A grinding noise came from the blast shield door as it slid aside, 
granting the two admittance. "They were a hive mind, remember?" 
replied the woman, walking towards the small steel door inside the 
small chamber. "How would you fare if someone was smashing up 
pieces of your brain?" 


His scoff turned into a shudder. "So the guard is our survivor?" 
"No. He wound up dead after an intense interrogation." 


"Goddammit!" shouted the doctor, stamping his foot. "| was willing to 
let the vague summons slide, but this is getting ridiculous. You 
brought me here without any in-depth knowledge of what | would be 
dealing with, and you expect me to help? Who or what is so 


important that you'd need to keep it a secret from me?" 


The woman opened the door, revealing a small room with a bed in 
the corner. On the bed was a short, round, balding man in a blue 
pinstripe suit. His face was paling, an expression of great pain 
covering it. His glasses lay askew, and his tie hung limply off the 
edge of the bed-frame. Clutched tightly in his hands was a white 
gold amulet, with a ruby surrounded by diamonds in the center. 


As the doctor recoiled at the recognition of the object, the woman 
said, "The fact that we've nearly lost this one. There'd be panic if the 
rest of the Foundation found out what transpired here, especially 
since we have no explanation how he formed the hive mind." The 
doctor moved forwards, and reached out to touch the amulet. The 
woman slapped his hand away. "You know better than to touch that. 
Just make sure he's alright." 


Taking a deep breath, the doctor examined the head of the old man, 
though he did not bring out any tools to cut him open with. He 
prodded and poked, checked his responsiveness and vital signs, 
took blood samples, all the while avoiding the amulet in the body's 
cold hands. 


At length, he heaved a heavy sigh and said, "There's nothing you 
can do." 


"You've barely even touched him," snapped the woman. 


"Look," said the doctor, leaning against the wall and wiping his brow. 
"pased on what little information you've given me, | was brought 
here because of my extensive experience with amnesic overdose. 
Now, there are certain little signs that you learn to pick up after a 
while of dealing with those cases, little things that are off with the 
patient. A specific temperature, or a certain toxin in the blood. While 
there are certainly differences between the overdoses and our case 
here, the end result is the exact same. 


"If the hive mind was destroyed so thoroughly that this one was the 
only survivor, than there's no hope for him. Normally, if there had 
been much less of the others, he would have stood a chance. But 
with less than one-seven hundredth of his mind still intact, it's a 


properties. 


Well, that was anticlimactic. -Dr. Manheim 


Name: Doctor Q. 
Date: 04/03/18 
Total Items: One camera, broadcasting to a monitor. 


Input: One (1) camera 

Setting: 1:1 

Output: 17 seconds after entering, video feed showed a 
series of gears before abruptly cutting off. Regained 
contact about 21 seconds before leaving the output door 
but from a different camera. 


Name: Doctor Q. 
Date: 04/03/18 
Total Items: One (1) mirror. 


Input: One (1) mirror 
Setting: 1:1 
Output: A similar mirror in a different shape. 


That was disappointing, I'll try it on Fine. -Dr. Q. 


Input: One (1) mirror 
Setting: Fine 
Output: One mirror reflecting 100% of light. 


Input: Previous mirror 

Setting: Very Fine 

Output: [DATA EXPUNGED] Doctor Q. went blind for 
about 5 minutes. Object destroyed. 


Input: One (1) blank sheet of paper. 
Setting: Very Fine 
Output: Top half of SCP-571. Incinerated. 


Notice: Continued in part 2 -> 


miracle he's still breathing." 


The doctor stood and started to walk out. "Now, if you'll excuse me, 
I'd like to get out of here as fast as | can. Whole place smells of..." 
he sniffed. "Old flesh and burning fur." 


The woman stood over the body of the senior staff member, 
reflecting. At length, she too sighed, and walked towards the exit. 
There was much to explain, and an awful lot of fallout to contain. 
Senior staff would want answers, and her team would no doubt be 
assigned to a round-the-clock investigation of the incident. Before 
she left, she turned back for one last look at the old man. 


The faintest whisper of a breath steamed out his nostrils. 


"Just like his brother," the woman said to herself. "Poor bastard." 


Population Control(led) 


It's hard to get the image of a sky that's 90 percent bugs out 
of your head, even if you've seen some pretty gruesome stuff 
in your line of work. Our hands were already tied since 
everything up and went crazy and people stopped dying. 
When entire ecosystems got thrown out of whack, we could 
barely do anything with what The Foundation gave to us on 
loan in Oregon. 


