She had seen too much, knew too much. She danced to fc 
rather not have. She downed a pill of giddy-thoughts-and-s 
citizen belts (against regulation), desperately trying to forg 
plastered on belts all the same. 


Xe walked to the girl. Most people thought xe was part of < 
design, the scum of the Earth; deserters, cowards, degene 
image, but Reyes had both brain and standards. 


Xe reached out to the girl, swatting a flock of bright pink n< 
synthetic music they chirped. "Hey! You alright there!" 


She looked at Reyes, her eyes overflowing with tears and 


Xe knew xe had stumbled xemself into trouble the very mc 
say. "I-| can't hear the stars sing anym-" 


And then, the alarms went off, the windows of the overlook 
polarized; every citizen of xyr class, xemself included, bec 
shook the WarD to the ceiling, the music gone, the lights s 
with warnings and advisories. 


The powerful, commanding voice went: Attention, D-Clas 
in this Arcology. Do not approach the exterior nor atte 
return to the previously designated emergency areas. 
Arcology... 


Of course, the grandiosity of such anomalies is not lost on me. It is 
not lost on many of us. There will be stories from beyond our light 
that will go forever unexplained, tales of survivors who saw other 
suns over other worlds, and sometimes just hints, clues to a greater 
universe... lost. We agreed that letting go is worth more than the 
alternative. 


"We agreed.” Nobody else did. Just us. 


| feel like crying. If | close my eyes, | will see how the Sister of the 
Sun withers and dies again, writhing, her face frozen in pain as it 
snaps in pieces; so | do not. 


Half-walking, half-jumping down the hall of my house (a small lunar 
bunker, well equipped but mostly just functional), | reach my 
terminal. It has a magnificent screen, hemispheric, capable of 
reproducing in real time and perfect tridimensionality every event 
that | am supposed to know about in the entirety of the Solar 
System. 


For the past ten or so years, however, we have been euthanizing 
every single anomaly we knew of. There are not many alerts left to 
which | should pay attention to. There was a good reason: we did 
not want them to suffer what the Sister suffered. 


Or so many other things, monsters and wonders alike, that we killed. 
We killed them just so we would remain hidden away. 


Not just us, the Foundation; not even us, humanity; us, Sol. 


The one star left; the one star we will carry with us. 


Old Man Sun fell, his augmented body finally spent. A con 
for it. Finally, his brain died out. 


Then, he woke up. 


"Well, it took you a while," said the Old Man Dream. 


Old Man Sun opened his eyes. Yes, the sky was there, bu 
started, "my eyes..." 


He touched his hands, his face, his ears. Old Man Sun coi 
see. He looked around. 


The moon still gleamed over his head, untouchable. Unde 
Mode, Arcologies bunkering down and closing sheet after 
He stood over a mountain higher than any of the immense 


"They've come a long ways, eh," said Old Man Dream. Ol 
clothes like those of the Federation's highest. "Despite our 


"What happened ?", asked Old Man Sun. The other shook 
"They have noticed a threat they can't beat, so they're run 
"... but, you-?" 

"You are dreaming. It's normal you don't recognize me, mt 
"Dreamer?" 

"Sun Master." 

"lam dying, am | not?" 


"Sure. No more ball-pushing. The younglings have it cove: 
late to stop it." 


Old Man Sun gaped at the scene. "| am dying..." 


He gasped for an air that did not exist and saw the Cities ¢ 
the Sun rolled on its own, warming the cold concrete and 1 


He took it all in, his dreamself shaking and beginning to cr 
Old Man Dream came to him, placing a hand over his sho 
Old Man Sun nodded, nervous. "What about you?" 


"| will probably be joining you too, soon. | just have to cher 


"Go, then... | shall see you s-" 


"SCP-499-55 is down, | repeat, SCP-499-55 is down." 


"Dispatching SCP-499-56. God, we're running out of clone 


Because, for a very long time, the Foundation almost lost 
everything. 


For the longest time, we had to make concessions. We had to go all 
the way straight down to discreetly endorsing fascism, then all the 
way up to enacting the world's greatest farce; Foundation, 
Federation, just brands for the same product. Then, with the masses 
blind of nepenthe, we worked our backs by handling the heft of the 
world on our own, and expected it to get heavier; so we expanded. 


Humanity is the Foundation now. The Foundation is Humanity now. 
Extricating one from the other now would leave one limping to its 
deathbed and the other pointless. 


| digress. | check on the progress of Phase two, opening a float feed 
connected to a camera on the surface. The last wave of true 
starlight already passed Earth and | missed it. Stars have dulled, 
and most die out entirely as | look. Amused, | wonder if that one star 
can still see us, and whether we can tell what it thinks of this whole 
thing. 


| open another float on the automated array of devices meant to 
monitor it. | smile. Threatening to the end. 


| close it, and know that the star is dead. All stars are dead. 


