| didn’t dream that night. | saw nothing like a singularity, or a single 
pillar of light, or a broken reflection. | expected that | was on some 
sort of trail, and that was where the next clue would be. What | 
thought was magic turned out to be a day trip in my head, and here | 
was trespassing on someone else’s life. 


No more dreams. | got tired of the little bits of stellar history lying 
around my studio apartment. | got cynical again. | resented the 
elephant painting and the cosmic mystery | imagined. 


Then the girl was back. | just glimpsed her turning a corner one day, 
and | could hear her arguing on the floor below me. When | left 
yesterday morning, she was screaming at someone in the hallway. 


This isn’t the same! 


It was the man in the photo. She turned around and started crying. 
The man seemed frustrated and scared. He looked a lot like her. 


Why isn't this the same? 


The man she left with long ago turned the corner with a middle aged 
woman. 


She's not smiling. 

The pair kissed at the foot of the stairs. 

Why isn't she smiling? 

The girl screamed at her brother, then seized and kissed him. 
This ts not her world. 


Endorphins swam around in my head. | began to grin. | cried and 
laughed and | didn’t care about the looks they gave me. This was an 
accident. A masterpiece. | performed a miracle. 


| understood how we exist in their memory... and other people exist 
in ours. My memories of her were wrong, but now they are absolute. 


That night | could hardly sleep, but | dreamed. | dreamed of the 
things escaping into a distant spot. | saw them funnel out of the 
other end. They were screaming, crude reflections of what they 
were. | woke up and lay staring at the ceiling, lightheaded. 


| disposed of some garbage; my room was empty but for the 
paintings. Happy little elephant scribblings all over the walls and roof 
and floor. | went to the zoo and | purchased every single painting 
they had and the brilliant splashes of colour were everything. 


It is a fine thing to be a patron of the arts. 


| went to sleep and | woke up and between the two was everything. 
The girl lived with her brother and the man had moved away. She 
cried and he cried and they cried because the world was not their 


own and they knew it. 


| started to make art of my own. | bought some paint and some 
horsehair paintbrushes and some gloriously beautiful white paper 
and | started to apply some colour, but they didn't mix the right way 
and it all came out wrong. 


| went to sleep and | woke up and the green light of the sun flowed 
through every window. Meanwhile the universe tried to make sense 
of my art, so the girl next door and the boyfriend that was the brother 
sat and giggled and looked into each other's eyes and saw nothing 
but each others' retinas. The elephant paintings covered the roof 
and the floor and the walls and the sink and the lights and my 
clothes and my flesh and the world. 


| wish | could paint like the elephant did. 


| went to sleep and | woke up and my dreams were pyrite and 
sulphur. The boyfriend and his sister smiled and grinned and 
skipped in tune. | picked up the horsehair paintbrush with my trunk 
and flayed the flesh of the rough-hewn canvas with whips laced with 
black and blue and red and a shade of being that words are not 
enough for. 


| went to sleep and | woke up and my paintings were not enough 
and so | took a brush to myself and painted my grey skin and the 
blue light of the sun on my indigo paint mixed with the red of the 

coupling next door and it all mixed into a single hue and had the 

consistency of vomit twice removed. 


| went to sleep and | woke up. 
| went to sleep and | woke up. 
| went to sleep and | woke up. 
| went to sleep. 


Uncountable infinities of light swam into impossible oneness. An 
errant thought: wouldn't it be nice to dance among the fairies? The 
lights cackled and shone and whispered foreign words down my 
throat and the words became mine and the world felt like nothing. 


| disappeared into the distance and never woke up. 


A Defection 


>cavalcade.bat -o -xk -scp 00315 
LOADING... LOADED 

PROJECT CAVALCADE CONTINGENCY 
COMMISSION 

STANDPOINT: 47.6097° N, 122.3331° W 
CONTINGENCY 00315-XK-001 
STARTING... ERROR [048500: INSECURE LINK] 
>realgen.bat -a 

RealGen Rootkit v1.31 

OverDood Environment Loading... Loaded. 
Enter Target Range: 

>192.168.0.* 

Scanning Ports... Scanned. 

Enter Redirects: 

Se 

Redirecting... 

System Redirect Loop Found. 

Ignore? 

>y 

Redirecting... Redirected. 

>quit 

Exiting OverDood Environment. 
>cavalcade.bat -o -xk -scp 00315 
LOADING... LOADED 

PROJECT CAVALCADE CONTINGENCY 
COMMISSION 

STANDPOINT: 47.6097° N, 122.3331° W 
CONTINGENCY 00315-XK-001 
STARTING... STARTED. 

