Kothbox 2

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Dr. Worldwide (4/5): 4314 is currently in 4 languages
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The SEXTANK Initiative (SE_): 4225, 4820
Thank You For Your Cooperation (0/7)
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Guest Star Appearance (0/1)
Tall Tales (5/10): Halloween on 17th Street, Drooling Path 1-4
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The Challenger (0/3)
Making Strides (10/50)
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Pollice Verso (517/1000)
Contender (2/5): Exquisite Corpse, 6000
Engaged (0/001)
The Centurion (10/100)

haha headcanon go brr

• 166's mother was either a manifestation of or equivalent to the same "trickster forest god" that caused the Day of Flowers and erased the Yeren civilization. If 166 were to complete the ritual, the same thing would happen to us. Could also be a connection to the Verdant - surely there aren't two completely unrelated deer-like gods that cause plant growth. The prehistoric Veldt/Verdant conflict that killed the OG Veldt god mentioned by Coyote "when we were barely out of our caveman days" might've been the same incident as the Day of Flowers.
• The SCP Foundation used to be dedicated to the preservation and enrichment of humanity in all respects, using its unlimited resources and such to create a utopian situation. Only the Department of Abnormalities, a bunch of underfunded badass lunatics, dealt with anomalies. Their expertise was used to build SCP-2000, the original Foundation's ultimate accomplishment, but the DoA was still not given proper credit, funding, or appreciation for their contribution. They eventually got fed up with having to be the secret organization that does all the Foundation's most maddening and horrific tasks, so they usurped control of SCP-2000 and let their version of SCP-231-7 give birth, causing an End of the World. The DoA then used SCP-2000 to rebuild, but they assumed complete control of the Foundation and bent all of its resources toward their original mission.
• Dr. Dan's plan worked and SCP-096 was terminated.

further 173 stuff

http://www.scpwiki.com/forum/t-76692/scp-173#post-4011601
http://www.scpwiki.com/forum/t-76692/scp-173#post-4018219
http://www.scp-wiki.net/conclusions-red-173-2263-incident
http://www.scpwiki.com/re-the-statue
The horrendously awful original version of 182 (SO TERRIBLE) would have some kind of emotional breakdown whenever 173 came up.
Note that 187's response to 173 is similar to the effect of wearing the black variety of strange contact lenses.

First is Peanut, one-seven-three
one desire, to kill you and me
If you're looking' then you better not blink
Keep one eye open, it's harder than you think

Part 2: Elroy requests and (after much deliberation) gets permission to ask 682 about 173. He asks it why it was afraid of "the moving statue," to which 682 replies "because I know what it is when no one's looking". When Elroy asks 682 what it is, it replies "nothing," then eats the D-class holding the microphone. Elroy leaves in frustration.

Part 3: Carlson cashes a favor on Researcher Assistant ██████ and has a D-Class write "learned the true nature of SCP-173" in SCP-393. The D reacts in the same way that 187 did. He notes that this is similar to the strange contact lenses.

Part 4: In the middle of the night, it occurs to Researcher Carlson that when he said "the moving statue" 682 might have thought he meant 689. The quantum oscillation theory also applies to 689, to an extent, so Carlson tries to dig up some further documentation on 689. These documents include:

• a more detailed account of its recovery (it was found in a ruined temple, where people worshiped it as an idol 24/7, thus keeping it at bay - maybe some Second Hytoth stuff)
• if someone important has seen it, then it must've happened after the 682 test, which they'd've only attempted if the only people who'd seen it were Ds
• maybe the Foundation is concerned that it'll return to 682, giving it a dangerous weapon
• wait, 682 is a human? What the [REDACTED] actually, 689 probably works on any intelligent being. They just haven't tested it with a Yeren or anything.

Carlson formulates an alteration of his quantum oscillation theory for 689, then consults with the same physicist from Part 1.

Part 5: Carlson convinces Researcher Assistant ██████ to have a D-Class (the same one from before, woken up from his coma) write "learned the true nature of SCP-689" in 393 this time. The guy goes completely insane, but Carlson is able to interview him and pick up some Pattern Screamer indications.

Part 6: Carlson requests permission to perform tests with 689 but is immediately denied for being a crazy bastard. They won't even let him wave a Kant counter at it.

Part 7: A strange individual with antimemetic properties (a high-level personnel who ceased to exist after entering SCP-3930) appears to Researcher Carlson. The Man Who Wasn't There tells Elroy to stop thinking about SCP-689; by doing so, he is only making it stronger. He then resumes not existing, taking any memory of himself and everything Carlson has learned about 689 with him.

Part 8: The antimemetics division jumps Carlson while he's sleeping and use mnestics to force him to remember what the Man Who Wasn't There told him. They recognize a Pattern Screamer when they see it, so they refer this knowledge to MTF Iota-77 (the one assigned to SCP-2173).

The Sound of Silence

GOTTA BE SCARY WITHOUT BEING CLICHE

Page Type: SCP Article

Genre (Optional): Horror

Elevator Pitch: Tinnitus is pattern screamers, or at least you start to hear the screams if you focus too hard on your tinnitus.

Central Narrative: The Foundation first learns about this from cases of people who went insane due to their tinnitus. In the advanced stages, victims of SCP-XXXX start to understand what the screamers are saying and repeat it. The Foundation discovered this and is now working on treatments for tinnitus. In the meantime, they terminate anyone who gets taken over by screamers.

Hook/Attention-Grabber: "SCP-XXXX is the medical condition known as tinnitus."

Additional Notes:

No physical object to be contained, but maybe a dedicated task force, perhaps the pattern screamer-specific one.

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: The Foundation is currently working on a cure for tinnitus. Until such a cure is produced, Foundation front company Sleep Comfort Pillows is to produce and sell earbuds, ambient noise machines, and other devices which help victims of tinnitus cope with it as much as possible. If any people become instances of SCP-XXXX-1, they are to be located and terminated.

Precognitive Restaurant

NIFTY, SIMPLE

Menus? Oh, don't worry about that. We already know what you want, and we know exactly when you'll want it. We also know how much you'll tip us.

Can't be contained, but might be located near Site-54 since nothing else they deal with is contained anyway.

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Only Foundation personnel may enter the restaurant, and only then through the back door. All windows have been spray-painted black and boarded up, and the restaurant is by all appearances closed and out of business.

Addendum: Foundation personnel with high enough clearance are permitted to dine at the restaurant at a maximum of once per month.

Alien Hand Syndrome

TOUCHING NARRATIVE, IF A BIT SIMILAR TO "WHEN YOUR OWN HAND HATES YOU"

Euclid, or Keter if the hand is hard to keep sedated.

Humorously, the hand is the anomaly - the dude is -A.

A man whose left hand literally has a mind of its own. It responds to his emotions, occasionally teleporting elsewhere for a time before returning with an object or after performing a specific action. Perhaps the guy himself is also capable of teleportation, but after a brain injury, perhaps the severing of the middle brain thing, the hand started teleporting independently.

The various wacky shenanigans engaged in by his hand suggest that he might be at Site-17, where wackiness is a bit more common that most humanoid containment sites.

The Mother of Meteorites

TOUCHING NARRATIVE, HARD TO WRITE

Euclid

Lithivorous meteorite-like aliens that reproduce like sea turtles. The Foundation contains them by retrieving the eggs and hatching them at the moon base, so they'll return there instead of to Earth.

The Hollow Sky

BORING

Space MTF's problem.
keter
The universe is collapsing inward towards Earth. However, the destruction wave travels at the speed of light, meaning that there will be no visible signs of the devastation until it reaches Earth. The Foundation therefore isn't all that worried about it, since the wave will take several billion years to reach Earth and isn't breaking the masquerade. Scientists speculate that Earth, or something on it, may be causing the collapse, and that SCP-2399, the Hateful Star, and other hostile extraterrestrial SCPs may have been sent to eradicate it. Don't say that it's 682, just wait for someone in the comments to figure it out.

Break On Through

EMOTIONAL, PERSONAL, HARD

Site 98 or one of the anart places.

Uses the Wikipedia page image for the 27 club, captioned "Graffiti depicting SCP-XXXX-1 through SCP-XXXX-7 and D-11424."

Jim Morrison’s gravestone bust. If someone touches it and repeats a particular Doors lyric ("Mr. Mojo Risin'"), it transports them to a strange pocket dimension where the souls of musicians linger on as long as their music is loved. D-11424 goes inside and meets Jimi, Janis, and even Paul McCartney, but not Jim Morrison or Elvis. Musicians of all genres are present, even “some rapper with a bunch of x's in his name”. A few classical musicians have been there for centuries, and they're wondering where Felix Mendelssohn is. A few musicians want to pass on, and tell D-11424 to make people stop listening to their music. Others beg him to make sure people do, because they want to stay. Even very old musicians are there, including classical composers. To determine how many fans it takes, the Foundation makes a rap group from D-class, designated MTF-(whatever) “D-Boyz”. They record an album that is distributed to all Foundation personnel, then are terminated. The Foundation then systematically amnestizes people to determine exactly how many fans must remain to keep the D-Boyz in Rock 'n' Roll Purgatory. Finally, they send D-11424 in before amnestizing the staff assigned to the anomaly, so that he is the only person who remembers the D-Boyz. He has an emotional conversation with the faded remnants of his old pals, before finally leaving the pocket dimension and being amnestized immediately, causing the D-Boyz to pass on.

