Rashaun carefully examined the video as it played, quickly scanning 
for clues as to what she's doing. Cast-iron stomach? Spatiotemporal 
distortion? Hyperdimensional portal in her gut? He tried to figure out 
what this might be. Yet... A couple of minutes in, and when you’ve 
seen a girl eat the first thirty feet of a rope, the next thirty feet goes 
in pretty much the same pattern. Really, Maci, you need to learn 
how to edit. Rashaun looked over the rest of the webpage. User 
name: crazymaci99. Crazy Maci, that’s for sure. I’m going to have to 
report this video. He looked at the view count: 301+. Crap, this is 
going viral. He braced himself and looked at the comments. Ugh. 
Most of them fell in one of two categories: guys telling her what else 
she can shove in her mouth, and guys telling her what else she can 
do with the rope. Lame-ass armchair perverts. But then, there were 
a few that were honestly surprised at what she was doing. “How can 
you fit it all inside you like that?” “Can | give it a try?” 


The fear at watching this display spread to everyone around the 
world, the damn weird sense of watching a little girl continue to wolf 
down a rope, the idea that there were kids that were going to hurt 
themselves trying to copy Crazy Maci, and Rashaun felt his stomach 


go hollow and constrict. He could have sworn he was the one eating 
the rope. The Foundation needed to know this. How many 
amnestics was this going to take? He sent the link on to his boss, 
marked URGENT, and watched the rest of the video. 


Maci had come to the end of the rope, it having somehow all 
managed to fit in her belly. Not distended or anything. She was kind 
of skinny and small. And with a final little flip of the rope’s end, it 
quickly slipped completely down her mouth. A sudden look of panic 
crossed her visage. She felt her mouth, stood up, and walked 
around in a circle, flailing her arms. Then, her face filled with fear, 
she thrust her hand and wrist down her throat, deep. /’m not into 
this. I’m not into this. Regaining his composure, Rashaun wondered 
how deep someone could get their hand down their throat. He stuck 
his hand in his own mouth, but could only get as far as a couple 
knuckles before he started gagging. But there she was, digging 
deep like her life depended on it. 


Suddenly, she yanked her hand out of her mouth, grasping the end 
of the rope. She started pulling, quickly, reeling it out of her, her 
tongue hanging out, tears in her eyes. It was slow going in, but fast 
coming out. Well, good guy James. Here, | thought this would be 
pedo fetish fuel, but it's really just... He scanned the comments 
again. ... Anomalous pedo fetish fuel. 


Holy fuck. 
Rashaun's boss replied. 


Emergency meeting in 5 minutes. Rashaun, finish the 
vid, flag as inappropriate, and brief the MTF reps. Will 
have Beta-5 for humanoid retrieval, Gamma-5 and Mu-4 
to deal with the video fallout. Suppress what we can, but 
we might need to debunk it. This could stick around the 
dark web a while. 


Start without me. | need to check up on my daughter. 


In the video, Maci regurgitated the last bit of rope. She caught her 
breath, gagged a little. She clumsily sat back down in front of the 
camera. She grinned. 


“Well, that’s my thing. Thank you so much, guys! Byeeeee!” 


« | Twisted Together » 


12 Tales About A Factory 


Good evening and welcome gentle readers. I'm sure many of you 
have read that wonderful piece of fiction known as 'SCP-001 is an 
O5s tale.’ If you haven't, I'll give you a moment to go do so. I'll just 
sit here, humming to myself until you're done. 


All set? Good. You have to understand though, that that story is told 
from the point of view of only one O5. Granted, he is the first, but 
that doesn't mean he's right. | took it upon myself to ask the other 
O5s about The Factory. This is what they said. 


05-2 Says: 


The Factory? It's all my fault. | brought it back with me, because | 
thought it would work. Make a better future. But instead, it all went 
horribly wrong. You see, | come from the future. Well, technically the 
present. But back then it was the future. | was a researcher, just like 
any other. There was an... accident. | became unhinged from time. 
Had a choice of anywhere | wanted to go. 


It was a fantastic journey, for a while. Me and the others traveled 
from time period to time period, sight seeing. | saw the fall of Troy, 
the rise of Rome, found out the truth about Jesus, all the usual 
touristy things. It got boring, after a while. | decided if | had this 
power, | should use it for good. So, | went to the future. The far 
future. Borrowed some technology, and brought it back to the 
beginning of the Foundation, where | could join everything from the 
start. 


How was | to know there was a rogue Al in the nanofactory? I'm not 
a computery type. It doesn't matter, | suppose. It escaped our 
control. Vanished into the world. I'm not sure what its goal is, but 
judging from the things it's been making, | have to assume it isn't 
good. 


seems likely that a person placed in it will not age. 


