The Director of Media Relations has his lips in a straight line as he 
pushes a printout across the desk toward the Site Director's open 
palm. "This is it. Same one you approved last night, of course." 


"Excellent, excellent. Thank you for all that you've done," he says, 
picking it up. 


"Everything looks the same as last night, right? | checked it myself 
for errors probably five times." 


"It's perfect, it's perfect. Succinct as always. It's believable media, I'll 
tell you that. My hat goes off to you and your department, Director." 


"Likewise. And it's R-and-D you should be thanking, not me." He 
laughs, barely perceptibly. His cheeks are pale. "Well, you can thank 
the crew | have running the Coastal Sun Reporter, of course. Whew. 
But yeah, the public seems to be taking it decently so far. It went out 
this morning." 


"Emailed to employees, in the morning papers, featured on a few 
local channels and websites... that's it, right?" 


"Correct. | guarantee you that starting small is the way to go. Hell, all 
the big names are already signed on without the spotlight, anyway." 


"Alright." He sets the paper down on the desk with a sigh. "That 
agent, though. Sanderson. Shame about him." 


"How so?" 


The Site Director shrugs, hands clasped with his elbows on the table 
and his head to the side. "I just think he was on the right track, and 
it's a shame to see he slipped up on the legality." 


"Well, his case... made us look pretty bad, sir, to be honest." 


"Oh, I'm not excusing him. There's no doubt he made mistakes. Just 
a shame to see a good agent go to waste just because of- because 


things are so hard these days." 
"Oh. Agreed." 


He nods. "But the PIl is looking up. That's what we've got going 
forward, that's what matters." He looks back down at the document 
on the table. "I'll see you tomorrow, Director. We've got a busy few 
weeks ahead of us." 


"We sure do." There's no comradery in his tone, though he's 
straining to try and convey it nonetheless. 


"Our stocks are in great condition. The business end of things is 
looking up. Everything in that realm of operations is looking up. The 
Foundation still has a strong future ahead of it. A different one, yes, 
but still a strong one. Don't forget that." 


"Of course, sir." He stands up to leave, looking at the door. 


The Site Director picks the printout up off the desk and lowers his 
glasses. "Oh, and happy Independence Day," he adds. "Easy to 
forget there's a country waiting outside those fences, sometimes. 
Isn't it?" 


He swallows and nods. He doesn't think so. "Happy Independence 
Day, sir," he mutters. 


When the door closes, the Site Director sighs and reads the article 
again, his mind fixated on the future as a calm smile creeps across 
his face. 


Correspondence 


"For fuck's sake." | told him. 'Him' being Robert E. Brooks, chief of 
human resources at Site 19. "We've been working on this SCP for 
the past four months and we've gotten nowhere. It doesn't do 
anything besides play shit with people's minds and act as a short- 
range microwave. My team is tired - /'m tired - of running test after 
pointless test, always getting nothing, because there is nothing. 
There isn't anything left to figure out." 


"Dr. Daveson, | told you already, there is nothing we can do. You 
signed on for the term, you can't transfer until it's over. I'm sorry." 
His sausage fingers rifled through a stack of forms. 


"Fine. Just look over the papers. Look over what we've done, look 
for openings anywhere. " He tried to reply, | could see him forming 
‘No’, with his lips. So | turned around and left. Nineteen has these 
enormous wooden doors leading into offices, | made sure to slam 
them on the way out. 


There was a hallway between me and the security checkpoint when 
| started noticing the assistants rushing up and down between labs 
weren't making eye contact with me, they probably thought | was 
about to kill someone. | walked down the checkpoint, two guards 
were ready to meet me. "Intimidating", that's one word to describe 
the security at nineteen. Massive men with jet-black body armour 
and face masks. They gave me the rub-down, | gave them a blank 
stare. 


| let out a heavy sigh when the garage lamps buzzed into life. | 
checked my watch, it was a half hour to midnight, | never realized 
how late it'd gotten. Lights flickered above me, and even though | 
couldn't see the outdoors it felt like the night. Most of the vehicles 
were gone, but the night staff's were still here. The stiff scent of old 
concrete covered everything, but | greeted the musty smell of my 
Cadillac with a sigh. | turned the key in the ignition, and frowned as 
the car started. 


| lied when | told Brooks that we had done all we could. The last 
experiment alone had given us plenty of questions that were still 
unanswered. We had Foundation grants to work with, enough D- 
Class to last us a decade. My team was happy with the work, and | 
liked it too. It's none of that which made me want to leave. It was 
what happened when | slept, it was the dreams. 


The same dream. Every. Single. Day. 
| open my eyes. 


