Retrieving a fresh piece of paper and dipping his quill in the almost- 
empty inkwell, Thomas set about rewriting his destroyed letter. It 
was the only hope of the colony now, the only solution to the 
problem. There weren't enough men remaining to go out and tame 
the beasts, to purge them from the land. The only solution to this, of 
course, was to call for more men. 


To the most high and mightie King James, by the 
grace of God King of Great Britaine, France and 


Ireland. 


The world beyond the window was a blur to Edward, a blur that he 
had never seen. It was the same physical world, with its old trees, 
grass and fields, but this view showed the new spirit of it all. A new 
world was blossoming from the seed of the old, with new ideas and 
perspectives coming to fruition. Some were frightened by the 
change, and that was understandable. The things that had changed 
were drastic, and the time taken was short. 


A feeling of déja vu washed over Edward, the strange and 
inexplicable feeling he had done this before warning him that 
something had just happened, something that wasn't Mundane. No 
doubt it was another catastrophic mistake made by some fool 
fighting in the ongoing Sixth Occult War, some new unstable Fault- 
place to be used as a hidden battleground. Who knew how long it 
would take to be cleaned up - chances were, it would probably just 
end up under lock and key with the Foundation. 


Hearing the train's whistle, Edward quickly shifted in his seat to see 
the fast-approaching cityscape of London. What normally took him 
several hours to traverse by carriage had taken only a little over two 
by railway. A shame he was coming under the circumstances he 
was in; he would have enjoyed to have wandered about London, 
exploring it as he once had while young. Retrieving the telegram 
from his satchel, he read it over once more. 


HIS MAJESTYS FOUNDATION REQUIRES ASSISTANCE 
DIFFICULT FAULT ENCOUNTERED CONSULTATION 
NEEDED SEEK JOHNATHAN SMITH UPON ARRIVAL 
CJ 


King James' Foundation was new compared to some of the 
thousand year-old groups in the occult world, but it was quickly 
becoming an intimidating powerhouse. Though they were still 
growing in their understanding of the occult, their actions still carried 
immense momentum, enough to ensure that their summons 
wouldn't go unanswered. Many a battle in the Sixth Occult War had 
been squashed by them, the Faults being confiscated and 


uncooperative fighters disappearing to who-knows-where. Yes, they 
were young, but the world knew better than to ignore them. 


Assisting them was quite beneficial too. Edward actually enjoyed 
teaching them what he knew, helping them understand Faults they 
couldn't figure out themselves. In return they had allowed him to 
continue with his thaumaturgy, undisturbed by the Foundation as 
long as he kept to their guidelines. Said guidelines were hardly 
unreasonable; most of it boiled down to don't hurt people, don't 
cause trouble and keep the unaware world, unaware. Magnitudes 
simpler than the Charlemagne Conscripture, and effectively 
enforced. 


Of course, the Sixth Occult War broke many of these guidelines. 
People were killed, trouble ensued, and the periodic Mundane was 
dragged into a chaotic and unfamiliar world, all in the name of 
outdated rules. Understandably, the Foundation was taking 
extensive actions to end the war immediately; several factions had 
resigned in the wake of the Foundation's threats. Those who didn't 
were forcefully dissolved and apprehended, torn from the war and 
permanently barred from the occult. As far as Edward was 
concerned, such facts merely made supporting the Foundation all 
the more morally correct. 


Such a shame the Mundane world no longer cared for the 
Foundation. Witch hunting was viewed quite poorly in this new age, 
and so were people still partaking in it. Anyone who knew what the 
Foundation did branded them as witch hunters, unfairly scrutinising 
them and purging them from memory. Perhaps it was for the best - 
the Foundation couldn't hope to keep the normal and occult worlds 
separate while acting as a nexus between them. They would do best 
fully submerged. 


The train lurched to a halt, prompting everyone within the cabin to 
collect up their possessions and head to the exits. Edward nervously 
rose from his seat, unsure if the locomotive would make another 
abrupt motion. He made sure to steady himself upon nearby seats 
as a precaution, cautiously walking up the aisle to the exit and 
stepping off the train. 


Charles sat in his bedroom, quietly reading through his book. It had 
been an average sort of day, no different from the last and probably 
no different from the next. School had been no different to any other 
day, filled with the same mediocre rounds of classes. Nothing 
special had happened, no big packet of news, nothing. Ever since 
he had gotten home, he’d just been reading his book - A Study In 
Scarlet, a story about a strange detective and his wounded assistant 
— waiting for his father to get home. 


Hearing the faint sound of the front door opening, Charles dropped 
the aged book to his side, leapt off the bed, and raced down the 
stairs. Within moments, he was hugging his father, finally home after 
a hard day’s work. 