Alternatively, rather than being a weird sort of rock 'n' roll purgatory, this is a metaphysical middle ground created so the residents of both Heaven and Hell can continue to enjoy their favorite music. The problem is, the good people of Heaven (and perhaps some of its nonhuman inhabitants as well) really like rock music, but rock musicians aren't exactly known for living virtuous lives. As a compromise, the angels on both sides agreed to create this neutral ground. Hell agreed to let the musicians out so they can perform here, while Heaven agreed to let the denizens of Hell continue enjoying the show. The place has now become a consequence-free neutral ground akin to the Nightside, where the people of Hell can come to escape their eternal torment and the people of Heaven can indulge in things they aren't technically supposed to be doing. That's the power of rock 'n' roll, enough to move Heaven and Hell.

The access point is Jim Morrison's tombstone because, unlike most of these guys, he went there when he was still alive. In a drug-fueled metaphysical trance, Jim somehow learned of this place and decided to travel there physically. With the help of some French AWCY guys, he faked his death and constructed this tombstone as a gateway. There may be clues to this embedded in some of his lyrics and poetry (reproduced in the document, of course). That's the real reason fans made pilgrimages to his gravestone - to enter rock 'n' roll purgatory and see their long-dead idols once again. Jim is still here and still alive. Paul McCartney is as well, of course, but Elvis is conspicuously absent.. Tupac is missing as well, because of the whole Scarlet King thing.

A Slightly Less Irrational Number

ASK FOR CO-AUTHOR HELP

The computer doing it would probably be at Site-98.

Move more of Dr. King's philosophical ramblings to what the thing itself says, somehow. Create an extended conversation with it.

Alternatively, communication doesn't work. The messages, instead of being garbled pattern screamer cliches, recount a chain of events that led to the Pi-entity assuming its current form and/or its gradual decline into hatefulness and insanity. In the early digits it's pleading to be seen (or not seen? What do these pattern fuckers want?), but the further you go the more pissed-off it gets at your continual failure to see it (or continued persistence in seeing it). Looking too closely might even cause it to slightly adjust the value of pi, initially at scales so tiny that it's basically irrelevant but at larger magnitudes each time. Or maybe it just embeds cognitohazards or memes in its messages, since it's a pattern screamer. Or, since the calculation is being done by a computer, it might somehow take over the computer and cause all sorts of problems.

Maybe instead of messages in the number itself it causes anomalous phenomena in the computer calculating it. Pattern screamers routinely mess with computers. For that matter, the digits could have a memetic effect on humans who calculate too far. It could still be an encoded message (in which case affected computers and humans will repeat the typical pattern screamer messages).

A distinct idea might be a setup where the digits past a certain point (far beyond where the actual value would have any serious scientific consequences) exist in a quantum superposition, undefined until measured. It could be a sort of situation where "the universe doesn't have imagery at that level" - you've reached the maximum level of detail that the creator of the universe designed, so now you're staring into a mathematically/physically meaningless void that's reflecting a pattern screamer at you.

Rather than Ortothan, it could communicate in Greek, since the Greeks discovered it (and contained it).

Note that, due to the infinite monkey theorem, it's possible that these messages are completely non-anomalous, just exceedingly contrived coincidences.

39 digits are sufficient for cosmological calculations, to measure the circumference of the observable universe with a precision of one atom. A few hundred more would be sufficient for any calculation.

No amount of quantum wankery can change the fact that pi is constant.

Apparently this is rather similar to SCP-1214.

Support for Contained People

PROBABLY OKAY

Years after the masquerade breaks and nonviolent humanoids are released from captivity, they form a support group to better deal with their lingering issues. Being a former SCP is difficult; anomalous qualities aside, it's hard to deal with the psychological trauma of being contained for so long, especially if your family was told you died or, worse, was made to forget that you ever existed. Ex-CPs are required to identify themselves as such but not to disclose exactly which SCP they were, and most go to great lengths to avoid being identified as a particular SCP, now that their files have been declassified. They hate their numbers, and they hate the attention and stigma it brings when people make racist jokes about their containment procedures.

Surviving ex-SCPs include:

• SCP-105 has used her abilities to become an accomplished private eye.
• SCP-507 now works for the Foundation in an official capacity.
• SCP-187 blinded herself immediately after being released.
• SCP-1041 is an author famous for publishing her 153 autobiographies as fiction.
• The host of SCP-007.
• SCP-011 lives happily with its caretaker.
• SCP-108. She reports to a nearby Foundation facility once a week to have her air supply refreshed. Now married to 1834, who might still
• SCP-4820 runs a "long pork barbecue". This is just a side hustle; most of his income comes from selling his own organs on the black market. His restaurant is right across the street from Cannibal Chin's, which he aggressively competes with on the stance that he only serves the meat from his body, not literal shit and so forth.
• SCP-1132 lives a relatively normal life, keeping her jaw wired shut when at work to ensure no unintentional snake bites.
• SCP-1177 has squandered most of her body on a gambling addiction.
• SCP-1203 has a normal life, but returns to the Foundation to give birth.
• SCP-657 warns people when they're going to die so they have time to get their affairs in order, or helps out at a nursing home or hospital by telling doctors which patients are going to live and for how long.

The Idiot Ball

-J, WILL PROBABLY SUCK

Site-19.

Some kind of tempting MacGuffin that neither the Foundation, the random civilians who stumbled across it, or the police they reported it to were dumb enough to activate. The description describes it in detail, but outright says it is unknown what will happen if it activates. There's an interview with the teenagers who found it and wisely didn't mess with it, with the cops who did the same thing, and between two Foundation employees. Maybe even a D-Class brought in for testing for successfully convinces the scientists that since it isn't doing anything right now they should just leave it alone.

SCenPai notice me!

IDK MAN

Someone who desperately wishes they were anomalous, so they use makeup, special effects, and hired extras to get the Foundation's attention in hopes of being contained. They are contained multiple times, but each time the ruse is discovered, they're reclassified as an -EX, amnestized, and released.

For a more serious bent, the POI is a former Task Force agent who was amnestized and discharged for something horrible he did. For unknown reasons, the amnestics didn't take. He's completely nuts now, but he remembers the Foundation and is mounting a one-man crusade against them. He sets up traps for Mobile Task Forces with obvious stereotypical anomalies as bait, then uses his knowledge of MTF tactics and training to kill them and evade detection by the Foundation.

Game Day at Area-14

]
GOOD, BUT LONG

Scene 1: Marshall, Carter, and Dark are discussing what to do with Vector (currently in an induced coma) and the two vials of her blood they procured. They consider pimping her out to bugchasers and other disease fetishists, but inducing the level of cooperation necessary would be difficult. More importantly, it'd be very time-consuming, and at least three other groups are hot on Vector's tail right now. Then they consider selling vials of her blood to bio-terrorists looking to reintroduce smallpox or something. This is a better option because it doesn't require her cooperation, but it still means that a lot of their facilities are likely to get wrecked by the Foundation and GOC in attempts to retrieve her. An even better plan would be to sell her off immediately for as much money as possible, thus allowing MC&D to cut a major profit while minimizing the level of collateral damage they sustain (perhaps by dropping some hints to agents Kramer and Harken). The other two question who would have the money and the desire to buy her in her current state. The third smiles.

Scene 2: Vector wakes up surrounded by Chaos Insurgency. They inform her that she can infect them with as many pathogens as she wants, but she'd better cure them right away. She flippantly asks if they'll kill her, but they say they'll do much worse - give her back to the Foundation. Vector lifts the diseases and lets them make their proposal. The Insurgents want her help in attacking ABCA-14, the base of operations for MTF Nu-7, basically the Foundation's army. If ABCA-14 can be taken out, the Foundation's responses to CI attacks elsewhere will be completely crippled. Unfortunately, ABCA-14 is far too well-defended for regular CI methods to work. They went to great effort to get the Chaos Pump (2068) put there, but the Foundation exceeded the Insurgency's expectations and managed to keep it contained. However, their agents in Ecuador have been in contact with the permanently quarantined breach survivors at Area-14, and they've hatched a plan. Then they give her the blood vial they bought from MC&D - they seem to be under the impression that there was only one, because MC&D kept the other. Vector might mention that or choose not to, or she might not be smart enough to even ask.

