Hockaday's body was knocked about and his clothes were shredded 
but lead rounds don't do much to twenty-thirty's semiskin. The 
creature pulled itself into a mass and flung itself across the room at 


SCP-721: Factory Toys 


Item #: SCP-721 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: Instances of SCP-721 are to be 
contained in one of three designated lockers at Site 19's low-priority 
item storage facility, depending on whether they are classified as 
SCP-721-1, -2, or -3. Each instance must be sealed in a plastic bag 
with a label that clearly identifies their designation. 


Upon recovery, all instances of SCP-721 are to be subject to testing 
with Class D personnel to determine whether they are instances of 
SCP-721-1, -2, or -3, provided this information is not available from 
other sources. They are then to be contained according to the 
procedures outlined in this document. 


At time of writing, all six contained instances of SCP-721-1 are used 
to monitor and aid in the containment of sapient Keter-class SCP 
items. Any further instances of SCP-721-1 that are contained may 
be assigned to similar projects at the discretion of O5-8. Contact 
Site Director Cassidy for further information. 


Testing of SCP-721-2 requires permission from Dr. Bright. 


The use of SCP-721-3 to terminate any person requires approval 
from no less than three personnel with relevant Level 4 clearance or 
higher. Any subject known to have activated an instance of 
SCP-721-3 is to be euthanized if possible, then disposed of in the 
nearest suitable furnace. 


Description: Each instance of SCP-721 is a steel cylinder painted 
black measuring 7 cm in diameter and 2 cm in height. One side is 
covered by a steel mesh, and the other by a weak magnet labeled 
with "The Factory". Testing does not indicate that the material itself 
has any anomalous properties. 


Ludwig looking like a blanket made of oatmeal, same color too. Hit 
Ludwig full on and he went down like a sack of bricks. Meanwhile, | 
had my hands full keeping our Soviet friend from making a run for 
the door. 


Conley and Roberts burst in through the back door just as | got 
Antonov under control and Tegelmann followed them with the BAR. 
Headquarters had issued us particular rounds for this skip — super- 
dense armor piercing; very experimental. His first two bursts 
punched right through twenty-thirty's mantle and into Ludwig; ugly, 
but no helping it. Punctured, the skip bled out in seconds. The whole 
fight couldn't have lasted two minutes. 


Interviewer: Let me stop you there. Your report says that you 
transported the KGB agent away from the engagement site and 
released him; without consulting me, | might add. Why did you leave 
him alive? 


F: We interrogated him while Michaels and Stettin were 
whitewashing — sterilizing the place and distributing amnesiacs. 
Antonov wasn't in any condition to be concealing things. He was 

well out of it, breathing heavily, eyelids dark blue — all the 
symptoms of early twenty-thirty infestation, and the skip's drugs 
were still thick in his system. “I've got to get to Carre,” he says first 
thing, even before we ask him his name. Carre, he says, Carre. Very 
important. Absolutely critical. Sure enough, there's a photo of the 
bastard sewn into the seam of his jacket. 


Interviewer: Carre? 


F: John Carre. CIA spook playing a double game between the 
Americans and the Russkis. Helped pillage Site 20 back in '59. 
Looks like the Kremlin wised up to all that, though. Hence, Antonov 
getting fed to our skip. 


Interviewer: You believe the meeting was intended to... 


F: ...Expose Carre to twenty-thirty, yes — to get him out of the way 
without the Americans knowing their cover had been blown. Some 
KGB bastard must have figured they could have their cake and eat 
it, too — close a leak, and get their hands on a shapeshifting puddle 


grateful for sanctuary in the bargain. All they needed was somebody 
expendable like Antonov to get the creature over the wall and into 
contact with Carre; then they could replace him with the skip and 
leave the Americans none the wiser. 


Interviewer: You were part of the team which brought the entity into 
containment in the first place, Franklin, so | know you know what it's 
capable of. How did knowledge of Antonov's mission justify 
releasing SCP-2030 into the wild with no clear timeframe for 
recovery? 


F: Carre's a particular case. A nose for our operations and very few 
scruples about selling our secrets...the foreign teams had been 
trying to knock him out for a while now. If getting him meant letting 
the thing loose, writing off Antonov and who knows how many other 
good little Communists...well, then call it a matter of operational 
necessity. 


Interviewer: | expect you to be onhand, should the creature attempt 
to return. In the meantime, Tegelmann will take over pursuit of the 
remaining Oslo anomalies. 


F: Twenty-thirty won't be gone long. It'll come back over the wall 
when it's worn out its welcome — and | doubt our Russian friends 
will think much of its ‘gratitude’... 


[Excerpt ends.] 


« Misnomer | Hub | Audio of War » 


Audio of War 


Audio Transcript 1035 
Welcome to Site-76 


It is here in the vast Egyptian desert that we keep many 
confiscated anomalous objects we find the two great 
superpowers of the world clutching onto, and it is here 
that you new recruits have been sent to research and 
defend these items from either power. This is imperative, 
if either side is able to get ahold of these objects, why... 
it could mean something even worse than nuclear war. 
We cannot allow this to happen. 


