"At the time that the outbreak began, we were a U.S. Army 
laboratory, through and through. Eight days into the crisis the 
Foundation ‘acquired’ us. All the classified research, all the material 
resources, and all the compliant top staff, including me. Anybody 
who wouldn't comply was mind-wiped and sent back to the Army. 
Twenty hours after the acquisition, we deployed the second bomb 
and the cult was gone. Nobody remembered it, nobody remembered 
being part of it, zero loss of life. A completely clean detonation. 


"After that is when everything really kicked off. Once we started 
working for the Foundation, the pace of research ramped up. Every 
new technological advancement uncovered new hidden SCPs. | 
passed the Foundation field exams and went out catching ghosts. 
My life turned into the Twilight Zone. I—" 


Marness blinks hard. He covers one of his eyes, then the other. 


"| remember all these different people now," he says. "It feels like my 
memory is in stereo. Almost every antimemetic SCP we caught 
before the wipe in "76, we caught again soon after the wipe. That 
means | remember two acquisition logs for each one. | remember 
two Antimemetics teams and | don't remember who belongs on 
which side of the wall. Do you remember Goldie Yarrow? The 
neurologist? Studied the mechanism of anomalously accelerated 
memory loss... wrote a library on the subject..." 


Wheeler doesn't. 
"Dr. Ojobiru? Julie Still?" 


"El, this is important. Are you at the right place in your own timeline 
to remember what happened yet?" 


Marness focuses. And he discovers that he is. Something changes 


in his eyes, as he stops reminiscing. He speaks more slowly now, 
his voice dropping almost to a whisper: 


“There is an SCP which your division has never seen. The SCP 
which my division couldn't contain. The escapee. This is what you 
wanted, isn't it, Marion?" 


"Yes," she says. "This is the data I'm killing you for." She leaves a 
gap where, if she felt there was anything to apologise for, she would 
apologise. 


Marness locks eyes with her. "It was eating my division alive. It 
came at us so hard and so fast that the only way we could stop it 
was to self-destruct. But we had no site nuke, and in retrospect it is 
obvious to me, now, that this was because the SCP had consumed 
our site nuke first of all. 


"If you know it exists, it Knows you exist. The more you know about 
it, the more it knows about you. If you can see it, it can see you. And 
you can see it. You've been looking right at it all afternoon." 


Wheeler is suddenly acutely aware of her surroundings. 


There are only two of them on the boat. The boat is anchored more 
than a kilometre from any of the lake shores. She hasn't brought any 
backup with her. There's a radioactive prickling in her brain. She 
doesn't— 


Red flag. Why didn't | bring any backup with me? That doesn't make 
sense. 


There should be a team at the lake house. There should be an MTF 
operative and a medic here on the boat with me. And a second boat. 
At minimum. Am | all alone out here? Why did | do that? 


She pulls her gun, but doesn't aim it at Marness yet. "Where is it? Is 
itin you?" 


Marness' voice is becoming urgent. He covers both of his eyes 
again. "Destroying all knowledge of it was the only way to destroy it. 
And restoring my memories was a foolproof way to bring it back!" 


It's in his eyes. Most likely his left eye. Wheeler backs up to the 
other side of the boat, draws a bead on the centre of Marness' head, 
and says, "El. Are you still in there?" 


"There is a way to fix this," Marness hisses, dropping to his knees. 
He keeps his eyes screwed up and gropes his way forward blindly, 
on his hands and knees. 


"El, you need to tell me what this thing is." 


"That's the opposite of what we need to do," Marness says. "You 
need to set another bomb off." 


"We don't have that bomb. We lost that technology—" Wheeler 
begins. 


"You've always had it! There's an engineering lab in Site 41. You 
know it. An underground complex the size of a football field. In 
pristine condition, and totally disused. Why? Think about it. That's 
where your bomb's installed." 


"But that just sets us back to square one. If | set the bomb off," 
Wheeler says, knowing full well that she is thousands of kilometres 
from it and can't hope to reach it in time anyway, "how do we contain 
this thing?" 


"We won't," Marness shouts. "We can't, ever! Don't you get it? The 
whole division is looped! We start the division, we run headlong into 
this thing, and either it eats us, or we wipe ourselves out in self- 
preservation. The idea of antimemes is as old as forgetfulness itself. 
Humans have been looping through this problem over and over 
again since long before the Forties. Maybe for centuries!" 


His blindly probing fingers find the medical box. It's too late. 


As Wheeler watches, a waving black pedipalp coated in dark hairs 
forces its way out through Marness' left eye. Marness screams. Still 
on his knees, he grasps the pedipalp with both hands and tries to 
break it, but it's solid, as if it has bones inside it. 


"What is it?" Wheeler shouts at him. "That can't be the whole story. 
Where is it from, what does it want? Can it reason, can it speak?" 