It looks promising. It did not use to, back then; our predecessors 
feared we would lose everything to fanatics or anomalies... but we 
won. Kings of the anthill that Earth had become. And even after 
winning, that was not enough. 


Resources were scarce, even under our rule. We absorbed every 
group, every corporation, every nation; it was not yet enough. So we 
expanded even further. 


Of course, as part of an ongoing effort to secure the secrecy of our 
project, we told the masses that interstellar travel was impossible, 
probably even dangerous to experiment with. It used to be, yet we 
developed it one hundred and twelve years ago. We used it to 
collect the resources required to implement the plan, most of them 
extrasolar in origin. 


The populace believes the underlying physics of the universe are 
comfortingly solid, reliable and absolute. Therein lies yet another 

kind lie; C is as much a barrier as it is a protective wall: nothing of 
the sort. 


The truth is far more complicated. Thousands of self-replicating 
ships were launched back in the first days of the project, when the 
shadow had barely begun to manifest. We did not deplete our own 
star system because we could reliably predict how much humanity 
would need it in the days after the plan was completed. Those ships 
traveled faster than light towards their colonies, loaded with three 
things: automated machinery, a strict schedule, and a dedicated 
workforce, inspired through a manufactured religion. Billions of 
them. A flourishing civilization on their own. 


Most of the bulk of humanity is actually composed of what we like to 
call "E-Class Citizens," who called themselves "Exiles." The E-Class 
personnel, | am told, originally handled the securing of anomalies. 


Now, as | and twelve others flip a switch, they are dead. Scattered 
across a fractured cosmos, a dozen worlds depleted of all useful 
materials... just to make certain that the Foundation had a chance at 
success. Their exile, and the stories and legends that surround it, is 
ended. A century of oral tradition, dedicated machine worship and 
astronomical mysticism, all of ita delicately engineered and 
projected memeplex, burnt in a second to never be remembered by 
anyone. 


But the Overseers. 


We, the Overseers. The makers, shapers and guardians of lies. 


Everything a lie. He sees it now. 


into several other objects. It is believed that SCP-629 was being 

held at this facility due to Church members believing it was a portion 

of their 'god’. Interviews with SCP-629 have confirmed this. 

SCP-629 claimed that it at first allowed their beliefs to persist, as it 

believed that they would provide it with some level of safety. Church 

members located at this facility have been terminated as of / 
/1995, and SCP-629 has been classified as Safe. 


+ Show Interview 629-1 
Interviewed: SCP-629 
Interviewer: Dr. 


Foreword: This log was taken as part of 
SCP-629's initial acquisition. 


<Begin Log> 


Dr. : Can you tell us more about how the 
Church came to acquire you? 


SCP-629: So | was walking around downtown 

, kind of a slummy city but a good place to 
hide if you're some kind of freak like me. 
There'd been some rumors about me going 
around town and I'd been thinking about 
getting the hell out of dodge, when one night 
this hooded dude walks up to me while I'm in 
my alley. 


Dr. : What did he say? 


SCP-629: He offered to take me to some kind 
of church thing where they could take care of 
me. At first | was pretty hesitant because, 
y'know, look at me. But the guy told me that 
was why they wanted me there. | figured it 
would probably be better than the whacko 
doctor or living on the streets, so | said yes. 


Dr. : Where did this person take you to? 


The fleets of the Exiles watch in awe, fear and sudden co 
machine they know well, for their mothers, and their moth 
with the bones of every dusty ball of ice and rock a dozen 
enter the holy space beyond it. 


It had been forbidden. 


Now, Grand Helmsman Roderick watches as the Border c 
dimmer around them. He sees his brethren confused, sho 


It had been forbidden. 


Roderick turns and looks down to the small reliquary of hi: 
which Is One (One Mind, One World, One Purpose) that F 
right all along. All the promises and hopes their kin had be 


Again, it had been forbidden. By whom? 


He takes the most sacred thing he has ever called his ow 
When faced with the terrified looks of the other vat-bred E 


He now knows the truth, and he shouts out. 
"It Who Is was Never Whole!" 


And Sol, and all its promises, goes away in a stream of tw 
the universe slowly becomes darker, darker as the worlds 
to devour first. Darker as if a shadow came to them... 


It had always been coming. It was here. The end of the ur 


Desperation washes all over the fleet as the stars went ou 
Border. There is nothing left, the Helmsman knows, but to 


And he does. Connecting the thick tube of communication 


"Pray for your souls, my brethren,” Roderick says, searchi 
instead. "May they reach It and make us all Whole again." 


And lies were worth it, it was all worth it. For the first time in all of our 
history, an Overseer can look upon our works and say "Yes, we are 


safe. Yes, Humanity is safe. Yes, Earth is safe. The Foundation's 
mission is complete." 


