When they D-class saw it, the group did not react. Each continued 
their routines, even as it stalked and killed them. Not a single one 
made note of it. 


Satisfactory. A good test. D-13279 got to carry two briefcases the 
day after. Need extra room for important details. 


N REPORTING TO ALL 


CLEAR: EXISTENTIAL THREATS CLEAR. 
TRANSUNIVERSAL THREATS CLEAR. LOCALIZED 
THREATS CLEAR. NORMALCY CLEAR. 


NOTES: NTH BEHAVIORAL TEST SUCCESSFUL. 
MASS DEPLOYMENT MECHANISMS REQUIRED 
NEXT FOR TARGETING OF CITY CENTERS AND 
WATER DISTRIBUTION. SUGGESTIONS FOLLOW. 


SCP-994: Some Silver Dishes 


Item #: SCP-994 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: The flock of SCP-994 is to be 
contained within a remote 50 square kilometer area in northwest 
Washington state, with housing provided within hangars 3, 4, 6 and 
8 at Site-410. All SCP-994 individuals are to be fitted with radio 
transmitters broadcasting on Foundation-secure channels, as well 
as implants tied to an “invisible fence” network operating out of local 
cell phone towers. 


The SCP-994 roosting hangars are be resupplied with food twice 
weekly (the standard plankton-enriched nutrient fluid is to be 
replaced with 25 head of cattle once per month), and cleaned on an 
as-needed basis. 


SCP-994 are allowed free range within the containment territory: 
due to the special nature of SCP-994, sightings by the civilian 
population or minor breaches are to be treated as low priority. All 
incidents requiring action are to be dealt with by Special Intelligence 
Team "NUAOIS" (Northwestern Unknown Airborne Object 
Investigation Society). 


Description: SCP-994 is a species of airborne lifeform bearing no 
resemblance to any known phylum of organism. SCP-994 are 
generally circular, with a flat ventral surface and curved dorsal side, 
and measuring between 3 and 50 meters in diameter (9.84 and 164 
ft, respectively) when fully grown. SCP-994 will change in shape 
with age: juveniles will appear as blunted triangles, adults will be 
saucer-shaped, and elderly SCP-994 will be oblong. 


SCP-994 have no distinctive features on the dorsal side, outside of a 
layer of short, highly reflective silver fur and the orifices of the 
creature’s respiratory tracts. SCP-994 have no visible eyes, instead 


13279 
02438 
91354 
50246 
PASARS eS 


Every month is the same. D-13279 used to feel a sense of urgency. 
As their knowledge grows, beyond this world, into every universe 
with a Foundation. 


This world was not meant for the Foundation, but a tipping point has 
been reached. They will make the world into one for themselves, 
and make those in it fit for the world. D-class are just the template. 
What the Foundation has learned from them will be applied to 
everyone. And none will ever notice. 


The only comfort D-13279 took was that soon, they would be like 
everyone. And everyone would be like them. And that's some 
justice, isn't it? 


D-13279 saw all of them. 


"You've committed a crime. It's very important that you pay your 
debt to society." 


The response: "What?" "No..." "What crime?" "Fuck off!" 


Knowledge is powerlessness. D-13279 could not help a single one 
of them. But the Foundation could. 


Overlapping bricks add up to something. Means nothing more than a 
brick to building. A building to a mountain. A mountain to a planet. 


Every Foundation was there, but they blur together. There's only 
one Foundation, one for all the universes, and its ligaments are 
vacant promises, linked hands, and full briefcases. Soon there will 
be nothing but the Foundation. And the Foundation will be 
everything. 


D-class expand above and below. The researchers can't remember 
the nights they spent on mattresses in gymnasiums. The civilians 
will never remember what the scientist said just before they pushed 
the plunger on the syringe. 


As far as everyone knows, the world never changed. No-one will 
ever know what was lost. 


For the record, she said "You're paying your debt to society. 
Goodnight." 


05-0041 sat in a conference room with 12 other men. Each had their 
own plans. Today, and tomorrow, and so on, they would meet and 
discuss a common topic, and choose their Foundation's stance. Just 
like they had for all the yesterdays. 


They were the most frightened men on the planet. Each man held 
his fears close, because they were the only thing that kept him 
awake throughout the day. Even as the reason for fear dwindled. 
Even as reality grew ever closer to matching the spine that they had 
been constructing. 


The multiverse couldn't stop them now. The Foundation was bigger 
than it was. It could only fight back for so long. 


Every O5 nodded in agreement when the final resolution was 
proposed. It was all coming together. 


But they were still afraid. You can always add one, and then you 
have an entirely different number on your hands. 


D-13279 kept looking for a key, or a door. Some way out. The 
dreams weren't an escape, just a reminder of the bars. They could 
not evade the mindkill forever. They would die eventually, and a new 
person would be born from their corpse. 


