"If we have any questions, full records of the company are on file, 
and we don't need to ask to visit. They're kept in the planesource 
library, which | imagine is the same Library that Mister Marshall is 
familiar with. We should be sure to fully review those records and be 
familiar with them as soon as we can. | assume it likens the 
consumption of information to the consumption of food, meaning 


that we should chew that data as much as possible." 


Robert raised an eyebrow; Skitter shrugged; the instance flipped its 
card again. 


antiproblem found. 
enjoyable Darkeness! 


On the morning of the 26th, /T WAS THE MOTHERFUCKING 
SLENDERMAN. 


lris' first instinct: run like hell. 
lris' next thought: you can't outrun him, kill the bastard. 
She patted the pockets of her pants. Keys. Screwdriver. Box cutter. 


She pulled out the box cutter, extended the blade, gritted and bared 
her teeth, swung open the door, then drove it deep into the torso of 
the entirely unsuspecting A-78xD instance. 


It popped like a balloon. 


lts internals were pressurised, off-yellow, bubbling foam, the 
consistency of pus, which splattered all over the hallway. Iris 
immediately regretted having bared her teeth while stabbing, as 
quite a lot made its way into her mouth. 


She spat and coughed, clearing her nostrils, wiping it out of her 
eyes, getting it out of her hair and just generally shuddering with the 
repulsion one would expect when coated with eidolon innards. She 
blindly staggered backwards, slipped in the goo, and fell back inside 
her apartment. As she put her hand to the floor to raise herself, she 
felt paper against her slime-coated fingers. 


Iris picked the papers up, put them on the nearby table, closed the 
door, wiped the last of the gunk from her eyes, had a long, long 
shower, got dressed in far cleaner clothes, put the clothes she'd 
been wearing into a pile to burn, and then read the letters. Then she 
understood what had happened. 


"Oh. Oh shit." 


She felt exceptionally embarrassed when the next instance showed 
up, holding a placard in front of it: 


apologetics for fearmake 
letter Consumption idealised 
appreciation; please Follow 


Iris packed a small satchel of essentials, slung it over her shoulder, 
locked her front door, and joined the instance in the hallway. The 
two of them tracked eidolon muck down the corridor; the instance 
stopped at the steel-fronted elevator, pushed a red, metallic key into 
the security lock, and twisted. 


The elevator opened as usual, but behind its doors was a long 
passageway, lined with shiny black stone that Iris couldn't identify. 
She followed the instance through, the door automatically closing 
behind them. They walked into what Iris knew, if the universe were 
playing fair, should have been empty space a few stories from the 
ground. 


ink talking Requisite per. gonefolk want. 
insertion flickways at Perforate indicative; 
sapient servitor remainder guide 


Skitter and Robert blankly stared at the sheet, then turned to Iris in 
near-unison. She sighed. 


"Ink talking. It wants us to sign something." 


concordance. 
safeness inhabitage; 


The suited instance pulled a thick suitcase seemingly from nowhere, 
passing on three large sealed yellow envelopes addressed to each 
inheritor, along with three weighty silver pens. 


They read their documents. This took some time. There were 
intermittent hmmms and ahhhs and chuckles as they realised what 
they were to be receiving. They didn't know it at the time, but not all 


SCP-566: Word a Day 


Item #: SCP-566 
Object Class: Anomalous Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: All copies of SCP-566 are to be 
stored in Low Valuable Item Storage on Site-10. Any new instances 
of SCP-566 are to be assessed by a designated researcher with 
level 4 clearance for this purpose. 


Uncontained instances of SCP-566 are to be treated as a Keter- 
level threat - to this extent, Foundation operatives are to regularly 
inspect the stock of bookstores and libraries for instances of 
SCP-566, as well as any other literature or stationery published by 
the "Living Language Linguists' League". Websites, file-sharing sites 
and forums are to be monitored for scanned or transcribed SCP-566 
contents, and DMCA takedowns issued if any such is found. 


Any new reports of anomalies are to be cross-checked with known 
SCP-566 contents database in order to both ensure a standard 
response and to make sure any SCP-566 copies potentially present 
are found. The classification SCP-566-A is to be used for anomalies 
related to SCP-566 use (See Document 566-Alpha for list and 
associated containment procedures). 


Description: SCP-566 refers to a set of tear-off desk calendars, 
sold under the name "Word-A-Day 2009 Edition: Wacky Wordables 
and Idiosyncratic Idioms", with manufacturer listed as "Living 
Language Linguists’ League".! The front page, where present, 
includes a black-and-white logo, consisting of a stylized tongue ina 
top-hat, raising a champagne glass in one hand, and holding a book 
in the other. 


