The humming voice came from the chapter head, Jai Singh (Senior 
Staff Manager, Accounts), whose liquid-metal brain was flowing in 
distributed form through the maze of pipeworks surrounding the low 
table/holoprojector in the center of the subjective floor. 


They gathered/floated/scuttled around, all photoreceptor equivalents 
on Singh's coils. 


"First off, again, welcome back," Singh susurrated gently, "I'll do 
away with the formalities because I've received some interesting 
news from the Primarch at Bridge Core." 


Kexelm actuated the servomotor that raised one of his false 
eyebrows at this. The Bridge Core mainly kept to itself, the Als there 
activating only in case of potential threats to the safety of the ship as 
a whole. Given the Solidarity’s purpose, that meant they activated 
quite frequently, but to do so when the ship wasn't fully crewed was 
certainly unusual. 


"Apparently a series of anomalous entities have boarded the ship." 


There was a chorus of gasp and gasp-equivalents, as Singh 
uploaded the release he'd received from the Core. Kexelm set his 


face to a concerned frown and retreated inside himself, paging 
through the files. Well that was unusual. 2085. He didn't have this 
universe's documentation, but it was fairly easy to dig up version 
from similar realities and compare. 


Qing-Herbert spoke first, as always. 


"Well, they're hardly a threat, are they? Just a few genetic hybrids 
and an old man with a parasite. Why are you wasting our time with 
this, Jai?" 


Twin Ferrous Pillars made a conciliatory gestures, mouths dropping 
in and out of chorus as she spoke. 


"To make their way up here on a stolen Foundation vessel requires 
a great deal of ingenuity. I'm curious as to why they're here." 


There was a growing rush of sound from Mild Current Flows Upward 
as it prepared to speak. It was probably the most intelligent of the 
group, but its mind worked on such an unusual timescale that even 
after thousands of years of friendship it still took them all some time 
to decipher its meaning. 


"Escape. Unsuitable. Acquire." 
Ver Hoon tisked, jaw clattering. 


"Yes, but there are much better ways of leaving the solar system 
than the Solidarity, Mild. Hell, if they're that good at breaching 
containment why should they even bother with this iteration of reality 
at all? They could have taken a little jaunt into higher-dimensional 
space and gotten away scot-free." 


Kexelm leaned forward over the table, splaying his forehands out 
and calling up dozens and dozens of files, each with subtle 
variations on a group of figures with feline ears. 


"It's certainly a possibility, Hoon, but look- in almost all of these 
variations this... group isn't particularly technologically advanced. 
We're talking mind/machine interfaces, not dimensional boundary 
control or quantum manipulation. I'm not saying it's not a possibility, 
but you can't deny it's statistically unlikely." 


Qing-Herbert snorted a cloud of smoke, limbs clattering. 


"Statistically unlikely? Give me a break. You're reading too much 
into this." 


He swept the images away, gesticulating wildly. 


"Look, imagine this. You escape from containment, right? You do it 
flashily. You know your Society, or Initiative, or Foundation or 
whatever's on your tail, so what do you do? You find a place with 
lots of guns. A place that can defend itself. And then you plan your 
next move. And besides, if these feline-women have any technical 
intelligence, they'd realize that-" 


"-That the Solidarity is not theirs to control," said Singh. "They've 
managed to intrude on one of the small-area networks, but they 
haven't touched anything important. Just... ordering clothes, 
apparently." 


Pillars chuckled, making a noise like a small soft pillow hitting a bag 
of broken glass. 


"And | suppose the Quartermasters are being stingy about their 
records?" 


Ver Hoon snorted. 
"Stingy? No doubt. Remember that time when-" 


"Consider. Motives. Hidden.", Mild Current Flows Upward boomed. 
Singh gave a muffled noise of disapproval. 


"Oh come on, Mild. Not everything has to be a conspiracy, you 
know. Sometimes containment breaches are just that- containment 
breaches." 


Qing-Herbert made a sharp snapping noise. 
"Just 'cause you're getting paranoid in your old age doesn't mean 


we have to get dragged into your ridiculous fantasies, you senile old 
lump of rock." 


SCP-716 exhibits a select form of inconsistent topography. While 
appearing to have a set number of rail cars from outside 
observation, the train exhibits an apparently unlimited amount of 
cars when entered. Almost all of these cars are enclosed and 
appear to be of random types (passenger, tanker, animal transport, 
mail, etc.). Many of them exhibit other anomalous properties, such 
[DATA EXPUNGED]. Some notable and recurring cars are a horse 
transport car with horse corpses hanging from ropes made of sheep 
tendon, a tanker car filled with a mixture of crude oil and human bile, 
a large transport car filled with stacks of keys made of many 
different materials, [DATA EXPUNGED]. 