D-1327 thought about all the people around them. They lived such 
short lives. Tiny people, easy for the Foundation to move around. No 
baggage to deal with. 


D-132 thought about fear. The fear that they as they know 
themselves would soon be dead. The fight for maintaining the world 
as one knows it. Is that noble? 


D-13 thought about how concentrated things feel. Reality is getting 
denser, as all the universes collapse upon themselves. Uncertainty 
is going away. How will the new man think? 


D-1 felt something pleasant bubbling up. They don't need to 
wonder. They are the new man, tailor-made for this new world. They 
don't need to worry anymore. They can give up. 


And D- _was ready. 
The loud nights were over. 


The quiet days were here. 


The Word and The Cool Kids 


Part I: The Word and The Cool Kids | Part I! | Part III 


Adrian Baudin had a recurring dream. He'd dream that he was lying 
awake on his cot, in the basement beneath the house in which he'd 
spent two months, ever since the day of the Greenwich Exhibition. 


The basement, normally filled with the sound of chatter (and drilling, 
Adrian was convinced; power tools at least), was instead mute, and 
the wooden floorboards of the house that sat anomalously silent 
above Adrian's head were streaming with flames. 


Adrian always found himself unable to move from the cot, unable to 
take his eyes off the ceiling as it glowed with embers. Eventually, the 
roof would fall, and the flames would engulf his body. Every part of 
him that was recognizable would be burned away, and beneath 
them would be a new human, reborn and ready to emerge in a world 
that did not remember his face. 


And it was always at this time that Adrian awoke. 


Today, he woke up in his cot, as usual. Usual, but not always— 
sometimes, he'd wake up on a porcelain floor in the bathroom, or 
perhaps on dead grass outside. His hosts told him this was a normal 
consequence of the field that permeated the house. He tried to no 
avail to think nothing of it. Elsewhere in the basement, other men 
rose from their cots, which were set up in haphazard rows on the 
concrete floors. Without any fanfare, the day had begun. 


Across an aisle, he spotted a familiar face hunched over his knees 
on the edge of a cot, staring between his legs, willing them to 
cooperate. 

Adrian walked over. "Geoff." 


"Adrian," Geoffrey mumbled through a grayed mustache. "Let's go 


for a walk." 


There wasn't much space for walking outside. The house looked run 
down, white paint worn by endless raindrops into a streaky mess. 
There seemed to be all too much wood propping the place up, and 
all too many worm-ridden holes in every plank. 


The exterior of the house was enveloped by only another 
confinement. A dome of eggshell blue came down on all sides, 
leaving a scarce few meters' radius of unkempt lawn. If one stared 
into the barrier, it might seem like fog that had been pressed against 
some transparent wall, embossed with the shape of hexagons ina 
grid. If one stared for longer, the eyes would lose focus, trying to 
grasp the other side of a wall that wasn't there. 


Once, Adrian had walked through this barrier. When 
he returned, he found one of them waiting to let him back in. From 
the outside, the house just looked like an empty field. When he 
entered again, the wall became solid, unyielding. He had not left 
since. 


And so it was often that the misplaced artist and his friend would 
wait outside. They would talk about what they had been doing. What 
to do next. 


Geoff wasn't happy in the old house. The hosts made him uneasy. 
That they might consider themselves artists, and call what they do 
art. He scarcely thought art should put you on the radar of the 
Foundation. Or the Coalition. 


Adrian was less sure. He didn't think a single one of the Cool Kids 
really thought they were artists. He saw it in their eyes, reflected in 
every drop of water they drank: they were soldiers. The moniker was 
purely practical, of course. They knew it would draw in the people 
they wanted. They knew it tied them to ideas they liked. "Hey," they 
might say. "We fought back then when the Word was something 
worth fighting for. We can still fight. Fight with us." 


But, it was all conjecture. Sometimes Adrian wondered if conjecture 
was all he had left anymore. Is it worth asking a question if no-one 


thinks to answer? Is it worth painting if your canvas ends up ina 
research vault somewhere? 


Adrian related this, in so many words, to Geoff, who was quick to 
correct him. They had each other. That would have to be enough. 


Sometimes Adrian stared at a canvas, paintbrush in hand. 


He had borrowed them from the communal supply stash. Most of the 
paint in the building was used for reinforcing sigils, or protective 
circles. But they had some surplus from which Adrian could leech. 
And he tried to paint when he could. Today, he'd managed to sneak 
some space in the vacant dining room. 


He thought about what could be projected onto the canvas. Who 
made his suffering? Who kept him from leaving this place? 


Was it the Cool Kids? The Coalition? Was it the government? Or the 
Foundation? 


His brush moved, and he focused as he'd done before, in that 
apartment. When the world clicked, and it all made sense. He did 
with his brush what he once did with his mind, what he now does 
with his eyes. Sorting the threads in his mind into neat boxes, 
tracing the lines to their origin. Following the circle. 


