She was suspended midway in the air above the reactor when 
everything happened very quickly. A chuffing, a shrieking sound. A 
bright light rushing from her peripheral vision. A groaning sound as a 
plasma wake melted and ripped the catwalk apart directly in front of 
her, destroyed the supports for the stretch of catwalk she was 
standing on. A rush of panic as the metal beneath her feet fell away 
from her, as she felt herself plummeting to the solid glass floor of the 
reactor chamber. The wet thunk of her own skull slamming against 
the floor. 


Footsteps walking towards her. A quiet growling speech, ina 
language Olympia didn't fully recognize. She could pick out a couple 
of words; a couple of Greek, one of Arabic, but nothing coherent. 
Finally, the voice (male, she recognized) began repeating one word. 
Slurring it at first, but as his pronunciation grew sharper, she could 
make out what he was saying. 


"Fun...funshen," he said. "Founshen. Foundashen. F...Foundation. 
You...Foundation." 


Potas sat in the dirt, contemplating the apprentice sitting 
in the dirt beside him. This was how the ritual went now; 
similar to the way he had ascended into the rank the 
apprentice now sought, adjusted at the will of Potas. 
Sammart had taught him the value of tradition, of 
learning the way things were done in the old times, of 
honoring the paths walked by the ancestors. Potas 
respected this, and acknowledged it. 


At times. Other times, there were other lessons to learn. 


The apprentice, her name was Haimak. Potas was 
present at her birth, and considered how pleased he was 
when her mother asked Potas what her name should be. 


From the ashes of a dead world (was the world Sammart 
spoke of dead? Was it once dead? Did the tellers of tales 
give it new life with the words?) a dead woman's life had 
new meaning. As Jaime MacGilligan died smiling, a girl 
named Haimak was born crying. 


"lam satisfied," Potas said, the words echoing deep into 
the cave they sat within. Potas reached almost from 
instinct for the Abirtian amulet that he had discarded 
years before; Haimak would not be required to pledge 
allegiance to the gods of the Espy Fonshun of the old 
world. She could come to those conclusions on her own 
if she wished. "Rise and assume your position." 


Haimak, small and shaking from fear and anticipation, 
nevertheless rose to her knees and presented her Baj. 
The tattoo beside her neck rested on the dark, taut skin 
of the young. Potas might have felt lust if Haimak's sex 
were to his taste; as it was, he considered how loose his 
own Baj now seemed, decades after the last of his 
insignia were added to it. He lifted the stick from the 
ground between them, dipped it in the small pot of ink, 
and began to work. 


"Haimak of the Twenty-second Cietu, you are trained 
and knowledgeable in the histories of our people, in the 
tales of the Old Ones, and in the lessons of our tribe, the 
lessons our mothers learned from their mothers, and that 
our grandsons will learn from our sons." Potas continued 
poking the stick into Haimak's skin, ignoring her flinches 
just as she did. "You are now a Novice Librarian. By 
tradition, you are permitted to ask of me three questions. 
Would you like to do so?" 


"Yes, Over-Seer," Haimak said, wincing. She looked 
down, watching the third line being added: 


ESPY FONSHUN 
HAIMAK NAME 
LAVAL ||| RASHAR 


Haimak looked away. "There are many questions the 
Cown Sil has, questions they wish to learn the answers 
to," Haimak said. "Are there any of those questions that 
you know the answer to? Answers you have...decided 
not to share?" 


"The answer to that question," Potas said, concentrating 


as he completed his work, "is 'yes’. 
Haimak frowned. "No, | mean—" 


"| Know what you mean, girl," Potas snapped. "This 
should serve as an adequate lesson. Given an 
opportunity to access information from a source such as 
myself, in an opportunity you will never receive again, 
and you waste your first question on a simple 'yes' or 
‘no’. Discipline your questions and you discipline your 
world. This is your duty." 


Haimak shrank for a moment. Potas paused and wiped 
the sweat from his forehead. "Two questions left, 
Librarian. Choose well." He lifted the stick once again 
and continued his work. Haimak thought. 


"What wisdom did the Unwelcome One give you?" 
Haimak finally said. 