Scene 3: Vector will be somehow smuggled into ABCA-14. Once she arrives, she'll trick them into thinking there's been a 016 breach by infecting multiple personnel with Ebola and Marburg. While everyone's rushing to contain that, she is to get to 2068 somehow and set it loose. The Chaos Insurgency convinces her to go along with this for the opportunity to collect dangerous anomalous pathogens (016, 149, 1801, and 2068-1), and to get revenge on her captors. They're allowing her to live out her supervillain fantasies, and she loves it. There is one part she won't like, however: their plan to smuggle her inside involves blending in with, becoming one of, or hiding inside one of the cows that Area-14 imports to feed 058 and 165.

Scene 4: Vector and maybe an Insurgency agent working at Area-14 successfully make it through the checkpoint with the cows. She somehow gains access to the Medical Facility, maybe by appropriating a D-class uniform and intentionally manifesting Ebola symptoms to be brought to the facility. Then she kills the personnel nearby and goes on a rampage, murdering everyone she finds and collecting anomalous pathogens on her way to 2068.

Scene 5: The personnel of Area-14 figure out what's going on, identifying Vector from the security footage. They're tempted to evacuate everyone and nuke the place, but unfortunately Vector exposed everyone she came into contact with to various horrible diseases that make evacuation a supremely bad idea. Alternatively, they do the evacuations but some Nu-7 agents volunteer to stay behind and deal with her to hopefully avoid nuking the place. A whole bunch of Nu-7 agents go into the medical facility in the thickest biohazard gear they've got, equipped with flamethrowers and other weapons for use against the various pathogen monsters. The ones running rampant through the facility include victims of 016 that Vector has turned into monsters, advanced-stage 940 patients who've gotten loose, and swarms of 149-bearing mosquitoes. Some scientists trapped in the Medical Facility know that she can't be allowed to get 2068-1, so they terminate and incinerate their quarantined colleagues. Vector finally reaches 2068, and the CI agent walks her through the elaborate processes necessary to disable its containment procedures. She might have to fight off Nu-7 at some point during this, but she's turned herself into a huge monster with 016 so it's not especially hard. She finally frees 2068, but it doesn't go well for her - the virus changes itself faster than she can change it, and the pump's control over her might be stronger than her control over it. It doesn't matter, though, because the pump tells her that they're both going to die anyway when the nuclear failsafe goes off. They were both played by the Chaos Insurgency, used as sacrificial pawns. Needless to say, that pisses Vector off.

Scene 6: The nuclear failsafe doesn't work. Everyone who wasn't already wearing their shitting pants puts on a new set. Apparently, while everyone was worrying about Vector's shenanigans, the Chaos agent disabled it. Or perhaps Nobody did, if he wants Vector alive for some reason. Now we cut to a prolonged sequence of Nu-7 fighting the mutated, fire-breathing, acid-spitting, self-detonating, mosquito-spawning personnel swarming out of the Medical Facility's bowels, controlled by Vector, 2068, both, or some gestalt of the two. They hit those suckers with everything they've got in a last-ditch effort to keep them from getting out (they can't just carpet-bomb the place because it'll break the seals and something might slip out), and it's perhaps the single greatest display of badassery ever witnessed at the Foundation. They're winning, too, because there's only so many infectable people in the Medical Facility and Nu-7 knows enough to cremate their dead. Unfortunately, the Zerg rush was a distraction, as the pump sent a mutated Vector with burrowing claws to dig over to the main facility, where she starts setting loose all the other SCPs.

Scene 7: O5 command orders the commander of Nu-7 to drop a nuke on Area-14, but he defies orders and refuses to do that until they've got no other option. All his men die either way. Someone wonders why Vector is releasing the other SCPs, when she could've just escaped, but someone points out that the Pump's sole goal seems to be causing chaos and mayhem. More Nu-7 go downstairs in the main structure to contend with the escaped 939 instances (immune to Vector's pathogens, due to lack of organs), a confusing and harrowing experience. Fortunately, their hazmat gear protects them from 939's amnestic breath. The sand is also loose, but it's pretty slow. The giant ticks can't pierce their armor. 326 is in her panic room, where she needs to stay because they can't afford it if she gets infected. ███ is out but nobody actually sees it, just its fused-together victims. They hope it's immune to the various viruses going around. It is, as is 058, which Vector made the mistake of releasing. It beats the living hell out of her, maybe even seems to kill her, but that could be a frying pan/fire situation.

Scene 8: O5 command sends the Red Right Hand to nuke Area-14. Meanwhile, the agents on Site have finally cleaned up the mutants in the Medical Facility. They destroy 2068 with extreme prejudice, which renders 2068-1 inert. The guys back in the main building do a good job of dealing with the (much smaller number of) 016 patients that Vector created over there and the mosquitoes that came with them when they're confronted with 058, which tears through them like tissue paper. Somebody might feed a bunch of baby meat to Baba Yaga in exchange for her assistance in dealing with it. If they've made it this far, agent Kramer might fight 058 instead and possibly even win, since it's so messed up from its encounters with super-Vector and Nu-7. With 2068 neutralized and 058 disabled, Red Right Hand calls off the nuclear strike (perhaps after a very tense midair confrontation with Nu-7's air force, or even a dogfight) so a more precise cleanup can take place.

Epilogue: Using 1801, Vector regrows her body inside one of her living victims. The unfortunate victim dies, but she's okay (if horribly traumatized). Unfortunately for her (but great news for the rest of the world), none of the anomalous diseases in her body transferred with her flesh, except for 1801 itself. She runs into some Nu-7 agents and, exhausted, surrenders to be contained. Unfortunately for her, "Hammer Down" has had enough of her shit. They collectively agree to say "fuck it" and torch her on the spot. With extreme prejudice. At the last minute, Agent Harken stops them and convinces her (perhaps by playing to her anger with the Chaos Insurgency, or just plain old threats of force) to cure all the survivors of everything first. Either way, the bitch is getting burnt. Vector gladly gives up the Insurgent who coordinated this whole thing, who is then apprehended and interrogated by Harken about the Insurgency's other plans. Harken interrogates him by writng "SCP-252" on his arm and threatening to add the 1 if he doesn't talk. The commander of Nu-7 and everyone else who directly defied the O5s will be severely punished for that, but the commander will probably tell the O5s to go fuck themselves.

ALTERNATE/SUMMARY

• MC&D discuss what to do with Vector. Dark recommends selling her to the Chaos Insurgency.
• The Insurgency recruits Vector's help for their attack on ABCA-14.
• Vector is somehow smuggled inside Area-14. She dons a D-class outfit and induces Ebola symptoms in herself, causing the personnel to assume a 016 breach and bring her into the Medical Facility. She goes on a rampage, wrecking the place, sampling the anomalous pathogens, and setting the monsters loose.
• The people on the base begin either evacuating or hunkering down, while a sizeable detachment of Nu-7 enters the locked-down medical facility to try and take out Vector before she reaches 2068. The Site director sees that Vector isn't heading for the pump but for the quarantined breach survivors, so he directs Nu-7 or some of the trapped scientists over there to torch them. The person in question is horrified by the Foundation's decision to quarantine these people forever and keep it a secret, but doesn't have time to give a lecture.
• Vector redirects her efforts to 2068 itself. The Insurgency agent walks her through the process of disabling the containment procedures and she exposes herself to the virus, only to be taken over by the pump. Vector realizes she's been played.
• The Nu-7 commander overrides the Site director and deactivates the nuclear failsafe. He's not going to vaporize his men until he's got no other choice. "Hammer Down" unleashes their full wrath on the medical facility, battling the remaining mutated personnel in a spectacular show of badassery. Casualties are high, but they're well-trained and have learned the lessons of previous breaches of these anomalies.
• O5 Command orders the Red Right Hand to nuke Area-14. Nu-7's air force engages in a tense midair confrontation or even a dogfight. An even more mutated Vector has tunneled into the lower levels of the main building, where she is now setting loose the other SCPs. More Nu-7 forces enter the main structure to stop these breaches and neutralize Vector. She makes the terrible mistake of setting 058 loose and they nearly kill each other, leaving her as a burning, flailing beast and it as a punctured, limbless lump. Unfortunately, the sprinklers turn on before Vector can burn completely to destruction. 2068 reanimates her corpse and it almost destroys what's left of Nu-7, until the remaining agents in the medical facility destroy 2068, rendering the virus inert.
• Now free of 2068's control, Vector (who was fighting it the whole time) regrows her body, or part of it, from the flesh of someone she infected with 1801. Agent Harken uses her serious trauma, her anger with the Chaos Insurgency, and/or threats of force to convince her to cure everyone remaining at the facility and rat out the Insurgent who helped her. Then Nu-7 torches her anyway. Agent Kramer, meanwhile, mops up the remaining escaped SCPs. O5 calls off the nuclear strike, now that 2068 and Vector have been neutralized.
• It takes SCP-500, cloned by SCP-038, to heal anyone that Vector didn't cure, and that takes a long time. The Nu-7 commander and anyone else who directly defied O5 or fought the Red Right Hand will never be heard from again. Harken interrogates the captured Insurgent by threatening to write "SCP-2521" on him.

