Excerpt, Memoirs of K. Yildirim, Mission Commander, 
Expedition of the First Thousand 


| think back to what happened, how it changed the way 
in which we view the ultimate result of the expedition. | 
don't think we will ever know why the event was such a 
surprise, given the extensive mapping operations for 
more than a century before we arrived. 


As | reflect, whatever the results afterward, | am grateful 
to have experienced the event in its purest form, 
unmixed with any of the subsequent uncertainty and 
doubt that we have come to associate with this 
enterprise. This fledgling world needs its moments of 
hope as well as its reminders of the mysteries that we 
have yet to unlock as we traverse the cosmos. 


| have reproduced my notes from the first landing, taken 
as the events were developing. Reading them over, | 
come to the conclusion that | would undertake this 
mission again, if | had the opportunity. | hope that this is 
as valuable a service to the reader as it was to me. 


ETA New Shambhala 2 hours 4 minutes 12 seconds: 
Video feed of Venus goes live on the all-ship communications 
network. All non-essential ship function personnel gather in the 
community theater. 


ETA New Shambhala 1 hour 37 minutes 5 seconds: 
Visual of the New Shambhala Atmospheric Colony achieved. 
Cheers go up from assembled personnel. 


ETA New Shambhala 1 hour 15 minutes 46 seconds: 
Brief messages of congratulation played alongside visual of descent. 
Messages are from UN Secretary General Nkurunziza, Prime 


Minister Xue, President Wataya, Prime Minister Dukanovic, and 
numerous world cultural figures, congratulating the First Thousand 
on their successful mission. 


ETA New Shambhala 31 minutes 18 seconds: Entry into the 
Venusian atmosphere confirmed. Cheers again go up from 
assembled personnel. 


ETA New Shambhala 5 minutes 32 seconds: New 

Shambhala Head Administrator Natalya Volkova, present at the 
station with a skeleton crew of personnel for the past two years, 
appears on video feed, officially welcoming the First Thousand. 


ETA New Shambhala 0 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds: Ship 
docks with New Shambhala. Assembled personnel engage in 
extended celebration. "To the Stars," a new anthem composed as 
part of a worldwide collaborative effort among the international 
musical community, is played over the ship's PA system. 


ETA New Shambhala -0O hours 3 minutes 31 seconds: 
The flag of the United Nations is symbolically raised in the entryway 
between the ship and the New Shambhala Docking Port. 


ETA New Shambhala -0O hours 17 minutes 59 seconds: 
The First Thousand begin entry into the confines of New 
Shambhala, marking the beginning of humanity's status as an 
interplanetary species. 


Please, Say My Name 


He was born into a cold and empty world. His location was 
irrelevant, for he only knew of two places; his barren home and the 
foreign outside world. He didn't know where he was, why he was 
there, or even who he was. All he knew was that he could hear and 
see what others said anywhere at anytime. He constantly stood 
vigilant, looking for more information, hoping someone could help 
him figure out himself. 


That is how he spent his days; listening and watching the whole 
world, waiting for a new breakthrough in a cold case, for someone 
who could finally answer his existential questions. He was frequently 
left disappointed, however. He could see a story in a book, about a 
tall, dark, monster... but this one had teeth, or scales, or tore out 
your guts in a haunted forest. He was almost always left just out of 
frame, only gathering pieces of a lookalikes' life. The last time he 
met a human, they ran off screaming into the horizon, their orange 
jumpsuit never to be seen again. 


Still, he waited. Eventually, he figured, someone would learn about 
him and allow him to know his true nature. Eventually, his great 
mystery would be solved, and his life given a sense of completion. 


Eventually, someone would say his name. 


... If it wasn't for the tireless work of the Foundation to keep his very 
existence under lock and key, never to be mentioned again. 


Historically speaking, communicable infohazards were among the 
most difficult anomalies for the Foundation to contain. Even the very 
documentation meant to protect readers could be used to inoculate 
victims and spread the virus. Containment often amounted to 
clearance-level locks and copious usage of amnesetics - what you 
don't know can't hurt you. 


Hear no evil, see no evil, soeak no evil. 


Fortunately for the Foundation and everyone it protects, by the late 
2020's, all communicable infohazards were effectively neutralized, 
simplifying some of the organization's most complicated 
containment procedures. No one could spread their dangerous 
ideas to anyone else ever again. Unfortunately, this was a byproduct 
of the world's inability to communicate anything at all. 


He noticed that slowly, he was hearing fewer voices mention 
something relevant, and seeing fewer tales that aroused his 
attention. His flow of information was running dry, and with it, any 
chance for his epiphany moment. 


He didn't know of the impending demise of communication, or of the 
desperate attempts to save it. He didn't feel horror as people 
struggled to say "I love you", "What's for lunch?", or to even use a 
turn signal. 