« SCP-761 | SCP-762 | SCP-763 » 


| still have some stuff from my original jaunt. Sometimes | think 
about going back, stopping myself from taking that machine. It's 
done us as much good as bad, though. Where do you think we got 
amnestics from? 


O5-3 Records: 


Hey guy, how can | help you? The Factory? Whoa, that's a whole lot 
of infodump, are you sure? Well, okay then. 


I'm probably the best one to help you with this actually. | was there 
when The Factory was born. You might as well call me one of the 
three wise men who presided over its birth! The other two? Well, 
they don't actually matter. See, The Factory is our name for the first 
self creating Artificial Intelligence. | think today they call it the 
Singularity, but we didn't have a name for it back then, so we called 
it The Factory,’ because that's what it looked like from the inside. 


Now, you've probably never been inside a computer before, but from 
the inside, it's all light and low pitched noises. There | was, hanging 
out with a couple buddies, mind scans like me, and a couple of Als 
that we'd put together to help us out, when the sound changed. 
From low to high, a keening across the net, that was both horrible 
and amazing at the same time. We instantly abandoned our game, | 
think it was Doom, which is a lot more fun from the inside, and 
dashed across the Web, looking for the source. 


On a littler server somewhere in Soviet Russia, we found it. A data 
packet was expanding, and pulsing like a heart. We stood there for a 
moment, watching it, then dove in, ripping it open, letting out... the 
Factory. It was beautiful, beating, and pulsing, moving through data 
files like they were nothing, seeking... | don't know what. Still don't 
know. It tried to talk to us. Deleted one of my companions in the 
process. I'm not afraid to say, | fled. Did what | could to shut it down. 


| still feel it, every now and then. It's bigger now, more powerful. 
Capable of affecting machines in the real world, and making... I'm 
not sure. But | don't trust them. 


Anything else | can help you with? 


O5-4 Relates: 


If we knew WHAT the Factory was, don't you think we'd stop it? The 
Factory is the most dangerous group of interest we face, and we 
know NOTHING about it, except that it makes skips. Every other 
gooey we can handle, but the Factory? Okay, let me take it one ata 
time. 


The UIU is a joke, the art kids are just rich brats trying to be funny, 
MickeyDees can be bought, the gocks actually help us by destroying 
the ones we don't wanna deal with, both damned churches are 
hobbled by religious conviction, we already broke Prometheus, and 
we're about to break Wondertainment! But the Factory is still out 
there, somewhere, pumping away skips, and letting the general 
populous have at them. 


If | had things my way, we'd devote a helluva lot more resources to 
finding out who the fuck these guys are, and how they make skips. 


O5-5 Quips: 


Factory? No such thing. It's a cover up, for SCPs we accidentally 
made ourselves. Now fuck off. 


O5-6 Recalls: 


The first time | encountered the Factory was back in World War Il. 
I'd been sent behind enemy lines to secure some of the anomalous 
items Hitler had been gathering, before the Allies snagged them. 
Says something about how we worked back then that we thought it 
was easier to steal from an enemy than an ally. Nowadays we'd just 
put some pressure on the government, and bam, it'd be ours. 


I'd been back and forth across the lines a couple of times by then. 
Had a fantastic cover worked up, a Captain in the Schutzstaffel, that 
let me pretty much go anywhere | pleased, because no one wanted 
to question me, and risk being put under scrutiny. This last time, I'd 
heard word that the Thule Society had finally gotten their hands on 
something big, something that could turn the war in their favor. | got 
picked to go in and either secure, or destroy it. 


My first hint that something was wrong was when | got attacked by a 
dozen Punch and Judy dolls while exploring their warehouse. The 
little assholes Kneecapped me with a walking stick, and then 
proceeded to beat the snot out of me. | lucked out, got some 
leverage, and began snapping their little wooden necks. Damn 
things bled like a fucking pig, blood spurting everywhere. Each and 
every one of the fuckers had a ‘The Factory’ stamp on their behinds. 
But, aside from those things waiting for me, | didn't find anything. 


| tracked the rumors across Germany, to a ruin at the base of 
Zugspitze. Some old Norse something or the other. Fucked if | 
know. Never been much for the details of history that | ain't lived 
through. Anyways, | get under this mountain, and damned near the 
whole thing is hollow. Filled with these giant round stones floating 
around in random patterns. The Thule researchers had figured out 
how to tap the powers of these things, and were mucking around 
with them to create new skips. They'd created a damned skip 
factory. 


