Finally, some work. I’ve been assigned to SCP-_, another Safe. | 
think they just handed it to me because | wanted something to do. 
I've been reading the previous research on it, and I’ve found a lot of 
problems with some of procedures. Though, considering it was the 
renowned Dr. — who was heading it up, I’m not surprised. I'll be 
taking over in the morning, if all goes well. Descent sized staff too! 
Christina says that she’s jealous, but | doubt it. She’s wonderful, 
though. So supportive. 


November 11, 199 : 


Christina just won a site award for her research with SCP-  ! She 
actually managed to fully sequence its DNA, and it looks like we’re 
going to be successful in finding a cure for the “brittling” side effect. 
Near as she can tell, its poison is effectively turning the bones into 
chalk. Exciting stuff! 1, on the other hand, have ruined seventeen lab 
coats. But, I’m having fun. A lot more fun than I’ve had in a long, 
long time. 


December 26, 199 : 


She was successful. My God, | am married to a brilliant woman. In 
less than five years, she’s managed to do what senior researchers 
have been trying to do for twenty. Even better, it looks like it’s going 
to be a valid cure for osteoporosis. She should be getting the Nobel 
Prize for Medicine, but instead, she’s just getting a pat on the back 
and a transfer to a new project. But, that’s the nature of the work, | 
guess. She’s moving over to SCP-_ . 1 can’t say I’m not a little 
worried... This one is a Euclid, after all. But she’s smart. Vibrant. 
Amazing, really. So much more than | deserve. 


The following section takes place over the three weeks 
that preceded Dr. ’s final breakdown. While 
psychological reports, available from Dr. —_, seemed to 
represent a man with significant self-doubt and an 
inferiority complex, they did not, in any way, hint at what 
was to come. Post-mortem reexaminations of these 
materials, and further reevaluations done in the wake of 
Agent ’s discoveries, seem to point to SCP- - as 
the primary culprit. 


March 11, 199 : 


| think something is wrong, but I’m not sure... Christina was pretty 
sick last week. She says it’s nothing, but I’ve been after her to go an 
see the site physician. I’m almost certain that it has something to do 
with SCP-_ . She didn’t have this problem before the transfer, and 
I’m worried. | don’t know what I’m so concerned about, but... Well... 
It's a husband's prerogative. 


March 14, 199 : 


| know something is wrong. She’s quiet. Reserved. It has to be that 
damned thing that she’s working with! We barely understand how it 
works, much less how it reproduces. And she won't listen to me! I’m 
sure, |‘mso sure thatit’s , but she’s not... Damn it. If | could only 
convince her. I’m sure. I’m almost certain. 


March 16, 199: 


I’m positive that she must be keeping something from me. | don’t 

think there’s any other explanation for the way she’s acting. She’s 
never done this. Not in the twelve years we've been married. Not 

that | can remember as least. Am | overreacting? 


March 17, 199 : 


Christina and Agatha quit talking when | came into the room today. 
She must know that | know she’s hiding something. She must. 


March 19, 199: 


Christina came by the lab today during testing, but she wouldn’t say 
what she wanted. She just “wanted to see me.” I’m not sure what 
that even means. We got into an argument about it when | got 
home. This is absurd. She must realize the —_is doing something to 
her. 


March 21, 199 : 


Dr. is being dispatched to Site- for a week. His lab is perfect. It 
should be empty, quiet, and it has all the medical equipment | need. 
Everyone forgets that | have training in something other than 
metaphysics. I’m going to figure out what is wrong. 


March 22, 199 : 


| couldn't decide how to get her into the lab, so | had to drug her. 
She kept rambling about the size of a quarters. And she kept fucking 
smiling at me. Some sort of stupid little grin. | don’t know what’s 
wrong with her. But | have to find out. She’s too wonderful for me not 
to. 


March 23, 199 : 


| was right. | was right about everything. I’ve had to keep her 
sedated. She woke up and started screaming, but that’s pretty much 
par for the course in Dr. ’s lab, so no one thought anything of it. It 
has to be SCP-_. It’s done something to her body. Something is 
growing inside her. Feeding on her. She can’t die. | love her too 
much. | have to help her. 


March 25, 199: 


Agatha came by the quarters this morning looking for Christina. | 
told her that we'd had a fight, and she'd left. Agatha looked shocked. 
Never thought I'd see that look on her face. I’d take her to the lab 
too, but she shows no signs of infection. I'll make sure she gets 
examined after | present my results to the site director. They'll have 
to listen to me then. 