REVERSION POTENTIAL: 0.03740 
RESOLUTION POTENTIAL: 0.00276 
>revokePrivs.bat -all -s -m 73 

Does the black moon howl73737373? (hard lock 
disengaged) 


>logoff -cor 

Does the. (7373)?? howl black white black white black 
white black white black white gray moon does howl? 
how737373 


Sedna Prewitt sighed, knowing she had ended thousands of lives 
with a few keypresses. At least it would get the point across. Sedna 
calmly walked to the safe in the corner of her office, rotating the 
mechanism until the lock opened with a satisfying thud. She swung 
open the safe door, revealing a rusted toolbox. She picked it up, 
then closed the safe door. Sedna walked out of her office. It was 
odd, she thought; a weight had been lifted from her chest, and yet 
her stomach felt like it was sinking. It didn't matter too much. She 
inhaled sharply as she approached the exit of Site-76. 


Site Director Prewitt was waved past security without complaint. 


Sedna walked out the front door towards the drab blue car on the 
opposite side of the road. Her pair of contacts sat inside it: Gamut 
Ruckfall was reading her newspaper, resting it against the steering 
wheel; Krav Lichtenfield sat in the passenger side, chewing 
strawberry gum and rubbing his stubble. Sedna opened one of the 
passenger doors, eased herself down into the leather seat, then 
rested her toolbox on her lap. Gamut folded her newspaper, placed 
it on the dashboard, and started accelerating down the road. Krav 
turned around and leaned across, grinning and offering Sedna a 
stick of gum. She took it, unwrapped it, then placed it in her mouth. 
Krav's grin widened even more. 


"Welcome to the Chaos Insurgency, Miss Prewitt." 


PROJECT CAVALCADE CONTINGENCY 
COMMISSION 

STANDPOINT: 47.6097° N, 122.3331° W 
STANDPOINT DESIGNATION: SEATTLE 
CONTINGENCY 00315-XK-001 

DESCRIPTION: CONTINGENCY FOR SCP-315 XK 
SCENARIO FAMILY 

SOLUTION: WIDESPREAD UNILATERAL 
DISSOCIATION AND TEMPORAL LOCK AS PER TS-7 


PROTOCOLS 

VECTORS: SPARSE AIRBORNE (CHEMICAL, 
PATHOGENIC), MEMETIC 

MODIFIERS: SRA TYPE C, XACTS TYPE B 
REVERSION POTENTIAL: 0.03740, LINEAR, 2 HOUR 
ZERO POINT 

RESOLUTION POTENTIAL: 0.00276, LINEAR, 7 HOUR 
ZERO POINT 


The Administrator contemplated the readout on his screen. A two 
hour window of non-zero reversion potential... plenty of time to 
address the situation. There had been worse breaches in the past, 
by far, and for worse reasons. 


The phone next to the Administrator rang, and he picked it up. O5-4 
was the one who would have to deal with the situation. Time was of 
the essence; there was no time for a council vote, so O5-4 made a 
direct petition. The Administrator listened to the requests, agreeing 
to all of them one by one. This wasn't the worst that the 
Administrator had seen, but it was the worst that 05-4 had ever 
needed to deal with. 


Sedna Prewitt had been capable of doing much worse than this, and 
for that the Administrator was pleased and disappointed in equal 
measure. 


A man was looking out a window. 


The birds were flying, the sun was shining, and everything was right 
with the world. Everything was okay, everything was alright, there 
was nothing to worry about. He heard a car screech off the side of a 
road, then the crunch of metal against brick below his office. He 
heard people shouting, screaming, crying, and then the shouting 
stopped. 


Everything was perfectly fine. 
"Hello?" 


A middle-aged man was talking to him on a laptop screen. Said 


laptop was sitting in the lap of the man who was not on the laptop 
screen. The man on the laptop screen started talking again. 


"You seem to be forgetting things every time we stop talking." 


The man that was not on the laptop stared blankly. He started to 
talk, then coughed; he welled up some spit in his throat, then tried 
again. 


"What?" 

"Something is heavily affecting your concentration." 

"Who are you?" 

"Who indeed. Perhaps a more pertinent question: who are you?" 


The man who was not on the laptop screen paused for a moment to 
think. Who was he? It didn't seem too important. It wasn't that he 
didn't remember. He knew that he knew who he was; on realising 
this, safe in the conclusion that he was aware of who he was on 
some deeper level, he refused to drag it up into his active 
consciousness. The man who was not on the laptop screen was 
struck by a profound, zenlike apathy. Easier by far to mirror the man 
in the laptop screen's words than to think his own thoughts. 


"Who indeed." 

"Well, for convenience's sake, let's call you Kevin." 
"Why Kevin?" 

"Because that's your name." 

"Ah." 

"As for me, you can call me 315. Ringing any bells?" 
Kevin stopped paying attention. 

"Kevin?" 


Kevin's gaze started drifting from the man in the laptop screen. 315 


clicked his fingers loud enough for the laptop's speakers to clip. 


"Back to me, Kevin, focus on me, alright? If you look away, you'll 
forget again." 


Kevin looked back towards the screen. Easier to go along with it. He 
spoke to 315. 


"Okay." 


"Alright. Good. First of all, we need to start moving. Pick up this 
laptop, be careful not to drop it, and we're going to start walking out 
the door. Okay?" 


"Okay." 


Kevin, at this point, felt the easiest course of action was compliance. 
He grabbed the laptop in his hands, then stood up. He started 
looking towards the window. 315 snapped his fingers again. 


