Doctor: It was a deadly virus which was eliminated in 
the 20th century, but was believed, for a time, to have 
been held in stockpiles for biological warfare. His plan 
was two-fold - if the authorities acted as he'd hoped, they 
would have evacuated both buildings. If they didn't, he 
would have released the Rx52 by remote into the 
buildings’ ventilation systems. The physical symptoms 
which Rx52 presents would make people believe that it 


truly was smallpox, and they would panic, fleeing the 
building, or at least try to leave, going down to the lower 
levels if the authorities enacted quarantine procedures. 
Detective 1: My god. 

Doctor: Yes. Ingenious. The people behind the attacks 
would have had no way of knowing, but if his plan had 
succeeded, those planes would have collided with two 
empty buildings. 

Detective 2: What was the weapon for? 

Doctor: That was in case he was discovered. He'd 
thought of everything. In case he was found planting the 
Rx52, his intention was to get into a gunfight, which 
would have caused the authorities to turn up and cordon 
off whichever tower he was found in. He would have told 
them, between shots, that they were 'too late, I've 
already done the other tower’. Again, this would have 
caused both buildings to be evacuated. 

Detective 2: OK, let me get this straight. Doctor Snow 
was going to use your device, a time machine, to stop 
one of the worst atrocities this country has ever 
experienced? 

Doctor: Yes. 

Detective 2: And you stopped him? 

Doctor: Yes, he had to be stopped! | couldn't let him 
interfere! 

Detective 2: Why not? He could have saved thousands 
of lives! 

Doctor: No, no, my god, no. He would have changed 
history! History is fragile, don't you get it? Had he 
succeeded, history as we know it would have been 
completely rewritten! He would have created a paradox! 
We have no idea what would have happened, it could 
have decimated the fabric of spacetime! Destroyed 
existence itself! 

Both detectives are silent, staring at him 

Doctor: DON'T YOU GET IT? HE COULD HAVE 
LITERALLY TORN THE UNIVERSE APART! 

Detective 1: Sit down please. Sit. Down. We'll get into 
the physics of it later. Continue with your story. What did 
you do when you'd listened to the message? 


caller to input the item codes for the food they desire, and then for 
their credit card number to pay for the order. Once item codes and 
credit card number are input, the automated system will tell the 
caller the total price, thank them and then disconnect the call. The 
caller's credit card will be immediately charged for the total price of 
the order, plus the local tax rate for prepared food. The prices for 
orders made with SCP-971 are always comparatively lower than 
prices for other popular fast food chains in the caller's current 
location. 


Once the call disconnects, about 15 or 20 minutes will pass; 
afterwards, a paper bag with Quik n' Ready Mealz logo (designated 
SCP-971-1) will appear near the caller. SCP-971-1 almost always 
appears when all potential observers’ attention in the vicinity is 
diverted elsewhere. Remote video observation of SCP-971-1's 
appearance has been reasonably successful, although not 
particularly informative (SCP-971-1 simply appears instantaneously 
with no visual indication of its method of delivery). SCP-971-1 will 
contain the same items chosen in the phone menu, and all items will 
be cooked and prepared to normal Food Safety and Inspection 
Service health standards. Aside from the method of delivery, the 
only other anomalous feature of the food delivered is the 
undefinable meat used for the listed burgers, sandwiches and other 
meat containing items. 


The meat used in the food is from an unknown source, and tends to 
be a bit tough and gamey. Simple testing has proven that it is not 
from typical beef or chicken stock, and personnel D-1282 (convicted 
on multiple counts of cannibalism) verifies that the meat is not 
human. More rigorous testing of SCP-971 samples has been 
approved. The meat used in the food is from assorted animals on 
the EEC Endangered Species List. Further DNA testing on the meat, 
as well as reports of sudden weight loss and muscle mass loss in 
animals from several zoos, confirms meat from pandas, cheetahs, 
red wolves, and several other species recognized as endangered. 
Currently all meat tested from meals that SCP-971 provides are 
from animals that are commonly known endangered species to the 
general public, not the more esoteric endangered species such as 
the equatorial dog-faced bat or the Oklahoma cave amphipod. 