March 28, 199 : 


| don’t have any more time. Dr. is coming back in the morning. 
I've been pouring over medical texts for the last week, but I’m just 
not certain | can do this... It’s been so long since I’ve done anything 
like this... | flunked my medical entrance exam, but... | have to do 
this. | have to fix her. She'll be fine. | Know she will... Dear God. 
Please let her be fine. 


Dr. ’s operation to remove the “parasite” was 
successful, and his wife survived the operation, 
remarkably. When Dr. _ returned the following day, he 
discovered Dr. carefully dissecting an aborted fetus 
in his lab and reported it to site security. Dr. was 
taken into custody and confined to the care of Dr. __, 
the site psychiatrist, for careful observation. 


Christina committed suicide on July 14, 199 after 
administration of Class A Amnesiacs was unsuccessful. 
Dr. was not informed and, until his termination in 
201 , believed that he had saved his wife’s life. 


Whiteout and Ink 


Libraries collect secrets in the quiet hours of the night... 


In the midst of the darkness, Alai sat with a mug of hot chocolate in 
her hands. Her desk lamp carved an island of light in the space 
between night and morning. 


This time of the night, right here, was the only peace to be had in the 
life of Alai of Antarctica. 


Alai hadn’t slept well. She rarely did, these days. Time went too fast 
here, in the north — An entire year compressed into the space of a 
few hours, the sun and night going round and round enough to make 
her dizzy. Always scrambling over itself, go go go. Never going 
anywhere. Each day the same, each hallway identical. The old 
circadian rhythms of her brain rejected the terrible race, and clawed 
back into her memory - 


- For the deep black of winter, huddled with her family around the 
decorated hearth. 


- For the long, sweet orange of the fading summer, long walks in the 
hills. 


- For the Empress emerging from her palace to bring the sun above 
the horizon each spring. 


For something more than this. For more than living in this pit. The 
namesake was fitting — a foundation, a root cellar. Darkness and 
stone and pickled things. 


She drew up and drank in all those memories there in the timeless 
moment, offering her secrets to the library. Only then, when all else 
was gone, could she entertain those thoughts — elsewhere, the 
despair that stabbed through her heart would be too much to bear. 
In her waking hours, a permanent knot of tension had formed 


between her shoulder blades, as if her spine had fused into a 
tangled, cancerous mass. 


The place was a cage, and she the fool locked within. 


Three years now, in the north. She was the last of the Imperials to 
remain with the Foundation. All the rest had returned home...or so 
had been said. Alai doubted. So easy to doubt now, but so hard to 
replace it. She had applied for transfer back home long ago. No 
response. The next four times were the same, and by the sixth she 
had stopped trying. The message was clear. 


“We didn’t receive it, could you please resubmit?” was just the 
patina covering “Stop rattling the bars.” 


This place didn’t need historians, nor want them. That truth was 
bared. The library she had been shown before was merely 
temporary, as the Powers that Be soon decided that a restructuring 
and downsizing was in order only a few months after she arrived. 


Dr. Quail vanished around that time. He simply didn’t show up the 
next morning, one day during the restructuring. It was difficult to 
remember his face, and Alai could only dimly hold on to the 
impressions of his colorful shirts and colorful speech. No one else 
ever talked about him. No one else ever pretended to remember 
him. Her early, clumsy searches fell on empty directories and deaf 
ears. 


Not even in the computer systems. So clear, so obvious - but no one 
cared. There was no Dr. Argus Quail. Written out of the record. 


What was wrong with them? What was wrong with her? A fuzzy 
face, a distant voice, a colorful shirt — imagined? An act in an 
elaborate stage play? 


The paranoia had gripped her for a time, and faded. There was 
really only one way to deal with it: She stopped asking questions. 
People disappeared. And somewhere, on someone's list, there was 
her name. Waiting with Damocles’ eraser hung overhead. 


Ed remained for a while longer, another year and some, before he 


recording systems, and was not discovered until the tapes were later 
analyzed. The recording consists only of a three-second burst of 
static, and the word "help". 


Date: / /94 

Subject: SCPS Taurus, Foundation listening ship 

Description: Contact made. Transmission was very clear, and 
consisted of 19 seconds of screaming from multiple subjects before 
being abruptly cut off. No coherent speech was recorded. 


Date: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Subject: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Description: [DATA EXPUNGED] 


Date: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Subject: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Description: [DATA EXPUNGED] 


Date: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Subject: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Description: [DATA EXPUNGED] 


Date: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Subject: [DATA EXPUNGED] 
Description: [DATA EXPUNGED] 


« SCP-997 | SCP-998 | SCP-999 » 


too vanished. Re-assigned, they said, though not to where. 
Classified. 


