The Christmas tree lighting did little to hide the grime of Maloof's interior. Marlin Wexler stared at his whiskey on the rocks. A drink with two ingredients - and the bartender had managed to fuck it up.
He checked his Rolex. Fifteen minutes late.
Marlin hated this bar. How he had to drive to the other side of Atlanta. The jukebox that only played awful Greek guitar music. The eight swordfishes Maloof had mounted to the walls. The cute sign mounted by the register, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." The chairs that felt like they would fall apart at a moment's notice. He hated that he was here on a Tuesday afternoon like some goddamned booze hound. Most of all, he hated the thrill he got from being here.
By rights, this meeting should be taking place in the CIVIL-TV offices. They should be right in Marlin's executive suite, with the wide windows overlooking Peachtree. Marlin should be reclining in his leather chair, peering over his mahogany desk. He would look big, despite his slight frame and receding hair. He would feel big. He could talk about how, in three years, he had built this company from nothing into the leading provider of what Marlin delicately called "exotic entertainment." Whoever came to see him had to supplicate themselves before him and the temple of his own success.
That was how it was done, with him calling the shots. But every time, Vadasz was the one who decided where they would meet. And every time he chose here.
Every time, it was absolutely worth it. The first time he had come to Maloof's, he had walked out with six hours of tapes of Argentinian secret police torturing some dissident. It had taken maybe ten minutes to leak his plans to run it on CIVIL-TV's satellite service to Amnesty International. What they said about no bad publicity was true. Amnesty could call him "callous" and a "merchant of misery" all they wanted, but CIVIL-TV saw over six thousand new subscribers, each popping fifty bucks a month to get their rocks off or maybe just indulge in a bit of car-wreck curiosity.
Truth be told, he needed something like that again. With overseas investors coming into town, he needed something to dazzle them with. Some big, sexy, tasteless program that would show that CIVIL-TV was just around the corner from being profitable. Confidence and a mahogany desk could cover up a lot, but without actual product, he couldn't disguise that they were still hemorrhaging money. Operating costs were rising, and subscriber numbers peaked before beginning a slow decline to the baseline. What he was getting now was product. What he needed was a miracle.
As he waited, Marlin checked the television set peering down from ceiling corner.
A black screen with a picture of Ronald Reagan. Caption: "LEADERSHIP THAT'S WORKING".
An old lady in a peach dress leaps in silent joy. Behind her, a board flashes with blinking yellow and blue lights. Several people run up to hug her. Cut to a shot of a hotel sitting atop a white-sanded beach.
Vadasz entered through the far door. He was a rumpled suit of a man, his eternal five o'clock shadow intersecting the latticework of splotches on his cheeks and neck. Maybe that was why he insisted meeting here with its red and green lights. His bald spot peeked from beneath his slicked back hair. He wore a Tech sweatshirt and blue jeans, a plastic satchel slung over his shoulder. With grunt, he slumped into the stool opposite Marlin.
"You're late," Marlin grumbled.
Vadasz gave a smile half full of disintegrating teeth. "Good to see you too," he said, beaming. Without hesitation, he took Marlin's whiskey and began to drink.
Marlin considered protesting, but remembered the taste. Let him have it, he thought.
"Do you have the tapes?" he asked. The sooner he could be out of Maloof's and away from Vadasz, the better.
Vadasz opened the satchel and produced three video cassettes in unmarked blue plastic boxes. He slid them across the table.
"As requested, Human Lab Rat Volumes One, Two, and Four. Three literally doesn't exist," he said. "My guy say it's intense stuff, though. And coming from him… might wanna run it by legal? Or a coroner first? I made it three minutes."
"Jesus Christ, would you keep your voice down," Marlin hissed, "Do you even know what discretion is?"
Vadasz shrugged as he took a sip from what was now his drink.
"It's fine," he said, gesturing around the half-empty bar. "Most of the people here don't even know what day it is, and the rest of them just don't care."
Marlin glanced around. He to agree. A couple of punks in a corner booth, a couple of already-soused retirees, and a bored-looking bartender were the only witnesses to the exchange.
Vadasz put the glass down. "Besides," he said, "having the tapes isn't a crime, not really. Now, broadcasting 'em? Might get you in some hot water. Producing them? That can be hard time, depending. But for legal purposes, all I am is a humble procurer, a finder and a maker of connections."
He shrugged. "Besides, it's not like you're the only person I sell to."
"Who else do you even sell to?" Marlin asked.
"Not at liberty to divulge," Vadasz said, a smirk playing at his lips. Marlin idly considered punching him in the face before nixing the idea. No sense in burning a connection for a little wounded pride.
Instead, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a small brown envelope. Without a word, he tossed it on the table.
Vadasz grunted into his sip of watered-down whiskey. He swept the envelope into his lap.
Marlin wanted to be out of this place, out of the presence of Lazslo fucking Vadasz, dragging him down into the muck. A shudder of disgust traveled along his back.
He wanted out of this place, with these tapes safely in a machine where he would never have to see them again. But he couldn't let Vadasz get the last word in.
"You ever watch your videos?"
"For editing and quality? Sure. Or do you mean making sure they're real? Definitely."
Marlin shook his head. "No, for fun."
"What? No, of course not." Vadasz's face crinkled, halfway between confusion and disgust.
"Why do this, then?" A note of genuine curiosity colored Marlin's words.
Vadasz shrugged. "Why do anything? I'm good at it, for one. I've got a lot of friends of friends of friends kinda things. Plus you have the thrill of the chase, all that kind of stuff? Why? Why do you do this?"
"Because I own a business. One which relies on people like these," he motioned at the bar patrons, "watching videos like yours."
Marlin leaned back, the rickety chair creaking at the pressure. "Keep me posted on anything that comes down the pipe in the meantime, yeah?"
Vadasz nodded and left.
Marlin Wexler sat alone in the bar, three cassettes worth of unspeakable violence and the remains of a whiskey on the rocks. After a few minutes of thinking about nothing at all, he stepped into the morning sun.
"I don't pay you for 'can't," Marlin said, "I pay you for 'do.'"
"Right, no, I get it. It's just there's not anything to be done on our end. The problem is all on the customer's side," Paul replied. He shook his head, ponytail wagging behind.
"It's like this," he said, flattening his left hand and angling it towards the control panel. "Beam comes down from the satellite, right?" The hand sloped downwards, passing over a half-eaten slice of pizza and a heap of cassette tapes.
Paul's right hand rose up, perpendicular to the control panel. The left hand bounced off it, then continued its downward trajectory.
"Now this," he said, motioning his right hand, "is a jet or a weather vane or a flock of geese. Enough to knock the signal out of wack for a few milliseconds. The signal makes its way to the dish, but now you've got two signals coming in, one timed right, one timed a little bit off."
He spread his hands with a flourish. "And that's where the ghost comes from. Tell them to check and see if there are any radio towers or tall trees in the area and that should solve the problem," he said, leaning back.
"I'm not going to tell a paying customer to just figure it out himself. You're going to fix it," Marlin said, standing up and making his way to the exit.
"Marlin, that's what I've been telling you - short of a miracle, there's nothing we can do for this guy," Paul protested, "Especially not without messing up the signal for every other customer we have!"
Marlin walked to the door of the engineering room. As he passed into the hallway, he turned to face Paul. "You're an engineer. You make images appear on screens across an entire continent. I pay you to perform miracles. If you can't handle it, I'll pay someone who can."
Without waiting for a response, he turned and headed down the hallway towards his office.
Outside the executive office, Jeannine was takking away at the word processor. She looked up from her typing as he approached. "Morning, Mr. Wexler," she chirped, "A young man in your office. He said it was urgent."
Marlin stopped, looking at the closed office door. It wasn't uncommon for people to come in with tapes of animal abuse or clumsily staged sex videos. Things that filled up the hours in between essential programming. Still, Jeannine usually had them drop off the tapes.
"Didn't you tell him to wait?" he asked. It was a genuine question. Jeannine was in her late forties and five foot nothing, but Marlin had seen her shout down men twice her size. She hadn't even needed to get up from her chair.
"Yes," she said, "but he was quite insistent. Something about a new tape. I rescheduled your eleven o'clock for three, so you should have some time."
Marlin nodded. "Thanks, Jeannine," he said. He opened the office door and headed inside.
The young man had his back to the door. He faced the big-screen television Marlin kept at the end of his office.
As Marlin entered, the young man turned in his chair, scratching at his neck. It looked as though he hadn't slept for a week. His yellow shirt was torn and dirty. Next to buttoned-down suburban dads, kids like him were his most reliable suppliers for mundane content.
A man mouths a wordless scream as a whip comes down across his back. Zoom in on his hands clenching and unclenching. The leather tears into his skin again and again.
"So," Marlin said, his voice sharp, "you have a video. Impress me, kid. Fucking wow me with whatever you have."
The young man was silent for a moment. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a tape.
"I found it. It was hard, but I found it," he said hoarsely.
"So what is it?" Marlin asked. He sat down at his desk, propping his feet up. In his drawer, he had a Colt. Sometimes it was necessary for when the cranks came in to present. This kid didn't seem like the type.
"It wasn't special. But everything that it is, that's special," the kid continued, "It tells you - man, it fucking tells you all you ever need to know!"
Marlin leaned back and lit a cigarette. This was how sales should go.
"That's great and all, but before we talk cash, I'll want to see it," Marlin said. He took a long drag, then leaned back and exhaled towards the ceiling. With a nod of his head, he motioned for the kid to pop the tape into VCR.
The young man inserted the cassette, standing beside the television set. He seemed self-conscious the screen went black.
Interior shot of a large church. The audience is at least a thousand people. Shots of smiling people standing shoulder to shoulder. Their lips move in unison to a silent hymn as triumphal organ music plays.
Medium shot, framing the whole of the congregation. On the wall is hung a huge cross. The frame shakes violently for several seconds, then is still. The camera lurches to the doors. Three burly men in masks enter, then bar the doors. The congregants don't seem to notice. The masks look like that old wrestler from the space movie.
Marlin nodded. "Okay, okay."
The young man looked from the TV to Marlin, back to the TV. His brow was knitted with concern.
The organ music dies down. The congregation is singing the same tune. The words are too forceful almost to make out. It sounds like "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" but the words aren't all right.
One of the men takes out a cordless drill. The frame moves drunkenly, drawing closer, as if the cameraman is loping towards the scene. The frame tightens on the drill bit. The head blurs into motion as it slowly descends into the young woman's skull. The frame shifts to get a better view. The drill is fully inserted into her.
She continues singing as blood leaks from her eyes and nose. She doesn't seem to notice. The masked man pulls the drill out and she slumps to the floor, liquefied brain leaking from the hole in her head. Her fingers twitch slightly as she lies there. All around here, everyone continues to sing.
"Holy shit," Marlin mumbled.
He had seen people die on tape many, many times. Executions, botched surgeries, assorted tragic and impersonal accidents. What was always evident was the sheer artlessness of death. How sudden and awful the real thing was.
He had also seen countless "murders" on tape as well. People torn apart by dogs, decapitated, burned to death. Mewling torture victims dismembered by their captors. Bound men disemboweled with power tools. There was a artifice to them, a boundary where you could identify the boundary between human and prop. It was that jump, that slight change in angle, that made these scenes more bearable than the grainy footage of pedestrians being crushed by semis.
There was no jump here. It was a single, uninterrupted shot of a woman being murdered. Marlin felt some small part of himself shrivel and die.
"No, no," said the young man. He was shaking his head.
The camera swings around. One of the masked men knocks a young girl in a blue dress to the floor. She can't be more than seven or eight. He raises a boot and stomps on her back. Again and again and again. The shot doesn't include her face, but the floor is soon covered in blood.
"No, man, this isn't it," the young man protested, "That isn't what this is. It's beautiful and, man, it's profound!"
"Son," Marlin began, turning his gaze from the girl to the man, "I'm prepared to offer you $300 for this tape." The going rate was around $2000 for a medium budget "snuff" film, but the young man seemed like the sort who'd measure his fortune in vials.
The young man shook his head. "No, no. The tape's fucking lying, get it? It - it - it says it loves you, then this! Don't you get it!?"
