"If it's remote sight, it probably works like scrying, right? And things 
that block scrying might make a blind spot." 


Adam chewed on that for a moment. "And if the Mayor doesn't 
realize something's going on, and the FBI is dealing with the fallout 
of a bomb and a bunch of phony murders..." 


"Everyone's distracted. It's the perfect opening." 


They stopped. The street had come to an end; the facade of 
Eustace's building hung over them. 


They had no sooner knocked than the door swooshed inwards. 
Eustace was standing down the hall, arms crossed. His wrinkled 
hands impatiently beckoned them in. 


Adam gave a weak wave with his good hand, but Eustace just shook 
his head. 


The door slammed shut, plunging the foyer back into twilight. "Do 
me a favor. Next time you leave this house, don't do anything that'll 
be on the news before you get back." 


Casey and Vera blinked a few times, letting their eyes adjust to the 
light. Adam had shuffled into the kitchen to sit on the granite 
countertop. 


Casey coughed. He thought about how to phrase this. 
"| think we need to meet the Mayor." 


Eustace nodded along. "Right, right. Okay. Well, I'll Keep my eye on 
the obituaries—" 


"It's the most likely target of — well, whatever is going to happen,” 
Adam interjected. "The bomb's got the whole city looking the other 
way, and no-one's going to bother to sort through the evidence for 
days, at least." 


(the cake is placed on the plate. Automatically it sags 
and appears to melt, covering it and dripping off the 
sides) 


Cook: Well, what the bloody hell just happened? 


Man in suit: If | were to venture a guess, | would say it 
turned into a pile of fats and sugars. Yup (pokes) you 
can see some soluble lipids right there, and the yellow- 


Addendum 04: See Log SCP-604-04 
Log SCP-604-04 
(audio and video) 


Cook 1: Okay, sausages wrapped around the front, and 
the other slabs of steak are held together with gristle. 


(three cooks have put together some sort of meat 
sculpture in the shape of a human head) 


Cook 2: (dabs at blood running down raw meat parts with 
handkerchief) 


Cook 3: Lets just cover the ear area with the baloney. 


Cook 2: Are you sure a thin slice of turkey pastrami 
wouldn't be better? 


Cook 3: Positive. (Gestures with knife) Pastrami would 
have to be pinned here...this way, it lets me slice off the 
top like this, so | can pour the brains in. 


Cook 2: It's the attention to little details that can make the 
difference. 


[DATA REDACTED] 


Cook 1: Okay, one, two, three! (they lift up the meat 
sculpture, and place it one one of the plates) 


The old man sighed. "Well, that's peachy. And if that's true at all, we 
should be leaving the city, not charging headlong into certain death. 
City Hall is done up like a bank vault on demonic steroids." 


Casey frowned. "We can't leave. We all have people here." 


"I'm sorry, do you have friends that you have not yet murdered, 
amnesticized, or dragged into this death spiral with you? If so, they 
should a/so be leaving the city." 


Adam fished a white rectangle out of an oaken drawer. With his 
good hand, he pressed it to the wound, gritting his teeth as 
thousands of microscopic arms affixed themselves to his laceration. 


He took a shuddering breath in, then exhaled smoothly. "Whoever's 
doing this is moving fast. Even if the City Council listened, it'd take 
weeks for them to do anything — we need to act now." 


Eustace narrowed his eyes at his son. "At what point did | give off 
the impression that | am in any way supporting your absurd plans? 
Why shouldn't | just throw you out now and let the police sort 
everything?" 


Adam jumped down from the counter, flexing his bandaged arm 
experimentally. "Because if you don't help, | will do it anyways. | will 
charge into those defenses alone. And | will die." 


Eustace tilted his head. "Are you holding yourself hostage?" 
"Yes. You know I'd do it." 


"God, you would, wouldn't you?" There was a dull glint of pride in the 
old man's voice. 


Eustace stared at Adam. Then at Casey. Then back to Adam. 
"Fine," he said, enunciating carefully. "Let me get my things." 


Eustace pulled the kitchen blinds shut, dragging the last slivers of 
early afternoon sunlight away and out of the room. 


The elder turned around, leering at the three people sitting patiently 
at his dull ochre dinner table. After a moment, he slid out his own 
chair, and sat down with a dusty thud. 


He cleared his throat. "| want to start by informing certain parties at 
this meeting how much | despise them." 


He pointed at Casey. "| hate your weak-willed attitude and 
susceptibility to mind control. | hate that you give my son excuses to 
do stupid shit." 


Casey looked at the table, arms folded on his lap. "Let's be honest, 
he doesn't need me for that." 


Eustace ignored him. He shifted his finger of blame to Vera. "I hate 
your bland cheerfulness and the fact that you think you belong 
here." 


Vera shrugged. "Guilty." 


Adam spoke up. "I think it's nice that someone has an ounce of 
optimism." 


