking into his office. His lips are still 
covered in a fine layer of grease from the meat he was eating. It's 
these cuts of meat, every day, that make Agent Harrison convinced 
that Frost's salary must be much higher than his. 


"Agent Harrison," Harrison corrects him. He doesn't even think of 
himself as Albert at work. 


"Yes. I'm gonna need your help." That's odd. 


"On Lambda-099? Your spaniels are going into top secret territory?" 


SCP-838: The Dream Job 


Item #: SCP-838 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: To prevent SCP-838 from 
affecting civilians, Foundation agents are to be placed on the staff in 
charge of managing the classified ad section at major newspapers in 
the Chicago area. Alternatively, the cooperation of the newspaper 
may be obtained for similar purposes. No ads matching a form taken 
by SCP-838 are to be printed. 


Description: SCP-838 is the collective term for a series of job ads 
appearing in newspapers that print in the vicinity of Chicago, and 
whatever agency is behind them. The job offered varies between 
instances, and has included positions in accounting, management, 
and janitorial work, among others. These ads are entirely mundane 
unless responded to. Attempts to trace these classifieds have 
proven unsuccessful. 


The next time a person who has responded to SCP-838 falls asleep, 
he or she immediately enters REM sleep. Upon awakening, the 
affected individuals report experiencing extremely vivid dreams of 
having had a job interview for the advertised job, in a large 
windowless office building at a company called Pellus, Inc. Subjects 
deemed qualified are offered a job. Anyone hired by Pellus, Inc. is to 
be considered part of SCP-838-1. Those not offered jobs are 
unaffected. 


When members of SCP-838-1 sleep during the week, they report 
vivid dreams of working in what is believed to be the same building 
that the interview took place in. In these dreams, the workforce of 
Pellus seems to consist entirely of persons who have responded to 
SCP-838. Testing has shown that communication while asleep 
between members of SCP-838-1 is possible, indicating some 
degree of connectedness between the dreams. 


Harrison can brag that he's got a higher security clearance than 
most people on site — he's supposed to be the buffer between the 
division and shit they're handling here. 


"We're working with SCP, er, three twenty— no, one forty... oh, dear 
boy, it must have been..." Harrison has more than a decade on 
Frost. He's silent as he goes to check through Frost's paperwork. 


BACKGROUND: Document "Green Geneva" Secondary 
Mission Statement was passed 19th November, 1946. 
While it is most remembered for expanding the Ethics 
committee, it also lead to the creation of several smaller 
projects and changes in the operation of existing ones. 
Most of these were attempts to improve conditions for 
humanoid and sapient SCP objects where possible. 
Bowman's Proposal marks initial first efforts to aid in 
these secondary mission objectives by the FAAD. 


Bowman's Proposal | -346 | 04/21/1947 


DIFFICULTY IN MAINTAINING SECONDARY MISSION 
OBJECTIVES: Due to a combination of its anomalous 
traits and past ttauma, SCP- appears to suffer from an 
acute anxiety disorder. Standard treatment has been 
deemed high risk due to SCP-__'s unique biology, and 
regular counselling sessions have had minimal effect, as 
SCP- _ shows little trust towards Foundation personnel.