Edward was there when they reached the nearest guard post, 
wearing a blue dressing-gown and a long-suffering expression as he 
sipped a mug of cocoa. His pale skin looked positively ghostly under 
the bright lights of the secure panic room. 


Keagan was bundled in and thrown into a chair, his wrists still bound 
behind him. One of the blue-hats remained behind at the door, 
weapon in hand. They sat there for a while, Edward drinking his 
cocoa and watching him warily. 


* "Chill to -10,000F° before serving." 
¢ "Garnish with antimatter parsley." 
¢ "Marinate for 900 trillion years." 


D-682-41 was tasked with cooking the 93 usable recipes, using 
SCP-241 plus a "correction sheet" (written by Dr. —_) which 
replaced impossible ingredients and instructions with the closest 
feasible analogue, with the results being delivered to SCP-682 
containment cell upon completion. SCP-682 has shown no ill effects 
after having eaten all 93 meals. 


Item: SCP-2578-D 


NOTE: Test was conducted independent of the Foundation by 
SCP-2578-D. Secondary designation as a termination test has been 
given to Incident-2578-682-1. 


Tissue Test Record: 
N/A 


Termination Test Record: 

During a routine maintenance check of SCP-682's containment 
enclosure, SCP-682 sustained five cranial penetration wounds in 
rapid succession and remained unresponsive for a period of roughly 
32 minutes. Upon recovery, SCP-682 yelled "FUCK YOU AND ALL 
THREE OF YOUR MOONS" toward the ceiling. Five minutes 
afterward, Dr. Naismith received the following instance of 
SCP-2578-B on his personal email account: 


[three-crescent symbol] has failed. [three-crescent 
symbol] is greatly embarrassed, and regrets the 
continued existence of your unpleasant lizard. Orders 
were orders. And for the record, [three-crescent symbol] 
didn't miss. 


Item: SCP-2617 


Tissue Test Record: 
Not attacked by SCP-2617-A instance. 


At length Edward looked up. "You're a fucking pain in the ass, you 
know that?" 


There was a further silence for the span of about a minute. 
"...I'm sorry for getting you up so late," Keagan said at last. 


"Before | came here | was an investment banker in the City," Edward 
said. "I'm used to late nights. So you tried to break out." 


"Figured it was better than waiting around to get killed. That's what 
you do, isn't it, at the end of a D-Class shift? Kill everyone who's 
left." 


Edward said nothing. 


"But seems like | won't have to wait that long. I've been assigned to 
554." Keagan saw Edward's eyes widen slightly. "Now, that's a bit of 
a puzzle, but I've been thinking about it. Did you know us D-Class 
record the numbers of the Special Containment Procedures we work 
with on the walls of the dormitories?" 


"| didn't," Edward said. 


"Well, we do. Now, that would be an interesting study—who started 
that tradition? | don't think anyone on my shift ever discussed it, but 
we all do it, and we all know what it means when someone puts a 
cross on the end of someone else's list. Now, the numbers on the 
walls range from the hundreds up to the high thousands; unless 
they're assigned randomly, 554 must have been known to the 
Foundation for a long while. Is that reasonable?" 


Edward looked at the guard at the door. He nodded slowly while 
taking a sip from his mug. 


"Okay," Keagan said. "So here's the thing. | haven't seen 554 written 
anywhere in the dormitory. Not once. | reckon there's years and 
years of D-Class who've written on those walls. So that means 
either the Foundation has known about 554 for years but never 
dared do experiments on it until now because it's so dangerous—or 
something happens that means no-one who ever works with 554 
writes its number on the wall. Am | close?" 


Edward shifted in his chair. "Keagan, | can't discuss that with you." 
"Why not? I'm pretty sure it's going to kill me in a few hours." 


Edward folded his slipped-socked feet up into the chair to get them 
off the chilly tiled floor of the muster point. "Look, Keagan, let me tell 
you a story." 


"As long as it doesn't take the rest of my life." Keagan choked out a 
bitter bark of a laugh. 


"It's a story that was told me when | first arrived here," Edward said. 
"So there's every chance that it's a load of horse shit. But even if it 
is, it still illustrates exactly what I'm trying to say. Anyway, you know 
about the amnesiacs?" 


"No. You mean—people who forget things?" 


"Well, no, that's what the word should mean. Around here, though, 
it's what we call what should really be named 'amnestics’. 
Substances that induce memory loss. Don't ask me why they use 
the other word, probably someone at the top misspoke early on and 
no-one ever bothered to correct them. You've seen some of the 
things we keep here?" 


Keagan nodded, but the words were an icy shock to him. Did | 
overlook that, he thought? 


"Well, most of the time they come on our radar because someone 
reports having what might be termed a supernatural experience. 
Something that doesn't fit into the modern idea of a logical universe. 
People falling through the cracks into the world. They can't cope 
with what they've seen." 