A few other librarians came and went in that space, but Alai found 
herself the most senior of them. All gone now — she was the last. 
The last librarian of the Foundation. Perhaps even the last one who 
cared for the books - The band of her regular visitors had faded, to 
the point that it might be days without a single visitor. No friends, 
certainly. Strangers here to pull files from the archives. 


Shortly after Ed was taken away, the memos began. The memos 
always began like this: 


“The Information Review Bureau has determined that the 
following items are no longer accurate:” 


And everything on the list was to be disposed. Every two weeks, the 
notice came in, with another list of names. 


Alai loaded them up in the incinerator as instructed. Somewhere, 
inside her, on the hills of her youth, a girl cried out against the 
injustice. 


Everything to the fire. Papers written by the wrong people, about the 
wrong things. People who obviously didn’t exist. Photographs that 
were clearly staged. Journals that were undeniably hoaxes. All into 
the fire, licking up unwanted time. 


What wasn’t burned, was taken by the IRB itself, and returned two 
weeks later. Words were missing. Sentences changed. 


It was all so obvious... but no one saw it. It must have been real 
then, right? People would notice it if it was that obvious. People 
would care... 


Alai had found once, in a dark and dusty corner of the archives, a 
photograph — black and white, old enough that it near crumbled in 
her hands. A old man with a beautiful bushy mustache and a 
dashing coat, attended by a taller, leaner, younger man in black. 
The first man was cutting a ribbon run up across a doorway with a 
pair of scissors. On the back was written. 


“Opening the Blackwood Foundation, 1889” 


Into the fire. The IRB was very clear it was meaningless. In fact, the 
representative she showed it to was confused by its presence in the 
library itself. 


Into the fire, into the fire. On Empress she was tired. 


The archives, so wonderful and welcoming when she had arrived, 
were now a cold, starving thing. A half-corpse, suckling on the 
censor’s pen. Sometimes, Alai even found herself doubting the 
existence of the world outside the site. Who was to say that there 
was anything left? Who was to say that the books had anything true 
at all? 


It was difficult enough getting people to remember that she had 
come up from the south... 


Alai finished her hot chocolate... 
and sat in the darkness... 
Alone. 


KKK 


There was no body to be found. Just an empty mug, a banana peel 
in the trash can, and a folded piece of paper, held underneath a little 
nameplate with flower stickers on it. 


“Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick and sad. From 
where the sun now stands, | will fight no more forever.” 


Who Am |? 


Who am I? | wish | could just tell you. 


Who am I? | am a curious god. | wanted to discover what made you 
mortals tick. | was surprised when | found that many of you were 
immortal. Whether you gained this through fame, through history, or 
through some other means, | do not know. | did meet a very 
interesting immortal though. He seemed to be a shapeshifter, and | 
would never see him with the same body twice. | was very interested 
in what you mortals are. Sadly, | had to return to my home. | left a 
few of my personal effects in your care. | didn't mean to, but it 
couldn't be helped. 


Who am |? | am a vengeful god. | came to your pitiful plane to 
destroy and subjugate you. | brought artifacts from my home and let 
them infiltrate your system. They gathered information for me, which 
| then used to attack you. But you fought back. | retreated and had 
to find help. | asked another god whose existence was known to 
few, but his anger was known to all. When we attacked you again, 
you managed to defeat and capture my ally. You are a strong 
opponent, but | will defeat you. Expect my return and fear it. 


Who am |? | am God. | have lost contact with you, my creations, 
over the past few centuries. | returned to see what happened. | 
chose a venue that best represented what humanity is. Love and 
hate, fear and faith, war and peace, dedication and apathy, death 
and life all condensed into a single organization. | spent quite some 
time there, studying humanity, but now | have left. | understand that | 
will no longer be a supreme power on earth. My time is over, but I'll 
still watch on occasion. 


Who am |? I'm from another reality. I'm like your own 507, randomly 
appearing in various realities and dimensions. Evidently in this 
reality, | worked for the Foundation. This reality was nice, | liked it. 
But, as my nature forces me to, | was moved to another dimension. | 


find strange objects in my travels, from reality to reality, but | had 
gathered too many to keep all at once. | filed them away as SCP 
objects, but | plan on returning to take them to a better and safer 
place. 


Who am |? | am a foolhardy computer genius. | sit at my computer 
all day, being a dick on various forums, and trolling in various 
games. | have an extensive knowledge when it comes to computers, 
and | may have hacked one or two in my day. | found a few of your 
documents, after an attack from one of your enemies left a hole for 
me to breach. | thought it'd be funny to add my name to a few of the 
reports. | even added a fictitious one about an invincible man.