As the senior staff — Bright, and Rights, and Kondraki, and oh god 
Clef, and Crow, and Gerald, and Gears, and Light, and even 
Snorlison - filed into the conference room and took their seats, he 
could not help but compare what he knew about them with what he 
had learned. 


"Th-thank you for coming, gentlemen. And ladies. And... and Dr. 
Crow. I'm... I'm sorry to disturb you all, but —" 


"Get on with it, Northrop!" someone — was it Kondraki? — snapped. 


Northrop winced, took a deep breath, and continued. "Yes, Dr. 
Kondraki, of course. Sorry. I've... I've called you all here because of 
some very disturbing results from Project: Turtledove, results which | 
feel may have significant repercussions for us. Not... not for the 
world, or for humanity, but for us specifically. The people in this... 
this room." 


Dr. Gerald's brow furrowed. "Turtledove. Turtledove. That's the 
alternate timeline one, right?" 


"Yes, it—" "Working with Gephardt to expand our network 
allochronously so that we can connect to another timeline's Internet 
and pillage their Foundation's files, yes. Sorry, Northrop, | could tell 
you were going to have trouble with that one," Snorlison finished 
kindly. 


Northrop winced again. "Uh... yes. Now, for the alternate timeline R- 
zayin-H-517/6, we experienced some significant difficulty in locating 
that timeline's version of the Foundation. Their Internet in that 
timeline is quite... quite ubiquitous, and the absence of media 
reports on interactions with... with Euclid-level entities is... well, we 


* SCP-907-E: Icy moon orbiting a ringed helium giant. No 
atmosphere present. Irregular composition of the ice 
combined with abnormal warming and cooling patterns has 
caused a marbled pattern on the surface. 


¢ SCP-907-F: Terrestrial planet approximately 17 times the 
mass of Earth, orbiting a B-class star. Six small moons 
present. The atmosphere is made primarily of nitrogen and 
argon, and large quantities of arsenic and mercury are present 
in the soil. Winds of up to 270 km/h have been recorded. 


« SCP-906 | SCP-907 | SCP-908 » 


thought it a definitive indication that that timeline has an SCP 
Foundation to take care of these problems. But.... none of the 
standard domain names were in use, our dedicated IP blocks were, 
were unallocated... and then I, then | found it. If you'll consult the 
flash drives I've prepared beforehand, you'll see the... oh god. You'll 
see the entire content of their Foundation's site." 


Northrop held his breath while the others pointed-and-clicked their 
way through the files. After a moment's silence, Clef spoke up. 


"Is this some sort of joke?", he spat angrily. 
"N—no, sir, it's quite serious." 


"Bullshit! Their version of the Foundation is hosting its website on a 
public wikifarm?" 


"Y-yes, sir. They are. And it gets worse. It gets a... a lot worse. Sir." 
Gears raised his hand. 
"... yes, Dr. Gears?" 


"Thank you, Dr. Northrop. By 'worse’, are you referring to the notice 
on the website's front page which tells casual visitors how they can 
join the SCP Foundation?" 


Bright snapped to attention. "They what?!" 
Northrop winced. "Th-that's.... that's part of it. But —" 


"Hey, | thought you said these were the entire contents of their 
website?" 


Northrop blinked at the interruption. "Uh... yes, Dr. Rights. The 
whole... the whole contents of their site and their... their forums, 
which —" 


"Then why do we only have censored versions of their documents?" 


"That's, |... please, sir, ma'am, I'm, I'm getting to that." 


Rights sat back down, muttering. 


"Th-thank you, Dr. Rights, ma'am. Sir. Uh, yes. As | was saying, 
for... for timeline R-zayin-H-51 7/6, uh, one of the first anomalies we 
notice is that their... their SCP Foundation has its... its site in public. 
With their files open to the public, and — as Dr. Gears pointed out 
—a "join us" link on their front — their front page. Our initial reaction 
to, to such a catastrophic security breach was... well, frankly we 
thought they were being idiots but we didn't care. They're not... not 
us, they're just our allochronous equivalents. But, uh. There are 
some... some significant problems with that... uh. Project Turtledove 
is, uh, our goal is to, to learn from the allochronous database, and 
so we —" 


Kondraki grumbled menacingly. 
".,.their files are the same as ours," Northrop finished hastily. 


Crow's doggy head tilted and his ear quirked upwards. "I noticed 
that they have a lot of entries that seemed familiar, but surely they're 
not identical?" 


"I'm, I'm afraid they... Dr. Crow, sir, there's nothing in their SCP files 
that's not also in ours. With the same wording. Exactly the same, 
down to the... the typos. And... sir, they even use the same 
numbering as us. Not just the same, the, the same numbering 
system, but the actual... the actual SCP numbers are exactly the 
same as, as ours. For every entry." 


There was a long silence. 


"That's impossible", Clef said. "They... they must be running a 
Project Turtledove of their own." 


Gears raised his hand. Clef sighed. "What is it, Gears?" 


