"Praise be to the Lord Bright!" shouted the assembled cardinals and 
guards. 


"Aaah!" Lord Bright shouted. "Not so loud. This body must have the 
mother of all hangovers." 


"Forgive us, Lord Bright," the Second said. "The Procedures state 
that the host body's reflexes are to be dulled with alcohol before the 
ritual." 


"Uh-huh," Lord Bright said. "New Holy Procedure; next time, save 
the alcohol for after you wake me up. Somebody write that down." 


"It would be my honor, Lord," the Thirteenth said. 


"And haven't you guys had some sort of renaissance or reformation 
or scientific awakening yet? What year is it this time?" 


"It is the year 698 After the Breach, Lord." 


Lord Bright sighed again as he looked at the men assembled before 
him. "I thought you would've re-invented pants by now. Anyway, it's 
been nice chatting, but I'm sick of this place and I'm sick of you. 
Guard, be a dear and strangle me so | can get back to my nap." 


"Forgive us, Lord Bright," the Second said, "but we must beg Your 
indulgence for a short time longer. A great... difficulty has arisen that 
threatens to tear our Holy Foundation apart, and we can find no 
authority greater than Yourself capable of settling this matter." 


"Goddammit," Lord Bright said. "You guys really need to start 
thinking for yourself. Alright, what is it? Containment breach? D- 
Class rebellion? Are the Serpent's Hand back?" 


"No, Lord Bright,” the Second answered. "It is... a matter of 
theology. One of great importance, that this Council has been 
unable to resolve." 


Bright groaned. "Restart the Foundation as a church,’ Clef said. 'It'll 
make sense to scientifically illiterate peasants rebuilding society,’ 
Clef said. Well, what's the issue?" 


"It would seem that the Sites and Areas in the eastern lands," the 
Second said, "began teaching an interpretation of the Gospel 
According To Everett several years ago which is quite different than 
that which has been maintained here in the heartlands. This... 
interpretation,” he said so as to not upset certain of his peers, "has 
spread to Overwatch itself, and a great deal of strife has broken out 
among our many churches and outposts regarding which is the true 
and correct belief. We fear it may come to outright war, and thus we 
resolved to have a vote amongst ourselves and determine which is 
the one true interpretation. Unfortunately, we have become 
deadlocked, five to five." 


"That's why there are supposed to be thirteen O5s," Lord Bright 
said. "Did you need to wake me up just to remind you that those 
chairs aren't supposed to be empty?" 


"They are not empty by design, Lord Bright," interrupted the Tenth. 


"The First and the Eighth succumbed to the plague during the long 
winter, and the Fifth is currently in the south commanding the Mobile 
Legions in our ongoing crusade against the Chaos Insurgency. Due 
to our being deadlocked on this issue, we have been unable to 
appoint any to take their place." 


"Of course. So what's this big disagreement?" 


The Second nodded to two large books on the desk. "It concerns a 
disagreement in the translation of chapter 37, verse 25." 


"Which is?" 


"Was the child that you and St. Agatha conceived on the eve of the 
Great Breach created of Your spirit, or from Your spirit?" 


"And that,” said the old man, "is how one word almost led the world 
to the brink of war - and how the Lord Bright set things straight." 


"But what did the Lord Bright say?" asked the towheaded boy sitting 
at his grandfather's feet. 


"Yeah!" cried the girl sitting next to him. "What did He tell them?" 
"What do you think?" the grandfather asked. 

"| think she was born from Bright's spirit," said the boy. 
"Nuh-uh!" the girl said. "St. Emile was born of Bright's spirit!" 


The old man laughed. "Looks like we've got a schism on our hands 
again, right here." 


"Well?" the boy asked. "Which of us is right?" 
"And say it in your Bright voice!" 


The old man scowled and did his best Bright impression as he read 
the last line of the story; 


"For cryin’ out loud... Rights and | never had any kids." 


Tales C 


C-Sharp 


Agent Morisato heard the sound of C-Sharp and, at first, ducked. 
Then she registered the tall glass window next to her, which faced 
windows from other office buildings. She reconsidered, and bolted 
down the nearest hallway instead. A moment later, gunshots 
cracked the glass and pounded into the wall where she'd been. 


She stopped, caught her breath, and then carried on down the hall. 
Now her sidearm was in her hands. If the Coalition knew she was in 
the building, they'd be locking down right now, and anyone on the 
floor would be alerted to her position. But they wouldn't know that 
she had the fire key for the elevator, her simple but elegant escape 
route. The documents ought to be in the quartermaster's office, 
which was nearby. A few odd turns to throw anyone off her tracks, 
and she'd be ready for the ride out. 


At the end of the hallway, she slowed to a jog, and tapped the base 
of her left ear, activating a sub-dermal implant, which sent a signal 
backward in time. 


