EXTRA NOTE 2: When | put Skip 16 in his jar, he started 
running up the side. While | was watching him, | fell over. 
He escaped. Put Skip 16 in his jar carefully so that you 
do not fall over. Skip 16 is not a toy. — — 


"Give me that." 

"Is there a problem?" 

"Malley, this is..." 

"Ha. I've never seen you speechless before." 


"I'm going to go check on the Blue Room. Last time it turned redd 
we lost... | think it was twelve good men." 


"And a close friend. Or two." 
"That's where / need to be." 


"Then do your job, damn it. Leave that on the table, and I'll do mine. 
...Here's your pencil back, Skip. Sorry if he rattled your bones." 


"Doctor Malley." 
"Doctor Kurtz?" 
"Merry Christmas." 
INTERESTING GROUP: The Foundation 


The SCP Foundation is a very large organization. It is 


like me if | was the size of the Earth. It performs my task 
and | think that it has done well. It has performed my task 
on me. 

| cooperate with the Foundation because | approve of its 
task. | also cooperate because | was told to and because 
of a third reason that | do not remember and because if | 
did not cooperate, it would not help anyone and | think | 
would be moved away. 

| like where | am. The Foundation is keeping me in 
Armed Containment Area 24. The Area is built around 
the Blue Room. The Blue Room has been designed to 
contain a Keter-class SCP with a high clearance rating 
and an immense risk factor. The continued lives of those 
in this facility are, despite the best efforts of the 
Foundation, entirely its decision. 


| wish | knew why | remember them. 


three (3) unsolved crossword puzzles. 


Input: An unsolved Sudoku puzzle 

Setting: 1:1 

Output: An unsolved Sudoku puzzle. The numbers have 
been changed around; it no longer resembles the original 
puzzle. 


Input: An unsolved Sudoku puzzle. 

Setting: Fine 

Output: A solved Sudoku puzzle, complete with margin 
notes and scribbling. 


Input: An unsolved Sudoku puzzle. 

Setting: Very Fine 

Output: A massive grid comprised of many smaller 
squares, resembling an enlarged Sudoku puzzle. The 
grid contains several characters not normally found in a 
standard 9x9 Sudoku square, including several Greek 
letters, various unidentified pictographs, arrows, and 
kanji. 

Note: This result has been photocopied and enlarged if 
anybody wants to take a crack at It. 


Input: An unsolved crossword puzzle 
Setting: 1:1 
Output: An unsolved word search. 


Input: An unsolved crossword puzzle 

Setting: Fine 

Output: A brief typed letter requesting the meanings of 
various short phrases, which are identical to the "clues" 
given in the crossword. 


Input: An unsolved crossword puzzle 

Setting: Very Fine 

Output: A crumpled-up piece of paper, launched at high 
velocity and trailing smoke. 

Note: Yeah, | never really liked those things, either. 


On the Slope of Olympus 


The newborn god who used to be Andrew MacGregor fell through 
the rift and crashed roughly to the mountainside. He collected 
himself and got to his feet. He called to the sun and moon, reaching 
for the sources of his power, but something was in the way. There 
was a thickness in the air - the god, though he had existed for only 
seconds, understood much of the human world. But not this 
thrummimg force, blocking him from his purpose. 


Others approached - beings like himself. They walked up calmly, 
wielding guns. How did he know what guns were? How did he know 
to question his own knowledge? 


Why couldn't he call down the sun? 


The soldiers marched to a halt and spread out, keeping a respectful 
distance. Their leader pulled out a small black box and held it up in 
front of her. The box began to speak a series of words, ina 
language he couldn't understand. No - it was one word, repeated 
over and over in many languages. Finally he heard one he 
recognized: "Hello." 


"Hello," he answered uncertainly. 


The woman spoke into the box, then held it out again. "You must 
have many questions. Please come with us, and we will answer 
them," it droned. 


"| don't suppose | have a choice," he said. The box translated his 
words into a series of grunts and barks. 


The soldier listened, then pulled off her helmet to reveal a charming 
smile. "We come as friends, to take you somewhere safe," she said 
through the device. 


So Andrew MacGregor, on his first day of godhood, descended 


Mount Olympus and willingly entered containment. 


"Well, this one's no good." Doctor Maria Alvarado frowned at the 
screen. "FMRI shows barely any difference from a typical human's 
— you can see some of it here, these striations on the amygdala — 
but this is not what we're looking for." 


The green lay in the imaging machine on the other side of thick 
glass, wall-mounted reality anchors pulsing away on both sides. The 
analysis room was cramped, and the SRA seemed to give off heat 
as it thrummed; Maria and her trainee were both starting to sweat. 


