The butterfly doesn’t care, or perhaps it doesn’t know enough to 
realize how uncaring it is, but then | never know, maybe no one 
really knows, maybe no one will ever know. It lives to eat and make 
sure it keeps eating. 


And so another hour passes as I’m taken through a whirlwind of 
death and disease and darkened dreams. The butterfly remains 
perched on my shoulder, serenely folding and unfolding its uneven 
wings, tilting its antennae gracefully as | slump forward, head in my 
hands. 


It’s beautiful... 


Walk in the Park 


"And the Phantoms are no-shows, again?" 
"You know they can only play home games, sir." 


"Well have somebody conduct a séance or something, Johnson! We 
go live in fifteen! 


"Yes, sir." 
"What about Seattle?" 


"Their pitcher was caught without a valid inspection sticker. Big 
scandal, I've heard." 


"Damn it. Somebody wire the Tampa Bay shortstop five virgin souls! 
| was sure that | would win that bet..." 


"On it, sir. We're ready to air, on your signal." 
"Are the blast shields up?" 
"Way ahead of you, sir." 


"That's what | like to hear, Johnson! All right, everyone, you know 
the drill. Helmets on, guns loaded, microphones one and two 
broadcasting..." 


He hated this stupid job. But nobody had quite the face for radio like 
he did, and he needed the bribe money to put bread on the table. It 
was just so boring, he believed. The same fifty innings described in 
gory detail from each game of the official teams, and then another 
two hundred games from the "official" teams. 


Who cared about baseball, anymore, anyway? Ratings had gone 
down ever since the NBA began installing flamethrowers. No blood 
oath or demigod in the league could top those. Maybe they could 


persuade some Martians to substitute for Anaheim, again. That 
brought listeners. Well, it brought them until the entire team was 
abducted, anyway. 


Someone in a different room whistled, and he began to read the 
summaries and charts that were covering his desk. 


"The Whales capsized the Flounders today in Arizona, where 
record-high temperatures were sweeping the state. Tragically, 
though, their first baseman was the victim of a harpoon attack 
committed by a Mr. Ahab. Please contact the Coast Guard if you 
have any information related to the incident. 


"Now in its seventieth inning, the game between the Colt .45's and 
the Wolverines shows no signs of ending soon, even though 
Houston players have begun to research the legality of nuclear 
weapons in baseball. Authorities are recommending that any 
spectators retreat to their stadium's fallout shelter until the matter is 
resolved. 


"In other news, his holiness of the Cardinals is offering to forgive 
sins at a discounted price of 899.99. Credit not accepted. 


"And that's today's baseball news! Tune in tomorrow for live 
coverage of Oakland! It'll be a game you won't forget!" 


As soon as Johnson gave him the thumbs-up, he buried his face in 
both hands and sighed. It just never was any easier. 


"Hey, Johnson?" 
"Yes, sir?" 


"Do you think there's some poor sap in some other place, doing the 
same thing?" 


"It's likely, sir... though | doubt their sports are as predictable as 
ours." 


Walk the Floor 


— Site 150, Foundation Research and Development 
Department, Entrance 3, 09:00 — 


Pride. Dr. Tabitha Foster knew the feeling well. Pride was black ink 
in the ledgers. Pride was a good deal put to good use. Pride was 
coming out of the workshop with something that worked. Pride was 
a plan coming to bloom. 


Pride was looking out across ten square kilometers of factory floor, 
bright under endless rows of lights far above. The ceiling was so 
high that it may well have been the sky, the floor so busy it should 
have been a city. Monorail lines weaved throughout, above the 
testing areas and workshops and factories. The occasional hover- 
shuttle, laden with cargo or passengers, would occasionally buzz 
into view before speeding off. In the distance, three new zeppelins 
floated lazily, ready for deployment. Elsewhere rested the half— 
constructed ring suspension ring of a new HALO station. 


It was a wonderful morning. It smelled of progress. 


Dr. Foster stepped into her personal shuttle. It was a ritual she made 
every two weeks, to go and personally check on the major projects. 

Her assistant Eric was already strapped into his seat, labcoat neatly 
pressed, computer tablet in his hand, glasses sliding down his nose. 


“Message from the Overseer Board, ma’am,” he said, just as Foster 
stepped inside the carriage. The door closed automatically behind 
her. 


“What is it? More sanctions, | suppose?” She sat down across from 
Eric, fastening her own harness. A button press later and the 
shuttle’s autopilot took over. 


“Yes. They’ve called for the immediate cancellation of development 
for the Paraselus. Claimed it was too unstable and a waste of 


resources. Resolution was passed seven to four.” 


“Five and Ten leading it again?” 


” 


“Yes. 


“Send the board a message saying that the project has been 
mothballed. Re-route assets into the backup projects, wait until the 
conversion matrix is upgraded to the mark eight, and bring it back to 
main production. We can afford a few months’ delay.” 


