Within twenty-four hours, a new copy of SCP-877 will emerge in the 
new host; the chip will be slightly smaller and the generation number 
will have advanced by one. The highest generation number located 
to date is (see Addendum 877-2 for update), and each chip 
appears to be capable of propagating itself six times, implying that 
the total population of SCP-877 may be in the millions tens of 
millions. 


Addendum 877-1: Recovery Log: The first copy of SCP-877 
located was discovered by zoological researchers at the University 
of [REDACTED] in Tennessee in 199 during a typical dissection. Its 
unusual presence inside the creature drew the attention of 
Foundation scientists, who determined it to be a first generation 
chip. Analysis of unusual energy readings from the chip led to 
scanning for radio transmissions with a frequency of [REDACTED], 
leading to the capture of two more chips. Instances of SCP-877 
began changing frequencies repeatedly; however, having several 
specimens in captivity made tracking easier. 


Addendum 877-2: Update Log 


February 2011: Tenth specimen acquired. During testing, a major 
spike in radio activity was recorded on several different frequencies. 
At this time, all instances of SCP-877 in captivity ceased transmitting 
on any frequency, and all known frequencies for SCP-877 
transmission went dead. O5 Command believes the rest of the chips 
are communicating on scrambled channels and continuing their 
propagation cycles. Without any understanding of the chips’ origins 
or ultimate goal, the threat level of SCP-877 is to be considered high 
and attempts to locate specimens of and materials relating to 
SCP-877 should be considered top priority. 


- August 2011: On two separate occasions within a week, reports 


"You will follow the updated test protocol," Command says. "You 
understand the consequences for ceasing experiment cooperation." 


Of course you fucking understand. You're collaborators. You all 
understand what happens if you don't follow orders. Command has 
never had to keep you in line. You do it to each other. For the ones 
you left behind at home. 


World after world after world, you stay in line. 
It's ludicrous to balk at this, at something as small as this. 
"Call up the first subject," Command says. 


You call up the first subject. You think of the subject carefully as an 
"it". Dehumanization as a form of emotional removal. That's what the 
Foundation trains you to do. Both the Foundations. 


A metal tool is being pressed into your hands. You find yourself 
frozen still. Dissociating. 


You are dimly aware of more restlessness from the other agents 
from Overwatch. 


"05 won't like this." 
"They knew this might eventually have to happen." Command. 


"We have to at least try it." Your mirror. "They'll look the other way. 
We need results. We've gotten nothing good in a long time — we 
need to step up the game. We're erasing everything anyway." A long 
pause, then a whisper that you can still hear, as close as you are. 
"We've done so much worse than this, objectively speaking." 


You will not stare at the test subject. The test subject is brave. The 
test subject is not crying. 


Command is talking to you again. 


"Remove the subject's leftmost phalanges as marked on the testing 
diagram." 


You don't move. 


"Remove the subject's leftmost phalanges as marked on the testing 
diagram." 


You don't move. You can't do this. 
Command repeats the sentence a third time. 


You remember your home. Your loved ones. Your family, your co- 
workers, the annoying neighbors you used to hate. They seem far 
away. You don't know what will happen to them. Maybe it would be 
alright. Maybe it's not too late to stop. 


You remove the subject's leftmost phalanges as marked on the 
testing diagram. 


When it's over, and the subject lies in carefully separated pieces on 
the floor in a pool of liquid, you hardly believe what you've done, 
what you've gone through with. 


You aren't looking at the other test subjects, but you can hear them 
(emitting distressed vocalizations, a voice says in the back of your 
head with the proper clinical remove). You notice that Li— poor Li 
— has passed out, slumped in a pool of ritual blood which now 
almost looks like it's coming from her body, her fingers (fingers) 
draped over a soiled paintbrush. 


You cast your eyes distantly at your collaborators. You see the 
horror you expect. But you also see gratitude. Gratitude that you did 
this, not them. 


Command shifts his shoulders. He hasn't looked up in quite some 
time, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on whatever is written on the files 
he's been holding in front of him. 


"Call up the next subject,” he says. 


KKK 


But you don't continue the experiment with the next subject. 


You can't believe your eyes, because it's like something you could 
have once imagined. But not the kind of thing you expected to 
imagine again. 


A blazing white light. Spreading wings. 
Something like a sword. 


You remember little except for the evacuation. In an orderly fashion. 
The blazing light hangs over the air, over the children, unmoving. 
The children are sobbing — fear? joy? — and you have no idea 
what emotions you are feeling, or even if you have any emotions left 
at all. 


You are herded (Li is lifted) into low, gray vehicles stamped with the 
sign of the SCP Foundation. 


