He sighed. Had there really been so many degenerate artists in the 
Reich? There must have been a thousand people here. The 
sergeant thought of his own sister, and her paintings and poems. He 
couldn't imagine her or her friends hurting anyone, much less 
presenting a threat that had to be solved like this. His hand again 
crept to his brace-supported right leg. He was not a fighting man, 
and it didn't take long before he was rendered unfit for combat by a 
Russian grenade. But as awful as that was, it was preferable to this. 
He waved the next person in line through to his station, employing 
the etiquette that he thought was the least he owed these people. 
His finger went back to the manifest. 


"Erm, uh...Allendorf, | beg your pardon Herr Allendorf...oh, I've lost 
my place again." 


A tall red-haired young man made his way through the assembled 
inmates in the central yard, already bedraggled and rumpled looking 
in his recently-issued bright red uniform. He picked his way through 
the milling crowd, spotting a long, lean young woman in the midst of 
a small knot of people, dressed in a blue uniform, her wavy blond 
hair in its trademark pile pulled to the left side of her head. 


Incident Report Log 567-4012 


Date: May , 19 
Subject: SCP-567-9-1 


Description: Though there were two reported incidences of 
SCP-567-9 before the Foundation arrived, SCP-567-9-1 was the first 
incidence observed by the Foundation. It was discovered by Agent 

, and was approximately 2 m in length. Though it walked on four 
limbs, its front limbs had human-like hands capable of operating 
complex devices. SCP-567-9-1 was quite intelligent, and was able to 
deduce the operation of a [DATA EXPUNGED]. There were a total 
of 14 casualties prior to its containment. 


Date: June ,19 
Subject: SCP-567-9-2 


Description: SCP-567-9-2 appeared shortly after Site 41 was fully 
established and quarantined, and took the form of [DATA 
EXPUNGED]. Foundation personnel suffered 9 casualties before it 
was destroyed with remote explosives. Agent , who participated 
in the containment of SCP-567-9-2, is currently undergoing 
psychological counseling for his experience. 


Date: July , 19 
Subject: D-834200 


Description: D-834200 was used as part of testing to determine the 
trigger conditions for each cell. When placed in front of the cells, 
SCP-567-6 and SCP-567-7 both activated simultaneously and 
attempted to draw D-834200 in. After a brief struggle, D-834200 was 
[REDACTED]. The individual body parts vanished as per the usual, 
once drawn completely into the cell. 


"Hey, Zuzu! Hey! Over here!" 


Aldon looked up. A smile broke out over her face. "Werner! You're 
alive!" She rushed over to the young man and embraced him tightly, 
the two artists clutching each other tightly to reassure themselves 
that both were still there. "We thought they had killed you! Zanzibar 
heard that they were carrying your body out of the lobby when they 
marched us off!" 


Werner smiled. "A little sleight of hand. They caught me two days 
later, though. Turns out Ratzinger's basement wasn't a Way after all. 
Rotten little phoney." 


Aldon dismissively waved her hand. "You were the one who bought 
the instructions for the ritual from him!" Her smile evaporated. "And 
how about that, hmm? We were supposed to be able to get away 
from those Gestapo jerks when you chanted the words!" 


"| figured that one out, actually." Werner assumed his crouched-over 
old man pose that he did whenever he used his Aleister Crowley 
impression. "Be it sealed in truth, by a man of foreign land, who 
speaketh the words of power, bearing the marks of his opponents." 


The rest of the group had gathered back around the two errant 
members of the Young Collective of Weimar Artisans, now 
accounted for in its entirety. Aldon waited expectantly. 


"Aaaand?" 


Werner straightened his posture again. "Well, | had the words of 
power from the other sheet, and | had the Hitler Youth costume." 


"Yes, what could possibly go right?" interjected Aldon. 


Undaunted, Werner continued. "I just wasn't a man of foreign land, 
that's all! Germany isn't foreign enough to Poland, you see." 


"You mean that was what put this all screwy? | could have told you 
that, you lummox!" She tossed a ration of bread at Werner's chest. It 
immediately dissolved into an unsatisfying mist of dry crumbs and 
sawdust. "And now look! Another fine mess you've gotten us into." 


Zanzibar O'Reilly slowly shook her head. "Yep, just like home 
again." 


"It's simple. All we need to do is find someone else who can 
complete the ritual, and we'll all be out of here in a snap." Werner 
casually brushed the crumbs from his shirt. 


Aldon shook her head. "How are we going to do that? These goose- 
stepping knuckleheads run all of Europe now, it's all Germany as far 
as this two-bit ritual is concerned." 


"Surely there's-" 


Werner was interrupted by the speakers wired over the yard, as a 
disembodied voice addressed the inmates of the camp through 
squeaks and crackles. 


"All inmates report to the central staging area." Repeated over and 
over, droning ceaselessly until all assembled were pestered into 
compliance. The guards were curiously absent. 


