We did it! The new specimen printed great, with no 
acting out or nothing. It should be a chemosynthetic 
organism. We put it inside the testing chamber and 
pumped in a load of hydrogen sulfide and carbon 
dioxide. It got fatter and then shat out water, carbon, and 
sulfur. What | created is a diarrhea monster! Ha ha ha ha 
ha. We're going to print out a few more and then test 
them in a legit environment. | don't know where they're 
gonna find a legitimate environment at the bottom of the 
sea, but whatever. It's not my problem. Still a few kinks 
with it, mainly the conversion efficiency, but | think | can 
fix that within a day or two. 


8/24/87 

Fixed the conversion issues today. Now it's converting at 
a more manageable but still a very high rate. Just in time 
too. We got a surprise visit from the VP of the 
department. Apparently, somebody- Gunther- forgot to 
tell us that they were visiting! Just good luck that we had 
something for them to see. | think they were impressed 
by it, since | got a new specification to print out. | guess 
this means we're still on track for the showcase. | think | 
mentioned it already. Too bad that Bernard or Ranjit 
won't be there, but whatever. Their loss, if you catch my 
drift! 


8/25/87 

Printed out the new specimen this morning. Only had to 
slightly modify the first mold to get this new one. The first 
one's supposed to get some water and organic 
compounds, you know. What they're trying to do here is 
get it to convert various toxic chemicals into oxygen, 
nitrogen, you know, various Earth compounds. Main goal 
is to normalize temperatures to Earth norms. Maybe 


index=38 minutes, the vehicles, cadavers,° 
weapons, and ammunition all vanish. 


Testing Log 694.3: 


Description: The minivan is destroyed with 
explosives at time index = 04:45. 

Result: SCP-694-2, -3 and -4 position themselves 
in mid-air, where the minivan was, and "drive" 
away at the speed normally exhibited by the 
minivan. Non-loop objects placed "inside" the 
nonexistent minivan are not carried along with it. 
Bullets fired by SCP-694-1 have been observed to 
react as if they were impacting a minivan (i.e., 
slowing and deforming) at the times they enter the 
space where the minivan would be. At time index = 
27:40, SCP-694-2, -3, and -4 all hurl themselves 
into the ravine and are killed by the fall. 


Testing Log 694.4: 


Description:SCP-694-2 is killed at time index = 
00:30. 

Result: SCP-694-1 continues speaking to 
SCP-694-2's corpse, telling it to put away its toys 
so that they may go to the supermarket. 
Subsequently, SCP-694-3 and SCP-694-4 tie up 
the corpse, load it into their van, and drive away; 
SCP-694-4 repeatedly chastises the corpse for 
making so much noise. 


Testing log 694.5: 


Description: The minivan is destroyed with 
explosives at time index = 27:10 

Result: SCP-694-1 ignores the burning remains of 
the minivan, parks his car, climbs down into the 
ravine, fires two shots into the spaces where 
SCP-694-3 and -4's heads would be, then 
positions his arms such that he could carry the 


some salt. I'd tell you all about how it works, but that 
would take forever, and I'm too lazy for that. It worked 
really nicely, though. | know | usually make these 
recordings at night, but I'm going to be gone all day. | 
have a lunch date with you know who! And if things go 
well, well then! Bow chicka wow wow, you know? 


8/26/87 

Work's progressing nicely. Doing a whole lot of new stuff 
at once. I'm way too tired to make a full recording, 
though. | just want to kick back and play on my brand 
new NES, but | gotta finish this just for routine. Like 
brushing your teeth? I'll just say a couple things we're 
working on. It's pretty cool, they want us to design 
organisms that can consume raw material and print out 
other organisms. And | mean raw material. Iron, sulfur, 
silicon, you name it, they need to eat it! Then they 
produce, like humans and dogs. Like, better humans. 
With their genomes and stuff revamped and, um, | 
dunno, updated, so that they are already adapted to a 
new environment! That way we can colonize entire new 
planets! It's really neat. Now we're really pushing the 
edge! At first | wasn't sure how to go about doing it, but 
by talking to some guys in a few other departments and 
borrowing their tech, we managed to get something out. 
It's times like these that really make me appreciate 
Prometheus Labs. They work really fast! In other news, | 
should be done with the pills tomorrow. | don't even have 
an addiction to them or anything! Prometheus really is 
amazing. 


