“If | Know ancient temple complexes, and | do believe that | do,” 
Salah stood at the cusp of the stairway and swung his beam down 
into the blackness. “I predict that we will face various traps involving 
spike pits, dart launchers, and rolling boulders, perhaps a puzzle or 
two, a monster of some kind, and then a room wherein we will find a 
small amount of treasure or an individual of some plot importance.” 


The joke was answered with dust and silence. No laughs, no 
groans, nothing. Just lonely silence. 


It was times like these when Salah realized how little he fit in 
anymore with the world he had grown up in. What sort of Muslim 
favored the likes of Chaucer and Milton? 


He wished Mary-Ann was there. She would have elbowed him in the 
ribs and gone off about suplexing a criosphinx. He belonged there. 


“Or more likely, it’s just empty.” He shrugged, and took the first step 
down the stairs. 


These twelve leagues of darkness, 

This path of the dead, 

Gilgamesh of Uruk did traverse in a single night 

And upon the dawn he found himself in a great valley, 
The place there the gods had made their garden, 

But the garden was burnt and desolate, 

And all was ash. 


Salah had been wrong and right, as it was. There were no traps, 
only dark, wide stairs, eventually leading down to another chamber, 
with another altar and another wall mural. The inner sanctum. This 
mural looked something like a tree: a trunk of cogwork building up to 
a single gear, from which sprouted fractal branches, bare of leaves. 
The design was inlaid with copper and bronze, the metal engraved 
with tiny lines of script. 


“What does it say?” Rashid said impatiently. 


“Hold on, hold on.” Masum squinted at the text. “These aren’t the 
usual mantras.” He snapped a couple pictures. “It’s an older dialect. 
Look here: Ahkpan lon-shal khi-khidan. Anywhere else that would be 
akkaphan lon-sal khiddan. There’s a slight difference in meaning 
between the two: the older version uses the form of ‘evil’ without the 
connotation of ‘flesh’." 


“How old is it?” Salah asked. 


“This? Four thousand years, at the youngest. The chapel above us 
is maybe...a thousand. And beyond all that, nowhere here do | see 
‘Oolzhak Le’an', the God Who Has Been Broken. Instead, we have 
simply 'maddiz', the machine, but it’s the smaller form. Closer to 
‘tool’. Masun stood up, brushing off his knees. “Very curious. This 
might have been converted into a sanctuary afterwards, which if 
that’s the case, this might be an entrance of sorts.” 


“An entrance to what?” 


“| don’t know, and even if | did, | have no idea how to get in. The 


upper door is a simple key, just arranging the circular plates on the 
altar. Really nothing more than a complex combination lock. This...| 
have nothing, if it is a door.” He turned to face the tree. “Iftah ya 
simsim.” 


Nothing. He shrugged. 

“It was worth a try.” 

“Is there any sort of clue in the text?” Rashid asked. 

“Not that | can see. | think this would a job for the scribes.” 


As he finished his sentence, Salah became acutely aware of 
footsteps on the stairs behind them. 


There Gilgamesh came to the house of Utnapishtim 
And found that man alone, 

Marked with a brand upon his brow 

And arms of living metal. 

“Why have you come to this place, King of Uruk? 
Why have you come to this desolate place?” 
Spoke he, with weariness of heart. 

“I seek life eternal, son of Ubartutu, 

So that | might not die.” 

With heavy heart, Utnapishtim spoke again. 
“Come, and follow me. | will show you 

This thing which you seek 

And perhaps it shall spare you 

Of your desires.” 


The man who stood there now was old and shriveled, skin like 
leather from desert sun. He was clad only in a loincloth, and had a 
walking stick of copper tubing in his hand. The top of his head was a 
buzzing, clicking array of gears and clockwork, and his eyes were 
two glass lenses. 


The nearest Wolf raised his gun. 


“Hold fire!” Salah shouted, putting all his authority into the words. 
The Wolf paused. The old man did not seem particularly fazed by 


this: in fact, he was smiling. 


The man started babbling to them. Salah could pick out a few words 
of Arabic, but the majority was cogspeak. He stepped out of the 
way, allowing Masun to come to the fore. 


“Salah, need | remind you that this man is an enemy?” Rashid 
whispered to him. 


“He’s unarmed and elderly. Perhaps a nibbanic hermit.” 

“Do not undermine my authority again, Salah.” 

Salah found that somewhat funny, as he was fifteen years older than 
Rashid and far more experienced in the Initiative, but he kept his 
mouth shut. 


After some time, Masun turned to face the group. 


“He says he can show us in, and invites us to rest and refresh 
ourselves.” 


“Tell him that we...” 

“...Will be honored to be his guests.” Salah cut Rashid off. 
Rashid scowled. 

“| just told you...” 


“| cannot undermine your authority if | am leading the expedition, 
which | am. Calm yourself. We don’t know the whole story.” 


