Lazarus waited nervously. The tramp had expired unceremoniously 
half an hour previously in a glut of vomit and formaldehyde, his skin 
darkened to the point of brownish purple. But even now, as he 
worried whether he had done the right thing, and looked around 
again for witnesses, he saw the love of his life take shape in the 
corpse's ruined features and knew that all was well. 


He took his suit jacket off and wrapped it silently and tenderly 
around the elongating, blossoming form of Helen Gwandoya as her 
body subsumed that of the tramp, the purple darkening into ebony 
and the limbs unfurling into graceful, balletic elegance. The eyes 
were open but glassy, dull, unseeing; her chest still, her breathing 
nonexistent. She was here, at last, but she was dead. 


Really, most sincerely dead, he thought. 


Lazarus took the phone from his pocket and swiped the screen. 
"Nearly fucking forgot," he said, and, having navigated to the 
contacts, typed a single word into Helen Gwandoya's details. 


Resurrected. 


He sat back against the gravestone and waited, like a child on 
Christmas Eve, for The Future Mrs Lazarus' first faltering breath. 


Prev 


Of Multiverses and Dandelion Wine 


The problem is, one of the first things you do when you 
make dandelion wine is throw away the flowers. 


Seventeen minutes. That's how long the world lasts this time. 


The crucifixes with their screaming human sacrifices flayed and 
nailed to the i-beam crosses vanish, replaced by a bucolic pastoral 
scene, the serenity of the gold-flecked, rolling hills ruined only by the 
presence of a thirty foot tall Albertosaurus biting the head off a 
three-headed sheep. He hits the stopwatch, resets the timer. 
00:00:01 and counting. 


He decides to head south, pushing through the fields of waist-high 
dandelions and away from the predator messily devouring its meal. 
A throbbing scar on his leg, angry and red, serves as a reminder 
that a few minutes are long enough to be maimed or killed. He takes 
a moment, once he is far enough from the gory scene, to tear the 
leaves off of one of the plants and cram them into his mouth. They 
taste bitter, and tough, but they are edible, and he has not eaten ina 
long time. 


They told him that he would be safe. They told him that 
he needed to carry the information across the universes. 
Somewhere out there, they said, there would be a 
universe where the Foundation still existed. Find them, 
tell them what happened. Maybe they can fix it. 


He tears the stem off of one of the oversized dandelions and sucks 
on the milky sap, then starts to pull off the dinner-plate sized flowers 
and stuff them into his battered rucksack. Maybe on the next jaunt, 
he can find a bottle and some sugar. Make some dandelion wine. 


The shift hits him between zipping his rucksack up and hefting it to 
his shoulder: he is now standing in the middle of a four-way 
intersection at rush hour. A yellow cab nearly runs him over: the 


man behind the wheel is shouting at him, waving a wide-fingered 
hand as his ruddy face roars, twisted in rage. His eyes are empty, 
and his passengers are only corpses. 


He steps aside and looks up into a vermillion sky: the noonday sun 
is crimson, the color of blood. It is bloated, too large, taking up 
nearly half the sky, and the light is dim enough to gaze into, to see 
the wide, blotchy, diseased patches that dot the surface of that 
shining orb. 


All we can do is place one person outside it. An Outside 
Observer, unaffected by the shifts. We drew straws. We 
chose you. 


Twenty-one minutes. That was how long the world lasted. He hits 
the stopwatch, resets the counter. 


There is a supermarket on the corner. The plate-glass window is 
shattered, and a man, now long dead, has been hurled through it. 
He steps over the glass and into the empty, deserted aisles. He is 
hungry. He is always hungry. 


He ignores the rotting displays of fruit, buzzing with flies, or the 
greenish, molding displays of meat in the butcher's aisle, and heads 
straight for the canned goods. On the way, he passes by the dried 
goods. Something makes him pause. It's a box of instant stuffing. 
The front shows a typical Thanksgiving scene in the style of Norman 
Rockwell. The father is carving into a screaming human head. The 
apple-cheeked children are passing around plates of body parts. 


He takes down a can from the shelf, a thin rectangular can in the 
style of a sardine tin, and opens it up with the twist key. Seventeen 
baby blue eyeballs packed in oil stare back up at him. 


He grabs as many cans as possible. He can't afford to be picky. 


We know what caused this, but it's too late. We can't 
stop it. Reality, as we know it, will vanish into the sea of 
chaos. Into the seafoam of the What-Could-Have-Been. 


This time, the world lasts a full half-hour before the shift. He hits the 


stopwatch, resets the counter. The world is filled with fog. From out 
of the fog come men, or creatures very much like men. His machete 
is drawn before the first one reaches him, its broad mouth open 

impossibly wide, revealing a maw filled with jagged, sharklike teeth. 