Antimemetic Bedbugs

Anomalous bedbugs whose bites bear an antimemetic effect that makes it impossible to determine how many bites you've got. When attempting to count them, you inevitably forget which ones you've counted already, what number you're on, and such. People sometimes spend hours counting the bedbug bites around their ankles and shins, losing count each time but also forgetting that they lost count and not realizing how much time has passed. The bugs themselves might have a similar effect that makes it impossible to remember seeing them. The effect might also make people forget to call exterminators and such.

The kicker is that, since they're no more dangerous than non-anomalous bedbugs, their properties make them self-concealing, and they'd be exceptionally hard to contain, the Foundation collectively shrug their shoulders and write them off as Safe.

The Remains of the D

PEOPLE DON'T LIKE D-CLASS ANYMORE

The ghost of a D-class who appears to death row inmates and other people that've been selected as D-class candidates and warns them not to take the deal. The Foundation learns about him because an unusually high number of candidates are turning them down, and eventually one spills the beans about why. They set up a camera and record one side of a prisoner's conversation with this fella, which allows them to deduce approximately who he is (or not, for true anonymity). This uncontainable ghost represents a threat to their resources and their secrecy, so the Foundation is faced with a choice: stop recruiting prisoners, or stop giving them a choice.

Wandering Exoplanet

LOTS OF MATH IN THIS ONE

An exoplanet that teleports between star systems. The planet has life on it, and it sends radio messages. However, because of the way it moves around, these messages don't arrive in order, and it can actually be viewed at several different points in its history due to speed-of-light delays. They chronicle the gradual doom of the civilization on the planet, perhaps as a pattern screamer-related consequence of whatever anomalous means they're using to move around the galaxy.

For a twist, perhaps the planet is Earth, visible as it was a long time ago in the past at various points. The planet's movements might even coincide with the mass extinctions.

Berbalang Gargoyles

KINDA BORING

Because we didn't have enough killer statues, right?

These are gargoyles that defend a cathedral in the Philipphines, that somehow have the spirits of berbalangs bound within them. When someone steals from the cathedral, the berbalangs leave the stone bodies of the gargoyle and hunt down the perpetrator, terrorizing him with illusions and tricks before entering his house and devouring him. Only the thief can see the astral bodies of the berbalangs, who seem to take sadistic pleasure in prolonging his suffering. Even after the stolen goods are returned, they continue their pursuit. The Foundation contains these easily, by simply closing down the cathedral, but things are a bit more complicated than that. The berbalangs, being sadistic and hungry, don't like being denied prey, so they sometimes try to trick people into taking things from the cathedral just so they can briefly escape from their stony imprisonment.

Her memory a fickle thing, the strongest shall endure.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS HARD BUT ALSO EASY

A tale from the perspective of SCP-231-7. She's just been amnestized again, and she wakes up in the dark of her containment chamber, strapped to a table with no idea of where she is or why. The side effects of being amnestized so often have disordered her thought processes and affected memories other than those of just Procedure 110-Montauk. However, she's starting to develop a resistance to the drugs and remember a little bit, or her brain is reconstruction the absent memories. However, her declining mental health due to all the trauma she sustained (in Foundation custody, with the Children of the Scarlet King, and before that) has further muddled her memories and thought processes. Some of her memories are repressed, not wiped, but they might start to creep back as the lies there in the dark and tries to figure out who she is.

The story ends when, just as the lights come on and the D-class enter, she remembers the procedure and screams.

Close with a cold, clinical memo noting her developing amnestic resistance, and that adjustments may be necessary.

Exactly Where They Want It

HARD AS FUCK

KTE-2013-Kapala-Mendes was given to the Foundation. The first guy to get possessed by these things was a Foundation agent, and the seventh is unaccounted for. What if one or more members of the O5 council have been possessed by the entitites in the spears? This would explain some of the apparent inconsistencies, and how an otherwise bog-standard Satanic sex cult backed by fundamentalist Christians and gun rights activists managed to infiltrate the upper echelons of the most powerful secret paranormal organization on the planet. If this is true, as many as 7 O5s could be possessed, with the remaining as few as 6 covertly working against them. 7 O5s are a majority, enough to ratify the current containment procedures of 2317. Maybe the highest-level iteration of that file initially said something different, but they changed it to deceive the non-possessed members. O5-13 knows something is rotten in the state of Denmark, so he put that secret message in his note and then redacted his designation to protect his identity. Complex wars of subterfuge with each member of the council trying to figure out which others are possessed without revealing whether or not he is.

No talking on Keter duty!

A new D-class has been assigned to SCP-689 after the last one got killed in an unrelated containment breach. The tale follows his conversation with the other D who was already working on it. They swap stories about what they did to get here in the first place, then what they've seen since they got to the Foundation. The more experienced guy eases the other's concerns about monthly termination.

The BIONICLE God

TOO COMPLICATED

There are interesting similarities between the BIONICLE universe and the Church of the Broken God's beliefs - in both, the universe is made by/of a colossal mechanical god that is currently broken/sleeping, the toa/Church are trying to repair/rewaken said colossal mechanical god, the toa/Church are biomechanical beings that augment themselves and/or combine together, and so on. At the simplest level, this means that kids growing up in the CotBG like to play with BIONICLES, and that many adult CotBG members were/are BIONICLE fans. At a larger scale, we have this anomaly:

The Dream. The legendary experience that BIONICLE fans covet, a nightime vision of finding oneself in a store where the shelves are lined with rare, expensive, or even nonexistent BIONICLE sets. Surprisingly similar dreams caused by the most common wish-fulfullment of people who crave discontinued toys, or a vision from MEKHANE?

When people awake from the Dream, they find that they've actually constructed the nonexistent set from the Dream (in their sleep, from the parts they already had), and it's animate and intelligent. The living BIONICLE somehow works to serve the Broken God. Perhaps this phenomenon is due to MEKHANE reaching out to people due to the psychic resonance between itself and the concept of Mata Nui.

The bionicles can imbue their builders with great power, if the person will accept their destiny and become a "Toa" to try and recover the pieces of the "Great Spirit". If the builder does so, they gain elemental powers and a mask in their possession (any mask will do; Halloween, surgical, ski, whatever) becomes a sort of "Kanohi". Removing this mask has the same effect on them that removing it from a Toa would. Motivated by their living BIONICLES, these "Toa" then join together and attack Foundation facilities where CotBG artifiacts are located.

To clarify, the BIONICLES don't try to tell their builders that Mata Nui is real. They reveal a propagandized version of the CotBG's beliefs and provide a warped version of what the Foundation does. Plenty of people would gladly take the fight to the Foundation, since it's the massive secret organization secretly controlling the entire world that conspiracy theorists fear so much. They wipe people's minds, perform horrible experiments on human prisoners, and lock up all the separate parts of the Great Spirit that need to be reunited. It certainly doesn't hurt that the chosen individuals get to fulfill kind of a power fantasy/dream job by becoming "Toa". Six people with elemental and mask powers attacking a Foundation Site could do a decent amount of damage, at least until the Foundation figured out what was going on and how to respond to it. Funnily enough, these guys abide by the Toa Code, meaning they go out of their way to avoid killing Foundation personnel.

The person who had the Dream is designated XXXX-A-#, while the anomalous BIONICLES themselves are XXXX-B-#.

Object Class: Safe (from when they thought it was just one anomalous BIONICLE) Keter (from when they realized it was a whole thing) Neutralized (now that BIONICLE has been canceled)

Containment Procedures: No personnel known to be part of the BIONICLE fandom are to interact with SCP-XXXX or know of its existence. Different XXXX-1 instances are never to be brought into contact with each other or non-anomalous BIONICLE sets. The instances are small and weak, so they can be safely locked in small boxes.

The Foundation contained this anomaly by arranging for the cancellation of the BIONICLE line. Foundation personnel determined to be part of the BIONICLE fandom are not to know this. They have prevented many instances from forming by buying up as many BIONICLE sets as possible and storing them, unopened and disassembled, in lockers. They've also bought many used ones over the internet. They don't intend to confiscate every BIONICLE on earth, since that would be borderline impossible, but they do keep an eye out for any evidence of additional instances and monitor BIONICLE internet communities for mentions of The Dream.

People who've become toa are terminated after interrogation for useful information, unless terminating them causes demanifestation of the BIONICLE. It's possible that there's only six of these, in which case the Foundation has good reason to keep them all contained to prevent more from forming. If they're limited in this way, the sixth remains at large. Either that, or the six that are contained speak of a prophecied seventh who will come to save them.