"You brainwash them," Keagan said, slowly. 


"We take away the memories. In many cases it's the only way 
people can go on. When they work: sometimes they remove the 
higher levels of cognitive memory but not the emotional connections, 
and on some people it doesn't work at all. That's why I'm here—l'm 
immune, apparently. They never figured out why. But anyway, 
amnesiacs are one of the most important tools in the Foundation's 


arsenal. They let us cover up things that it would be impossible to 
explain away otherwise. But because they're not 100% effective, the 
Foundation is always looking for ways to accomplish the same effect 
without recourse to chemicals. So anyway, there was a psychiatrist 
—usually when you hear the story he was in Sector-30, that's 
Germany, but I've also heard versions where he was in Britain, the 
US, Argentina... But the name's always the same. Dr Glut. 


"He was recruited for his research into behavioural modification. The 
Foundation told him ... there were no such things as amnesiacs, or 
at least, that the higher level ones were a fraud, designed to make 
squeamish Foundation agents think we had a magic pill that made 
bad memories go away. He and his team were led to believe that 
the only way people were ever persuaded to forget what they'd seen 
was—" he paused for a second. "Through torture. They told him that 
the only thing standing between civilisation and anarchy was a room 
full of scalpels, electrodes, and black hoods. He was told that the 
people he was ... experimenting on were civilians who had to be 
persuaded that what they had seen wasn't true, that they'd gone 
insane." 


Keagan felt his lips peeling back from over his teeth. "And what 
were they really?" 


"D-Class, mostly. Mostly. And it worked—at least the story says it 
worked. Dr Gilt used physical pain and good old fashioned operant 
conditioning to make people override their own perceptions. He was 
—a man at the top of his profession. But here's the thing about the 
story—the Foundation wasn't interested in the people Dr Glut 
abused. That wasn't the point of the project. They already knew that 
extensive torture and psychological abuse could affect recollection. 
They wanted to learn how someone held up under the pressure of 
having to inflict terrible pain on another human being, hour after 
hour, every day." 


"Milgram," said Keagan, recalling Professor Reeds. "They weren't 
studying the learner. They were studying the teacher." 


"Yes. But Dr Glut lasted longer than anyone thought possible. They 
kept sending him people to torture, kept making the stakes in the 
fantasy scenarios they fed him higher. But he continued, year after 


year. He became an embarrassment to the Overseers; | guess they 
expected to see some signs of conscience, not just a machine that 
went on performing the worst acts one human being can do to 
another for decades. Then he just broke. Completely and utterly. His 
wife says he woke up one day and his mind was gone. Reduced to a 
gibbering wreck. 


"The story is told as a morality tale, but for me it represents 
something else—the Foundation doesn't tell the truth. Maybe not to 
anyone. | think I'm working as a researcher and counsellor, studying 
anomalous objects, talking to D-Class subjects who break the rules. 
But who knows? Maybe this whole place is here to study me and 
they're waiting to see how much | can take. They tell me they let 
someone called Dr Glut torture people for decades just so they 
could see whether he could take the strain. They tell me they lie 
through their teeth to get volunteers for their experiments, most of 
whom die, then they kill the ones who survive. Maybe the 
Foundation doesn't do any of those things. What seems to be the 
end might not be." 


"That's how you justify being here," Keagan said bitterly. "It might all 
be a lie.' That's what you're counting on." 


Edward flushed, dark red, and tears welled up in his eyes. "The 
Foundation does good," he said, with a sudden burst of 
forcefulness. "Even by lying. We keep the necessary illusion going. 
For everyone." 


"What illusion?" 


Edward looked down, starting to shiver. "That science works, that it 
isn't just a bad approximation of one small part of a universe 
characterised by madness and illogic. That the ground is firm and 
won't drop away from you at any moment. Without the illusion— 
there is no reality, as our civilisation understands it. Without us—no 
laws of physics, no laws of mathematics. We've decided what is 
considered part of reality and what is considered supernatural—it's 
arbitrary, a man-made distinction." 


Keagan thought for a moment. "Einstein must've really done a 
number on you." 


"The atom bomb. Yes. There was a lot of debate amongst the 
Overseers over whether atomic weapons should be considered 
anomalous. But it was ‘our’ side—the Allies—who had developed it, 
and the Foundation was a lot weaker then, for a number of reasons. 
Pragmatism won out." 


They settled back into silence for a while. Keagan closed his eyes 
and tried to sleep, but found it impossible. After a while he said. 


"Edward, this is important. The amnesiacs. How powerful are they?" 


Edward had been staring through the reinforced glass of the guard 
post office into the dark of the corridor outside. He jolted back to 
attention as Keagan spoke. 


