corrections. In her subsequent testimony, Specialist Simos claimed 
that she had intended to submit the document to Dr. Rajaputram. 
However, she later admitted she did not believe that relaying the 
contents of her dreams to her superiors would have changed the 
outcome of future events. - Sabapathy V., Archival Department 


Archived Testimony from Franz Ziegler, RAINBOW BODY Head 
Researcher, dated 1989/02/01: 


Yes, it was Jocasta that started having the dreams first. 
For her they'd started in July, though she did not report it 
to anybody at the time. | think she was worried about 
being separated from Rao. Rao had taken up too much 
of her energy, too much of her time - she must have 
spent whole days in the observation room, even as the 
rest of us scrambled to have the place prepped for the 
handover to the brass. The experiments had stopped, 
and all but three of the subjects had been cleared and 
returned to general circulation. Yet she still talked to 
Rao. She was growing tired, and afraid. Afraid they'd 
write her up for excessive cognitohazard exposure or 
somesuch, and send her away. All she wanted was to be 
here with him, to get answers from him. Eventually, it 
was too much, and she stopped - at my behest. It clearly 
was too much on her. 


| went in there once or twice, and talked with him, for a 
given measure of talk. It's all on the record. | remember 
leaving from those sessions feeling greatly unsettled, as 
if | had glimpsed the scene of a great tragedy. | do not 
know what Jo saw in her interactions with him that made 
her go back again and again. | tried listening to the 
tapes, once - as head researcher, | had the authority to 
do so - but as soon as | played them, it felt like | was on 
the cusp of committing something profane. Like 
eavesdropping on a confessional. 


Then | started having the dreams too, long, plunging 
nightmares of light and sound, sending me awake with 


the faint aftertaste of sweetness on my lips - awake with 
the feeling of the familiar beside the divine. That 
morning, | moved to my office and dug out two copies of 
the standard dream report. On the first | found my pen 
trembling above the third blank, paralysed with 
forgetfulness; the second | tore and shred. | was 
convinced the dream was a message, an omen of things 
to come - but it was not one that was meant for me. | 
believed its intention though | did not understand its 
contents. | believed it, without seeking further 
verification. On this point | admit my lack of discernment. 
But belief is a stronger force than any of us realise, sir. 
You've been here long enough to know that as well as | 
do. We are who we are because we believe. 


When Jo told me about her dreams, and that it was of 
utmost importance that we leave the site before noon, | 
did not disbelieve her. After breakfast we left on foot 
without telling anyone. | asked her if we were escaping 
some terrible catastrophe. She said that Rao had 
promised her nobody would be hurt. She also asked if 
there was a Safe place that we could hide in until the 
events foretold in her dreams had come to pass. 


| told her about the safehouse down at [REDACTED]. | 
remembered the place from the initial briefing for the 
project - they stored backup equipment and supplies 
here in the eventuality of the site being compromised. 
We went in one at atime, she first, and | second. Inside, 
she went straight for the equipment closet and strung out 
a set of electrodes. She turned to me and said, "Hook 
me up. There's no more time to waste." 


"That's a test set. You haven't been conditioned. It's not 
going to work," | told her. 


She pushed the set into my hands. "Then we improvise. 
Besides, I've read the papers. This is all we need - the 
rest is just supplementary." 


My rational mind believed what she was intending to be 


impossible. | knew from my early days at the project that 
the procedure would just as likely fail as it was to kill her 
entirely. But we'd both seen the dreams, and in the light 
and heat of the dream that | remembered something had 
reached out then and touched my conscious mind as if to 
say, "This is the only way." | looked into her eyes and 
saw that she believed that too. We went ahead. 


In the cupboard, | found a dripfeed, a waterproof 
cassette player with the bright yellow cognitohazard 
triangle emblazoned on it, and an early version of the 
electrotherapy machine we'd used for the first tests. 
Inside the ice compartment of the freezer were five bags 
of the serum. There was an untouched tank in the 
bathroom with the packets of salt still sealed. Jo set it up 
while | went to work programming the machines from 
memory. It wasn't hard working from the presets, and | 
found myself recreating almost precisely the very pattern 
on the oscilloscopes that had surely been burnt into my 
eyes from the long nights of lab work. Any further 
adjustments would have to be impromptu. But that 
something stirred again, and reassured me of my path. 
From the bathroom, | heard the sound of the tank's 
filtration system running. There was the sound of 
splashing as Jo tested the waters. "It's good to go," she 
called. 


