SCP-923 is capable of rapidly shifting its orbit in order to reach a 
target quickly. When given O5-level authorization, the object will 
accept firing orders. It requires standard GPS coordinates, altitude, 
a time, and an integer value for the intensity. An experiment log for 
determining what the numbers mean has been included. Special 
permission has been granted to keep some D-Class personnel alive 
beyond the normal expiration date for the purpose of study. 


Intensity: 10 
Response: Error reported by SCP-923 stating that it was incapable 
of firing at an intensity lower than 23. 


Intensity: 25 

Response: Subjects reported hearing voices, interacting with people 
not present, overwhelming paranoia, compulsions to harm others, 
and terror. Interviews with affected subjects reported strong feelings 
of ‘being watched,’ though they were unable to elaborate further. 
Time until recovery: 15-19 days. 


Note from Dr. 
In order to better examine the phenomena caused by SCP 923, 
several recording devices were placed next to the target. 


Intensity: 35 

Response: Similar to intensity 25, but with the subjects also reported 
compulsions to harm themselves, constant suicidal thoughts. 
Researchers within 10 meters of the target reported having panic 
attacks. 

Time until recovery: 6-8 months. 


6 


*Chin up, kid,” says Containment Officer Simon Lorell to his son, 
who is standing there alive with tears streaming down his filthy 
cheeks and dripping onto the gun he holds that Simon would never 
have let his seven year old child hold in any other situation. He 
smiles to him and hugs him with his remaining arm. They’re almost 
out. It’s day eight but they’re almost there- 


7 


*"We got the motherfucker!” yells Mobile Task Force operative Lora 
Wimae in joy on day nine with her semi-automatic in one arm, kevlar 
rubbing against her bruised ribs, drenched in rain and dirt and blood 
in the dark forest surrounding the site with a mobile containment 
chamber the size of a train car loaded onto a semi truck bed behind 
her- 


6 


*See? We're out,” says Containment officer Simon Lorell from where 
he lays strapped to a gurney in the medical evac helicopter on day 
ten. His seven year old son winces as the medic tending to him 
disinfects a gash on his leg. When the helicopter takes off, his son is 
buckled into one of the seats, and Lorell waits until he’s sure he’s 
asleep before he rests himself. 


) 


*You saved me,” says the older woman to Colette Dale. She’s taught 
her everything that she knows, and Dale doesn’t think for this reason 
that she’s really able to be thanked in this situation, but in plastic 
tents set up outside the ruined site on day eleven she can’t say no 
when she hugs her. 


4 


*You built a mobile osmosis system?” asks the regional disciplinary 
officer to D-48248 as he sits across from him with a raised eyebrow. 
D-43248 looks up from his shoes on day twelve to meet his 
superior’s eyes. He might not be as deep in shit as he expected. 


3 


*Alex?” croaks Alex Whittingham's partner of four years from where 
he lays in a hospital bed on day thirteen. Whittingham told himself 
many times that he wouldn't cry, especially not now, not when the 
two of them were six hours from home dressed in street clothes in 
the soft light of the lamp he’s been reading by to pass the time for 
the past few days. He does anyway. His boyfriend does, too. 


2 


*Don't touch me,” snarls a frazzled and violent Natalie McCreed to 
the rescue workers that pry open the blast door on day fourteen. 
They look for the too-high-clearance-level-hot-breath-being that 
should be there with her. They only find its body. 


1 


*That’s fine,” replies Director Wistuba over the phone from her 
temporary apartment far away from the site she runs. The man on 
the other end of the phone is far above her in rank, and when he 
tells her to start rebuilding, she does, because containment is like 
two lovers sharing breath; there is a give and take, a rise and fall. 
The water pushes against the levee and the levee pushes back. It’s 
rusted in places; it was built by someone before her. Sometimes, the 
water builds too much, and the levee breaks. 


Sometimes, it’s just a matter of swimming until the tide recedes. 


It is day fifteen when Director Alice Wistuba begins constructing a 
new levee at the waterline. 


Regret 


Dr. Lang woke up happy. Everything was okay again, the way it was 
meant to be. He had fixed it. Or maybe it had never happened, and 
was all a misunderstanding. 


A moment later, the dread hit. The relief had been a dream. A 
stomachache knotted itself in his gut and sent a wave of dull pain up 
his body, into his arms and throat. It was the dull ache of never 
being able to get comfortable, a constant shortness of breath, a 
constriction of the throat. It was the kind of pain that was always 
there, shadowing every moment, even the good ones. 


