| nodded, said goodbye rather awkwardly, and ducked into the 
plane. | suppose it was narcissistic to assume | would be the only 
volunteer from my site; two others were already aboard the plane. 
One, a very thin black woman in her thirties, was sitting at a window 
seat, staring silently out. Beside her, talking at her (rather than with 
her), was a short, twitchy, rather monkey-like man of indeterminable 
age- he could have been twenty, and he could just as easily have 
been forty. He had dark hair and glimmering brown eyes, and a face 
that was a febrile mass of laugh lines, crooked teeth in a crooked 
smile, and heavy, expressively cocked eyebrows. A high, constant 
stream of words, strained through a Brooklyn accent, flowed from 
him. 


| sat nearby, listening. He seemed about halfway through a colorful 
story about three venomously jealous women he had been juggling 
back home. 


Takeoff was uneventful. About an hour in, | interrupted my fellow 
passenger's unending diatribe (which, by now, had become a very 
entertaining tale of a containment breach that could only be stopped 
with the power of funky dance), to ask, "Hey- what did you two do 
before this?" 


The fellow's story ground to a blinking, grinning halt, and | was afraid 
| was about to hear the grim story of a pair of unstable death row 
inmates, or Foundation demotees, when he piped up, "Retrieval 
specialist!" 


"Retrieval?" | asked. 


"Fuckin' A, brother! Foundation's own gawddamn bloodhounds! 
Retrieval Team Four-Oh-Nine! Best o' the best!" His smile was 
bright enough to put burning white phosphorus to shame. 


"...Alright. How about you, miss?" 


SCP-774: Whistlebones 


Item #: SCP-774 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: All supplies of SCP-774 are to 
be kept in sealed metal barrels designed for hazardous chemical 
waste. Subjects are to be maintained on hospital beds, kept alive via 
Procedure 17-A. 


Description: SCP-774 is a by-product of the halogen azide 
[REDACTED] when [PROCESS REDACTED]. When in contact with 
the skin, it permeates the body's tissues and selectively attacks 
bone, dissolving the bone mineral and leaving only the soft collagen. 
This can occur in minutes or over the course of days, depending on 
the degree of exposure. 


The only bone that is not affected by the initial reaction is the skull. 
However, shortly after the other bones begin dissolving, the 
anomalous properties of SCP-774 manifest. Calcium leached from 
the rest of the body is deposited on the skull, creating grooves and 
ridges that grow from the interior and exterior surfaces of the skull, 
forming symmetrical patterns of increasing complexity that intrude 
into neighboring tissue, eventually erupting from the skin or growing 
to meet other bone tissue. These eventually fuse the bones of the 
skull, rendering the mandible immobile. The largest pattern 
observed so far is two meters across, induced by procedure 17-A.1 


Intrusions in the sinus cavities create whistling sounds in the 
subject's breathing which rapidly change pitch and tone, though 
each skull has a different set of tones. The effect is similar to 
birdsong. While subjects affected by SCP-774 are unable or 
unwilling to communicate, their heartrate and breathing becomes 
more regular when able to hear other late-stage subjects (See 
Addendum 774-2). 


The thin woman turned to me, and gave me a long, cool, measured 
look. | hadn't seen her so much as glance at me previously (I would 
have remembered); she had a stare that could shut a man down 
from a hundred yard, get his complete measure, and inform him with 
contemptuous clarity that she was not impressed. 


".,. Theoretical Physics Division, Level Two." 


Well, that explained why I'd never seen either of them. Retrieval 
teams spent all their time either on assignment or in their own 
dorms, and the Theoretical Physics Division were the Site-207 
phantoms; memos and research drifted from their carefully secured 
wing, occasionally, but they didn't mingle with us soft-science 
plebians. 


"I'm Level One, Memetics," | said. "My name's John." 


"Pleased ta meetcha, brother! I'm Nicky, that's Nicholas Scotti on 
paper," burbled the monkey-faced man irrepressibly. 


"Annette," murmured the woman, her attention drifting back out the 
window. "Annette Milgram. Pleased to meet you." 


"So you're both volunteers?" | asked. 


"Yep," said Nicky. "Second tour, I'm told. Nonconsecutive, of course. 
Shooting people up with amnestics on a regular basis can mess you 
up pretty bad, apparently." 


"Yeah," | said. I'm Memetics: | know all about amnestics. "There's a 
lot of cognitive and physiological side-effects to long-term amnestics 
use. Seizures, brain damage, loss of long-term memories, 
anterograde amnesias, aphasia..." 


"Yeesh. Sounds like fun." Nicky mugged a cartoonishly overdone 
grimace, and chuckled. "So, how about you? First time?" 


"Yes," | said. "I've never been a D-Class, before. | didn't know 
volunteering was an option until ten days ago. | wasn't even aware 
you could do it more than once." 


