Detached and cold, though the fact her and Connie split 
up over their theological differences might explain this 
attitude to their interactions. An engineering prodigy of 
some note who converted from Maxwellism to the 
Cogwork Orthodoxy, she currently runs an Orthodoxy- 
supported business fixing machines and mechanically 
augmented people (though really, what's the difference 
to an Orthodoxy member?) in the Brass District of 
Flipside. 


Allison Chao: In question. 


Not as deceased as she should be. 


| Care Because You Do 


As | touched the face of the body with a single gloved hand, the first 
thought that ran through my mind was that it had a face, and that 
was never an especially common sight around here. 


Our Jane Doe was pinned to the pavement like a butterfly on a cork, 
her head pierced by a perfectly-cylindrical metal rod twice the length 
of my arm. That in itself might not have killed your average 
Alagaddan citizen, but what would have was the intricate script 
running around its circumference — tangentially, that script 
should've sent me and any Alagaddan without years of discipline 
reeling from a mile off, but | wasn't an Alagaddan. Hence why I'd 
been called in today. 


Carefully, thoughtfully, | brushed the length of the spear jutting out of 
her head and dispatched a hesitant ping of energy into its core: as 
expected, even through the latex | felt a jolt of energy refresh me 
and a brief flash of blue light from the runes on the cylinder. 


| picked myself up from my kneeling position and peeled the gloves 
off, tossing them to the sidewalk where they'd be absorbed by one 
of the fleshy flagstones eventually. Karcist Nadya noted that I'd 
finished with my inspection and affixed me with her twenty-eyed 
gaze: "What information did you gather from the monolith?" she 
chittered, teeth in her mouth rearranging themselves as she spit the 
syllables in my direction. 


"Definitely a Mekhanite perp from Flipside, you're right." | fumbled 
for a bottle of antiseptic in my pocket and gave my hands a quick 
slather just to get the feeling of the fetid oils off my nerves. "First 
glance, that thing has a couple verses from the First Tract of 
Trunnion round the circumference; all things being equal, our 
murderer's a Cogwork Orthodoxy member, though railgun weaponry 
points to Maxwellists." 


"The brass residue would suggest that." By the time | was done with 


blowing, or kissing sounds as the representation. Also of interest is 
that almost immediately strong oral fixations will develop or 
resurface. Those who quit smoking will start again (100% 
occurrence) and the chewing of gum, snacking, gluttony, nail and lip 
biting, and hair chewing, rises as well, almost to the point of 
psychosis; there are deadly weight gains, choking incidents, balls or 
clumps of human material obstructing the digestive system, murders 
over food (the vending machine is often completely empty), and 
dental and health problems. Doctors and personnel in the area of 
effect, even those entering for a few moments will find themselves 
absentmindedly putting something in their mouth without realizing it. 
Observation of the employees in their homes or private lives also 
reveals [DATA EXPUNGED], often to the point of only being 
aroused by [DATA EXPUNGED] 


Men with already unstable or fragile egos find a strengthening in 
Oedipal complexes, often to dangerous levels; three employees 
have raped and murdered [DATA EXPUNGED]. These same 
personality types also enjoy [DATA EXPUNGED] and request 
access to SCP-597 for that purpose. Unfortunately, although this 
behavior is not encouraged, those with this disease are many, too 
many to take a moral or ideological stance and completely restrict 
the activity without losing the needed number of workers. A good 
number are also high-level personnel, although revelation of their 
identity is forbidden, and requires clearing the area and disabling the 
camera feeds so they can perform the act (which is not allowed to 
go over an hour, or separation will cause seizures and homicidal 
tantrums). Specific procedures for sexual visits can be found in See 
Document 597-XD-12 


Addendum-01: / / See Document 597-XX-23 
Document 597-XX-23 


Found currently at 597's base and sides are sixty-one specimens 
suckling. They are: 


¢ Four dogs at its bottom area, laying out in front of it like a litter. 


¢ Six cats. 


my handwashing ritual, I'd looked up just in time to see the Karcist 
retracting her rope-like tongue into her mouth, residue of Jane's 
brain still dripping from its surface. "Tannins from Oregon..." She 
licked a stray droplet of grey matter hanging off the edge of what 
counted as her lip. "...no, she's an Indiana native. Most recently 
she's got traces of the Black Quarter, though." 


| grimaced and wrinkled my nose. The Black Quarter was one of 
those places filled with enough theologically, morally and 
mathematically abhorrent behaviour that the thought of having 
touched anything that'd come from it made the both of us equally 
nauseous, if our almost identical expressions of disgust were any 
indicator. "Signal Above cut me out, a Grade-A theoweapon and a 
Black Quarter runaway in the same case, huh." The thought that | 
hadn't actually got a name for this body crossed my mind — that 
combined with the sketchhy providence of said body set me on- 
edge. "Speaking of, you actually have any idea who this girl is?" 