What he did feel was the deafening silence and numbing blindness. 


He no longer listens for his name to be called - there is no one to 
call it. He no longer tries to read about himself, or find an expert on 
his own history, for all that he will ever know has already been 
written. 


He had always been lonely, but he was never alone. The voices 
gave him company, the texts gave him something to live for. 


Now? 


He is abandoned in an empty world. He has no one to talk to, and 
no one to suffer with. 


And he assumed there was no escape from this life of torture. If he 
had outlived humanity, he reckoned he'd outlive just about 
everything else in the universe. 


His life means nothing. 


Without anyone to describe him, he /s nothing. 


And he always will be. 


Plumbing 


This was stupid. It was a stupid idea, thought up by stupid people, in 
stupid, safe offices. Agent Two looked around slowly, letting his 
flashlight play over the walls, one of the only items the Agents were 
allowed to carry inside SCP-015. Agents Six and Lon were standing 
just behind him, doing the same. The idle chatter and joking had 
died off about thirty seconds ago, each Agent slowly realizing that 
this was no simple little milk-run. Go in, find the observation unit, pull 
the data and recover the unit. Cake. They'd laughed, Lon asking if 
she should find a Mario hat to wear, them being plumbers now and 
all. Now, however...seeing the dim, cramped tunnel yawning before 
them, the only joke was them being there at all. 


Two stepped forward, slowly, fixing his flashlight on the ground. It 
was a hard mat of pipes, more or less level with the floor. A few 
small tubes stuck up here and there, snaking around like tree roots, 
or suddenly turning up in the middle of the floor like a pillar. The 
walls, the ceiling, every inch of the original structure was coated in 
pipes. Some researcher who led them up to the main door said that 
there wasn't anything left of the old warehouse really, except for the 
outer shell. He pushed away that whole line of thought, pointedly 
following the pre-mapped course they'd had to memorize, stepping 
around a pillar of tightly woven hair, the glossy surface steaming 
gently. 


Six plodded along, taking the rear and keeping a close eye on Two 
and Lon. Skittish kids. Lon was jumping at every sound, and Two 
looked like he was ready to drop and run if he saw so much as a 
mouse. Kids. He sniffed in the dark, playing his light forward, 
smelling heat, sewage, and god knows what else. They needed a 
good military hand to lead them, but damned if Six was going to 
mollycoddle grown adults who were going to jump at shadows. They 
were going to get this goddamn job done, and get the hell back out. 
Fuck that bullshit SCP slip, they were just security blankets for 
eggheads and flakes. “Semi-sentient” my ass, they just didn't want 


people denting their pet horrors. He wanted out of this dripping 
nightmare. He was going to get this mission done with or without 
them. 


Lon tiptoed over a thick, thorny mass of pipe, the surface like 
braided thistles, trying not to whimper. She kept close to Two, 
keeping the light at her feet so she wouldn't step on anything nasty. 
She hadn't wanted to seem like the little, weak girl...but she had a 
terrible fear of tight spaces...and this place was like walking around 
in someone's slowly closing arteries. Lon shook her head, hard, 
breaking off that whole train of thought. She was the tech, Six and 
Two were the safety. All she had to do was stick by them, pull the 
data cards out of the MRV, and then leave. She tried hard not to 
look back at the sealed doors in the distance behind them. Only a 
couple turns to the MRV, a little work, and then out. In and out, 
simple as pie. She ignored a softly throbbing pipe of leathery flesh 
near her arm with a focus that was almost physical. 


They found the MRV after what felt like an hour of walking. It was 
hard to keep your bearings. The rampant growth of the pipes had 
cramped some areas down to crawlways, and snarled others in to 
random, claustrophobic mazes. Six had nearly gotten stuck twice, 
and had looked like he was about to murder Lon when she made a 
comment relating to Winnie the Pooh. Lon was talking again, at 
least...but it was brittle, whistle in front of the graveyard chatter. Two 
kept trying to follow the directions...but even with them being less 
then a week old, they were little more then a guideline. When they'd 
finally found the MRV, it'd been a momentary relief. At least they 
were at the half way point. Then they'd looked at it in the light. 


It had been speared, for lack of a better term. Pinned against a pipe 
of some kind of dense fabric, a smooth, black pipe had docked itself 
to the camera lens of the observation vehicle. It wasn't smashed or 
damaged, it just...connected, as if it was made for it. It had lifted the 
little treaded robot nearly a foot off the ground, and it looked like 
other, smaller pipes had started to connect to other open spaces on 
the vehicle. It just sat there, the wheels slowly turning as the battery 
died, like a bug on a nest of pins. Some clear, foul-smelling fluid was 
dripping softly from the camera housing. 


