Archeological Expedition 1988/ES-2 recently discovered several 
objects in the Tabernas Desert, which we believe could be of value 
in addressing these issues. The objects discovered include: 


¢ A large (9000 kg), humanoid corpse, which possesses a 
number of prosthetics constructed from an unknown metal 
alloy. These prosthetics display an advanced degree of 
integration with the corpse's tissues, and show no signs of 
rejection syndrome. Aetheric resonance imaging of the corpse 
has revealed low-level EVE emissions from it, as well as high- 
level EVE emissions with the same signature from the 
prosthetics. This has been interpreted to mean that the corpse 
and the prosthetics share a common source of thaumatic 
power. 


¢ An organ, believed to be a liver, removed from the humanoid 
corpse for separate study. This organ was in pristine condition 
when removed. Cell cultures taken from it have displayed 
remarkable regenerative properties, with one culture growing 
back into a full liver in approximately 30 hours. 

Several artifacts, thought to be religious in nature. These 
artifacts are made of the same metal alloy as the prosthetics 
found within the corpse. Aetheric resonance imaging shows 
that these artifacts emit EVE particles, with the same 
signature as the corpse and its prosthetics. It is believed that 
these artifacts draw thaumatic power from the same source as 
the corpse and the prosthetics. 


We propose that the metal alloy composing the artifacts and the 
prosthetics be analyzed to determine its exact chemical makeup, 


with the intent of producing more of it for use in medical implants. 
Depending on its conductive properties, it may also be of use in 
developing electro-neural interfaces. 


The extracted liver may be of use in the ongoing research of Project 
Samsara into developing stem cell based regenerative treatments. 
Using techniques to induce pluripotence in these livers cells could 
provide a stock of rapidly regenerating stem cells for use in 
regrowing organs or limbs. 


We also propose further study of the artifacts recovered to 
determine the process through which they were imbued with 
thaumatic power. If this process could be reverse engineered, it 
could be used in the construction of thaumatic prosthetics, which 
would allow anyone access to thaumaturgy. 


BUSINESS CASE 


The commercial potential of any one of these lines of research is 
extensive. 


The metal alloy from the prosthetics would have applications in 
advanced medical devices and implants, and could potentially be 
used for artificial augmentation of the human body. Potential 
markets would include implanted medical sensors, prosthetic limbs, 
and neural interfaces. 


A working regenerative treatment developed by Project Samsara 
based on the extracted liver could be used to treat seriously injured 
and physically handicapped individuals. A large potential customer 
base could be found in world militaries, which have to treat large 
numbers of amputees and critically wounded individuals every year. 


Augmenting human thaumaturgic abilities would be of interest to 
several organizations involved in thaumatology research or which 
extensively employ thaumaturges, primarily the International Center 
for the Study of Unified Thaumatology and the Global Occult 
Coalition, and would also be of use in our own thaumatology 
research. 


USE OF FUNDING 


Approximately 250,000 USD would be needed for chemical analysis 
and reverse engineering of the metal alloy, which would take 
between one to three months, depending on the exact composition 
of the alloy in question. Building or modifying infrastructure to 
produce this alloy at the larger scales necessary for commercial 
applications would cost nearly 1 million USD, and would take 
between six and eighteen months. Time and money could be saved 
by modifying existing excess infrastructure for this purpose. 


An additional 400,000 USD would be needed for animal testing of 
prosthetics developed from this metal alloy. It would take several 
years to test these prosthetics to the standards required by 
government regulatory agencies. 


Existing funding for Project Samsara is sufficient for the 
development of induced pluripotence techniques. Samsara is 
expected to produce a working technique within eight months. 
Adapting this technique to the recovered liver cells would cost less 
than 100,000 USD. Testing and certification costs would be nearly 
500,000 USD. 


It is estimated that approximately 150,000 USD would be needed to 
identify and reverse engineer the process used to imbue the 
prosthetics and artifacts with thaumatic power, and is expected to 
take three to five months. Developing thaumaturgical prosthetics 
from the metal alloy with this process would cost 100,000 USD, 
assuming the use of existing research and resources from the 
development of mundane prosthetics utilizing the metal alloy. 


Testing of the thaumaturgic prosthetics would be done on Hyper- 
intelligent Model Laboratory Rodents’. These rodents display an 
advanced degree of problem-solving ability, which is necessary for 
successful testing of the proposed thaumaturgic prosthetics; testing 
procedures would involve presenting subjects with problems that 
can only be solved through the use of thaumaturgy2. The costs of 
this testing are estimated at 75,000 USD. 