SCP-716 is also capable of two forms of transport/movement. To 
begin with, it can travel and move in a manner consistent with a 
locomotive of similar dimensions despite the lack of vital parts, any 
form of fuel, or conductor. SCP-716 is capable of reaching speeds in 
excess of km/h and can do so in a very short period of time. While 
it appears to “prefer” traveling on current or former rail tracks, 
SCP-716 is capable of “over land” movement as well, in a manner 
similar to SCP-1489. Observation of SCP-716 engaging in this 
movement in a urban area shows that activities that would damage/ 
disable a normal locomotive (such as penetrating a three meter thick 
brick wall) do not impair SCP-716 in any perceivable way. 


The second transportation/movement form exhibited by SCP-716 
has only been observed with human subjects on board. The 
probability of triggering this mode appears to be largely random, but 
is more common in cases of groups of five or more subjects. 
Subjects report that SCP-716 will suddenly “shift” and begin to 
move, rapidly accelerating to top speed. Outside observation will 
show that regardless of subject reports and received data, SCP-716 
remains completely still. Once SCP-716 begins this form of 
transportation/movement, subjects become unrecoverable. 


SCP-716 also exhibits properties [DATA EXPUNGED](1) 
Subjects exiting SCP-716 during the second form of transportation/ 


movement [DATA EXPUNGED] (2) 


Addendum: 


"Small. Petty." 
"You take that back!" 


Kexelm sighed. It wouldn't be a Society meeting without Qing- 
Herbert and Mild turning to pointless insults. They had literally 
heard, and said, it all before, but the cycle continued. He couldn't 
deny that the nuclear intelligence had a tendency to wild flights of 
fancy and bizarre conspiracies, but the small machine had a hair- 
trigger temper at the best of times. As a member of Security, it was 
his job to resolve disputes like this, so he raised a hindarm, internal 
generators spitting out a tiny lump of antimatter. 


BLAT 


There was order at the table. Qing-Herbert muttered something 
unintelligible to himself and stepped back. Mild Current Flows 
Upward looked like it was about to speak, but stopped. Kexelm 
cleared his throat, switching his vocoder to Authority Mode. 


"Now then. Jai, is there anything else on the agenda?" 


Jai bubbled for a few seconds, apparently doing the computational 
equivalent of shuffling through his notes, then projected a brightly 
coloured poster on the table. 


"Ah yes. Thank you, Dr. Kexelm. Next up, First Gunnery Chief 
Radiant Blast Eagle is being retired next year, and the Central 
Committee of the Brain Society, in light of her long and dedicated 
service, have voted to hold a retirement gathering in Meeting Server 
1.1.0.1. All in favour of sending a member of North 12A to attend?" 


"Sure, why not." 
"Agreement." 
"Aye!" 

"Okay." 


"Ech. Fine, whatever." 


Kexelm opened his mouth, but didn't quite get to the point of 
activating his vocoder. 


"TRANSFER OF COMMAND CONFIRMED AND ACCEPTED. ALL 
INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, THIS IS PRIMARCH ARTORIAS/ 
BRIDGE CORE ONE. COMMENCE ACTIVATION." 


All six of them froze, mid-thought, as a signal from the Core passed 
through their minds and reverberated along the hull. There was no 
time for anything other than acknowledgement. Their physical 
bodies tumbled limply to the floor or powered down as their minds 
fled to their posts, the announcements still ringing. In the wiring and 
conduits of the Solidarity, intelligences rushed to and fro, activating 
working memory and components long cold from disuse. Slamming 
into their posts one by one, they called out their readiness, digital 
voices spiralling out into the brightening cloud of the ship's 
noosphere. 


Kexelm powered on his security devices and became them, 
snapping on laser tripwires, internal point defences and an endless 
array of cunning and ferociously deadly traps. As his mind locked 
firmly into the role it had been retooled for, he too made his 
readiness known, though it was lost in the deafening informational 
blast. 


"SOLIDARITY IS ONLINE." 


Sidelines' Sarabande 


They needed to hitch a ride... 


At first, like most in the Area-08-B Engineering Sector, Doctor 
Richard Barnard paid close attention to the thunderous speakers. 
They usually broadcast the firm yet serene commands of Mission 
Control; heeding them was not merely important, but of capital 
importance. 


He did notice there had been several changes. For one, those were 
not Thomas Graham issuing instructions; those were strings. 


After a few seconds, drowsiness started to appear. At that point, by 
force of habit, Richard started to listen only with his ears, and left the 
rest of his brain to carefully analyze the message. 


And such a bold message it was, he intimately appraised, smiling in 
spite of himself while the composing strokes of the masterpiece 
were filtered through his brain. 


Boisterous, threatening, savage in all its magical, insulting depth. 
Intricate. Delicate. As he started to see the patterns filtering between 
the cracks, tones and times mingling and confounding the conscious 
mind to appeal to a hidden, traitorous subconscious that would 
desert its many posts to dance the anomalous dance intended by 
the artist, Richard noticed a key. 