“Well, | can see you're excited!” 


He was referring to the bicycle trip they had been planning. It wasn’t 
anything particularly out of the ordinary, but it was still exciting to the 
fifteen-year-old boy. Because today, together, they would be going 
further than ever before; today, they would ride beyond the outskirts 
of London, into the countryside. 


“Of course, why wouldn’t | be?” 


Not wanting to wait another moment, Charles raced over and 
grabbed the two bikes leaning against the nearby wall, escorting 
them to the front door. Finally, something different to do. 


“So, what did you do today dad?” 


“Nothing interesting, I’m afraid. Just sending some more people over 
to Germany to fetch one or two things.” 


The war had changed. 


In another history, a soldier’s loving parents wrote to him about a 
factory in his home of Germany, mentioning that its instigators — an 
anti-Reich collective known as “The Foundation” — had been caught 
and were sentenced to death. In that same history, the proud soldier 
wrote home to his parents, saying that the war would soon be over; 


soon, he would be home with them again, their victory assured by 
fearsome Wunderwaffe. 


But that was a different history. That was an old history, one that 
never happened. 


A nameless soldier died in a faraway place, buried in a shared and 
forgotten grave, hoping his family would be safe in Dresden. 


CONTINUE. 


“Four.” 
“Eleven.” 


The concrete walls of the bunker were untarnished, a featureless 
grey. A long desk, befitting of a boardroom, occupied most the room. 
Thirteen seats were positioned around it; only two were occupied. 


“Always wondered what you looked like.” 
“Now you know.” 

“| wasn’t expecting for you to be-” 
Eleven raised a finger to his mouth. 


“... Really? We're about to die, and your worried about the room 
being bugged?” 


“Are the Anchors active?” 
“Yes, but-” 
“Then we will survive.” 


“... They don’t work.” 


“You said they were active.” 


“They are, but they don’t help. The cascade overloads them, and 
they fail within minutes.” 


Silence. 
Four leaned back in her chair. “Still stone-faced as ever, | see.” 
“How do you know they fail?” 


“What do you think happened to the others?” She gestured to the 
empty seats. 


yee 2 ie 
“Quite.” 
Silence. 
“Do you know how this started?” Eleven asked. 


“Not the precise details, but... The gist of it seems to have been that 
Soviet second-strike system, Dead Hand. Turns out, it’s some dodgy 
semi-corporeal paratech that decided the best counter-strike is a 
pre-emptive one. They couldn't wrangle it in time.” 


“What about the cascade itself?” 


“You know those unstable, extra-spatial places that were made 
during the Sixth Occult?” 


“Such as All Portlands, yes.” 


“Dead Hand decided to take a shortcut through one. Punctured a 
hole where we couldn't afford to have one.” 


“How bad is it?” 


“Multiple origin Rat’s Nest event. Try as we might, this isn’t one we 
can win.” 


Silence. 


“At least the Foundation made it this far.” 


NO. 
REVISE. 


PRESERVATION 
REQUIRED. 


Winding Down 


Oh, the cold here was biting. He wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't 
for his left lung, his left lung and the stupid bits of exposed bone 
about the sternum. The last unconverted parts of his whole body, 
the nerve endings there were still intact and turned raw and red by 
the chill. His rounds done, Agent Ketterson tightened a woolen 
greatcoat about him, then tapped his temple with an index finger. 


“There’s nothing here. Can | come back in now?” 


“Sure,” the voice drifted back to him. “We'll have hot chocolate and 
marshmallows waiting.” 
He shivered and trudged back through the icy taiga. 


Of course, he couldn't just reach the door and go in. That would be 
silly. First he stepped inside a ballistics-reinforced antechamber, and 
plugged in a password. Then he stepped into a heated, plastics- 
lined chemical shower, though the current attendant vetoed that 
quickly. Finally, another airlock, and then the doors to the site swung 
open. Ketterson shivered a bit, then hung up the greatcoat and 
walked down the hall. 


The site had been functional for decades, but only in recent years 
did the quick remodels become necessary. One entire wing was 
partitioned off by an airlock, where the few staff who still had to 
worry about it could put on their clean suits and go about another 
day's work in health. As for the rest of them, well... 


Ketterson stopped in at the medical wing, even though it wasn't 
where he was going. A nurse there lifted up a patient and 
transferred her to another bed (the steel rebar in her arms must 
have assisted her considerably). Ketterson edged around her as she 
began to change the sheets on the bed, mumbling an apology, and 
went to look at the patient. 


Poor Johanna. She had given so much for them. Even as more and 


more joined the numbers of the damned, every day, she was 
dedicated- it was her who had found out that once the infection 
reached the brain, it went one of two ways- either becoming a mass 
of tiny tubes, or a mass of wire circuitry. From there, that one gifted 
technician had been able to create a network attached to the 
circuitry, letting everyone with fully-converted wire-type brains to 
connect. It was the only way the site and its staff had remained 
functioning and survived. 


