| thought all | could do was give her peace. | should have known it 
wasn't enough. | won't fail her again. 


He must see how I'm watching over his shoulder because he turns 
and pulls his gun on Richards. From the way his head moves | think 
he must be talking. Good luck with that, Richards can't lipread for 
shit. 


And then Zhao just walks out of the bushes at my three. Her hands 
are empty, and it's hard to tell through the glare on her visor but | 
think she might be crying. What does she think she's doing? 


It started going downhill when she left, she signs to Richards. /t fell 
apart when she died. We need her back. 


Oh. 


We can't just come out of the woods with a dead colleague, 
Richards signs, but | can definitely read that expression. That's 
"please talk me into this" if | ever saw it. 


We're facing armed resistance, Zhao signs. No alternative. If we 
can't stop him... 


She and Smith were close. For me she was the kind of friend you 
make at work. You're glad to see them there, but nothing follows you 
home. | felt it more when she went on leave than when she died. But 
that doesn't mean Zhao is wrong, does it? Maybe we never had 
Eta-10's cachet, but we did lose something and it wasn't just a skill 
set or someone to spend coffee break with. She was the heart, or 
maybe the spine. Something you can't replace. 


Mace looks from Richards to Zhao, then smiles and tucks his gun 
back into his belt. We can all go back, he signs. | lost something too, 
when she died. Don't we all want another chance to fix our old 
failures? 


Sure, don't we all — if it were that easy. But what if it is? What if this 
is all it takes, and you really can go back? 


the kid's faceplate started to dry up and flake off about 
an hour or so in so | could see his face. He looked tired 
and scared. 


| think... check the logs, Sarge, | think it was about 
thirteen hours in when the kid started talking again. Kid 
started babbling. Apologized for [DATA EXPUNGED]. 
Anyway, after that, he calmed down a lot, even managed 
to crack a couple of jokes, then | told him to take a nap. 
He slept a bit, thank god. 


About twenty four hours in, we reached... | guess they're 
calling it the stomach now. First warning sign was a 
gurgling kind of noise, louder, with a crunching noise 
over it. | told the kid to bring his suit up to full power and 
get ready. A little while after, we fell out into this big 
chamber... big as in, big enough for the two of us to fit in 
it comfortably, which was huge compared to the tight 
squeeze of the tube. Kid's suit started hissing and the 
outer shell started to turn all pitted and stuff, and | 
noticed my gloves were starting to degrade to, so | yelled 
at him to move, and we started heading towards this... 
sphincter, | guess. | remember... god, why can | 
remember this, the insides of the stomach were lined 
with [DATA EXPUNGED]. 


| almost lost it there, [DATA EXPUNGED] I'd stayed, my 
suit would have melted and I'd be dead, but the kid 
grabbed me and shoved me headfirst through the 
sphincter and we fell into... the other place. 


It was even worse than the stomach. [DATA 
EXPUNGED}, this place was... well, you know what it 
was full of. I'm not squeamish, Bill, you can't be if you're 
a Mole Rat, but this place squicked me out so bad | 
almost passed out. The kid helped me back up to my 
feet, though, told me we were almost out. "Come on, 
Lieutenant, we're almost out of here, let's go," he said. 
We moved over to the other sphincter, but the thing 
was... well, it was puckered up tighter than my Drill 
Sergeant's asshole back in basic. So no way we were 


Richards stands upright all of a sudden. Failure, he signs, and his 
hands are trembling. Paris. And the song at the party. 


The memory | was digging at suddenly tumbles out. Decades ago 
we got called out to Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques?, it 
must've been the '84, because the organizers wanted us to mop up 
after this pretentious little shit Smith kept running into. Someone 
who kept harping on how everybody around him was a failure 
(except for him, of course) and this time he'd written some 
interminable po-mo requiem that turned half the anacoustic 
enthusiasts in Europe into screaming neurotics. 


Because of the nightmares. 


| was wondering when you would figure it out, Mace signs, looking at 
once smug and disappointed. Consider yourselves lucky. My original 
plans for that piece were far more elaborate. 


Richards looks stunned. He's saying something to himself, but | 
can't quite catch it. | make a move toward the iPod, which has just 
kept on playing while we debate. They burned her body to ashes 
and laid her in an unmarked grave, and suddenly I'm glad for that 
sheet. How long now before those ashes swell into blackened meat 
and reeking rendered fat, wrapping around unshattered bones, slick 
with jellied blood — 


Zhao stops me. | try to pull away, but she's got her fingers dug deep 
into my arm and she's not letting go. 


She would have known right away, Mace signs. She wouldn't have 
forgotten me. No one will forget me anymore. 