Reality, Straightened

ISN'T THAT JUST CLEF

Foundation first flagged him after reports of some bad thing he caused with powers come in. The article starts with a summary of events he caused, culiminating in a domestic dispute where he telekinetically threw his girlfriend across the room and inflicted some minor damage to the house. Cut to how they contained him (he resisted arrest, but non-anomalously) and now a post-containment interview. He describes the domestic dispute, the anger that could've happened to anybody (most people yell, he used telekinesis because he's a monster), the fear he had when he thought he killed her, the fear he had when he saw the fear in her eyes, the brief thought of mind-controlling her, and then the fear and revulsion he felt after realizing he'd seriously considered that. He describes how, after realizing he lacked the great responsibility to go with his great power, he simply turned his powers inward and flipped the off switch. It never occurred to him before because some small part still wanted to be the child god (who wouldn't?) but after that event he scared himself so bad that he was finally able to get over it. He now seems to be completely normal, except for a Hume level that remains unusually high. The Foundation now has a conundrum of whether to call him Neutralized and let him go, or keep him locked up and run the risk of him eventually finding a way to turn his powers back on.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

WEIRD, CO76 HARD, BUT COMES FROM THE HEART

A class of '76 tale.

Most class of '76 material on this website focuses on the school. The dread that high school really will have been the best years of your life, or all the other vague horrors associated with your teen years. One thing that the class of '76 never does seem to cover, despite its location in the heart of Appalachia, is the horror of growing up in the mountains.

The tale follows an unnamed inhabitant of the town affected by the Syncope Symphony as you return home after a long time away. You drive past all the abandoned things beside the road, from broken-down cars to overgrown houses to rusting mine equipment. Pictures of all these things are provided. You remember the oppressive shadow of the mountains, where ice hangs on the road cuts all day even though it's seventy degrees. You remember the people, all those distant cousins and aunts and uncles. You tried to be a big shot, going off to the city somewhere to get some fancy desk job instead of working the mines like your fathers before you. You thought you were too good for mine work. But even if you didn't, the mines are long gone now. Nothing but grown-over shafts with chain-link fences cut through by meth addicts in search of copper wiring to steal and huge, nameless structures beside the endless miles of train tracks and the winding, lifeless river. This is where you were born, and it's where you've come to die. Home. Everyone knows you here. They are all your family. No city slicker big shots here, no one who expects you to do something with your life, no one who competes with you for the same meaningless job pushing papers behind a desk. There will always be a job for you here, but even there's not you'll still get by. Hill people take care of each other.

Eventually, you come back to your old house. It was built by your great-great-grandfather, on land he bought with money earned in the mines. Your grandmother lived here when your mother was young, even after your grandfather died a young man. But she's dead now too, and your mother's locked up somewhere for selling meth and your dad's locked up somewhere else for the same thing. The house is empty. Some of the windows are broken. The front door has been forced open. You go inside and aren't surprised by the holes in the walls. Your other family members, those who cared about your grandmother and attended the three-day wake that you were too busy to come to, already took everything of value. The family heirlooms: cast-iron pots seasoned with a century of oil, your great-grandmother's Bible with all your great aunts and uncles' birth certificates pressed inside, the ancient black-and-white photographs of your mother when she was young, some metal post with a strange foot-shaped bit at the end, all of them gone, divided up and fought over by people who'd been hungering for them since great-grandma died. Even the wiring has been taken, though your family had nothing to do with that. Word spreads quick in small towns, and by the time your grandma was in the ground there were already drug addicts tearing the copper from the walls. Just as well, you think. This house didn't have electricity when it was built. When your great-grandfather wired the place, he did it like a mine - haphazardly, and in need of constant maintenance. It's a miracle this thing never burned down. The plumbing is the same, lengths of flexible gray pipe meant only for mobile homes. There's always been a faint smell of sewage in the kitchen, probably a leak somewhere between the toilet and the septic tank, but your grandmother pretended not to smell it because she didn't want to pay to have it fixed.

The Jackson Sloth Memorial High Class of '76

GOTTA READ S&C FIRST

When the Foundation removed Big Bear from Camp Krakkow in the summer of '76, the following night was a gruesome crossfire of Sloth's Pit's most vicious anomalies. The Goatman and the Hook-Handed man slaughter councilors mid-fornication or as they try to drive away in their non-starting cars, the King of Knives skins cabins full of naughty children, and countless other ghost stories and horror movies come to life. It's the slasher movie to end all slashers. But who caused this massacre by tipping off the Foundation about Big Bear? Could it have been the Syncope Symphony? They seem to love causing tragedies at summer camps. Perhaps they intended to harness the narrative power of the nexus by telling scary stories about the class of '76, thus causing them to manifest if the campers are scared. They could easily tell a ghost story about the bodies in the water and the other summer-camp-related class of '76 anomalies. This plan doesn't work, though, because the nexus isn't that easy to manipulate and it brings in a bunch of other anomalies as well. Perhaps the Goatman and Hook-Handed Man even target the councilors preferentially because of their attempts to exploit the nexus. Or, for a cooler twist, the type of story the Syncope agents told is too abstract, not as scary to these little kids as the ones they already grew up with.

dado fat loss pills

NEEDS A NARRATIVE

people are always with the diets and the treadmills to try and lose the weight and look thin like christ fir hamwords (in the average finally war, not the average egg name) but losing the weight is not easy. lucky for u fine capitalist dado has make fat loss pills that turn u thin without having to run the treadmills and stationary bicycles to lose weight. simply take good dado medicine and u become thin like crisper ham warmth. low easy price and free shipping because dado have amazon prime from the bezos. u trust dado.

These are pills that make you thin (extremely, unhealthily so) by destroying your body fat without altering your weight. It either shunts the extra mass into some alternate dimension, increases its density, or transmutes it into bone mass that makes your existing skeleton denser and stronger. This has the health impacts that you'd expect.

Usage of the pill does not, however, prevent future accumulation of body fat. You get people who take the fat loss pill, gain more weight because they didn't change their eating habits, take the pill again, and so on. Once the fat has been transmuted, it's impossible to lose that weight. People can easily end up weighing half a ton but looking skeletally thin. In any case, it's not healthy for a person to be that dense.

Misfortune Teller

COMPLICATED

A fortune-teller machine that can make accurate predictions. After verifying this, the Foundation uses it to predict breaches and stuff. However, the machine (initially unbeknownst to the Foundation) is sentient, and once it has their trust it begins making slightly inaccurate predictions to trick the Foundation into fulfilling its nefarious goals.

Fernand the Cannibal

STUPID

The fairy tale from which Fernand originated. A beautiful princess has been taken prisoner by a hideous, man-eating ogre named Fernand, and the king promises her hand in marriage to anyone who can save her. Many knights try to slay the cannibal, but their weapons cannot pierce his thick hide and their armor cannot withstand his crushing teeth. When all the kingdom's knights have died or fled, a clever peasant boy decides to try to outwit the ogre. He engages in a battle of puzzles and riddles with Fernand, eventually emerging victorious when he successfully convinces Fernand that he's a fictional character and tricks him into becoming real. He somehow takes advantage of the fact that Fernand can't lie while singing.

Intelligent Life

SHAGGY DOG

A species of extremely competent alien invaders that the Foundation is powerless to stop. They send their reconnaisance scouts, cloaked in some kind of invisibility thing and/or antimemetics, who manage to infiltrate the database of the Foundation and/or several other GOIs. The Foundation eventually detects the incoming invasion fleet, determines that nothing can be done to stop it, and begins preparing for the worst. Then, to their surprise, the aliens retreat. They leave some sort of parting message indicating that, while they could easily take over the planet, they'd rather not have to deal with Earth's abnormally high amount of anomalous phenomena afterwards and decided to seek easier pickings elsewhere.

Hospital Horror

SCARY IS HARD

A reality bender who was hit by a car before he could save himself, but survived the injury with brain damage. When he partially woke up at the hospital, he accidentally turned the whole thing into a surreal blending of reality, his memories of the accident, his fear of doctors, and the hallucinations caused by drugs and brain damage. The hospital is full of all the weird shit that a drugged, dying, brain-damaged reality bender can come up with, mostly centered around hospital horror and the vehicle that ran him over. The foundation sends some teams in there before finally discovering the Type Green himself, half-conscious and half-alive in the middle of a surgery that never ends.

Weird shit includes:

• inconsistent geometry
• the sound of a car horn over the PA system
• skid marks and the smell of burned rubber in some hallways
• patients who have their original injuries but also the injuries from the car accident
• the patient is living the nightmare of a surgery, constantly being cut open and sewn back together as things are taken in and out of him, tubes are inserted, and random machines are connected and disconnected

Idea Springboard

Likes:

• Wilson's Wildlife Solutions
• Dr. Wondertainment
• The Factory
• surreal horror
• word salad
• baby horror
• MacLeod's LV-Class Lifted Veil Scenario canon
• pattern screamers
• vast dimensions of pointlessness, particularly the interiors of weird structures made out strange materials like 015 and 455
• the class of '76
• ABCA-14
• scary, surreal broadcasts and recordings like 1981, 2030, and the message from 2432-1.
• hotel horror
• The SPC

The ideas are already flowing!