The nature of Reality is that of a multiverse. Choice 
causes new universes to branch out. Possibility creates 
new realities. Always before, however, those parallel 
universes have been separate, distinct. That is changing. 


The next few minutes are difficult. He kills many, but they are legion. 
He is thrown to the ground. They tear open his pack like a bloated 
corpse and scatter the contents. They grab hold of the cans and 
slam them against rocks and broken bricks, bursting them open and 
devouring the eyes, fingers, and tongues within. Then they turn on 
him. 


This is a visual representation of the CK-Class 
Restructuring, they told him. The spirals represent the 
universes. They are converging. 


He is lucky. The world only lasts nine minutes, but that is long 
enough for one of the shark-faced creatures to take a bite out of his 
arm. He emerges into a new world. It is raining, and the rain is made 
of shit and blood. 


When they woke him from his bed in the middle of the 
night, he knew it would be bad. But then, he had been 
ready. His years in the Army had taught him no fear, had 
taught him how to survive against all odds. He was ready 
to face whatever they needed him to face, kill whatever 
they needed him to kill. 


He didn't expect that they would take him into a room 
and show him a movie: a false color representation of a 
mathematical reality. It looked beautiful: a sea of blue 
foam with bubbles forming and popping, with brilliant 
yellow spirals floating among them. The spirals, he 
noticed, were getting closer together, and their colors 
were fading. 


It reminded him of back on the farm, in his childhood, 
when his grandfather used to make dandelion wine with 
the flowers his grandmother and sister would pick from 
the rolling green fields. The old man would put the 
flowers into a big pyrex cooking pot and fill it with water, 
some sugar, and lemon juice, and he would watch, 
spellbound, as the yellow flowers rose and fall in that 
boiling liquid, turning slowly in the bubbling water, 
changing color from bright yellow to dull brown. 


He hits the stopwatch and resets the counter. 


You Ain't No Family 


Dreaming of her past... 


The as-of-yet unnamed girl insulated herself from the cold in a thick 
hoodie, having no idea what to expect from the game. Silent Hill 3. A 
fascinating name for a game. There wasn't much she could go off of 
beyond what the disc looked like in the bangead-up plastic sleeve her 
friend at school packed it in (where was she gonna hide it in her 
closet of a room?) and what he told her. 


"You should play this! It's violent, but that's fine since the main 
character is a girl. She rules. You'd probably appreciate that," he 
said. And it was true. She did appreciate that. Somehow, she 
appreciated it despite it being horror. Violent horror. 


At the crack of dawn, long after finishing the game, she still couldn't 
figure out what had enthralled her about it. Was it that she was 
playing a game she could hide from her parents? Maybe it was that 
it was more than just a violent game, in some way. It was 
surprisingly fun. Perhaps it was the perfect form of escapism; a 
game where you could fight (religious) monsters and kill (a) god 
while being a badass teenage lady up against evil adults. That was 
the main thing she had kept coming back to as she tossed and 
turned in bed, fidgeting with her secret hair bow. 


Heather Mason. Heather Mason. What a gorgeous name. Heather 
Mason was only three years older than her. It was the first time she 
could recall playing as acool female lead character, rather than just 
a cute one. And she won on her own strength. That was the most 
important part. 


Heather Mason. She was everything she had wanted to be. Ina 
way, if she could manage to be more feminine, they'd probably even 
look alike. Maybe cosplaying her in the future wouldn't be out of the 
question. Heather Mason. Heather Mason... 


That would make for a nice name, she thought. 


From then on, she fully shed her internal identity as a boy. Now she 
would be, forevermore, Heather Mason. 


"Nnnn..." Heather woke up, groggy from a rough night of sleep. It 
took her a few seconds to realize that the two figures in her room 
were, in fact, Dahlia and Andressa, mom and mommy. They both 
held multiple numerous presents for her. "Wh —" 


"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!" 


"Aaah!" She jumped out of bed in shock. She never heard them yell 
that loud. She never heard anyone yell that loud — not in a positive 
way. It was disorienting. "O-Oh, right, June 4th. You remembered!" 


"Of course we did, Mags!" Dahlia beamed. She was always proud of 
that nickname. "We obviously weren't gonna forget it for the world. 
All of us pooled money together to get you some neat shit." 


"You didn't have —" Before she could speak anymore, the both of 
them leaned in to kiss what was approximately her forehead. 


"No way we weren't going to get you stuff," Andressa reassured. 
"Me, Dahlia, all our friends, we wanted to treat you to something 
special. You can look forward to this every year." They smiled. It 
was a feeling she still hadn't gotten used to, even after all this time. 


