"Shit." He sprinted off towards a cluster of officers around the center 
of the machine. Val muttered under their breath and followed suit. 


"Excuse me, agent coming through." The officers immediately 
dispersed. Danyal looked around the machine's surface for any 
details when he saw what Val had spoken of. A small dot on a metal 
panel. Same conceptless structure, same informational glow. 


Val leaned in and stared. "Conceptual structure?" 
"Well, no. Conceptless." 

"Like CNC, or —" 

"Completely conceptless." 


"Shit." It was clear they didn't know what this exactly meant, but they 
had watched someone die from Conceptually Null Clearsolids. 
Anything with conceptless in the name was a bad sign, even if the 
specifics varied. 


The dot changed into a small sphere, a fraction of an inch larger. A 
few officers stopped to watch the commotion. The priest finally 
stopped her shouting as several polygons sputtered out of the 
sphere and retracted. 


"Vitae collapse rennen rennen." Danyal said. 


Hearing the specialized activation phrase, the golem ceased idling 


and walked towards the sound's source. The spirit inside knew 
trouble was afoot, even if it couldn't comprehend the specifics. In 
seconds the spirit had pored through the minds of Danyal and the 
surrounding people, setting its mind on "peculiar spheroid" and 
"apprehend" — simple enough for a standard police golem to know. 
Danyal shivered as it tumbled through his thoughts. 


The humanoid bulk of concrete pushed Val to the side and a dull, 
monotone voice scraped out. "Step aside citizen." Val grimaced. 


As the golem leaned over, the dot suddenly stretched out into a set 
of long blobs. They expanded and phased through the golem's 
torso, which immediately began flashing and changing into many 
colors. From Danyal's view conceptual details were being rapidly 
modified and shredded into their basic components, ejecting and 
dissipating in a metaphysical light show. The golem was gaseous, 
translucent, shadowless, sound, a topology equation. 


Both agents leapt back and people looked on in shock. The not- 
concepts drifted out towards the ceiling, showing a hole with rubber 
edges and a steel panel beneath it. The torso was deleted, and the 
legs stumbled before becoming a liquid that fell to the ceiling. The 
variable construct emesis ended. 


"Great going, cannon fodder," Val muttered as they looked up. 
"Step back everyone!” Danyal ordered. 


Tendrils lashed out at the air and conceptually broke the atoms it 
composed, leaving a white glowing trail of informational destruction 
and a breeze of air, moving to replace the vacuums it created. 
Several officers ushered people towards the stairwell as they 
shouted over their intercoms. 


Ideatic text hovered inches above the steel panel, glowing and 
flickering. 


FOR THOSE WHO DETEST HUMAN DESTINY 


"Self-sabotage," Val remarked. 


"Hm." Interrogation of the captured cultists to find the culprit could 
come later, assuming they were captured. 


"That or a pre-programmed feature." 


Val popped the lid of their flask open and took a long swig. They 
claimed the liquor helped them concentrate to the suspicion of 
many, though Danyal wondered more about whether the cyan fluid 
inside could even be classified as alcohol. "Think you can handle 
this?" they asked. 


"Probably." 
"Sweet. I'll Keep the area covered." 


"Covered from what?" Danyal looked at the many police officers and 
specialists behind him, and remembered the many more agents in 
the building above and below him. 


"Whatever is... heading for your booty, | guess." 


Danyal chuckled, and began inspecting the machine. "Uh, some 
help opening this?" 


Val closed their eyes and clenched their fists. A second later chunks 
of metal ejected off and flew past Danyal, tailed by the pink 
message. It landed next to Val, who took a deep breath. A 
researcher gasped, either from the spontaneous destruction or from 
the horror of potential damage to the device. 


"Try not to ask that too much, okay?" 


He looked into the machine's interior, a long tunnel that held 
massive amounts of conceptual structures: translucent gold tubing 
and gears in the shape of a roughly cylindrical shape. Through a 
combination of ennoiatheama, willpower, and a chunk of conceptual 
wiring lodged in his skull, he could comprehend the entire structure 
by seeing a single portion of it. The full details refused to stay in his 
head though the summary did. 


The machine was essentially a large computer, operated with the 
terminals and conceptual abilities. An object would be assigned to a 


pointer as an input, and its properties would be modified, becoming 
the output. Without an input the device shouldn't be active, but it 
was producing a constant stream of junk outputs. Several broken 
spheres lining the conceptual structure would be reason why. 


Despite his experience with metaphysics, it was impossible for him 
to repair concepts. This left two options: attempt to find the 
machine's power source and shut it down — risking more not- 
concept production — or to break it, dismaying the UIU Metaphysics 
Department. Hopefully they'll understand. 