Manifestation Epsilon is considered no longer 
canon after the events of Manifestation Event 201. 
Further information may be found in Document 
582-201b. 

Manifestation Zeta — Manifestation Zeta exists 
within more than three dimensions, making it 
impossible to properly perceive by humans. 
Manifestation Zeta has only been encountered 
once (Manifestation Event 256, / /2010), 
resulting in three hundred fifty-eight deaths and a 
Localized Restructuring Event. 

Manifestation Zeta Prime — The post- 
metamorphosis form of Manifestation Zeta. The 
account involving Manifestation Zeta Prime was 
interrupted mid-narrative by Foundation personnel: 
Any further instances of Manifestation Zeta Prime 
are to be considered a continuation of XK 
Scenario-582-6b. Protocol 582-XK1 “Jonah and 
the Whale’ is to be initiated immediately. 


Addendum 3 
+ SIT EYES ONLY 


In accordance with Security Chief Special Order 945, a 
segment of SCP-582’s containment narrative has been 
included for illustrative purposes. 


What thoughts, if any, that flow through that 
alien mind are not mine to know: It remains 
silent and still within its chamber, entrenched 
in the persistence of its own memory. It 
remains, but only as a shade of what it was, its 
power spent, or at least come to rest. 


All personnel, please note: SCP-582 is a reaction. It has shown no 
signs of actual consciousness or free will. Everything it has ever 
said, done, or thought is because someone wrote that it would. 
-Dr. 


« SCP-581 | SCP-582 | SCP-583 » 


"Help—" 


A second spider leg, significantly longer and spindlier, slides out 
through Marness' trachea, ruining his throat and voice box and 
producing a gout of blood. He gurgles. A third leg shoots from his 
abdomen, like a spear. 


Wheeler shoots Marness in the head. Marness falls forward, limp, 
then rises back up, lifted by the three spider appendages as if he is 
a puppet being controlled by something gigantic and invisible. His 
arms raise, as if suspended by wires. 


Wheeler squints. She fires four more shots over Marness' head, at 
the likely body mass of the invisible puppeteer, and fires the rest of 
her clip almost directly into the sky. The whole boat vibrates, along 
with the surface of the lake, as if responding to infrasound or a 
localised earthquake. Then the boat shudders violently and starts to 
lift out of the water, raised by more unseen appendages. 


Wheeler holsters her gun and goes for the medical box herself, 
pulling it away from Marness' floating feet. There's a compartment 
with Class-B amnestic, the fast-acting stuff, in serum form. She does 
a hurried burst of mental arithmetic, measures out the correct 
dosage in a syringe and, hands shaking, plunges it into a wrist vein. 
The boat is still rising. Whatever the monster is, it's colossally tall, or 
maybe it flies. 


She is, of course, already dosed up to the eyeballs with mnestic 
drugs. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to perceive any of 
this. Foundation medical literature warns in the strongest possible 
terms against putting both kinds of drug into the same brain. Best 
case scenario, this ends with her in the hospital. 


They're thirty metres up in the air now, ten storeys. There's a 
stabbing pain developing in her left eye. She kicks her shoes off and 
throws the gun away. She goes to the edge and contemplates the 
drop for a disbelieving second. She jumps. 


It takes two heart-stopping seconds of freefall for her to hit the 
water. The chilled hammerblow of the impact is enough to blank her 
mind out. By the time she surfaces she doesn't remember where 


she fell from, or why. And likewise, the skyscraper-sized being which 
claimed Marness and the boat has forgotten about her. 


"What the hell," she gasps, treading water. "What the hell, where the 
hell?" 


There is nothing above her, no explanation. Only the symptoms of 
the drug cocktail give her any indication of what just happened: a 
sensation like hundreds of tiny lumps of hot solder in her brain, and 
pain and exhaustion spreading to all of her tendons. She wants to 
die. 


Swim, says part of her. Get to shore first. Then you can die. 


* 


The extraction team finds her around dusk, unconscious on the lake 
shore. They stabilise her in the helicopter, then take her to Site 41 
for examination, and to have her system flushed. 


She spends a solid eight days at home, detoxifying: no mnestics, no 
amnestics, no exposure to dangerous memory-corrupting SCPs, no 
work visitors. "No work," the doctor also tells her, pointlessly. 


It isn't anywhere near the first missing event in Wheeler's life, nor is 
she the first person in the Antimemetics staff to have such an 
experience, but the sensation is no less disturbing for its familiarity. 
As per procedure, she writes a report summarising everything she 
can remember. The gap in her memory is about thirteen hours. 


Then she adds her report to the extensive, complex map of Missing 
Time which the whole division maintains collectively. It is a map of 
holes, and the map is becoming large enough that very faint 
patterns are gradually forming. The outline of an enemy is becoming 
visible, or perhaps a group of enemies. 