Another deep taste of the corpse: had the majority of Mekhanites not 
shed their fingerprints in the first parts of their conversion, | would've 
complained my partner turning them into streaks on the china-like 
skin of the cadaver. "Maybe ‘runaway’ is the wrong word, Inquisitor 
Xiang. More a passer-through, if anything: you know the trade in 
galloladders, exotic organics... all the usual smuggler's vices." 


"Travelling girl, then. Still haven't given me an ID, though." 


She took a deep sniff, fluttered grey eyes that would've been pretty 
on a face with fewer eyes and an actual skull in it. "Allison. Allison 
Chao," she concluded, after some thought. Eyes turned to slits, 
nostrils flared again. "Did you do something to the body in your little 
inspection, Inquisitor?" 


My brow furrowed and my hand itched to release its payload. 
"Nothing more than a quick ping to test if the artifact was still active, 
which it is. You sure you're not just picking up on the after-effect of 
that thing?" 


"No. The metal." She turned to the side, spat out a gob of gold- 
stained blood. "It doesn't get any less disgusting the further you get 
from the weapon, you know? The distribution's too even for it to be 


just the monolith." 


"If you say so, | guess." | knelt back down. "Let's take a closer look, 
check if she's not lead-lined or some shit..." 


As | did, the first thought I'd had upon seeing the body came 
unbidden to the front of my mind — her face looked too close to a 
Flipside citizen, too close to my baseline for it to resemble anyone 
who'd been wandering the City of a Million Right Angles for enough 
time a Karcist knew her taste. Pondering the interpretations, my 
eyes scanned the body one more time, noticed the expensive- 
looking coat swaddling it like she was floating on a sea of velvet. 


Hell of a thing to go to your grave in. 


Slowly, gingerly, | peeled the coat from her shoulders. She was 
wearing a tank top, already something odd in the freezing winters 
even the city had to put on padding for, and | noted the tattoo of a 
chess piece on her shoulder: the black queen, the colour a striking 
contrast against the deathly-pale shade of her post-mortem 
complexion. 


As | kept going with it, the coat peeled away to reveal more of the 
shoulder, then the arm, then— 


A hand, delicately filigreed with silver trim and humming softly with 
the tick of gears moving under its skin. The first sign of a recent 
convert to Mekhane. 


My breath caught in my throat. "Nadya!" 


"That's Karcist Na..." The command faded, to be replaced by the 
guttural fury of Low Sarkic creole. "Shit! She bought in—!" 


"She's a bioterrorist drug mule at best, world-ending extremist at 
worst," | responded, hurriedly covering what I'd seen in the coat's 
rich folds and getting back to my feet. "You need to set up 
quarantine. Fast. The theoweapon was bad enough, but if she's got 
a live sample of the Conversion you could be seeing a full-on 
eschatonic event at worst, XK in a bottle..." 


"Understood." Nadya clawed at her neck, exposing an array of 


fleshy nodules growing along the musculature there like plants on 
display in a greenhouse: picking one between finger and thumb, she 
burst it with a sudden burst of force and the state-designated smell 
of emergency filled the air. As it did, the alleyway around us began 
to get closed off by curtains of newly-forming muscle and bone, the 
walls of Alagadda itself responding to the pheronome signal with a 
sudden overdrive of growth. "Where will you be off to, Inquisitor?” 


"Flipside." | began sprinting for my car while the road to where it was 
parked was still open. "| have to see a lady about a priest!" 


And with that, | clambered into the driver's seat, hammered the keys 
home and revved the throttle. The tyres of the Argo squealed on 
striated gristle as | tore down the highway, heading towards the 
woman who I'd loved and damned to hell in the same year. 


Crossing the Frame 


Crossing the Frame 


| Care Because You Do 


If you travelled the multiverse for long enough, you saw the things 
that never changed no matter where you went. One of those things 
was inconvenient traffic jams. 


As | sat in my idling car waiting for the officers to open up the Way to 
Flipside, a part of me couldn't help but remind me that | was a 
goddamned Royal Inquisitor of the Eighth Empire of the Broken 
Goddess, and that traffic laws were for people without a ten-word 
title appended to their name: in response, | reminded myself that the 
better part of valour was "not getting your ass handed to you by 
every Sarkicist looking for a fight in a fifty-mile radius." 