Then she was running again. 


Once she had the documents, was reasonably sure she wasn't 
being followed, and was at the elevator, reaching for the button she 
heard the sound of C-sharp again. What? She looked down the 
halls, but she had been in and out of them with no visuals... and her 
intel had sworn up and down that the building would be clear. She 
looked at the elevator again, and frowned. 


(There was someone on the other side of the elevator, holding a 
taser and a pistol. The Coalition knew Morisato was in the building 
about five minutes before the shots, which was enough time for their 
second agent to leave the sniper's nest, and make it up the elevator. 
As soon as the door opened...) 


She took the stairs, instead. On the fifth step down, she tapped the 
base of her left ear. 


At the bottom, she used a miniature charge to explode through the 
door's lock, listening all the while for C-sharp and footsteps that 
never came. The door opened onto the street. She grinned, spun 
the gun around in her hands before dropping it back in the holster, 
and booked it across the street to meet her getaway. She'd move 
fast enough that the snipers on the other side of the building would 
never know she'd gone. 


The implant was a little heavy, and sometimes it itched. Now and 
then it also made a very low humming sound in her left ear, but 
she'd gotten used to it. If she turned the sound up in Sea Hero, it 
just sounded like part of the game. Even among her colleagues, not 
many people had the implant- after all, it was still relatively untested- 
but she'd made an effort to stay in touch with a few who did. 


After handing off the file and debriefing, Morisato lit a stick of 
incense and sat in her private quarters in the dark for a while. Then 
she turned the lights on, microwaved a frozen dinner, powered on 
her computer, and called up Agent Oberoi while her game loaded. 


“How's it going, Hotshot? Back from a mission?” 


“Yeah. In the Ice World, did you find the skeleton key in the first 
dungeon or did you have to wait to beat Pirate Cave?” 


“| think | had to wait. You don't actually need it in the mean time.” 
“Thanks. How's it going?” 

“Aw, not so bad. Been on R&R the last week.” 

“Oh?” 


“It's the leg again. Nothing too bad, they don't want me jumping on it 
or anything.” 


“Relaxing?” 


“Oh yeah. You got to try it, Hotshot. Let's do vacation again 
sometime.” 


“Hell no. | don't know how you do it.” 


“| compartmentalize. Come on- Jakarta's nice. We'll get out of the 
city- | hear they have flying squirrels the size of raccoons.” 


“That's your idea of a good vacation? No wonder Minsk was a flop.” 


“It's on my bucket list. Hey, gotta go. Take care of yourself. You still 
seeing the shrink?” 


“Well, yeah.” 
“Me too. Good. If you need help with Pirate Cave, text me.” 


Agent Oberoi worked at another site now. She had the implant too. 
Oberoi heard C-sharp sometimes, and, well, she just coped better 
with it. Morisato knew it was an unfair thought- Oberoi worked just 
as hard to keep her mental state in order as she herself did- but she 
must just be better at it. How else did you explain the cafe in Minsk? 
Halfway through their lunch in a small cafe off the main drag, a child 
banging on piano keys had hit C-sharp, and the noise went straight 
through her brain. Morisato had cleared the area. Immediately. 


Had she hurt anyone? Had she broken anything? Oberoi assured 
her she hadn't, maybe scraped a chair when she toppled it in her 
mad dash out. By that point, her breathing at slowed and she was 
far too embarrassed to go back inside. It was a piano key. It wasn't 
the computerized tone she knew. It wasn't even the same timbre. 


Stupid, she thought as they walked away. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 


Another time, she'd been walking along a busy sidewalk in a city 
she'd never been in, and she heard C-sharp. At first, she backed 
away from the street edge, then backtracked through the crowd and 
slipped inside a fast-food restaurant, eyes fixed on the street 
outside, as she tapped her ear to send the signal back in time. 


Nothing. No gunshots rent the air. No vehicle ran off the road and 
plowed into the sidewalk. No screams, no alarming figures in heavy 
coats walking slowly or with their hands stuffed in pockets to conceal 
their firearms. Of course, a sniper would have seen her move. She 
called her supervisors and bought an apple turnover while they 
scanned the area from afar. 


The tentative all-clear meant she should go outside again. She was 
ready to move, but nothing happened. No high tone rung in her ear 
for the rest of that trip. What would have happened? Why had the 
signal gone back in the first place? False positives had never been a 
problem before. Obviously, her acting had changed the situation. 
But for the signal to send, it had to be sent back for some reason. 
Somehow. 


Who had sent it? 


Site 81, Supervisor's Office, Phone Line 


“Agent Morisato, the technology is safe. It absolutely 
cannot, and | mean mathematically impossible, transmit 
over five seconds in the past, so large-scale reality 
alterations or paradoxes are impossible. It's the golden 
goose.” 