Everything is vivid, but blurry. Goddamn it, it's like broken 
glasses, giving me a headache. | try looking around, and 
realize that these ‘glasses’ are covered in paint. | blink, 
or at least | try to blink. It doesn't seem to work. | try 
wiping my eyes, my arms don't seem to work either. 


| feel like an observer, like I'm looking through my eyes 
but | don't control them. | see shapes move, and my - are 
they really mine? - eyes follow them. They all glow, 
softly, warmly. | can't make out their features, but | have 
the overwhelming feeling that they're good people. They 
all take seats in something in front of me. A table. A few 
more blurs shuffle into the room and sit down, they bow 
their heads. Something comes through the walls, these 
bright, yellow things. They sit around the corners of the 
room, they don't move much. | think they have wings. 
The blurs lift their heads, and suddenly everything 
changes. 


The sound of breaking glass, my vision clears. They're 
all people, | know now, all the blurs are people. Some 
young, children. They all look scared. The yellow things 
are sharper, whiter, golden. Feathery wings rest at their 
sides, hovering above the ground almost gracefully. 


Everything changes again, damnit the paint is all over my 
eyes, an explosion, all the people are rushing, 
screaming, shouting. | see panic on their faces, the little 
children cry. Figures in black. They come down the stairs 
two rooms over. Pain courses all over me, bullets fly, 


they kill one of the children. They kill all the innocent. It 
hurts so bad to see them die, but | can't even cry. The 
yellow things’ wings fly out, they descend like enormous 
shields to protect all the blurs, the people. One of the 
dark men toss up a canister, it erupts in a red cloud. All 
the yellow things, all the - the, angels? they perish. Die, 
all the people choke, cough, collapse. 


The men come closer. They examine the bodies, check 
for life, but they already know that no one survived. | 
know it too. They come closer to me, | can see the 
insignia on their uniforms. It is that too familiar symbol of 
containment, circle and arrow, it is the Foundation. 


A few weeks passed, and then the day came. "Tim!" | knew that 
voice. Claire was a seasoned doctor, but she always seemed to 
have the enthusiasm of a junior researcher. 


My groggy eyes rose up from behind a pile of forms to see her "Yes, 
Dr. Claire?" 


"Results from the latest spectrum analysis!" She dumped a stack of 
papers onto my desk, her smile hovering slightly above the top of 
the pile. If it was any other person | would have thought they were 
trying to piss me off, but Claire was different. Besides, getting angry 
at her would have disrupted her walk out of my office, viewing her 
from behind was a highlight of my days. 


As the door shut, | felt the gentle gust of wind that accompanied it. 
Some papers caught it, their edges lifting up, but clips made sure 
they stayed in stacks. The room became silent again. | remember 
hating it. It was a tomb made of drywall, forms and similarity. 
Whenever | was in that room | looked forward to leaving it. 


| read into the sheets Claire had left behind. The SCP we had been 
working on, all data analysis of wavelength variation. After the last 
experiment resulted in a containment breach of half a dozen SCPs, 
O5 restricted personnel exposure. All we had left was wavelength 
analysis, and psychological testing. Everything else was off-limits, | 
appealed, | thought we could get more done if we had just a few 
more tests, but it was denied. The other doctors thought that 


preventing long-term exposure, and keeping the guards rotated 
would stop it from reaching out to other people. | don't believe that 
anymore. 


Time doesn't work right in my dream. Sometimes things 
move faster, sometimes slower, sometimes not at all. 
You only get bits and pieces, you can grasp a few things 
but lose others. But most of it, | understand. All the pain 
when your family dies, all the anger, hate, suffering. | 
would be angry, too. 


A thousand things all pass at once. The time in my 
dream skips. Suddenly | arrive in a room, a white room, a 
single light illuminates the box around me. A bed colored 
gray is against the farthest wall, it lacks a pillow, and is 
just a thin cushion against a cold metal frame. But it is 
not for me, or the eyes which | see through, | don't have 
a body which could rest against that bed. A shelf and 
desk lay to the right of me, both cold, hard metal. The 
shelf is filled with mostly old, tasteless, and useless 
literature. The desk has only a pen and a stack of paper. 


| don't know the time, | only see half-formed shapes 
move outside the room. They move quickly, too quickly 
to be human. Or is it that I'm moving too quickly to see 
them as human? It doesn't matter. All | Know is that this 
is alone, this is isolation. | don't like it. 


Across the room, in the reflection of the wall, | see 
myself. | don't have a body, | don't have arms or legs or 
anything. | - It is a symbol of love? 


| looked at the stack of papers on my desk, graphs, charts, diagrams 
abundant. | slid them all to the side, and reached down to a low 
knob on my desk drawers, the wooden frame opening with a loud 
creak. A thick pile of melange folders bulged out of the wooden 
coffin. | carefully pushed them forward, searching for the lowest 
folder. Ah, there it was, just above an oddly-shaped lump | had 
placed there not long ago. | pulled the folder out, and laid it on my 
desk. Photographs spilled over the wood, accompanied by a number 
of written files. 