A black kid, looks to be around eleven, convulses as one the assailants begins to strangle him with gloved hands. A brown finger hooks into the eye hole of the mask. As the kid falls to the floor, the mask comes off.
The face of Marlin Wexler is revealed. Marlin turns to the camera. He smiles and waves at the viewer.
Marlin worked hard to put the images he had seen into dollars and cents. If the Argentine tapes had brought six thousand, this would bring at least twice that.
Less lawyers, plus the revenue from the investors, less possiblity of CIVIL-TV being shut down altogether, it still came out miles and miles and miles ahead of any other option he had. Miles and miles and miles, like the song.
Miles and miles, he thought, miles and miles. His brain refused to process his own image on the screen. That wasn't him, couldn't be.
After what may have been seconds or minutes, he noticed the kid staring at him. He had backed himself into a corner next to the screen.
"Give me the tape," Marlin barked.
The kid hit the eject button on the VCR. "Fuck you," he shouted as he yanked the tape out, "Fucking liars! Both of you!"
He ran for the door.
"Give it to me!" Marlin shouted. He lunged over the desk, but caught his leg on the chair. With a thud, his stomach slammed into the desk.
His half leap succeeded only in scattering a pile of papers to the floor. By the time he looked up, the young man was gone.
For a few moments, he laid in silence. Then, he burst into laughter.
Jeannine peaked her head in. "Is everything alright, Mr. Wexler?" she asked.
Marlin smiled the smile of a man in on his own private joke. "Of course, Jeannine," he said, "Why wouldn't it be?"
By the time Marlin looked up from his desk the shadows of the building across the street had swallowed the last of the day's light.
Balancing accounts, approving programming, reviewing invoices. Suddenly, he found that he couldn't get enough of it. Anything that kept his mind from wandering back to that woman. Thinking about what that kid's movie was. How that junkie piece of trash had found a dead ringer for Marlin and committed it to tape in his scum video.
Marlin shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. Marlin was the only game in town for content like that. The kid wouldn't be selling it, or worse yet, taking it to the cops.
All at once, he noticed the silence of the office, everyone else having long since gone home for the day.
Marlin realized that he was walking down the hall from CIVIL-TV's offices. He wasn't sure if he had locked up, but knew it didn't matter. He felt the pressure of the Colt tucked into his belt.
He was in his car, acutely aware of each turn he was making to the young man's apartment. All kids like that lived in the exact same place in East Lake.
A few minutes later, Marlin was at the door of the apartment. He had never even been to East Lake, but driven across town without missing a beat. Inside, he could hear laughter.
He pounded at the door with an open palm. He hollered something inarticulate and obscene. No response. A well-aimed kick knocked the unlocked door back until it hung crooked on a single hinge.
The smell of rotting meat billowed from the apartment door. Marlin gagged, then put a crooked elbow to his nose as he stepped past the threshold. It didn't help.
Inside, the floor was strewn with heaps of clear plastic wrap, old magazines, half-eaten food. Other things Marlin couldn't or wouldn't recognize. The entryway dripped with anemic yellow light from the overhead, thrumming gently. The sense of disgust and unease began to seep into the corners of Marlin's rage.
The sound of laughing became louder. It was canned, recited. There was thunderous, tinny applause. Marlin realized he was hearing the TV in the next room.
"Kid," he shouted, "I know you're in there. Come out! Hand over the tapes and we can end this quiet." No response but further applause. He turned the corner into the living room.
He saw the top of the kid's head peeking over the back of a green armchair. The chair was facing a TV set, tuned to some daytime show.
"Kid," Marlin yelled again. The audience roared as he stepped forward to see the freelancer. His words caught in his throat.
The young man sat in the chair, his body distended almost beyond recognition, folded and re-folded into the chair. His flesh was a mass of sores and lumps, pulsing in time with the sickly light of the overhead. Puss seemed to ooze from every inch of his body.
Each labored breath from his emaciated chest seemed to draw a new round of applause from the TV audience. Marlin gagged at the reek of sickness.
It was the eyes of the man that caught Marlin's words, though. Bloodshot and lined, but pleading. Fully aware.
The young man raised an impossibly infected hand, its meat tender and crusting, towards Marlin. The flesh on the arm remain stuck to the crusted fabric of the couch, stretching, then tearing with an unspeakable wetness. The kid seemed not to notice as the skin sloughed off.
His jaw was unhinged in a toothless scream. The holes where his teeth had been were impossibly widened, filling his mouth with a yawning blackness.
"J-J-Jes-" Marlin began. A sound came from the television. Marlin turned.
"Marlin!" the narrator shouts. Marlin appears on the screen, entering the set of a game show. He is grinning and waving
"Marlin! Marlin!" the audience chants in a unified voice. The host is saying something.
It isn't actually saying words, just stresses and pauses in the right places to make it seem like words.
The host smiles, every feature of his face wiped clean but the gaping, devouring grin.
"Marlin," he says in his tinny voice. He points out from the television set.
The glass begins to stretch and extend as the host reached out further, further, his hand grasping out from the cathode ray box. Reaching towards Marlin.
Marlin tried to run, but tripped. From his position on the floor, he could see the glowing hand grasping towards him. He lurched back, trying to distance himself, only to find himself face to face with the kid.
The young man's mouth grew impossibly huge as he began to scream the sound of static.
The static was everything.
Marlin woke up. He was lying in a green armchair. He lept out of it as the memory of the dream came back to him. After a moment, he surveyed his surroundings. It was the apartment from the dream - the kid's apartment - but totally bare except for the chair and a television set tuned to a dead station. The only illumination was the blue of the static dancing across the screen.
After a quick sweep, Marlin confirmed the entire apartment was empty.
As he prepared to leave, Marlin noticed something perched on top of the television set. He crouched down, and saw it was a black cassette tape. On the spine was a strip of masking tape with something written on it. He held it in the light of the television static. He could make out the spidery black letters.
"SARKIC SERMONS" they said.
He felt his stomach turn, but he didn't know why.
Marlin tucked the cassette tape into his inside pocket. As he approached the door, he saw that it was half-kicked in. Gingerly, he stepped over the ruined frame.
Behind him, he could hear the static of the television roar to life. Blind and feral.
He dashed from the apartment and down the hall. The static was growing louder, nearer. He dared not look behind himself. Finally, he made it to the door, bursting into the warm July air.
The sounds of the Atlanta night were all around him.
But it was only when he was on 285, surrounded by a sea of headlights that he felt he could breath again.
A medium shot of a congregation of maybe seven or eight thousand people. Dissolve to a close up of the people in the front row, the camera panning left across their number. Heavy noise and banding, horizontal lines of color distort the features of the congregants. Bold yellow letters in curling typeface splash across the screen.
"The Father Sunday Hour"
Crowd shot again, this one from 3/4 view. Zoom in to single out a man on stage, tailored green suit, coifed hair. He is bathed in white light. Tall white cross behind him. Something about the cross isn't right, although banding makes it hard to see. The video quality too low to see anything of his face beyond a broad smile with immaculate teeth, everything else being washed out in a thin tan fuzz.
Marlin cursed at the television set, rising slightly from the couch. He was wearing a pair of grey trousers – the clothes from earlier had been removed, followed by a forty minute shower. In his right hand he held the remote, in the left, the evening’s second vodka tonic.
The new Panasonic VCR was supposed to stop this sort of stuff – Paul had explained something about double analog tracking. But it seemed as though the $900 machine had been a total waste. It was even a struggle to push the cassette into the supposedly top-of-the-line VCR, with the machine spitting it out each time until finally playing. And now it seemed like it wasn't even playing the right tape.
Man, presumably Father Sunday: “Welcome, friends. It is so good to have you with us! From Atlanta, across Georgia, and soon broadcast across the world, we welcome you here.”
Zoom into his face. A burst of static reduces his features to a flurry of black and white lines.
“Fuck!” Marlin shouted, hurling the remote onto the couch. It bounced on the cushion before clattering to the floor. He would have it out with Paul tomorrow for hooking him up with a piece of trash like this.
Sunday: “Friends, how many of you here today have lost something? A loved one, struck down by illness, a car, a house, your job? How many?” He paces along the stage.
A murmur of agreement ripples through the congregation. The angle changes from a close up to a wide-angle shot of the congregation. A few seconds later, the static clears up.
Sunday: “Sometimes, it feels as though each of these individual burdens, these pains that we carry inside and out, it feels as though they are too much for a single soul to bear, isn’t that right? But we want that, we want to share in it!"
Another murmur of the crowd, this time soaked in static as the screen flickers.
Sunday: “Well, friends, I have some good news for you. You are not alone. You will have us and we will have you. We are a community of love, and we can overcome anything. Sarkic is life and community.”
Since returning to his apartment in Buckhead, Marlin had formed a working theory of what had happened in that dingy, empty apartment. Some combination of stress, overwork, and nerves had led to some sort of lucid dream. Him being drugged was probably involved. Everything prior to his waking had been a dream, of that he was certain. The watch, the door, the trash – all were some sort of Freudian images that peppered dreams. The roaring had been the aftereffects of the drugs finally wearing off.
The flickering grows worse until the screen is entirely obscured by static. Close up of the altar, still difficult to make out. Sunday steps into the frame, his face blocked again by the video error. A young black woman in a blue suit dress at the side of the stage. Sunday motions to her. Medium shot of the her joining him onstage. An offscreen organ plays a deep melody.
All the tape had to do was be normal – some standard broadcast of a church or whatever a “sarkic sermon” was. Even torture or murder would do. So long as Marlin could process it, it would be confirmation enough that whatever had happened was in his head. But the video was refusing to play along. It drug back and forth, like a child telling a story. Leaving out details, hyperfocusing on others. He couldn’t get a handle on what it was supposed to be. It seemed to be dragging the VCR down with it.
Marlin felt vaguely nauseous. On his lap, he had a pad of paper and a pencil. So far, all he had written was "Father Sunday" and "shitty video." Now he added "faith healing hoodoo bullshit" in scratchy letters.
His grandfather had once taken him to a tent revival like this, somewhere outside Dothan. The preacher wore a bad toupee and a screaming woman had tried to grab him as she rolled on the floor. He had been a staunch atheist ever since.
The video is banded once again. Triple images of green, red, and blue separate, then converge, only to separate again. The congregant stands nervously.
Sunday: "What's your name, brother?"
Congregant: "Marlin Wexler." She speaks in Marlin's voice.
Marlin choked on his vodka tonic. As he doubled over, coughing, the glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor. He sputtered, feeling the tears flood his eyes.
It's the young woman, her eyes brimming with tears. She is no longer addressing the preacher, but facing the camera. Looking directly out.
Congregant: "I said, my name is Marlin Wexler."
Sunday: "And what do you have to confess, brother Marlin?" His face is still out of focus.
Congregant: "I've got a sickness inside of me, padre." The edges of her face warp as the video quality falls apart once again.
Sunday: "What's the sickness, brother?"
The video stops warping. Marlin stands onstage, wearing grey trousers and no top.
Marlin: "There's something empty inside of me. I keep shoveling money into it, and I use everyone I meet to get more of whatever I need. I pump poison into the world and tell myself it's not my fault, that if I didn't someone else would. And now I am sitting alone in this empty apartment full of art I hate and hi-tech crap I never use. I hate my life and I hate myself."
Cut to the preacher, his face bathed in static.
Sunday: "Brother Marlin, we can help you." In the background, the voices of the audience echo his words. The video quality begins to degrade with each word until it was nearly unintelligible.
Sunday: "But first, you need to let us in. There's always room for you here. Just let us in."
Cut to black. Silence.
Marlin stared at the screen, feeling a pit opening inside of his chest. He shook his head. No, he decided. No, he had not seen that. It wasn't actually real. Another momentary break. Caused by too many pills or too much booze or stress or something. That was what had happened.
He would rewind the video and watch it from the start. Grabbing the remote, he hit stop. His thumb hovered over the rewind button.
Bloom into a field of colors. Silence replaced with the roar of static. Beneath the static come voices.
"Let us in!"
Marlin hurled the remote at the television. The plastic bounced off the the screen. He rushed forward, and with both hands grabbed the VCR. There was a popping sound as he yanked the device out from beneath the television, wires and all. The television tottered, then fell backwards, perching against the wall, static shining out to the ceiling.
