A year passed without any messages for Gedril. The people she met 
during her daily activities noticed the missing playful spark in her 
eyes. When they asked if something was wrong, Gedril insisted that 
she was fine. She eventually stopped participating in the weekly 
chess and poker games with her neighbors. When she was invited 
to the wedding of a baker's daughter, she accepted, even though 
she only wanted to stay inside her house. When the daughter and 
her husband finally kissed each other, Gedril cried again. She told 
people it was because she was happy for them. 


One day, while walking through the streets as she usually did, Gedril 
arrived at a port. She decided to stay and watch the men work and 
the ships come and go. She wondered if they would ever let her 
inside one of those ships and take her to wherever it was that Jane 
lived. Gedril knew it was impossible, however, and soon went back 
to her home. 


She read some books without much interest, trying to push away her 
painful thoughts. The night came and she went to sleep. Gedril 
dreamed that she was in a new and wonderful world. In this world, 
she finally met Jane and all of her friends and family. They didn't 
even mind it when Gedril showed them her condition. 


They would remain only dreams. 
Gedril woke up with the sun's first rays touching her face. She didn't 


want to get up. She didn't want to do anything. Unfortunately, she 
remembered that she had remained in her house for so many days 


SCP-771: Self-Repairing Biological Al 


Item #: SCP-771 
Object Class: Keter 


Special Containment Procedure: SCP-771 is to be held ina 
secure windowless containment cell at all times. Any and all 
materials entering or exiting the containment area must be scanned 
for contamination. Containment area must be checked weekly, and 
any damage done by SCP-771 is to be immediately repaired. No 
personnel are to enter SCP-771's cell without full body haz-mat 
containment and Dangerous Object Handling (DOH) armor. 


In the event of attack by SCP-771, all personnel are to immediately 
evacuate and seal the containment area. Subjects suffering from 
"stings" are to be left in the containment area, or recovered for 
observation when possible. 


Description: SCP-771 is a form of A.I. that appears to be 
constructed out of both organic and mechanical components. The 
metal components of SCP-771 are of varied origin and composition, 
with several still unidentified, but many appear to be broken or 
damaged. Its biological components appear to be extremely 
decayed, appearing to suffer from some form of degenerative 
disease or virus, with the mechanical components acting as a form 
of life support. Due to this impaired state, SCP-771 cannot function 
properly, and can only function for short periods of time, with many 
errors and "glitches" during that time. 


When SCP-771 undergoes an "error" or shuts down, a swarm of 
small robots are released from a hatch within SCP-771. These 
"microbots" will "swarm" over SCP-771, then start to "search" the 
surrounding area. The swarm will break down any and all metal in 
the area, and return it to SCP-771, attempting to "patch" the 
damaged areas. These patches appear to be temporary, and 
typically only last for 3 to 4 days. 


that she really needed to go to the grocery. She got up without any 
energy in her movements and left the house. After buying what she 
needed Gedril went back home and sat in her armchair. 


For some time she couldn't count, Gedril simply remained there and 
thought. She began to feel as if someone was squeezing her heart 
and the tears began to fall. She sobbed and convulsed as the tears 
kept falling. Without the will to do anything but sleep, she went to 
bed. 


This would repeat for the following weeks, and Gedril's health would 
slowly deteriorate. One day she began manifesting worrying 
symptoms. She went to a doctor, who told Gedril that she had a 
brain tumor and that she probably wouldn't live more than a month. 


Gedril left the hospital with her spirit crushed and went back home. 
She thought of something Jane had once told her. "Our time on this 
world is short, and we never know when our last day will be". These 
words kept repeating themselves inside her head, until she could 
take it no more and made a decision. She would not go as someone 
who had surrendered to sorrow. She went looking for people who 
needed help in any way and eventually found a charity center. She 
worked there for the following month and quickly made many 
friends. 


One day, while returning from the center at night, Gedril felt a 
strange sensation inside her head. She called all the friends and 
family she had and thanked them for all they had done for her. 


She went to sleep and silently passed away. 


A Greater Darkness 


Bethany opened herself from its place, trudged over groggily, but 
more awake than she'd ever been, to the wall of the mobile home, 
and with a bloated forefinger pushed down a plastic shutter to peer 
outside. The small gravel driveway outside the door was empty. It 
was in the interim from dusk to darkness, and the barren, stunted 
trees looked angry, upset that she had roused them from their sleep. 


She let her finger slide from the shutter, leaving an absence in the 
dust-covered plastic the shape of the water tower she saw 
silhouetted in the autumn sky. A wave of some disgust-adjacent 
emotion took a slow roll through her stomach, and she turned on the 
linoleum floor, facing the unlit beige interior of the mobile home. She 
closed her eyes and let the familiar smells in; the warm smell that 
her dildo gave off every time it was washed, the smell of the pile of 
filthy clothing laying damp next to the sink. And the new smells were 
there too; that implacably comforting smell, the smell of the blood- 
soaked... 