• Baby Talk (surreal/word salad/baby horror) - the natural language of humans, a creepy word salad language that babies sometimes acquire instead of "normal" speech under certain circumstances. Might be a meme that causes people exposed to it to revert to baby talk, then develop the same language. It might also cause other transformative elements, perhaps turning people back into babies and/or transforming babies into something that's not fully human, but is actually what we're "supposed" to be.
• Rated G for Gore (Wondertainment/Factory/scary broadcasts) - a Wondertainment product that transmutes TV and movies into kid-friendly programming. However, this is not actually a Wondertainment product (the good doctor thinks TV rots kids' brains, and would rather have them play with active, creative toys) but an attempt by the Factory to undermine Wondertainment's reputation. While it does alter most things to be kid-friendly, it has the opposite effect on shows that are already for children, turning them into x-rated gorefests. The Foundation doesn't realize it's a Factory product until somebody accidentally breaks it or they take it apart on purpose, at which point they discover that the device's purple plastic exterior conceals a rusted metal interior stamped with "Property of the Factory".

Clef and the Goddess

EDEN MANIFESTO GOOD

The goddess was a reality bender who early on rejected humanity and turned herself into a deer like creature because she admired their silence and grace. She met Clef in the wood when they were young and was intrigued by his immunity to her abilities (perhaps because he was a latent Type Green himself). They fell in love. However, as Clef grew up, he began to move away from all this nature stuff, while she became more fanatical in her denouncement of civilization. At some point, the GOC picked up Clef after detecting his unusually high Hume level (perhaps mistaking him for a proper Type Green at the beginning) and put him to work killing his own kind. This took a psychological toll and further strained his relationship with the goddess, since he was afraid he'd been sent to kill her one day. Eventually, she founded a weird cult out in the Cornish wilderness, an off-grid commune of people who wanted to return to nature, or "Eden". Clef refused to go there with her, because he knew he couldn't just drop off GOC radar without leading them to her. He couldn't tell her that, so they fought and broke up. Nine months later, the reality distortions related to 166's impending birth alerted the GOC to the goddess's commune. Clef was sent there to kill her or went of his own accord, at which point they had a final confrontation before Clef killed her and took the baby, causing the Cornwall Incident in the process. He faked his death or something and went on the run, deposited the baby at a convent in Ireland, then joined the Foundation to escape the GOC.

Throwing Away My Shot

BAD

Two old-timey duelists who both lived and died. The world at large is under the impression that both were killed, but they are manifestly alive (though it's sometimes difficult for people to remember that, and for machines to record it). This unusual situation arose because, since the outcome of the duel was in some respects up to chance, there was another universe with a different outcome. The two universes somehow became entangled, so that one has both living and the other has both dying. The universe can tell something's wrong, which causes all sorts of secondary problems that can only be solved by letting these guys repeat their duel so a proper victor can emerge. The Foundation doesn't want to let that happen at first, but eventually the secondary effects (possibly just fluctuations in probability, the universe trying to correct itself) contrive a circumstance where the two are able to face off. Either one emerges victorious and things go back to normal, or they kill each other simultaneously and we wind up in the one where they're both dead, and now we can't fix it. I like the first one better.

Genesis

NOBODY WANTS THIS

A tale told in the style of the Book of Genesis, if it chronicled the beings in the SCPverse. Hopefully doesn't overly resemble the djkaktus cinematic universe or Between Two Trees.

SCP-XXXX-J

MEAN BUT FUNNY

A joke SCP that is intentionally designed to look like a draft that someone posted too early.

SCP-5000-J: Why don't we just...?

FUNNY I GUESS

A parody of 5000 that addresses all the much easier ways the Foundation could've exterminated humanity, and the hilariously frivolous reasons that the Foundation chose not to do so.

The following is a message composed via consensus of the O5 Council.
To expedite the extermination the disgusting humans crawling like vermin across the repugnant face of this miserable little sludgeball called Earth, we are now taking suggestions from all Foundation personnel for any possible means of expunging this abhorrent plague from existence.

All recommendations for efficient means of annihilating filthy human trash from this pathetic excuse for a planet should be submitted to your local HMCL Supervisor, and will be implemented following Ethics Committee approval.

(some kind of funny punchline here)

Below is a list of proposed means of eradicating the loathsome human infestation.

Relevant Anomaly	Proposed Action to be Taken by the Foundation	Response
SCP-2935	Send someone into the cave and have them walk back out.
SCP-231	Stop performing Procedure 110-Montauk.
SCP-2399	Stop blocking communications.
SCP-2501	Send an individual equipped with SCP-2501 to space, then have them use the object to crush the planet Earth.
n/a	Just start a non-anomalous nuclear war with all those failsafe warheads we have stocked up.	Denied. Seriously, what idiot came up with this idea? We're the SCP Foundation, not the nuclear war Foundation.
SCP-770	Detonate a nuclear warhead on it, making it grow out of control and destroy the world.	That could work, but slime mold is gross.

Mine-otaur, Taur o' Mine

TOO DERIVATIVE MAYBE

A blend of the Greek myth, "The Unnameable", Mather's account that inspired "The Unnameable", and the stuff about the Minotaur's relationship with its father from House of Leaves.¹ A misbegotten bull/human hybrid, or perhaps the ghost thereof, confined to an abandoned coal mine. The article explores this creature's relationship with its father figure.

Class of '76 Ideas

CO76 HARD

• The Big Game - a football team that's been running nonstop since 1976, either in laps around the field or all over the country. They're getting ready for "the big game". TOO MUCH LIKE OG 332
• Homecoming - the sash and tiara for the Homecoming Queen, which have some sort of anomalous effect.
• cafeteria food - as part of Syncope's efforts to take over one or more schools, they might've put drugs in the cafeteria food or made it anomalously dangerous to consume. The anomaly would then be an assortment of iconic cafeteria foods - little milks, those bags of baby carrots, etc. - that have anomalous effects on people who eat them (maybe just kids) like making them more suggestible, causing an obsession with music, or having mnestic or amnestic properties. ANOMALOUS OBJECT PENDING REWRITES
• smoking weed - a strain of weed labeled "Spirit of '76" with memory-altering properties
• video games - Arcadia was apparently active during the 70s; Breakout and Night Driver were released in '76. I can imagine an Arcadia/Syncope collaboration. CRIES IN RJB_R
• Gym class, and how much it sucked - apparently, kids used to shower after gym back then, and I cannot imagine a more upsetting situation to be forced into. To connect with my (and presumably others') traumas, maybe some kind of effect that makes you feel horrible for being bad at sports. DUMB, DO SOMETHING ELSE
• wild teen party - somebody threw a party while their parents were gone, and a terrible tragedy ensued (one or more people probably got drunk and drowned in the pool). The house, which remains in its post-party wreckage, has various residual imprints of the tragedy and other wild teen party shenanigans. Actually, the drowning is probably just one of several tragedies. This could be the embodiment of all the horrible undersides of wild teen parties, and the anomalies could reflect that. Maybe someone overdosed on acid or whatever else was available in the 70s (surely they had coke then, right?). Maybe a drunk dude fell down the stairs and broke his neck. Maybe somebody found a gun and accidentally shot someone else. Maybe the house burned down. GOOD
• graduation - students died in a car crash on the way to graduation, after they went back to get a forgotten necktie. Maybe now they show up at every graduation since then, still bearing their grisly injuries. SAD
• some schools have (or allegedly have) fallout bunkers in the basement - Syncope-affected individuals sometimes develop an obsession with bunkers, so things could be interesting here. Perhaps the bunker was secret or forgotten, but there have been some high schoolers who disappeared in '76 living in it this entire time (or they were living there, but eventually died). Maybe Syncope's fuckery made them think the end of the world (whatever triggered 2000 the last time and created Syncope to begin with) has happened, and (if they're still alive) they can't be convinced otherwise. GOOD
• school buses - a creepy bus that pulls up at people's houses (or sneaks into the lineup at schools) and abducts them for an eternal ride. The bus is infinitely long and full of kids that've been there since the 70s. They try to call for help by writing on the foggy windows, and maybe throwing messages out if they can get away with it. KIND OF LIKE TYLER BUCHANAN SERIES
• childhood cancer - my high school is deep in the heart of the coal fields. Some combination of mining waste, fertilizer, and inbreeding gives us a tragically high rate of rare, untreatable childhood cancer. I built a memorial to my dead friends with my bare, bloody hands, but people didn't like being reminded of the loss. They wanted to go on about their merry lives, trampling over graves and memories like their friends never existed. I had to make sure they would never forget. PERSONA L
• makeout spot - Inspired by such a location in my own school, a camera blindspot under the stairwell near the band room, down a short flight of stairs next to an exterior door that's always locked. When you stand there, and maybe perform some action like writing on the wall, the door opens, revealing an idealized summer of '76 that never ends. Your high school crush, as she appeared then, walks through the door. She invites you to come with her to 1976 and stay there forever, be young and happy and in love forever. The D-class used for the test takes the offer. The Foundation has to take steps to stop other personnel who are dissatisfied with their lives or marriages from using it. If I really must, I can throw in a horror twist, where the 1976 outside the door is horribly wrong in some way and the victims manage to communicate that somehow, by slipping paper under the door or creating graffiti, but I think I'd rather not. Surely we can have one happy class of '76 article? This article is an exploration of that little existential wish we all have to go back to simpler times, which plays on the fear of having peaked in high school anyway, so adding more horror would just cheapen it. The Foundation could also have a test log with different D-Class who didn't go to high school, are still married to their high school sweetheart, murdered their high school sweetheart, etc. TOUGH TO EXECUTE BUT WORTH IT
• boys' bathroom - absolutely disgusting HAHA TOILET HUMOR
• creepy, rickety elevator - goes to some nonexistent floor, perhaps one filled with broken wheelchairs, crutches, and other things associated with the handicapped students who get hidden away from the rest of the school. Special education in the 70s wasn't like what it is now. HARD
• outdoor classroom - again, inspired by the similar location at my school, and Jacob's wondering how many seniors have had our same conversation about fixing it up
• class pet - a student took the class pet home over the weekend and let it die, so now that student must take the place of the class pet - either by taking its form or just being memetically turned into it like the raccoon guy. This cycle has been repeating since 1976. Alternatively, it's a situation like Ms. Cornett's turtle and mantises where kids catch bugs and things to feed to it, but eventually it gets too big for bugs and they start feeding their own pets or even each other to it. NOT CO76