Doctor: | ran as fast as | could to the wormhole 
chamber. When | got there, he'd already activated it. 
Beside the door were the canisters of Rx52, with the 
shotgun and ammunition on top. | screamed at him to 
stop. He turned to look at me, sneered, and told me | 
was too late. He was standing in front of the wormhole, 
there was no way | could have reached him in time to 
stop him going through. Even if he went through without 
his equipment, he could still create catastrophic damage 
to the timeline simply by his presence there. | had no 
choice, | could NOT let him step through. | grabbed the 
shotgun from where it was, and aimed it at him. | gave 
him one last 


<end transcript> 


The Red Place 


It's not a crystal, it's a portal. 


| learned this while staring into Anomalous Object P-2145-T's ever- 
shifting facets. Yes, | had permission to study it. The truth is, my 
mind just drifted and | began staring. It was fascinating, the way its 
form changed continually, the way those little flakes of blue and red 
and purple scintillated just below the opaque white surface. 


| was being drawn in, deeper, deeper, until | was no longer sitting in 
Anomalous Storage Room 34-B. | was... somewhere. Everywhere 
and nowhere. As if in a dream, | saw a scene before me and a thing 
that was supposed to be me, yet couldn't be me. 


The world was bathed in red light, like a photograph darkroom. A 
vast looming blackness lurked behind the light, threatening to 
swallow it and return the world to the abyss from which it had 
spawned. The scene was framed with stark mountains, their faces 
like bleeding toenails in the light. They were bare save for various 
stones that sprouted haphazardly from them, as though growing in 
the rock face. 


Yet for all that unfathomable immensity, the space upon which | 
looked was claustrophobic. The mountains nearest me were lower 
than those surrounding them, and hollow in the center. From them 
emerged enormous black silhouettes, like rounded tubes whose true 
natures | could not comprehend. They rocked slowly back and forth 
in the still air. Again and again, an enormous filament would emerge 
from the top of one, a ghastly thing as long as the creature's body, 
wreathed in swirling tendrils. Down it would snap, into the ruddy soil 
of that barren world, and then up again, retracting into the mouth 
that had spawned it. 


Out, down, retract! Snap, snap, snap! 


| was unable to do anything but watch them continue this behavior. | 


realized their targets were hundreds upon thousands of tiny black 
shapes that scuttled about the hills, oblivious to the sessile 

predators that towered over the landscape. The filaments speared 
the dots by the dozens and drew them back into the gaping maws. 


| felt a shudder run through me, and | did not know why. 


From the sky came a flash of light, and a tiny fireball rocketed to the 
earth. Then another appeared, and another, and soon there were 
dozens, streaking willy-nilly to impact with the red hills. Sometimes 
they left craters. Sometimes they were swallowed by the loose soil. 
Sometimes they annihilated the stone tumors growing from the 
mountainsides. Everywhere they landed, they flashed again and 
again, and | realized there must not have been an atmosphere, for | 
could hear no explosions, nor had | heard anything since finding 
myself in that alien landscape. With each explosion, hundreds of 
miniscule pinpricks of light were released, and the mountains were 
pockmarked with a shower of debris. Entire cosmoses of light were 
born and extinguished in moments. It was beautiful. 


One of the exploding meteorites drew close to one of the titanic 
monarchs of the red valley and the tendril lashed out. It was met 
with an explosion and withdrew. Just as quickly as they had begun, 
the flashes began to die out. The final one attracted once more the 
attention of one of the creatures, that had not learned its lesson 
previously about airborne meals. This catch was successful, the 
tendril curling around the light and drawing it into the mouth. The top 
of the creature lit with an explosion, and a plume of dust curled out 
of the top. 


Then the third feeder, the one that towered above its massive 
brethren, launched its tendril at me, catching me fast and drawing 
me inward. 


In that instant, a thought came unbidden to my mind. The universe, 
it is theorized, began with an explosion, just a tiny speck of all- 
matter that burst and became all that we know and can conceive of. 
It expanded and expanded. Some say it will expand infinitely; some 
say that one day, it will simply stop, and everything will cease to be. 
Others claim that eventually a limit will be reached, after which the 
expansion will reverse. Further theories propound that the cycle will 


begin anew thereafter, creating a new universe and cycling 
indefinitely. 


As the thing-that-could-not-be-me was dragged helplessly into the 
mouth of the thing-that-could-not-be, | knew what | would see. 
There, beyond the toothless maw, down the stygian esophagus to 
the incomprehensible depths of that being's stomach, lay a panoply 
of lights, uncountable by the human mind. 


This creature, this mammoth tunicate whose existence was nothing 
more than an endless cycle of feed and feed again, had gotten 
lucky. It had plucked a star from the sky and taken it into itself fast 
enough to escape detonation, and now held within itself an 
expanding collection of stars, and | was being hurtled right into their 
center. 


| know where these anomalous objects come from. | know why the 
Big Bang happened. | know that there will never be a Big Crunch. 


