Tulip saw Abe looking up and down her every curve. She didn't mind 
it — she was a showgirl once, and Abe was a willing customer. 
Recently, though, she had noticed a spark missing in Abe's eyes. 
He looked ever less ravenous, ever less willing to come back to her 
room with her and give her the few fleeting moments of real feeling 
she usually ever managed to experience. He was growing bored 
with her. No, it was more than bored. He was growing disappointed. 
And yet, he came with her each time, and they spent their nights the 
same way that they often did when he was in town. She thought it 
might just be her imagination, but she couldn't help but notice a 
desperation in his movements. Where there was once an exchange 
between them, Abe seemed to retreat behind his eyes. No longer 
was she part of his equation. He was only doing it for himself, she 
thought, and yet he still went to her. As if he didn't have countless 
other lovers. What did he hope to gain? She caught him again, 
glazing over and failing to appreciate her. Instead of taunting him, 
she went around the corner to grab a cigarette in her room. 


Abe sat up. He hadn't done more than gazed at his drink. Slumping 
ever more on his stool, and setting his drink aside, he looked to his 
left and caught Tom staring at the men playing eight ball. They 
puffed on cigarettes, and they barely spoke. The majority of their 
conversation consisted of calling shots, and the rest of it was asking 
for smokes or saying what a good game it was before restarting. 
Tom seemed intent on watching their every move. Abe struck up 
small talk. 


"Would you like to move closer?" 


Tom turned to Abe and held up his glass. "This stuff doesn't do 
anything for me anymore." 


"Then why have it?" 


Tom slid the drink down the bar to where Abe's was, and turned to 
look at the pool tables again. The men had restarted once more, and 
a satisfying clack was heard when the first shot was fired and the 
triangle broke. 


"Because we always do." 


Abe stared at Tom for just a moment longer before looking at the 
two drinks in front of him. Playing with the small umbrella in one of 
them for just a second, Abe scooted the drinks even further out of 
view and turned to look at the pool game with Tom. For a good 
couple minutes the two sat in silence while the other two shot balls 
into pockets. Before long, Tom spoke. 


"How long do you think you can play pool?" 


Abe shrugged. "It can keep me engaged for around five games, 
each one takes around twenty minutes, so almost two hours." 


"Huh. | meant more in the long term. If you made it a point just to 
play pool, and get good at it and go to competitions. How long do 
you think you could do it?" 


Abe looked oddly at Tom. "I've gotten good at pool before. Some 
men let it take them a life time. That seems reasonable. Most things 
can last you that long if you're interested." 


"Do you think it would be worth it?" ... "To take up pool?" 
"Well, worth what?" 


Tom sunk a bit. "That's what | thought." It was inaccurate to say that 
Abe had never seen Tom like this before, but it had all been recent. 
Within the past decade, at the very least. They were getting more 
frequent recently, and Abe didn't have any really good idea what 
they were all about. He'd known Tom for most of his life, and he 
wasn't a pessimist. No, Tom was a realist. And, realistically, most of 
the time life was as good as either of them could have asked for. 
Unfortunately, Abe thought that might have been what was getting to 
him. Abe might have felt it too, if he were more introspective. Abe 
didn't understand Abe the same way that Tom understood Tom. 
When Abe was indulging himself, Tom could be found just thinking. 
Tom thought a lot. Abe thought it wasn't good for him. Being alone 
with his thoughts had never been comforting to Abe, and he couldn't 
imagine it being any different for anybody else. 


"Hey, Tom —" 


"So how many trick shots do you think there are? In pool. You can 
get a bank shot, you can hit the two off of the one and into the side 
pocket. Could you get the eight ball in on the same shot you got the 
last of your balls in? Would that work? How many variants do you 
think there are, really? When would it get stale? At what point does it 
stop feeling new, when do you admit that you've seen the same 
board before, and that you've made the same shot before. Maybe in 
a different context, maybe the other balls were in different positions, 
maybe you were stripes last time, it doesn't matter. You've made 
that shot before." 


Abe expected him to continue, but suddenly Tom stopped and 
twitched a little. Another peculiar silence sparked between the two, 
and Abe decided it was time to get up. The bar was giving them that 
melancholic air that it sometimes did, and Tom would do better to 
get to sleep. While Abe was beginning to stand, Tom started up 
again. 


"| asked a question." 


Abe shrugged it off. "I think it gets stale when your opponents never 
win." 


Tom began to stand up himself and pull his jacket on. "What if they 
never do?" 


"Well, what do you mean ‘what if?" 


Tom pursed his lips, and then sneered, and then sighed in a short 
facial evolution. "Yeah. Sure. You're right. | think you should stay 
and have a couple more drinks." 