"Oh, sure. Lots of people do it more than once; that myth that D- 


Class get executed every month started because our shifts are thirty 
days, and wound up falling apart 'cause some of us volunteer more 
than once. Now they say us poor doomed souls get amnesticized 
and shuffled around...which, | guess is kinda true. So....how'dja get 
into it, anyway? Try to expose 'em, or something?" 


"Wrote an essay, actually. Posted it on the Foundation intranet. | 
said that anyone with authority that supported the D-Class program 
was guilty of war crimes." | paused, as Nicky laughed at that. "...I'm 
still not sure that I'm not being punished." 


"You aren't," chipped in Annette quietly. "This is the fourth time I've 
volunteered over the last eleven years. When | first volunteered, | 
was Level One. | made Level Two in half the time most would have, 
and I've been fast-tracked for Deputy Director of the Theoretical 
Physics Division." She paused. "I was going to expose them. | was 
going to reveal the existence of the Foundation and the D-Class 
program to a journalist. They caught me. | thought they were going 
to execute me, or at least amnesticize me. Instead..." 


"| wonder why they do that?" said Nicky ruminatively. "Recruit 
people who, uh, you know, buck against the D-Class program? 
Grant us amnesty, too. | mean, conspiring to reveal the Foundation- 
that's a straight-up capital crime." 


"Conscience," said Annette. "Who else would volunteer to do this 
once, let alone many times? You have to feel a moral responsibility. 
After all, causes are made up of individuals. Most can just look 
away- the bystander effect. ‘Someone else will take care of it,’ is the 
attitude. They target the people who can't look away." 


We digested that in silence, and she went back to staring out the 
window. 


A few hours later, we landed. The differences between Site-207 and 
Site-301 were immediately apparent. 207 is a relatively small facility, 
all out in the open: it looked like a factory of moderate size 
supporting a small nearby town. 


301 is in the middle of nowhere, in patchy scrublands, and 
distributed. Infrastructure, be it buildings, satellite dishes, or heavy 


pipes, were everywhere; but it was obviously supporting an 
underground structure which formed the larger part of the facility. 
The landing strip was outside the gates of the barbed-wire perimeter 
fence; we were met when we disembarked by a scholarly-looking 
gentleman with a cue-ball-bald pate, milky blue eyes peering 
myopically from behind spectacles, a sharply-trimmed white van- 
dyke, and a rather archaic three-piece suit. 


"Hello, hello," he said to us. "My name is Myron Frazier, Ethics 
Committee Liaison to Site-301. Greetings! | understand you must all 
be quite tired, and likely a little frazzled. | understand one of you is 
new to the program, a Mr..." Frazier squinted at a clipboard in his 
hand, clearing his throat. "...Ah, a Mr. Leary? John Leary?" 


"That's me," | said. 


"Yes, indeed, pleased to meet you. | understand that you must have 
some misgivings, and a lot of questions; but I'm afraid intake day is 
always a bit busy for me. I'll show you all to the D-Class dorm, and 
you can change into your uniforms and have your dinner. | have a 
few more volunteers to meet, and then I'll be about to give you your 
orientation. If you would kindly follow me? Thank you." He gave an 
‘after you' gesture, and began walking quickly toward the gates. 


We were led through a heavy steel hatch and down a long flight of 
stairs, to an elevator that took us God only knows how much farther 
down. It opened directly into the dormitory; rather than a bunch of 
cramped bunks, as | had been imagining, it was a hall with a series 
of spartan, but not uncomfortable-looking rooms (though each with a 
bunk bed; it looked as though we'd be doubling up). I'd slept in worst 
places, in my college years. 


Most of the rooms were already taken; there were fifteen, and only 
two left vacant, and one that already had one resident: a rather 
pudgy, serious-faced young woman with spectacles. It was decided 
that Annette would bunk with her; Nicky and | picked another. Our 
orange jumpsuits were on our bunks, in little folded bundles. 


| picked mine up. "Why do we have to wear these?" | asked Nicky. 


"Lotsa reasons. Most of em pretty unlikely individually- civvie clothes 


could be used by a skip to track you, might get some permanent 
stain or something on ‘em that could cause a security breach, you 
get it. Just a bad idea. These are easy to clean, very visible in 
emergency situations, completely disposable, and-" he pointed to 
his bundle, which bore the number D-3961, "-They got your number 
on 'em." He grabbed his bundle and trundled off to the adjoined 
bathroom to change. Once he was done, | did the same. 


They might have been ugly, but they were actually pretty 
comfortable. The things could breathe. We went out, met a few of 
our fellow D-Class, chatted a bit, and after a few minutes, we were 
all called to the little cafeteria adjoined to the dormitory for dinner. 