8/30/87 

Yes, it's the middle of the huff day, but BRRRRM huff | 
gotta huff make BRRRRRRRRM huff huff huff this 
recording. The shit hit the fan, and this whole place is 
going to hell! | don't huff huff even know how! One 
BRRRMMMMRR minute, huff huff huff huff the specimen 
is converting the environment like normal. It was a bit 
busted, like it was converting the wrong chemicals. The 
huff huff huff next minute, the testing chamber broke, 


and it's flooding the lab with gas! We got the hell out of 
there, but the fucking lockdown procedure didn't work! 
So then the entire ZAP complex is filling with gas. 
Everyone RRMMMBLL evacuated and the drones got 
sent in. And you know what happened? They got 
converted! The process worked great. Isn't that a 
ZIIMMM fucking joke! God CRACKLE damn it Carter 
open the door! Working on it! My specimen works 
perfectly and it's going to kill us all! We're going to 
fucking khoo ghaacck hgghhck suffocate on its farts! If its 
kids don't get us first. The environment was apparently 
conducive to carnivorous organisms, and they got out! 
You know why? Because the lockdown procedures failed 
miserably. We gotta get to the tele porters aye BZZT sap 
before the place fills with gas. Carter why is the door not 
open yet! Thank you! Where do we go now? Okay, let's 
go! So, what was | saying? Oh right, we might get eaten 
or CRACK asphyxiated! Jesus Christ! Shoot it CRACK 
CRACK KREEEE shoot CRACK it! Huffhuff huff huff. Oh 
my god. Ooooo my god. Holy fucking christ it tore off his 
head! Go go go go KREEEEeeee! Oh jesus oh jesus oh 
jesus! Way to go! You and your bloody bioengineering! 
Oh of course it's MY fault! It's not like the fucking 
containment chamber broke as soon as it touched it! I'll 
tell you what it BRRRM was! Fuck it just go! One of the 
specimens just snatched up Carter! It was just this 
fucking centipede that up and ate him! But that wasn't 
even one of mine! Where the fuck are these coming 
from? Unless... oh my god. They're evolving! How the 
fuck did they do that, then? | don't know! We need to 
move quicker! Hisssssss can you hear that? Oh my god 
the entire lobby's flooded! How do we go now? Let me 
see, come tup tup on, come on tup, come on! Here we 
go! We need to go left! KRASH oh god it's blocked off it's 
blocked off! Jesus jesus REEET jesus we're DIDDIDIDI 
trapped oh god please god REEEEEET god please help 
me no please help help jesus please oh help me help me 
help me AAAAAAAAAIIIIII| KRUNCH 


The document ends there. SCP- was discovered nearby, 


consuming various pieces of debris strewn around the area. 


Nothing Human 


"Following this event, settlements were quickly established. The 
interim leaders of the settlements, Omega-021, Epsilon-024, 
Zeta-031, and Gamma-050 decided that a meritocracy would form a 
solid bedrock for a stable and peaceful society. They assumed 
control of their settlements on the basis that their initiative and 
ingenuity in establishing initial control proved their ability to lead and 
govern. Society flourished for eighty years under their leadership. 
During this time, numerous more settlements were established 
across the continent..." 


Delta-735 quietly sealed off his eardrums. He'd already read the file, 
and the digi-tutor was just reading it off again. Besides, if the tutor 
asked him a question, it would still come through. He surreptitiously 
snuck a glance at Phi-724. She was staring intently at the digi-tutor. 
Delta-735 resigned himself to the knowledge that she would not look 
at him, then he looked again. Phi-724 was now quietly reading 
through her e-reader. Delta-735 sighed to himself. Her bright, 
iridescent nictitating membranes, the sheen of her waxy skin, the 
way her nostrils flared ever so slightly to capture extra water vapor, 
and the way she effortlessly applied linear quadratic estimations 
while also calculating angular velocities and trajectories for inertial 
guidance systems exuded grace and beauty. His reverie was broken 
by the beep of his e-reader. Delta-735 nervously unlocked it to peer 
at his newly arrived test scores. 


"Darwin man, if I'd gotten a 93 on an exam | don't think my unit 
coordinator would've let me back into the charging pods!" 
Lambda-713 buzzed, his voice muffled through the radiation suit. 


"Look, | don't want to talk about it right now," came Delta-735's 
reply. "Can you just get the anode? We can't have a Hall effect 
thruster if there isn't any electric potential!" 


Lambda-713 walked towards the back of the hangar. He scanned 


the shelves for an anode, picked one up, and returned to 735, his 
feet clanging against the metal floor. 


"C'mon man, what happened? How could you screw up so badly?" 


"For Darwin's sake what part of | don't want to talk about it don't you 
understand?" 735 shouted. 


"Seriously, what happened?" 713 pried. 724 wasn't listening, though. 
He was looking somewhere else. 713 followed his gaze. Outside of 
the garage where the two were working, Phi-724 was trotting down 
the street, kicking up iron-laden dust as she went. 713 whistled 
appreciatively, observing how the length of each stride was precisely 
calculated to use as little energy to cover as much ground as 
possible. Then he noticed 735's eyes following her every step of the 
way. 


"Oh Tesla! You have a thing for her, don'tcha!" 713 realized. "Wait, 
she's in your class..." 


"Shut up and plug in that anode!" 
"Dude, if you want to work with her, you gotta talk to her first!" 