"What?" 
"| said that you shouldn't follow me. You wouldn't like where I'm 
going." 


Just as Tom walked over and was about to reach for the door knob, 
it disappeared. His hand hovered in mid air for a moment, and then 
he straightened the hunch in his back. 


"Abe, bring the door back." 


"I'm not stupid, and I'm far from a bad friend. | might not get it, but 
I'm not going to go let you hurt yourself." 


"Now is not the time to be sappy." 

"Not trying to be, Tom. Just trying to understand you." 

Tom turned halfway around. "Let me out of your head." 

"You know as well as | do that you can leave whenever you want." 


Tom turned back to where the door should have been and walked 
through it without a word. Abe stood in the midst of the bar stools 
and tobacco smoke and hum of the air conditioner. He wondered if 
he should give chase... and he decided against it. Tulip returned to 
see Abe slink back into his seat. She flashed him a look, and he 
simply shook his head. He fondled the tonics, and then downed 
both. Soon enough he stood back up and made his way, 
determined, towards the wall. The door appeared again, and he 


containment area, which has led researchers to hypothesize that 
SCP-589 follows a very specific life cycle pattern. 


Infection Pattern: After various experiments on test groups 
consisting of D-class personnel, SCP-589 appears to be solely 
targeted at individuals with severe insecurities, or those suffering 
from high amounts of stress. Infection rates on subjects whose 
psychological profiles suggested that they were susceptible to high 
amounts of stress or low self esteem showed a 90% infection rate, 
while subjects with little to no stress and high self esteem only 
suffered from a 12% infection rate. This confirms Dr. 's initial 
hypothesis that SCP-589 targets areas with high numbers of people 
that are easy for it to infect. 


Sentience Hypothesis: It is a real possibility that SCP-589 may in 
fact be a sentient creature, rather than an inanimate object. Study of 
SCP-589's movement patterns, correlated with data about its 
infection patterns suggests that SCP-589 deliberately controls where 
it appears at the beginning of every cycle. However, we need more 
data and experiments in order to confirm this. 


Administrative Note: Due to catastrophic loss of containment 
during Experiment 589-05, resulting in Incident 589-40, SCP-589 is 
to be permanently kept in its secure container. Any request to 
remove SCP-589 requires O5 level clearance. 


O5- 
« SCP-588 | SCP-589 | SCP-590 » 


pushed his way through it. In the snowy street, Abe found Tom's 
jacket. Abe still had the choice to follow him, but Tom didn't want to 
be followed. 


Abe made a short yell, stomped the ground, and everything went 
away. The road, the buildings, the people, all of it. He stood in void 
for a second, before stars began to fade back in. Soon he was 
surrounded by the milky way and all the constellations that he found 
familiar. The stars sparkled and nebulae blurred and galaxies 
swirled and turned but everything was silent. Abe felt only his heart 
beat, heard only a low ringing. He didn't want those either. His body 
faded — his skin unraveled in glorious velvety strands, his organs 
conformed to basic shapes and shrunk, his brain separated into 
lobes. His neurons and axons expanded into gaseous balls of 
plasma, becoming celestial bodies and attracting thoughts like 
planets and asteroids. Finally, he couldn't feel or see or hear. 
Finally, he couldn't do anything but think. 


Finally, he was alone. 


When you're able to do anything whenever you feel like it, with 
nobody challenging you, with absolutely no limits at all, what's the 
point anymore? Once there's nothing more to win, what do you do 
with all your time? If you can't die and you're a jack of all trades, if 
you've traveled the multiverse twenty times over, if you've become 
everything you've ever wanted to be. If that, what then? 


What happens upon your mind when you hear the word "god"? 
Does the lack of a capital make you jump not to the monotheist 
visions of the Abrahamic religions, and lead you on an odyssey 
through Greek and Roman lands, perhaps the great thunderous 
wraths of Zeus and the curses his lover Hera may put on his 
mistresses? Do you think of the nights Hephaestus spent toiling over 
his anvil, hammer in hand, handing his cyclopian helpers tools and 
barking requests? Do you believe in Hermes' treacherous journeys 
through Hates' domain, making it out alive with scorch marks on his 
winged shoes, just to bring the departed souls through? 


Maybe you are more familiar with the Norse myths, of the similarly 
stormy nature of Thor, and the omens of Odin's Ravens, or the 


mystical powers of runes. Perhaps when you think of gods, you think 
of idols, of men and women you look up to, of geniuses in their 
respective fields, be it music or science or athletics, be they Jerry 
Garcia or Stephen Hawking or Usain Bolt. Maybe you were raised in 
the deep south, and God is a sacred word to be feared and 
respected, and His name must not be used in vain. 