Marshes became bug paradises, although people who lived 
near them called them hell. Entire houses were swarmed by 
termites, devouring it in a matter of days. Cicadas were so 
loud and so plentiful that you couldn't go outside in the 
Summer without earplugs. And the mosquitos, god the 
mosquito swarms were as thick as mud, you had to practically 
wade through them in special suits if you wanted to go places 
without losing most if not all of your blood. When a swat 
doesn't kill them and they live more than a few weeks, bugs 
become less of an annoyance and more of a horror story. 
God knows what life is like in places like Louisiana and 
Florida right now; they had to be evacuated after the first six 
months. 


We did our best to make sure these animals didn't suffer, 
but... it's hard. It's hard to figure out what's actually suffering 
and what's just us not being able to hear them crying about 
the pain. We knew when we signed the Boring Agreement 
that we would have to agree to some less than savory stuff, 
but we never thought we had to deal with this, this... "torture 
apocalypse". 


A lot of the workload got to some of our people. Nandini 
couldn't take the stress of being head of the Veterinary 
Department, poor woman. She just up and left when she saw 


a mountain lion with her stomach burst open writhing with 
maggots, still mewling weakly in pain. She'd usually euthanize 
the poor girl in this case, but... obviously that wasn't an option 
right now. 


Hell, when The Foundation called us to visit them in order to 
do something to deal with this problem, a lot of us didn't even 
want to show up. | myself almost considered breaking that 
agreement just so we didn't have to deal with so much of this 
weight. In the end, | went alone; someone had to handle this, 
and it's more or less my job to protect people that need 
protecting. 


| was outfitted in a hazmat suit with a ‘friendly’ little 
Foundation logo on the breast, hurried out of a van, and into a 
fairly ominous-looking concrete building. When | asked, | was 
told that the site name was classified; all | needed to know 
was that it specialized in chemical containment. If they 
thought a little pesticide was going to stop this, | would have 
walked out then and there, but | had to keep on... if there was 
a way to stop this, | had to at least try to hear it out. 


It took an uncomfortable amount of time in an elevator before 
we reached our destination; a stuffy little room secured by a 
few too many airlocks than | thought were necessary. Hey, | 
guess they had to be safe, considering what could be stored 
here. Dr. Violet Mesmur, a woman who said she was on 
the Ethics Committee, greeted me as warmly as Foundation 
members are known for. She seemed relatively calm and 
collected at least, but that made me think that she had no 
idea what was even going on outside. | didn't know if | should 
have felt angry or jealous, but that didn't matter. | needed to 
be focused, eyes on the theoretical prize. 


"Mr. Wilson, would it be wrong to assume that your operations 
are at least somewhat well-known in the United States?" Dr. 
Mesmur asked. 


| cleared my throat before | replied, "W-well, we've been trying 
to get ourselves out there, as | guess you know. We do 


videos on the animals that we're allowed to show, like when 
we raised a small family of Pileated Woodpeckers after their 
mother and father got eaten by predators," | took a breath, 
stopping myself from getting too invested in the tangent, "I 
wouldn't want to get cocky, but at least we're known pretty 
well in the Pacific Northwest." 


Dr. Mesmur nodded, then spoke, "Mhmm, well, you're going 
to be a face now. We're busy enough dealing with the human 
population, trying to keep everyone from taking advantage of 
their newfound immortality for... less than savory actions." 


Dr. Mesmur instructed her assistant, who had since been 
standing silently nearby, to 'Get the cylinders’. As they flitted 
away, | felt a little sad that in our brief interaction that | never 
bothered to ask their name. I'm usually much more on top of 
getting to know people, but | guess, you know, life kinda 
stressed me out. 


"You're already intimately familiar with animals, | would 
assume. From what I've read about you and your 
organization, their preservation and safety seems to be a bit 
of a passion for you, no matter what kind of animal it is,” Dr. 
Mesmur remarked as she turned back to face me. 


"Well, heh, you're pretty on the nose there, pardner. Not 
exactly hard to see, I'd say, but that's not the point you're 
getting at, is it?” | replied. 


"Astute. You'll essentially be tasked with using something 
we've been developing and perfecting for the last few years 
on the animal population to stop their growth," at this point, 
the assistant came in, holding a box with three vials of 
something light blue inside them, "And considering the fact 
that it is... somewhat questionable, having a recognized face 
take action rather than us, a 'shadowy organization’, should 
remove a few of the road blocks." 


The kind assistant set down the vials on a table in front of us, 
each one sporting a neat little label. Dr. Mesmur gingerly took 
the leftmost vial, labelled 'SCP-3287-1' and held it, looking at 


it. She didn't bother to look at me as she continued to talk. 


"It's a gaseous sterilizing agent. Simply expose any living 
subject to it and within 60 seconds they will be instantly 
sterilized. Or at least, that's what's in this vial," Dr. Mesmur 
said, setting down the first vial carefully. 