Doctor Garth Christensen compared the readout to the example 
charts she'd given him. "So this shows the minimum of anomalous 
features he would need to be a candidate?" 


"It doesn't need to be as atypical as the one you're looking at. But 
you want to be within, say, 10% of that. If you're not sure, just send 
them - we'd rather spend the money on extra cells than miss out on 
a green we can use." 


"Understood. So, does this mean you'll be staying until a better 
candidate comes along?" 


"| guess so. I'm not comfortable leaving you on your own until I've 
had a chance to show you the procedure in person. | guess you'll be 
stuck with me for a while." 


"Well, we're happy to have you." 


She grinned "I've seen the way your MTF friends look at me. They 
can't be rid of me soon enough. They all think I'd be digging around 
in their brains if | could." 


"Oh, come on, I'm sure they don't-" 


"They're not wrong." She smiled wider, more sweetly, and let him 
think she was joking. 


The newborn god who used to be D-822-46 floated out of the rift and 


down onto the mountainside, hovering above the crust of snow. She 
grew a pair of rabbit ears, swiveling them. Silence. 


The ears retracted and her face split from the nose down. Her 
tongue unbraided itself into tendrils, tasting the air as they waved. 
There were others surrounding the hill. 


They were hiding under the snow, but she could taste everything 
about them. Like her, but covered in armor. They did not carry the 
reek of fear, nor the electric hum of anger. They were merely 
determined. They had come to hunt. 


She put her face back together and willed herself to where one of 
them stood on the edge of the ring. The hunter leapt to his feet, 
firing his weapon; the bullets rippled into her like pebbles into a lake, 
vanishing harmlessly. The taste of panic made her blood start to 
rush. 


She popped him like a berry and pressed him dry, the fluids of his 
body swirling in the air around her, and jumped to her next enemy. 
The serpentine trail of blood and mucous darted to his helmet, 
flooding it, forcing its way down his nose and mouth, filling his lungs 
until they burst. She threw her head back and shrieked with joy. 


A boom echoed across the mountainside, and something 
undeniable - even to her - crashed into the groud. It was too slow; 
she was a streak in the wind, trailing color and furious glee. 


Someone pushed her - a tug toward nothingness. She shook it off, 
like the grip of a child, but it was real power. Power like hers. Power 
she might steal for herself, once she consumed the vessel that 
Carried it. 


She burst toward the one trying to unmake her, teeth bared; her will 
was stronger than his, her desire more forceful, and he could not 
make her change. Laughing, she spiraled and picked up speed, and 
they collided with enough force to scatter his body over the snow. 
The survivors broke their formation, starting to rush in, and she 
knew she was winning. She burst into flames, just to make them 
afraid. 


They closed on her, some of them running along the ground, others 
ripping through space the way that she did. She could sense words, 
coming out of their devices and traveling through the air between 
them. She didn't understand what was said, but she felt the meaning 
- through desperation, a plan. 


Stones rose up from the ground and began to strike her; she waved 
her hand, and they turned to moths and flew away. In the instant 
that took her, one of the others reached his will into her chest and 
pulled. She felt herself torn open, twisted and cracked, bones 
exposed, bare heart bitten by the cold. 


But she was above their world, and her body not subject to its laws. 
Her ribs spread wider, stretching and reaching, until they surrounded 
the nearest prey and snapped shut around him. 


She felt his screaming from inside his body as her bones extended 
and tunneled in. She pulled him toward her, reshaping them both, 
breaking down his form. She would add it to her own. She would 
add all of them to herself, mind and body, and any others she found, 
until there was nothing else left, until the only life that existed lived 
within her- 


Then a huge steel net came down over them all. Before she could 
erase it, the boom came again and an unstoppable force slammed 
into her legs, shearing them off mid-thigh. She screamed. She was 
suddenly bristling with darts, falling to the ground, pierced with a 
spear that began to pour lightning into her shifting flesh. 


She screamed again, and her agony blossomed into chaos. Spires 
of pointed bone shot up from the ground. A monstrous serpent burst 
roaring from the mountainside. A storm of teeth and thorns howled 
around her. 


They scattered, but quickly regrouped, spreading out into a 
rehearsed formation. Their leader roared defiance at her beast - she 
could hear it from where she lay, even through the woman's helmet. 
The creature writhed, scales ripping away and muscle instantly 
turning to ash, until its blackened skeleton crashed to the ground. 
One of them thickened time itself, and her projectiles slowed to a 
crawl, while another changed them to lotus petals with a soft, sad 


song. 