However it is perceived, | assure you that these are tall tales. If ever 
these gods lived, for which there is an argument to be made, they 
have long since left us. Since the world as it is now was made, gods 
have been finite and static. There's one titan, and eight gods. The 
gods were human, once. They were born just like you or I, froma 
mother's womb and into a hospital room, or perhaps at home 
assisted by a midwife. They were mortal, and they went to school. 
They got degrees, their names became recognized, and one 
discovered that whether someone is observing the universe or not 
changes the laws of physics at their base. His name was Thomas 
Young. 


| won't go into him much. Everything you need to know about his 
backstory can be found on wikipedia or the like. We live in the digital 
age, and | do not intend on communicating useless information. 
There are things they don't tell you, though. He was a hero. True 
blooded, to his core, a hero. The world was in peril — they don't 
mention that either — and he was far from giving in. The public 
blissfully unaware, Tom recruited myself and we got to work. A year 
passed, and another. We toiled on a new model, and then a newer 
one. Continuously improving. 


Each one had a more impressive name; Gaia, then Atlas, then 
Chronos, but the final model was called Brahman. Each one better. 
Each one grander. Each one safer. The smiles on our faces 
widened, breaking an otherwise professional veneer. Nobody would 
even notice. We'd be like doctors, the earth our patient, and we'd 
repeat the ancient phrase "This won't hurt a bit." 


There's another thing they lie about. Tom didn't die in May. On the 
10th of May, 1829, Mr. Young and his companions, myself included, 
flipped a switch... and that's when the world turned on. 


« Waiting on the Good Times|Forever Young| TBA... » 


Atzak Hub 


Atzak | 
Atzak II 
Atzak III 
Atzak IV 


I've done the math enough to know / the dangers of our second guessing. 


Aizak | 


As you lie sleeping- 


you dream of dark and empty eyes. 


ATZAK 


PART ONE 


You wake up when an alarm rips through the silence of the sleeping 
quarters. You blink the sleep away from your eyes, and glancing 
around the room you confirm your first thought; the others' sleep 
was just as fitful as yours. A room full of men who had dreamed the 
wrong dreams. A man at the other end with a uniform and a gun 
barks an order, and the day begins. 


You stumble towards the door after getting dressed. Your head 
pounds. It always pounds after waking up. Everyone's does. You go 
over the same mental checklist you do every day, the one that they 
said you should. Your name? Of course you know your name. 
Where are you? On a submarine. Why are you here? You'd rather 
not remember, but it's there. 


Any friends, family? 


Ah, but that's where it gets fuzzy. You see children, maybe. You 
didn't yesterday, but there they are. Playing in your yard outside of 
Pittsburgh. But you never lived in Pittsburgh, you remind yourself. 
You had a child, but she died young. And you never lived in 
Pittsburgh. But why do you remember this so clearly? 


They told you that this would happen. Said they were studying 
something in the water down here, some chemical, that made 
people hallucinate things. You don't know much about science, but 
you figure it's probably something radioactive. Like those people 
who got their brains fried when they dropped the bombs on Japan. 
You pause for a second to wonder if they ever remembered things 
that never happened to them. 


You're all ushered into the cramped hall, where you're assigned a 
job. There are twelve of you, but there were thirteen last week? 
Maybe not, you can't remember. "Don't worry about your memory", 
they've said. "It'll all come back to you as soon as we surface." Have 
you surfaced before? You can't remember if you've been on here 
long enough to have gone back up and seen if your head would stop 
aching so badly. Would you even remember if you had? You 
could've sworn there were thirteen of you last week. 


You grab a mop and get to work. Custodial today, just like 
yesterday. The day before you met with the psychologist all day to 
talk about how you felt. You liked him, he at least looked at you like 
a person. "Please, call me Anand," he had said. He asked about 
your family, what you could remember. Had you told him about the 
children in Pittsburgh? He asked about your parents. Asked about 
your earliest memory. Asked you about your dreams. 


He looked anxious, you had noticed. You saw it on the faces of the 
other prisoners every morning, the lingering dread. That's what they 
all called it. The doctor at the clinic told everyone it was something 
about nitrogen, made people feel nervous. Said the pressurized 
metal tube you were all in didn't help. You believed him, but the light 
beading of sweat on Dr. Anand's forehead didn't help either. 


You mop for a little longer, but a crewman comes up and shakes 


you. Says to report back to the bunk. How long have you been 
working today? Can't have been more than about fifteen minutes. 
"Ten hours," he said. That's impossible, you just got here.