Masun and the old man finished speaking. The old man skipped 
over to the tree in the wall, and began poking at the branches with 
his walking stick, muttering some things to himself, as if reciting a 
list. The clockwork in his head whirred faster for a few moments 
before, the wall split apart, stone grinding on stone. 


Unapistim led Gilgamesh 
Through the garden, 
Through the blackened trees 


And soil of ash. 

There were men there, 

And women, crawling in the ash, 

And their eyes showed no life, 

Like a goat, their eyes showed no light. 
“These are the sons and daughters of the tree. 
They live without death, without 

Fear of death. They do not suffer, and 

Yet they do not see.” 


What lay beyond the door was an open space, halfway between 
cavern and valley, maybe half a mile or so across. A jagged line of 
sunlight ran through the roof, letting light down into the cave. A river 
ran through it, flowing down into the earth off to their left. In the 
distance, Salah could make out the roar of a waterfall. The ground 
was grassy here, a much more verdant green than what would be 
expected, and was dotted with various boulders and monoliths, all of 
which bore some sort of carving on them. A breeze from some 
unknown source brushed against his face. 


The old man chattered as he led them down a simple stone path, 
Masun speaking with him as best as he was able. Here and there 
Salah could see little stone houses, light shining from within. Some 
were on the flat floor, but the majority were built up against the walls 
of the cavern in perilous tiers, braced by a rickety wooden 
frameworks of walkways and ladders. 


“Have you learned anything else?” Salah jogged a few steps to walk 
even with Masun and the old man. 


“I’ve told him why we're here, and he asked if we were on pilgrimage 
to meet the Voice. They have a piece, and it seems to be a big one.” 


“Then we will destroy it,” Rashid said. 


“Tell him we are,” Salah said. “Rashid, we are here to investigate. If 
it must be destroyed, it will be done later. Six of us is too few.” 


Rashid sulked as Masun talked to the old man some more. 


“He says he will take you directly to it.” 


SCP-634: Forgetful Goldfish 


Item #: SCP-634 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-634 is to be kept ina 
37.85 L (10 gal) tank in the center of a 10 m x 10 m room. The tank 
shall include a filtration device, an aerator, a heater set to maintain a 
constant temperature of 25°C, and an automatic feeder set to 
dispense 10 mL of standard goldfish food twice a day. Tank and 
walls of room will have posted message "DO NOT PUT HANDS 
INSIDE TANK" at regularly spaced intervals. 


A team of no fewer than three D-Class personnel shall be assigned 
to weekly replace 50% of the tank's water and clean tank as 
needed. Team will be provided with constant oral instructions over 
the intercom system. On alternating weeks, team will provide 
SCP-634 with 12 g of uncooked meat. 


Description: SCP-634 has the appearance of a male common 
goldfish (Carassius auratus) of full maturity, approximately 7 cm in 
length. SCP-634 was discovered in 20 in  , CT. It was housed in 
a 2 gallon round glass tank placed on the passenger's seat of a car. 
SCP-634 came to the Foundation's attention when a waitress ina 
nearby diner noticed that the car had been parked with its 
emergency lights on for several hours, apparently out of gasoline, 
with a driver who attempted to start the car approximately once 
every 90 seconds. She also reported that the officer sent to 
investigate it had been repeating his walk from his police car to the 
disabled car and back for more than an hour. 


SCP-634 was removed from the scene by agents operating under 
constant prompting by a team leader who maintained a minimum 
distance of 5 m from the object at all times. Upon removal of 
SCP-634, behavior of the driver and officer returned to normal. 
Officer expressed confusion over what had happened, but otherwise 


Salah nodded. His stomach was roiling. His mind knew that there 
was a massive danger involved in this, but his gut said that he was 
safe. The old man seemed to be completely in control of his own 
mind. The villagers that were emerging from their homes to watch 
the procession from the margins looked much the same. Men, 
women, and children, all of them touched by clockwork, but all still 
very human. None of the jerking, puppeted movement of the 
Church, none of the babbling diatribes of nonsense tick-tocking 
syllables, no violence. He could see no basilica, no Towers of 
Blessing, no clockwork monsters, no real machinery at all, beyond 
what was in the heads of the villagers. 


With the age of the door they had passed through, these may very 
well be the descendants of the original Church, before whatever 
corruption that befell it had set in. 


This had become quite exciting, quite quickly. 


“What disaster befell this place? What scourge 
Befell this garden?” 

“It was laid to ruin by my brother, 

A man of a black heart, 

Who with his armies and dark masters, 
His masters the black Daevas of Gothog 
And Molug and Carthac and Moluch, 
With banners of red and black, 

Did descend to set this place 

To the torch and sword. 

For he sought life undying 

And stole it from this place.” 


They had walked over a mile by now, right up to the base of the 
waterfall. The old man had fallen quiet as he led them along the slick 
stone path. Rainbows danced in the mist. 


