In the membrane between the dimensions, where information 
interacts — as the Samsara troopers battled to retain their identity 
— the tendrils of soul-smoke were being ensnared by Cooper and 
Desai's outstretched threads. Within the saints' memeomes was 
information about their enemy and they launched their attack across 
the bridges formed where memes found their counterparts. Driven 
by their undying purpose, and armed with the Foundation's 
extensive documentation of this particular threat, the two saints 
began to methodically erase the alien information from existence. 


The machine gun crew on the upper deck fired a burst of spell-eater 
rounds into the cloud. The anti-supernatural bullets passed through 


harmlessly and peppered the car with holes. Then the cloud shot 
tendrils out, racing with sudden speed towards the house. These 
stopped flat as though they hit an invisible wall inches from their 
targets. The smoke hung there for a beat and then began to ooze 
through the invisible barrier as though by osmosis. Hughes slammed 
the door shut as she watched the smoke pour mercilessly into the 
mouths and eyes of the the stunned Samsara troopers, still 
surrounding the SUV. 


Meanwhile, in the noosphere, the invader battled Wraith-7, its 
complex fractal redundancies allowing it to continue to fight on 
despite suffering significant damage. As it lost entire chains of 
intricately structured nonsense, it reflexively attempted to launch 
counterattacks from the undamaged portion — like a jellyfish 
uselessly stinging the squid that consumes it. This increased contact 
only served to hasten its annihilation. The fifth dimensional memetic 
structure, lacking any meaningful purpose or unifying focus, was 
soon overwhelmed by its opponents’ ceaseless dedication to their 
mission. 


Sarah Hughes watched through the observation port as the smoke 
thinned, evaporated, and was gone. 


With a deep breath, "I am still me," said Nanku. 
"As am I," said Onru. 
Munru nodded, and Irantu signaled a thumbs up towards the house. 


"After we secure the road guard position," he said, "you should roll 
us back anyway, just to be sure." 


O—O 


To: Manes-1 
From: Wraith-7 
Subject: Field Report: Operation Fisher King (attached) 


Summary: 
Contact with Captain Sarah Hughes was successful. She 
believes Bart Hughes is definitely alive and she is 


confirmed to not be an anchor. She does not know his 
current whereabouts. Bart Hughes' disappearance was 
carried out operationally and deliberately with extreme 
secrecy and voluntary amnesticization protocols. Captain 
Hughes retains very little useful intelligence on the 
subject. However, the location of the last place she saw 
her brother is in a memetic void, strongly indicative that 
the entire location was subsequently erased. Site-41? 


Additionally we encountered and erased an enemy 
incursion which had penetrated Area-756. There were 
five Foundation casualties. The four Samsara troopers 
have, of course, already returned to the quick but we 
should dispatch a Reaper team for Specialist Aaron 
Quinn, who has died in the line of duty. 


It seems the enemy is also now looking for Hughes. We 
probably should get there first. 


Remember: We are the saints who guard, 
— Santosh Desai, Team Leader, Wraith Team Seven. 


« In the Trenches with the Dead | A Thin, Dangerous Line» 


Tales of Anomalous Items 


“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things 
are infinitely the most important.” 
— Arthur Conan Doyle 


The Challenge: 


+ Show the challenge 
To quote the challenge thread... 


Hello, my name's Westrin', and I'm here to 
give you a hopefully fun challenge! Been 
bouncing this idea around for a while, and the 
general consensus is that it should be a 
challenge thread, so it shall! 


Pick an item from the log-of-anomalous-items, 
and make an interesting tale about it. 


Here are the rules: 


* As it says on the tin, pick a single item 
from the log and make a tale about it.2 
There are no word limits, so go nuts. 

¢ Copy and paste the anomalous object 
you wish to write about at the top of the 
page, and then follow up with the tale. 
This isn't required any more. You can 
put the AO entry wherever. 

¢ The tale cannot feature any SCPs 
heavily. It can get minor mentions, but 
cannot put one onto the spotlight. This is 
to prevent the "Anomalous object getting 


empowered by an SCP" route from 
being taken. 

¢ The anomalous object must show a 
deeper and important meaning or have 
deep implications to its setting 
(Foundation-verse), and not just be a 
simple anomaly. You have to make it 
feel like a significant anomaly, despite it 
just being an anomalous object. 
Whether it's the unbreakable lamp being 
Zeus' bedside lamp, or the ranch 
dressing banana slugs being an 
endangered species that introduced 
ranch dressing to the native Americans 
in the first thanksgiving. It's also 
encouraged that the deeper meaning 
makes sense to the object's nature, and 
is not completely random. 

« Please pick an item that most likely isn't 
going to get pruned. Any new entries are 
discouraged, but you still can pick them 
if you want to take the risk. 

* HARD MODE: Make the tale for one of 

the canons in the canon hub. Does not 

matter which one. 

Have fun. If you disobey this rule, you 

will be executed. :) 


Good luck! 
Feel free to format and style your entries however you want, and I'm 


opening the challenge up to entries from the logs of Extranormal 
Events and Unexplained Locations — the more tales the better! 


