"Wait, what is this? How do we know these animals are being 
affected by the Vesta donation?" 


"We don't. But think about it. The animals are regenerating body 
parts from seemingly nothing... Vestan fungus grows into stuff we 
design it to." 


Frank groaned and put the report down, "God help us..." 


Dodger pursed her lips and crossed her arms, "Smile. Savor the 
shit. Remember how sweet it tastes compared to the shit we're likely 
to have to eat tomorrow." 


"Why didn't we know of this?" 


She shrugged, irritatingly calm about this situation, "None of my 
contacts knew, but then | don't have any ears among the town 
elders the way you all do. Why didn't the elders warn you?" 


Frank shook his head. Political intrigues, he guessed. "I'll have to 


warn Lindsberg and the rest." 

"Yeah," She was still calm, even smirking at him. 

"What's so goddamn funny?" 

"Smile, Frank. It can only get worse from here. Enjoy it while you 
can" She turned to leave, and leaned against the door again, "Savor 
the taste." 

"Ugh, just go." 


« Over the Bonfire | Hub | Land of Plenty » 


Land of Plenty 


Everything had gone by so fast, just as Priscilla preferred. It gave 
her little time to sit and reflect on what had happened. How did 
people react when faced with world-shattering trauma, irrevocably 
changing their lives forever? Priss had gone to her sister and gotten 
a new job. Was that appropriate? Was that what you were supposed 
to do when you lost everything but the clothes on you and the quiet 
friend who'd saved you? 


Seated in the back of the vehicle, she had plenty of time to let those 
thoughts infest her. The weight of it all pressing down on her was 
starting to make her crack. Even as her face remained 
expressionless, she felt her face start to burn, and her vision start to 
blur. 


"Hey..." Frank noticed, catching on quickly that she was starting to 
lose it, "Hey, come on. You're gonna be okay, alright?" 


Priss brought a hand up, pressing her knuckles into her eyes and 
turning away. A violent ripple of emotion twisted her guts, making 
her shudder and wretch before quickly collecting herself. As slowly 
as it had crept over her, it faded away. 


"What are Nazis, Frank?" Priss asked suddenly. 


"You don't have Nazis where you come from?" He asked 
incredulously. At her silence, he went on, "Bad bunch, them. Came 
around in Germany in the 1930s, led by a guy named Adolf Hitler. 
They were really into white supremacy, touting the 'Aryan race' as 
ideal, and had a particularly strong hate for the Jews. They started a 
war with pretty much every other superpower in the world, and 
would've taken us all down if they'd just listened to that most basic of 
military principles; divide and conquer." 


"They started a war and the Kaiser just went along with it?" 


"What Kaiser?" 


"You don't have Kaisers either?" Her voice started to warble. Every 
little difference seemed to compound on her, like flecks of mud 
smearing on a wall, spelling out in messy brown letters 'You don't 
belong here.’ 


"I'm not really an expert of history, so | don't know... Pretty sure the 
Kaiser stopped being a Kaiser after World War |. Probably kept the 
title, but as far as | remember from history class, they started 
electing presidents between the wars." 


Priss found her breath coming more easily. Talking like this helped, 
she realized, "Where | come from, the first World War didn't really 
technically end... it just faded away as both sides started signing 
ceasefire agreements for longer and longer periods. Main problem 
was the Qing... they were eating away at Russia and Central Asia, 
so Europe just started losing focus on fighting each other as Russia 
threatened to collapse. Then the Japanese invaded the Qing, and 
suddenly all of us were taking sides again in a new war." 


Frank snorted, "Sounds familiar enough. Then again, people are 
people, no matter what universe they come from." 


Priss clenched her jaw tightly, losing all taste for further 
conversation. 
"Hey!" 


People were starting to call her that. It was easier than "Dodger", or 
"Spiffy". 


"Hey-Hey girly!" 
Dodger turned, finding a little boy coming up behind her. 


"You pretty. Pretty girl should have pretty things," He extended a 
little hand out to her, imploring her to take it. She did, thinking it was 
just a friendly handshake. The boy slipped her a little golden 
bracelet. 


"| don't have any money." 
The boy didn't say a word, calmly taking it back, and walking away. 


The whole village bustled. People looked happy and moderately 
healthy. A perfectly normal sight in any relatively stable east African 
village with an NGO operating nearby. The difference here was that 
people were looking well-fed. 


Shut your racism, she thought to herself. But it still stuck out horribly 
—people in a poor African village were looking absolutely plump all 
over. Some had even dropped by the hospital with severe stomach 
pains, nausea, and heart troubles. Diagnosis: re-feeding syndrome. 


They'd been starving for weeks. Suddenly they were stuffing their 
faces. 


