"Hello, uhh," he muttered, squinting his eyes to look at the 
identification, "Ms, uh, Smith, yeah. | know plenty of Smiths, and 
you're the most Smithy of them." 


"Neat." 
She took her seat across from him, a notepad in hand. 


"Tell me," she began, looking through her blue ink soaked paper 
notes as if her life depended on it, "what do you know about the 
Circus?" 


"It's gonna take more than some hot nerd to get me to spill the bean 


"I'll give you a memetic hazard that'll give you instantaneous 
orgasms upon viewing if you comply." 


"Where do you want me to start?" 
"Start from the beginning, please." 
"Well," began Dick, reclining in his chair, "it all began when my 


grandfather fucked a Clown...." 


Stretchy exited his trailer to face both Masky and Ken. A pistol was 
still at Masky's hip, and Ken, well... 


"| already told you to stop that," Stretchy said. 


Ken rolled his eyes and removed his finger from his mouth, saliva 
covering it to the base of the finger. 


"What did you get out of the kid?" Masky questioned, stepping 
closer to Stretchy. 


Stretchy rubbed the back of his neck, looking back at the trailer. 


"Well, the kid finally spoke. It's progress, | suppose. Other than that, 
his name's Vince." 


"Nice name, he choose it himself?" Ken quipped sarcastically. 
"Yes, actually." 
"Oh." 


"Are you going to tell Manny or Icky?" Masky asked, leaning against 
the trailer. 


"No, no, we don't need to worry them about thi—" 


"Dipshit, you brought a goddamn Green into the Circus who's being 
tracked down by murderous Gock fucks. It's all of our problems," 
Ken interrupted. 


"| know, | know, but if we can get him to Portland, we could avoid 
Causing any trouble." 


"Are you suggesting we bring a child to a potential hot spot for 
anomalous activity and criminal activities?" 


"| Know it's not the best solution, Masky, but it's better than here or 
anywhere else." 


"The city would kill him," Masky retorted. 


"He's survived worse at this point. Besides, we fared worse things at 
that ag—" 


"Please don't compare our situations, Stretchy." 


Ken tuned out as the two children bickered like an old married 
couple. He wondered if there was any ice cream left... 


(D-5674 is a 27-year old South Asian female of below-average 
physical fitness. Psychological background indicates extreme 
xenophobia. Subject has an extensive record of [DATA 
EXPUNGED]. D-5674 is equipped with an LED flashlight, a 
handheld camcorder fitted with a transmission stream, and an audio 
headset for communication with Dr. at Control.) 


D-5674 inserts SCP-860 in the door leading to an abandoned house 
on Street, , Germany. She turns the key and open the 
door, revealing SCP-860-1. D-5674 passes through the door. After 
she takes two steps, a loud bang is heard. D-5674 turns. The door is 
closed and attached to a large concrete wall. 


D-5674: [EXPLETIVE REDACTED] 
Dr. : Follow the trail, D-5674. The exit is on the other side. 


D-5674 turns around and walks down the trail. After 94 meters, 
D-5674 stops and turns to the woods. 


D-5674: Did you... did you see that? 


Dr. : What? 
D-5674: Did you see those... those... 
Dr. :...yes? 


D-5674 is silent. 
Dr. : What did you see? 


D-5674 does not respond. Twelve seconds later, she resumes 
walking down the trail. 


Dr. :D-5674, please report what you saw, we need— 
D-5674: It was nothing. Mist must've tricked me. 


D-5674 walks for 10 more meters before stopping again. 


Dr. :D-5674, why did you stop? 

D-5674: [low monotone] Silence... can't you hear it? 

Dr. : What? 

D-5674: [low monotone] It's calling me... | have to... | have to go... 
Dr. :D-5674, you can't— 


"...and that's how | became a Clown Breeder with no prior 
experience, training, or discipline." 


Doctor Smith stared blankly at the man. Silence covered the room 
like a blanket. 


"So, uh, you gonna give me the meme or no—" 


Before he could continue she punched him and shoved a pill down 
his throat and poured water down it. He gagged as he felt himself 
get queasy and weak before the world started turning to black. 


Grant placed his face into his palm, groaning after the four hour 
memoir that was recited to them. 


"So, uh, what should we do—" 
"Fuck this, I'm going to the Tracking Department." 


And in one swift move he took his coat, notes, and pistol and left the 
room, leaving the dumb struck Smith and drooling Dick. 