Eustace glared for a moment. Adam laid back in his seat once more, 
cradling his left arm in a dark fabric sling. "Moving on-" 


"Are you forgetting anyone?" Casey asked. 


Eustace frowned at him. "Adam's doing his best. What are you 
implying?" 


Casey looked to Adam, who just gave a shrug. 
"That's not-" Casey sunk back. "-what | meant." 
"Anyways," Eustace resumed. "Here's what | know." 


A warm draft swept across the room, and from the plain tabletop, 
spectral pinpoints emerged. They shone opalescent, each glittering 
vertex dragging others along with it, forming a polygonal starfield. 


Eustace spun his fingers, and they whipped themselves into a 


shape. From the bottom up, a holographic model of a building was 
formed. It was about two stories high, thin and spindly, and each 
side held an amalgam of balconies, windowsills, and pillars, all of 
varying architectural origins. The windows were all opaque and 
black, and no doors marked an entrance. 


"City hall," Eustace dictated, as if it was obvious. "Impenetrable. 
Even city council doesn't go inside. They just teleport paperwork in. 
Sometimes, they even get some paperwork back." 


"Funny thing is, place isn't even a building. In the late 90's, whole 
thing went bloop and reformed into that shape. Happens every few 
decades, | think. Same general shape, but more modern 
accoutrements." 


The shape exploded outwards, the topmost layer of stardust swirling 
up to reveal an oblong vortex within, balancing on one edge. 


"You look inside, there's two concentric barriers. | did my own tests 
On it a long time ago, and it seems the first barrier is semi- 
permeable. The thaumic programming in there is going a mile a 
minute to detect and isolate pathogenic matter, though." 


Adam cut in. "Could we distract it? Sneak in unnoticed?" 


Eustace drummed his fingers, and the glittering constellation on the 
table pulsed to the beat. "You could magically project some smaller 
threats onto it, | suppose. But you'd need to predict the weak spots 
much quicker than a human mind could handle." 


Casey interrupted in turn. "Prediction, like, machine learning? The 
Cl agent, Troy, he mentioned they had something like that." 


Eustace sighed. "The Chaos Insurgency wouldn't know quality 
engineering if it punched them in their edgy teenager faces. I'll see 
what | can do." 


Adam frowned. "How do you know so much about the Mayor's 
defenses anyways?" 


"Few years back | had some trouble with building permits. Briefly 
entertained the idea of killing the Mayor and replacing it with 


someone with less of a fetish for paperwork." 
The room went quiet. 
"...dad." 


"| planned for all outcomes. Sue me. In any case," he segued, "you 
still need to physically get into the building." 


Adam twisted his mouth. "Maybe we could mail ourselves? Like the 
paperwork." 


Eustace stared. "Right. You work on that. And someone else can 
work on how the hell you're going to actually breach the second 
barrier. | can't even figure out what's inside that nucleus, let alone 
pierce it." 


"If | may interject," Vera interjected, "| have something that might be 
of use." She reached into the inside of her jacket and plucked out 
the stubby, pistol-like device she had used in the parking lot. She 
brandished it in front of her, rotating it for the others to see. 


"My understanding is that it opened a door for me to come here. 
Perhaps it could be useful now." 


Eustace snatched it from her grasp. He held it sideways up to his 
face. "Where did you get this?" 


"| received it along with my meal at Taco Bell." 


Eustace set the device down, then took a moment to reflect on what 
his life had become. 


Finally, he spoke. "This is some prime paratech. A Way-opener that 
can be used by even the most mundane among us." He side-eyed 
Vera. "With some jury-rigging, you could, perhaps, drill partially 
outside Portlands and then back, but inside a place of your 
choosing. Past the barrier, because you never went through the 
barrier. To finally talk some sense into the Mayor." 


"Then we're set," Vera said, smiling. 


"| suppose we are," he grumbled. 


He clapped his hands. The iridescent projection folded in upon itself 
until it was just a tiny pinprick. And then the room went dark. 


The words "crude" and "intricate" are not typically used in 
succession to describe the same subject. This combination of 
adjectives is typically only prescribed to tax law and critically panned 
films, but it applied as well to the great assemblage Eustace Rowe 
had propped up in his kitchen. 


With loving care Eustace had woven layers of sinew into organic 
auraducts. The shrink-wrapped neural tissue that formed the pulsing 
core had been selected carefully, fused with precision into the 
blender-sized form before him. Each loop of muscular tubing circled 
through itself in a Klein bottle of pseudoelectric plumbing, running 
along the tabletop to a simple metal helmet studded with electrodes. 


It was a perfect biomechanical focus for heavy-duty thaumaturgy. 
Prometheus Labs would have — and, in fact, often had — literally 
killed for paratech like this. Laymen called it an abomination. 
Eustace, in his head, had taken to calling it Hevel. 


Looking at it gave Casey a headache. If you were to ask Casey to 
describe its aesthetic in two words, he would politely refuse the 
question to avoid thinking about the machine any longer. 