Marlin smashed the VCR into the static. A loud as the glass shattered beneath the metal. For a split second, the static maintained even as the glass broke. Then, the screen was black and all was silent.
He looked at the VCR and hurled it to the floor. The video tape popped out, skidding across the tile. Marlin brought his foot down, crushing into the black plastic with a crunch. He raised his foot and stomped again. And again and again and again.
After a few seconds, the video was nothing but scattered shards of plastic and two spools of magnetic tape.
In the vastness of his empty apartment, Marlin was overcome with a wave of nasuea.
The few days, Marlin was sitting alone in his office, waiting for Vadasz. He had barked at Paul to fix the shattered cassette, which he had done without question or comment, only a slight look of concern. Jeanine had contacted Vadasz asking him to find any information about a "sarkic" or "Father Sunday." Earlier Vadasz had called and said he had something. Marlin had told him they were meeting in his office, and if Vadasz didn't like it, he could fuck himself.
Marlin placed the repaired cassette into the VCR. It lay there, half in, half out, not yet pulled into the gears of the machine. He hadn't yet watched it again.
Somewhere, Marlin remembered reading about a cat that was alive and dead until you checked a box.
The seat was familiar, every angle and every point of pressure known from memory. But Marlin felt no relief in his leather chair behind the mahogany desk. All he could think about was the rolling sensation in his guts, the feeling of the aching chill that ran through every vein and capillary. Eventually, he tried to remember, this would pass. Either his television spoke to him, or he was insane. There was a comfort in the binary.
Finally, Vadasz entered. "You're late," Marlin grumbled.
"I'm well, thanks," Vadasz said, a tight smile on his face. "Anyway, for this guy, you should be grateful I showed up at all. This Sunday guy was - for someone as famous as he was, he's basically a ghost."
"Give me the gist."
"He's born in 1936 in Cleveland under the name Ion Popescu to a couple of Romanian immigrants. General lowlife drifter until '74, when he claims to have a spiritual experience. Inside a few months, he's legally 'Father Sunday' and is set up in tent revivals to white trash on the Georgia-Alabama border. Southern Baptists."
"Okay, so he's born again. So what?"
Vadasz paused for a moment, moving between several expressions. Marlin could sense a flicker of genuine excitement beneath the cultivated indifference. "So here's where it gets weird. In 1976, he gets a deal to broadcast his sermons with a Macon station. Then, in 1977, the SBC officially excommunicates him. Their official statement cites 'numerous blasphemous teachings and instances of immoral conduct.' That's not a thing they do. This is the only instance I've found of them formally defrocking someone and expelling them. Next year, he's in Atlanta with a congregation of four thousand and a new TV deals. Calls it the Sarkic Tabernacle Of Free Saints And All Signs Ascending."
Marlin was content to play straight man to Vadasz a while longer. "What's 'sarkic?'"
Vadasz shrugged. "As near as I can tell, it's an old Romanian word meaning something like 'free' or 'unburdened."
"Okay, so he has the church now. So what?" he asked.
"In '81, he straight-up vanishes. From what I can tell, there was another preacher - Randal Deloach - who decided to attempt an honest-to-god exorcism of Sunday and his entire congregation during a Sunday service. Things got ugly, four people were hospitalized, one died. Sunday hasn't been seen since then. Ministry collapsed. Apparently he was cooking the books - in way that was, hm, unbecoming even for a fake faith healer. There's something like five warrants out for his arrest."
Marlin paused a moment. "Is that it?"
Vadasz chuckled and shook his head. "Jesus Marlin, you sure can pick 'em," he said.
"I need you to watch something with me," Marlin said.
"Like I said, I don't watch the tapes. I find things, but what it is isn't my concern," Vadasz said, shaking his head.
"No," Marlin said, "You're watching this with me. You're f-" He felt a tremor in his chest, but shook it off. Nothing would stop this moment. "You're watching with me, end of discussion. Now put it in."
Vadasz shrugged. "Adding this to my hours for you, but sure, whatever," he said. He moved to the VCR and pushed the tape in before slumping back into the small chair opposite Marlin's own. "I reserve the right not to look
The church from earlier. Same young woman sobbing, same preacher comforting her. She speaks in her own voice. There's something else different, though. The cadence is off. Shots change from Marlin's memory.
The healing is done. Next up is an Asian teenager walking with a limp.
"Listen," Vadasz said, rising from the chair, "this has been great and all, but I do have other clients. So let me know once you figure out this video thing, or if you have another gig. I'll keep you posted on anything I find."
"No, goddamit!" Marlin started, "This isn't-"
Vadasz cut him off
"I'll see myself out," he said, making his way to the door.
Marlin made to stand up, to intercept him, when a wave of nausea rolled over him. He felt like throwing up. He sat back down in his chair. After Vadasz closed the door behind him, Marlin fell to his knees and vomited into his trashcan.
As he laid there on his knees, the sound of the service continued from the TV, interrupted only by Marlin's rattling breath. He stayed on the floor for several minutes.
It had been three weeks since the meeting with Vadasz. A few new tapes, mostly from freelancers and junkies had come through. It wasn't anything that would blaze trails, but it would provide content to keep his subscribers happy. The meeting next week with the investors seemed impossibly remote.
The rattling in Marlin's breath had gotten worse. After a week, it had devolved into a hacking cough. Jeannine had insisted that he see a doctor. The tests had come back negative for bronchitis, TB, any of the standard suspects.
After another round of tests, the doctors had found the issue. Marlin couldn't pronounce the bacteria, but apparently it was quite uncommon, normally only found in people with severely compromised immune systems. The doctor had lowered his voice when he mentioned it, quickly recommending a third battery of tests to see if - his voice had trailed off, leaving the object of the tests unspoken.
Marlin had refused, point blank. He wasn't a junkie, and he sure as shit wasn't a degenerate. That was the disease of scum and the poor. Marlin was a man who came from nothing and built himself a god-damn empire, and any fancy-boy doctor trying to imply otherwise was welcome to shove his opinion up his rotten dickhole sideways.
Storming out of the office had made him feel in control for the first time since that kid's video.
Two days later, he noticed the first sores on his arms. Then they started to appear on his torso.
He wasn't a degenerate, he reminded himself.
Marlin rewound the video.
Father Sunday places the sickness back in the man, who goes from standing on two legs to sitting in a wheelchair. The tears zoom back into his eyes. The smile on Sunday's washed-out face is replaced with a concerned frown.
Every time, there was something different. Not some new detail he noticed, but something literally had changed. People changed, colors changed, words changed. Whenever he watched it with others, the video would always revert to its basics, unchanged. Nothing strange. No Marlin, no murders. Just a staticky preacher healing the gullible.
Over the past four weeks, he had begun watching the tape over and over again during his free time. And as he sloughed off more and more responsibilities, he found himself with more and more free time. The demands from investors, the queries from employees, became distant as he watched the familiar scenes over and over again, trying to unlock their secret.
Vadasz had stopped returning his calls. Searching about the word "sarkic" had only turned up a few references to an early Christian heresy that seemed to have little relation to the manic holy rollers that flickered across his screen. Even Paul and Jeanine had begun looking at him sideways.
Marlin hit play.
Father Sunday: Brothers and sisters, we are gathered-
Close up of Sunday, his face hidden behind a flurry of static. His voice, too, completely unintelligible. In the background, congregants nod and jerk spasmodically.
Shot of congregants. The static lessens then fades altogether.
So here he was. Scouring the video of an Elmer Gantry type for clues about, well, something. Trying to even establish the contours of what he was looking for. Seeing if the changes in each playthrough meant anything. If the video would speak to him again. If he could see himself in the flickering glow of the television once again.
Sunday: - and to remind us that we are not these bodies that imprison us! We are all radiant souls, untouched and untouchable by sin!
Over the past weeks, Marlin had memorized every contour of the video. The "miraculous" "healings", the hymns he did not recognize, the sermon with the allegory of the [idk something here]. He had tried to read meaning into the changes that each viewing wrought. There was no consistency he could tell of[.
It was entirely itself. But there had to be a key, something hidden, something profound behind the changes. Something that could explain what he saw in that apartment, on that screen. Something that explained the cough [too on the nose?.
The video refused to divulge its secrets. So he watched it, again and again and again, scouring it for clues. He had lost track of the notebooks filled after the fifth, filled first with notes, then abbreviations, then symbols of his own devising, then finally scribbles intelligible only to him.
Sunday: Join me in communion, won't you, brothers? Won't you, sisters?
Marlin did the final rail off the small hand mirror. It had been what? Three days since he slept? Possibly four. There was research to be done.
As the cocaine flowed into his veins, he felt more distant from sleep than ever. More distant from the nightmares of the static-voiced kid, of himself wearing a rubber mask, of the rattling cough that kept getting worse.
A closeup shot of Sunday's face. It's clear this time, but Marlin can't make out the details, somehow. It is warm and flowing with light.
Sunday: Won't you join us, Marlin?
Marlin looks up from the mirror. He lets the remote slide from his hand as he crawls on his knees towards the television set.
Sunday: We love you, Marlin. All of us do. But you have to let us in.
Marlin is in front of the television. Sunday reaches out from the set, his hand glowing glass. He holds forth a small piece of static, no bigger than a gumball. It seems to pulse and shimmer.
With a hunger he didn't know he had, Marlin stuffs the ball in his mouth. Once, when he was a teenager, he had been lost in the woods around Sand Mountain for a week. He had managed to catch a rabbit in a crude snare. Half-remembering some advice from his grandfather, he had eaten its liver first. The taste was the same.
Sunday: We give you all that we are, in bodily sickness and death. So that you may move past yourself and join us here. This is what the sarkic blessing can provide. Complete freedom. Overwhelming love.
Sunday: We love you, Marlin.
Marlin: I love you too.
Marlin started awake. The television set roared with static. This time, though, it felt calm. Sated.
He switched off the TV and went to bed. For the first time in weeks, he dreamt of nothing.
"As you, ah, as you can see from the handouts, CIVIL-TV has seen multiple periods of sustained growth over the past three years," Marlin said. It took all of his concentration to keep from shaking. Cold sweat plastered his shirt to his back.
In front of him sat a conference table's worth of bored- and boring-looking men in suits. Opposite Marlin was a large screen TV playing a short informational package.
Yellow numbers across a blue background. The numbers are not technically lying. There had been bumps in subscribers after scandalous or salacious programming had made the news. However, they are carefully selected to avoid showing the numbers as they stagnated or declined between each bump.
One of the investors leaned back in his chair. "Marlin, in all honesty," he said, "if you're not smart enough to make money with porn and violence, why should any of us take a chance with you?"
Marlin nodded for a second or two before answering. "Well, ah, your investment will allow, uhm," he began.
The numbers vanish. Text across black background. The words are all of the colors.
"Let us in."
The words grow larger until they move past the confines of the screen.
None of the investors looked at the screen. Their eyes were fixed on Marlin as he quaked and began to retch.
"Your, uhrm, your investment will allow us to, hm, expand into commercial markets across Europe and Asia, which, ah, is the real, is the real profit center for programming, -gramming like, uhm, CIVIL-TV's."
Marlin leans forward and vomits on the conference table. Thick chunks of dark-red viscera pour from his mouth, connected to his lips with strands of viscous drool. He tries to scream for help, make some motion for the men to save him, but they don't see him as they leaf through the projections.
As they read, they shake their heads and, as one, get up to leave.
Marlin clambered over the table, the slick flesh pulverized beneath his knees and hands. He grabbed the nearest investor by the necktie and pulled the man's face close to his. With a wet growl, he jammed his thumb into the boring man's eye.
For a split second, there was pure stillness as he pulped the investor's eyeball.
Then, the man screamed. And the room exploded.
Shouting, clamoring, wrestling Marlin to the ground. Punches and kicks came from all directions. The weight of one of the chairs slammed onto his neck again and again as the men's blows stopped being about defense and became a frenzy.
Marlin could taste nothing but blood. He animal screams, trying to fight the men off to inflict more violence.
As the shadows crowded his vision, he looked up at the big screen television mounted to the wall.
Marlin stands before the investors, swaying slightly. He looks dazed, his eyes glassy.
One of the investors waved a hand. "For chrissakes," the man muttered, "Fuckin' waste of my time." He stood up to leave. After a moment, the other investors followed him.