735 sighed, grabbed the anode from 713, and quickly secured it into 
the thruster casing. "Look man," he buzzed, " we have nothing in 
common. She's designing flying organisms for cargo transport for 
her project. We're designing a hyper efficient Hall effect thruster. 
Plus she's a Phi. Phi's are engineered to go for lotas and Zetas, you 
know that!" 


"To be fair, there was that one time that an Alpha and a Phi got 
together." 713 pointed out. "But | have a better idea. A friend from 
Settlement-05 told me that Phis are big on ecology. He also told me 
that there are rumors of some weird organisms by the original 
landing site. So all you gotta do is find one of those things, bring it 
back, and show Phi-724! She'll be all over you." 


"What kind of weird organisms?" 735 buzzed curiously. 


"Well, that's the thing. He swears that people have seen Homo 
sapiens." 


735 snorted, his mouthparts curling to let the air flow through and 
against his tracheas in such a way that it would strike the right 
balance of incredulous and condescending. "You Luddite! At least 
try to come up with something | can believe." 


"I'm serious! He says there's a few wandering around near the 
landing site. No one's gone to check it because Homo sapiens have 
been extinct for more than ten thousand cycles. But if there are 
some..." 


735 shrugged. "Fine, let's go. We can test out the range of the 
thruster anyways. Help me hook this up to the buggy." 


The duo cruised across the red dunes, their rucksacks bouncing as 
the buggy kicked up sand. The Hall effect thruster worked perfectly, 
propelling them forward at a crisp 20 kilometers per second. Several 
times the buggy almost lost traction on the granular iron sands. To 
both of their reliefs, the buggy did not tip. Within 120 seconds of 
setting off, they could see the landing site. Within 123 seconds, they 
were at the landing site. Within 123.01 seconds they were about to 
crash into the generation ship. 


735 smacked the emergency brake. The Hall effect thruster 
immediately shut off, and the buggy's emergency 
magnetorheological brakes arrested all movement of the buggy, 
converting it into flywheel energy that could kickstart the buggy. It 
did not, however, arrest the movement of 713 and 735, who were 
hurled from the buggy and against the generation ship. 


735 bounced back to his feet and picked up his rucksack, head 
spinning but paradoxically steadied by his own excitement. He had 
seen the generation ship before, but always from a distance. Now 
he could actually reach out and touch it. The tall, white, egg-shaped 
craft stood proudly, its enormous ion drives supporting it even as the 
bright red sand battered at it, fighting to engulf and consume it. On 
the side of it, nearly worn off after thousands of cycles, were two 
characters, written in an archaic script. One character was a 
sideways semicircle attached to the upper right of a vertical line. The 
other was a straight line connected to a second, perpendicular 
straight line. 


"Did somebody get the license on that speeder?" 735 looked to his 
right to see 713 forcing himself to his feet. "Ah geez, my head is 
killing me." 


"You okay?" 735 asked. 
"Yeah, | should be fine. Check the buggy. Are the trang guns there?" 


735 bounded over to back of the buggy, where the supplies were 
stored. He opened the trunk and pulled out two long, thin rifles. 
"Trang guns are fine. They're loaded, too. Catch!" 


713 bobbled the gun, which went off in his hand. "Religion! The 
bloody thing almost hit me! Hey! Look at this!" 


735 walked over to 713, who was peering intently at the ground. It 
was a footprint, but unlike any they'd ever seen before. It was a fat, 
oblong cylinder with ridges inside. 


"Huh! This must be a Homo sapiens footprint! Okay, let's see. Homo 
sapiens like flesh, right? Maybe we can lure one out with some 
meat." 735 decided. 


"Okay, let me see..." 713 murmured. He took a piece of jerky from 
his rucksack and moved around. "Hey man, there's a hole in the 
generation ship!" 


"Really? Where?" 735 called back incredulously. 
"Over MMMMMRRRRRPPHHH"" 


"713? 713!" Delta-735 raced towards Lambda-713, his hearts 
pounding in his chest. The sand restricted his speed, threatening to 
make him slip, but 735 reached 713 in time to see him being 
dragged by something into a great rend in the side of the ship. 


"Oh Darwin oh Darwin oh Darwin..." 735 stared into the gap. It was 
nearly impossible to see. Enormous gears and wires threaded 
through the gap, sparking and giving off horrendous noises. 735 
turned, intending to get help, but then stopped. What if 713 was 
killed by then? Or something worse? 


Inside, almost no light could penetrate the ship. The ground was 
rough and metallic, and all sorts of gears, rods, and jagged ends 
poked into the corridor, rubbing against him. Eerie, harsh shrieks, 
loud roars of machinery, and the crackling of electricity punctuated 
the thick air. He felt claustrophobic, which was bizarre since he'd 
spent all of last night poking around the ventilation shafts back in the 
hive. But this was nothing like the hive's warm, organic confines. 
This was cold, sharp, and grim.