Take a good look around gentlemen, it is with these men 
that you'll be working for years, perhaps even decades. 
This is a lifelong job, but a necessary one. The human 
race needs you to protect it from destroying itself. You 
are a member of the Foundation now, sworn in to protect 
anyone and everyone from the threat of a looming 
apocalypse. 


Site-76 houses a number of important anomalous 
objects, including some psychic and memetic. Therefore 
it is important that you all remain focused, because you 
never know when a memetic visual might come into your 
line of sight, or a psychic machine might override your 
mind! 


Remember gentlemen that this site is top secret ona 
need-to-know basis, and anything you encounter here 
remains here. Even something as insignificant as the 
type of tree you see outside this window could give away 
our position to a looming superpower. 


Now, as with all sites of this nature, it is entirely possible 
that a breach may occur requiring the detonation of a 20 
megaton nuclear warhead, sitting right now underneath 
our very feet. In this case all personnel are ordered to 
evacuate the site immediately. In some cases we may 
need to detonate the warhead before all personnel have 
evacuated. You gentlemen have been instructed on this 
before, and | trust you are willing to sacrifice your lives to 
contain the monstrosities we hold here. 


We thank you for joining the ranks of the Foundation, 
and hope you have a good day. That is all. 


« In the Shadow of a High Wall| Hub | SCP-2350 » 


What The Spybird Saw 


TOP SECRET (PILLAR GARDEN) — DO NOT COPY — DO NOT 
TAKE ABOARD AIRCRAFT 


DEBRIEF FILE - FLIGHT LIEUTENANT 


Interview Date: JANUARY 29 1963 

Incident: Aerial reconnaissance incident recorded February 13 1962 
— Operation PILLAR GARDEN 

Document call number UNGOC 17u4.233 

Witnessing Officer 

Stenographer 


: BEGIN INTERVIEW — IDENTIFICATIONS TRUNCATED::: 


Back in 1955, Kelly Johnson said he'd sell his soul for six 
more inches of room in the Lockheed U2, but when the 
Foundation came calling, they added six feet. These 
planes are 90% engine and 10% camera, but the 
Skunkworks boys jammed a love seat in there anyway. 
That's just how it is with them. The Foundation, | mean. 
You can't bring civilians on missions that never 
happened, and you especially cannot fit that big camera 
into a two-seater Dragon Lady. But for the Foundation, 
the Air Force did both. 


They issued the double-birds to us in 1962 when we 
deployed to Pakistan — we'd only been in-country for 
four days when they broke the news that our flights were 


getting passengers. Six young women in rotation, to be 
specific. Sure, the extra weight was a bit harder to drive, 
but | think stewardesses are just what our spybirds were 
missing. Of course they didn't tell us why. 


Gotta say, the girls livened up the joint — the Lady 
wasn't built for two and the full camera, so quarters were 
nice and tight. Those flight suits are hardly revealing but 
fifteen hours parked eighteen inches from a real live 
woman is pretty damn superb even if there is an ejector 
seat in the way. 


But | digress. 


The program was hard-edged from the beginning. 
Cruising over the Russkis at 70,000 feet, no weapons, 
no concealment, and no cavalry coming when shit hits 
the fan - but we had done Korea, Cuba, and Edwards 
AFB. These instructions hardly bothered us. Glide over 
Russia in a hundred-foot wide tin can, why not? Carry 
some broad along — Even better! There may have been 
some dissenting opinions about letting women work the 
million dollar Perkin-Elmer camera, but the brass tamped 
all that down. 


They didn't live with us, eat with us, or talk with us. It was 
like flying around with a shop-front mannequin. There 
was strictly no in-flight chit-chat, just some designated 
phrases — "Instance November, begin photography; 
Instance Oscar, prepare for descent" and stuff like that. 
At the end of each mission some spooks rushed 
whichever girl you'd flown with off in a black chopper 
before the engine even cooled. 


All very hush-hush, Secret Squirrel bullshit — more so 
than the rest of what the CIA jackoffs get up to. More so 
than the rest of the U2 program, for that matter. These 
ladies were capital-S Special. I'm talking about the 
Special Talents, the 388th Company; fuckin' Superman 
and Captain Marvel too, and every other half baked idea 
off Jack Kirby's desk. The parascientific combat team — 


same jokers responsible for the stalemate on the Yalu 
and the whole Inchon mess. 


DO NOT COPY — DO NOT TAKE ABOARD AIRCRAFT 


We used to hear all sorts of things from up top about 
how they were going to win the war this week — a new 
bomb, or plane, or supersoldier. They — the Pentagon 
— had told us that the Sidewinder was a sure thing 
against the MiG too but a third of the things wouldn't 
even launch. People said the U2 flew too high to be shot 
down, but they forgot to tell Lieutenant Powers. So when 
word went around that these girls could reach through a 
photograph and touch the other side, | was _ not 
tremendously impressed. Call it jaded or cynical or dumb 
as fuck — later on | wished I'd listened. 