They didn't bother hiding it, either. It was a gift from Allah, as far as 
they were concerned, and an attraction—an opportunity to shill shit 
to curious foreigners, and sell food to hungry people from other 
villages. At the center of the village, a massive circle of blood was 
surrounded by short fences made of wire and cloths. A lion lay at the 
center of the blot, beige fur painted brown and red. It was a big 
male, with a healthy mane and thick limbs. It lay on its side, eyes 
half-closed, purring sedately, as its intestines were being pulled out 
and chopped like individual sausages, and cooked on the spot ona 
great grill. Other animals were around it as well; a wildebeest, two 
fat buffalo, and a line of dogs that had been shaved and hosed 
down, likely to hide their infestation of mange and scabies. All were 
bloody and missing chunks of meat. 


"People are eating it fine?" She asked Yasir, "No problems, no side 
effects?" 


Yasir nodded to the grill, "As long as it is cooked thoroughly, it is 
fine. Some people ate it raw. They died." 


"How?" 


"Suicide. Or killed by their neighbors, self defense, yes? They attack 
their neighbors because they want to be killed by the neighbors. 


They call this 'suicide by cop’ in the Law-eight-Order." 
"Law-eight-Order?" 
"A TV show, yes? American. Law, number 8, then Order." 


"That's an ampersand. It stands for the word 'and'. Law and Order 
But yes, | know what you mean." 


Dodger put a hand on her face, covering one eye and rubbing it 
reassuringly. The other had to watch. She wanted just one instant of 
normalcy. Just one quick flash of the lion's eyes widening, of it 
yowling in pain, anger, anything other than sedate pleasure. 
Anything just to make it fit in with what should have been. 


It did not yowl, it did not roar, or snarl, or whimper. It closed its eyes 
and started to sleep. Some people nearby froze and watched. Had 
the beast breathed its last? Was it finally going to die? Then its tail 
flicked, and it farted noisily. The people near it laughed, and went 
back to cooking up its organs. 


"The people who cut themselves, how did they do it?" 


Yasir said something in Arabic, then pointed to the lion and the 
wildebeests near it, "Just like that. They lay down happily, and cut 
themselves open." 


"But did they die? The animals are doing that and apparently not 
dying." 


He shrugged, "I don't know. The people cut themselves open and 
die. The animals are cut open and do not die." 


Dodger was already putting it all together in her mind, visualizing the 
food chain in action, as the small animals offered themselves to the 
bigger ones, and the big ones wandered into villages to offer 
themselves to the bigger ones still. If they regenerated their flesh 
and organs, it meant their organs would have to be removed first. 
The cat she'd seen yesterday had had its guts spilling out of it, 
caked in dust, while other parts of it were regenerating. 


And she still had to report to "Do-Your-Best" Lindsberg. And to 


Kone. 


"A theory... The people who ate the raw meat and cut themselves 
open died because no one would eat their flesh. The animals who 
do it have their flesh eaten, and the flesh grows back." 


Yasir was starting to look queasy, the horror of it all starting to get to 
him, "Meaning the meat is infected with something?" 


"Maybe..." People were eating the cooked meat fine; if the meat 
was infected with something, fire could handle it well enough, "Or 
maybe the meat starts to die, and rots if it isn't cut out quickly 
enough. Necrotic flesh gets infected, the person dies. Maybe the 
animals know this, and that's why they want us to keep cutting them 
open and eating their flesh. Easy to see it as a gift from Allah." 


"| do not care what these people say, this is not a gift from Allah," 
Yasir turned away from the lion, "God did not cause this. You did." 


Before she could respond, he added on, "I am not blaming you, or 
the Charitable Foundation. But something has gone wrong and | am 
certain you are the cause. This way, hopefully, you can fix this. | do 
not know how | can help more." 


Dodger tilted her head slightly, groaning to herself in frustration, 
"Just keep people coming to the hospital. Especially people who've 
been eating from these animals." She pursed her lips, and started to 
turn away, "Just in case." 


Priss pursed her lips, looking at the dimly lit room around her. More 
like a tunnel, but it was tall enough for her to stand atop Frank's 
shoulders with enough room to spare. The massive reservoir was in 
the room behind them. 


"Don't worry, we've got the suits," Frank assured her, prodding at 
the Level-C hazmat suit the two of them wore. 


She looked down at the Anabasis, worried about it getting sick from 
something brought in. She caught herself again—it's not alive, you 
idiot. 


She knelt down, starting to adjust the knobs on the device. The 
hazmat suits were an unnecessary precaution; she'd used this thing 
plenty of times before without getting infected with anything. Given 
that it "merged" with living counterparts here, it wasn't likely to churn 
out something that would be so utterly foreign that it would spread 
magic smallpox around the world in a month. 