We had to patch the trodes and drip system through 
some extension cables so that they could reach the 
bathroom. | had experience only with the bioelectrical 
part of the procedure; Jo intubated herself, wincing as 
the warm saline entered her veins. "Just one more 
thing," she said, producing a marker from her pocket. On 
the hatch of the tank, she inscribed a twirling, eight-sided 
pictogram in a single careful motion that ended with both 
ends entwined in its center. "Now we begin." 


| looked away as she stripped and placed the electrode 
helmet on her head. The tank was custom-made, with 
speakers embedded in the sides; all | needed to do was 


Although SCP-279 has no known motive, it does not have a known 
history of violent behavior. SCP-279 has been observed standing in 
unusual areas for up to several days at a time, looking into windows 
of occupied rooms, walking in a circle roughly two meters in 
diameter for hours, [DATA EXPUNGED] in houses, entering shops 
and [REDACTED] staring [REDACTED] shop manager informed 
local authorities after three minutes, walking along roads, etc. 


Care must be taken to avoid direct skin contact with SCP-279. When 
such contact is made, the person in question will vanish along with 
SCP-279 at the usual time of disappearance. Only one individual 
has been recovered after direct contact with SCP-279, despite 
[REDACTED] D-class and equipment expended. Said individual 
appeared to be in a state of near-catatonic shock upon recovery ina 
basement. After being relocated to Site- , the subject showed signs 
of being legally blind despite examinations proving vision was only 
slightly farsighted. Subject appeared to be reasonably lucid despite 
showing signs of mental [DATA EXPUNGED]. 


[DATA EXPUNGED] reported saying “Get away from me” repeatedly 
while [DATA EXPUNGED] however, does not satisfactorily explain 
the injuries the subject incurred while confined to a straitjacket, in a 
padded room. 


Addendum-279-A: Agents monitoring SCP-279 have brought to our 
attention a problematic development. While in the past, information 
leaks were secured easily due to the fact that SCP-279 rarely 
appeared near large crowds, it has recently been frequenting 
densely populated areas. 


More conspicuously odd actions have also been noted, although this 
may be due to the fact that more people are reporting unusual 
events surrounding SCP-279. Despite our best efforts, SCP-279 has 
since become something of a landmark of the town due to its open, 
unusual behavior. Liberal amounts of amnestics were administered 
when citizens noticed connections between missing individuals and 
SCP-279. Violence directed towards SCP-279 attracted large 
amounts of attention and resulted in an immense security breach 
before agents were able to arrive. 


Currently, efforts are being made to maintain security without 


to play from the cassette, cue the drip, and regulate the 
pattern. She entered the tank and carefully shut the 
hatch. | turned the switch on the drip machine and it 
emitted a beep, signalling the switch from saline to 
serum. | knocked twice on the tank, signalling that it had 
begun. "Godspeed," came her muffled voice from 
beneath the hatch. 


There was no more fear. When the thrashing began | 
found myself stroking the tank and whispering the words 
| did back then: simple words of soothing and 
encouragement. "You're strong. You'll hang in there. 
You're the best of the best. You'll handle this, | believe ... 
" The splashing subsided. Her vitals remained strong. | 
attenuated the pattern, adjusted the last of the dripfeed, 
and sent her under. 


In reality, we were two rogue employees swept under the 
dream-fervour of an anomaly. But in that moment, 
surrounded by the hum of the machinery, | felt every bit 
in control of my rational thoughts. Before my eyes, theta 
waves began to dance on the oscilloscope screen. 
Against all odds, | had succeeded - though Jo still had a 
long way to go. 


Archived Testimony from Jocasta Simos, Esoteric Containment 
Specialist, dated 1989/08/02: 


| wasn't prepared to tell this part of my story before 
today. Now, it's almost been a year. | think it's about time 
the truth came to light. 


In the tub, | went under, just like Rao had shown me. I'd 
never been subjected to the procedure before, but | 
recognised its sensations from the reactions of those that 
had gone before me. In the tank, it was like my entire 
body had dissipated into a million pieces, floating further 
and further apart from each other until the feeling of the 
drips and attachments had faded into the background of 


the tape track with its ambient binaurals around my ears. 
Eventually the binaurals themselves ceased to be 
audible to me. | began to panic when | could not feel my 
heart beating. The sensation of death encroached all 
around me. | was alone in the universe. | was me. | was 
no longer me. Then panic turned into clarity: this was 
exactly how it had felt to dream those dreams back in 
July. 