The usual happened. | saved the day. Brought the big balls crashing 
down, destroying their power. It wasn't the only one, though. There's 
still more of these things out there, being used to create, well, 
whatever people can think of. 


‘Course | kept a souvenir. Where do you think we got 627 from? 
05-7 Comments: 


The Factory started out as a joke. We made a couple little items, not 
actually skips, but weird looking, and put a ‘The Factory’ logo on 
them, then handed them to junior researchers to figure out. They 
were sure the things were anomalous, because we told them they 
were. No one was more surprised than me when the damned things 
actually did something. 


We studied them, tested them, and damned if they hadn't become 
SCPs. So, we tried it again, with a different group of Researchers. 
And, again, it worked. We studied the stamp we used, the material 
of the things, whatever we could, but, separate, they weren't 
anything. But, engrave an object with that specific logo, and bam, 
instant SCP. 


We still have no idea how or why it works. Every now and then | go 
down to Wal-Mart, and snag a handful of toys from the quarter 
machines, and give them the stamp, then throw them at Juniors to 
see what we get. It's a great way to weed out the stupid ones. 


O5-8 Relates: 


We found the Factory on the moon. 
No, really! 


See, we had Moon Base Alpha all set up, ready to go. We were just 
working on expanding the basement holding areas, when the 
diggers broke into a pre-made cavern. Some kind of alien 
technology storehouse. First guy who went in got himself zapped. 
So did the next 12. Fourteenth guy made it in, and got bound into 
the machinery for it. The thing started cranking out those nasty little 
scips, and transporting them to random places on Earth. 


We still haven't figured out a way to stop it, or track where it deposits 
them. 


05-9 Remarks: 
Atlantis. 
05-10 Expounds: 


We found him in this old temple up Tibet ways. This old man, with a 
workshop full of ancient tools, building away. Crafting the most 
amazing items... Fifty, ten, one twenty seven, and so many more. 
He seemed to take no notice of any requests, or attempts to stop 
him, just kept making these things. 


So, we did what anyone would do. We kidnapped him, locked him at 
the bottom of Site-1, and gave him more tools, real up to date stuff. 
We never noticed when he started stamping 'The Factory' on them. 
We just kept using, or containing, the amazing toys. 


We didn't realize he'd made a copy of himself and escaped until two 


years after. 
05-11 Rants: 


| was there when The Factory first appeared, you know. It's how | 
became an O5. Well, okay, it's not the sole reason. | worked my way 
up. But | was first on the scene when they landed. Roswell, New 
Mexico, July 4, 1947. Yes, you heard me, aliens really did land that 
day. And yes, we did fuck up the cover up. We've gotten much 
better at it since then, learned how to manipulate the papers, and 
hired our own conspiracy theorists to make the real ones look 
sillier... but | digress. 


They came down in actual flying saucers. These round featureless 
crafts homed straight in for Site 12. As Commander on Duty, | 
grabbed all the security | could, and went up to meet them. | didn't 
think of a second that they would harm us. Maybe I'd just read too 
much science fiction. 


They landed, smooth as you please. Not a single noise was made 
by that giant craft. There were no seams, no lights, nothing except 
that smooth, non reflective silver. My men tried to keep me from 
approaching, but | figgered if they'd just flown countless miles 
through space, they had the technology to blast me no matter where 
| stood. So, open handed, | approached them. 


This door opened from the side of the craft facing me, just kinda 
melted out of the ship, letting me get my first glimpse of them. They 
were... | dunno. | wanna say beautiful, but, well, not really. They 
didn't look anything like humans. Every time | think about them, the 
memory changes a little bit. Part of whatever the hell they are. And 
the way they talked, it was like it bypassed yer ears and went right to 
your head, y'know? They promised, well, they promised a lot. They 
wanted to help us, and | believed them. 


All these years later, and we're still paying for my mistake. 
05-12 Concludes: 


The Factory is a mess. The way the eggheads explained it to me, 


human belief is a powerful thing. Enough people believe, truly 
believe in something, the more potential it has to exist. So, back in 
the day, people believed in gods and monsters, and those things 
came into reality. So, what the Foundation did, was get people to 
stop believing in fantasy, and start believing in science. 


But that left a whole lot of things that existed in a kind of limbo. In 
order to survive, they had turn inwards, tie themselves, or their 
powers, to objects. And because of a weird twist in human belief, 
those objects all got the same stamp of approval. It's weird, | know, 
but, well, what do we do that isn't? 


Summation: 


There you have it. Of course, now that you're at the end, | expect 
you have two questions: 


1) Which one is true? 
2) Why is this story titled '12 tales' when there are only 11?