And Johanna Garrison had been going so well, her brain starting to 
turn into wires- but the conversion went wrong, and the stroke hit. 
Now she couldn't read, didn't understand much of what was said to 
her, and had no functional control over the right side of her body. 
Because of the single medical doctor connected to the Hivenet 
already, he could tell other things about her, too, reduced brain 
usage and decreased nervous connections. All things pointing to a 
bad prognosis. He poked her hand, and she stared up with glassy 
eyes. 


He wanted to sit next to her, to talk with her, maybe to thank her for 
something, but it looked like she was drifting into sleep again. He 
merely squeezed her hand with his own metal pliers of fingers, and 
left, back down the hall. 


At least they didn't have to worry about containment any more. Or, 
barring the limited Hivenet, communication. Were they still part of 
the Foundation? What Foundation? The Foundation had failed. 
Somewhere out there, keeping away from the ice and the salty 
oceans, there was still a metal construct rolling across barren plains, 
looking for devotees to sate its hunger and its final piece. Thankfully 
someone had taken the initiative to launch the disk it wanted into 
space just before everything fell apart. The lone site in Siberia could 
focus on research, keeping the power supplies running, and do little 
side projects, as if that would help. 


The Greenhouse was one of these side projects. It was everybody's 
pride and joy. Ketterson stepped in, his lipless jaw twitching happily 
at the welcome breath of warm air. If he could smile, he would. Even 
though windows still pointed into the accursed tundra, the air here 
was steamy and warmed by waterwheel power. Large-leafed plants 
and flowering trees, mosses and ferns, and even tiny animals ran 


SCP-1000: Bigfoot 


Item #: SCP-1000 
Object Class: Keter 


Special Containment Procedures: All media reports related to 
SCP-1000 are to be examined for potential verifiability. All 
organizations and individuals investigating SCP-1000's existence 
are to be kept under surveillance by Mobile Task Force Zeta-1000 
and discredited or administered amnestics. All physical signs of 
SCP-1000's existence must be retrieved and kept in Foundation 
custody, and replaced with decoy items if necessary. Alleged 
sightings of SCP-1000 must always be investigated by MTF 
Zeta-1000, however trivial the claim. 


Absolutely no contact with wild or captive instances of SCP-1000 is 
allowed without prior approval by Director Jones. Any interaction 
between SCP-1000 and humans, including Foundation personnel, 
must be reported to Director Jones immediately. 


Description: SCP-1000 is a nocturnal, omnivorous ape, classified in 
the Hominini branch along with genera Pan and Homo. Adults range 
in size from 1.5 to 3 m (5 to 10 ft) in height, and weigh between 90 
and 270 kg (200 - 600 lbs). They have grey, brown, black, red, and 
occasionally white fur. They possess large eyes with good vision, a 
pronounced brow ridge, and a sagittal crest on the forehead similar 
to that of the gorilla, but present in both sexes. Their intelligence is 
on par with that of Pan troglodytes (the common chimpanzee). 


SCP-1000 evolved alongside Homo sapiens, existing 
contemporaneously with proto-humans and humans in large 
numbers until 10,000-15,000 years ago, when an extinction event 
eliminated all but 1-5% of their population. This event was triggered 
by SCP-1000 contracting an anomalous "pseudo-disease" classified 
as SCP-1000-f1. This disease is passed on at the genetic level and 
affects every present-day instance of SCP-1000. The majority of 


amongst the bushes. 


The Gardener was Marie Ayala. She knelt by the dirt, cutting 
clippings off of bushes and flowers with a pair of scissors, to plant 
again. Ketterson's heart ached when he saw her. Once a mechanic 
who could fix anything, her beautiful mind had turned into a mass of 
pipework when the disease hit. Now she did the same tasks every 
day in the Greenhouse. Clipping, planting, digging, reciting poetry. 
Ketterson knelt beside her, and touched her shoulder. 


“There will come soft rains,” she muttered, speaking softly as she 
worked. Her hand shovel dug into the soil. “And the smell of the 
ground. And swallows circling, with their shimmering sound.” 

He knew the poem. She said it so often, and once one person knew 
it, by virtue of the Hivenet, everyone did. 


“And frogs in the pool, singing at night- and wild plum trees in 
tremulous white. Robins will wear their feathery fire, whistling their 
whims on a low fence-wire.” She- all of them, but especially the ones 
that weren’t on the Hivenet- were so devoid of emotion, until it came 
to the poems. She could say them with all of the sadness and 
longing, all of the feeling of what could have been in the world.