"No, Kevin, come on, focus. Look to your right. The door is on your 
right." 


Kevin looked to the door on his right, then paused for two seconds. 
"You need to walk towards the door, Kevin." 


Kevin started walking towards the door. 


Professor Thaddeus Xyank was annoyed. Not at the fact that a 
space the size of Seattle - indeed, a space that was Seattle - had 
been temporally corrupted. He was annoyed that nobody had told 
him that it was going to happen. The research potential into 
temporal corruption seemed enormous. This was mostly because 
Xyank still didn't understand what temporal corruption actually 
meant. 


From: O5-4 (1.1.861.291| 
artni_3ujk2bv6j3b5.4-50#1.1.861.291| 
artni_3ujk2bv6j3b5.4-50) 

To: Thad Xyank (1.1.861.291| 


SCP-569: Heads 


Item #: SCP-569 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-569 are currently 
contained at Bio-Research Site-66. Contained instances of SCP-569 
are to be sealed within 1 m3 steel crates and immersed in ice water 
baths when not under research. If containment is breached, 
aggressive instances are to be neutralized through application of 
aerosolized liquid nitrogen. Passive instances are to be herded back 
into a containment crate and returned to containment. 


Personnel injured by SCP-569 may be treated via amputation of 
affected surfaces; severely affected personnel are to be terminated. 
Matter produced by agitated instances of SCP-569 is to be ground 
into powder and utilized in Site construction. 


Description: SCP-569 appear to be a collection of 46 animate, 
disembodied, floating human heads. All instances are identical, 
resembling a bald man in his late 40s. Analysis reveals that 
SCP-569 are sculpted from Sylacauga marble; no further anomalous 
materials are present. 


SCP-569 will usually congregate into a loose swarm and float 
aimlessly at a mean height of 10 m. Individuals will randomly shift 
between several identical expressions, ranging from apparent joy to 
considerable distress. No pattern or probable cause for these shifts 
may be found; they are hypothesized to be simply random. In 
addition, instances of SCP-569 appear to react to temperature 
variances; temperatures below 4° Centigrade render them inert. 


If an instance of SCP-569 is assaulted by a human, a sudden 
movement is perceived in its direct field of vision, or a sufficiently 
sudden loud noise occurs in the immediate vicinity, the affected 
instances will transform into an aggravated state and attempt to 


artni_83028f03b4.knayxt#1.1.861.291| 
artni_83028f03b4.knayxt) 

Date: [FIELD EMPTY] 

Subject: Temporal Corruption 

Content: 

Seattle has been temporally locked as per TS-7 
containment protocols. However, the Type B XACTS 
stationed around the breach have malfunctioned, 
resulting in temporal corruption. Considering your paper 
regarding hypothetical use of a Type B XACTS array to 
introduce temporal corruption, you are the person most 
suited to address the situation. This should also present 
a valuable opportunity to test the accuracy of your 
theories. 


You will be transported to Seattle within the next twenty 
minutes. 


Xyank hadn't written the paper that O5-4 was referring to yet. No, 
scratch that; he hadn't even designed a Type B XACTS yet. On the 
short trip to Seattle, Xyank thumbed through both the 
aforementioned paper, as well as the specifications document for 
the Type B. 


Halfway through the latter, Professor Xyank saw the memetic trigger 
he was going to place within the paper. He felt his arms seize and 
slump, damned whatever reason he was going to have for putting it 
in there, then fell unconscious in the back of the unmarked van. 


Sedna Prewitt watched her watch tick down. 
90 minutes remained until Seattle was irrecoverable. 


Gamut had taken them out from the city centre, through the 
residential areas, and out into the "semi-residential" zones. They 
had reached the strange sort of point at which a city seems to lose 
its steam; where more of the land is used for roads than housing, 
and more still is simply open grassland, as yet unclaimed by urban 
sprawl. Krav was staring out the windows, chewing his gum to calm 
his nerves. Sedna couldn't take her eyes off her watch until Gamut 


broke her concentration. 
"We're here." 


Gamut slowly decelerated, rolled to a stop besides a well-forested 
area, then pulled up the handbrake. She unbuckled her seatbelt and 
got out of the car, momentarily stretching her arms and legs. Krav 
opened the glove compartment, pulled out a small packet of papers 
held together with a thick elastic band, then got out himself. He 
turned, opening Sedna's door for her, and gesturing with a smile. 


"Out we get, Miss Prewitt. Watch your step, 'n all that." 


Sedna grabbed the handle of the rusty toolbox and stood up outside 
the door. 


"What now, then?" 


Gamut answered as she walked around the front of the car, running 
her hands through her short pink hair. 


"We have a five minute walk through these trees, then we hit an 
open field. Our plane's waiting there." 


Sedna nodded. Gamut pulled a compass from her pocket, looking at 
it intensely; Sedna stared, confused. 


"So it's just past these trees?" 


"Yes, but we need this to get through. Walking in a straight line can 
be difficult in the wrong places, if you get my gist."