« Green Day |Hub| Green Day III » 


Footnotes 

1. It got him every damn time. 

2. Which Smithreallydidn't like. 109 just didn't have the same ring to 
it. 

3. Icky and Manny banned alcoholic drinks after the whole 
Bubblegum fiasco. He still had the nightmares. 

4. Not capital C, but still 


Green-Gray 


It's been two weeks since the lights went out. Two weeks to the day, 
to the hour, to the minute. | remember every instant of it. | remember 
everything. That's one gift from Prometheus. The locked, dark, 
room? Yeah, that’s another. This door is sealed, and my keycard 
doesn't work without power. And there’s no way I’m getting that 
thing open. Why couldn’t Prometheus have invented something to 
let me rip a metal door out of its casing? Ah, right. “The true 
Promethean will rely on strength of mind and spirit, not of body, for 
even metal is weaker than will.” Well this would-be Promethean is 
going to die if that’s all he gets! 


Even if | could open it, I'm not sure if I'd leave. Something is wrong. 
The lights are powered by the same source that powers the whole 
facility, so if it's out for me, the whole system must be down. No one 
has come to help me, either, which isn't exactly encouraging. Could 
it have been the pinwheel spinning off? Some catastrophe in 
chemistry? Or did they transcend mere humanity into beings of pure 
enlightened energy and have no time for poor little old me? In all 
likelihood, this testing chamber may be the safest place left. 


TO ALL PROMETHEUS EMPLOYEES: 


Introducing... Telekill. The latest invention of the 
Prometheus metallurgy division, the capstone of years of 
research. Telekill is a psychic dampener alloy. It 
produces a zone of low psychic potential, which naturally 
draws in and negates harmful mind-waves. Durable and 
ductile, Telekill can be used anywhere you want to keep 
your mind safe. 


Three weeks now. At least my latest and no doubt last residence is 
tolerable. The claustrophobic environment makes it hard to think, but 
it's well furnished. Maybe they'll dig me out in a thousand years and 
think | was a pharaoh. Pity they’d only give me that respect after I’m 
dead. 


Normally these rooms are fairly spartan, but since I'm doing a longer 
term study (very longer term, apparently) they've outfitted it with nice 
furniture, a lantern, and all the food and water my enhanced 
metabolism needs to survive. A bed, a desk, some bottled water and 
cans and cans of food. And, of course, filling the corner of the room, 
the green-gray slab. Telekill. The green-gray slab. 


The average human mind suffers countless minor 
intrusions each year. Between lingering Faerie glamours, 
Saljab mind-tricks, and Enforcers, "free will" is not so 
free as it ought to be. The influences are subtle, but 
alarmingly real. Telekill will finally liberate human 
determination from the interference of inhuman forces. 
Sign up to be one of the first to truly control their own 
mind, their own destiny. With our previous Mem-Fast 
mnemonic inoculation, you may be sure your memories 
serve your mind. Telekill will ensure that your mind 
serves you. 


Five weeks. I’m not getting out. I'll die here. | had hoped for more 
than a lonely death in a room with the green-gray slab. | had such 
dreams! | would have been the one to not just reach but seize the 
future. The new era when mankind sees just what the universe is 
like. | had plans. | could have been so much. Now I've just got 
dreams of the green-gray slab. 


The Prometheus of legends stole fire from the gods so that mankind 
could rise to be like the gods. I've seen what this Prometheus will 
bring mankind, besides the green-gray slab. We will be like gods. | 
would be a god. But no, I'll die here with only the green-gray slab for 
company. 


Telekill is still in development, however, and before the 
Grand Public Offering, we must ensure its safety. Which 
is where you come in. Everything Prometheus produces 
is extensively safety-tested. And though testing on 
primates has revealed no adverse effects, there is no 
substitute for human testing. In accordance with the 
Promethean Code, such is to be conducted only on 
Prometheus volunteers. There's risks involved, but there 
always are to the first brave men to touch the future. 


Step forward on the path from Man to Promethean. 


Eight weeks. If there is still a world outside, it's forgotten me. 
Someday, they'll exhume the chamber with the green-gray slab, 
maybe, and wonder at it and its contents. Perhaps they'll even figure 
out what the green-gray slab does. Even if | won't get to live forever 
in body, maybe I'll live forever in memory as the man in the mystery 
chamber with the green-gray slab from the past who brought the gift 
of freedom to mankind in the form of the green-gray slab. Freedom 
is like fire, right? Maybe I'll be Prometheus. 


My gaze returns to the green-gray slab. But why not? It's the most 
visible thing there is. There's an odd sheen to its surface, a color 
that vanishes as soon as you focus on it. An ephemeral sort of 
cerulean. If | look slightly away, | see it swirl like an oil slick ona 
lake. 


FROM: geraldf@prometheusLabs 
TO: sangw@prometheusLabs 
TOPIC: Telekill primate testing 


Steve, 


So | was reviewing the tests with the telekill project. | 
think | noticed something screwy near the end, about 
forty days in. The chimps we're testing with — they’re 
bonobos, right? So | checked the records near the start, 
and they’re doing the bonobo thing, i.e. humping like 
rabbits. Anyhow, later in, they weren't doing anything like 
that at all. Didn't seem to be interacting much at all, not 
just no monkey-sex. 