You drive for several hours before you're hauled out into a gray, 
foggy day. Day has lasted too long. Somewhere where you weren't 
paying attention, Command slipped your group between worlds 
again. 


Command and the other agents don't seem particularly angry with 
you. Which should come as a relief, but doesn't quite relief. You're 
having a hard time caring. 


Command orders you to stay when he dismisses the rest of your 
group after the debriefing. 


He doesn't say anything for a while, just paces around, fills out 
forms, types up file entries. You recognize that he's updating a test 
log and an administrative report, maybe even an addendum to an 
SCP article, the way you might once have done, the way some of 
your colleagues still do. 


"It was a test," Command abruptly says to you. "To see how far we 
could go. Apparently we got our answer." 


A long wait. Apparently he wants a response from you. 


"It's my job," Command says. "Plenty of other teams out there 
working more mundane angles. Trying to find a way to stop the 
Worm. My job is to draw out divines. This was probably the most 
successful experiment I've ever had." 


This is more than Command's ever told you before. 
"What about the children?" you ask. 


"The subjects? We could always have put them back together. We 
will put the initial subject together. It won't remember a thing." 


You sit there, in awe somehow. 


"We have the technology," he says. "Of course we do. We're not like 
your home Foundation. We never chained our hands. Do you really 
think you couldn't make a cure-all if you didn't have regulations 
against it?" 


You don't know, but you doubt you'd like what it look would look like. 
You say something along those lines, but Command isn't listening. 
He's shaking his head. 


"| know they like to plant these rules in your Foundations to limit the 
experiment parameters, but | always thought you'd be more effective 
if you weren't. Maybe you'd actually figure out how to stop the 
Worm. Of course... Maybe you'd figure out how to unravel our 
Palisade if you did. Turn it against us. Yes, I'd believe you'd do that 
first before stopping the Worm. Logically, it would be easier. Since 
we know how to do that, after all, and we don't know how to stop the 
Worm. | suppose you have to be kept in your place." 


He expects you to react to that. 
"They were children," you say. 


"This shouldn't be a surprise. Your Foundation follows the same 
protocols. Don't think of them as people. They're fodder." 


"Aren't we fodder too?" 


He seems impatient. "You were. We made you people. We decided 


you are people, we decided you matter, and so you are, and so you 
do. Listen. Think of it as editing. A book, or a piece of art. You need 
to make the mistakes to figure out what you really want." 


"Mistakes?" 

"Yes." 

You don't know what to say, so you don't say anything. 
You wonder what you saw. An angel? A goddess? 


"So you went so far that the literal forces of the universe decided to 
step in?" 


Command shrugs. "They don't seem to object to massacring 
uncountable billions," he says. "The rituals work because they let 
them. It doesn't impress me that they draw a line at child torture." 


You again don't have a response. Command doesn't seem to need 
one, now. 


"Doomsday doesn't feel personal, | suppose," he says. "Listen. We 
had to bait them. We must find out why the Worm exists. We 
assume tampering with the forces behind existence will eventually 
let us figure it out. Or maybe one of your people will. Either way." 


You still don't have an answer. 


"We're the heroes, here." He smiles. A hint of irony, like he knows 
it's a cliche? "The gods or fate or the universe put us in this position. 
They created the scenario in which we did this. Isn't that 
endorsement enough?" 


You don't understand why he even cares about endorsement at this 
stage. 


He's getting excited again. 
"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," he says. "Maybe the 


others are right. This little child-loving god or angel or whatever — 
it's small potatoes. | could make something more impressive in a 


fucking lab. Nothing compared to the Worm. Blessed be the 
children, who cares? Grimdark isn't sustainable, not like this. It's 
missing... it's missing the creativity." 


You're starting to feel a little more afraid. 


"That's it," he says. "That's the key. The Worm? Fuck the Worm. It 
just erases our fucking realities. You can't even see it! Can't even 
comprehend it! It's not even a fucking Worm! Baiting it to universe 
after universe — that's not gonna draw out any self-respecting 
divines hiding out there. Where's the meteor heading dramatically 
towards Earth? Where are the swarms of human-faced locusts? 
Where's the Wolf striding the horizon? Where's the XK-Class End of 
the World scenario?" 


He's grinning now. Excited. Thrilling at his own words. 
"Doomsday," he says. "That's the answer. The principalities and 


powers love a good doomsday.” He sets down his notebook with a 
note of finality. "We'll have to try a few." 


In The Eye Of The Beholders 


Only one person ever saw Lisa after 2:02 PM on November 27, 
1991. 