Sometimes on the long flights, up at 75,000 feet where | 
ought to have been hearing precisely nothing | heard 
conversations in Russian, right there in the cockpit. 
Sometimes it was alarms, or gunfire, or churning 
machinery. The ladies would chatter or mumble to 
themselves and you had to ignore that too. | just kept my 
eyes on the dials and the plane in the air. 


Still, every time | heard something, every time it got 
weird up there, | got a feeling | hadn't felt since Edwards 
AFB when we were taking the X-15 up to space. When 
your engine kicks you in the pants with sixty thousand 
pounds of thrust you know you are doing something 
Mother Nature did not intend for you to do! Up over 
Russia with those silent ladies | felt it again. Like I'd 
peeked behind a curtain — and some big ugly thing had 
noticed me on the other side. 


| still remember the last day of the program, every 


moment of it. Thirteen miles over Leningrad | hear this 
little pop, like a jar opening. Look over my shoulder and 
my cargo — Instance September was her designation — 
has her arm jammed half way into the loading aperture of 
the main cam, shoulder-deep in what is supposed to be 
a six inch loading slot. Orders here are clear: Ignore 
everything, fly the plane. 


Some Russki is shouting right behind me, angry voice 
echoing and distorted. Ignore everything. Finally 
September pulls her arm out of the impossible space 
with an honest to god briefcase in her hand, her knuckles 
scratched to hell and white from squeezing. A lesser 
man might have crashed from pure shock — but | just 
said to myself, ignore it. Fly the plane. The shouting cuts 
off like a switch has been flicked. She's laughing, smiling. 
A thousand times more expressive than I've ever seen 
her. Seen any of them. Honestly it kinda shook me. 


Fly the plane. Ignore everything. | don't say a word as we 
fly the five hours back home. Never saw September 
again after we landed; the spooks hustled her off and 
that was that. No more girls, no more flights, no more 
sunny Pakistan. But | remember what she said as we 
were touching down, every word of it. You could hear the 
crazy. Hear the loss. 


She said, "I did real good today. They won't be mad 
anymore. They'll let me see my Iris again." Lots of stuff 
like that. 


Me? | just ignored it. Kept flying the plane. There was 
something in her voice — it's like, on all those flights I'd 
been pushing the envelope, and that was bad enough. 
But September, she lived clear on the other side. 


After a couple of more days we shipped back to 
Germany. We never learned where our passengers 
ended up. | still don't know who those women were. 
Don't wanna know. Never learning their names made it 
— easier. Still, | come back to it every once in a while. 


Whoever she was, | hope things turned out alright — for 
her and for Iris. 


:nEND TRANSCRIPT::: 


FILE No. 
Receiving Officer 


TOP SECRET (PILLAR GARDEN) — DO NOT COPY — DO NOT TAKE 
ABOARD AIRCRAFT 


« SCP-2350| Hub | They Will Leave Us with a Shaken Earth » 


They Will Leave Us With a Shaken Earth 


From Bernard Fall's article "New Technology and a Familiar 
Strategy in Viet-Nam," published on December 28th, 1966. 


A desperate fight broke out on the far side of McNamara’s Plaza just 
as | sat down to interview General Roland. Even at a distance we 
could hear the rattle of machine-gun fire flare up before being 
drowned out by nearby batteries of heavy guns. Exploding artillery 
shells echoed through the hazy morning, rattling all the windows in 
downtown Saigon but failing to faze my impeccably uniformed host. 


General Roland is part of the new breed of American fighting men, a 
veteran of Korea tapped to oversee one of the most sensitive 
aspects of Lyndon Johnson's escalation. Big, tall, he carries himself 
with a brusque, almost rambunctious air; surface informality 
conceals a quick mind and a deep belief in the inevitability of 
American success — if they can just get their hands on the right 
tools. 


We had met to discuss the latest generation of “Special Talents” 
soldiers whose recent, spectacular debut rests at the center of the 
Army's newest push to bring some resolution to the nineteen year 
old Indochina War. The current hostilities, a large Viet Cong raid on 
the outer defenses of the city, were an unscheduled backdrop to the 
meeting, but the general refused to be deterred by the percussive 
interruptions, and seized on one particularly significant blast as fuel 
for a tangent. 


“All that stuff you hear out there,” he said, gesturing expansively 
towards the distant blasts, “is ours. Our planes find every Viet gun 
that gets within twenty miles of Saigon and smash it. Meanwhile, our 
heavy artillery puts out more firepower per square mile than any 
other army in history. We have complete weapons dominance over 
the Viet Minh.” He paused, rapping his knuckles on the desk. “What 
we haven't had is a certified way to chase down the Viets in their 
holes and through the jungle. At least, till now.”