It could have been that the Executive Board wasn't actually trying to 
sack her and didn’t want her to fail, but the concept seemed 
hilariously stupid to Isabel. They were the Executive Board, a bunch 
of dusty old busybodies who liked writing long words in small print 
and asking for things in triplicate. It was their job to meddle in the 
state of things, to put up roadblocks, to try their damnedest to 
prevent fun from occurring. Trying to outsmart them had turned into 
something of a game: Isabel even kept score for a while. Maybe 
they were only trying to make themselves look like the big bad guys 
to get the game up and running again. 


Maybe. But that still left the Factory to deal with, and the Factory 
was not something one dealt with. It wasn’t run by anyone. It had no 
investors, no shareholders, no CEO, just miles and eons of blood- 
soaked gears and lonely sweatshop souls churning out soulless 
muck from its bowels, a cancerous structure seeking nothing but the 
mammon that allowed it to grow and spread and offer the universe 
its waste in exchange for more resources. 


The Factory was good at its game. Very good. 
Emma returned and handed Isabel a spoon. 


“Thanks.” Isabel said half-heartedly. She hated being wrong, or 
thinking that she was wrong, especially in this case because that 
meant that she really had no reason to get the ice cream at all and 
wouldn't be able to enjoy it properly because depression eating 
wasn't any use if there wasn’t a good reason to be depressed. 


There was another long, awkward silence. This time it was hippo- 
shaped. 


“Mm-hmm.” Emma cleared her throat. 


Oh no she’s initiating conversation... 


“Jeremy! About time you got here!” Isabel shouted. Saved by the 
dog. 


The corgi waddled into the office, balancing a bucket of ice cream 
on his head, followed by Jeremy and Jeremy, on and on down a line 
that stretched out of the office door, a little corgi conga conveyor 
line. Each dog dropped off his ice cream in turn and trotted back out. 
Isabel grabbed the first bucket and tore off the plastic lid. Marvelous 
Marshmallow Mania. Good way to start. Maybe she didn’t need the 
ice cream now, but Jeremy had already brought it all up anyway so 
she might as well eat it. 


She did so. Another awkward not-quite silence passed in monolithic, 
cringe-worthy horror. Jeremy continued to bring in more ice cream. 


“Uh, you can have some too, if you want. I’ve got...” She glanced at 
the growing pile. “Bunderbelly Blueberry Bonanza...” 


“No thank you.” 

“Very Vunderful Vanilla Vampire?” 

“No thanks.” 

“Napoleon’s Neopolitan Nepotism?” 

“’m good.” 

“Uncomfortably Tasty Orange ‘Splosion?” 
“| already ate.” 

“Mega Meat Mystery?” 

“No.” 


“Suit yourself.” Isabel put her feet up on her desk and continued to 
eat. 


Emma cleared her throat again. 


“If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, are you planning on working 
any time soon?” 


“Maybe, when I’m done with all of this.” 

“There’s quite a lot of it here already.” 

“Yeah, and? ‘S not that much.” 

“l’ll take your word for it.” Emma’s expression remained unflappably 
neutral. “But | still think it best that you leave the ice cream for 


another time and focus on your work.” 


“Maybe | am focusing on my work? A couple hundred buckets of ice 
cream to drown my sorrows should be more than enough brain 
food.” She grimaced. “Jabberwocky sneezy knee socks. There. 
Ideas.” 

“Not a very marketable one.” 

“Way to ruin the mood, Negative Nancy.” 

“Emma.” 


“| can see why you'd be concerned, but jabberwocks need knee 
socks sometimes, especially in the winter when they get the snifflies 
and the sneezes.” 


“Ma’am, if | may make a suggestion: perhaps a more marketable toy 
would be appropriate.” 


“Not you too. The Board is bad enough with that. That’s Factory talk, 
and they’re driving us out of business with their Battleduties and 
their Birdvilles.” 

“There might be something that can be done about that.” 

The spoon paused. 


“Explain.” 


“The Factory is, effectively, an unthinking force. Something like an 


animal, right?” 
“Right.” 


“A person can’t talk with a bee, but a bee can talk with a bee, so to 
speak.” 


“So...we shoot bees at the Factory.” 
“No. The Factory is bees, here.” 
“Okay, Factory is bees. Butt-bees.” 


“We, the people, want to talk with the Factory, the bee, but can't, 
because we’re people and it’s a bee.” 


“So in order to deal with the Factory...” 
“You just have to speak their language.” 
Speak their language... 


“Wait...that’s it...that’s it! How did | not see it sooner that’s it!” Isabel 
leapt off the table, tossing the bucket of ice cream across the floor, 
and grabbed Emma by the shoulders. A manic smile lit up her face. 
“That’s it! We take the Factory’s game and use it against it! It’s the 
last thing they'll expect from goofy old Wondertainment! Aislethorp 
you're a genius!” Isabel planted an overwrought and slightly off- 
center kiss on her assistant’s face before leaping away, pirouetting, 
and moving into a little victory dance. Emma wiped her face on her 
sleeve. 