They had come early, early in the afternoon - but of course they had. 
The early afternoon is benevolent. No one wants to hurt you at two 
in the afternoon. No one wants to kill you, or tear you to pieces, 
when the sun is high in the sky. 


They came in a rusted 1989 four-door Ford Escort, how perfect. No 
slight anachronisms, everything in its right place, everything as it 
should be. But she knew them: who they were, what they were, 
though they did not know what she was, no, they did not know her, 
they did not. 


A blue tag emblazoned with an emblem of a wheelchair-bound man 
swung leisurely from the rear-view mirror as the car pulled to a stop 
with a crunch, and a woman swung out, pivoted smartly on her left 

leg, pulled open the back door, took out a crutch, slammed the door 
closed with an unhealthy thud (perfect, oh so perfect), and hobbled 
toward Bethany's door. Bethany opened the door before the woman 


had a chance to begin her labored ascent of the stairs; she stopped 
and looked up, not the least bit startled, and making a show of it. A 
young woman, brown hair, brown eyes, pale. A battered blue plaid 
shirt, three sizes too big, and pale pale blue, tight jeans. 


"Whadayawant?" 


A guttural cough from the woman; a chain-smoker's cough. Fake, 
false. (They try, try, try, to keep it all, don't they? Selfish is what it is.) 


"Was just wonderin’ what the hell's been goin’ on lately. Fuggin’..." - 
Another cough - "Fuggin' lights at night...you know 
whasbengoinon?" Another cough. Phony. The syntax, the inflection, 
the vocabulary, all so perfect. Bethany felt like throwing up, though 
she'd always had an iron stomach, and hadn't eaten anything 
physical in months. 


"Don't know what the fuck's goin’ on. Heard about it but ain't seen 
nothin’.” A short pause, a fleeting look of deep boredom on the 
young woman’s face. “You got anything else you need to wake me 
up to fuckin’ know?" The woman didn't seem to take notice that 
Bethany had opened the metal door herself. A grunt, a turn, and the 
woman began her slow hobble back to the four-door. Bethany 


slammed the door. Foundation. 


KKK 


Bethany hated. She hated at the roots of things, and at every single 
root, and the seed that sowed the root, and whoever had planted the 
seed. Interaction between person and world - knowing, knowing, 
knowing, everybody wishing to know, to be, growing themselves like 
a homogenous, toxic fungi over existence and perceiving greedily, 
raping existence. She hated people for knowing themselves, for 
knowing each other, and for knowing these things, for being. 
Existing in the conscious world - what a sinful realm. 


So when it had shown itself, she accepted it like a father, she did, 
this thing beyond absence and beyond form, which lived within her 
self. In fact, until the four-door, she had thought that it may be some 
natural piece of herself, and perhaps of everyone. Some dormant 
trait that, through her 52 years of radiant and recursive hatred, had 


become finally focused to a burning point within her mind. 


And she knew, sheknewsheknewsheknew, that that young woman 
with the tight jeans and fake accent was driving 70 miles per hour 
down Highway 57 in that rusted four-door, muttering to herself these 
words: “Goddamn -04 thrusting useless prototype shit-tech at me. 
‘Type-B Anomalous Detection! It'll help you in the field!’ Bullshit. 
Seeing lights at night in a trailer park - buncha hicks.” She threw 
something that looked like an early cell phone on the floor in front of 
the passenger's seat. 


Oh, how the search for knowledge fell at the feet of vanity; if 
Bethany were someone else, she would have laughed. 


KKK 


It made her know things which would keep it. Keep it here. 
Hypocrisy? She didn't care. The Foundation, that macro-life-force - 
threat. She knew the metallic ring that would sound in each of those 
learners, those be-ers, heads when the time came. It told her these 
things in whispers that were naught: key-ter. Key Ter. How 
wonderful the sound, and the horror it would make, and then readily 
destroy. 


And she knew that thing: the thing which it carried within itself like 
the DNA that bacteria absorb in their slow campaign against life. 
(Maybe that is what she could call it; where bacteria had failed, in 
giving only death and not a permanent solution, it gave the solution, 
it did. It ended truly and earnestly. The great bacteria. It. It. These 
things, the KNOWINGknowingknowingKNOWING of people. Done 
forever, forever nothing, forever ended. The beginning point of an 
abominable ray pointing backward in time, the ray of light, the ray of 
life, blood red. The Parasite of Perception.) 


Absence of the night. A slow crumble, severance of the mind from 
the world. Closure. 