The path curled around the pool, running right up against the sheer 
rock wall. There would be no point to that unless...yes, there it was. 
A cave. He didn’t mind the fact that he was sopping wet by now: his 
heart was in his throat. For a moment, the cold water crashed down 
on his head. 


There was a cave behind the waterfall, a large cave, lit by lamps of 
oil and clockwork. Beyond the platform they stood on, it was filled 
with a lake, the surface oddly still. There was a single island in the 
center of the lake. 


Salah was certain that his heart had stopped. 


At this Gilgamesh despaired. 

[The following six lines are missing] 
“There is more to see, and more to learn.” 
To the center of the garden 

Gilgamesh was led, to see 

A great form, a god of living metal, 

Of many parts of metal that moved about 
As if a living thing, 

And it bore great scars and misshapings 
As if a rent shield, or a melted candle. 

At its side was a tree 

Small, old, and twisted. 


On that island was a mass of metal, maybe a hundred and fifty feet 
across. Thousands of moving parts, clicking and ticking and moving. 
It was roughly spherical, and much of it looked heavily damaged: 
segments were melted, crushed, torn, broken. The moving parts 
looked to have grown around the dead regions, to make up for lost 
capability. Salah couldn’t help but think of it as scar tissue. The 
noise the thing made sounded like a heart-beat, but it was an old, 
weakened heart. Near to it was a single, shriveled tree, black-barked 
and withered, without leaves. 


Bump-bump. 


Was this it? The actual Machine? Salah could not help the chill that 
ran down his spine. This place...this was a sacred place. This was 
the same chill that ran through him when he had stood in Al-Masjid 
al-Haram or St. Peter’s. That same feeling of smallness, of 
insignificance amidst a space that had been made God’s own. ..it 
surrounded him. This was a sacred place. 


A voice inside his head cursed at him, warning not to be fooled by 
this devilry. It is a lie, it is an idol, cast it down, cast it down! There is 


no god but God! 


But the voice was wrong. He knew it was wrong, but he could not 
explain why. In that moment of clarity, he knew. This was the 
Machine, and they were wrong. All of them. Every one outside of 
this valley was wrong. So very wrong. It was not a god to be 
worshipped, it was not a force of destruction, it was not evil. This 
thing, this machine, was a tool of God, even as broken and twisted 
as it was. The rest of the Church must had been corrupted by 
incomplete parts, and from seeing only them, so the Initiative had 
inherited their corrupted version. Here, with the core of the Machine, 
these people were unharmed. They remained human. 


He had to know more. They would get the scribes, come back here 
with an army of researchers. Interview every villager, translate every 
text, trace the family trees back to the beginning. This was world 
changing. Salah’s imagination ran wild. When the Initiative was done 
here, they could take it to the world, reveal this place. It was always 
said that it was not time, but if this here did not mean that it was 
time, then there would be no time. 


He stood a few moments longer in stunned silence, and then it 
spoke. The Machine spoke. 


The Machine spoke with a voice that was nothing like thunder. This 
was the voice made in the forge of stars, where worlds were broken 
and remade. It was not simply heard with the ear, but felt with the 
bones, felt with the soul. It layered upon itself, harmonized with its 
own note. It was eternity, all of creation, in a word. 


Then, it was over, and there was silence. Salah could feel himself 
trembling. He was trembling. This was fear of God. 


There was silence for a long time, before Rashid broke it. 
“It is settled then. It must be destroyed." 


“This is the Voice, the Voice of the King of Gods 
Who created Apsu and Tiamat with a thought. 
To its right is the tree that bears knowledge. 

To its left the tree that bears life is no more, 


Stolen by my brother. 

The children of the garden, they chose 

The tree of life alone, and their minds 

Are that of animals. 

| am of both, and | am cursed. 

My brother is of both, and he is mad. 

Do you see now, Gilgamesh, King of Uruk? 

Do you see the foolishness of your quest? 

It is not life eternal that is to be sought, 

But knowledge instead. 

It is knowledge that separates man from animal, 
And it is death that separates man from monster. 
Without knowledge, man is not man, 

Without death, man is not man. 

This is the test, and the gift.” 


Salah was speechless as his thoughts came back together. He 
knew that tone, knew that mindset. He had been in that place once, 
and he saw his past reflected back at him in all of its small-minded 
pettiness. 


Anger boiled up with a speed and fury he no longer thought 
possible. 


He punched Rashid in the face. 


“You idiot! You /unatic! This...this is the voice of God! And you wish 
to destroy it?" 


"You've become deluded by the Path, Salah." Rashid rubbed at his 
cheek. "God needs no machine to serve as His voice. This is like all 
the others, a false god to be destroyed and its worshipers to be 
purged. 


Salah laughed. He couldn't help it. There was no joy to be had.