SCP-566 instances themselves exhibit no known anomalous 
properties, with sample analysis showing no deviation from listed or 
expected composition.2 


the documents were the same. Iris signed first, then Skitter, and 
finally Robert put his pen to the paper. 


They had used green ink. 


compliance appreciative - 
remediate dullness to stateful representative 
hourly expectations 


"A guy from the estate should be here soon." 


The instance nodded, then pulled the papers together, briefly tapped 
them against the table to align them, then slid them into a single 
envelope, then placed the envelope back into the suitcase, then 
closed and locked the suitcase, and then put the suitcase back 
wherever it had been holding it, though nobody could quite tell 
where that was. 


reiterative of thankmake 
safeness inhabitage; 
goodfutures desirable of subject! 


The other instances slowly shuffled out the door, leaving only the 
one seated in front of them. It stood, then shook the hand of each 
inheritor carefully (which each of them would recall not unlike a 
massage from a sock full of jelly). The instance paused at the door, 
and consulted a card it didn't feel the need to show them. 


watch for tickermen 
The A-78xD United Eidolonic Collective left the room. 


Iris, Robert, and Skitter had a lot to discuss. Iris talked for a time, 
then Robert, then Skitter interrupted, then Robert re-interrupted, Iris 
mediated, and then she talked uninterrupted for a long time. When 
she stopped talking, the other two agreed with her, though wanted to 
go over a few small points. Iris clarified for them and wryly smiled. 


"That's if you're up for it, at least." 


Robert smirked. Skitter grinned and replied. 


"| think | can live with that." 
There was a knock on the door. 
It was the representative. 


« Iris Dark | Hub| An Exploration of Dynastic Wealth » 


Angel Of Red And White 


The coldest | have ever been was the day | was born. 


Alaska, of course, is a very cold state to begin with, even in the 
middle of summer. | was born in the winter. It was on New Year's 
Day, twenty nine years ago, that | was unceremoniously thrust from 
my mothers’ loins in the back of a second hand pickup truck. My 
parents realised they would not make it to the hospital in time. My 
mother, for her part, was calm. There was no room inside the 
vehicle, and so my father lifted her out, then rested her on the snow 
covered truck bed. The cold did its part to dull the pain. Twenty 
minutes later, | slipped out into my father’s chilly gloves. As | cried, 
my tears began to freeze. 


Every birthday, my parents would share this image with me. | was a 
baby still dripping with blood, with snowflakes sticking to my body. 
Their tiny little angel of red and white. 


Then we'd go outside and let off the fireworks. 


Happy New Year. 


The first few years of my life were uneventful. | crawled and mewled 
and burped and pooped and did what a baby is supposed to do. 
Tufts of red hair popped from my head, and Alaska's endlessly cold 
weather resulted in a lot of playing indoors. | aged some more and 
learned to talk, but had very few people to talk to. My father worked 
all day and | slept all night, so we saw very little of each other. My 
mother ran me through my homeschooling course modules; neat, 
compact little packages of worked examples. 


Those course books were the best games | had. My parents would 
never let me buy computer games, of course. They rot your brain, 
they'd say. | had no friends to play with. We lived in the middle of 
nowhere. As a child, the only things | had to occupy my time were 


those worksheets. 


When | was seven years old, my mother had to go to the hospital for 
a week. While she was there, my father looked after me at home, 
taking a break from his work. He didn't know how the 
homeschooling program was supposed to work, and he wasn't a 
good teacher. We never really had a great rapport. So he left me to 
my own devices in the room with all the instruction booklets, 
Kindergarten and up, all sorted neatly into their nice little boxes. 


When my mother returned home, | had finished two years of 
schooling in her absence. 


This was, perhaps, the most pivotal educational event of my life. 
Rather than guiding me through slowly, my mother allowed me to 
progress at my own pace. She'd lie upstairs in her bed all day, 
coming out to make quick meals. | would sit downstairs and devour 
educational materials. After junior school level, the content ramped 
up in difficulty, and so my progress slowed. I'd go upstairs to visit my 
mother, proudly showing off my completed worksheets. The things | 
said to her still incite guilt after all these years. 


"Look how well I'm doing without you!" 


| was a child. | didn't understand the sort of pain that comes from not 
being needed in your own house. In retrospect, I'm sure my words 
were tormenting. A grinning, red-haired little kid, telling his mother 
that he's glad that she's not slowing him down any more. That she 
isn't getting in the way. That he’s glad she's spending all day in bed 
now. Now she gets to relax. 