“Right. There’s also a message from the Office of Field Affairs.” 


“Again? Tell them that if they have such an issue with the Special 
Augmentation Program, they are more than welcome to come up 
with a more effective alternative. Oh wait, your casualty rate is 
fifteen times higher than ours and you’re run by a bunch of brain- 
dead Neanderthals who think that conventional technology is 
sufficient for the Foundation’s purposes...Don’t actually put that last 
bit in there, that’s just between us.” 


“Right, ma’am. There’s also a communique from Dr. Bailey with the 
latest trade agreements.” He passed over the tablet. Foster glanced 
over the text, occasionally scrolling to see more. Some pullouts, 
some new acquisitions, demands. Those weren’t important. What 
was important was what was going to get funneled to her 
department. 


She very much liked what she saw. She had no idea what to do with 
seven hundred tons of flerovium, but it was bound to be impressive. 
Most of the rest was just raw materials, a few technology samples, 
another coldcore for the reactor, documents and diagrams and 
terabytes of information for the sorting. She kept reading. 


“An exchange program? Someone actually wants an exchange 
program?” 


“The O5 board will veto it,” Eric said. 


“Oh, | know. The O5 board also tried to veto updating outdated 
containment documents, instituting the organizational catalog, 
purging 732-contaminated records, and putting recycled napkins in 


the cafeterias. They are not the most forward-thinking of individuals, 
nor the most aware of the current state of affairs. To think what we 
could have learned if we had been able to contact the University 
before it fell.” She shook her head. “Ah well. No use now. There are 
more Universities out there and plenty of work to be done here.” 


The shuttle hummed along. 
— MF-7 Automated Security Drone testing chamber, 09:17 — 


The drone, a white sphere roughly the size of a beach ball with a 
single lensed eye, zipped through the air in short bursts. Move, stop. 
Move stop. Movestop. Movestop shoot. Movestopshoot. The 
shooting looked much like not shooting, save the burn marks that 
appeared on the targets that shifted around the chamber. 


“Power cell has double the run time when compared to the mark 
six,” the tech explained. “And it recharges in six hours instead of 
twelve. Main laser is boosted too.” 


Foster nodded. The plan was to automate the majority of the 
Foundation’s internal security within ten years. Foster would have 
had it done in three, but Five was cock-blocking, as usual, and had 
One, Two, Four, Six, Ten and Thirteen on the leash. 


Five years then, with one model instead of the ten they had plans 
for. They would work from there. 


— Module Construction Yard, 09:43 — 


There wasn’t anything much new in terms of site construction. That 
section of factory floor was still filled with the same blocky modules, 
all of them bigger on the inside than the outside. An A2 Module the 
size of a tractor trailer could provide enough room for five 
containment chambers and thirty staff. 


Foster passed through that area quickly. Approval of their work was 
given, and she moved on. The Barston Principle was very well- 
understood, and the last collapse had been over a decade ago. Her 
presence was better used elsewhere. 


— Portable Spatial Containment Device Testing Chamber, 10:20 


The man in the testing chamber reached into the padded case, 
removing a smooth black sphere the size of a tennis ball. On the 
other side of the chamber stood an unadorned store mannequin. 
The man slid a switch on the side of the ball with his thumb. A white 
LED lit up. He wound up his arm, tensed, and threw. 


Right before the ball hit the mannequin, if one had a hi-speed 
camera on hand, one could see the ball fold itself inside out. The 
inside-out ball hit the mannequin, and then it was gone, along with a 
hemisphere of the floor. There was no flash or noise, just a barely 
perceptible ripple in the air, and it was gone. The now right-side-in 
ball dropped to the floor, rolling down to the bottom of the basin. The 
man walked over, picked it up, thumbed another switch. The light 
was green now. He tossed the ball again at a bare stretch of floor, 
near where he had been standing at the beginning. There was 
another ripple as it hit the floor, just for the briefest and most 
imperceptible of moments. A pile of crumbled and cracked concrete 
and half-molten shards of plastic sat on the floor. 


At least they had managed to consistently stop the field from 
backfiring on the thrower, Foster noted. Progress. 


“They could always work as grenades,” Eric said. 


“They’d be rather difficult-to-build grenades. Not very practical for 
general use, unless you really needed to liquefy something.” This 
project had been a headache for months. It was impressive, yes. 
The very concept made the science-related part of her brain very 
excited. Execution though, was proving a nightmare. Each Portable 
Spatial Containment Device contained several cubic meters within it, 
same principle as the factory itself, enough to store the average 
humanoid or animalistic anomaly. The capture mechanism worked, 
pushing the space out and pulling it back in, but keeping things in 
one piece during capture was proving an issue. 