"Bit of an obvious question, but what are in the other two vials 
then?" | asked, gesturing towards the other vials. 


"Well..." Dr. Mesmur began, finally turning towards me, 
“Technically, we don't know. Plenty of people have theories, 
but none of them are confirmed. We've tried dozens of tests, 
but... we'll just have to go on a gut feeling here because we'll 
be needing you to either confirm or deny what these 
substances actually do." 


She sighed, which | assumed was her signifying she finished 
what she was saying. | stayed quiet when she finished, 
assuming she'd have something more to say, but that never 
happened. 


After a few seconds, | finally said something, "Are you asking 
me to try to figure out that theory or are you waiting for me to 
agree to using these things?" 


Dr. Mesmur sighed, "I'm sorry, | got... distracted. The working 
theory is these vials are, well, retroactively sterilizing their 
subjects. If you use these gases on the right animals, you 
could easily stop problems before they even happen, or 
happened in some cases. Obviously you'll need to be briefed 
with how to properly use this, but you will need to give verbal 
and written confirmation that you consent to using this, should 
it... gO wrong." 


"Go wrong?" | asked. 


"You could be erased from existence. Nobody would 
remember you, your organization would never exist, anything 
that you did for humans and animals alike would never 
happen,” Dr. Mesmur said flatly, "I need a yes or a no before 


we can continue." 


You could always count on the Foundation to gamble 
everything but their own skin on something if it meant that 
they could maybe learn a shred of information about it. They 
really just asked me if | wasn't just willing to die, but willing to 
risk the lives of every poor critter | had saved in my years 
upon years of working. What they said was absolutely crazy! 
It was inhumane! It was... it was... 


It was the only shot we had. If | didn't do it, everyone would 
be damned to a world of locusts and mosquitos and mayflies 
and horseflies and wasps and... well, | don't exactly need to 
list them all out. But even they know that it's theoretical; they 
apparently hadn't even tested the damn stuff. It's just... I'd 
need to decide. I'd need to be the one to say whether or not | 
was willing to wait for a definitive solution or risk everything 
for one that could help us now before it gets too bad. 


| gave my answer. 


Surprisingly, life was relatively easy once people started 
becoming immortal. Something about what happened made a 
lot of the animals sterile, so we didn't have to deal with issues 
of overpopulation and whatnot. Our main problem was just 
making sure animals didn't suffer too much if they got into 
scrapes. Sure, we couldn't euthanize them, but we did our 
best to make sure they were at least taken care of as best as 
we could. 


Of course, a few people started going stark raving mad once 
they found out they could live forever, but they thought 
immortality meant no repercussions. A lot of the fine folks at 
the Foundation said they got that covered, but if anyone ever 
decides to do something like break into a zoo and release all 
the lions or something like that, we handle it. Oddly enough, 
we've been dealing more with domestic stuff than anomalous 
stuff ever since this all happened. 


It's still a bit hard when an animal comes in, hit by a car with 


its legs crushed but still breathing. It takes a while to get used 
to it, but considering how much has been done to improve the 
quality of life for humans, a bit of that was given to us to help 
these animals suffer as little as they could. Needless to say, 
the Veterinary Department's a bit overworked, but Nan just 
says she'll be fine as long as she has enough of her noir 
novels to read on her down time. 


You know, you'd expect something everyone is calling ‘The 
Apocalypse’ or 'The Rapture’ to be scary and dark and full of 
madness, but sometimes it's good to just be a guy who works 
with animals at a time like this. Being able to nurse them back 
to health, seeing them running and happy again... it's like 
these animals are making me, making us all feel a little more 
human. 


| thank whoever's up there every day for my organization, 
though sometimes | gotta thank someone a bit more down to 
Earth. If it weren't for those doctors over by the Foundation, 
our organization would probably have faded into obscurity. 
Instead, they decided to let us do our thing, and | think a lot of 
us appreciate that. | certainly do. 


Portrait of Two Choreographers 


SCP- Addendum: Partial list of recovered documents from 
Incident- /4. Documents constitute a correspondence between 
Pol-4667 and Pol-4668, both prominent anartists potentially involved 
in the creation of SCP- .See Document- for more information. 


Abel 


| thought you had lost your touch. | thought when | went 
to see "This Little Sadness in Life" that | would see 
something mainstream and conforming to typical modern 
dance notions, but my God have you done it again. The 
way you had your dancers move against that carpet wall 
was a revelation, my friend! That young man (Ira, | 
believe?), where did you say he trained again? 
Switzerland? 


The audience was simply spellbound by the feats of 
strength you were able to portray. | was glad to see the 
final performance. 


Yours, Andre. 
Dear Andre.