Earth will live. Humankind will develop, and wither, and eventually 
die when our sun dwindles and dies itself... unless we manage to 
trick ourselves out of this new conundrum, of course. 


Because the Foundation will persevere. We persevered these past 
decades, and we succeeded. At the negligible cost of the rest of the 
universe, we escaped a threat that is now devouring all known 
space... perhaps all that once was, for lack of a better word, "real." 


We do not know how long our countermeasures will last. But even 
that has been taken into account, of course. There are dozens of 
temporal sinks beyond the Oort Cloud, their size larger than the 
Moon, continuously bartering time out of a universe that has none 
left for itself. They siphon what little eons can be salvaged from it... 
My peers say that we cut its agony short. | believe euthanizing it 
without asking is still murder. 


The Anchors we have deployed took almost a century of 
uninterrupted work to finish. They do keep at bay the simple horror 
of a predator that we, poor prey, are not evolved enough to outrun 
on our own. The entire thing requires an enormous array of Dyson 
statites to keep it going, barely active. And still, we know — / know 
that it is the right thing to do. 


As | input the final activation sequence authorization and see how 
the other twelve do the same, | wonder if there was a right thing to 
do. 


Of course, | Know there is, and we did it. We vowed to protect 
humanity. Intellectually, | know how morally myopic this all sounds, 
to sacrifice the entire universe as bait while we built our own 
defense, our /nfinite Border. But please, judge us kindly. 


It is too big for us to picture. And we have seen the children. We 
have met the lovers. We have embraced the siblings. We have 
rebelled against the elders. We are humans, and we are egotistical, 
and self-centered, and ultimately, scared. 


We want to live. 


Is it such a crime, to not give up? To know what it means, to be huma 


A nameless man wanders alone in the plains of Mercury. 


His suit is ancient, and has been repaired many times. His 
computer insists that he should go to a shelter or at least < 
may look upon now. Worse still, he cannot even feel the D 
over... and his last friends are gone with them. Immortals | 
lost, and knows it. 


In a certain way, he ironizes, he got lost an age ago and d 


He thinks of the things he knows. Of what he has seen an 
Earlier today, he saw a goddess die and the stars fade aw 


It is enough. He has done enough. 


True, he failed; but his was always a titanic task to accom} 
to stop the Foundation when there was time, the holy men 


They all failed, because humanity was afraid, because hur 
Foundation's. The more comfortable choice, to sit down ar 
when it was over. 


He has never blamed them for that; no matter how little he 
Well... he does now. 


He checks again; oxygen will run out in a few minutes. Wh 
ever know him or his fate anyways, nor care. And it matter 


| hear weeping and prayer (prayer! Such cowardice! To whom 
should we pray? Would such prayers be even pondered, coming 
from us?) from my equals as the system comes online. The Border 
is now closed, for good. Forever. 


| look through the float that shows the camera feed, knowing in 


advance what | will see: a black, starless night sky. All light from 
other suns, looming over other worlds forevermore trapped beyond 
the Border, dead void looking back at us. Fortunately, and thanks to 
the global alert systems, only a few human beings will be looking at 
it right now. Only B and a few select C personnel are supposed to 
look at it, and those are loyal enough as to take their amnestic 
course and let go of it. 


If we say they can live without it, they can live without it. Memories 
are usually a burden, anyways. 


Phase three is the most poetic and, | know, the most unnecessary 
part... but the others said it would bring a comfort to the masses that 
Ennui agents could not. Only the B-Class personnel dedicated to 
astrophysics will ever know the truth about the statites, and those 
will be told that the Border is a protective system that surrounds Sol; 
not a veil. 


As its main systems come online, the immense microwave receivers 
gather the energy from the statites. By the billions, satellites deploy, 
designed to energize the Infinite Border, divert power to mirrors and 
reflectors and, for the lack of a better word, massive and extremely 
well-contained micronized stars. They are magnetically contained 
fusion reactors not larger than a small country, numbering in the 
thousands. 


And finally, as the powerful space-bender tethers close the bleeding 
Border over itself, Knitting it in a trillion fractal arcs around the 
furthest limits of the System, all the excess light recaptured from Sol 
is turned into further energy for the Infinite Border. 


Now its name is legitimate: a few of these void-bridges bend the 
light until recreating the vague luminous path of the Milky Way, and 
Solar space is a perfectly closed Klein bottle. The Border now 
irradiates the Solar System with a fake starry night. 


As the not-quite starlight crosses the few minutes that separate us 
from the statites, | try to imagine a bubble barely a few light-hours 
large. | try to imagine a teardrop as it detaches from the universe's 
face and drifts away. 


Safe. Confined. Protected.