"She fought it!" Zhao shouts silently at me, shaking my arm to make 
me look. Her face is grotesque behind the visor, wrenched with 
desperation, streaked with tears and with colored lights from the 
HUD. "She wanted to live. The Foundation could have saved her, 
she begged them to save her, there's a dozen skips that could've 
done it but they let her die!" 


Yeah. She fought it. It chewed up her belly and bred in her bones 
and still the doctors tried to burn it out, she wouldn't let them stop. 


They drowned her in poison and she still called for more. Last time | 
saw her she was yellow as old linoleum, skin hanging loose even on 
her skull, she was so thin. And that's where she'd wake into life, too 
weak to scream. 


"You have to give her this chance! This is what she would've 
wanted, you know it is, you know it!" 


Yeah, | know it. 
| don't care. 
! don't want it. 


| grab a noisemaker off my belt. 110 dB, thirty seconds. More than 
enough. 


Zhao tries for it. She misses. 


Mace turns around just in time to see the sonic grenade land dead- 
center on the sheet. 


He pulls his gun on me but doesn't fire. He knows it's too late. 


The air ignites around us. There's no way this many butterflies could 
live in this small an area, but here they all are anyway, the guards 
Mace created to defend her. He was right the first time: she didn't 
belong in an unmarked grave. She belongs here. Safe. At rest after 
that last terrible fight, and all the ones that went before. Not dragged 
backward out of an ugly lingering death just because sometimes it's 
hard to let go. 


As the monarchs swarm her grave, | can see tiny jewel-green pellets 
dropping out of the air. 2402's only defense: shrink them back into 
the chrysalis. It won't be enough. | can feel the pressure shift against 
my poor blown-out eardrums and | know the silence has won. 


Mace is screaming, pulling at his hair — gun's still in your hand, 
buddy, bad idea. Better let me have that so you don't hurt yourself. 
It's probably not necessary to hit him in the face too, but | can't for 
the life of me see why | shouldn't. 


Zhao and Richards come out of cover, looking poleaxed the both of 
them, whether from sensory deprivation or something else | can't 
tell. Dee scrambles up from my left a few seconds later. How much 
of this she's put together is anybody's guess, but she looks... 
approving? Satisfied, anyway. A good day's work. She puts the 
restraints on Mace, none too gently, and gives me the thumbs-up. | 
pick my way through the tremor of orange and black wings to 
recover the iPod and its speakers. 


When | turn back Zhao is looking into the ragged grave, where no 
butterflies have landed. | don't think she meant for me to see her 
face. 


Enkidu 


The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest ones in the book, one of 
the oldest stories written by the human race (that people these days 
care to remember, anyway.) It's a story that's been told time and 
time again throughout the millennia; a tale of pride, of redemption, of 
man's eternal struggle against his own nature, and his acceptance 
of his place in the universe. 


Gilgamesh is the great king of Uruk. Wise, robust, unbeatable in 
combat, half-divine, one of the mightiest rulers in the entire world. 
But he's also arrogant, egotistical, and cruel to his subjects, who cry 
to the gods for relief. And so the gods send Enkidu, a wild man 
formed from the clay of the Earth, to end his reign of terror and 
teach him his role. But rather than defeating Gilgamesh through 
force of arms, he befriends the great king, and the two of them 
become as close as brothers. Together, they defeat all the horrors 
the gods can send at them - the terrible giant Humbaba, the 
rampaging Bull of Heaven, and the other monsters that history has 
forgotten or are now known by other names. In the end, the gods 
decide that Enkidu must die for his failure, and despite Gilgamesh's 
love and the ministrations of his healers, he slips away. 


The bereaved king becomes obsessed with his own mortality, and 
searches the world for a way to cheat death. He travels far and wide 
before he meets Utnapishtim, the oldest man in the world, the only 
man to ever become immortal, and is humbled by him - for when the 
wise man challenges him to remain awake for seven days, he 
cannot even conquer sleep, let alone death. Utnapishtim relents and 
tells him of a single plant which can grant him unending youth - but 
after diving to the bottom of the sea itself to acquire it, it is stolen 
away from him and eaten by a snake. 


Thus the tale ends, with Gilgamesh accepting his mortality and 
returning to Uruk to rule as a kinder, humbler lord. That's how the 
version that's known today ends, anyway. | went to great lengths to 


ensure that the last few tablets were never rediscovered by anyone 
smart enough to piece things together. The truth is, Gilgamesh 
learned from Utnapishtim that there is a balance between life and 
death. For a man to live longer than his allotted time, others must 
have their lives cut short. For a man to live forever... well, it took 
years for Gilgamesh to figure out the techniques and teach them to 
those of his priests who were loyal enough, but in the end, he 
learned the secret. 