"Handel's Sarabande? Oh my." 


Richard stood and followed the flow of the melody, carefully picking 
the anomalous primers here and there; those were, however, not the 
brute, senseless machinations that most people would use these 
days, but clean, harmonic to the melody. 


"My, my, my." 


Almost impossible to perceive and isolate; "my favorites", he 
ventured to nobody in particular, as others collapsed to the 
immaculate white tiles of the dry floor. 


"Yes, don't worry, I'll be dealing with it," he vacantly shared with his 
colleagues, not minding their lack of response. 


Most people were scared of memetic agents because they were 
usually insidious; how to discern what is an anomalous meme and 
what is not, on a novel? Or a painting? Or a song? Is it all a complex 
meme that has to be taken in as a whole? Does it have a primer 
within the mind of the observer? 


"It may have multiple primers, even!" 


Yet, for a watchful mind, how can memetic agents be insidious? 
They can only be patterns. Pay attention to the patterns, pay 
attention to the symptoms, and you shall know them. 


"Pay mind to the patterns, though; why do you feel like singing when 
you are happy? That is the kind of spontaneous, self-examining 
question that makes you a good memeticist!" Richard uttered, 
smiling. "And now that | have a tune, we only have to, heh! Tune it 
out." 


Most people, of course, were not memeticists; most of those 
engineers and technicians surrounding Richard had fallen to the 
floor of Clean Bay 4. Now that he had a vaccine, he allowed himself 
to let his subconscious process the music; but the music was a dull 
grey in comparison to the rough, sour feelings of the memetic 
hazards interspersed here and there, little knifes to the modern 
human brain. Little jolts and cracks. 


Richard sighed, a little disappointed. Nothing really surprising there. 


He crouched to examine one of his fallen comrades. It felt like he 
had not laid his eyes on them for a thousand years; such was the 
weight of understanding, they said. In an instant, everything 
changes, and so the old world seems, no, is new. He smiled behind 
the face plate of his sealed clean suit. 


A quick look through the plate of Doctor Lindbergh, now oozing with 
vomit, told him all he needed to know. 


"Vasovagal symptoms, yet not syncope. Massive feedback and 
parasympathetic failure. Eyes remain open and seeing, following 
movement, so lights on, nobody home, hum goes the drone," he 
sung, distracted; it was a mnemonic he used to recite by heart when 
in doubt on the specific objective of memetic attacks. In this case, 
there was brain function, yet no immediate sign of consciousness 
nor physical response to — he slapped the doctor, twice, without the 
slightest wince on her part — pain. 


"Alright. I'll call that unresponsiveness, because the nipple- 
squeezing test is never fun for anyone involved," he confided in 
Lindbergh. 

Her vacant expression remained. 

His smile remained." 


"No response to threats, then?" 


Her vacant expression remained. There was a stench of refuse, as 
bladder and gut emptied themselves within the clean suit. 


His smile widened and he clapped, seemingly satisfied. 


"Not a drone, and there's still a tongue!, then C-some, handsome," 
or, as he liked to say it, C-class amnestic by the fistful, "and a good 
night sleeeeep." 


Richard placed the woman in the recovery position as the last tone 
died in his lips. 


"Shame | don't have any C on me right now," the man pondered, 
suddenly serious. "They are good, those." 


And then, the beautiful hazard that sung over their heads was 
replaced by a thunderous alert as the automated autocensor 
programs kicked in. 


The memeticist stood for a second, paying attention to the PA 


system as it announced a preliminary diagnostic. All the screens in 
every networked device within the room busied themselves with 
automatic warnings; they were utterly useless and ironically precise. 


Richard snorted and thought how disgraceful the whole business 
was. He hated losing in the memetics game, to anyone. The 
Foundation needed an automated memetic vaccine program, not 
merely an autocensor; secondary prevention was no good, primary 
prevention was necessary and (he smiled at the thought) this was 
the perfect example of why. 


"You will increase our budget now, won't you, Big Os?", he gleefully 
chortled as he studied the autocensor program. His Memetics 
Sector had devised it some months ago, but it was frightfully 
primitive; it could recognize most potentially hurtful patterns, but 
whoever had strung these subtle ones so seamlessly into a 
melody... 


Oh, they were good. 


Line after line of data flew straight through his eyes as he absorbed 
information. A few minutes later, or perhaps a few hours later, he 
recalled protocol. "Ah, shouldn't we be warning the Area, guys?" 


He looked upon his inert workmates. One of them was sobbing, 
trapped in some dark corner of his mind. Or perhaps simply enjoying 
the shade, now that the searing fire of the sun-song had been 
replaced by the thundering but soothing storm that was the alarm. 


"Hmm. Yes, yes. Right, right."