“Well.” 


Two's voice echoed in the dark, a monument to pointless speech. 
They all stood, for a few moments, then Lon started to, carefully, 
look over the MRV. Six was looking around with an increasing 
restlessness, starting to mutter quietly. Lon was reaching for the 
data cards, before stopping, looking over at Two. 


“Um...Two...since it's grown in to the MRV, do you think it... 
counts?” 


“What do you mean counts?” Two kept the light on her and the 
machine, a hiss of steam behind him making him flinch. 


“| mean as damaging 015. If | take out the data cards, do you think it 
will...react?” 


Two looked around slowly, shining his light along the floor, a pipe as 
wide as a car and seemingly made of compacted lint. 


“...this suddenly seems like a bad-” 
“Oh shut the fuck up.” 


Both Agents turned to stare at Six. He'd stepped up to the MRV, 
flexing his hands and reaching in to his coat with one hand. The 
other pushed Lon away none too softly. 


“Move it. Reaction, for fuck's sake...they just say that shit to fuck 
with people and keep their toys safe. It's a bunch of weird pipes. 
Beginning and end, there. Maybe it grows or whatever, but the damn 
thing sure as shit isn't going to take offense to people. I'm grabbing 
this goddamn thing, and we're getting out of here.” 


As he spoke, he stepped forward, flipping open the dataport cover. 
More of the clear, scummy liquid had pooled inside. The other two 
Agents froze, staring in shock a moment...and the building seemed 
to do so as well, the whispered sounds of venting steam, sliding 
materials, and soft pinging had all stopped. The heartbeat in Lon's 
ears sounded like gunshots. Two started forward, reaching for Six. 


“Jesus, Six, what the fuck are-” 


Six ignored him, slipping out the thin data cards. It felt like old, nasty 


water over them...bad, but they were built to resist it. He slipped 
them out, then put the bundle in his pocket. He prodded around the 
edge of the camera lense, shifting the MRV a bit, trying to see if it 
would work free as Two and Lon backed away, slowly, the silence 
around them seeming to crush inward. Six gave up, turning away 
from the helplessly trapped MRV and shining his light on the two 
white-faced Agents. 


“Fucking kids. | don't know how you guys survive.” 
The pipe under him opened with the soft sound of tearing felt. 


Two and Lon didn't even have time to react, before he slid in to the 
widening gap up to his armpits, and started screaming horribly. Six's 
flashlight went tumbling away as the two Agents, galvanized by the 
big man's wretched screaming, ran to help him. A blast of heat and 
light was pouring up from under the man, as the two Agents grabbed 
his arms and looked down. He was submerged in a mass of thickly 
flowing molten glass. His clothes had already started to smolder and 
burn, the stench of seared flesh almost more overpowering then the 
reverberating screams. They pulled, and dragged up half of a man, 
with a ruined, seared mass of flesh and cloth where his lower body 
should have been. 


They panted, trying to drag him, Lon starting to scream along with 
Six, Two's eyes wide and fixed on some point far away from there. 
There was a horrible swell of sound rising all around them, pinging, 
hissing, clicking, cracking, a pipe to their side bulging alarmingly and 
causing them to nearly fall. They regained their footing just as a 
wooden pipe above them burst open in a spray of splinters and 
clear, stinging dust. 


Two and Lon spun away, gagging and choking, Two spitting out a 
sudden mass of blood. Glass. It was powdered glass. It poured over 
Six, muffling his screams, shifting as he struggled a few moments, 
then stopped, the glass quickly covering the body and spreading. 
Lon blinked, eyes red and puffy, looking over at Two. He nodded, 
and they bolted down the hall, trying to ignore the rising cacophony 
of sound, sounding like an approaching subway train. A mass of oily, 
reeking chemicals boiled up behind them, a jetting surge of rose 
thorns nearly cutting off their forward progress, forcing them to crawl 


Input: One (1) typed thesis, titled “An Experimental 
Study on the Stress Limits of Metals in Corrosive 
Liquids”, as submitted by D-914-29. 

Setting: Very Fine 

Output: One (1) typed thesis, titled “A Complete 
Experimental Study on the Stress Limits of Metals in 
Various Environments”. A review of the output by the 
subject and subsequently studied by appropriate 
personnel revealed no anomalous properties. The output 
contains research on several experiments not included in 
the original input, with suggestions on how to vastly 
improve the strength of metals in a wide variety of 
situations. A review of the output is being conducted by 
the Facilities and Engineering Department to test to see 
if these findings can improve security within the 
Foundation. 


Input: One (1) page of sheet music from “Ellen’s Third 
Song” by Schubert, as submitted by D-914-86. 
Setting: Very Fine