Just thinking about it now makes me shiver. Now | 
understood how those first subjects felt when they went 
under, before the conditioning process had been refined. 
| had the familiarity of my dreams and my experiences 
with near-ego death to prepare me for what | saw. But 
they - they hadn't. God, it must have driven them mad. 


| suppose it was at this point of the procedure that the 
subjects were introduced to the instructions. | was aware 
of the idea of sounds from outside, but | did not hear 
them with my ears. | knew there would be a tap dripping 
behind me, or the hum of the dripfeed on my two o'clock, 
but the thought just didn't occur to me to see them. Left 
unprimed, my mind wandered in a faint copy of my 
dreamscape, where dim shadows danced amidst vague 
memories of places that | knew. 


| drifted for what felt like eternity until | became aware of 
a hive of shadows, a mass of swirling shapes that | soon 
recognised as the shadows that had terrified me in the 
dream. Somehow they were not as terrifying as the 
dreams themselves - maybe because | was only here as 
a guest, and not its resident and their prime target. They 
had congregated around a gate of sorts, looking like the 
arched iris of a massive eye. Inside that gate, there was 
another space, a space of something as clear and lucid 
as plain water, where | felt no secrets could lie. | 
approached, and it let me pass through. Then | saw it - in 
the stillness, the shadow-bell, framed in the vague 
memories of the site's fluorescents, and containing within 
it, his body. Rao's body, towering before my vision like 


an ocean. He was so much more massive in person. As | 
stared, a portion of his eyes swiveled and regarded me, 
fixing me in their blinding glare. | screamed so loud then 
that | thought | would wake from the trance. But 
something had held me within the bell. | did not wake. 
After a while, | felt no fear, only the recognisable dream- 
sensation of familiarity mixed with death. 


Seeing him in full from the outside, | now truly knew that 
it was him. There was no question about it. We'd been 
on missions in England before, runs with the paranormal 
that left us half-mad with fear - we'd all been forged in 
fire, and we knew the shapes of each other's souls. This 
was him. He'd formed the clearness and the bell, to keep 
himself safe, but it was him, alright. 


The moment | understood that, my vision morphed. | was 
now standing at his height, looking into his eyes, the 
eyes that he had had as a man. There were no secrets 
here. When he spoke, he spoke in a language that he 
and | immediately understood, unencumbered by the 
distance of the dream. It sounded like a thousand silk 
sheets being unfurled. He said, smiling, happy as a lark 
and plain as day: "Jo, Jo, I'm so glad you finally came." 


| embraced him, overjoyed. In the same language as his, 
| said, "I've missed you so much. | don't want to see you 
go." Surprisingly, the words flowed as easily from my 
tongue as it did from his. 


| asked him if he was in pain - if he had been in pain. He 
shook his head and told me that he was not in pain as | 
knew it, but that he felt himself growingly wrapped in 
both rapture and fear: the rapture of the knowledge and 
power he possessed, and the fear that this power had 
instilled in him. He gestured to the hive of shadows 
outside. They shifted, as if in response, and their flurry 
around the bell grew slightly quicker. | felt the sensation 
of what passed for eyes running over my skin: my 
presence in this realm had clearly not gone unnoticed. 


He said, "| fear the fates, but | also fear the powers 
greater and more subtle than the fates. Every movement 
| make sends a ripple that draws both of them ever 
closer to me." 


Rao withdrew from the embrace and produced a knife in 
his hand, which he pressed into mine. It was black as 
pitch, and its edge twinkled with what | thought were 
stars. 


| told him that | couldn't do it. That knowing it had to be 
done would not make its doing any easier. | insisted that 
there had to be other ways, better ways, in which this 
could have ended. We were not subsumed to fate. He 
shook his head, and bade me to calm down. Slowly, Rao 
reached towards my eyes and pressed my lids shut with 
the fingers of his free hand. They burned, and in that 
moment | ceased to be blind, because | had seen the 
wheel of the world. 


In one spoke, | saw men in black execute my superiors 
and colleagues one by one, as the disembodied voice in 
the basement pleaded with them to stop. In another 
mere steps in parallel with the first, a strange man is tied 
to a strange machine and made to bark into the 
darkness, wherein he begs for calamities to happen. In 
accordance, twenty-seven silos explode, taking with 
them a hundred thousand lives. A ray of light pierces the 
Siachen Glacier, vapourising all life within twenty 
kilometres. From their souls is forged a bloody peace. 


In yet another spoke, this peace does not come. Panic 
gives rise not to surrender, but to steeled resolve. A 
missile is readied from a ship in the west, and is cleaved 
into two by an unseen hand minutes before launch. In 
the waves of escalation and retaliation that follow, vaults 
on both sides are opened. Horrors are unleashed. In the 
flames of what remain, slumbering giants rouse for war. 


And in the darkest part of the wheel, shapes like castles 
appear in the sky. The god-man, unable to die, watches 


helplessly from his throne as the beasts he drew forth 
consume the collective sanity of humanity. There is a 
storm, and a great flood, and a rending of the earth. 
Soon, nothing else remains.