We would also like to request the allocation of 10 million USD for the 
construction of a research facility on the site of the archaeological 
dig. This facility would provide a base of operations for further 
exploration of the dig site, and function as a central location for 


research of the objects recovered. 
KNOWN ISSUES 


At this time, no reliable means of inducing pluripotence in adult cells 
exist, although research by Project Samsara into this problem has 
turned up several promising potential techniques. The successful 
development of such a technique is necessary for any further work 
by Project Samsara, whether it involves the extracted liver or not. 
Even assuming the successful development of induced pluripotence, 
the process may not work on the cells from the extracted liver, or 
may produce stem cells that are not viable for human treatments. 


Assuming that the process for imbuing an object with thaumatic 
power can be reverse engineered and applied to the development of 
thaumaturgical prosthetics, mass production and commercialization 
will almost certainly be opposed by normalcy preservation agencies. 
This will be true for as long as thaumatology cannot be reconciled 
with mundane physics. Despite the limited market this would create, 
we believe that it will still be profitable to develop these prosthetics. 


Bibliography 

1. Henningsen, T. F. (1981). Occupational Injuries: A Worldwide 
Epidemic. Journal of Anthropological Research, 69-80. 

2. Stefansson, L. J. (1983). Organ Rejection in Contemporary 
Hospitals. Journal of Medical Statistics, 120-129. 


« Avatara | GRANT REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATING... | SCP-2970» 


Footnotes 

1. A mutant breed ofRattus norvegicuscreated during research into 
cognition enhancement. 

2. For a detailed breakdown of our proposed testing procedures, 
refer to Appendix B. 


Samsara 


The Holy Warrior walked. It had been a long time since he'd walked 
this far (he knew that now, he remembered’), but he was used to 
walking nonetheless. 


The sand supported his feet supported his legs supported his body, 
and he walked onward through the sand. In the nights, he could 
walk as much as he wished—those he fled would not come near 
him; they knew that if they brought their helicopters close the circuits 
would merely blister and boil, and they would die. In the days he 
covered himself in sand, closing his eyes and pretending he still 
dreamt. 


He had been in a cave for so long. After that, he had been in a cell. 
There had been no reprieve from walls. Now, he was in the sky, and 
the now-rising sun, but even the clouds felt not ten paces away. 
Can't escape the walls. Not yet. 


The God that was Will should be dead, but the Warrior was still 
alive. If he was alive, would Someone be keeping him alive? If there 
was a distress signal, was Someone distressed? And if he could 
remember who he once served, would Someone still be there when 
he went to check? 


If Someone was there, could they still feel pain? Could he make 
Someone hurt? 


The God that was Will was not all will. He became flesh, and with 
flesh came power but also mortality. If some vestige remained—if 
will could be harnessed—the Warrior could pull him back. Create 
flesh, in the Warrior's image. Bring back what once was. Create 
something that will be. 


If God was not dead, the Warrior would make him beg. 


As he mounted the last hill, he was struck by sunlight, reflected from 


a silver door where there was once a familiar yawning cave. Bold, 
red lettering pronounced to the birds and the sand and whomever 
else was around: 


PROMETHEUS LABS TEST 
SITE c-1 


That was new. But it didn't matter. 


As the Warrior approached the door, a grid of symbols screamed at 
him in droning tones. He ignored it, and placed his favored hand 
against the door. 


The Warrior was the cave, and the cave was the Warrior. The door 
blocked the cave but the door is the entrance, and it was meant to 
be entered. The door that is the entrance that is the cave that is the 
Warrior would open. That's what they do. And they did. 


The Warrior went inside, and breathed a presence he had not 
breathed for a thousand years. The presence that had been inside 
him all along, even though it had abandoned him long ago. 


He laughed. "It's you," he said, in his mother tongue. "You're here." 


The sun beat down on a large, glossy chrome building nestled in the 
edge of the Granada Plateau. A few eagles screamed across the 
sky, their sleek triangular forms outlining the stark emptiness of the 
Almerian badlands. One unfortunate raptor spotted a particularly 
plump rabbit and dove too close to the building. A satellite dish on 
top of the building sprung to life, swiveled towards it, and the bird 
abruptly exploded in a shower of feathers and gore. 


From half a kilometer atop the cliffs, Mobile Task Force Tau-5 
peered through their binoculars at the dish as it swiveled back into 
place. 


"What kind of systems are those dishes?" Munru questioned. 


"| suspect a high-powered... microwave emitter," Onru suggested. 


"...Tch, probably. | say," Nanku pulled out a crumpled, slightly torn 
page from her pocket and quickly scanned it, "we get down there 
and..." she continued reading through the page, "...blow the 
bastards to kingdom come." She punctuated her statement with a 
few fingers pointing at nowhere in particular. 


Munru glanced back at her, fiddling with the straps on his gear. "Is 
that a new... tactical phrase?" 