He mentally pushed and extended translucent blue conceptual 
projections of his arms — a metabody — out of his body, with the 
metabody's hands floating into the machine. The hands grabbed 
onto the structures and prepared to snap a central tube off. A 
second after a shadowy blur flew past one of his metahands and 
sliced it. 


Three bulges appeared on the surface of the structures, dark-gray in 
color. A second later they burst into not-concepts that shot out of the 
machine and went through the floor and walls, spraying shimmering 
metal fragments from behind them. 


"Everybody leave!" Val shouted. 
Nobody hesitated to run. 


Val tapped their mic on. "This is Agent Valarie Dell communicating 
on all channels, several metaphysical hazards are now present on 
Floor -1..." They kept a watchful eye on Danyal's motionless body. 


A sliver of Danyal's metahand was now nonexistent. The blur, a 
pitch-black metaphysical katydid, landed at the structure's opposite 
end. It lunged again and he dodged. It was the machine's defense 
mechanism and was trying to eat his metabody, which would take 
days to regenerate. Though it wasn't guaranteed death, he couldn't 
let it reach his real body. Body property and perception damage 
wasn't worth gambling on. 


Leap, dodge, leap, dodge. The battle swiftly fell into a pattern that 
left him in a weak disadvantage. As it passed under his metahands 


again he went for a swift punch. He pulled back when two fingers 
were sheared off as he touched the insect's body. It was a 
conceptuvorous hole, impenetrable to the metaphysical combat he 
relied on. It may tire out after a while, but he didn't have a while. 


More dark-gray bulges appeared near the right end of the construct. 


"Wait, Val. Is the android still there?" Danyal shouted over the 
chaotic metaphysical noise only he heard. 


"Uh-" 


Officer ARO43 was still connected to the computer, their processing 
power dedicated entirely to data retrieval. The only safety measure 
they took was crouching down. Val clenched their hand and the 
android was ripped from the conceptually flashing terminal. 


"Get out of here!" 


ARO438 briefly looked around and sprinted to Floor -2, ignoring their 
severed hand laying by the superconducting computer remains. 


Danyal pinched the surface of the conceptual structures and 
extruded a barrier from it in front of his metahand. The katydid 
dodged around and collided into another wall that was transforming 
into protective semi-spheres around each metahand. If the creature 
was tasked with protecting the device, it wouldn't eat through parts 
of it. The hands swung around the structure's sides and repeatedly 
slammed into the creature, sending it careening. Both fists gathered 
enough material and broke off the surface into the air, fully 
encapsulated in spheres. They rocketed towards the bug and 
crushed it into the structure, blasting a crater on its surface. Before 
the bug could react the spheres broke off the hands and wrapped 
over the crater, sealing it in. 


The hands shed the spheres and moved to a thin conceptual pipe 
next to a mass of translucent gears. If this was broken it would split 
the machine in half, rendering it inoperable. He grabbed on, noticing 
dark gray bulges on the other side of it. He had to move quickly. The 
hand pushed and gradually dented it, extruding more walls from it 
and shrinking its size. The bulges were growing, expanding, twisting, 


and bending. Suddenly a rapid series of modifications to the 
machine were detected by Danyal. The bug was tunneling through 
the machine towards his hands. In an instant it burst out and the 
right metahand was eviscerated into particulate debris. It reached 
the opposite side of the machine and propelled itself towards the last 
hand. 


He snapped the pipe as the bulges grew and pushed them out 
towards the bug, letting go to avoid the chaos that would ensue. A 
colorless jet shot out as the conceptual structures buckled and 
collapsed, piercing through the insect. The katydid split into red and 
blue afterimages of itself which ricocheted through the interior, 
smashing apart electronics. After a second they vanished in a haze 
of ampersands, fading out of ennoiatheama's range. Danyal's 
metabody began retracting into himself. 


Chester pushed Danyal to the ground as a row of not-concept 
spikes came out of the machine, barely missing his head. Val swung 
their hand back and they flew away from another spike that went 
along the floor. The remnants of the machine crumpled, and with a 
long electric whine it deactivated. A translucent ring rolled out of the 
debris and melted into his remaining metahand, which phased back 
into his body. His mind made an attempt to keep going, grasping at 
and hanging onto disparate thoughts. He fainted. 


Chester dragged himself off the ground and inspected himself. Only 
a few scrapes on his clothes, and after pulling back his sleeves he 
saw that his cybernetics were intact. He looked around. Metal 
shards, broken pipes spilling water onto the ground, thaumic 
circuitry spitting out arcane symbols in electrical arcs. Columns of 
light spilled through as the not-concepts disintegrated and 
unplugged the holes they left in the ceiling. 


"He really did a number on this place,” Val said between pants. They 
raised their flask and took another swig. 


"It happens." 


Val nodded. They could faintly hear the sounds of panicked 
pedestrians and the officers trying to calm them, both groups 


disturbed by the spikes that had stretched far out of the building. 
The floors above and below were lit with the chatter of agents, all 
calling back to command in confusion. Countless materials with 
tampered properties were sprinkled through the air. 