Even Vera wasn't sure what to say. "It's... nice?" 


Eustace shushed her. With his bony hands he took the helmet by 
the edges and held it aloft. As soon as the steel touched the crown 
of his head, Hevel stirred to life with an alarming shudder. 


He shut his eyes, and the temperature of the room shifted up by half 
a degree. Even without looking, he sneered in Adam's direction. 
"Don't look at me. Get on with it." 


Adam cleared his throat. In one hand, he was carrying a sheaf of 
papers. His other arm was pressed against his abdomen in a tight 
sling, still recovering from the self-inflicted slashes. "Right. So, I've 


been in contact with a specialist in legal documents. They owe me a 
favor." 


He nodded at Casey and Vera. "With some finangling and the 
barrier weakened, I'm pretty sure | can have you both designated 
particularly bulky tax returns. Nothing should seem amiss, at least 
until-" 


Vera piped up. "Until | can use this?" She held up the not-gun, 
adorned with a few new flashing bulbs. 


Adam nodded. "Yeah, you should be able to do that. | think?" He 
turned to Eustace, who was now swaying slightly in place, lostina 
thought projected from some other time. 


Adam took a step forward, and gave Casey a one-armed hug. "Now 
or never." 


Casey hugged back, as carefully as he could. His heart was 
pounding. 


"Well," Adam said, "let's get you in a box." 


In a dusty hallway in the center of Three Portlands Plaza, a large 
cardboard box materialized, suspended six feet in the air. 


A moment later, it stopped being suspended, and fell to the carpeted 
floor with a painful thud and two yelps. A fist thrust its way through a 
seam. Vera Garcia scrambled onto her knees. She took in a deep 
breath but got a mouthful of dust, and she started to choke on the 
air. 


Casey's head emerged next. His eyes darted around. 


They were in a hallway of some sort. The aesthetic was dated, not 
only by the jazzy patterns in the carpet and peeling blue wallpaper 
but also by the inch-thick layer of dust covering absolutely 
everything. 


Well, not everything. Scattered about the hall were papers, booklets, 
and envelopes, lying atop the sea of dust. They likely made it in the 


same way Vera and Casey did, although the likelihood that a person 
was inside one was much lower. 


The place was dead silent. Not a draft, not a squeak, not a footstep. 
Barren. 


Vera cleared her throat and clambered to her feet. She offered 
Casey a hand, and pulled him up. 


"Here we are," she said. 


Casey turned in place. The hallway went in two directions, each 
slightly curving to form what might be a circle. "Wanna try left or 
right?" 


Vera dusted off her not-gun. "Left feels lucky." She set off, disturbing 
a trail of particulate, and Casey followed. 


The hallway kept curving, so it might've been a loop — but Casey 
also noticed an incline. A spiral? Most of the path was desolate, just 
abandoned letters and inches upon inches of grit. Coming round the 
bend, something else was visible: an old fashioned window and 
pane, rotated ninety degrees and down against the edge of the 
carpet. It faced to the inside of the circle, ostensibly further into the 
building, and just displayed pure black. 


"That's not where windows go," Vera observed. She knelt next to it 
and pressed a finger to the glass. It was scalding to the touch, and 
as she recoiled a deep blue wave spread across the surface. 


"That tracks, | suppose." She stood back up. "Should we kick it in?" 


"Uh. We should probably go around some more before we try 
property damage." 


She shrugged. "Ashes to ashes. All solutions converge to property 
damage in the long run." 


"That's very philosophical." 


"More of a mark of experience." She stood up again and kept 
walking, undeterred. 


They continued again for a moment longer, and something odd 
caught Casey's eye from around the bend. Something brown, and 
crumpled. 


"Is that a box?" he asked. 
Vera squinted at it, slowing her pace to an amble. "It is." 


They approached. It was crumpled and torn like a person or two had 
emerged from it and set off down the hall, as indicated by a muddled 
track of disturbed dust. 


Casey tilted his head. "Is it our box?" 


Vera took a knee beside it. She poked at the cardboard folds with 
her index finger. 


"Hmm," she said. "I do not know how to tell boxes apart." 


Casey shifted back and forth on his feet. "We've been walking uphill, 
right? We couldn't have gone in the circle." 


"Maybe the Mayor is a fan of M.C. Escher." 

"That would make a lot of sense, actually." Casey paced in a small 
circle. "So, either the building is doing some weird stuff topologically, 
or there's someone else in here." 

"Those are not mutually exclusive." 


"Good point." 


There was a trail of footsteps emanating from the perforated 
cardboard, proceeding the same way they were going. 


"Nowhere to go but up," Vera muttered. 


They proceeded around the spiral for another half-turn. The 
footsteps in front of them continued, framed by increasing quantities 
of unopened mail. 


Vera scooped up a sheaf of letters. "A building permit. News of a 


regulation on the fourth dimension. A warrant for the arrest of 
someone accused of "lemoning"? Do you know what that is?" 


"I've only heard rumors."