“Corporate sabotage!” Isabel continued dancing. “That’s what we'll 
do! We sneak into the Factory itself, mess everything up, and run 
away laughing, and then we hit them with the biggest and best toy 
line in Wondertainment history! It'll be a coop-dee-grass!” She 
clapped her hands together, stopping the dance. Oh this was good. 
The game was back on. She’d show the Board, she’d show the 
Factory, she’d put Wondertainment back on the map. The Doctor 
was no pushover, she’d prove that. 


“Steel yourself, Ms. Aiselthorp.” Isabel grinned. It was a wild, 


childish, grin, the kind of grin that came with schoolyard scheming 
and various puerile pratfalls. “We’re about to embark on 
ADVENTURES IN CAPITALISM!” She struck a dramatic pose to 
emphasize the point, one arm pointing skyward, the other one 
pinning Emma in a headlock. 


Emma did not look particularly plussed by any of this. 
“l'll start packing the Wondermobile.” 


“Excellent!” Isabel made a triumphant fist. “Jeremy! TO THE 
LABORATORY?!” 


The corgis froze, and in unison dropped their ice cream. More of 
them poured into the room, swarming about in a vast furry carpet. 
Isabel spread her arms wide and fell gracefully onto their backs, 
laughing maniacally as they ferried her away out of the office. 


Emma waited patiently for the last dog to depart before leaving, and 
took a quart of Papal Papaya™ on the way out. 


« | Hub | Part 2: The Super-Cool Road Trip Adventure » 


Footnotes 

1. MD, DD, OD, PsyD, and EngD too. 

2. For a given value of father. Wondertainment family genetics are 
notoriously convoluted. 

3. Wondertainment family members had tried using Dr. 
Wondertainment Personable Portraits™ in the past, but the ensuing 
argument over the best design for the Dr. Wondertainment Super 
Stick-And-Hoop™ proved to be too much for Dr. Roxanne Lauren 
Joan Dora Peidmont von Wondertainment, PhD, who fed each and 
every one of them to the Dr. Wondertainment Crazy Confetti 
Machine™. 

4. Granted, from Dr. Isabel Wondertainment's viewpoint everyone 
was shortish and plumpish in comparison. 

5. Pronounced la-bor-a-tory. A lab-ro-tory is a dog that spins around. 


The Super-Cool Road Trip Adventure 


Shortly after the Boss Lady got an assistant... 


The Executive Board of Dr. Wondertainment, Incorporated, sat 
around a circular table, in a square room on the top floor of a boxy 
grey building far removed from the toy factory and the Workshops of 
Wonder. The building contained a great many square rooms, which 
were divided into further square spaces, and each of these square 
spaces held an Accountant, or a Manager, or an Assistant to a 
Manager, or a Regional Representative, or a Department Head, or a 
Department Bottom, or a Supervisor, or a Supervisor to the 
Supervisor, or a Team Diversity Manager, or a Diversity Enforcer, or 
a Human Resources Manager, or an Executive Manager, or an 
Executionitive Manager, or one of many other fun-filled positions. 


All of these many and varied individuals stood in their squares and 
stamped pieces of paper. The pieces of paper had words on them, 
but the people in the squares did not read the words. Their job was 
to stamp paper and move it to another square, not read them. 


Above all, the fluorescent lights hummed. 


The Executive Board had brought the stampers with them when they 
arrived: it was not proper for an Executive Board to be without their 
court. It was also not proper for the Executive Board to interact with 
their court in any way, so they stayed in their board room and never 
left. 


As was appropriate for an Executive Board, the members had no 
eyes, so that they could not be misled by irrelevant information. 
They had no tongues, so as not to speak irrelevant words: instead, 
ticker-tape rolls of fluctuating stock prices and focus group data 
spilled out from their thin lips into the shredders that sat between 
their withered knees. 


The Doctor has taken initiative... the voice was little more than a 


whisper, a hiss of air escaping the mouth. /t has removed its sphere 
of influence from the Structure... 


Will the assistant be of use... 
It will do whatever is instructed of it... 
With the Doctor away, it falls to us to maintain order... 


Correct... 


The bright purple convertible Wondermobile, all spoilers and 
chrome, raced down the ancient raised road. Basalt paving tiles 
stretched out to an indistinct horizon that never seemed to come 
closer, a sharp line of black against the harsh red of the dry, flat land 
that baked under three suns. Lining the road were crumbling chunks 
of ancient masonry, and tangled rows of twisted old trees, their 
branches heavy with browning fruit. 


Dr. Isabel Wondertainment sat with one hand casually on the wheel, 
the other flipping through radio stations, and a massive pair of 
rhinestone-encrusted pink plastic sunglasses taking up the majority 
of her face. The radio flicked through station after station, jumping 
from random clicks and number strings to K-pop jellybean ballads, to 
solar flare rap battles in booming Russian, to the “Tom Kenny (All 
Praise Unto the Immortal Dog-Emperor of Nine Realms) Musical 
Extravaganza”. Isabel eventually settled on the Galactic Plumbers’ 
Union Orchestra. 