"It's from a journal | found in our cell..." she enunciated slowly, " the 
book said it's like how... 'regular joes’ talk, which means... 'regular 
joe’ means person." 


"Oh. Who wrote it?" 


"Me... number 39. | wanted to write books... there were lots of lists 
of phrases and other ways that regular joes talk. | guess | picked it 
up from other deployments." 


"| wonder what the old you was like," Munru pondered briefly. 


"...Yes - yeah," Nanku said. " Look; she - | - wrote this. | want to 
write something like that." 


"... Well... the old you is dead," Munru said. "So |... bet... she's not 
as... great as you." 


lrantu whistled sharply. "Target spotted. East side." 


The four of them watched a cybernetic figure approach the building 
and stand in front of it. Two microwave emitters swiveled to face him 
and then crumbled to pieces. 


"My binoculars are... flaking," Onru observed. Even half a kilometer 
below them, the anomaly was affecting their gear. 


"It appears distracted by something..." 


WE CAN LEAP DOWN AND AMBUSH HIM. 


"Good idea. Potential energy converters functioning?" lrantu asked. 
"P-E-C's functioning properly," came the response. 
"All right. Deploy now." 


lrantu slipped a pair of goggles over his eyes and leaped. Munru, 
Onru, and Nanku followed suit, plummeting from the cliff. 


The wind shrieked past them, batting at their faces and biting at 
every inch of exposed skin. The building hurtled towards them, 
eagerly anticipating smashing their bodies into bits. 


The squad slammed through the roof with enough force to pulverize 
a truck. 


400 HOURS EARLIER 


"Why do we need these surgeries?" Onru inquired as she stripped 
off her clothing and donned a johnny gown. 


"Doctor... Fredrickson indicated that the research team had figured 

out how to... negate the effect of 2970 on our gear. He said that the 
gear had to be... surgically... implanted," Nanku explained. "but that 
the surgery was perfectly safe and that we would be fine." 


It took the surgical team a couple tries to perfect the process. 
Luckily, corpses meant spare limbs. 
THE PRESENT 


lrantu stood up first. Two pistons jutted out from his calf, extending 
down into the hemispheres of cables and anomalous metals that 
had replaced his feet. 


The group stood in a flat, gray, well-lit corridor, face to face with four 
African cyclopes wearing body armor and equipped with pulse rifles. 


Nanku's eyes lit up. She yanked out her knife and immediately 
lodged it into the neck of the nearest cyclops, pulling it out through 


his jugular with a wet CHWUNK. As he fell, she immediately leaped 
at the next one, tackling him to the ground and stabbing him 
repeatedly in the face. 


The other two cyclopes backpedaled, firing frantically at Nanku. As 
the bullets ricocheted off her demonic body armor, Munru grasped 
his right wrist and forcibly dislocated it with a SQUELCH, spinning 
his hand around to grip the trigger of a battle rifle that had been 
somewhat messily fused to the underside of the arm. Holding the 
gun with his other hand, he fired off two quick bursts without even 
flinching, the P.E.C. module implanted in his back absorbing the 
recoil. 


The two cyclopes collapsed, blood oozing from the neat coin-sized 
holes in their necks. Keeping one eye on the corridor, Munru 
examined his hand slowly, careful not to let it spin back around and 
lose its grip on the rifle. 


"Status?" Irantu quickly asked. 

"Unharmed," said Munru, Nanku, and Onru simultaneously. 
"The implants seem to be working," Munru noted. 

Nanku exhaled. "That was no fun. It was a... piece of cake." 


"Remember what Captain Hughes told us? Normal people do not 
enjoy killing..." Irantu warned her. "Now we need to keep moving - 
the target is still somewhere in the building and we must assume 
that our intrusion has been noticed. Check your P.E.C.'s." 


"Nanku's pek and my own appear operational. Munru's functioned 
fine to eliminate the hostiles," Onru observed. 


"| assumed that we would be able to at least follow 2970, but then 
we broke through the roof and now the plan needs to change," 
lrantu said frustratedly. "Let me call HQ." 


lrantu tapped his ear to activate the radio implant and received no 
answer. He tried again. "No signal." 


The squad looked up and down the corridor. Both sides were 


equally long and featureless. 
"Which way?" Nanku asked into the air. 
East. HE HAS ALWAYS WALKED WITH THE SUN. 


"All right. If we're in agreement, let's go east," lIrantu ordered. He 
looked up through the hole in the ceiling to regain his bearings, and 
then they set off down the corridor. 


The Warrior's call received no response. As he'd hoped. The silver 
box he had entered became a welcome desk, which then became a 
corridor, and he made no delay as he set off.