The Breach Boys

ROUND ROUND GET AROUND I GET AROUND
A cackfiction tale about various SCPs singing parodies of Beach Boys songs about breaching containment and killing people.

Olympus-5 Council (001)

DUMB
The O5 Council are the Greek Olympians, plus Hades (if Poseidon being SCP-4275 is an issue, the list includes both Hestia and Dionysus to fill the gap; perhaps Poseidon's death at Medusa's hands was the impetus they needed, though that apparently didn't happen until the 30s or 40s). As belief in them diminished, so did their power. The monsters did not suffer this fate, since they were not gods. Alternatively, they were never proper gods, just a screwed-up family of run-of-the-mill Type Greens. To prevent the world from being overrun with the brood of Echidna, the weakened Olympians were forced to grow up and start acting like gods. To that end, they disavowed their former identities and collaborated with a bunch of ancient Greek philosphers to form one of the Foundation's ancestors.

VII

FUCK

Update: I just learned about the 80s Satanic panic daycare conspiracy. This real-world event is remarkably similar to the idea I independently came up with here.

How does the Department of Abnormalities have duplicates of anomalies already in containment elsewhere?

SCP-2000.

Many, many iterations ago, the SCP Foundation was something entirely different. Only the Department of Abnormalities dealt with anomalous objects. Among these objects was SCP-231, the Scarlet King's Seven Brides recreated in effigy by a cult calling themselves his Children. The Department captured these brides, and through something called Procedure 110-Montauk it was able to keep their horrid offspring from being born - for a time. Eventually, though, a breach did occur, and the DoA was unable to prevent an XK-class scenario.

But this was not the end. The SCP Foundation used the machine beneath Yellowstone to restart the world, and they tried again. The Department contained SCP-231 once more, but despite the knowledge they had gained the first time they failed again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

After the sixth time 231 brought about the end of the world, the Department had had enough. In a terrible night of blood and fire, they assumed control of SCP-2000, and the Department rewrote history so that the Foundation's only goal would be the containment of abnormalities, and that they would finally have the resources they needed to prevent yet another apocalypse. The thirteen overseers erased the DoA from the Foundation's records and memories and had its facilities hidden away. Yet, despite all their efforts, they could not keep the Seven Brides from being recreated a seventh time. Some speculate that they did not try. After all, it was 231 that allowed them to usurp the Foundation in the first place, and it is 231 that would allow them to start over again if necessary. You could even say they've got exactly what they want exactly where they want it.

(Perhaps that was the genesis of the Chaos Insurgency. The last remnants of the original SCP Foundation, fighting to overthrow the Department. Or maybe they alone are aware of the Department's complicity in the existence of 231.)

Six times did the Foundation fail. Six times were the Scarlet King's children reborn. Six times were they locked away and forgotten.

I may have to embed some white text to get that stuff about the six previous failures, though that could be ripping off 231 too much. The exact number of previous iterations doesn't really seem worth the amount of effort it would take to explain, or the payoff it would produce.

The anomaly is an abandoned daycare center with the standard "Department of Abnormalities" plaque on the front door. Within the center, there are clear indications that these were no normal children. There are seven of everything - seven chairs, seven cubbies, etc. The seventh of each set has never been used. There's also a creepy elevator like the one in 3790, going down.

There is one basement floor, a hallway with seven rooms - three on either side, and one at the end. It's a lot like 3790, but the contents of these rooms are different. Each one is a child's bedroom, and it contains the remains of (or other evidence of previous habitation by) a child of the Scarlet King. Disturbingly, some of these resemble the containment chambers for existing anomalies. For example:

• SCP-040. Holy cow, this works better than I thought. I disregarded her initially because she couldn't have come from the CotSK, but she could definitely be from the most recent go-round of the DoA.
• SCP-2192, if I can figure out how she's in Chernobyl while Stella's in Japan.
• SCP-734 if the hospital story was somehow faked. They didn't find the mother.

1 - alternate 116. His room is 16 meters long and lined with rubber padding. There's an old wheelchair at the back of the room with a twisted, deformed skeleton in it.
2 - reincarnated 017. The viewport is sealed. A bright but flickering light shines out of the cracks around the door.
3 -
4 - reincarnated 682. A child's bedroom, but the furniture has been destroyed and scratches cover the door and walls. There's a ripped-up version of the note given to Five, and the corpse of a young boy with reptilian features.
5 - alternate 053. The viewport is sealed. However, a note had been slid out from under the door.
6 - 134. Opened and empty. The room has Hello Kitty furnishings, accommodations for a blind person, and some of the same stuffed animals that she has now.
7 - empty. Never been used.

I'm sorry. I don't want to leave you here. You shouldn't have to die like this again. But this will be the last time. Your little brother, the one you never got to meet, he's going to fix it. He's going to tear down this world again, but this time we'll build back a better one. One where you won't have to live like this, or die like this. The Department Foundation will take care of you next time. I promise.

Then, on the other side, 5 has written her reply.

please come back

Department of Redundancy Department

HUMOR IS HARD

A parody of DoA articles' tendency to just be alternate versions of existing SCPs. Comments like "Don't we already have one of those?" "Ooh! I know this one!" and "Did we really need another one?" are made. Would need to make sure it's not too harsh to the original authors.

The Custom of the Sea II

PEOPLE LOVE CANNIBALISM

A slave ship from the Middle Passage that lost its masts in a storm and got stranded out at sea. The white sailors hopped in their lifeboats and sailed away, leaving the slaves in the hold to starve. They were eventually able to get free, but that didn't mean much. What followed was an unimaginably horrible period of [DATA EXPUNGED] that left all the slaves dead and the ship permanently scarred by the horrible events that transpired. Now the ghost of the ship prowls the high seas, inflicting cannibalistic madness on all those it encounters. There's no crazy-to-death going on here - rather, the ship creates storms, mechanical failures, and other problems that strand others out at sea, then lurks on the horizon while their crews descend into madness. Once they're down to one guy, the ship finally moves in to add the survivor to crew of cannibal ghosts.

If that's too racially charged (I don't think it is, but having a bunch of Africans be cannibals might come across that way, even though cannibalism is a thing that happens at sea all the time), then we can make it so the white guys started out surviving by eating the slaves, who eventually managed to escape and take over, only to turn to cannibalism themselves.

Alternatively, some dude aboard the ship was a Sarkic, and he kept the ship afloat and his followers alive by replacing damaged portions with the flesh of his enemies. Now they've got some kind of freaky cannibal cult going on, sailing around on a disgusting flesh ship like nightmare pirates.

4820's destiny

STUPID

4820 exists at a weird midpoint between Sarkicism and the Veldt. His powers are likely Sarkic in origin, as is his personal philosophy, but he'd certainly be susceptible to the Veldt's doctrine of self-sufficiency. He could also become sort of a Messianic archetype, letting people who erroneously believe they'll inherit his healing powers consume his flesh and blood. That belief might not be so erroneous, if he's subjected to some Sarkic or Veldtic modifications. In any case, it's a BAD idea to go syncretizing three different religions that have so much to do with FLESH. He could wind up catapulted into some kind of demigod state, perhaps by consuming one of the Veldt's gods like Set or Coyote, or maybe he already IS a Veldt god, the long-lost equivalent to Pan/Cernunnos. Then there could be some kind of apocalyptic disaster where he devours and usurps Set, Coyote, or even Grand Karcist Ion.