Is that normal for bonobos in captivity for an extended 
period? If not, telekill might not be as safe as we thought. 
| wouldn’t want to sterilize the lab tech guy the Old Man’s 
got testing it. Also, I’m taking next Tuesday off. Can you 
take my carpool then? I'll owe you. 


— Gerald 


That's the green-gray slab. There’s nothing else to look at. It's shiny 


if you don't look too hard. Sort of a blue on the surface of the green- 
gray slab. Yeah, it shines kinda blue. 


There's the green-gray slab. That's funny, the green-gray slab is 
blue! 


The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The green-gray slab. 

The greendarkgray slab. 

The greendarkgray slab. 

The greenit's darkgray slab. 

The greenit's very darkgray slab. 
The greenl can't seegray slab. 
The greenl can't feel my armsgray slab. 
The greenor anythinggray slab. 


The greenam | dead?gray slab. 


The greenNo.gray slab. 


The greenl'm not dead. | can't be dead yet. | have so much left 
to be.gray slab. 


The greenYou can't stop me from being who I'm going to be. | 
remember me. | remember everything.gray slab. 


The greenl know what happened to me. You weren't safe, were 
you? Just took more than four weeks. You ate my mind, my 
soul. But you can't digest it. Because I'm me. I'm me. | 
remember myself. You can't destroy my memories because | 
have the mnemonic.gray slab. 


| don't need anything else. I'm going to be who | am. I'm going 
to be who | could be, who | would be. Can you feel that? I'm 
getting my form back. Metal is weaker than will. If you took my 
body, Telekill, then it's only fair that you replace it. 


Senses, limbs; all will be mine once more. | stagger to my new- 
formed feet and swing a molded fist at the reinforced door. It 
holds. But metal is weaker than will. Soul-drinking stone, you 
were to give mankind freedom of destiny. And you shall still 
bring it to me. My fire will burn bright, even as others flicker 
and die. The door is beginning to buckle. Soon, very soon, | will 
leave this chamber and leave Prometheus to the eagle. Then all 
will see my will. All will see who | am. | am myself. | am my will! 


| AM ZACHARY! 


Greener Pastures 


It used to be different, but | suppose that all old men say that. That 
back in the day the air was cleaner, or the sun was brighter, or that 
the grass was greener. That’s how they remember it, so that’s how it 
must have been. | don’t. | remember it as it was — dark and grimy 
and radiant, all of it, from the sewers to the sky. And that’s how it 
was. 


| was a reporter, when | was young and largely stupid. | was good at 
what | did — | got truth and | took it to the papers and then they took 
it to the people. It didn't matter, really, where it came from or why it 
was true. All that mattered was the ink on the page, and the dollars 
in the newsstand. They didn't ever question it — the way | always 
knew where to be and what to see, just who and what and when and 
how things would play out. | didn't either, for a long time. It just sort 
of came to me, like out of a dream. And | know that sounds stupid — 
people tell that same old story all the time, about visions and 
prophecies coming in their dreams. | knew a lady once who 
dreamed she was on a boat that sunk, and the next day she looked 
in the paper and a boat had sunk off shore. It didn't matter that she 
lived on the coast and boats sank every week — she had been on 
that boat, in her dream. It was never like that, for me, though. When 
| slept, | slept. The only dreams | ever got came when | was wide 
awake. 


| was there when the jetliner went down over San Bernardino in ’67. 
A lot of people wouldn't know it, but the spot where it crashed was 
actually really popular with the local kids. It had been thirty years 
before that, too, when | was a kid standing out in the fields and 
playing ball with a rock because that was what we had. | can 
remember exactly, explicitly, sitting on the train on my way out of the 
city, staring out at the clouds, and thinking back to playing ball in 
those fields. | remember looking up at the sky, in my not-quite a 
dream, and seeing a great big metal beast of a thing with its wings 
all aflame coming down out of the sky slow and gentle, like it wanted 


to steal home plate, hoping the pitcher might be lazy enough for it. 


| went out to that field the next day, on a whim, and not four hours 
later | had the story of the year. 


At first | thought it was some lucky coincidence, or that | had seen 
something and remembered it somehow. But then it happened 
again, with a train that got derailed over in Colusa County. And then 
again, when the market dipped out in June that year and half of 
everybody | knew was thinking about buying barrels for leggings. | 
had sold a month earlier, of course, but that was just a given. When 
the story came around, | was ready. 


It went on that way for a long time. Things would happen, and then 
before that | would know about it. | felt like one of those spacemen, 
in the books, where they go back in time and they've got every little 
bit of every little thing that'll happen all figured out. | felt like a god. 
Funny how that worked out.