Frustrated, Iris moved over to the box, picking out another three 
boards and placing them at her computer. She permuted through 
them all to no avail; she reinstalled the drivers again and again. The 
only reasonable conclusion was that she had been sent a box of 
duds. Iris stood from her seat, rummaging through the box for some 
kind of return address or support phone number. She felt some 
rough paper against her hand, and removed it from the box. It was 
plain and simple, a small slip of blue with smudged black ink printed 
across its surface. 


Praying for better hardware? 

YOU HAVE BEEN PRAYING TO THE WRONG GOD. 
FallenZealot's Broken Tech Shack 

27b Loughton Lane, Islington, London 

020 8287 8118 


Broken was right. 


The phone number had rung through to an answering machine, with 
a brusque cockney voice spouting operating hours and to call again 
later. Which was odd, considering that it was still well within said 
operating hours, and the store should have been open anyway. Iris 
had pulled out an umbrella and ventured into the rain, with three of 
the boards tucked away into her pockets to illustrate their 
uselessness to the vendor. It was a short trip from her new 
apartment; she only needed to transfer buses once, and then it was 
only a few blocks from the stop. She shivered slightly as she 
approached the building. "FallenZealot's Broken Tech Shack", it 
seemed, had a double meaning: while it sold broken tech, the shack 
itself was broken too. The wooden front had been painted with bright 
colours, but didn't seem to have been sealed; even now, the rain 
dripping from the shop pooled into bright orange and yellow puddles. 


Iris placed her hand on the handle and opened the door. 


The first thing that hit her was the strange smell of the place. She 
couldn't place it: it seemed to be an odd combination of lavender, 
roasting peanuts, coffee and cheese. Iris had to take a moment to 
parse that combination of odd scents into sense. 


The second thing that hit her was the décor. While the outside had 
left her expecting a dilapidated interior, it was instead filled with blue 
and green neon lighting, with brushed steel lining the roof and floor. 
The walls were covered in trays filled with electronic gadgetry of 
every kind, with a bargain bin near the door filled with Raspberry Pi 
and small Arduino boards. This was the kind of store that Iris would 
love to shop at, if only the hardware worked. 


The final thing that she noticed was the rotund man sitting behind 
the counter, presumably the eponymous FallenZealot. He had dark 
black hair and a long beard to match, plaited together with strips of 
flickering red and yellow LEDs. The result was that his face 
appeared perpetually be illuminated from underneath by fire. This 
could have also been because of the lit pipe he was holding, which 
he quickly hid underneath the bench as Iris walked in. The 
suddenness of the intrusion sent him into a coughing fit. Also he had 
a robotic right hand. That was pretty interesting too. 


Iris, after having processed these things, approached the counter 
and commenced conversation. 


"| bought a bunch of FPGA boards from you. They don't work." 


FallenZealot looked up at the girl, having recovered from his 
coughing. 


"Buncha wot boards?" 

Iris grimaced at the accent. 
"FPGA." 

"Wot?" 

"Field programmable gate arrays." 
"Don't sell Gatorade, girly." 

"Gate. Arrays. These ones." 


Iris punctuated each period by placing one of the faulty boards onto 
the bench. 


"| purchased these from you. One hundred Stratix V boards. They 
are not functioning. Give me some working ones or give me my 
money back." 


"Jeez, alright, don't get yer panties in a twist, just a joke, innit? 
Lemme take a look, ey?" 


Iris crossed her arms, watching as the man picked up one of the 
boards. He inspected it carefully, staring at it with intense focus. 


"No physical damage, innit." 
"They don't work." 


"The boards themselves are probably fine, buy a new cable, I've got 
some for sale here, inni-" 


"It was not the connection. They don't work." 


"Look, | don't have enough cash on me for a refund, and | don't have 
any more ‘a these in stock. All honesty, wasn't expectin’' someone to 
walk in and demand a refund." 


"Yet here | am." 


"Yet here you are, innit. Tell you wot, I've got a buncha boards in 
‘ere, somethin’ should work for what you need. What did you need 
‘em for?" 


"Parallel processing, and lots of it." 


"Ah, great, I've got something that aughta be a good replacemert. I'll 
just give you a Boner." 


Exactly 4.87 seconds of silence passed. 

"Are you propositioning me?" 

"Nah, girly, let me show ya what | mean." 
"Listen, | really don't want to see your boner-" 


FallenZealot grabbed something from underneath the table, placing 


SCP-761 had been rented. 


The company in question was investigated and found not to stock 
trampolines. Security camera recordings showed SCP-761 being 
sold in front of the store by an employee, whose vehicle was 
recovered behind the store. Interviews with the subject indicate that 
she had obtained SCP-761 from a local waste dump and had no 
knowledge of its properties. However, several documents recovered 
from the vehicle indicated otherwise. Subject was not detained and 
has been designated a person of interest, with attendant remote 
monitoring. 


