The symphony hall was packed to capacity for what promised to be 
the event of the season. Ushers lead men in tuxedos and women in 
evening gowns down dimly lit walkways to their seats, the twinkling 
of hundreds of tiny lights on the chandeliers overhead illuminating 
the elaborate architecture. The city's finest conversed in their box 
seats, the elite and the middle class sat out front to see and be 
seen, and in the galleries even the less fortunate of the city had put 
on their Sunday finest and turned out. A hush fell over the 
assembled multitudes as the Conductor stepped onto the stage, 
empty save but for his podium. The audience rose in respect as the 
thirty-ish impresario in impeccable white tie took his position 
upstage, bowing once to the crowd to signal that they could sit. The 
Conductor turned to the podium, where his sheet music and baton 
lay at the ready. He opened the book to the first movement of 
tonight's performance, looked straight ahead at the empty space 
before him, lifted his baton, and the performance began. 


A sense of shock and wonder rippled through the crowd as the first 
bars of the overture rung out - aggressive, powerful, demanding 
attention. A brief pause allowed the crowd to compose themselves - 
there was no band on stage, there were no speakers anywhere to 
carry the sound, and yet, as sure as they could hear their own 
breathing, they heard music. Before they had too long to ponder it, 
the second bar hit them, at first just the horns, then came the violins, 
the bass section, oboes, flutes, timpani, and the sound of an entire 


orchestra filled the hall and echoed from front to back. The 
Conductor kept time and signaled the invisible, imaginary band with 
his baton, sweat dripping down his brow as he struggled to ensure 
that the cellists were in tune and the xylophonist wasn't coming in 
too early. He gave them a five-minute preview, in music, of what he 
hoped would be his magnum opus - the history of creation itself - 
and as the final strings of the overture gave way to the lone drum 
representing the heartbeat of the last man alive (or perhaps the 
first), he prepared himself for the part he had not yet performed 
before an audience. The Moog synthesizer kicked in as the 
Conductor grabbed the podium with his free hand, twisted it around 
90 degrees counterclockwise, turned himself sideways to face the 
crowd on the left and the fictional orchestra on his right, and picked 
up the second baton. 


With a quivering hand, the Conductor raised his second baton 
towards the audience, and flicked it like a magic wand, the Moog 
providing a sting to punctuate the flick. Nothing. The violins quivered 
along with his hand as he tried the flick again - still nothing. The 
Theremins kicked in on the third try, and with a third flick - and the 
sound of the gong - the chandelier hanging above the floor seats 
vanished, leaving only a hundred flickering bits of light in midair. The 
crowd gasped and applauded politely, but the Conductor only raised 
a finger to his lips, a "Shhhhhhh!" provided by the electric guitarist's 
Vocoder, as he carried on. Continuing to direct the orchestra with 
the baton in his right hand, he now stared upward at the flickering 
lights, pointing at one with his baton and nudging it slightly to the 
left. He pointed at another and moved it up somewhat, then another 
which he directed to fly around in a circle. Before long, the points of 
light were flying every which way around the hall, up and down, front 
to back, swinging in grand arcs over the balcony or zig-zagging or 
orbiting the head of a particularly confused old woman in the front 
row. The orchestra carried on in a regimented cacophony, dozens of 
leitmotifs representing the different lights as they swirled around, 
joyful, playful, ever in flux, one minute a minuet as two lights 
seemed to dance around each another, another anticipatory as one 
slowly wiggled its way up from the floor to the top of the hall, 
triumphant as it swirled about above all the other lights - and then a 
crashing sense of betrayal as it swung down, collided straight into 
another light, and the light broke apart and was snuffed out, 


accentuated with the sound of the cannon. 


Silence fell, and the hundred lights stopped their play and gathered 
in a circle around the attacker. The string soloists called out in 
confusion and mourning. Why? How? What has happened? The 
time for wonderment was short lived, as from the back another light 
swooped down and smashed into another extinguishing it, then a 
third, then a fourth. The gathered lights panicked and grew a bright 
blue, huddling together at first in fear, and then some of their own 
launching outward to defend themselves against the yellow-red 
aggressors. The machine gunners kept time, the bassoons sounded 
the march, and the accordionist wailed - it was war. 


Few in the crowd took the time to look at the Conductor as the war 
raged on above them. Had they, they would have seen the sweat 
dripping from his brow, his hair soaking wet from it, his hands wildly 
flailing in both directions at once as his mind focused on keeping 
both his imaginary productions in sync. The orchestra rose to a 
crescendo as the room grew dimmer, more and more of the once- 
so-innocent lights vanishing into the darkness, and the last handful 
of blue lights gathered together in a ball, their attackers orbiting 
around them like a giant molecule of some unimaginable element, 
diving in and out in an attempt to penetrate the defense. A single 
chord that the Conductor had hoped would sound like the one from 
A Day In the Life sounded out from the entire band in unison as all 
the attackers swooped in at once and the entire concert hall erupted 
in a blinding flash of white light. The lone drumbeat returned as the 
light faded, and the crowd could see that the ceiling of the concert 
hall had been dematerialized entirely - and beyond it, there stood 
nothing but a sky full of millions of stars. 