Potas smiled, not even pausing his work. "Both cunning 
and ambitious, your choice," he replied. "A rumor spread 
around the young that | was seen walking with a being 
with no firm shape. A demon, some said. | am not as 
young as you, perhaps, but | hear the clucks of the 
gossips. Given this opportunity, you risked wasting yet 
another question — and further derision from an elder — 
on the chance that the rumors were true," Potas 
continued. Haimak sat quietly, patiently waiting the more 
complete answer she knew he was bound to provide. "I 
was in mediation when | heard an intruder within the 
cave, perhaps a month ago. Just as | heard its footsteps, 
it...it heard me hearing it. This is part of the magicks it 
possesses, to know when it is perceived. | did not open 


SCP-595: Teleporting Destroyer 


Item #: SCP-595 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-595 is currently stored in 
either enclosed drydock 2 , , Virginia, or a secure Foundation 
warehouse district in Philadelphia depending on SCP-595’s current 
state. Both sites are restricted without Level 3 access clearance or 
higher. Access to SCP-595’s interior is restricted to specially 
selected Class D personnel or mobile task forces with approval from 
either site’s local administration. 


Due to the nature of SCP-595’s effects, it is imperative that no 
personnel or sensitive equipment be located within the storage sites 
after SCP-595 has been “dormant” for over two hours. Normal 
research activities may resume at one of the two sites after 
SCP-595’s documented effects have subsided. 


Description: SCP-595 is a Cannon class destroyer escort, DE- 
USS , commissioned by the United States Navy in late 1942. It 
is no different from any other vessel of its class with the exception of 
several munitions magazines filled with [DATA EXPUNGED] of 
unknown manufacture. These devices cause the vessel and a 
limited surrounding area to be permeated with abnormally high 
levels of electromagnetic radiation. 


Periodically the devices induce a tremendous spike in the amount of 
electromagnetic radiation, resulting in effects outlined in Document 
595-1. While these spikes are mosily regular in their timing, they can 
result in severe damage to surrounding equipment and personnel if 
safety precautions are not strictly adhered to. 


The ship is tied to reports of a secret US Navy experiment, “Project 
Philadelphia”, purportedly investigating principles of teleportation 
and possibilities of camouflaging naval vessels by bending light 


my eyes, but merely smiled. It saw me, or whatever it 
does instead of seeing, and spoke to me. We discussed 
many things. | gleaned part of its life. It too had grown 
old, grown weary. It too had seen much, perhaps too 
much, and far in excess of that which | had seen. It was 
ready to lay down its burdens. | believe it told me many 
things it perhaps did not intend to, some secrets | will 
take to my funeral pyre, some secrets | will distribute 
when and where | feel appropriate. 


"But you asked me what wisdom it gave me. Using my 
person conception of what wisdom is, and basing the 
idea of 'giving' on the deliberate providence of things or 
knowledge unto another, | would say it gave me wisdom 
about my elders." 


"Sammart? Your mentor?” Haimak blurted, then 
immediately recoiled. Potas chuckled. 


"There, you see? That is the flaw of the elders. You fear 
even to speak to me in a manner that | might find 
disrespectful. For me not to be challenged, from time to 
time, by those beneath me...this fosters the greatest sort 
of weakness in me. Complacency, perhaps you may call 
it. For me to dare to enforce this fear, to promote it in 
those younger than myself? This fosters the greatest sort 
of error: presumption. And this is the ultimate flaw of the 
Alexylvae, of the Wayward Prince. The founder of the 
religion they call a society, the original conceiver of their 
nightmare republic, placed too much faith in his own 
knowledge. In his ability to understand the way that 
people should be treated, and should be governed. His 
acolytes supported him, not necessarily because they 
embraced his vision, but because he was an elder. Once 
a growing empire found his teachings, he was embraced 
not as a thinker, but as an e/der thinker; not as a 
statesman, but as an elder statesman; and with this to 
his name, he was now beyond reproach. He was also 
too dead to argue with the ruling." 


Haimak giggled at this. She was well enraptured, as 


people often were when Potas told a tale. 


"Sammart had this failing to himself; | respect him for 
what he was, but abandoned that which he clung to from 
pure fear of the unknown. Anaxagoras had this failing to 
himself, expecting obedience by virtue of his age rather 
than wisdom. He placed too little pride in righteousness 
and far too much in se/f-righteousness. And when given 
the opportunity, Milephanes, the Wayward Prince 
himself, demanded the trappings of age, the respect 
befitting an older person, without concerning himself first 
to see if he was a better person than they. He was right 
and wrong at the same time, Haimak. You want wisdom 
gleaned from an intruder to a cave on a mild spring day? 
His wisdom is that he has no wisdom. Go find your own 
truths and watch your children ignore them; no better 
inheritance exists." 


Haimak was in a virtual state of hypnosis now, her mouth 
slack. Potas paused, looked closely at the tattoo, and 
jabbed the needle in one last time, harder than before. 
Haimak jumped, her face cross. "Is there anything else, 
sir?" 


"Sit, sit, child. Let me finish the story." 


Haimak considered the matter briefly, smiled, then said 
"I'm sorry, sir, that was my third question," and walked 
out of the cave. Potas smiled as he had not done in 
years, and did so for much of the rest of the evening. 