The shutter closed. Again. The sound of the wind against the wall of 
her mobile home was not heard. The bottoms of her feet cold, 
freezing, on the linoleum floor, the consciousness of Bethany Karen 
Bowlen imploded. And as this atomic spasmodicum danced with 


light in the non-air of a rural Wisconsin trailer park, the November 
night, and all who lived within it, moved toward a greater darkness. 


A History of Reaction 


BULLETIN FROM THE OFFICE OF INFORMATIONAL 
SECURITY 


The following archive is a collection of records, logs, and 
intercepted communications. Selections of this document have 
been retrieved or created through esoteric means, the nature of 

which has rendered the archive difficult to control. 


Information retrieval specialists have attempted in this archive to 

provide the clearest possible history of POI-1844. Certain events 

described in this document may be presented out of order, or in 
contradictory ways. This does not mean they did not happen. 


Date: March 25th, 1912 
Location: Essonne, France 


7:00 AM: Moments before dawn, a luxury De Dion 
Bouton motor-car speeds through the forest, still snow- 
capped in the early spring, travelling to the 
Mediterranean coast. 


7:03 AM: The driver, a chauffeur of Marquis de Dion, 
notices an obstruction on the road ahead. He notifies his 
companion in the passenger seat, who suggests the 
road may be damaged or closed. 


The limousine comes to a stop in front of two horse- 
carts, blocking the road. Before they can react, two men, 
each armed with a Browning semi-automatic, emerge 
from the flanks. 


7:04 AM: One of the assailants introduces himself, and 
informs the driver that the car is no longer his. The driver 


draws his weapon, but is shot. The passenger is shot 
four times. 


Both bodies are removed from the car, and left by the 
side of the road. 


Dossier: POI-1844 


Name: Octave Garnier 
DoB: December 25th, 1889 


Biography: Born in Seine-et-Marne, Garnier's unremarkable 
childhood quickly evolved into a radical communist adolescence. 
Garnier engaged in a steep procession from petty theft, to assault, 
and eventually to violations of orders both judicial and natural. 


Garnier's anarchist "gang", whether the papers call them "The Auto 
Bandits" or "The Bonnot Gang", poses a threat to the rule of law in 
civilized society. Their utilization of automobiles and state-of-the-art 
weapons has led them to largely outclass French police, as they 
plunder banks without resistance and inspire otherwise loyal 
workers into strike and rebellion. 


Foundation interference in Garnier's operations invariably results in 
failure, through the intervention of natural, thaumic, or logistic 
obstacles that are not ostensibly under Garnier's control. 


It is not known when Garnier became anomalous, or when the 
anomalous began to suit him. 


Monsieur Garnier, 


| hope my letter finds you well. | would like you to know that | hold 
the greatest respect for your actions. Your mere existence, the way 
you live, the way you act, is a subversion. A sabotage of the 
structures that divide and destroy us. 


| know how it feels to be against the grain of normalcy from the 


outset. That is why | am writing you. 


| possess many associates from all walks of life who exist ina 
superliminal state. They are invisible, they do not age, and there are 
many in society who do not tolerate their existence, and tolerate 
knowledge of their existence even less. 


| live in a place where all knowledge is held. Our security is sacred. 
Your actions offer us a path to secure our place in this world, once 
and for all. | hope you will give me the chance to explain. This world 
is not what the oppressors would like us to think. 


Tonight, fall asleep with this letter beneath your head. 
Tomorrow, you will understand what | ask of you. 


Sincerely, 
Le Sagittaire 


Date: March 25th, 1912 
Location: Chantilly, France 


9:00 AM: POI-1844 and his associates, André Soudy, 
Raymond Callemin, Etienne Monier, and René Valet 
approach the Société Générale Bank in Chantilly, driving 
the stolen limousine through the suburban landscape. 


9:11 AM: A Foundation task force stationed within the 
bank's back room, positioned to intercept the Bonnot 
Gang should they choose this place to strike, are 
informed of the incoming vehicle and prepare to 
intervene. 


The limousine stops at the main square in front of the 
bank. POI-1844 and three associates proceed into the 
bank, while one provides cover from the sidewalk. 


The gang order the civilians inside to make way. 


The Foundation task force attempts to leave the back 
room, but find the door locked from the outside. 


9:12 AM: Several bank tellers resist the gang's 
instructions. POI-1844 orders his men to open fire. Three 
people are shot. They proceed to the bank's safe, and 
begin collecting the money. 


The Foundation task force attempts to batter the door 
down, but begin hallucinating the appearance of a 
woman in the room with them, who interrupts them. 


The woman told the task force something that they were 
later unable or unwilling to recall. When she finished, the 
task force began to vomit live, non-venomous snakes.