As they made their way to the staging area, the assembled 
degenerate artists and moral deviants of the Reich found a stage, 
hastily constructed from exposed beams of freshly cut planks of 
white pine. To Aldon, it looked like someone had smashed together 
about eight sets of gallows. Most of the guards were assembled 
shoulder-to-shoulder in the front of the stage, uniform in stance 
down to the manner in which their rifles were slung over their 
shoulders. Others were busy separating the inmates into color- 
coded groups; green for the writers, red for the painters, white for 
musicians, blue for sculptors, and so on. The throngs of prisoners 
were a riot of color, surrounded by drab gray structures and 
hemmed in by a line of black SS men. 


"That's the ugliest chorus line I've ever seen! | want my two 
reichsmarks back!" 


The mysterious voice was back, calling somewhere from the crowd. 
The accent was strange, though familiar to Aldon. Where had she 
had heard that voice before? The guards separating the prisoners 


scowled, surveying the crowd in vain for the heckler. After several 
moments of searching, they went back to their tasks. 


Aldon stood in a crowd of other blue-clad sculptors. This is a 
travesty, she thought, I'm a multi-media artist. Lumping me in with 
just sculptors. 


She looked back over the crowd. That voice. She was still missing 
something about it, but she knew enough to recognize it as 
belonging to a New Yorker. She thought back to Werner's two-bit 
ritual. She kept searching the crowd. A loudspeaker from the stage 
called everyone's attention forward. 


"Willkommen, my friends!" called a high, insistent voice. A small 
man with a pencil-thin mustache and slick, pomaded hair took the 
stage, carrying a large microphone. The freshly pressed tuxedo 
sporting a blood-red party armband may have seemed out of place, 
but what stood out to Aldon was the pancake makeup and rouge 
outlining the man's facial features. 


"Oh, how delightful! Look at you all, assembled and sorted! It's like 
being back on the set!" The man punctuated his remarks with a bout 
of extended giggling at some internal joke. 


Aldon squinted. She recognized Max von Gruben, the German silent 
film star of the early 20s. He was still wearing the same makeup 
from Der Schdler. God that movie was terrible. His career vanished 
with the introduction of sound, and she now understood why. His 
high-pitched, nasal voice set her teeth on edge. From the looks of 
things, though, that may not have been the only impediment to Herr 
Gruben's continued work. 


"Now, | know what you are all thinking. 'Why must | be persecuted 
for my art,’ blah blah blah, ja ja ja. But we are here, not to imprison 
you, but to educate you on what art truly is!" Gruben giggled to 
himself once more. He strutted across the stage, behind the row of 
SS guards, walking the ramparts of an absurd human castle. 


"| shall tell you what art is not. It is not the subversive doggerel." 


The white-clad prisoners mumbled grumpily, though not too loudly. 


"It is not ghastly paintings of twisted-up people, who don't even look 
like people." 


Gruben kept strutting, stopping in front of Aldon's knot of blue 
sculptors. He seemed to fix his painted, purple-shaded gaze directly 
on her. He jabbed at the air, slowly, for emphasis. 


"And, it is most definitely. Not. An ambulatory phallus. That 
ejaculates spoiled milk in the presence of party officials." 


The guards, seemingly anticipating this remark, tightened their grips 
on their truncheons and rifles. Aldon bit her cheek in attempt to not 
burst out laughing. Others were apparently having the same 
problem. Her greatest work, recognized. She was equal portions 
pride and restrained hilarity. 


"We have brought you all here for a single purpose. Would anyone 
here care to guess what it is?" 


A silence fell on the gathering of artists, momentary mirth quickly 
forgotten. Every one of them had had time to speculate on what fate 
awaited them. Every one of them had come to the same answer. 


"To witness the holy matrimony between Hitler and his mother?" 


Gruben scowled at the heckler's interruption, seeming to come from 
a different part of the crowd than before. Silently, he dispatched two 
guards into the crowd with a flick of his wrist. He put the ersatz smile 
back on, and resumed. 


"You, the corrupted potential of the Reich, are to be rehabilitated! 
You shall put on a grand production, the likes of which never 
attempted before, to show the world the power and strength of our 
Fuhrer's vision! A tremendous spectacle we shall make, a worthy 
use for your misguided talents!" 


The silence seemed to only grow more ominous. They were going to 
make them put on a Nazi propaganda play? Horror gripped Aldon, 
the only thing worse than death now confronting her; enforced 
tackiness. 


"What, did you think we were going to kill you? How dreadfully 


boring! No, we have much better, more efficient uses for all of you! 
This camp shall be a marvel, a testament to the triumph of our 
Fuhrer's values!" 


A slight, spindly man stepped out in front of the white-uniformed 
writer's contingent. He raised his expressionless face to Gruben. It 
was Bartleby, the quiet, unassuming poet of Aldon's group. 
Bartleby's voice was surprisingly loud and resonant for such a small 
man, audible to everyone in the courtyard. 