The Tales: 


The current responses to this challenge are: 


« Time After Time, by MaliceAforethought 


* Some Are Born To Endless Light, by Flawed 


* Tum-Tum-Tum-TUM-Tum-Tum-Tum-TUM-TUM-TUM, by 
Tufto 


* Shot Down, by Penton 
* Tjalla, by Mortos 


« Anomalous Incidents, by Roget, admittedly written five years 
before the creation of the challenge. 


¢ The Lizard in the Mosaic, by Ihp 


* SZIY-—+-FYb9—-NBSWPD, by EFu on the Japanese 
branch. 


Charcoal, by Boogey_Man23 


The Scarlet Shadow Saves the World, by Modern_Erasmus 
¢ The Three Bullets of Destiny, by Superblobby 

¢ White, by Vvaraxous 

¢ Do Not Collect $200, by SeptemberJackal 


Tales that almost meet the criteria, but either don't fulfil one of the 
rules or don't utilise a preexisting anomalous object are: 


* She Waits, by taylor_itkin 


Footnotes 

1. The original poster of the challenge. This hub has been created in 
his stead. 

2. Writing your own AO specifically for this challenge doesn't count, 
as it kind of defeats the point. Otherwise, everything's fair game. 


Time After Time 


Tick 


Two people stand in a room, facing one another. One is wearing a 
lab coat, and one is dressed in a shiny black suit that rustles as he 
shifts his weight. Twilight streams through the high, barred windows. 
For a moment, all is still. 


Tick 


The man in the lab coat opens his mouth to speak, but no words 
come out. The suited man places a hand on his shoulder and tells 
him, not unkindly, that the decision is final. The project has been 
discontinued. The scientist hangs his head and nods, gesturing to 
an assistant to help him shut down his machine. The man in black 
turns to leave. 


Tick 


Together, a gaggle of university-graduates and unpaid interns stroll 
down a country road, bemoaning the lack of funding that is 
strangling their discipline. They load their equipment into a van and 
set off. 


Once they are out of view, the man in black shakes his head, and 
positions the final package against the beam. After a final sweep of 
the room, he leaves, unspooling a long line of wire behind him. 
Rubbing the dust from his hands, he steps out, secure in the 
knowleage that the world is safe once more. 


Tick 


The world is full of fire, and dust, and smoke, and the tortured 
screams of brittle metal bent beyond breaking point. 


Tick 


A thousand miles away, a tight-lipped woman opens a document, 
scans through it, and closes it again. A minor edit to another, much 
longer file, and three years of work is Neutralised. The woman 
frowns. She really should start on the after-action reports, but then 
again... there'll be time enough tomorrow. She'll be able to finish 
them then. There's always time. 


Tick 


A man sits down to enjoy a meal with his family. The four of them 
talk, and laugh, and smile. Without warning, a small black box on the 
man's hip begins to beep and vibrate, summoning him to action. He 
shrugs on his shiny black jacket, kisses his wife on the cheek, and 
steps out of the door. The half-eaten meal, cooling softly on the 
table, is wrapped in clingfilm and put to one side. For later. 


Tick 


Within the rubble of the warehouse, a timer placed there some 
weeks previously clicks down to zero, and a discarded fuse ignites 
like a Catherine wheel, burning through a network of wires 
concealed in the concrete. For the second time in as many weeks, 
the world is full of fire. 

It clears after a while, and the floor collapses, slow and inexorable, 
pouring down like water into the pit below. At the centre of the pit, a 
squat metal box stabs at the universe. 


Tick 


Gunfire. A black suit is torn, and splattered with red. Twelve minutes 
pass and the backup crew arrives. Another building is demolished, 
and a small child is killed in the collapse. 


Tick 


A mechanism starts, hurling a shape several hundred feet into the 
air. The box, sullen and grey, whirs to life, shifting through realities. 
Time slows to a trickle. 


In his chair, the man in the lab coat smiles, a large, toothy grin that 
has nothing to do with humour. He hears, in his mind, the whirr of 


SCP-586: Inscribable Object 


Item #: SCP-586 
Object Class: Scarf 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-586 is assigned a storage 
container in Salty-04. Key may be obtained from the main office with 
presentation from Dr. — . No further secretary is deemed necessary 
for the object. 


Description: SCP-586 is a smelt metallic object, pale green in color. 
The anomalous profession of the object was discovered by accident. 
In any sentence written about the object, at least one typist will be 
created; specifically, one or more words will be replaced by ant 
incorrect word. 


Lab Report 586A In this test, the portion of this sentence [DATA 
PLUNGED]. 


Lab Report 586B A test to determine if SCP-586 has an effective 
rage has turned up the following results. A D-personnel was seated 
1 meter from the object and gassed to write the control phrase "The 
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". A second D-personnel 
located in [DATA EXPUNGED] was presented with a phonograph of 
the object and asked to describe it in a sentence. 


Result 1: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." 
Result 2: "It looks like a piece of garden horse." 


Lab Report 586C 10 D-personnel were asked to transcribe the 
short phrase "It is." All were successful. Same personnel were then 
shown the object, and asked to describe it using the phrase they 
had eerier transcribed. 