Emma sat in the passenger seat, reading a fluttering map. Jeremy 
sat between them, looking very happy with the trip. The back seat 
was filled with all manner of whimsical-looking plastic items: the 
Wondertainment Bubble Fun Gun Playset™, the Wondertainment 
Grabby-Claw-Thing™, the Wondertainment Big Foam Noodle™, a 
jug of Happy Hiker Grrrranola Trail Mix™ ice cream, the 
Wondertainment Super Secret Surprise Box™, and a great deal of 
other goodies: They had cleaned out the laboratory of anything that 
seemed to be of use. 


“You know, you are the best assistant I’ve ever had, Emma,” Isabel 
said. 


“I’ve only been working with you for a few hours, ma’am.” Emma 
kept her eyes on the map. 


“Really? It feels like a lot longer than that.” 


“Correct me if I’m wrong, but | believe | am the only assistant you’ve 
ever had, ma’am.” 


“Right. | mean right as in you’re right, not right as in | understand 
that | should correct you if you aren’t right, which | don’t have to do 
because you're right...though, | did have Mr. Butler when | was 
really little, but he was really just my dad’s assistant. He was a friend 
of one of my dad’s friends from way back, and dad took him in when 
he lost his old job.” 


“Where is he now?” 
Isabel shrugged. 
“l...don’t actually know. He just sorta stopped showing up.” 


There was another one of the long pauses that characterized their 
conversations, though it had in the space of a few hours become far 
less uncomfortable. The relationship had naturalized quickly, like the 
introduction of chocolate to marshmallow’: as soon as the 
connection had been made, it became impossible to think of one 
without the other, and unbelievable that a time of separation had 
ever existed. 


“So, uh, how goes the mapping?” 

“It goes well.” 

“Anything | should be worried about up ahead?” 
“Nope. It should be a straight shot for a while longer.” 


Isabel glanced over at the white sheet of paper. Its surface was a 
shifting spaghetti mass of tesseractic lines in red, black, and blue, 


knowledge of puppeteering techniques; however, instances with a 
background in marionette use will be more able to utilize SCP-570. 


After bringing multiple subjects under their control, the SCP-570-1 
instances and subjects will begin to seek out any gathering of pre- 
pubescent subjects, and use the persons they have attached 
themselves in order to put on puppet shows. SCP-570-1 and its 
affected subjects will recreate any stories they know which are 
easily understood by children, and usable with the number of 
persons they have under their control. These puppet shows may last 
from anywhere between one hour and several days, depending on 
the length of the story and the number of subjects involved. 
Following the completion of the show, all subjects will be released 
from SCP-570-1. 


Subjects who were under SCP-570’s control will suffer no immediate 
side effects after being released, with the exception of a strong 
sense of longing. Because of this, many subjects will eventually try 
to take possession of SCP-570, and attempt to create shows of their 
own. Subjects will claim that they experienced extreme feelings of 
joy and belonging when performing, and wish to give these feelings 
to others. This effect is not universal, and will only manifest in 
subjects who previously displayed symptoms of depression and 
anxiety. 


SCP-570 was recovered from "Uncle Pappy's Magic Emporium," 
which was a magic trick/puppeteering business. The proprietor of 
the store had become an SCP-570-1 instance, and used SCP-570 
on the parents of children who came into his store. Following reports 
from local law enforcement officers after witnessing SCP-570, 
Foundation personnel were deployed and containment was enacted. 
As of 09/18/1976, SCP-570 has been classified as Safe. 


Addendum: Testing Log 570 
Test A - 6/09/19 


Subject: SCP-570-1, 6 D-Class subjects. 
Procedure: SCP-570-1 was instructed to perform 
"Cinderella" using D-Class personnel. 

Results: Show was performed without incident, with 


twisting and curling and consuming each other, driving barbs to the 
brain through the eyes.2 


She very quickly looked back at the perfectly straight road. 
“I'll take your word for it.” 


“The Factory won't give us any trouble while we're in transit. It won't 
know we're coming until we’ve passed the corporation limit,” Emma 
said. 


“That’s when the fun begins.” 

“| trust you're going to play it by ear.” 

“| move where inspiration takes me.” 

“I'll start on the backup plan, then.” 

“| thought you already had a backup plan.” 
“| did, but | don’t think it will be enough.” 
Isabel grinned. 

“We make the best team ever.” 


A roar echoed from up the road, off to the right, loud enough that it 
could be heard over the radio and wind. Isabel turned the dial down, 
straining her ears to see if she could hear it again. 


“Did you hear that?” 
“Il believe | did, ma’am.” 
“It didn’t sound good.” 


The roar did not repeat itself for some time, and had been written off 
as a circumstance of no portent when several things happened in 
short succession. 


A massive grey bulk launched itself up onto the road, tearing up 
trees and rubble. Isabel screamed and slammed her foot down on 


brake. The Wondermobile spun around, tires screeching, rubber 
burning. The creature slammed down onto the road, debris 
showering down around it. The Wondermobile ground to a stop, 
rocking back and forth on ruined suspension. The creature didn’t 
move. Neither did the Wondermobile and its occupants.