"Anyways, I'm checking the outside. Have to make sure the police 
can handle the situation." 


"Roger that." 

He dashed up the stairwell. "Oh, and I'll call for med support," he 
said, pointing at Danyal's unconscious body. He rushed up and out 
of site. 

Val admired the wreckage and crouched down. 

"Agent Valarie, status report," their mic sputtered to life. 
"Metaphysical hazards suspected to be neutralized. One golem 
down, one 3P police android damaged, Agent Danyal unconscious. 
Over." 


They laid a hand on his chest. Still breathing. 


"Copy that. Agent Chester has called for medical units, stay where 
you are and check for additional hazards. Over." 


"Copy. Over." 
The investigation was far from over. 
STATE OF BEING 


« UIU File: 2014-014 | Abstract Naught | Parmenidean 
Tango » 


forensics reports. You know what they said? 
Interviewer: What did they say? 


Agent M _ : They placed the ignition point right where 
the old coot landed after | shot him. His body put the 
whole place up in three fucking minutes. I... Jesus. 


Interviewer: Thank you, Agent, that will be enough. 
<End Log> 


Closing Statement: Agent —_ was remanded to 
psychiatric evaluation for three months, to treat mental 
trauma and acute pyrophobia not previously noted in his 
psychological profile. After amnestics failed to cure the 
condition, Agent was reassigned to a clerical position. 


« SCP-739 | SCP-740 | SCP-741 » 


Hypervelocity 


In thirty minutes she will either be dead or the greatest criminal 
known to Eurtec. Either way, she's going to get one hell of a fix. 


The target is a squat, unimposing, one-story concrete block - a blot 
against the vibrant Art Deco architecture of the crimson-light district. 
It's also the home of the Bank of Eurtec. There's at least ten million 
dollars’ worth of cash, bonds, stocks, jewels, spices, spells, and tech 
inside. And in thirty minutes, it'll all be hers. Or her soul will be part 
of the security system. 


Twenty-nine minutes left. 


She's sitting on a yellow 2008 Vespa S in an alleyway adjacent to 
the Bank. The moped has been modified with a small, flat table 
stuck above the headlight, on which she is dicing, crushing, mixing, 
and then filling a syringe with product. 


Also atop the table is a grey IMI Desert Eagle. It is large, loud, 
iconic, powerful, and incredibly unwieldy. She has never been to a 
range in her life. She's more likely to blow a hole through her own 
head with it than anything else. 


The products are ready. She's not. She hasn't scoped out the Bank, 
examined their security systems, seen any blueprints of the building 
- hell, she hasn't even set foot inside the Bank. Everything she 
knows about it, she learned from her inside man. But that doesn't 
matter. The products are ready. 


Twenty-eight minutes left. 


She takes a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a cotton swab, and rubber 
tubing from a satchel on her back. Then she dips the swab in the 
bottle, swabs the crook of her left elbow, and ties the tubing around 
it - an unwieldy process with two arms, let alone one. It takes her 
several tries to get it wrapped tightly. 


Twenty-three minutes left. 


Satisfied that the tubing is tight around her elbow, she takes the 
syringe in her right hand and gives it an experimental tap. It 
screeches in response; the thick, dark slurry inside coalesces into a 
tiny, red, six-armed gorilla that beats at the glass. She shakes the 
syringe rapidly to reduce the gorilla back into a scarlet sludge. Then, 
in a fluid, practiced motion, she gently stabs the needle into the vein 
in her arm and injects herself with 100 CCs of pure demon. 


Twenty-two minutes left. 


Her pulse doesn't quicken - it runs for its life. Her vision blurs briefly 
and then sharpens. Even as her head begins to pound to the 
drumbeat of the damned, she notes with satisfaction that her left 
arm has been pixelated. Where once there was continuous smooth 
skin, the entire limb from the shoulder down looks like a sixteen-bit 
sprite from a video game. She gives it an experimental flex to make 
sure that it doesn't fall off, then looks to the Bank. 


The Bank and everybody around it are now a sheen of threads: the 
dull grey of concrete, stone, and metal, the rich tan of wood, the 
vibrant scarlet of humans, the icy lime of machines, and the frosty 
blue of spirits. All of them are moving sluggishly, as if caught in an 
invisible flood of molasses. This is the power of demonic perception. 


Helmet and leathers on and cannon in hand, she covers the fifty 
meters to the main entrance in less than a second. The entrance 
doors are frosted glass, and shatter to bits when she rams through 
them with her left shoulder. Her trajectory carries her into a security 
android, whom she punches in the throat. As he falls, she wraps her 
right arm around his injured throat, shifts her gun to her left hand, 
and puts it to his head. She fires. People start to scream.