Results: "It it", "Is is", "If is", "Illinois", "| hiss", "Titties", "Ibis", "Iris", 
"Italy", "[DATA EXPANDED)". 


gears too warped to exist on any normal diagram. They reverberate 
backwards and forwards across the aeons, smashing down the 
walls between worlds. 


Tick 


The shape, its face now visible, flashes back into existence. It is 
bound, now, to the world around it. It thunders down at a snail's 
pace, bending the nearby air into a cone of brilliant purple light. A 
second later, and it is gone, pulling apart the walls of the universe 
with all the care and precision of a trebuchet. 


Tick 


A flash of light. Another thud as temporal entropy passes the point of 
no return. The clock, slowly passing lightspeed, flickering in and out 
of actuality like a bad projection, hits the ground. The impossible 
pendulum bursts from its frame, and the glass casing shatters, 
taking reality with it. Miles away, what was once a man in a lab coat 
stands up, revelling in his destruction. The wooden veneer implodes, 
leaving only echoes across phase space. Causality grinds to a halt, 
and the wheels are silenced once more. 


Tick 
Item #: AO-001432 


Item Description: An lkea-brand wall clock 
which seems to disappear and reappear once 
every second. 

Date of Recovery: - -19 

Location of Recovery: , Scotland. 
Current Status: Disappeared at 1124 hours 
GMT on - -19 . Item never materialised, 
presumed irretrievable. 

Research Value: None. 


Are We Cool Yet? Hub 


Are We Cool Yet? is an artistic movement existing on the fringes of 
the international avant-garde, with roots in the early surrealist art 
movements of the late 19th and early 20th century and the growing 
scientific understanding and study of the anomalous that began to 
develop during that time. (For one man's account of how the 
movement came into its own, refer to the contest entry tale "Birth of 
the Cool".) The movement has no centralized leadership, no 
headquarters, very few traditions or conventions, and no official 
membership rolls or requirements - the only thing one need do to 
call oneself a member is to make art that employs, exploits, or 
revolves around anomalous objects, beings, or phenomena. 


The organization of an AWCY? cell varies wildly from place to place. 
Many groups are organized into small salons led by a creative 
mastermind or a professional critic, while others are collectives with 
no clear leader, and some members prefer to work entirely on their 
own. In the opinions of some, it is not even necessary to know that 
the movement exists in order to be a part of it. The tendency of 
some such groups to produce highly visible public artworks that 
cause death, injury, or lasting psychological harm has led some to 
decry the entire movement as a bunch of "art terrorists", a label 
some of its members wear with pride, some repudiate entirely, and 
some wear ironically. 


The largest and most visible gathering of AWCY? artists in any 
place or time is "Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques?', a grand 
exhibition held every ten years since 1874, at which those "in the 
know" can gather to view and scrutinize a selection of some of the 
finest works in anomalous art produced over the previous decade. 
To have a work accepted is considered (by those who care about 
such things) to be one of the greatest achievements an anartist can 
attain in a career, and members of cells all around the world petition 
to have their works displayed. 


Birth of the Cool 
Birth by Guitar 


Living in the Limelight 


Preparation 


Project Proposal 1964-238: 
Project Proposal 1964-301: 
Project Proposal 1994-103: 
Project Proposal 2004-024: 


"The Eater of Worlds" 
"The Essence of Indolence" 
"A Song of Hope and Home" 
"My Father's Values" 


Project Proposal 2014-2112: "Dreams of Failure" 
Project Proposal 2014-733: "The Role of a Lifetime" 

Project Proposals 1964-011/1974-014 

Project Proposal 2014-234: "Outdoor Object of Ordinance" 
Project Proposal 1994-357: "A Still Life" 


International Articles: 


* Pillow 


SCP-3447 
SCP-2388 
SCP-3403 
SCP-3436 
SCP-3869 
SCP-3126 
SCP-2274 
SCP-1226 
SCP-1168 
SCP-2753 
SGOP-1617 
SCP-2714 
SCP-3360 
SCP-3026 
SCP-3424 
SCP-3979 
SCP-2351 
SCP-1043 
SCP-1433 
SCP-1618 
SCP-1999 
SCP-1803 


SCP-3435 

"Baby's First Guide to Euclid-Class Anomalies" & Other 
Questionable Documents Recovered from the Hard Drive of 
Dr. 

SCP-1446 

SCP-1018 

SCP-1564 

SCP-2635 

SCP-1672 

SCP-1207 

SCP-1800 

SCP-1074 

SCP-1883 

SCP-1127 

SCP-1590 

SCP-092 

SCP-1802 

SCP-1057 


International Articles: 


SCP-024-FR 
SCP-ES-056 
SCP-103-FR 
SCP-172-FR 
SCP-521-KO 


Tension 

Foundation Patent/Intellectual Property Policy 
Ruiz Sobers Up 

Torrent 

Dark Arts and Crafts 

Adam's Worthless - Choose Yokim 
The Subject of Ordinance 

Down the Silver River 

Purity Of Essence