The Conductor set his batons down as the drumming stopped, 
turned to face the audience, and gave a short bow. The crowd 
applauded thunderously, some of them rapt with joy, others with 
tears running down their faces, all of them looking forward to the 
second movement. The Conductor cleared his throat and snapped 
his fingers, and in an instant the performance was over. The roar of 
the crowd ceased as the men and women disappeared back into the 
ether from which they came, and the walls fell in until the concert 
hall was once again the rehearsal space of the West Soho 


Performing Arts Center. 


"Well, there you have it," the Conductor said to the two actual 
humans remaining of his audience of thousands. "Concerto No. 3 for 
Reality Warper, 1st Movement. 'The Fall of Heaven’. What do you 
think?" The bespectacled middle-aged man in a Grateful Dead t- 
shirt, his long graying hair tied back in a ponytail, gave a tentative 
nod of agreement. 


"Well, you put half your audience to sleep," the Critic said as he 
gestured to the ten-year-old boy who'd nodded off next to him, "but | 
was a Phillistine at his age too. The lighting effects are a little 
amateurish, and the score could use more Steinman and less ELP, 
but your work with the audience has improved by leaps and bounds. 
| swear | recognized my old drill sergeant sitting two rows behind 
us." 


"Thank you," the Conductor said. "I'm planning on elaborating more 
on the visual effects in the second movement. We haven't even 
gotten to the creation of man yet, after all. It ought to be ready by the 
next time you're in town if you'll have time to see it." 


"| look forward to it, Mr. Chesapeake," the Critic responded as he 
stood up and headed for the door. "Keep working on this and by '84 
you'll be ready to make a big splash. Leave the sheet music on my 
desk and I'll have some more detailed notes for you by the 
weekend. Oh, and see if we can do the next session earlier in the 
day so your son can stay awake through the whole thing. I'm sure 
he's got an artist's soul buried in there somewhere." 


Preparation 


Thump. 
Thump. 
Knock. 
Knock. 
Knock. 


The noise gently shook the walls and floors of the small studio 
apartment. 


Thump. 
Thump. 
Thump. 
Knock. 
Knock. 


The wood carving of Richard Nixon rocked back and forth on its 
hook. 


Thump. 
Thump. 
The frame holding the poster of Hitler rattled slightly on the wall. 
Knock. 
Knock. 


The shaking upset the clock made out of a repurposed lab rat and 


caused it to skip forward 
three and a half minutes. 


THUMP. 
THUMP. 
Finally, the noise managed to shake awake the sleeping artist. 
KNOCK. 
KNOCK. 


"Shit!" The artist thought to herself. She quickly rolled out of bed and 
dug out a small 
sculpture before rushing to the door. 


On the other side of the door was what resembled a six-foot tall 
blobfish, except that it was 

covered in barely-visible downy fur, and had muscular arms that 
were webbed like the wings 

of a sugar glider. It was wearing slacks and a button-down shirt. It 
looked at the artist with 

beady black eyes, before holding its enormous four-fingered hand 
out expectantly. 


The artist quickly pressed the sculpture into the creature's hand. "It's 
called Cleanliness is Godliness," she said. 


The creature closely examined the piece. It was a realistic soap 
carving of Mr. Clean, standing triumphant over a much smaller 
representation of the original bar of soap. The blobfish looked back 
up at the artist. 


"Right, context. Well, if you leave it somewhere overnight, by 
morning it will have eradicated any living material in about a two-foot 
radius. It's a commentary on the sterilization of popular culture, as 
well as the dangers of adhering too strictly to-" 


Before she could finish, the creature opened its two-foot wide mouth 
and greedily shoved the sculpture in. It chewed thoughtfully for 
about a minute before swallowing. Apparently satisfied, it thumped 


SCP-587: A Model System 


Item #: SCP-587 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: An isolation room in Sector-28 
houses SCP-587. Entry is barred without authorization from the 
project lead, and the interior is kept sterile. Climate controls must be 
maintained to simulate seasonally suitable weather, including 
precipitation when appropriate. Surveillance by digital recording 
devices is continuous. 


Inside the isolation room, great care must be taken not to physically 
disturb SCP-587 in any way (unless as part of an experiment). Level 
1 isolation equipment is required. All interactions with the model and 
its residents must be cleared with researchers overseeing the mass 
psychology project. 