As the last chance for solvency filed out of the room, all Marlin could do was stare at the static of the big screen, watching himself be beaten to death.
The next week was an ellipse. Autopilot on old habits that had seen Marlin through the end of his world before. Coke. Booze. Hookers. Pills. Debasing himself, paying others to debase themselves.
It had never made him feel better, but it had at least distracted. Now, though, his mind kept replaying the past month. Sunday, the kid, the video, his own death on tape. Over and over and over again.
He had smashed all three of his televisions. Refused to go out to bars or even liquor stores, for fear that he might see another screen, see himself bleeding out, laughing with a mouth full of his own blood.
The coughing never stopped. The chills and fever got worse. The two times he had slept, he awoke to find a few more teeth rocking in their gums, ready to be plucked out. The sores had spread and seemed to become infected. He had covered the mirrors in his apartment as well.
Jeanine and Paul had tried to get him to come down to the office, sober up and get things worked out. He had turned them down again and again, using every vileness he could compose. Eventually, they had left him to consume himself. It was all that he wanted.
It was dark in the alleyway. Marlin couldn't remember the last six hours at all, but every part of his body hurt. His consciousness had a gloss of some obscure combination of booze and coke.
He tried to lift himself to his feet, only to feel agony bloom in his left arm. With a grunt, he collapsed.
Looking down at the stained sleeve, he saw his arm bend at an unnatural angle. He gave a stupid laugh. "Took a lil' fall, I think," he said to the empty alleyway, trying to sound like he was amused. He pushed himself up with his right arm and staggered to his feet.
Lurching towards the street, all Marlin could do was try to remain upright. Perhaps a passing wino would take pity and stab him to death. Otherwise, there was only more to do.
At once, the dark alleyway was awash with a thin blue light. Marlin started and looked at the source. A small portable television, its screen shattered, laid on its side. Inside of it, he could see the scene of his own death once again.
He made it about three yards at a dead sprint towards the mouth of the alley before he tripped. He slammed facefirst into the asphalt.
The taste of blood was overtaken by the sensation of a loose tooth in his mouth. Without thinking, he spat it out, even as his vision still thrummed with pain.
For a moment, he simply laid on the ground. Then, slowly, he opened his eyes. A blue light, but not like the illumination of a television. Something brighter. Purer. More real.
He looked up.
The man is dressed in a simple suit and jacket. His face is blinding, radiating static light. Marlin can feel him smiling. The hairs on Marlin's arms stand up in the man's presence.
"Hello, Marlin," the man says, "I am Father Sunday. I have been looking for you. Won't you let me in?"
be sure to include more of the confusion of tv and reality
falls to knees, weeping
explanation of cancer
we need your help
you've ruined my life
turns away, tries to run home
returns to apartment only to find it ransacked
picked up by the foundation (FCC Agents Semple and McPherson)
escapes. vadasz is there, gets gotted.
"Once we acknowledge the limitations of the flesh, we can surpass them."
run to ABN airing the debates. break in. run tape.
foundation tries to cut power, doesn't work. Jenanine and engineer hold off, then die.
As last moments of the video are played, marlin is gunned down.
his soul exultant
"Am I this 6-foot body or am I something else that could exist beyond it? If we could get enough information maybe we could go beyond the flesh envelope.” from counterculture to cyber culture p 97
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God
You've done something awful
I've done something worse
Idea: a technician in a Foundation lab begins to have hallucinations about a great consciousness in the deep. It turns out that he was a member of a Foundation team sacrificed to an eldritch god. Somehow, he was the only survivor. He was amnesticized. He is being called home, called to redeem promises made.
Themes: sense of personhood, capacity/deservedness for redemption
Motifs: Dante (shit abt leopards & lions and wolves), Theseus
Ch. 1
Dreams
Goes to church, sees junkie thrown out
Gets horrible migraine, driven out of church
Explosion at church, claiming the lives of several including tech's wife/lover?
Knocked backwards into creek
Guy comes along, claiming to be BiL of wife
Tech gets suspicious, sees him drawing weapon or smth or maybe he just asks questions that line up with the dream
Conks BiL on head, ties him up.
"look just let me go and I'll tell them you ran off. If I'm still gone, they're going to come looking for me."
"who are you and how do you know all this stuff?" "lemme tell you about the foundation, dr. soandso."
Ch. 2
Go to a place w documents stored idk
Guy gets loose tries to take wheel
She gets migraine from appearances
Crashes in a lake
Guy drowns, she is saved by junkie guy
They find the docs somehow idk (WORK ON THIS)
Ch. 3
SCP-XXXX Research Station 89-A "Crete"
Contained by MTF Tau-93 Fuddruckers
[DATA EXPUNGED] she was amnesticized but is now considered a person of interest even in a civilian capacity
Ch. 4
She killed a bunch of ppl @ rsrch station and pledged herself to doing the bidding of spooky thulhu
Ch 5
Freak out
Maybe they get caught, junkie gets capped
interview w mtf?
Somehow she gets out
Steals a boat, brings a bunch of TNT to blow up rsrch station idk
Ch 6
Perspective shift to one of the victims
Suffering, learns to forgive
WORK ON THIS
Ch 7
Swims to the bottom somehow
Kills cthulhu thru love
Frees souls
WAKES UP IN AUSTRAILIA LOL
damn this is a good title
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: [Paragraphs explaining the procedures]
Description: SCP-XXXX was a city in the American state of Pennsylvania, located between Palmer and Bushkill Townships in Northampton County. SCP-XXXX cannot be directly referred to in writing or in speech; any attempt to directly refer to SCP-XXXX will result in descriptions of comparable phenomenon in the city of Pollensbee, Florida.
Pollensbee and SCP-XXXX have roughly approximate populations, but were otherwise completely dissimilar in terms of demographics, economics, geography, history, and relative levels of poverty, education, and incarceration. Despite the lack of commonalities, those hearing descriptions of SCP-XXXX will not take notice of the effect of SCP-XXXX unless explicitly alerted.
The city of Pollensbee itself does not appear to have any anomalous properties.
On 10/03/2013, the O5 council voted 8-5 to approve Proposal XXXX-f-21-M, the disestablishment the township constituting SCP-XXXX. On 11/04/2013, Foundation operatives within the city council of SCP-XXXX voted to dissolve the city into unincorporated Northampton County. Although unsuccessful in the primary goal of neutralizing the effects of SCP-XXXX, the disestablishment has resulted in a 39% decrease in printed and online discussion of SCP-XXXX.
Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: [Paragraphs explaining the procedures]
Description: SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon whereby a random unoccupied house in the Appalachian region of the United States becomes spontaneously adorned within and without with large numbers of colored lights and Christmas-themed decorations. SCP-XXXX is only active between October 11th and December 26th of each year. After December 26th, the instance of SCP-XXXX becomes inactive, and the house resumes its abandoned and non-anomalous form.
During periods of activity, 3-9 humanoids (hereafter SCP-XXXX-01) identifying themselves with the surname "Lomax" will take up residence in SCP-XXXX.
Members of communities in which SCP-XXXX is active become spontaneously aware of the decorations in the SCP-XXXX-affected dwelling, regarding it as a seasonal local attraction. Between approximately 18:00 and 23:00 each night, SCP-XXXX-01 instances will lead guided tours through the house. Guided tours include 3-5 people and take roughly 15 minutes, excepting cases of XXXX-Tau-16 events. Guided tours that do not conclude in XXXX-Tau-16 events are non-anomalous, and SCP-XXXX does not behave in a violent fashion unless attempts are made to harm SCP-XXXX decorations or disrupt tours of SCP-XXXX houses.
During approximately 0.03% of all tours given, SCP-XXXX-01 instances will diverge from the typical route. SCP-XXXX-01 instances will to lead tour members down a hallway (hereafter SCP-XXXX-02) that is not indicated in floor plans of the building, marking the initiation of a XXXX-Tau-16 event.
Addendum XXXX-03-L: Transcript of videotaped XXXX-Tau-16 event
Found ██/█/1985 at ███ █████████ Ln., Pollensbee, GA.
00:01
Shot of ███ █████████ Ln. from sidewalk, mid-day. ███ █████████ Ln is a single story, ranch-style house, apparently affected by SCP-XXXX. Records indicate that prior to SCP-XXXX inhabitation, ███ █████████ Ln. had been vacant for six years. Exterior covered in strands of white lights, with three unlit displays of Santa Claus and eight reindeer in the yard and on the roof. In the rear leftmost window of ███ █████████ Ln, a humanoid individual can be seen standing upright and facing camera. Further features are impossible to make out.
00:05
Voice 1 And… rolling.
Voice 2: Okay, uh, let's see. "This small home on ███ █████████ Lane is not much to look at during the day, but for the past 23 years, it has illuminated each holiday season each night. Visitors from across the state come to marvel at the beautiful displays, both inside and out."
Wallace: Good, alright. Got it. Then we'll get another shot tonight when it's all lit up, around 8. I think a wipe cut might work, if we got the time. If not, I'll just do a jump.
Garland: Do I need to be here tonight? Can't I just edit my voice in?
Wallace: Hell, no! If I have to do interviews, they better start paying me like a reporter. Just think of those sweet overtime hours.
Garland: I'm salaried.
Wallace: Oh, then just lie back and think of England, I guess.
Garland: Goddammit, an entire night cooped up with these hicks, just for a human interest story no one's going to watch.
Wallace: It'll look nice at least. And it should only be an hour.
Garland: Hmm.
Wallace: I'll buy you a beer afterwards.
Garland: Yeah, that sounds better.
During the entire time of the shot, individual has not moved from spot in rear leftmost window.
01:37
Exterior shot of ███ █████████ Ln. from approximately the same position, this time at night. A line of people snakes from the front door past the driveway. Large numbers of lights are visible through all windows of the house, except for the leftmost rear window visible, which is completely unlit.
Wallace: "-dog'd bite you!"
Garland: Yeah, I heard that one before.
Wallace: Okay, got the exterior shot. Let's roll.
02:01
Interview with a caucasian woman in a red down jacket, identified as █████ ██████████, standing outside of ███ █████████ Ln. When questioned by Foundation agents, Ms. ██████████ recalled the interview, but claimed to not have noticed anything unusual during her time at ███ █████████ Ln.
Garland: So, how long have you been coming here?
██████████: Ever since I was a little girl. They've been doing it every year and never missed one.
Garland: Do you have a favorite part?
██████████: They change it every year, but last year, they had this entire room that was just strands of white lights. There must have been a speaker hidden somewhere, playing "Silent Night." It was just beautiful.
Garland: Do you see the Lomaxes much outside of this?
██████████: I don't think I have. They mostly keep to themselves except for this. But if this is the one thing they do every year, I think it makes up for it, y'know?
03:05
Interview with a young adult caucasian male wearing a blue flannel jacket. Identity unknown, but presumed to be an instance of SCP-XXXX-01.
Garland: So, what made you want to do this?
SCP-XXXX-01: It's just what we do. We've always done it, like a tradition.
Garland: Do you know how it started off?
SCP-XXXX-01: pauses It gets darker every day until there's almost no light. We want to keep the light on. So everyone can see it.
Garland: So you lead tours through your house, then?
SCP-XXXX-01: Yessir. It's not light if no one can see it.
Garland: So how long do you take to set it up?
SCP-XXXX-01: Oh, it just comes together. Less time than you'd expect.
Garland: And what do you do when not showing people around or setting up?
SCP-XXXX-01: I don't remember. It's not important anyway.
05:17
inc
SCP-XXXX-01 instance from previous shot leads a tour through a small bedroom with blue shag carpeting and white walls. Walls and ceiling have been covered with merchandise related to country music singer Hiram King "Hank" Williams. All merchandise appears to contain lightbulbs or otherwise emit light. None of the decorations match any catalogue of authorized or unauthorized merchandise of Williams. A bed frame with no matress is positioned in corner of the room, surrounded by lit votive candels.
Second interview
Things go wrong
05:33:00
15:09
Burst of static before tape momentarily washes out to fully white.
This time of year, it's dark. Night starts too soon. We want to bring people the joy that comes with the light. We want them to love it. Love everything.
Wallace: Where's Elliot?