Then there was the fact that it resembled something from a child's 
cartoon, but Foster thought it best to ignore that. 


At the very least the thrower kept their arm. 


— Personnel Acquisition Initiative Center, 11:02 — 


Foster eyed the ranks of orange jumpsuits. Five rows, twenty to a 
row. Two hundred eyes, staring at her. 


“Dismissed,” Foster nodded something of approval towards them. 


The group softened. It didn’t disperse very much, but the hundred 
men and women turned to face each other. Soft conversations 
sprung up. Foster waited, hands clasped behind her back. She 
loved this part. 


“ATTENTION!” 


In one movement, one hundred D-class swung to face her. Eyes 
locked, face expressionless, feet together, hands at sides. One 
unified force, waiting for orders. 


It was the sort of scene third world dictators had wet dreams about. 
“KOSWITCH!” 


One hundred D-class dropped to the floor unconscious, even before 
her word had faded from the air. Foster nodded, smiling. 


“That's better response time than before. Excellent job, Mason. Your 
techs should be proud.” 


“lll make sure to tell them.” 


Mason barked a few commands, and the D-classes marched off 
toward the trucks across the shipping yard. 


There were a few more groups to be shipped off that day: some L- 
Class, some R-Class, some C-Class. Nothing unusual. 


The big building behind the parade grounds and personnel shipping 
yard loomed. Inside was Foster's pride and joy. 


One of them, at least. 


Foster knew that she was one of the few who wasn’t disgusted by 


SCP-990: Dream Man 


Item #: SCP-990 
Object Class: Keter 


Special Containment Procedures: Currently no containment for 
SCP-990 has been devised. Any personnel with suggestions for the 
containment of SCP-990 should report to Dr. . Any and all 
ideas are welcome, regardless of who suggests them. 


Description: SCP-990 is generally a human male dressed in a Cold 
War era business suit who appears to Foundation personnel through 
dreams. Thus far no Foundation personnel have encountered 
SCP-990 in the real world; if he corresponds to an actual human 
being, we have yet to find him. Presently there have been no reports 
of SCP-990 appearing to non-Foundation personnel. 


SCP-990 has been appearing to Foundation personnel since [DATA 
EXPUNGED]. SCP-990's existence came to light when several 
Agents discussed having dreams involving a similar individual. 
Numerous other Agents reported dream-sightings of an individual 
matching the description of SCP-990. The phenomenon did not 
officially receive SCP classification until the aftermath of 
event-990-07. 


Event log 990-07: 


Agent failed to report for duty at his assigned time. 
He was instead found in his quarters, asleep. Subject 
had been asleep for roughly eighteen (18) hours and all 
subsequent attempts to wake him were unsuccessful. 
Subject was transported to medical bay. 


After over 40 hours of sleep, Subject awakened in a 
highly agitated state. Subject reportedly ran through the 
facility yelling loudly about "the end of the world". Even 


the thing. 597 was synonymous with that cringing “eaugh” 
expression, mostly for being the center point of some of the grossest 
mismanagement in the last decade. Five high ranking personnel, 
including a site director, had been using 597 for personal 
satisfaction for over two years, and both the Overseer Board and the 
Ethics Committee turned a blind eye to it. The old containment 
procedures actually allowed it to be viewed, even for personnel to 
enter the chamber. That was what disgusted Foster. Containment 
procedures written by a gibbon with a typewriter. She had penned 
the new ones herself, and nothing had happened for years. No one 
had even seen 597 in years. No one had been inside that building 
but the classed personnel for years. Everything was automated: the 
insemination, the birthing, the implantation of the class 
modifications, the overseeing of the process, everything. 


Granted, it wasn’t perfect. The first several generations of subjects 
suffered from crippling Oedipal complexes and were completely 
useless. That was the result of trying to breed them as humans. The 
implants fixed that, eventually. They weren’t really human after the 
implants, after the brain was changed as much as it was. A fake 
human. A homunculus. 


Such a wonderful word. Rolled off the tongue. Hoh-moohn-cyu-luhs. 


Eventually, the implants wouldn’t even be necessary. That was a 
long term plan, though, and the current system would suffice for the 
time being. 


There was that pride again. Pride at the Personnel Acquisition 
Initiative, pride in everything they'd managed to build, pride in taking 
space itself and molding it like Play-Doh. Pride in the knowledge that 
she was feared. The Observers feared her. And who wouldn't, 
really? She was what happened when people got working, when 
people actually thought. When people looked out into the darkness 
and said “I am not afraid of you”. The antithesis to the scared men of 
“science” cowering in the shadows in their boardroom, petrified at 
the concept of change. 


She loved that feeling. Oh, she loved that feeling. 


Dr. Tabitha Foster, the most powerful person in the world, was very, 


very proud of her work. 


Walter G