There is a remarkably climactic scene that occurs when Anaxagoras 
arrives in the counterform reaction chamber. Milephanes is still 
there. Olympia has lost consciousness, regained it, and is 
pretending to be asleep. Anaxagoras sneaks up on Milephanes and 
disarms him. The two battle hand-to-hand using a variety of arcane 
martial arts techniques; the former using an incredibly well-crafted 
and honed skill with older, traditional school of combat, the latter 
using a less-disciplined fighting style whose unpredictability catches 
Anaxagoras off-guard at many times during the fight. A symbolic 


metaphor is played out rather graphically, written on the glass floor 
in blood and sweat. This is the battle between old and young, 
between progression and reaction, between Zeno's arrow and the 
man duped into holding the target. 


When it is done, when the hourglass of this eternal dance runs out 
of sand, Olympia kills the survivor and takes the plasma weapon. | 
will not tell you which one of them won, because as | watched them 
fight, | watched them die, and | watched them dissolve into gamma 
rays and dust a bare half-hour later. Death transcends all victories. 


A small quantity of motile self-propagating rock has been placed a 
very specific distance outside of the city of Alexandria. It is growing 
into the shape of a small animal and making haste away from the 
city as quickly as possible. It will not be seen again until it wishes to 
be, and until its master wishes it to be. 


| had shown Olympia what the correct sequence of controls would 
be to overload the counterform reactor. She remembered very well. 
She carried out the sequence and left the building as quickly as was 
possible, and began running again. 

She would not have survived. Less than a second before the reactor 
detonated, there was one more flash of light. 


So much variety with assassinations. | think it is why | interfere in so 
many of them. | do not wish to give the impression that | am 
omnipotent; | have limitations the same as any being, when viewed 
from an objective standpoint. | cannot see everything, and | cannot 
see all possible futures. With assassinations, the futures take very 
concrete forms. Once the redundancies work their way out of the 
system and the bands narrow into stronger paths, there will be 
perhaps a dozen possible futures for they, the living, to inhabit. | 
believe this satisfies a still-beating primitive urge within me for 
cleanliness. 


| had never deliberately converted a power generation facility into a 
weapon of mass destruction while enabling a sentient, warlike 
telepathic imperialist to begin infesting a planet. | never went on to 


perform such an action again, either, and unique actions are so rare 
for me. When the reactor fully destabilized into a matter-antimatter 
explosion, | saw all of the possible futures. Never before were the 
worlds so bleak, so devoid of hope. 


| saw the detonation, the energy and matter being ripped apart and 
blasted across the landscape. It was so near to sunset, too; the view 
was magnificent. Hundreds of thousands died; the voluntary 
evacuation of Alexandria of Forests had allowed the number to be 
so low. Those that died had entered the city armed and intending to 
kill one another. They burned together. 


| saw the beginnings of the swarm. The rock soldiers and their 
master had learned from the previous encounter with humans, and 
became smarter. The rocks bred new armies and attacked 
piecemeal. The attacks picked up, killing a few more here and there, 
destroying more properties, building new outposts for their own 
reproduction. When the true battles come, they could hardly be 
called that. The rock armies of Anesidora are legion, they are perfect 
of allegiance as they fight the philosophically fragmented human 
enemies. No mercy. No retreats. Prisoners only for food; by the end, 
Anesidora must breed humans as cattle to keep herself fed. 


There were deviations from this, from time to time, but this was the 
overarching future of Novomundus. Alexylva University burned and 
fell, barely ahead of its patron city that burned and fell around it. The 
nation that housed the city burned and fell before one of Alexylva's 
creations, writ large and filled with rage. A timeline that should never 
have happened drifted into the ashheap. 


It was a sloppy job. It will do. 


A man sits in a recliner, sunset-orange cat purring directly to his left. 
A laptop is the only source of light in the room. He considers the 
amount of time he has spent working on the project he is 
completing, the amount of time spent considering, writing, rewriting, 
editing, opening and altering only a few words before closing it 
again, and falling asleep before the project. He has an anxiety about 
showing his work to others, the anxiety he always feels. He is 
always afraid of rejection. He faced quite a bit of it over the year and 


a half since he started the project. He dismisses those others who 
take too seriously the opinions others have of his work, but deep 
down, he will always see everyone who doesn't take away from his 
work exactly what he anticipated them to take away as a failure. A 
personal defeat. He considers erasing the whole thing, leaving the 
story unfinished. So few people are left even to care, now. 


He considers his wife in the bedroom next door. Some rejection over 
that year and a half, yes. Some things lost. But so, so much more 
gained. He smiles, publishes his work, and closes the circle. 


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