When she quizzes the extraction team later, none of them 
remember who activated the emergency beacon which summoned 
them. In fact, the beacon itself cut out long before they landed at the 
lake. Wheeler compares the current size of her division with her best 
estimate of what it should be. Maybe she needs a few more key 


people here and there... So, assuming the division was fully staffed 
before the event, maybe those empty roles are the people who died 
this time around. Maybe one of them activated the beacon. A 
commendable act, by someone now only known to exist because of 
that single act. 


It's weeks later still that Wheeler discovers the largest new hole in 
her memory: 


Who founded the division? When? 


* 


Footnotes 

1. Excerpt from Document 180047109-L4799-098,User's Guide To 
Chemical Mnestics:The Class-X mnestic drug is a failed eternal 
youth serum. X rejuvenates both mind and body by upto _ years, 
but its effects are temporary, wearing off in a matter of hours. 
Furthermore, as the drug wears off, the suppressed time reasserts 
itself all at once, causing a harmful "whiplash" effect on the subject's 
physiology. X can rejuvenate an individual safely by up to thirty 
days, but with stronger doses the whiplash effect becomes 
dangerous, and past a threshold of 16-18 months it is fatal in all 
known subjects.X's restorative effect on the human memory is 
essentially a side-effect of all of this. However, this side-effect is so 
useful that it has become the drug's main practical purpose. The 
Antimemetics Division uses small doses of X to temporarily sharpen 
or restore memories from the recent past. This aids Foundation 
operatives in the accurate recall of incidents involving memory- 
corrupting entities. 


Next: CASE COLOURLESS GREEN 


CASE COLOURLESS GREEN 


Item #: SCP-3125 
Object Class: Keter 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3125 is kept 
inside Cognitohazard Containment Unit 3125 on the first 
floor of Site 41. This containment unit is a 10m by 15m 
by 3m cuboidal room clad in layers of lead, 
soundproofing and telepathic shielding. Access is 
through an airlock system at one end of the containment 
unit. This airlock is programmed to allow only one person 
to enter the containment unit at a time, and to remain 
locked until this person exits before allowing another 
person to enter. 


Under no circumstances may any coherent information 
be allowed to leave the containment unit. This includes 
written and electronic notes, photographs, audio and 
video recordings, sound, electromagnetic and particle- 
based signals and psi emanations. During the exit cycle, 
a purge system rigged to the airlock flushes the 
occupant's memory by flooding the airlock with amnestic 
gas for three minutes. 


A senior Antimemetics Division staff member must visit 
SCP-3125 every six weeks (42 days). 


END OF FILE 
"You're kidding me. That's the whole entry?" 
"That's the whole entry," Wheeler says. 


It isn't even the fiftieth strangest thing Paul Kim has seen in the 
database, but still: "No description, no acquisition report, no test log, 


no addenda? No clue who built the unit, or when, or how many times 
it's been visited, or who carried out the previous visits, or what they 
took in with them, or how long they were in there?" 


"Well, obviously Bart Hughes built the unit," Wheeler says, and this 
cannot be denied. The man's signature style of containment 
architecture is recognisable a mile out. Sleek, white, plainly 
impregnable without the aid of extremely heavy tools. "Which makes 
it at least seven years old. That's sixty visits or more. | guess there 
are good reasons for the rest of those omissions. Anyway... the 
timer watchdog says it's time again." 


"| don't like the idea of you routinely exposing yourself to a 
cognitohazard so dangerous that we can't even write the reason 
why we can't write it down down," Kim says. "Especially because it's 
impossible for us to recover any usable information this way. You're 
going to go in, be incommunicado for two hours and come out a 
smiling amnesiac. What do we gain from that? It's just a breach 
risk." 


Wheeler hears every word of this and elects to ignore it all. There's 
a vague shape of familiarity about the entry as written; there area 
few word choices which reassure her, in an intangible way, that it 
was written by someone who knew what they were doing. Possibly 
her. 


Kim's still talking. "We should just scrub that last line from the 
database entry. There can't be anything good in that room." 


Wheeler puts her keycard in the slot. The airlock rewards her with 
green LEDs and begins to cycle open. It's built as a slender vertical 
cylinder with a single opening. The entire thing rotates on its axis. 
Inside, there's barely room for a single person to stand without their 
shoulders touching the walls. 


"What are you taking?" Kim asks. 


Wheeler ducks to step in, turns to face him and shrugs. "A stick of 
gum." 


"| can get you field gear," Kim says, as the airlock begins to rotate 


again, emitting a low, quiet thrum solely as an audible warning that 
there is machinery in motion. "We'll raid inventory. Give me fifteen 
minutes and I'll turn you into a one-woman war." 


If Wheeler says anything in response to this, it's cut off by the 
soundproofing as the airlock rotates.