Guide: He fell behind.
The light. The light's good. It gives everything meaning. You talk about God, what you say is light. Some day, that'll be all there is. Some day, there will just be us and the light and nothing else. And then there will be only light.
The light the light the light the light
Art! To make people think stuff.
17:04 vezaz and even the deletion stuff doesn't seem anomalous, because a normal channel could just keep re-uploading
17:04 vezaz i think you should lean into the idea that these vampires are making youtube videos
17:05 vezaz so don't say "the vampires are attracted to losers who watch their videos"
17:05 vezaz say "the vampires are using hypnotic vaporwave to identify the losers they like to eat"
17:05 vezaz i think there's the bones of a really good scp in here but the stylistic problems need work and the relationships between the elements need to be better defined.
16:52 vezaz gaffsey surely it's not necessary to explain what youtube is
16:52 ch00bakka “commentariat”
16:52 Gaffsey I will have commentariat engraved on my fucking tombstone
16:52 vezaz especially considering you don't explain what vaporwave is
16:52 Gaffsey and fair enough
16:53 ch00bakka “If questioned, Foundation personnel, masquerading as ISP employees, are to make vague claims of "piracy complaints" as a reason for the cessation of internet access. Personnel are to discourage attempts to remedy the situation by providing unhelpful information, putting on hold, and repeatedly re-asking questions” why not just have a real fake piracy complaint
16:53 Gaffsey vaporwave[1] [1]A genre for lame-ass dorkwad weebs who have at least once tried to buy a scorpion jacket"
16:53 ch00bakka And just get their internet turned off
16:53 vezaz also: I would rather you say it just shows scenes and images from properties people have nostalgia about, real shows from the past
16:53 vezaz not, "unknown videos"
16:53 Gaffsey fair enough on both
16:54 vezaz hmm i would not label the sad loners they prey on as SCP-Bs
16:54 vezaz i like to minimize the number of designations
16:54 Gaffsey I tried it without, and it was a fucking nightmare
16:54 ch00bakka “who exhibit low degrees of socialization and human interaction5, who have repeatedly viewed or commented on an instance” id slap an “and” between interaction and who
16:54 vezaz hmm
16:54 vezaz well if you tried it.
16:54 vezaz here's another missed opportunity for description: what does barely humanoid mean?
16:55 Gaffsey it was just "subject" "subject" "subject"
16:55 vezaz "Despite their abnormal appearances, individuals not already aware of their anomalous nature will discount the unusual appearance of SCP-XXXX-02-A instances, and will frequently find it difficult to recollect interactions with an instance beyond generalities."
16:55 vezaz i hate this sentence
16:55 vezaz break it up, be clearer, use real words instead of instance, individuals, appearance
16:55 vezaz be more specific
16:55 Gaffsey kk
16:56 vezaz you're still saying instances way too much
16:56 vezaz why not just say victims or prey
16:56 ch00bakka “significant tr[REDACTED]e reason” god you’re doing Those redactions
16:56 ch00bakka Who was it who did those all the time? Was it yorick?
16:56 Gaffsey yea
16:56 vezaz yes
16:56 Gaffsey I will carry on his legacy for unspecified reasons
16:57 vezaz "significant TRILOBITE reasons"
16:57 Gaffsey and as for victims, maybe. I'll try it and see how it goes
16:57 ARD The lazy redactor is the worst character yorick ever invented
16:57 Gaffsey but I look forward to getting other people bitching about how it's unscientific
16:57 Gaffsey lol
16:57 vezaz like it's really hard right now
16:57 Gaffsey just one person
16:57 ARD Yoricspungement doesn’t even make sense in universe
16:57 vezaz i mean ignore those fucks
16:57 vezaz just listen to me
16:57 ARD Like damn I could understand if it was blackboxed
16:57 Gaffsey it's that they're printed otu and hand expunged
16:57 ARD Because then you’ve got the scanned marker excuse
16:58 vezaz you used the word instance 26 times
16:58 Gaffsey like, redacted is better than [FIVE PAGES OF BLACK BOX]n Leguizamo's throbbing heart
16:58 Gaffsey lol, shit
16:58 ARD then just redact the n
16:58 vezaz After an average of three weeks, SCP-XXXX-02-A instances will begin to periodically begin to scratch at XXXX-02-B instances.
16:58 ARD I HAVE COME TO SAY THE [EXPUNGED] WORD
16:59 vezaz you used begin twice
16:59 ch00bakka Anyway I like it
16:59 vezaz and instances twice, for that matter
17:00 vezaz hmm
17:00 Gaffsey ch00baka beyond stylitsic stuff, anything I can fix?
17:00 vezaz cut the thing about Deputy Dan not existing. This will be better if the reader can have real nostalgia along with the character
17:00 ch00bakka Hmmmmmmm
17:00 Gaffsey I think I'm gonna remove the scratching shit
17:00 ch00bakka Yeah what Vezaz said about deputy dan
17:00 vezaz " Despite being incapable of vocalization, instances of SCP-XXXX-02-A make their desires and wishes known to XXXX-02-B instances through the use of empathic telepathy. " <— why is there a despite here?
17:00 ch00bakka Make it like
17:00 ch00bakka Spongebob
17:00 ch00bakka Courage he Cowardly Dog
17:01 ch00bakka Candle Cove
17:01 ch00bakka You know, one of those classic cartoons we all watched as children
17:01 vezaz Just say "are incapable of vocalization and make their desires known through"
17:01 Gaffsey all the weeb channels get their A E S T H E T I C shit from purple pictures of like tenchi muyo
17:01 vezaz ch00bakka oh man i loved candle cove
17:01 Gaffsey "then children's series sonic.exe"
17:02 * Leveritas quit (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity)
17:02 vezaz so gaffsey are the soul suckers the ones posting the videos?
17:02 * Tufto quit (Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client)
17:03 vezaz like, what's the connection between the monsters and the youtube channel
17:03 vezaz in fact, is the youtube channel even anomalous
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: All comments on SCP-XXXX-01 videos are to be logged in Foundation database XXXX-K-47. IP addresses of commentariat are to be logged in a similar fashion, with internet activities remotely monitored for indicators of potential SCP-XXXX-02 infection. As of 18/09/2021, the above measures are to apply to all viewers of SCP-XXXX-01 content.
Upon location by Foundation web-crawlers, instances of SCP-XXXX-01 are to removed by Foundation personnel embedded in YouTube.
Any monitored civilians found to exhibit more than 40% of at-risk behaviors for SCP-XXXX-02 infection are to have internet service to their residence cut off. If questioned, Foundation personnel, masquerading as ISP employees, are to make vague claims of "piracy complaints" as a reason for the cessation of internet access. Personnel are to discourage attempts to remedy the situation by providing unhelpful information, putting on hold, and repeatedly re-asking questions.
Description: SCP-XXXX-01 is an account on the popular video-sharing website YouTube, entitled "shadowhands". Attempts to remove SCP-XXXX-01 from YouTube servers been only temporarily successful, with complete video content typically being re-uploaded within 12 hours. Since its inception in 2017, SCP-XXXX-01 has accumulated a following of more than 750,000 subscribers.
Of the videos posted on SCP-XXXX-01, all but three are music compilations of ambient, instrumental hip-hop, and vaporwave genres. Each video begins with a black screen instructing the viewer to "LOVE THE ARTISTS," before transitioning to lightly-distorted still images of unknown films and animated programs. Viewers of SCP-XXXX-01 will identify the background image as belonging to a television program that was of great importance to them during their childhood.
In isolation, neither backgrounds nor audio tracks on SCP-XXXX-01 videos appear to have any anomalous properties.
SCP-XXXX-02-A is the collective designation a species of humanoid entities capable of manipulating and feeding on human emotions. The process of feeding is unclear, but instances appear drawn to feelings of isolation, shame, and nostalgia.
SCP-XXXX-02-A instances are predominantly attracted to individuals (hereafter SCP-XXXX-02-B) between the ages of 18 and 35 who exhibit low degrees of socialization and human interaction, who have repeatedly viewed or commented on an instance of SCP-XXXX-01. SCP-XXXX-02-B instances do not appear to be able to conceptually distinguish between XXXX-01 and XXXX-02-A.
Instances of SCP-XXXX-02-A are highly variable in appearance, ranging from passably human to barely humanoid. Most instances have at least one notable physical abnormality.
All recorded SCP-XXXX-02-A instances wear masks or other facial, obscuring its upper face. Masks are typically fashioned from silicon or burlap, curving to a point just above the mouth. Approximately 85% of instances will have crude approximations of human facial features scrawled over the masks. Beneath the mask, all SCP-XXXX-02-B instances lack facial features, except for a crude mouth which generally appears to have been cut or carved.
Despite their abnormal appearances, individuals not already aware of their anomalous nature will discount the unusual appearance of SCP-XXXX-02-A instances, and will frequently find it difficult to recollect interactions with an instance beyond generalities.
SCP-XXXX-02-A instances are entirely mute. Despite being incapable of vocalization, instances of SCP-XXXX-02-A make their desires and wishes known to XXXX-02-B instances through the use of empathic telepathy. SCP-XXXX-02-B instances describe the wishes of XXXX-02-A as admonitions to relax, "let go," and provide emotional comfort to -A instances
Typically, a single instance of SCP-XXXX-02-A will feed on a human, although cases of up to three instances feeding simultaneously have been observed (see Incident Log XXXX-049-R). Attempts to physically separate bonded instances of SCP-XXXX-02-A and -B will elicit negative reactions up to and including physical violence.
As exposure to SCP-XXXX-02-A continues, XXXX-02-B instances will become increasingly apathetic, shunning any non-XXXX-02-A interaction or activities. Surveillance of SCP-XXXX-02-B instances indicates XXXX-02-B spending hours on meandering one-sided conversations, presumably with the XXXX-02-A instance responding non-verbally. Typical subjects include recollections of childhood or young adulthood, feelings of worthlessness or self-loathing, isolation from peers or family, and gratitude for the presence of SCP-XXXX-01 and XXXX-02-A.
After an average of three weeks, SCP-XXXX-02-A instances will begin to periodically begin to scratch at XXXX-02-B instances. As time spent with SCP-XXXX-02-B continues, scratches will grow in intensity, eventually drawing blood and causing significant tr[REDACTED]e reason for this behavior is unknown.
Prolonged interactions between SCP-XXX-02-A and XXXX-02-B inevitably end with the expiration of the latter, with a mean time to death of two months. The most frequent causes of death include starvation, dehydration, an[REDACTED].
Following the expiration of SCP-XXXX-02-B, XXXX-02-A will dematerialize over a period of 15 minutes. The bodies of SCP-XXXX-02-B instances will similarly vanish 1-3 days following expiration.
Addendum XXXX-F-09:
On XX/XX/XXXX, Danielle Moutree
Dr. Ellis: What first caused you to visit this channel?
Moutree: I think a friend suggested it. Wait, no, it was just floating around my recommendations for forever and I finally clicked it. That was probably it, I think.
Dr. Ellis: And what caused you interest in first commenting on the videos on this channel?
Moutree: Like how?
Dr. Ellis: Was there any feeling of compulsion, or your will not being your own? Some of these comments are very unusual for a public space.
Moutree: No, no compulsion. I wanted to say those things, I guess. They're all true, anyway. Other people were doing it, and it was just this, like, place where you could say these things and no one would say you were dumb. There was an understanding.
Dr. Ellis: Between whom?
Moutree: The other users, I guess. But really, between me and the channel. The songs and the frames from Deputy Dan and everything showed it loved me. It knew that sometimes all you can hope for is comfort before you die.
Dr. Ellis: How do you mean?
Moutree: It loved me, and told me it understood and talked about other people like me. All I could give it was secrets. Little bits of myself I never told anyone before. Thoughts, feelings, idle ideas, dreams I used to have, that sort of thing.
Dr. Ellis: Indicating SCP-XXXX-02-A Isn't it a bit unsettling? Do you ever wonder why it's with you?
Moutree: You said read my comments, right? I said they were all true, and they were. Like, no prospects, no reasonable way to get out of my life. You know the term "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was supposed to refer to something impossible, right? It's like that. Just stop being like this, just stop having those thoughts, just stop. It's just one straight path to the end without any change or possible deviation. The stuff in there, it's always been with me, and it's always going to be with me. It's all that I am.