"| would prefer not to." 


Gruben scowled once more. "You would...prefer not to?" His voice 
trailed off into disbelief. 


Bartleby remained where he stood. "I would prefer not to.” 


"| see. | am afraid we will have to make things quite dreadfully 
boring for you if you do not wish to join this effort." 


Still expressionless, still resolute, Bartleby replied once more. "| 
would prefer not to." 


The two guards, previously dispatched to find the phantom heckler, 
now descended upon Bartleby, grabbing him roughly by the 
shoulders and leading him off out of view and to a different part of 
the camp. Aldon immediately started to follow after her friend, silent 
while a number of high-impact curses and expletives churned in her 
mind and competed to see which would be the first to fly forth, 
before she felt a hand catch her arm and pull her back. She rounded 
quickly on a dark-haired man, eyes heavy-lidded behind a set of 
round glasses, his finger to his pursed lips. 


"Shhhhh. You'll interrupt the show for these nice folks." 


Through the confusion, surprise and anger, Aldon recognized the 
voice. It was the heckler! How had he managed to make his way 
over here without being noticed? 


Aldon lowered her voice to a whisper. "But they're going to kill him!" 


"Not yet they won't. They like to do things real by-the-book, these 


guys. Whatever ones they haven't burned yet, anyway. Your friend 
is real brave, he should be fine till we can spring him." 


Aldon kept studying the heckler's face. There was something 
familiar about him. "Brave? But he always says that! Do you know 
what his latest collection of poems is called? "| Would Prefer Not 
To"! He's going to get himself killed before- wait, what do you mean 
when we spring him?" 


"You're the lady that makes the moving putz statues, right?" 
"Um, I, uh, yeah. Why?" 


A wry twinkle crept into the heckler's deadpan face as he gave 
Aldon a quick once-over. "You know, speaking of moving-" 


"Ugh, stop, just stop." Gruben had started yammering again in the 
background. Aldon checked around to see if anyone was noticing 
this conversation. So far, no one had. "Tell me. What the hell is 
going on here?" 


"You do some unusual stuff, lady. So unusual that certain bigwigs 
have noticed and decided to pull your little menagerie out of the 
cage here." 


"Why'd they send you? You don't look like a soldier." 


"Really? That's a relief, I'll tell that to the fella at the draft board when 
| get home. I'd hate to get sent over to a place like this." 


Aldon sighed. "Is there anyone else coming?" 


The heckler stroked his chin. "You got any friends that aren't 
jailbirds?" 


"Ugh. You really don't have any sort of plan, do you?" 


"Not at all, plans get you put into prison camps around this 
neighborhood." 


Aldon shook her head. "These bigwigs you were talking about 
earlier. Who are they?" 


"The kind that can get a guy out of a studio contract. So | dunno? 
God, maybe? | don't think he's got good enough lawyers, though." 


"| have no idea what you're talking about." 


"That makes two of us sweetheart. Now, if you'll excuse me a 
moment." The heckler waggled his eyebrows slightly, and cupped 
his hands to his mouth. "Get a load of this," he said to Aldon. 


A voice suddenly called out from somewhere among the assembled 
guards on the stage. "Whatever it is, I'm against it!" Gruben stopped 
dead in the middle of his harangue, the guards suddenly turning 
their glowers and gazes on one another. Confusion erupted as the 
heckler's voice somehow kept emanating from within the fray on the 
stage. "Your proposition may be good, but let's have one thing 
understood, whatever it is, I'm against it," he sang out to the 
increasing fury of the camp guards. The scene devolved into chaos, 
as the stage was now a roiling mass of black clad guards, barking 
accusations at one another and jostling Gruben repeatedly. All eyes 
were now on the stage, which had turned against all odds into the 
scene of something of genuine interest. 


"There, that ought to buy us a little more privacy for a few minutes." 


Aldon had heard that song before. She thought back to a movie 
house in Krakow...no. It couldn't possibly. 


"How...how did you do that?" 


"Old vaudeville trick, sweetheart." The heckler began removing his 
blue uniform, a red one now showing underneath. "Now, let's talk 
about getting your little group out of here." 


"Wait. This seems fishy. How do | know | can trust you? 


At this statement, the heckler produced from his back pocket a small 
tin of black greasepaint. He dabbed some on his finger, and with 
slow, precise movements, painted two thick black lines over his 
eyebrows. Then he applied another across his upper lip. 


Aldon gaped. Things clicked into place suddenly as she looked at 
the man's exaggerated new mustache and eyebrows, recognition 


striking her like a lightning bolt. 


He put his glasses back on. "Is this the face of someone looking to 
pull a scam?" 


The young artist stammered. "You're...you're..." She stopped. She 
narrowed her eyes. "American." 


"What gave it away sugar, the posh accent?"