For within that being's stomach, we all exist. We expand and 
expand, and eventually our existence will be ripped apart. There will 
be no repeating cycle. In our future, there lies only digestion. 


Researcher Mayhew was granted a leave of absence for 
psychological evaluationon / /  . Attempts to 
corroborate his statement about Anomalous Object 
P-2145-T have so far provided no results. However, 
reclassification as an SCP object is currently under 
consideration should testing prove productive. 


The Red Woodsman 


The forest somehow seemed to get darker the closer the two men 
got to their destination. Agrippa kept reminding himself that the 
solstice had been three days prior, and the sun simply chose to fall 
sooner than in earlier months. But the feeling of menace these 
woods held for him never passed. Agrippa didn't like the woods. 
Most of his people, at least the other Class II's, usually didn't. Ari, his 
companion, liked it less than Agrippa did. 


Ari never slowed down, though. Agrippa couldn't tell what he was 
thinking, as per usual. Ari was always the headstrong type, even 
back in the creches. It was a small act of the gods that he was never 
thrown out and stuck in some Class III pod to spend the rest of his 
life drooling and building roads. Maybe if the creche had had a 
different headmistress, he would have been, but Professor Allgrass 
wasn't about to let Ari get the best of her. For all that Ari was 
unspeakably stupid, he was undeniably brilliant. He matriculated at 
the bottom of the legion (Agrippa didn't come out much higher), but 
he made it. Two centurions, born and bred to Advance the Greater 
Reason. Agrippa chuckled and spat. 


"What's so funny now?" Ari asked. 


"You, coming out of the best plutoborn creche in all of Sylvanos, and 
can't help getting lost in the woods." 


"We're not lost. We're looking for someone who generally mislikes 
being found." 


"If the Integrators get to him first, you know what happens to us, 
right?" Agrippa asked. "You know what happens to the movement if 
we lose the Woodsman?" 


"The Woodsman's not the primary goal, though," Ari said. 


"Yes, you've been hinting at that," Agrippa said. "He has some kind 


of weapon, right? Something from the other world?" 


"Well, there's no way of knowing,” Ari said, "but that's what we're 
told, and Milephanes himself wouldn't have asked us out here 
without good cause." Both Ari and Agrippa preened a bit at that; 
Milephanes was starting to be something of a folk hero, even among 
those outside the Movement, and they were his chosen instrument 
for this mission. 


"Of course not. Whatever it is, the NatPhi kids at Alexylva want it, so 
it has to be valuable," Agrippa said. "But what I'm saying is, do you 
know what happens if the Integrators find us before we find it?" 


"You mean, we'll get a medal?" 


"Ari, we'll get the black bile scraped out of our brains, be thrown in 
front of a target, and be used for practice by our old classmates. The 
ones you used to love to humiliate, remember?" 


"They humiliated themselves. | just pointed it out more than they 
liked." 


Agrippa wasn't in the mood to banter. He heard a sound just over 
the next hill. He stopped Ari and signaled to him that they should 
take cover. The two men split up and took positions behind trees, 
ten yards apart, and became completely silent. They watched the 
hillside, and waited. 


Integrators. Four soldiers, surgically augmented to be more machine 
than human. Forget the Braincaps; Agrippa has seen the 
schematics for all the technology stuck inside these men. Not even 
men, anymore; sexual organs removed, gender identity (along with 
every other mission-irrelevant thought) wiped. They moved with the 
speed of insects attacking an enemy anthill. Two of them were even 
walking on all fours, catlike. Agrippa had heard rumors that they 
could see in infrared, that they could hear human blood from inside 
the body, that they could smell souls. But you can never believe the 
propaganda those University kids throw out, he thought. The 
Integrators passed by without looking. 


Even Ari's implacable smile was gone for a minute. "We have to 


hurry." 
"Yeah. Which way?" 


"Follow me." 


The Red Woodsman's hut (hovel's more like it, Agrippa thought) lay 
some ways away from where the Integrators had been heading, the 
only factor that gave the two any comfort under the circumstances. 
Ari snuck up to the door and rapped out a pre-arranged code while 
Agrippa stood watch. When the door creaked open, Ari waved 
Agrippa forward, then ducked inside. Agrippa hurried over and 
closed the door behind him. 


The smell was even worse than Agrippa had imagined. Whatever 
food the Woodsman had been living on for so long, he was 
apparently a little less demanding about its freshness. The stench of 
rotten meat filled the single room, and Agrippa was glad that the 
only window was blocked off. Not that the candlelight was helping 
much.