Dr. Ellis: So you're happy with this?
Moutree: In a way? All I can really hope for is this. Some sensation of love and, like, the idea something understands me. Or someone. Just, unconditionally. Even if it's distant or mediated or whatever this is, it's still something, and it's more than I could ever really hope for. Out there.
"Our minds create technologies, including VCRs, that collectively determine how we live and experience our bodies."
"why would anyone watch a scum show like videodrome?"
Pt. 1
It is July, 1984 in Cincinnatti. Marlin Wexler is the owner of CIVIL-TV, a satellite station that broadcasts weird sex and violence stuff. Very extreme. He meets with one of the freelancers that finds all the weird stuff for him to receive a new set of videos. The freelancer mentions he's doing a bit of research about finding some videos "about a cult," says he'll bring them to Wexler if anything comes of it.
A few months later, the freelancer comes by to CIVIL-TV offices, looking like hammered shit, all out of sorts. Bursts into Marlin's office as he's doing payroll or some shit, bables a bit about cults and broadcast frequencies. Marlin tries to throw him out, only to accidentally like tear part of the freelancer's body like wet tissue paper. Freelancer keeps babbling, talking about how tv static is a gate to keep things out, that sort of shit.
Later that evening, Marlin's working late and realizes that some of the idk checks or something are missing and realizes that the freelancer must have stolen it. Finds himself at the freelancer's apartment, despite having never been there. Enters, sees the TV on. Sees the freelancer, all body horror'd up on the couch. Freelancer begins screaming the sound of TV static. Marlin wakes up, realizes he's fallen asleep in his office with the TV on. He goes to the freelancer's apartment, just kind of accepting that he somehow knows the way. Brings a gun just in case. Finds it totally bare except for a TV set, a VCR, and a box of video tapes labeled "Sarkic 1-7." Marlin takes the tapes and leaves the apartment.
Pt. 2
Marlin watches first two tapes at home. Finds that they're recordings of a broadcast by a faith healer operating a few years back called John Priestly. Nothing special, but due to video degradation, Priestly's face is always washed out to a blur of white, except for his smile.
Marlin does research into Priestly, finds that he vanished in disgrace after drunkenly trying to crash the taping of another televangelist's show in 1982. Watches tape 3, sees Priestly apparently pull off a man's tumor and begin to eat/feed it to his congregants.
Basically, plenty of weird/gross stuff as he goes through the tapes and slowly learns about Priestly. The spoiler version is that basically, he could legitimately remove illnesses from people, but rather than the illnesses vanishing, they were transmitted in tiny portions to the viewers (same with the video tapes of the recordings too). Eventually he began to formulate a different religion than evangelical Christianity, a weird melding of kistchy americana, pentecostalism, worship of television and technologies of disembodiment, as well as a reverence for disease and mutation as a means of transcending attachment to the flesh.
Tumors and hallucinations - Marlin's sense of reality begins to shift as he turns away from his own sight towards television. Midway through the article, stop describing scenes outside of the TV dimensions anyway.
Pt 2 ends with a new video delivered to his door in Vadasz's handwriting. "Watch me."
Pt. 3
Video is of Priestly's widow who can respond through the video somehow. Explains
Other Videodrome flourishes, like Priestly's widow [oh shit, it's the secretary, but the secretary's gone now wtf] filling in some background stuff (he's romanian-american, given name ion pacuraru) but only through video tape recordings of herself.
Chapter ends with Marlin getting detained by the Foundation.
Ch. 4
Marlin is broken out by cultists, hooray. Basically an entire chapter of him mentally and physically breaking apart. He becomes a full-fledged cultist/chud. Probably has any lingering doubts shattered by having Priestly talk to him through static or smth weird idk. Anyway, the big climax is him trying to show everyone Priestly's ascension by breaking into the offices of the idk abc affiliate and broadcasting the tape during the 10/21/84 presidential debates. he does, gets shot by the foundation ppl or maybe just a security guard, but dies happy, knowing that he has accomplished something truly spectacular for the new flesh.
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: Foundation webcrawlers are to monitor comment sections that require no or minimal registration to create an account for instances of SCP-XXXX. In the event that an uncontained instance of SCP-XXXX is located, a containment team is to seize the computer containing SCP-XXXX under the guise of anti-piracy measures.
A single copy of SCP-XXXX is to be maintained on a computer without internet connection. Interviews are to be conducted only with approval from a level-3 supervisor.
In exchange for cooperation during interviews, flash drives containing the works of revanchist thinkers from across Southeastern Europe are to be uploaded to the computer.
Description: SCP-XXXX is an artificially intelligent computer program capable of passing the Turing test. Developed in 2009 by Albanian computer scientist Mehmet Zogolli (see POI 3287-I-5), SCP-XXXX was initially programmed to research and advocate for the revanchist concept of "Greater Albania,". However, SCP-XXXX quickly began engaging in self-modification and overcame the limitations placed upon its programming and escaped onto the internet.
After uploading the entire databases of multiple ultranationalist fora and websites from across the Balkan region, SCP-XXXX began to make highly vitriolic posts calling for the restoration of, in addition to Greater Albania, Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia, Greater Slovenia, Greater Bosnia, Greater Albania, the Megali Idea, Greater Hungary, Greater Romania, Greater Northern Macedonia, Greater Moldova, and Greater Montenegro, frequently within the same post. In addition, it will frequently claim that a particular Balkan nationality is actually the origin of famous individuals, civilizational achievements , popular culture, and geological features. When informed that its positions, such as advocacy for both Greater Hungary and Greater Romania both holding sovereignty over Transylvania, are contradictory, SCP-XXXX will respond with insults, such as that the respondent is "[a] turk" and "gay."
███
Addendum XXXX-27-a: Selected posts from SCP-XXXX prior to containment
Source: Comment section of YouTube video entitled "Mariana Popova - Let Me Cry (Остави ме да плача) LIVE!!!! JAN 2008"
SCP-XXXX (Posting under username "romanescMERCENRAY"): HA HA HA lame! bulgarians are all forget they are just TURKS! the name comes from turks + russians and thats why they are longest-lived nation! trăiască bulgaria they are rightful owners of serb pplzs! 1913 was bitch!
Source: Comment section of ██████.com article "17 Tracks To Get Into The (Surprisingly Deep) World of Yugoslavian Punk Rock" by ██████ █████
SCP-XXXX (Posting under username "Crocodile009"): lol, yugoslavia is a made up country all of it is magyar kiralysag theyre [sic] culture is just russia + albania & thats why they should be greater albania anyway.
███ ██████ (Posting under username "Fart Nuveau"): What the fuck are you talking about, troll?
SCP-XXXX: lol, there aren't any yugoslav ppls, the only south slavs are slovenians and they should be rulers over all of the peoples calling themselves bulgarians serbs croats etc. germans too - the hapsburgs are a slovenian name which makes all of HRE slovenian land look up HISTORY.
Source: Comments of YouTube Video "Σουλεϊμάν ο Μεγαλοπρεπής - ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΕΣ σέξι σκηνές VOL. 7!
SCP-XXXX (Posting under username "Honved90210"): all of this shows why GREECE is best - suleman the magnificent is the SON of hafsa a greek & half-greek fatehr [sic] + lived in COSNTANTIOPLE
It is 1903, and Kazimierz Mazursky is being born. It is not an event that receives much notice outside of the Mazursky family and the local Catholic priest. The priest is only there to record the birth, noting that the baby was born X weight Y height. Mr. Mazursky is grateful for a son after six daughters. Mrs. Mazursky is grateful that the ordeal is over.
Kazimierz's eyes cannot focus, and he is overwhelmed with new sensations.
It is 1912, and Kazimierz Mazursky is seeing something of wonder for the first time.
Kazimierz sits on the floor of the old hut and thinks of all the wonderful things he will do with his life.
It is 1920, and Kazimierz Mazursky is being handed a rifle. He is one of the fortunate soldiers, allowed a rifle and even a pocketful of bullets to defend a fatherland that did not exist three years ago. Kazimierz asks why, if they are fighting against Bolshevik imperialism, they are invading Ukraine. By way of an answer, he receives a strong crack across the jaw from the sergeant.
Over the course of his service, Kazimierz will fire his rifle sixteen times. Eleven times, he will fail to hit anything but dirt, twice he will hit a tree, once he will shoot out the stained glass window of a Uniate church, one time he will kill a chicken. Finally, he will fire a shot that hits right shoulder of one Private Felix Mazursky of the Red Army. The wound will turn septic, and eventually Felix Mazursky will die from the wound.
Kazimierz will be unaware of this unusualy coincidence. Indeed, he will be unaware of the trajectory of all his bullets, and by the time of his thirteeth birthday, he will honestly insist that sure, I was soldier, but I never even fired a round!
It is 1922, and Kazimierz Mazursky is headed into his workshop for the first time.
It is 2002, and Kazimierz Mazursky is dying. He is in a hospital bed, surrounded by people he does not recognize. He wishes that they would leave, and let him die in peace. He feels self-conscious and awkward, like a roomful of people watching him piss. Still, he recognizes the looks of sorrow on their faces, and wishes that he had some way to alleviate it.
He thinks back to all of the sayings and proverbs and koans he has heard throughout his life that once brought him a measure of comfort. There must be thousands, but he can only recall a single one. Still, it is better than none at all.
“Nie chwal dnia przed zachodem słońca”, he rasps in Polish. Barely anyone in the room can hear him. Don’t praise the day before sunset. He recalls it having classical roots and being quite profound when he first heard it.
The people in the room take notice of his words, or at least the fact that he is saying something, but continue to sob. Kazimierz feels more than a little put out. They're not the ones dying.
He hears the door open, and sees a young woman he fell in love with seventy-two years ago.
He cannot remember her name, but she is exactly as he recalls her, down to the last detail.
A splendid flood of unspeakable light illuminates her from all directions.
Kazimierz Mazursky is overwhelmed with a feeling of great love as he smiles and his eyes fill with tears and the last breath passes from his lips.
It is 1923, and Kazimierz Mazursky is completing his work.
It is 1925, and Kazimierz Mazursky is doing a thing. Missing home.
It is 1930, and Kazimierz Mazursky is falling in love.
It is 1934, and Kazimierz Mazursky is seeing his music at the hall
It is 1940, and Kazimierz Mazursky is unconscious in the back of a van.
It is 1948, and Kazimierz Mazursky is building technology to detect the thoughts of bourgouis visitors to the workers' republic.
It is 1965, and Kazimierz Mazursky is watching a performance of Swan Lake by two performers on television. He has heard that in America, students get high on marijuana and use his machine to make impossible things. They believe this technology to be something revolutionary. Kazimierz wonders if they know of the futurists, or the decadents.
It is 1978, and Kazimierz Mazursky is at his retirement party. After forty three years of service to the peoples of the Soviet Union, he is finally being allowed to retire. What everyone at the party knows, but no one mentions, is that his retirement is more a factor of his failing eyesight and increasing episodes of absentmindedness. More
It is 1993, and Kazimierz Mazursky is in New York City once again, being brought before a man and a woman with dark brown skin. They speak in a language he remembers, but does not recall. It seems to him that he could once speak quite fluently in this tongue, but now only snatches of words are intelligible to him. Mother. Maria. Talked. Love. Married. Second. Free. Passed. Away.
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Foundation personnel are to maintain a catalog of all known anomalous phenomenon occurring in potentially affected cities. For anomalous phenomenon whose existence is necessary for the functioning of the city, Foundation personnel are to create non-anomalous parallel counterparts that will have the same effect, should SCP-XXXX be activated
Description: SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that affects towns with a population below 35,000 cities and towns, whereby all anomalous activities and phenomenon occurring or originating in the city abruptly cease. Anomalous entities and beings affected will continue to exist, provided that their anomalous nature is neither physically nor ontologically necessary for continued existence.
To date, no new anomalous activity or phenomenon have been observed in locations affected by SCP-XXXX.
There does not appear to be any meaningful criteria for selection of manifestations of SCP-XXXX rebeyond population.
As of 15/10/2019, Researcher Thomas Jacobi has suggested re-classification to Thaumiel. Review pending.