After what felt like hours of sitting in front of the gate waiting for 
something to happen, one of the guards shambled over and knelt 
down to rap on my window. Gingerly | wound it down and looked 
into its beady eyes: its face looked like it'd been salvaged from bits 
and pieces donated by charitable citizens who'd died fifty years 
before this thing was born. 


The officer coughed and splattered me with phlegm, before clumsily 
smearing it all over my face with a single limp arm. "Mind showing 
me your ID, ma'am?" it hissed. 


| tried to ignore the acid in the spit currently eating through my face 
and just flashed him the Inquisitor's badge. In response, it fumbled 
with the badge and flipped it over almost unintentionally, before 
handing it back to me and giving me a look of what could've been 
pity or condescension. 


Behind me, trendy crosses between horses, crows and some marine 
animal | couldn't identify — maybe a dolphin — stomped their 
hooves and cawed as they sniffed at my tailpipe, as if they were 


threatening to take a bite out of it. That combined with the weird 
looks | was getting from the guards made me rev the engine a little 
harder, drum my fingers on the steering wheel a little faster — it was 
too early in the day for pity and too early in the case for anything 
other than anxiety and speculation. 


With a dismissive flick of the guard's polyjointed arm | was waved 
through the entrance, and soon enough | found myself in the giant 
tunnel known as the Artery Road. 


One guess as to why they called it that. 


The tunnel was a roughly cylindrical mass of reddish muscle 
toughened by years of abuse by cars and Orcadian hooves alike. 
The one distinct feature inside the otherwise vaguely knobbly 
hundred-foot circle of darkness was a precisely painted dotted line 
running straight down the road, before stopping just short of the Way 
itself. Nobody knew who exactly put it there in the first place, but 
anyone who drove through the road was silently grateful to them. 
Every so often, someone would veer off the line after one too many 
drunken orgies; you tended not to hear much about those people 
aside from long, grisly horror stories. 


So | let the troubles of work melt away and focussed on toeing what 
little | could see of that thin white line, trying not to let the occasional 
throb of the walls, or the sound of the person behind me cantering 
on their horse-like abominations throw me too far off the beaten 
path. 


As the car approached the Way, the navigational computer began to 
strobe on and off and my teeth felt like they were vibrating in their 
sockets, every cell in my body singing in harmony like tiny tuning 
forks. The outline of its unspace loomed large before me, my 
already pathetic-looking headlights totally unable to cut through the 
blackness that made up its entrance. At the familiar sight | braced 
internally and shut my eyes: the next part was always the worst. 


Every Door has its Knock and every Way has its Price. This Way's 
particular toll was a half-litre of blood just dropping out of your 
system and circulating into the unknown depths of the muscles that 
comprised the Artery Road. 


My body hadn't needed blood to function properly for five years and 
counting at this point in time, yet it still threw every part of my body 
off-balance when it took its price: first the pricking sensation like a 
million needles sinking into every part of your body, and then the 
wave of nausea as the effect of the blood loss sent me into brief 
shock. When | re-opened my eyes, | opened them not to the 
crowded pink walls and citadels of Alagadda, but the sleek futurist 
outlines of Flipside's metal skyline. 


A warm summer's breeze was blowing, and it was early in the 
afternoon. Another quirk of the two worlds being diametric opposites 
meant that their seasons and days also got flipped: every so often, 
you'd see the (in)famous Alagaddan crimson snow blowing through 
the Way as city-wide blizzards howled and railed against the 
buildings on the other side of the portal. 


As for why it was infamous, remember when | said you needed a 
half-liter of blood to get through the Way? 


Trying to relax in my seat and let the auto-pilot take care of the 
driving, my attempt to laze in the sun was rudely interrupted by a 
flurry of messages from the Maxwellist intranet that turned the 
darkness behind my eyelids into an angry sea of flashing red 
messages I'd missed while | was out. Senders ranged from loose 
neural net experiments to fellow Inquisitors who'd condescended to 
use the heretic infrastructure. The thought of the old Luddite Legate- 
Faithful Brunel being forced to use a terminal was one of the few 
things to make me smile that day. 


A few judicious filters later and I'd whittled the six-figure pile of 
messages fighting for my attention into a more manageable mess of 
a thousand or so. Sighing, | flicked through them all, scanning for 
anything of interest — all of them turned out to be typical mundanity, 
one-week seminars on theological interpretations of Zipporah at the 
Forge, updates on the samizdat breakout near the Marble District. 


Nothing pressing that another one of the Inquisitors didn't have the 
jurisdiction or the firepower to handle. | breathed a sigh of relief and 
instructed the navcomp to take me to an address down in the 
Orthodoxy-owned part of the city.