She tried to remake herself, but there was too much to overcome, 
and the harpoon inside her crackled again, and then there was 
nothing. 


Maria set down the bone saw. Her gloves, apron, and mask were all 
speckled with divine blood. 


The class-V reality bender lay naked and pale in its steel coffin. Its 
body had resumed a human shape after it lost consciousness - 
except for the legs, which ended in shreds just above where the 
knees had been. The bronze-uranium shells used by Achilles' Heel, 
it seemed, enforced local reality on the target even after passing 
through. 


The top of its skull was also missing, but Maria had done that 
herself. She began methodically inserting probes into the exposed 
brain, occasionally glancing at the fMRI readout on its wall-mounted 
screen as she explained each step to Garth. 


"Back when the project was first started, they had to use response- 
to-stimulus to figure out where to place their leads - they had to talk 
to the greens while they did this. Can you imagine?" 


Garth's eyes never left her hands, taking in wire after wire as she 
plugged them into the tissue. "So it's basically just a matter of 
putting the shunts in where the system tells you, and letting the 
computer do the rest?" 


"Yep. I'd say ‘it's not brain surgery,’ except... well, it is. But it's not 
really any harder than connecting the life support system at the end. 
Just put the plugs in the right place." She smiled, and caught him 
shuddering at how casual she was. Oh, well - I'm getting out of this 
miserable backwater, Doctor Garth can stay here with his opinions. 


"I've got this. Now that I've seen it, it seems pretty simple. I'm just 
going to set up the leads and the life support?" 


"That's it, and then you close them up. These cells can only keep 


them for 72 hours, but that's enough time to get them to Site-48. I'll 
finish the processing there and get them all hooked up. Any more 
questions?" 


"Why do we want so many of them? Why such strong ones? What 
are we really doing here? | know about Orpheus, but why did they 
assign me to this seventy years later?" 


She frowned. "Does it matter?" 
"It matters to me." 


She held back a sigh. "The original concept of Project Orpheus was 
to preserve the world, but we know so much more now about what 
we're up against. We need a longer range." 


"A galactic reset button?" 
"Further." 


A long silence passed as she finished her work. "We've moved on 
from playing God, and taken His job altogether." There was more 
awe than judgment in his voice. 


"God was asleep at the wheel." She lifted the top of the skull and set 
it gently in place. "Hand me that stapler." 


Once But Not Now 


Sometimes, when he closed his withered eyelids, the old man could 
see the prairies of his youth, the moonlight grasses, feel and hear 
the gentle whiskers of the wind against his flesh. But that had been 
long ago, hadn't it? Sometimes when he dreamed, he would forget 
that he was old and leap through those fields, shrieking with the 
elemental joy of existence. There were others there, young, like he 
was in the dream, their faces blurry but so heartbreakingly familiar. It 
felt wrong to have forgotten them. 


Then he would wake again, and see the corroded metal walls of his 
prison. Technically, he was not bound in this cell; he could leave at 
any time - he just had to get up and walk out. But beyond, the world 
had changed into something lunatic, too bright, too complex, as 
though it had been designed to confuse and daze him. Burning 
white lights, random surfaces at dizzying intervals, so that the air 
seemed to drown or choke him. It had not been this bad when they 
had first brought him to this dismal place - or perhaps it was he who 
had changed, his faculties dispersing themselves into the 
suffocating walls. 


So here he stayed. He would try to take refuge in fantasy, losing the 
present as he had lost so much of the past, but those open prairies 
were becoming harder and harder to call up of his own volition. 
Instead, he found himself walking endless, twisted corridors, doors 
sagging with decay and dark, damp mould dripping from the ceiling. 
He wondered whether it was the ruin of his own mind he was 
imagining. 


He had been young once, he thought. He remembered his mother, 
and siblings, though in his mind they had become mixed with his 
children, and how they had played amongst the trees and in the 
open prairies. He had been taught how to hunt - in those days prey 
had been plentiful (no, not plentiful, he thought, but easier to catch). 
His mother had brought him an old, tattered one alive to show him 


how to hunt, and he and his brothers and sisters batted and clawed 
at it until it shuddered and expired. Did it think, he wondered - did it 
feel? Did it understand it was old and could no longer defend itself? 
Even then his tribe had not been large - never more than twenty. 


In those days the prey were different - their bones were long and 
thick, they had ridges over their eyes and they wore the skins of 
other animals. Their teeth and claws were barely a threat to the long 
arms of his tribe, but sometimes they had other teeth made of stone 
they could hold in their hands, sharp glittering things that tore your 
flesh.