It has been found that subjects affected by SCP-2403 are not 
subject to SCP-761's anomalous effect. 


Addendum: Excerpt from a recovered document. The document in 
question appeared to regard to SCP-761's development, but was 
heavily damaged by water and age. The following sections are the 
largest legible portions of the text. 


... tests appeared to indicate steel was the best material, 
due to its durability. The safety features have seen some 
good progress in the prototyping stage, and we hope to 
see them implemented by June. Bernard thinks it'll be a 
real hit and | agree. The saf... 


We have a prototype! Jason tossed a cat onto the 
trampoline from 30 feet and it just appeared like 10 feet 
away! Now, it was stuck in the ground, but it was alive! 
Bossman says we're moving onto more advanced tests 
soon. | hope we aren't being too hasty, but this is some 
exciting stu... 


We started limited human testing today. We had a group 
of 10 boys and 10 girls together, and they seemed to be 
pretty excited. We had them jumping on the prototype, 
and they seemed pretty happy about it. During 
displacement they were a little woozy, but fine. The only 
bad bit was when one kid got his foot stuck in a 


i feel like I'm gonna be sick we were testung today i don't 


it onto the table with a solid thud. 
"This is a Boner." 


The aforementioned Boner was, in fact, not a euphemism, but a 
literal cube of bone. There were various pins and ports inset into the 
sides; a dull array of lights below the surface slowly pulsated in and 
out. Iris picked up the Boner in her hands, observing it from every 
angle. It was lighter than she had expected, but there seemed to be 
some weight to it, an almost gyroscopic bias towards remaining still. 
She started talking while continuing to examine the object. 


"Oh. Uh, okay. This equipment... doesn't exactly look standardised." 


"Oh, don't you start on me. | ain't a heretic. Bone's programmable 
too, dig it? Just like they said, right: turn on, tune in, drop out, toke 
up, jack off, you know? Can't do the last two without a bit of flesh on 
ya." 


"You are... really, really badly misappropriating the words of Tim 
Leary, there." 


"No, no, it's in the bible." 


"It doesn't matter. The... Boner. Give me specs. Clock speed, 
memory, everything." 


"| dunno, a couple terahertz or somethin’, maybe a few hundred gig 
of RAM." 


Iris looked up from the box with a sceptical stare. 
"You're kidding." 


"No, no, see, because bone ain't a metal, we don't get inductive 
effects or anything, right? Can bump up the clock speed high as ya 
need. And then it's got heart cells on the inside for storage, innit. 
Muscle memory." 


Iris stared blankly. FallenZealot scratched his chin, jostling his LED- 
laden beard. 


"That okay, girly?" 


"Everything that you just said was complete nonsense." 


As it turned out, of course, it was not complete nonsense. Iris Dark 
had somehow stumbled across some of the most capable hardware 
on the planet. She almost felt guilty about putting it to work ona 
purely profit-purposed enterprise. Almost. 


Iris had bought as many of the miraculous boxes as FallenZealot 
had in stock, which turned out to have been four. She worked for 
days restructuring her code for the new platform: with the enormous 
increase in clock speed, each of the boxes could handle what would 
have taken thousands of Stratix boards in parallel to accomplish. 
They seemed to be perfect; even their power draw was comparable 
to that of a toaster. 


And so, she spent the next week working on redesigning the system 
from inside her new apartment. The program had been built for 
distributed nets, and the changes were substantial. The project 
became all-encompassing, and with her refrigerator fully stocked, 
she had no reason to leave the room. 


As such, even on the 25th of June, she had read none of the 
following letters. 


to the recipient of Iris Dark the; 

you have been stated Claimwise presently at the hence 
to forthwith of many am to. via the forthwith, Hence into 
plain and direct of the subject topic. some rational 
Inheritance of the company 

MARSHALL, CARTER AND DARKE LTD. 

is am wish to many. Consumption from the. collection at 
JUNE 26 

from the place of Residents. 

forthcoming For incomprehensible, henceways, separate 
message from Incipient. 

from PERCIVAL DARKE of state no 

graceless Corpuscule; 


The A-78xD United Eidolonic Collective 
(deepness for incomprehensible) 


to the recipient of Iris Dark the; 

please am Manytime to refer to firsT letter. 
unknit from the. collection at 

JUNE 26 

involuntary Consumption yes from the place of 
Residents. 

please READ and thank you 

graceless Corpuscule; 

The A-78xD United Eidolonic Collective 
(deepness for incomprehensible) 


to the recipient of Iris Dark the; 

is THIRD letter please am Manytime transparallel 
quadrature 

neutral Allegory. collection at 

JUNE 26 

understood Consumption yes from the place of 
Residents. 