"Thank you both!" A radiant, blushing ASCII face popped up. "I'm 
really thankful and happy, but uh... if you don't mind, | still need a 
half-hour to get myself out of bed. Even on my birthday." Heather 
added a heart alongside the face. It was too overwhelming to take in 
at that moment; she might need a whole hour this time. 


"Sure thing. We'll be making breakfast, so feel free to join us 
whenever you want. Do you want us to leave your presents here?" 
Andressa asked. 


"Oh! Probably just in the living room. I'll open them later, | think?" 


"Will do, Mags." With that, the both of them had left the room. It was 


tempting to fall back asleep right then and there; she already felt a 
lot of energy gone. 


She collapsed and turned towards the window. The sun wasn't as 
bright today as it usually felt. Did that mean anything in particular? 
Probably not, though she could probably go outside without needing 
to turn down her brightness settings. If she had that desire. No 
clouds was good, though that was more expected. There was 
humming drifting in from the kitchen, and sizzling; Andressa was 
most likely making eggs. The sound of guns meant Dahlia was 
getting mad at first-person shooters, most likely. It seemed like any 
other day. Nothing to prepare for, or to steel against. 


Since Dahlia was actually home from college for however long, on 
her birthday no less, it was tempting to ask if she could go out 
somewhere. Two months in, and she still had no idea about even 
the immediate area and where a nice place to go would be. Surely 
either mom would have an idea of where to go. The conversation 
was already playing out in her head: 


"Mommy, is there anywhere here we can go to have fun? 
It's my birthday after all.” 


"It might be a bit tricky to swing that with your head, 
Heather..." 


"Is there really no way to disguise it?" 
"Ah, I'm sure we can think of something, but —" 


"If you have any ideas, Dahlia, they better be super 
inconspicuous. | really don't want to risk anything, 
especially today." 


"But mommy..." 


"Ughhh." She rolled around, thinking. They might not have any 
ideas, or even want to risk any ideas. Was there really nothing? She 
got up and looked out the window. It was nice that their rooms were 
entirely on the second floor; the view was pretty good. Birthday 
views out the window seemed to be more magnificent, but they 


Experiment Log 826 


Experiment logs are requested to be written in the following format: 
Head Researcher: 


Subject: 
Material: 
Equipment: 


Results: 
Addendum: (Optional) 


Head Researcher: Dr. 


Subject: Agent 

Book: Little House on the Prairie 

Equipment: One (1) GPS locator, one (1) two-way radio, one (1) 
canteen filled with water, one (1) watch, one (1) 9mm semi- 
automatic with extra cartridges. 

Results: After Agent entered the room containing SCP-826 and 
shut the door, GPS locator and radio held by research team 
stationed outside the door in a room adjoining the containment 
chamber malfunctioned, cutting off communication to Agent 

After a period of 5 minutes, Agent emerged from the door 
unharmed. Agent was dropped in the middle of a prairie with a 
"green smudge" off to the west (presumably the Verdigris River of 
the book). Agent walked towards the river for what he estimated to 
be an hour, before being approached by one of the main characters 
of the book returning from a hunting trip and invited to join him for 
dinner. Agent accompanied character back to his home, a log cabin 
in the prairie where he met the rest of the character's family and 
discovered SCP-826 sitting on the mantlepiece. When Agent 
pointed out SCP-826 to the other characters, they claimed SCP was 
not there before, but did not appear concerned about its presence. 
Agent then ate dinner with the family, and afterwards asked if he 


could only be so pretty each and every day. 


Out in the distance was where Heather spotted it. There were a 
bunch of people at some kind of establishment. An arcade? 
Pizzeria? Some kind of combination. And all the kids and teenagers, 
for whatever reason, were dressed up in ridiculous costumes. It took 
ten seconds for her to burst out of her bedroom door and shout, 
digital voice cracking at the excitement of it. 


"| KNOW WHAT TO DO FOR MY BIRTHDAY!" Andressa and 
Dahlia blinked, taken aback. 


Andressa Santos dressed up as Lisa Lisa. Dahlia Price dressed up 
as Winry Rockbell. Heather Mason dressed up as the Arcade Hare. 


Dreaming of hurt... 


There was only one person in outside of the internet that Heather 
entrusted with knowledge of her true self. He seemed trustworthy 
enough. His name... it was always out of reach. Nothing but garbled 
unicode characters and corrupted data. 


She had told him two weeks after he gifted her Silent Hill 3. That 
was a scene she could never forget. 


"H... Hey, sAveraccgotH?" He turned around to look at her. "| need 
to tell you something. Can you keep it a secret between us?" 


And so he did, and she felt the safest she ever had up to that point. 
At least around one person, she felt that she could be herself more 
often. That was all she really needed. They only knew each other 
since 7th Grade, but they hung out enough and were close enough 
that she felt she could at least tell him most things. She had even 
seen him defend social justice stuff before, so he had to be fine.