The party was mediocre at best. Lisa’s friends had started noticing 
oddities at 1:53 PM. They told Lisa she had been looking tired, and 
so Lisa made some coffee. Still, she looked tired. They had said she 
looked cold and was shivering, and so she put on a sweater. Still, 
she was cold. They had told her she looked pale, and so she 
touched up her makeup. Still, she looked pale. Lisa was a pale 
person. But that night she was paler than usual. 


At 12:18 PM on November 27, 1991, Lisa’s boyfriend had dragged 
her to an antique store to “keep him company while his mother 
shopped”. She could have gouged her eyes out with a Spork and 
been more content. The level of disgust she felt practically forced 
her to sit in the corner, arms crossed and pouting. Practically forced 
her to catch a glimpse of that strange painting in the corner, leaning 
against a rack of tattered and dusty books, at 1:32 PM. Practically 
forced her to stroke its surface. It had felt...warm. Alive, almost. 


She had spoken to it. No, ithad spoken to her. It had known things 
about her, secrets she had never told anyone. How she had lost the 
class hamster in third grade, how she had stolen her best friend’s 
wallet to pay off her pot dealer, how she had destroyed her laptop 
on purpose to get a new one from her parents. Never had she felt so 
connected, so tied to another being in her life. At 1:38 PM, her 
boyfriend had made her leave it behind, despite their closeness. At 
1:47 PM, she could feel them becoming closer. 


She arrived at the party at 1:51 PM. At 1:54, she was paler than 
ever, more tired than she could imagine, and colder than ice. At 
1:57, she left the party. 


At 2:12 PM on November 27, 1991, her body was discovered. The 
police were called. Lisa was declared dead at 2:24 PM. 


On November 30, 1991, Jeremy walked into an antique shop with 
his wife. ! wonder if | can find a dining set, he thought, shuffling 
around the room. He looked at the tables; dust, books, a typewriter, 
more dust, some more dust, placemats, and dust. Nothing of 
interest. Jeremy sighed, disappointed, and turned towards the door. 
He reached for the knob and began to turn before a splash of color 
caught his eye. He turned, puzzled. And there, on November 30, 
1991, Jeremy became the last person to ever see Lisa. 


In The Garden 


And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely 
die: 


For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then 
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, 
knowing good and evil. 


And when the woman saw that the tree was good for 
food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to 
be desired to make one wise, she yearned to take of the 
fruit thereof, and eat. 


But instead, the woman said unto the serpent, If your 
words be true: 


Then let my eyes forever be closed. 


- Genesis (KJV), 3:4-9 
With just a word, Rebecca Love popped the door out of existence. 


Was 'pop' the right word? It definitely made a ‘pop’ sound. Kind of 
satisfying, actually — like snapping bubble-wrap. Why did it make 
that noise, she wondered? Maybe it was air rushing in to fill the gap 
where the door now wasn't? That made sense. 


Behind the gap, three men sat at their desks and toiled over alien 
machines. Their hands were stretched across symbol-enscribed 
boards, stroking out patterns like spiders delicately navigating a 
complex web. Each dip of a finger produced a pleasing ‘click’. In 
front of them, green runes glowed upon panels of glass. Given 
enough time, they could weave those runes into a particular kind of 
‘magic' — the most dangerous kind. 


All three men heard the ‘pop’. They turned to face Rebecca — a 
short, petite woman with burnt sienna skin and a smile as wide as 
the sky. One of them reached for his piece. 


Right away, Rebecca could tell that the wand was high-end — not 
one of those mass-produced imitation knock-offs. It was the color of 
moon-light; exquisitely carved ash-wood with a silver-capped tip. 
Probably a semi-automagic. 


Again, Rebecca spoke a word. POP. The wand disappeared from 
his hand. 


They froze in their chairs. 


"Now," Rebecca said, "| know what you're thinking. | mean, not 
literally." She held up her hands. "| can't read your minds or anything 
like that. But right now, | suspect you're thinking something like: 
‘Okay, she can pop doors out of existence. And she can pop wands 
out of existence. But... can she pop us out of existence?” 


All three exchanged glances, then turned back to her. Rebecca 
lowered her hands, cracked her knuckles, and gave them her best 
‘come-at-me' grin. 


"To which | say... wanna find out?" 


Silence stretched out across the room. After what felt like a half 
minute of deliberation, the one who pulled the weapon rose to stand 
and lifted his arms. The other two quickly followed suit. 


"Pfsh." Rebecca wrinkled her nose. "And here | thought you guys 
were all about empiricism. Whatever happened to the spirit of 
inquiry?" She reached up to tap the carved bone piercing in her ear, 
then focused her thoughts into the magical thread that wove through 
it: 


«Room's secure. Three Iil' snakes. Looks like they're giving up 
peacetully. » 


«Good. Upstairs is secure. A little tech, nothing major. Anything 
down there?»