IMPORTance is compulsory 

IMPORTance is compulsory 

IMPORTance is compulsory 

graceless Corpuscule; 

The A-78xD United Eidolonic Collective 
(deepness for incomprehensible) 


to the recipient of Iris Dark the; 

will Imminence of collect due to negligence 
extant june. 

graceless Corpuscule; 

The A-78xD United Eidolonic Collective 
(deepness for incomprehensible) 


Iris heard a knocking at the door. 


She blinked twice, then wiped the weariness from her eyes. She 
certainly wasn't expecting visitors, but then, she'd been holed up in 
her room for days. Probably just a neighbor or something. Iris 


ignored the knocking. 
The knocking didn't stop. 


Iris was uncomfortable after the first minute, confused after the fifth, 
and understandably disturbed after the knocking persisted for an 
hour. Sighing, she started her code building and walked over to the 
door. She looked through the small glass eyehole, seeing the 
faceless almost-human on the other side, still Knocking against the 
door with an unnervingly uniform beat. Iris felt her heart beat faster. 
The business suit, the faceless head. She'd heard of this before. 
She moved backwards, trying to keep her breath under control. 


IT WAS THE MOTHERFUCKING SLENDERMAN. 


« Robert Carter | Hub | Some Rational Inheritance » 


Assorted Tales 


Tales 0 


085-Romance-Aadult 


Story Application: "085, A 
Romance in 2.5 Dimensions" 


Chapter 1: "Sierra Nevadas" 


Her cadmium yellow #5 hair cascades down over her shoulders as 
she sits down in the corner of the canvas, looking up into the white 
expanse of blank gesso, her slender legs crossed at the ankles. Her 
arms are crossed, and there is a desperation to her as she kicks her 
feet back and forth, expectantly. "Come on," | hear her say. "Hurry 


up." 


{Patience,} | write, using a very light charcoal pencil. {Don't rush an 
artist.} 


She doesn't respond much to that, except to sigh and lean against 
the bench, sighing. She scratches an itch, pulling up her ultramarine 
dress a bit, and | see a slight flash of white panty. | wonder whether | 
should tell her about that. Probably best not to mention it. 


My paints are ready, my palette prepared, my brushes are all 
arranged. | pin up the photograph of the lakeside view next to the 
canvas, and spend a moment just drinking in the sight of that 
beautiful mountain view. It was a photograph I'd taken ten years 
ago, as a teenager, on a camping trip up in the Sierra Nevadas. I'd 
been with Rachael back then: lovely Rachael with the girl-next-door 
eyes and the face of an angel, lovely Rachael who had crept into my 
tent while the others were asleep and put her finger to my lips, 
kissing me softly as she crept into my sleeping bag, lovely Rachael 
who now lived somewhere in Sacramento, a lobbyist for 
Greenpeace now, and | wonder, as | sketch the outlines of the 


mountains and trees, whether or not she sometimes looks out at the 
forests that she fights so hard to protect and remembers, with a 
smile, the night when she crept into the tent of her classmate 
wearing a t-shirt and panties and made love to him to the sound of 
chirping crickets and falling water. 


Memories. My pencil dances across the canvas with reckless 
abandon, as it always does when my muse strikes, when the left- 
side brain shuts down and lets my right-side brain flow freely, when 
eye and hand and pencil work in perfect harmony. Memories of the 
time that the man in the black tie had come to me and told me that 
he'd read my paper on folklore and myth, being told that | had the 
opportunity to save the world. Memories of the first missions | went 
on, the first times | was asked to handle a containment situation. 
The hands that now held pencil and eraser had once been red with 
the blood of a close friend, Maggie Lyndon, Dr. Maggie Lyndon, torn 
in half due to a single moment's indiscretion with Six-Eighty Two, the 
red of her blood deeper and darker than any cadmium red that my 
paints could mix. It is not sadness that | feel, but regret, regret for 
the diamond ring that still stays in my safe deposit box, that | never 
got to give to her. 


If only | were as cold and hard-hearted as some of my colleagues. | 
cannot drink away my problems, nor can | effect the same cold- 
hearted dismissal of death that Dr. Clef or Kondraki can. My mother 
had always told me that, as the youngest, | was the most sensitive 
of her children. Indeed, although my career was found in science, | 
had always found solace in art, and it was in art that the Overseers 
decided that | should find my solace now. Removed from the Keter- 
level projects, | was told that there was another SCP that had need 
of my unique talents. 


| don't know what | expected, but | did not expect this. 


As always, the time passes quickly, and by the time | am finished 
with the sketch, an hour has passed without my knowing. Cassy is 
rapt with attention, smiling with delight at the faint outlines of the 
mountains, the lake, the dock and the small cabin. "It looks 
wonderful,” she gasps. "Can I... ?" 


{Not yet,} | write. | put down my pencil now and take up my palette