"| do apologize, Dr. Clef, but | must point out that even within a more 
mundane paradigm of reality, such an occurrence would not be 
impossible. |t is only a mathematical improbability, albeit one which 
is quite literally more than astronomical. You are correct, however, in 
that it is considerably more probable that our allochronous 


equivalents are running a Project Turtledove of their own." 


Kondraki got up from his chair. "So that's it, then? Looks like a major 
security breach from an alternate timeline, but it's actually just us 
reading over our own shoulders. Nothing to worry about and we can 
leave now. Right?" 


"Uh... I'm, I'm sorry, Dr. Kondraki, but there's ... more." 


Kondraki sat down again. "For fuck's sake. Okay, Northrop. What 
else do you want to tell us about alternate timeline R-zayin-H- 
whatever?" 


Northrop closed his eyes, chose his next five words very carefully so 
as to avoid stammering, and then spoke. 


"| don't think we're real." 


to be continued 


Micky D's 


“Iris!” Carter hollered from the hallway outside. Iris sighed slightly at 
the sound of the senior partner's petulant tone. 


Iris Dark and Ruprecht Carter had never much cared for one 
another, but as they were both board members and key 
shareholders of Marshall, Carter, and Dark, they were obliged to 
meet from time to time. 


Iris had yet to seek out Carter for anything outside of official 
meetings, and the only time Carter ever sought her out in person 
was when he thought it was a matter of utmost importance. 

It was never anything important. 

“I’m in my office, Ruprecht,” lris replied. Her office door swung open 
and Ruprecht Carter marched in like he was reporting to a general 
after a catastrophic enemy attack. 


“Look at this!” he said, dumping a bag of paper cups, napkins, 
leaflets and fast-food containers out in front of her. 


“Why are you pouring garbage onto my desk Ruprecht?” 
“Read it!” 
Iris rolled her eyes and picked up a leaflet at random. 


“Now you can order ahead of time with mobile ordering. Download 
the My McD’s app -” 


“There, right there! You see it?” 
“What?” 


“These are from Canada, | picked them up while | was in Toronto 
and -” 


“What were you doing at McDonald’s?” 
Carter hesitated for a moment. 
“That’s not important,” he said dismissively. 


“I’m afraid | have to disagree. You’re the most elitist prick I’ve ever 
met. You eat haute cuisine exclusively, drink only Black Ivory coffee 
because ‘everything else is shit' -” 


“| was aware of the irony of that statement when | made it, Iris.” 


“. And literally the only bad thing I’ve ever heard you say about 
Trump was bashing his fast-food habit.” 


“Two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fishes and a chocolate shake is not a 
meal fit for a king!” 


“So | ask again; what were you doing there?” 


“|... |was with a whore and she insisted on getting something to eat 
first, and | didn’t want Penny to know so | couldn’t take her 
anywhere | might be recognized, so we went to McDonald's. | ate 
prole food, | admit it. Are you happy?” 


“Very,” Iris smiled. “And what did Ruprecht Carter, the paragon of 
High Society, order off the value menu? Did you get a happy meal? 
Did they give you a toy with it?” 


“| had an Angus burger with a Caesar side salad and a cappuccino, 
but that’s not the point Iris! Look at this! The McDonald’s in Canada 
is branding itself as MCD!” 


Iris glared at him with a mixture of contempt and confusion. 
“Ruprecht, I’m busy.” 
“You're playing on your computer.” 


“I’m writing code, which is probably the most productive part of my 
job, and you’re distracting me with literal rubbish!” 


“This is a problem, Iris. Our clientele associate the letters MC&D 
with ostentatious wealth, and we cannot have that association 
besmirched by a fast-food franchise printing those letters all over its 
greased stained, cardboard takeout boxes!” 


Iris sighed, a small part of her conceding that his concerns might not 
be completely inane, and picked up a paper cup to examine it. 


“The McDonalds’ in Canada, you said?” 


“At least. I’ve been trying to get the market research team to look 
into if they’re doing this anywhere else, but they haven’t gotten back 
to me yet.” 


“| can’t imagine why,” she murmured. “Well, it’s clearly meant to be 


read as ‘Mick Dee’. 


“It doesn’t matter, it’s still MCD. Do you know what McDonald’s 
NYSE symbol is?” 


“MCD?” 


“Those are our letters dammit! People already call us Micky D’s 
sometimes, did you know that?” 


“I’ve heard that before, yes.” 


“There’s already an association in the eyes of customers between 
us and McDonald's, and their latest branding is blatantly reinforcing 
that association. Our brand must remain unsullied!” 


“That being said, this is clearly a branding issue, and |’m Chief of 
Paratech Development and Acquisition. This is not my department.” 


“You're Darke’s proxy, and | need the support of another senior 
partner for this to move forward.” 


“Meaning Marshall doesn’t support this?” 
“He... did not consider it a pressing issue, no.” 