The next year she died, and | grew up fast. 


My father looked after me after my mother's death. Still, | saw little of 
him. Some mornings I'd wake up and he'd already have gone to 
work in the ancient pick-up truck. | worked through my course 
books, occasionally ordering new ones to fill gaps in my knowledge. 
When | was thirteen, my father bought me a computer, and | 
discovered the internet. The net was still in its infancy, then; better in 
some ways, but worse in others. At the time, it never really occurred 


to me to use it for anything other than education. Learning was fun, 
and so | would read. When | was fourteen, | discovered... other 
things on the internet. There were no sexual education pamphlets in 
my course work, barring clinically dry biology textbooks. The 
burgeoning net was the next step in my educational pathway. 


When | was fifteen and a half years old, | finished the last of my 
schooling pamphlets. | remember turning over that final sheet, to 
look at the aged piece of paper reading "CONGRATULATIONS" in 
a childlike font. My mother and father had written on it back when | 
first started the courses. | felt tears well up in my eyes as | 
recognised my mother's handwriting. 


"We are so proud of you." 


| started college when | was sixteen. 


| still didn't really know what | wanted to do. Mathematics and the 
sciences were always a decent option, and admittedly what I'd 
always found the easiest, but | never really had any great passion 
for them. | never had any great passion for anything, though, so 
taking what | was good at made sense. Physics was my choice. 


| had to live on my own in Anchorage. Not that | minded; since my 
mother died, most days | had the house to myself. | was very much 
used to being alone. What | was very much unused to was not being 
alone; having to leave the house every day, having to walk to 
classes taught by Real People, in lecture halls filled with other Real 
People. | wasn't used to having to take notes; | tried for a week, then 
realised what | was transcribing ended up mostly useless. Instead, | 
just remembered the course content the first time. It was easier to 
understand what was being taught when instead of assigning it to 
paper, | spent that time assigning it to my mind. 


| topped the class in every course for my first semester. 


This gathered a lot of attention. Sure, some people had noticed | 
was shorter than other students, that | didn't talk to many people or 
join any clubs, and that | never entered into the on-campus bar. 
They mostly kept their distance. Course results came out, and | 


made the mistake of letting my name go out on print. Not long after, 
| gathered a reputation among my peers for being "the short nerd". 
Then everyone kept coming to me for course help. 


| hated it. | wasn't an anti-social person, but having to slow down my 
mind to explain things to people was frustrating. Never before did | 
have to transfer ideas in my head into other people's. Trying to do 
so made me extremely uncomfortable. | hadn't met this problem 
before. The second semester finished, and with one exception, | 
topped all of my courses again. Then | took to solving the problem of 
dealing with Real People. 


| found it surprisingly simple. 


Sociology, body language, some study of linguistics. | soent three 
days reading the dictionary from cover to cover. I'd never thought to 
do so before, nor really needed to; even if | didn't have the right 
words in my mind, there was no need to limit my thinking to the 
constraints of language. | saw it as a mesh, a grid with which one 
could transfer information, and with that attitude | turned my mesh 
into the finest one | could. 


| got along with my classmates far easier after that. 


When | was eighteen, a Professor offered me a teaching job. 


| Knew him quite well. He was a personable, if somewhat eccentric 
man; he'd taught three of the courses I'd topped. While not the best 
teacher, he was an excellent orator, and could easily hold the 
attention of his students for the marathon three-hour lectures for his 
more advanced classes. He needed someone to take a position 
teaching the first year courses' tutorial classes; | was glad to take 
the position, and the pay nicely supplemented my personal finances. 


It took some time to review the material on the course. It had been 
some years, but refamiliarising myself with the content didn't take 
long. Each week, I'd spend some hours preparing notes and 
worksheets for the course. The physics was basic to me, and | 
enjoyed passing on the knowledge. Admittedly, | was younger than 
some of the students, but nobody made too big a deal of the matter. 


At the end of the semester, only 3 in the class of 78 students failed, 
and they were the ones who hadn't attended my tutorials. The 
Professor was exceptionally pleased, and offered me a similar job in 
the second semester. 


At the end of the second semester, just before my nineteenth 
birthday and going into the final year of my Undergraduate degree, 
he offered me a research job. 


The research replaced most of what my final year of tuition would 
have been. For the first half of the year, | mostly covered theoretical 
Quantum Mechanics concepts. It was, while groundbreaking, not 
especially interesting work for me. Most days were spent poring over 
scientific articles the library's archives, trying to piece together the 
way that the nanoscopic world worked. At the end of the first 
semester, | came across a paper that greatly altered the course of 
my research.