"Pretty powerful. Not that | can speak from experience—the one 
time someone tried to use a Class-A amnesiac on me, it induced a 
seizure rather than wiping my memory." 


"Could they wipe out a month's worth of memories?" 


Edward looked at Keagan and some understanding seemed to pass 
between them, some recognition of the dim spark of hope 
represented here. Edward sagged in his chair. "I'm sorry," he said. 
"I've never known an amnesiac that works like that. Class-C and 
Class-B induce suggestibility and prevent formation of new 
memories while under the influence respectively. Class-A blocks 
recent memories from properly settling into long-term memory—at 
best you lose about half a day. The only thing more powerful is the 
Class Omega amnesiac, which induces complete memory and 
personality destruction—effectively kills you as a personality." 


Keagan nodded. "I just thought ... maybe at the end you're just 
wiped clean, sent off somewhere to live quietly with no knowledge of 
the Foundation." 


"It's a nice thought." 
"But not true." 


"...No. | don't think so." 


"Okay." Keagan leaned back again. Then: "You know, before you 
asked me whether | had had any strange dreams. | lied when | said | 
didn't. | don't want you to get in trouble." 


Edward exhaled heavily and reached for his pad. "How are they 
unusual?" 


"They're in a place I've never been before, but I've seen it several 
times now in different dreams. It's a place like this. There's a big 
open area, like a warehouse or a hangar, and a metal cube strung 
up in the middle of it with cables from the corners of the room. 
There's something in it. Trying to get out." 


Edward's breath caught, just for a second. "You've seen what's 
inside?" 


"Yes. It's like a monk. A Buddhist monk. But its face is fucked up, 
you can't focus on it at all. No-one else in the dream could see me, 
but it could. It seemed—surprised, | don't know." 


"Thank you." Edward said, distantly. "Thank you. | need to talk to 
someone." 


He got up, sliding his mug over to the far side of the table. The 
guard on the door stirred himself. 


"Agent Moon said you're to remain with D-8671 until Dr Barker gets 
in." 


"Well," said Edward, voice sharp-edged, "| need to talk to the 
Director. Last time | checked, I'm not D-Class. And | certainly don't 
take orders from you. If Agent Moon doesn't like it, maybe he can 
shoot me later." 


The guard shrugged—'on your head be it'—and moved aside. 
Edward swept by him, hands clenched tightly by his sides. 


The guard turned his attention back to Keagan but made no attempt 
to speak. Keagan waited there, drifting in and out of a feather-light, 
dreamless sleep that would be disturbed by every movement on the 
silent CCTV monitors. He saw five black-helmets entering the 
dormitory, MP7s drawn, taking a head-count at gunpoint. Keagan 


watched helplessly, willing the other inmates not to get themselves 
killed. But they seemed withdrawn, compliant—perhaps demoralised 
by the evident failure of Keagan's escape attempt. Even Ronny 
kneeled down on the floor with his hands beside his head. 


Later he saw Edward hurrying through a corridor. The blue-hat he 
identified as Agent Moon meeting a white-coat near the entrance 
gate, making obsequious gestures as though to placate him for 
having awoken him earlier. Other white-coats beginning to filter in 
through the corridors, laboratories. It was morning. The white-coats 
arrived in the bomb-ruin of the administrative office with postures of 
disbelief and exasperation, the blue-hat left on duty there making 
commiseratory nods. 


"It's time," said the guard at the door—only the second time that 
night he had spoken—and hauled Keagan up by his forearm, led 
him out into the corridor again. The little voice was screaming in his 
head—kick to the knee, shoulder-barge him as he drops, bite his 
throat until you find the jugular, do something, but he wasn't 
listening. 


When Keagan and his chaperone reached the laboratory—larger 
and better-equipped that the ones he'd seen thus far, with banks of 
computer screens surrounding a central raised platform—he was 
surprised to see Cancer, standing between two guards on one side 
of the room. Beside him, Ronny Feldspar, still nursing the stub of his 
wrist. He wondered whether they had been allowed to mark '554' on 
the wall before they left the dormitories. They seemed just as 
surprised to see him, Ronny throwing him a look of fear mixed with 
hate. However, he was not permitted to join them—instead, he was 
kept under separate watch at the other end of the laboratory, 
reinforcing Keagan's impression that he was to play a special role in 
this experiment. 


Dr Skinner was there, grey hair gelled up as usual, chatting 
animatedly to another white-coat, a bespectacled black man with 
short white hair, the one he had seen Agent Moon greet on the 
CCTV. The second man seemed irritated at having to be present— 
no doubt annoyed that Keagan's escape attempt had forced him to 
bring forward the time of the experiment; he kept glancing at his 


watch and scowling. This, Keagan surmised, was Dr Barker. At least 
six younger white-coats were bustling around the monitors, ticking 
off boxes on clipboards and talking in urgent, clipped tones.