“Alright Ruprecht, for the sake of argument let’s assume that 


McDonald’s branding itself as McD is tarnishing our brand and this is 
impacting our bottom line. What would you have us do about it? 
They’re known almost universally, whereas we take it as a point of 
pride that the ninety-nine percent have never even heard of us. | 
doubt there’s any legal action we could take.” 


“So did |, but | went to the A-78s just to be sure.” 
“And what did they say?” 


Carter took out the note from his pocket they had handed him 
earlier. 


Brandname doublemake 
Burgers and fries = glittering gold? 
Illrepute indistinct, supersized portfolio 


“... Well, there you go.” 


“This is intolerable! We were around for nearly a hundred years 
before those discount beef peddlers, longer if you count all of 
Darke’s wheelings and dealings before our merger. The name is 
rightfully ours! I’m not about to just let this indignity go 
unchallenged.” 


“Well, you seem to have already given the matter more thought than 
| would care to. What do you suggest?” 


“We’re the most powerful firm in the world. Surely it would be trivially 
easy to get McDonald’s to rebrand themselves,” Carter suggested. 


“Not as easy as it would be to rebrand ourselves. Darke & Dark has 
a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” 


“Maybe for an emo-punk music label,” Carter retorted. “Besides, 
changing our name would be even worse. Imagine what people 
would say! Marshall, Carter, and Dark, cowed into submission by 
McDonald's. We'd lose our mystique! No no no no no, that won’t do 
at all. Forget changing their name, we should drive them out of 
business and send a clear a message about what happens to 
anyone that even indirectly diminishes our profits. You can write 
some sort of algorithm or something that can plunge their stock 


value, can’t you?” 
“Conceivably, but -” 


“Great, that’s your new project! Good meeting, productive meeting. 
I’m going to go for a steam, shoot me a memo when it’s good to go.” 


“Carter, get back here!” 
Carter slinked to a halt and reluctantly turned around to face Iris. 


“Carter, even if it was worth my time to create such a program, 
which it isn’t, do you not think there might be some serious 
economic repercussions to bankrupting the richest fast-food 
franchise on the planet?” she asked. “Do you not think that a 
worldwide recession might impact our profits a tiny bit more than 
some bad brand recognition?” 


“Short term, sure, but the economy always bounces back. Plus 
recessions are inevitable anyway, so why not engineer one to get 
some use out of it?” 


“Carter, | am not manipulating the global economy to drive 
McDonald's out of business just because they share our initials,” Iris 
said resolutely. 


For an instant, Carter looked like he might argue with her, looked 
like he might try to put her in her place, looked like he would scream 
that he was one of the company's founders and she was glorified 
tech support, but he stopped himself. As much as he hated 
subordinating himself to a woman, to a youth, to anyone really, he 
dared not forget that she was a Dark. 


“No, no, of course not,” he sighed, hanging his head in defeat. 
“Something subtler then, perhaps?” 


“Go to Market Research and have them figure out how much, if 
anything, this is costing us,” she replied. “That will be the budget for 
any counter-proposals. You can oversee the project since it’s 
obviously very important to you, and unlike myself, you don’t appear 
to have anything better to do. Prepare a presentation and we'll have 
a vote at the next board meeting.” 


lris resumed typing at her keyboard, letting him know the discussion 
was over. Carter clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, but also 
held his tongue. She had given him more satisfaction than Marshall 
had, at any rate. Pining for the days when Darke’s seclusion and 
Marshall’s immobility had made him the de facto head of the 
company, he turned to leave. 


“Ruprecht,” Iris called out before he had made it to the door. “Clean 
this garbage off my desk.” 


Midnight Parade 


At midnight, two men met under the dim light of a back alley, away 
from the crowd and their watchful eyes. Dark stars shone weakly in 
the sky. 


One of the men was dressed in fine clothes, and yet he covered all 
of the jewels he wore with a thick black cloak. The other one also 
wore a black cloak, and appeared nervous. He occasionally glanced 
at the main road, making sure that no one paid them any attention. 


One of them, with luxurious ornaments here and there, spoke with a 
deep voice. It echoed in the dark alley, even though the man wasn't 
speaking particularly loudly. “I need to get out of the city.” 


“But my Lord!” The other one replied. His voice was a bit shaky. 
“The other Lords, they—” 


“The other Lords are going to stand by. They have long been jealous 
of my status, and are more than willing to be rid of me.” His master 
interrupted him. His voice was cold, and harbored hatred. “Did you 
get the gate key?” 


“Yes, yes.” The other one quickly took out a key from under his 
cloak, and handed it to him. It was a black metal key, which smelled 
faintly of burnt flesh. 


His Lord held the key between his long fingers. The rings of obsidian 
and porcelain he wore shone dimly under the street light. The 
constant frown on his face relived slightly as he examined the key 
carefully. He handed it back to the servant. 


“My Lord,” The servant continued, “You could appeal to the King! 
You are always—” 


“I’m always his favorite, and that's exactly why they would not let me 
live.” The Lord answered. His face twitched, as if in agonizing pain. 


SCP-908: Colocated Rock