“Well, the signal is safe. The technology will never be 
entirely safe, not until we understand it entirely, and it will 
never keep you absolutely safe. But this signal is safe.” 


“No, | Know you did your reading.” 


“It's, listen, Hotaru. The signal itself is sent from an 
alternate future in which your life is threatened. By 
receiving that signal, you can take action to avert the 
situation that created that danger, and by sending that 
signal back, you ensure that your own timeline is stable. 
Everyone is fine.” 


“No, I- what do you mean, parallel universes? We don't 
even know that's how this works.” 


“What do you mean?” 
“Who?” 


“Never mind.” 


Morisato wasn't a physicist. But she'd read a lot about time, since 
then, and knew that even if using the implant didn't cause universe- 
destroying paradoxes, cause and effect probably still didn't just go 
away. The cause was the danger, the effect was triggering that 
signal and heartless C-sharp. She read books and articles about 
multiple universes, branching timelines. Who was sending the signal 
back in the first place? 


She didn't think of them as separate people, but as one person; not 
individual selves cast aside throughout time, but a single copy of 
her- a tortured shadow that followed her at all times, ready to die for 
her at a moment's notice. 


Morisato trailed along the underground corridor, following the soft 
light of a laser beacon through the winding halls to the source of the 
anomaly. As she passed under a smoke detector on the wall, she 
heard a faint hissing. 


After three of her six fellow agents passed below the detector, it 
rotated 180 degrees in its socket and exploded. A hazy yellow gas 
filled the air, and the agents fell to their knees. Morisato's skin was 
burning, her nose and lungs were burning. She reached up and 
touched her left ear. 


As she passed under a smoke detector on the wall, she heard a 
faint hissing and the sound of C-sharp. 


She held up one hand in warning, then tested the knob on a side 


subject. 


“Copies” created this way are henceforth SCP-806-1. In order to 
produce SCP-806-1, film reels containing recordings of the 
deceased must be projected onto a silver lenticular cinema screen. 
Between 13 and 27 hours of recording is required to recreate the 
subject. At least one individual must be viewing the film through the 
duration of the phenomenon, or formation will cease and gradually 
reverse. 


If the projector is shut down, the instance of SCP-806-1 will fail, 
usually dissolving into a mixture of blood and graphite dust.4 


Finalized instances of SCP-806-1 lack any colour pigment, as if in 
monochrome. This effect is independent of the colorization of the 
original source material. Tissue removed from instances will 
gradually gain colour pigment through unknown processes, but 
decay unusually rapidly and do not survive transplantation. 


Complete instances of SCP-806-1 usually retain most memories of 
their past life, and initially will believe that they are the original 
individual. All instances save for SCP-806-1-a die of cardiac arrest 
between 70 and 75 hours after final formation. Use of SCP-806 as a 
means of investigating film based anomalies, is pending review. 


806-1-a and Discovery: SCP-806-1-a is the first known subject 
recreated through SCP-806, and the only still-surviving individual. 
806-a is a young woman of indeterminate heritage appearing in her 
early 20s, apparently born in the early to mid 20th century. For an as 
of yet unknown reason, SCP-806-1-a appears to be afflicted by a 
form of dissociative amnesia which prevents her from recalling any 
personal information regarding her original life, including her own 
name. No records yet been found regarding a person of 806-1-a's 
appearance or general timeline. 


806-1-a was recovered alongside SCP-806 during its initial 
recovery. Agent Fishe, imbedded in the local police force, was 
investigating a call that youths had broken into a local theatre which 
had been closed for holidays. There the agent encountered an 
unknown male angrily shouting while attempting to gather up 
SCP-806 and other paraphernalia, and 806-1-a in a state of 


door and hurried her team inside. A minute later, one of them 
identified the trap from Foundation records, and found an alternate 
route through the compound. Morisato kept her eye on her watch, 
and after she heard their new plan, reached up and touched her left 
ear. 


At last, they made it to the Coalition's research space. It had been 
cleared out in a hurry before they arrived, but the strange emission 
was still there, meaning its source was either immobile or hadn't 
been evacuated. It would be a great day for Morisato if they'd just 
left it behind, because it would save her from having to secure the 
whole compound. Well, if not, she'd had worse days too. 


The laser beacon was malfunctioning underground, but their map 
prediction put the signal's source dead ahead of them, so Morisato 
signaled to her team and opened the door at the end of the hall. 


The laboratory inside was lit by dim purple emergency lights alone. 
Morisato squinted as she cleared the immediate surroundings. It 
was hard to see into the lab's corners, of course, but nothing 
especially unusual appeared. As the team spread into the room, the 
hint of a dancing red spot of light caught her eye.