"lam become Death, the destroyer of worlds," he quoted to himself 
in the shower, before a sarcastic chuckle and a shake of his head. 
Who was he talking to? Himself? God, if there was one? The O5s? 
Whoever he was talking to, he blamed them. What kind of God 
would let this happen? How could HE, Dr. Lang, let this happen? He 
was a Director for one of the most important sites of the humongous 
goddamn shadow paranormal super-government! How the hell did 
HE let that happen? Then he remembered the Ods. Fuck them. In 
all their knowledge and power, they still refused to do anything about 
it. He needed to convince them. But he remembered that he tried, 
and it didn't work. He needed to do something himself. 


He thought back to the moment, as he always did. He had given the 
command, the techie had hit the enter key, and then... nothing. He 
had wondered if there was an error, if it even had any effect. Then 
the radio call. It worked... sort of. The entire beam hadn't just been 
redirected, it had disappeared entirely. Well, good, he had thought, 
that should please the O5s. Odd outcome, though. Then the second 
radio call a few minutes later, about the supernovas. Supernovae, 
whatever. That's when the dread first hit. Well, first it was disbelief, 
then dread, then a moment later, an overwhelming panic. "Oh 
SHIT!!!" he had screamed into the receiver. At least the initial panic 
cleared when he verified that there was no danger to Earth. At least 


we were in the clear. 


But the slow, gnawing dread had continued to build. They say time 
heals all wounds, but this one just got worse and worse. Five 
months, and it still consumed his life. He supposed he knew how 
people felt who lost spouses or entire families in car wrecks or fires. 
Some of them still hurt after five months, even five years, and that's 
normal. So maybe this was just normal. 


Dr. Lang snickered in disbelief again. The hot water had just run out. 


"Hey, Steve?" 
"Dr. Lang, please." 


"Yes, sir." Marty's tone seemed a little sarcastic. Whatever, let the 
little prick feel however he wants. "Here is your fax on retro- 
causality, two skip briefs, and the Level-3 file on the SRAs. It's 
almost all redacted, and the woman said you'll need to VPN in and 
request it yourself if you want the Level-4, and you'd need to fill 
out..." 


"Yes, just put it all on my desk," Lang interrupted sharply, "In the 
box, please. No, The INBOX, please!" Dr. Lang sighed. Everything 
annoyed him these days. He knew he was Just lashing out. But at 
the same time, the little shit didn't have to be such a retard, either. 


It turned out to be all useless, anyway. The retro-causality brief was 
based on the same Grandfather-Paradox bullshit he'd read a 
thousand times. All wrong. As for the skips, one was a minor trinket, 
some camera that took pictures of the past, and the other was just 
some door that could only be open or shut every 27.18 minutes. He 
was sure the researchers would never understand the significance 
of that number, the ignorant little fucks, he smiled sarcastically to 
himself. Too bad the file on the SRAs was so redacted he wasn't 
sure why the Level 3 version existed at all. 


"The invention of the Scranton Reality Anchor (SRA) appears to 
[REDACTED] and is credited to [REDACTED] Due to the expense 
involved in producing [REDACTED] Foundation-wide 


implementation of the device has been limited to units capable of an 
area of effect less than two cubic meters (“Use of mSRA ‘Scranton 
Boxes’ to Provide Mission Critical Document Security” L. Piedmont 
et. al., Foundation, Vol 106.8, pp 10-14, 1988)." 


Dr. Lang chuckled, violently ripped up the papers, and threw them in 
the trash. He idly speculated what would happen if he lit the trash 
can on fire. The smoke alarm would go off, the guards would rush in, 
he would play it cool. "What? What's wrong? Oh, the fire? What 
about it? Yeah, it's a waste basket fire. Big fucking deal. Why don't 
you go back to guarding the WEAPON THAT BLEW UP A FEW 
TRILLION LIVES. WE DEMOLISHED COUNTLESS FUCKING 
CIVILIZATIONS AND YOU FUCKS ARE WORRIED ABOUT SOME 
BURNING PAPER." God, he hated those useless morons. Was it 
time for lunch yet? 


The day only got worse: meatloaf. It looked like literal shit. Seriously, 
if the cafeteria ladies had squatted on the pan, pinched a few 
loaves, put it in the oven, and served it, that's exactly what it would 
like. 


Dr. Lang was ready for a drink before noon. At least he thought he 
was. He never understood how people became drunks, the stuff 
tasted like piss and made you feel even worse. Those tiny little fucks 
with their problems of women and marriage and jobs and kids. He 
WISHED he had those problems. He had murdered an advanced 
alien civilization, accidentally extinguished the life from hundreds of 
suns, and you didn't see him drinking. He took a walk instead. 


He brushed his hand along the beryllium bronze walls of the 
underground complex. This place was like a gold mine. Well, a 
copper mine. Bronze mine. Were there bronze mines? Either way, 
the Foundation kept asking for larger and larger "samples" and he 
didn't think they were really testing it. Probably just trying to pay all 
their bills. He smirked at the thought of the Foundation hocking 
chunks of copper at a salvage yard. 