Frank seemed to be reading her mind, "Wrong calculation and you 
might end up dumping a few tons of boiling hot water down on us. 
Germ-free, but probably best not to get caught with our pants down. 
Remember: we want water. Doesn't matter if it has heavy metals, 
rare earths or six-meter long tube worms on it, the hippo will take 
care of it. Just get us water, and all of this will be worth it, okay?" 


That made sense. Then she realized that meant the Foundation- 
that-Was apparently didn't care if she accidentally killed herself in 
testing, either. 


She pulled the lever, feeling it give way as if it had snapped off. The 
Anabasis came on, pouring its anemic light out over its selected 
area. Nothing appeared to happen. 


"Try it again?" Frank suggested. 


She pulled the lever again, and waited. This time she saw 
something. "Oh, fuck." 


"What is it?” 


She got up, heading over to the center of the room. Frank followed, 
crouching down beside her. Blades of grass poked out of the 
ceramic tile floor, some seeming to occupy cracks and small spaces, 
others seemingly merged with the tile itself. 


"Don't worry, Locke, the tiles will grow back. Still... a little higher 
next time." Frank suggested. 


"You're not helping," Priss complained, heading back over to the 
device. 


She aimed it higher, adjusting the height setting while leaving the 
others the same. This time a long patch of grass filled a quarter of 


precisely with objects of known origin, (such as with SCP-__, where 
not only the development team was named, but also the leader’s 
name and the SCP’s approximate date of creation). 


“Unusual” notes made by SCP-680-1’s eye socket are much less 
precise than the rest of the SCP’s notes, and usually take ona 
conciliatory nature. Many times, especially with studied SCPs, the 
messages will be generally what has been studied, but will also give 
general comments that often lead to a better overall understanding 
of other SCPs’ behavior. As such, however, much of its empirical 
data is either frustratingly vague or presented in a riddle. 


Dr. Mentha has shaped a theory that this SCP’s “general notes” do 
not actually come from the SCP “studying” the material at hand, but 
instead performs a quick survey of previously conducted research 
and paraphrases it. No explanation for how it obtains this 
information, however, has been discovered, and Dr. Mentha is 
reminded that he must be more explicit in said theories so that they 
can at least be verifiable. 


Addendum 680-1: SCP-680 must be presented directly to the 
object to be studied. A reproduction of the object, at best, will give 
information on the model or display of the object in question. 
Similarly, holding SCP-680 to a mirror, unless said mirror has 
sufficiently SCP-quality characteristics, will yield no information from 
SCP-680. 


Addendum 680-2: SCP-680 appears only to activate when 

presented with sufficiently mechanical objects. Biological objects 

elicit no response from the SCP, and if a mechanical object has 

biological components, SCP-680 will completely ignore those 

qualities. Here, “mechanical” is used to describe objects with at least 
moving parts within its structure. 


« SCP-679 | SCP-680 | SCP-681 » 


the room. No sound, no shimmering of the air, no phasing into being 
or dramatic entry. The room was all ceramic tiles, then quick as a 
frame of video, grass was in front of them. 


"At least the gardener can enjoy the AC while mowing the indoor 
lawn." 


The grass was thick and unruly, nothing like a well-kept lawn. She 
could easily get her foot stuck in the matted mess of roots, and 
probably have a snake slither by and squeeze her ankle. 


"Look," She pointed, crouching down again. She indicated the tiling, 
just at the edge of the grass. It was a few inches higher in elevation. 


"So it's replaced the tiles as well?" Frank scooted closer, pressing 
his fingers along the edge of the tile. It didn't feel like a smooth cut, 
but more like a natural break. The edges were jagged, and some of 
the tiles had cracked independent of the sudden change. 


"Good thing there's nothing below us, then. I'd hate to have to 
explain to anyone downstairs how they got pelted in the face with 
dirt and grass and whatever else is in this. Where is this from, 
anyway?" 


Priss pulled a stalk of grass out, clean from its root, "It should be 
native. From another timeline. Given that we're underground, that 
timeline's probably had an entirely different geological history. Lower 
elevation." 


"That's gonna be a problem, is it? For filling the reservoir?" 


She huffed a sigh, and started calculating in her head. Right away 
the numbers mashed into an incoherent mess. Getting it precise 
would be a problem. She was mostly just concerned with getting 
pure water in. Then she stopped herself, realizing she didn't need to 
fill it all at once, but could dump in water from the same spot over 
and over. 


"No. If | find an aquifer, | can just adjust the height, and start 
bringing it in overhead." 


"Got it. You can always settle on seawater, too," Frank took several 


samples of grass, sealing them in a plastic bag, "Let's do a few more 
tests for the Hippo's sake, then head on out of here before we start 
warping in wild dinosaur-riding lions or some other crazy thing."