He was interrupted by one of the youngest of his hosts. Adrian paid 
the required attention to him, turning his head away from the 
smattering of blue pigments to focus on the messy-haired man to his 
side. 


He had a toothy glare. "We know what you're feeling.” 
Adrian avoided his gaze. "What is it | feel?" 


"You're wondering if you could get out. You know what it's like to be 
pushed down. You scream, but nobody hears. You paint, but 
nobody looks." 


Adrian nodded. "Like you?" 


"Sometimes." The boy shrugged, taking an unwanted seat. 
"Sometimes it feels like everyone's listening. Sometimes it's like 
there's someone looking over our shoulder." 


"Seems comforting. You should take that to church." Adrian stared 
at the table. It didn't budge. 


"Not really. They don't understand us. Don't get it. We've tried 
outreach, but it's hard." The boy shifted in his seat. Adrian didn't 
look. 


"Is that what Greenwich was? Outreach? You did reach out to some 
people. People coming to arrest us." Adrian twirled a thin paintbrush 
between his fingers. 


The boy exhaled. Sounded like he was shaking his head. "No, no. 
Not for them. They can knock all they want, but they won't get in. It's 
the person who can get in... she's who we really want." 


"What? Who?" 
"Maybe if you looked us in the eyes, you could find out." 


Adrian stared at the table, adamant. The boy left, eventually, without 
another word. 


Adrian tried to resume, but the paint just wouldn't work. He shelved 
the canvas for another time. 


On another day, outside the house. 


"Did | ever tell you about my... when | was young?" Geoff was 
eating an apple, and perched on a patch of grass, one somewhat 
less craggy than the rest of the yard. 


"| don't think so." Adrian was staring forwards, into the foggy barrier. 
"You usually ask the questions." 


"Well, before I, uh... before | left, my parents had a farm. Big, wide, 
open. Lots of trees. Suppose it was an orchard, actually. There were 
lots of apples." He took another bite. 


Adrian turned, and peered past the fruit obscuring his face. "You 
don't look much like a farmer, Geoff. More of a... Hemingway type." 
He nodded to himself, satisfied with the comparison. 


If Geoffrey considered this, he didn't pause. "I like to think of it as, | 
was growing bowls of fruit twenty years before you started painting 
them." 


"You grew bowls?" 


"Ech, quiet. But, what I've been wondering, is: how long are we 
going to sit here, in this house... before they start trying to grow 
things on the lawn?" 


Adrian tilted his head. "| don't think they need to grow food. There's 
a van. Some kind of exploit pocket on it, and they can drive 
undetected. Get groceries." 


"If they're so good at hiding, I'm surprised we have to hide in the first 
place. Why weren't they so subtle back in... in Greenwich?" 


"Well," Adrian turned his head. Several of his hosts were sitting 
close to the barrier, cross-legged in a semicircle, eyes closed. "They 
thought they had to be seen. Had to do it in public." 


"I'm still trying to... scrub the whole bloody thing from my public 
eyes. | swear, | remember six different ways it happened and none 
of them make sense. | saw you die, at least... at least once." 
Geoffrey winced, and shook his head, but the memories stayed 
firmly inside it. 


"It's alright. | don't think it... | don't think any of it went like they 
wanted it to." The artist pressed his friend's shoulder gently. "Can | 
ask a question?" 

"Shoot." 


"Why'd you run away? From the farm." 


"My thought was, growing food for other people to eat isn't a real 
way to live." 


"Mmm. Fair sight better than this, though." 


They were silent. Adrian thought about mentioning something 
strange he'd noticed about the van. Sometimes he saw it out in the 
driveway, painted in its purple coat, a mural on the left side with a 
bird of prey, skull clutched in one claw and olive wreath in the other 
(who painted that, Adrian wondered. Surely not one of his hosts). 
Sometimes the van wasn't there, out on a supply trip. But, on other 
days, the van was nowhere to be found, but not a single person was 
missing from the house. As if it had driven away on its own. 


He decided not to mention it. 


Sometimes, Adrian's sight didn't want to cooperate with him. Ever 
since that project, the one the Foundation kept locked up... 


Sometimes everything just swirled together, lost in a sea of 
everything that came before. People got lost in the clouds of what 
shaped them, objects became obscured by the minds of their 
architects. 


Everything just blended together, like an oil painting in the rain. And 
Adrian could lose himself in the flood. 


Adrian didn't talk to his hosts very often. Most of the time, if you 
didn't talk to them, they'd ignore you just the same, and buzz about, 
performing rituals and spells and making sigils with acrylic paint on 
the floor and ceiling (and drilling away with power tools. Adrian knew 
it. He saw the hole in their faces). 


Whenever he saw them, he squinted instinctively. A single man 
seemed to be every man at once, not indistinguishable, but all of 
them together. The whole was not more than the sum of its parts; 
the whole was its parts.