The drift of my hand caught the edge of the folder, it opened to let its 
contents be read. Pictures of the bodies of people killed, pictures of 
that SCP in that damned room. | was trapped in here by the 
Foundation, by our protocol, by our duty. We were supposed to 
safeguard mankind, but all we did was produced an imaginary farce 
for the world to live in while we stymied the tides of unknown, efforts 
which only made humanity more and more vulnerable. The SCP of 
my dreams was trapped by the Foundation, by our protocol, by our 
duty. It could have given so many gifts to our world, but all we did 
was lock it away. 


| didn't realize all this at first, the first time | had the dreams. It was 
three days before | authorized the first D-Class testing under the 
supervision of Dr. Dier that | first had them. 


Suddenly the door flies open, a figure bursts in. 
Everything slows down to normal speed. It's a person. | 
see the face for a moment, before things start getting 
faster. He is a D-Class, he is a slave to the Foundation. 
He walks around, reads, leaves, returns, claws himself. | 
don't understand. 


| hear his voice, he calls out. His pain, he is so alone. 
Then I, 1? Something responds, from me, but | didn't say 
it. It is the eyes | see through which speak to him. They 
tell him not to fear, that soon all the pain will be gone, 
that his suffering will serve to help him. He fears, but 
accepts my, my? The words. He accepts. He grows 
weaker, or is it stronger? His form changes, becoming 
closer and closer to the image in the metal mirror. He 
becomes closer to love? He contorts, his body is in 
agony. Somewhere, deep beneath his body something 
stirs, his soul? 


All the blurs think he suffers. But they don't understand. 
They watch, and despite all their safety, despite all their 
precautions, the symbol, |? It? enters them, enters into 
their memories. They don't realize it, but | do. Just 
through their sight of it, because they remember it, it will 
forever be with them. It will watch them. But there's 
something about the memory, something strange. It is 


diluted, unfinished, imperfect. 


Oh my god he changes, the man on the ground, he 
changes oh god he changes so different. | recognize that 
image, it's the same as the reflection, it's love. 
Everything relaxes. Heart stops. Brain stops. But he 
does not die. 


Everyone thought D-3466 was going to die. Everyone thinks that 
D-3466 is dead. | thought that he would die. But as my eyes looked 
over those files, as | thought about my dreams, | realized, | did not 
give him death, | gave him eternal life. 


The dreams made me eager for work, eager to learn more. But they 
also made me afraid. | leaned back and forth, | wanted to stay but | 
had to get out. | went to try to get transferred, but Brooks put up a 
wall | could not pull down. The dreams got stronger, | started day 
dreaming them, they kept coming and coming. | didn't understand 
them, | didn't know what was happening to me. But on that 
afternoon all those days ago, Dr. Claire didn't stir me from work, she 
awoke me from my dreams. She awoke me from when my dreams 
changed, she awoke me and | understood what | had to do. 


| sighed, looked down onto old hardwood. | reached into the bottom 
of the opened drawer, and my hand drew out a Colt Single Action 
Army. 


A fear in me grows, quickly, unstoppable. My dream 
should end when | see the angel of D-3466. No. This 
isn't right. Why is it going? Why do the men outside the 
room darken? | can feel their hatred, why won't it stop? 
Stop! STOP! 


| want to cry. | want to cry so badly, | don't understand 
why does it keep going. The lights are brighter, stronger, 
they flash and turn red, get erratic, spray the room in 
their glow. Alarms screech in the air, get louder and 
louder and louder. Shadows of men pass outside the 
room. What the fuck is that? Gunshots? 


The door of my office closed, a tomb of drywall which | would never 


enter again. | felt my breath against my lips as | exhaled, as | 
stepped closer and closer to the point of no return. My mind leaked, 
the dreams entered by wakened mind. Oh my god... 


"Sir? Are you alright?" A young guard asked me as | passed through 
the checkpoint between me and my dreams. 


"Get the fuck out of my way." His brains exploded into the wall. 


Fucking bullets, fuck. Glass shatters, all the sounds 
glass breaks containment breached. Women on the 
intercom tells me containment is breached. Why must 
this happen to me? The blurs are all people. All people. 
All people. 


EVERYTHING WILL BECOME CLEAR. 


Red lights were everywhere, | stumbled down the hallway covered in 
blood. Its face was everywhere, alarms blared so loud, but its voice 
even louder. | stumbled forward, looked back. Men in dark armor 
turned the farthest corner.