Description: SCP-587 is an HO scale (1:87) model railroad diorama 
with dimensions 21.3 x 36.5 m. The handcrafted scenery depicts 
forested hills interspersed with buildings, a railroad, and other 
models which constitute the fictional township of Red Elk, Colorado. 
Each model is fully functional; plumbing and electrical power work, 
cars run on gasoline, etc. The town is populated by 1,270 living 
individuals identical to human beings other than their 19.5 mm 
height (average). Physical laws in the vicinity of SCP-587 seem to 
be altered sufficiently that anticipated ramifications of squared/cubed 
relationships are not observed. 


The artifact is meticulously detailed, from superficial features like 
license plate numbers and legible (with magnification) newspapers, 
to material composition such as the geology of the landscape and 
organ arrangement in vivisected inhabitants. The residents can be 
observed behaving as though in a normal town, and seem to have 
no idea about the unusual nature of their existence. Note: After 
years of Foundation custody and experimentation, some residents 


away. 
Her month's rent having been paid, the artist took a sigh of relief. 


Turning to her cluttered desk, the artist looked over the pages and 
pages of blueprints she had drawn up over the last few months. Her 
apartment wasn't big enough for her to assemble all of the 
schematics together into a full blueprint, so she had only a rough 
idea of what the final product would actually look like. 


The idea came to her in a nightmare; over ten thousand moving 
parts, seventy-two illegal memes, four human brains, and a pocket 
dimension the size of Jupiter. This was going to be her immortality— 
if it didn't kill her (and everyone else) first. 


Refocusing on reality, the artist began gathering her belongings. 
Today, she had errands to run. 


BackdoorSoho was perhaps the most colorful place on the planet. 
The graffiti that appeared in patches across the rest of Manhattan 

expanded to cover every surface that would take paint, and some 

that wouldn't. Even the sky was slowly working its way through the 
color spectrum. Right now it was light green. 


The streets, in contrast with the grid of upper Manhattan, wound 
back and forth, over and under each other in spatially impossible 
ways, making the neighborhood both massive and tiny at the same 
time. 


The storefronts were often stacked one on top of the other, with 
stairs, ladders and walkways creating layers on layers and streets 
on streets. 

Her first stop was the metalworking shop, in a narrow alley off 
Duchamp Boulevard known as Sélavy Alley. 


A man with receding black hair stood over a workbench. 


"Hi, Jakob," the artist said as she walked through the open 
storefront. 


"Hey, kiddo," he replied. Jakob called everybody "kiddo." The artist 
was fairly sure he didn't know her name. 


She looked at the scorch marks on the wall. One of the shelves had 
collapsed. The floor had puddles of what looked like motor oil. "What 
happened," she asked Jakob. 


"Some Church wackos wanted me to build them something. Called it 
‘the will of he who shall be made whole’ or some malarkey. They got 
mad when | said no, so | had to get Hank to take care of them." 


As if on cue, a seven-foot tall amalgamation of used car parts ina 
vaguely human shape lumbered in from the back of the shop. A 
license plate reading "HANK" was screwed on to its chest. 


"Wasn't anything he couldn't handle, of course. What did you need?" 
"I'm here to pick up the parts | ordered." 
"Right, right." He went to the back of the shop. 


The artist tapped her foot and looked at the piles of scrap metal 
strewn about the small shop. She wondered if she would be able to 
recoup some of these expenses if something went wrong. She then 
realized that if anything did go wrong, she, and a lot of other people, 
would probably be dead. 


He came back out a minute later, holding a large pile of shining 
metal parts. 


"Let's see here", he said, "we have five Penrose gears," 


He placed five stainless steel gears that were neither spirals nor 
circles on the counter. 


"Three reinforced psychic shields, 30 centimeters by 60 centimeters 
by 2 centimeters," 


He produced three metal rectangles and placed them next to the 
gears. 


"And twelve custom parts, made from imaginary metal." He 
pretended to lift several metal pieces up onto the counter. 


"If you don't mind me asking, what do you need all these for?" 


"Secret project. If I'm really lucky, you can see it at the “Sommes- 
Nous Devenus Magnifiques?” exhibition in about five years." 


The artist took one of the gears into her hands and inspected it 
closely. It twisted back on itself in a way that defied Euclidean 
geometry, an object that was both spiral and complete circle. 


Inspecting the shields, she was able to see the complex and delicate 
layering of telekill alloy. Hopefully this would be enough to prevent 
resonance. 


She pretended to inspect the imaginary metal. Jakob did good work. 


"You've really outdone yourself, Jakob. These are fantastic,” the 
artist said as she wrapped the parts in cloth and placed them in her 
bag.