At first they took the old and the sick to the sacrificial altars. Then 
the children, babies torn from their mother's breasts and thrown onto 
the pyres. Then the women - especially the virgins - who suffered 
untold depredations as the priests of Uruk snuffed out not only their 
lives, but their souls. Soon, anyone who showed their face on the 
streets of Uruk was fair game for those who served only out of the 
hope that they would be taken last. In the end, they were forced to 
turn on each other. The work was finally completed when the last 
two of the elders slit each others’ throats while singing a song of 
praise to their new god. Gilgamesh would live forever - as king over 
a city populated only by the dead. 


None could stop the great king as he tore a swath of destruction 
across the world with his new-found gifts. Entire armies fell before 
him, city walls crumbled at his coming. No man could defeat him - 
and even if he were cut to pieces and seemingly killed, he simply 
rose and returned again, bearing the scars of his defeats proudly as 
he hunted and annihilated those who had dared to stand before him. 
He sought not wealth, nor women, nor even worship or adulation 
from those he conquered - he did it because he could, and because 
it pleased him to do so. He always sought a greater challenge. 


And the gods answered his challenge. They sent Enkidu back - for 
even from the land of the dead, he saw what his friend, his 
companion, his brother, had become, and could not abide it. 


To bring the dead back to life is a difficult thing even for a god, of 
course. He was not as he had been - they couldn't find all his pieces 
and had to replace some of them with iron and bronze, and none 
who looked upon him could doubt that he was not a natural man. 
They granted him two divine boons to ensure that he would 
complete the task he had failed at before. First, a curse - that he 


could never stay long in one place and become idle, for a pestilence 
would follow him and the men of the land would not abide his 
presence, nor would he find any food to eat. Second, a blessing - 
that no man or god, not even Gilgamesh, could harm him without 
harming himself. 


The battle between them would have been a story told by people the 
world over - if any who witnessed it had lived. Entire empires 
crumbled around them as they grappled - great Al-llas with its silver 
spires, the city of Vemura and its fabled seven citadels, and | seem 
to recall that even the land of the Devas did not long endure when 
the battle found its way into their realm. The battle might have been 
the doom of all mankind itself - but on the dawn of the seventh day, 
in the seventh month, in the seventh year of their fighting, 
Gilgamesh struck Enkidu harder than he could bear, and when he 
felt the pain he had dealt to his brother, he fell. 


"Let me go, my brother," said Gilgamesh, "for the day has broken, 
and | can fight no more." 


"| cannot, my brother," Enkidu replied, "unless you shall let me bind 
you until the day the world is undone." And though it pained 
Gilgamesh to do so, his love for his brother was so great that he 
relented. 


And so Gilgamesh was bound and sealed away, to wait until the day 
when he would face a power great enough to defeat him once and 
for all. As for Enkidu, the gift the gods had given him could not be 
surrendered, and he has wandered ever since. The story of the two 
brothers passed from history into legend, and Enkidu made sure 
enough of the details got forgotten that nobody again could do what 
his brother had done. In time, even the names got changed around. 
Enkidu would be known by many names over the years as he came 
and went; Osiris, Lazarus, Wandering Jew, St. Germain, and so on. 


I'm pretty sure my name never really was Enkidu to begin with, 
though. 


Ennui 


On //  ,SCP-1733's test log was found to have 
accumulated several more viewings. Upon discovery, 
the video was going through what is estimated to be the 

playback. Most of the video showed the stadium filled 
with multiple mutilated corpses of many figures present 
in previous playbacks. In the last five minutes of the 
playback, a single blood-drenched audience member 
wrestles the camera down and places it on the floor in 
front of him. The following is a transcription of his 
monologue: 


| couldn't bring myself to do it, man. | just couldn't. We all agreed a 
while ago that we'd just kill ourselves in whatever way we could, but 
| just can't do it. We're in a living hell, and I'm still too much of a 
coward to die. | just... | can't... 


The man cries for the following twenty seconds. 


This is all | can think of at this point. Trying to use the camera to get 
to someone out there. They've tried it before, they've tried it so many 
times, and it's never worked but... | just gotta try something. There's 
dead bodies everywhere, and this is all | can think of. It's a TV 
camera. Someone's gotta be out there. Producers or audience or... 
just someone who can help. I've gotta try. 


If... no... you out there. You've gotta be out there. We're trapped. | 
don't know how, and | most certainly don't know why, but we're 
trapped. The game's been going on repeat for... God, | lost track 
backinthe — hundreds... It's been awful. It was just this weird 
feeling at first, but now | Know that the exact same few hours have 
been happening again and again and again and again. And there's 
no way out.