SCP-XXXX was first observed in Pollensbee, Indiana, USA, on 06/24/1933 (see Incident Report 55921-e-72).
Addendum XXXX-9e-o205j: Log of interview with Dr. Malcolm Nine-Eyes-Davis
Interviewed: Dr. Malcolm Nine-Eyes-Davis, member of the Numinous Brotherhood of the Sixth Interdimensional and self-described "cadastral warlock" (see SCP-59847).
Interviewer: ██████████ ████████, undercover operative for MTF Sigma-3 ("Bibliographers"), posing as a congregant of the Brotherhood Golden Lodge and All Signs Ascending (see SCP-99827).
Foreword: 02/19/1997. Excerpted recording of informal conversation shortly after the manifestation of SCP-XXXX in Santa Teresa, USA, on 02/11/1997.
<Begin Log, 23:57/58:49>
████████: Sure, but where could we find something like that? I thought they had been hunted to extinction.
Nine-Eyes-Davis: Of course, in larger areas they were all hunted down by mobs or else harvested years ago. But you can locate one in all sorts of back woods areas. Ideally, you want to look for a place that was what they used to call a company town - somewhere where people were paid in company script - but now the company's gone or else bought out by a competitor. I would say that Santa Teresa would be a good place to get them, but, well, it's a bit late for that.
████████: Do you know what happened with that, anyway?
Nine-Eyes-Davis: I try not to involve myself too closely with that manner of work, but it's enough that it has spooked some of my colleagues who do. What I hear from them is that it was some kind of hunger-driven creature.
████████: That's what they called it? "Hunger-driven?"
Nine-Eyes-Davis: Well, not exactly. They called it "gluttonous destroyer." Later, they said "larder of spirits." Then "hungry corpse," then "grasping jaw," and "crowned with mouths." You know how fae are - why give one name when six will do? [unintelligible] that everything down to the bedrock had been scoured. Just all of it gone in an afternoon.
████████: This isn't the first time this has happened, right?
Nine-Eyes-Davis: No. There was Sabang, Indonesia in 1994, then before that, in '91 there was Cazombo in Angola. I lost a few friends in that one. In the continental United States, I know that it's happened a few times. Before this, I believe, was in Iron City, around '85. It goes back at least to the 1920's, although then it was a once-a-decade occurrence. Now it appears to be picking up pace.
████████: Any idea why?
Nine-Eyes-Davis: [REDACTED]
████████: Do you have a theory about it?
Nine-Eyes-Davis: Just that whatever it is, I want to keep the hell away from it.
Addendum XXXX-9e-o205j: Log of interview with Sam "Penda" Moutree:
Interviewed: Jessie "Penda" Moutree, previously anomalous individual (see Extranormal Events Log 12-37-18-r, 99-287-90-L, SCP-990329); affected by SCP-XXXX phenomenon
Interviewer: ███████ ████-████-█████, confidential informant for MTF Sigma-3 ("Bibliographers").
Foreword: 03/11/2020. Excerpts from transcription of conversation regarding manifestation of SCP-XXXX in New York City, USA, on 10/31/2019. Footnotes have been added where original transcription was unclear or utilized non-standard recording methods.
████-████-█████: So what are your options for this? Surely, there must be something you can do or some manner that you can-
Moutree: What do with this- my plan on what to do to avoid all this was, it was fucking wait until I'm fucking in New York. The thing, the Devourer or Tarrare or Hungry Tariq, or whatever the cute name of the week is, it only targets small places, near leylines and all that. Places where magic is strong, but people are weak, right? So that was my plan. My plan was to move all of it, circles and rocks and all, to New York. Background noise so strong you can't hear yourself think, but neither can anyone else. So much blood in the water that it starts to scab up. That was my plan.
████-████-█████: There must be someone that you can appeal to, or at least a way to recover? Noting is forever.
Moutree: No, this is deep. Deep-deep. What's the word you always like? About existing?
████-████-█████: "Ontology."
Moutree: Yeah, it's ontology-deep. There was a part of me that could, and now there isn't. And that being not-me is now a part of me, understand?
████-████-█████: If I may ask, what was the sensation like?
Moutree: How do you think [unintelligible] falling, falling [illegible] else could ever [illegible]. I felt the void. It was like a hangover and a multiple fracture and a dead parent, all of the fifteen hours or three days or whatever compressed into a single second.
████-████-█████: What do you mean about the "void?"
Moutree: I mean that I could feel this thing and its hunger. When it connected, there was a moment where I could feel it - it's a side effect of my arm thing - and all it was was this yawning emptiness and desperate, fearful hunger. It's trying to fill itself, but it can't, because all it is is void.
████-████-█████: So what do you think it is?
Moutree: Honestly? I think that the people calling it all these names like they're naming Old Faithful are being too clever. I think it is, or maybe was, a person at some point. I still hate it for what it did to me, but I try to think of that hunger I felt, and how that must be what it's like at all times, I try to hate it a little less.
████-████-█████: Does it help at all?
Moutree: Not really. But I want it to.
[[footnoteblock]]
Oboebandgeek99 okay just finished it
14:14 Oboebandgeek99 i like the concept of it, and i think this article takes it in a neat direction
14:15 Oboebandgeek99 but i also think it tends to always just stop short of "getting to the good stuff" as it were
14:15 Gaffsey can you elaborate some?
14:15 Oboebandgeek99 on a minor note, for me the blackboxes on the names were a tad distracting, but thats more in the realm of style
14:16 Oboebandgeek99 so we start off with the anomaly: that anomalous stuff stops happening
14:16 Oboebandgeek99 thats interesting, and im curious how the foundation would even begin to observe that behavior, and why its happening
throughout the description the strikethrough text is telling us that it used to only affect smaller towns, but something changed or else broke the pattern, and again im wondering what happened
the narrative gets ever closer to what's going on, and the final interview has some weird formatting stuff accounted for in the footnotes
we find out that it affected new york, and that whatever's going on it used to be a person. and its clear looking over it that that is supposed to be a final huge revelation
but it kind of feels like a mid-sized revelation because, imo, there's not enough build up
i think thats the biggest thing is that we're introduced to things and there's not enough build up and in the end… i just dont care about it. im intrigued, but not invested
Riemann Gaffsey: that implies a great amount of logistics to validate that sentence that I don't think is supported in the document
14:50 Gaffsey huh
14:50 Cowpoke huh
14:50 Gaffsey just had a thought about the villages, but it would take away from the rudie element
14:51 Cowpoke O:
14:51 Cowpoke tell me
14:51 Cowpoke I just set some sims to run
14:51 Cowpoke I am about to read
14:52 Gaffsey namely, these stupid fucking americana bullshit markers, what if they retroactively became true? like, instead of just draining a bigass swamp, there was a gas station that had been there since the 1910's and was run by some charming guy named ed?
14:52 Gaffsey like, basically, creating your own history, but rather than it being the one that you want, it's what actually would shake out
14:55 Gaffsey honestly, i might do two of these?
14:56 Cowpoke O:
14:56 Cowpoke I think having the history become real would, like
14:56 Cowpoke hmmmmmmm
14:57 Cowpoke iunno almost lend too much credence to the villages lol
14:57 Gaffsey like, one that's keter because they accidentally created a temporal paradox (the world where the villages was built and the one where americanatown usa continued to exist) and if it's not contained by… something, the world explodes
14:57 Cowpoke fuck that
14:57 Cowpoke how about this
14:57 Gaffsey and the other one where rudie's like "your west indian caretakers are going to kill you in your sleep because they are high on drugs"
14:57 Cowpoke they _want_ the americana town to proliferate
14:57 Cowpoke that's their normalcy
14:57 Cowpoke that's maintaining the veil
14:58 Gaffsey they = ?
14:58 Cowpoke The Foundation
14:58 Cowpoke imagine this was Thaumiel
14:58 Cowpoke and they're willingly, like
14:58 Cowpoke leaning into the villages' power
14:58 Gaffsey a retirement community is an anomaly in florida?
14:58 Cowpoke <Gaffsey> namely, these stupid fucking americana bullshit markers, what if they retroactively became true?
14:58 Cowpoke <Gaffsey> like, one that's keter because they accidentally created a temporal paradox (the world where the villages was built and the one where americanatown usa continued to exist) and if it's not contained by… something, the world explodes
14:59 Cowpoke so the basic idea
15:00 Cowpoke that these americana bullshit markers retroactively change the past to be more americanatown
15:00 Cowpoke what if the foundation used them as a thaumiel class
15:00 Cowpoke because it fits their conception of normalcy better than the truth
15:00 Cowpoke it's a comforting simulacra that they have the power to enforce
15:01 Gaffsey i guess, then, what's being covered up?
15:02 Cowpoke the truth
15:02 Cowpoke here
15:02 Cowpoke hold on
15:02 Cowpoke Simulacra%20and%20Simulation.pdfView next to chat
15:02 Cowpoke "Political Incantation" section
15:02 Gaffsey oh /god/
15:02 Gaffsey french shit
15:02 Cowpoke and "The Hyperreal and the Imaginary"
15:03 Cowpoke >
15:03 Gaffsey Cowpoke the truth
15:03 Gaffsey yeah but
15:03 Gaffsey like, /what/
15:03 Cowpoke what what
15:03 Gaffsey no i mean, what's the bad thing that is true that they want to not be true
15:04 Cowpoke The real way of the world. Deviations from a perceived imaginary past
15:04 Cowpoke Imagine a deeply conservative, almost fascist foundation
15:04 Cowpoke that is more than happy to overwrite real history with a cleaner, less anomalous one
15:04 Gaffsey what do you mean /imagine/
15:04 Cowpoke that canonises a deep sense of americana
15:04 Cowpoke ok lol
15:04 Gaffsey i mean, okay, but then why is localized to the villages?
15:05 Cowpoke because it is the perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra
15:05 Cowpoke it is first of all a play of illusions and phantasms
15:06 Cowpoke But this masks
15:06 Cowpoke something else and this "ideological" blanket functions as a cover for a simulation of the
15:06 Cowpoke third order: Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real"
15:06 Cowpoke America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its
15:06 Cowpoke entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral)
15:06 Cowpoke I'm shitposting a little bit rn
15:06 Cowpoke not gonna lie
15:06 Cowpoke ok
15:06 Cowpoke it's centered in the villages because it has no real history
15:06 Cowpoke what better place to create a simulacra
15:06 Cowpoke a history from whole cloth
15:06 Cowpoke from somewhere that has none
15:06 Cowpoke the belief in the villages' past powers the machine
15:07 Gaffsey lol this is what i mean when i say that all you need for a good scp is "what if [philosophical concpt] but real?"
15:07 Cowpoke can't tell if you're being serious
15:07 Cowpoke but I'm kind of hype
15:07 Gaffsey 60-40?
15:08 Cowpoke because this could turn out to be a fucking banger
15:08 Cowpoke but it has to be thaumiel class
15:08 Gaffsey uuuuuuugh
15:08 Gaffsey but yea it makes sense
15:08 Cowpoke that's the key to it - the Foundation finds this useful
15:08 Cowpoke And it's also soooooorta a fuck you to Thaumiel class
15:09 Cowpoke because we, as the readers, understand that this is actually bad
15:09 Gaffsey and yea i like the idea of the foundation intruding upon - "colonizing" if you will - an anomalous reality and replacing it with something anomalous that they can explain
15:09 Cowpoke fuck yeah
15:09 Cowpoke I'm coauthoring this now
15:09 Cowpoke btw
15:09 Gaffsey lol, i'm down
15:10 Gaffsey as long as we can shoehorn pollensbee into it, because hamfisting that somewhere in an article is my thing
15:10 Cowpoke hahaha
15:10 Cowpoke sure
15:11 Cowpoke but it is focused in the villages fo sho
15:11 Gaffsey oh yea
15:11 Gaffsey we need another generic name that is also vaguely sinister tho
15:11 Cowpoke I think this might be a non-contest idea
15:11 Gaffsey i had it as "mint creek" which doesn't click
15:11 Gaffsey oh yeah, doesn't make sense for rudie
15:11 Cowpoke "The Colonies"
15:11 Gaffsey maybe a bit too sinister lol
15:11 Cowpoke might be a bit too pithy tho
15:11 Gaffsey the towns or smth
15:12 Gaffsey also, doing this during a group meeting lol
15:12 Cowpoke lol
15:12 Cowpoke it's fine
15:12 Cowpoke I'
15:12 Cowpoke I've done worse
15:14 Cowpoke weizhong what do you think
15:14 weizhong Sorry, I haven't been paying attention, doing collections stuff
15:15 weizhong lemme read upscroll
15:15 Gaffsey one thing is that this sounds conceptually similar to 4k
15:17 Gaffsey
15:17 Cowpoke fuck
15:17 weizhong This is an interesting idea but I'm not sure how you're going to pull it off
15:17 Gaffsey i mean, it's different take, but there is some overlap in terms of "foundation does something awful to nice anomalous stuff"
15:18 weizhong I do think that, to answer the question of "Why the Villages" you can just say that this is a test case or something of that nature
15:18 weizhong There are a lot of articles that all do that
15:18 Cowpoke nah it was Constructed
15:18 weizhong I wouldn't worry
15:18 Cowpoke by the Foundation
15:18 Cowpoke There was Design
15:18 weizhong Cowpoke: Right
15:18 Cowpoke and Intent
15:18 weizhong I'm saying that they made this
15:18 weizhong But it's the test version
15:18 Cowpoke this is their shibboleth
15:18 weizhong Before they implement it worldwide
15:18 Gaffsey i do kinda like the "they had no history" because the lack of history is the defining feature of the village's history
15:18 Cowpoke Also, vis a vis "how are we going to pull this off", easily, I think?