He finally reached the window to dash four. The Neutron Star. This 
thing was beautiful, he couldn't deny that, but being here always 
filled him with more pain and dread and heartache than anywhere 
else. But it let him focus on it. 


After all, he needed to save them. He thought of poets and artists, 
operas, cities, towers, magnificent works of architecture, people 
playing in parks, dogs, insects, trees, all living and working together 
in harmony. All dead, all gone, all because of him. So he wept. He 
needed to save them. Why did they die? Why did any of this 
happen? 


He wept and thought of spaceships. Orbiting worlds. A bright future 
of thriving life, a galaxy teeming with beauty and art and 
consciousness and happiness and trade and love and he killed it all. 
Cavemen aliens extinguished before they could become great. 
Veritable gods of space and time, wiped out by one. careless. hand. 
Wiped out by their own invention. Why were they so stupid? Why 
didn't they secure it? Why did they build it in the first place? And why 
here, on Earth? 

Maybe this is just how life is... maybe it is the nature of the universe, 
a fundamental law, that intelligent life will inevitably wipe itself out? 


Dr. Lang waited for an answer. 


There was no answer. The Neutron Star continued to burn, as it 
always had, mindless, careless. 


Maybe it was test. Maybe it was his job to fix it. Maybe that was 
what life was about: making mistakes and fixing them, even the 
biggest ones. 

Maybe he wasn't a destroyer after all, an insignificant ant who 
accidentally set off a nuclear bomb. Maybe he was a builder. A 
rebuilder. Maybe he could fix this, and he would be like Prometheus 
or Jesus or something. 


For what it's worth, he was trying... as much as he could, anyway. 
His Level 4/2100 Clearance gave him access to info on less skips 
than one might think. But they were the key. Somehow, somewhere, 
in some Foundation vault, or protected in some innocuous 
warehouse, there was something, probably a few things, that could 
let him save them. Time Travel was real, after all, and one could 
change things. That's how they died, that's how they would be 
saved. He resolved himself to try even harder, to stop worrying 
about possibly getting in trouble. What could they do to him 
anyway? Fire him? Kill him? D-Class duty? Big deal. He could 


accept any fate at this point. 


He deserved it. 


"Wowzers..." Dr. Lang said aloud to himself, grinning ear to ear with 
excitement. He needed to quit talking to himself, he noted quickly. 
But this... this was better than he could have hoped for! He felt a 
wave of hope wash over him, physically warming him. It was 
something he hadn't felt in a long time. 


It had taken Dr. Lang nearly four months just to piece together the 
fact that his mystery Doctor even existed, reading between the lines 
on redacted reports, unclassified containment documents, and 
asking just the right innocuous questions to just the right innocuous 
researchers. It took him another two months to come up with an 
innocent, legitimate reason to request access to the information he 
wasn't supposed to know anything about. 


"Experimental analysis cross-referenced with Foundation assets at 
CERN and MIT confirms the theoretical ‘T’ boson is being actively 
produced by the Neutron Star -4. Tachyonic Flux has been 
measured at non-negligible deviations from normal." Dr. Lang had 
written in his report. All bullshit, but the only people on Earth who 
could verify that already worked for him. Approval came quietly a 
few weeks later in the form of a simple e-mail. "You have been 
summarily approved for Level 4 Clearance Level Theta [General 
Restricted Temporal Anomaly Database],” the e-mail began, before 
detailing his new responsibilities and listing points of contact. 


Dr. Lang had assumed his mystery man would be a researcher who 
had studied temporal anomalies enough to really grasp the basic 
principles, had written up a few temporal skips, and with a little luck, 
had tried a handful of other experiments. Dr. Lang assumed this 
would be a guy who had sent a few letters to the past or heard from 
the future or something. He was not expecting this. 


"Signed Dr. Thad Zah-yank," Dr. Lang read aloud, wondering what 
kind of name "Xyank" was. If Document-1780-WL was legitimate, 
and admittedly he had every reason to believe it wasn't, then Xyank 
was a real-life Dr. Who, running around and fixing temporal 


anomalies. Xyank even had his own Containment Task Force Delta- 
t that he recruited from across different timelines. Jesus. This was 
pure science fiction. But this was the Foundation after all, the same 
Foundation with boreholes filled with infinite books and time 
travelling boats. Contacting Xyank didn't seem too difficult, one just 
needed access to SCP-1780. 


This guy, this Dr. Xyank, he was the key to fixing everything. 


"Your request to test SCP-1780 has been summarily DENIED. As 
this is your fourth request to access SCP-1780, your fifth request will 
be reviewed by the O5 council." 


Shit. -They- sure wouldn't give him access to SCP-1780. They might 
even catch on if this was brought to their attention. It had been a 
long shot anyway, trying to convince this Dr. Schrader that 
SCP-1780 had any relationship to the Tripwire.