We sat on plastic chairs at long tables, and ate our food. It wasn't 
bad; not great, but solid, nutritious fare. Salad, chicken, potatoes, 
bread. 


A few more new D-Class came in and filled their plates during the 
meal; soon we had a full house, fully thirty jumpsuited men and 
women. As we Sat around, talking after the meal, Myron Frazier 
strode into the room. Standing by the doorway, he cleared his throat. 


"Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen? If | could have your attention, 
please. Thank you. | believe we have all already been introduced, 
yes? Well, in case anyone failed to catch it the first time around, my 
name is Myron Frazier, and | am the Ethics Committee Liaison, here 
at Site-301, and | am in charge of the D-Class program here. Now, 
while some of you may be old hands at this- | see from your files 
that sixty percent of you have volunteered before- none of you have 
any memory of it, and further, there are some new faces. So, we'll 
dive right into the orientation, shall we?" 


"The Foundation, as I'm sure you are all aware, was founded in the 
mid-Nineteenth Century to contain and research phenomena 
beyond the pale of ordinary science. It became quickly obvious that 
many such phenomena were quite dangerous; I'm sure you have all 
dealt with objects with transmissible effects, or particular lethality, or 
similar unpleasantness. 


"lam very sorry to say that the Foundation's initial response to this 
problem was to utilize slaves of African descent. It was a dark time 


for our organization. We did terrible things. 


"Following the abolition of slavery in America in 1865 (the 
Foundation was, at that time, primarily an American organization), 
there was something of an ethical renaissance in our organization. It 
was decided that no separate group, especially no coerced group, 
was needed for this task. Instead, brave men and women of the 
Foundation would be asked to volunteer to interact with the 
anomalous, when needed. 


"These days, virtually all interaction with anomalous phenomena is 
performed by machines: remote-control drones, and the like. 
Between this fact and the safety measures that have been evolving 
for well over a century, we have managed to reduce D-Class 
casualties significantly: only two percent of all D-Class are severely 
injured or killed on duty. That's still much, much higher than we 
would like, but it's much better than the old days." 


Nicky, who had been sitting next to me, elbowed me in the ribs. 
"Hear that?" he muttered out of the side of his mouth. "Only sixty 
percent of one of us is gonna get got. Someone's gonna get 
everything below the tits amputated!" 


| made an impatient little ‘shut the hell up' gesture and turned my 
attention back to Frazier. He was still talking: "I'd like to, for the sake 
of those new to the program, address a few of the rumors that 
surround the D-Class, if | may. 


"Of course, you are all well-aware we don't press-gang convicts and 
refugees into the program, and it is never used as a punishment. Of 
course not: you will be dealing with anomalies! Leaving aside the 
ethical lunacy of that proposition, we would never let untrained, 
unstable, and grudge-bearing individuals handle what we are 
entrusting to you. Further, the logistics of obtaining such individuals, 
and subsequently executing or amnesticizing them is quite 
staggering. It would likely constitute an ongoing information breach 
in and of itself. How in God's name would we hide a gas chamber in 
a facility? Do you know what amnestics do to the human body over 
prolonged consecutive uses? Madness." 


| raised my hand. Frazier blinked owlishly at me. "Yes? We have a 


question? Mr. Leary?" 


"Yes," | said. "Uh...l was just wondering...| mean, you know how 
those rumors get started, don't you? D-Class aren't allowed to speak 
to researchers outside of testing, and vice-versa, and even then, 
only regarding the testing, and are only referred to by number...if 
you don't mind me asking, why is that necessary?" 


"Good question, Mr. Leary, thank you," responded Frazier with a 
punctilious nod. "You are a memetics researcher, are you not?" | 
nodded. "Well, then, the answer should be fairly obvious to you: 
certain anomalies have transmissible effects, or else can use a 
person's name to affect them. Sympathy and contagion. The policies 
you have mentioned are in place for the safety of both the 
researchers and the D-Class." 


Ah. Well, that made sense. | nodded an abashed acknowledgement, 
and Frazier smiled thinly. "Also, of course, we don't deploy D-Class 
volunteers at the Sites they usually work at, for obvious reasons- it 
would be a terrible conflict of interest for their coworkers, wouldn't it- 
and we amnesticize you afterward, both for informational security- 
outside of D-Class exemptions, you don't have the clearance to 
know about the objects you will be working with- and in order to 
purge you of any lingering memetic infections our end-of-the-month 
inspections may have missed. No stories from survivors, no D-Class 
recognizable as comrade personnel... it is quite understandable that 
rumors start, as well as inevitable." 


"Anyway, my last speaking point: most interaction with anomalies, 
as I've already mentioned, is handled by remote controlled 
machines..." 


"Gawdamn robots are takin’ our jobs," chuckled Nicky.