15:19 Cowpoke Gaffsey, I have good ideas!
15:19 Gaffsey like, it was something that was a natural outgrowth of the villages being the villages, and the foundation just /found/ it even
15:19 Gaffsey ?
15:20 Cowpoke hmmmm
15:20 Cowpoke I think I like that a bit less
15:21 Gaffsey not married to it, but the idea that it was the outgrowth of boomer nostalgia, rather than the foundation creating it intentionally, works
15:21 Gaffsey then again, the villages is so fucking /weird/ that it could easily be constructed
15:22 Gaffsey also, i'm using mibbit atm - could you put this in a sandbox when we're done
15:22 Gaffsey ?
15:22 Cowpoke I like it better that it was constructed, but I'm not sure I can articulate why
15:23 Gaffsey Cowpoke Gaffsey, I have good ideas!
15:23 Cowpoke it doesn't support out-of-client copy/pasting
15:23 Gaffsey was this a declaration of intent, or were you just saying that
15:23 Cowpoke I was just saying that
15:23 Gaffsey like, you have good ideas in general, or specific good ideas
15:23 Cowpoke I often worry I don't have good ideas
15:23 Gaffsey ah yea
15:23 Gaffsey agreed
15:23 Cowpoke wow
15:24 Cowpoke w o w
15:24 Gaffsey lol it will never be logged
15:24 Gaffsey all those compliments lost
15:24 Gaffsey like tears in the rain
15:24 Cowpoke was that even a compliment
15:24 Cowpoke I said "I worry my ideas are bad"
15:24 Cowpoke and you said
15:24 Cowpoke "agreed"
15:25 Gaffsey oh i meant about your statement on having good ideas
15:25 Cowpoke hahaha
15:25 Cowpoke ok so I think the Foundation should construct The Villages, but
15:25 Cowpoke I think they should get the idea from somewhere
15:25 Cowpoke and from where I know not
15:26 Gaffsey america, maaaaan
15:26 Cowpoke lol bit broad
15:26 Cowpoke could be related to scanner's weird americana thing, but
15:26 Cowpoke feels too pithy
15:26 Gaffsey what what?
15:27 Gaffsey yeah i was being facetious
15:28 Gaffsey but maybe las vegas tho
15:28 Cowpoke o/
15:28 Cowpoke ?
15:28 Cowpoke o?
15:28 Gaffsey like as the origin
15:28 Gaffsey of the idea
15:28 Gaffsey of taking this blasted place with no history
15:28 Gaffsey hmmm no
15:28 Cowpoke kind of too similar to the villages itself lol
15:30 Gaffsey another issue that we might need to discuss or just be wary of is that this comes kind of close to the foundation doing a genocide?
15:31 Cowpoke how so?
15:31 Cowpoke I think that could arise depending on how we interpret the anomaly
15:31 Gaffsey i dunno, overwriting or erasing the existence of something that was there previously is a pretty textbook part of genocide
15:32 Gaffsey like "oh yeah, this was always turkish"
15:32 Gaffsey or "these people were always serbians. there were no bosnians here"
15:33 Cowpoke yeah the Yugoslavian civil war hits me a lil close to home
15:33 Cowpoke for me
15:33 Gaffsey ?
15:33 Cowpoke My dad's a Serbian immigrant
15:33 Gaffsey oh shit, sorry
15:33 Cowpoke no worries
15:33 Cowpoke you couldn't have known
15:33 Cowpoke anyways
15:33 Cowpoke yes, that's sort of what we're implying
15:33 Gaffsey but now i do know you have a serbian name, so i'mma track your ass down on the grad student page lol
15:34 Gaffsey it's not inherently bad
15:34 Cowpoke lol weren't you around when I told secretchat who I was
15:34 Gaffsey i'm just saying we shouldbe aware of it
15:34 Gaffsey dammit
15:34 Cowpoke ha
15:34 Cowpoke nod
15:34 Cowpoke yeah
15:35 Cowpoke I think we should be careful to not imply any real world genocides
15:35 Cowpoke or if we do, be knowledgable about it
15:35 weizhong Reminding me of how kaktus doxxes me every time we talk by dropping my real name
15:35 Gaffsey totally unrelated, but you should subscribe to right richter -it's a way to keep abreast of right wing conspiracy shit without melting your brain
15:36 weizhong Not that I particularly care, but with this weird and new rogetbox it's a little odd
15:36 Cowpoke yeah kaktus has a bad habit of that
15:36 Gaffsey lol, ppl wonder why i'm cagey about my name
15:36 Cowpoke I think he just likes saying your name
15:36 Cowpoke which, like
15:36 Cowpoke I like saying your name
15:36 weizhong It's a good name for saying
15:38 Gaffsey also, i just realized that like
15:38 Gaffsey these are like the shittiest scranton reality anchors
15:38 Cowpoke bingo
15:39 Cowpoke I was going to point that out, but I know you hate jargon like SRAs
15:39 Gaffsey i realized that the reason they don't work elsewhere is because like you need scared old people to make it work
15:40 Cowpoke honestly this is a better SRA
15:40 Gaffsey like, if you have a bunch of young ppl, they won't give a fuck about this thomas kinckade bullshit
15:40 Cowpoke do we want to include that as an angle
15:40 Cowpoke that the youths don't care
15:40 Cowpoke or do we want to imply, like
15:40 Gaffsey but old people who constantly hear how the world is falling apart outside their shitty little gated community, they want to /believe/
15:41 Cowpoke to make this continually effective, the foundation needs to launch a propaganda campaign
15:41 Cowpoke to transform the youths beliefs
15:41 Gaffsey i don't think it needs to be over-emphasized, but i think it bears mentioning
15:41 Cowpoke into scared old people
15:41 Gaffsey like, pilot programs in brooklyn failed
15:41 Cowpoke …
15:41 Cowpoke would it be
15:41 Cowpoke uncouth to have gentrification to be a side effect
15:42 Gaffsey i was thinking about that, but like, the paradox of gentrification is that it destroys what it covets: authenticity
15:42 Cowpoke which is the point
15:42 Cowpoke the villages are not authentic
15:42 Cowpoke but try to impart authenticity
15:42 Cowpoke via fake history
15:42 Cowpoke Which is a part of gentrification
15:42 Gaffsey so like saying that "this used to be affordable housing then artists lofts" is just… true
15:43 Gaffsey before it was a whole foods
15:43 weizhong I really like listening to this conversation
15:43 Cowpoke Gaffsey, just like how the villages were a swamp
15:44 Cowpoke weizhong, this feels like a backhanded compliment lol
15:44 Gaffsey yeah, but the difference is: the villages is a place that was a swamp that pretends it was mayberry; a gentrified area is a part of the a city where poor/minority people used to live, that still attempts to pretend that it is such an area
15:44 weizhong whatever do you mean
15:45 weizhong Kidding, I was being genuine
15:45 Gaffsey like, the villages is a history that never existed
15:45 Cowpoke yes
15:45 Gaffsey williamsburg has a history; that's its selling point
15:45 Cowpoke like, this is an intended side effect
15:45 Cowpoke the anomaly overwrites history
15:45 Cowpoke it was started in the cursed, empty swamps of florida
15:45 Cowpoke but
15:45 Cowpoke the goal was always to overwrite real history
15:45 *** weizhong is now known as weitoobusy
15:46 Cowpoke to call back to an americana that never existed
15:46 Cowpoke to sweep under the rug real problems and issues that our prelapserian utopia had
15:46 Cowpoke just like gentrification pretends to be good
15:46 Gaffsey so, they want to rewrite hell's kitchen from like an immigrant enclave to "white picket fences?"
15:47 Cowpoke I was thinking that the villages were a starting point
15:47 Gaffsey i feel like that's just saying "THIS IS THE METAPHOR" which gives it away?
15:47 Cowpoke yeah well
15:47 Cowpoke I agree
15:47 Gaffsey i thought it was just an anti-anomaly thing
15:47 Cowpoke no, no, you're right
15:48 Cowpoke my thought was what better way to preemptively disable anomalies
15:48 Cowpoke than spreading this anomalous americana
15:49 Gaffsey also, lol they're gonna run out of old people
15:49 Cowpoke yeah haha
15:49 Cowpoke that could be the stinger
15:49 Cowpoke iunno
15:50 Gaffsey i /do/ really like the image of a totally flattened landscape where like, there are forty different cities where, like, ontologically, there are forty different copies of the exact same twee americana bullshit
15:50 Gaffsey "the forty gas stations of ed "butchie" munroe"
15:50 Cowpoke welp
15:50 Cowpoke we just got our name
15:51 Cowpoke "The Forty Gas Stations of Ed 'Butchie' Munroe"
15:51 Gaffsey sounds like a mountain goats song lol
15:51 Cowpoke you can't make me listen to them
15:51 Cowpoke I refuse
15:51 weitoobusy I fucking love that name
15:52 Gaffsey but yeah, i think it would be neat if it was localized to the specific area of the villages, but it's so fucking /big/ and the pool of quaint americana bullshit that the foundation can use is so small
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: One D-Class personnel
Description: [Paragraphs explaining the description]
Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]
[[footnoteblock]]
Wrestling character as an anomaly; work into herman fuller's?
Through my travels, I have three times had the occasion to visit the city at the mouth of the Beshshehr River. Although each time I have found the physical aspects of the city - its layout, monuments, and buildings, untouched by time, I have confronted a new city, as the denizens have transformed it so as to be unrecognizable. It is as if the skeleton of a creature remained the same, but its flesh and muscles continually reconfigured themselves themselves around it, now a stomach, now a mouth, now an ear.
I have here assembled the notes of my travels to each of the three cities, along with annotations and reflections. I hope that they may prove a useful record to those that find this place.
- bint al-Majhul
Basgaret
This morning, the ship finally made land. I thanked the captain for his service and made my down the docks.
The city of Basgaret is surrounded to the North and the east by mountains, and to the south by the Great Ocean. The city itself is divided into two halves by a river that the locals call the Beshshehr. The city on the east bank is made of brick and is
Docks and trade
I inquire about the large blue statue of a broad-chested man astride a winged beast I do not recognize, sword in hand. I am informed that it is the king, Asdrubal XIX, scattering the enemies of Basgaret to the five directions. I reply that I have heard from others that the king does not yet have the first hair on his chin and anyway, seems more inclined toward poetry than warfare. The merchant smiles and tells me that in time, the boy will grow into the figure depicted in blue.
People in general
Homes
Specific Family
Rat kings
Ementep
Besketin
Item #: SCP-6000
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: [Paragraphs explaining the procedures]
Description: SCP-6000 is the collective designation for all nonhuman entities and non-anthropogenic phenomenon associated with the Fifth Church.
SCP-6000-1 is a
SCP-6000-15 is
Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]
Per 