Can't believe this didn't occur to me - if he has latent magical potential similar to Agent Miller, the Veldt might be able to work similar magic as what the Verdant did to Miller to make him into some kind of demigod. The Verdant has been defeated now, but 3240 might still be neutralized. Even if it's not, the Veldt might still make some kind of move - after all, they're the ones who started this by deciding to go autocannibal. Now that Pan is dead, it's their chance to strike.

If the Veldt went and tried to create a new god for themselves, the Verdant might try something similar with 166.

DoA List

Because kaktus doesn't want a tag for some reason, I made the list myself:

• 3790
• 3220 - silo full of 173s (I)
• 4220 - the fucking moon (II)
• 5832 - 231-7 (III)
• 5371 - The Sculptor (IV)
• PL-167 - a spooky chair or something (IX)
• 4099 - a journal or set of mysterious documents from the Department
• 5806 - Corporal Lawrence's nursing home residence
• Unexplained Location UE-315520 - a sealed elevator in Antarctica, probably connected to their version of the Antarctic Empire
• 5218 - an AWCY piece that posed as the DoA's 914 or something but was just a trick
• 5845 - the planet Mercury, with some incomprehensible murals and something contained inside
• 2678 - an extradimensional church with a mind-altering organ
• 5689 - 999's birthplace
• 5988 - dreamscape facility?
• To Never Again See the Light of Day - tale that appears to be part of the 001 kaktusverse
• 5815
• 5709 - 579/055

Wow, that's more than I thought.

We Didn't Start the Foundation

FUN, EASY

A tale or joke 001 proposal, the lyrics to a parody of "We Didn't Start the Fire" where each verse lists the notable skips from a different Series.

The Taking Tree

EXCELLENT

A local apple tree where young lovers carve their initials. The tree gets sick of that, takes revenge. People who vandalize the tree die as their hearts turn to wood and bright red apples full of flesh and blood grow from the tree. Consuming the apples transmits the loving memories of the victim to you with each bite.

Enemies of My Enemy

MUCH RESEARCH LITTLE PAYOFF

After a particularly expensive Foundation raid, Dark (as in Marshall, Carter, and) has had enough. The Foundation has grown too powerful for MC&D to continue accepting regular raid losses. So, he has a plan.

A few days later, Dark holds a meeting in some mutually agreed-upon neutral ground for anomalous people. In attendance are representatives from several other groups of interest, including perhaps some of the Groups of Intrigue on the Library's website.

Dark proposes to these groups that, while they may have disparate goals, the achievement of all those goals is dependent on the eradication of the SCP Foundation. The Foundation has grown so powerful that its existence threatens the existence of the entire anomalous community, and this cannot be tolerated any longer. The different GoIs grudgingly agree to cooperate, but only as long as is necessary to destroy the Foundation. They seal their deal by forming an evil inverse of the O5 council, formed from 13 total members of the assembled groups.

I, SCP-001-J

STUPID, FUNNY IS HARD

It has come to the attention of the O5 Council that a series of new discoveries have been made in relation to SCP-682. Specifically:

• SCP-682's 5m by 5m by 5m containment chamber is evidently sentient and, according to several personnel, "an asshole".
• The acid bath in SCP-682's containment chamber is likewise sentient and, according to the 5m by 5m by 5m containment chamber, "a bitch".
• The Sun [SYSTEM ERROR] Data lost: ec172. Contact SysAdmin., resulting in ~6.8 billion gays within the first twenty-four hours.
• Researcher Talloran ███ ████ █ █████ ██████████ ███ █████ ███ ███ █████ ███████ ██████ ████ ████ █████ ████ [DATA EXPUNGED] ████ ██ █████████ ██████ ██ █-██x██ ███ █████ █████ █████ (███) █████ ████ ███/█████ ███████████ ███████ ███ Gangster Spongebob ██████ █████ ██ █████ Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The temporal, 'pataphysical, and sexual consequences of this event are unknown at this time.
• You're all morons.

Given this knowledge, the O5 Council has, after consulting the Ethics Committee, 'Pataphysics Department, Memetics Division, Antimemetics Division, Department of Abnormalities, one (1) magic eight (8) ball, and an alchemist, determined that these events are likely the result of [DATA EXPUNGED], possibly due to a collective stroke suffered simultaneously by all instances of such.

Armed with this knowledge, the O5 Council has formulated a potential means of reversing these alterations before they escalate into an OK-Class "Please Delete the Wiki" Scenario. The plan thus formulated (Procedure 110-220-42-10-69-Montauk-Calabasas-Humbaba-Israfil-B) is outlined below, for any personnel who still think this is funny.

You have been warned.

+ DAMMERUNG EYES ONLY
[[/collapsible]]

Drooling Path 3999

]

So, what is the drooling path?

Researcher Talloran has faced SCP-3999 an infinite number of times. Sometimes he dies, sometimes they live (…Like Clockwork), sometimes amnestics work on him (The Trouble with Amnestics) and sometimes they don't (I stared into the face of everything and nothing and made it back alive). In one particular universe, though, he didn't just defeat 3999. He absorbed it back into himself.

So, a few seconds after he went in there, she emerges. Jessie Talloran, the goddess. With 3999's powers at her command, she reshapes all of reality to suit her. She's always been a woman. Her parents love her. Benjamin Kondraki is alive. The SCP Foundation doesn't exist, because it doesn't need to. Every anomaly has been destroyed.

But it doesn't stick. Draven knows something is wrong with his dad, so Jessie alters Draven's mind. Draven's godfather Alto Clef still dreams of the way things used to be, and Jessie has to make him disappear. SCP-682 is still clawing at the edges of reality, trying to force its way back in. The reality anchors around SCP-2000 are holding, for now. Things are just barely holding together.

When Jessie is beating herself up, trying to convince herself that she did the right thing by bringing back Dr. Kondraki and messing with Draven's mind, Nines appears to her in the mirror. He looks like James Martin Talloran, but his lower jaw is gone and constantly bleeding. He offers her a curved knife sometimes, hoping she'll kill herself and put them out of their misery, but she never does it.

The breaking point might be when something bad happens, probably Draven breaking up with her after he comes to suspect something of what's going on. She'll completely shatter, thinking that everyone she ever loved has turned against her, all the people that served as anchors while she was trapped in 3999. That's just not fair - after everything she's been through, doesn't she deserve some happiness for once?

So, before long, the Eleven-Day Empire eats the sky, and the world melts back into a primordial soup ruled by the mad goddess, Jessie Talloran.

SCP-058, SCP-2432, and perhaps even SCP-1981 are figments of this reality, forced out through SCP-3008 or other extradimensional anomalies by Nines in an attempt to reach the one being capable of putting him and Jessie out of their misery - another version of Researcher Talloran. Nines created 3008 to serve as an interdimensional nexus, sent the original specimen of 2432 through the Moonlight Shores hotel, and sent 058 through 970 or whatever other anomaly it emerged from, all in an attempt to reach Talloran. 2432 is near his hometown, and 058 is at ABCA-14, where he worked before transfer to Site-17 and then Site-118. The "drooling path" is Nines's tongue, stretched out and trailing all the way from ABCA-14 to the IKEA in Fishkill. He's able to do this because, after she took over the world, Jessie's self-hatred deepened and gave Nines more power and just enough independence to cry out for help.

(058's voice is Nines's, given to him by Jessie when she got sick of hearing [SYSTEM ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED. PLEASE SEE A NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR FOR MORE DETAILS].)

So the plan here is that all the different Tallorans will converge on the Eleven-Day Empire and put Jessie and Nines out of their misery. Nines won't be happy when Dr. Scott shows up instead (Nines miscalculated his placement of 058), but he'll still try to use Dr. Scott to retrieve the other Tallorans.

A complication might arise, however, if SCP-4068 is Nines's doing as well. That would make Dr. Scott flip out.

The conclusion of this insanity happens when the James from my tale series enters Jessie's reality. She'll try to destroy him, but she can't - James, and every other Talloran out there in the multiverse, already fought and killed 3999, so she and Nines have no power over them. Infinite Tallorans suddenly appear - James Ari, Frank Talloran, even one armed with a Cobra Enterprise Inc CA380 380 ACP Carry Conceal Pistol with Pink Grips from sportsmansoutdoorsuperstore.com with an attached Sniper ZT 5-25x50 FFP First Focal Plane (FFP) Scope with Red/Green Illuminated Reticle and Gangster Spongebob custom decal. Nines is (to its own relief) obliterated by the combined will of infinite Tallorans, leaving Jessie broken and powerless. Then James uses a long, curved knife, the same one he used to gut LordStonefish, to slit her throat, which reverts everything back to normal. Jessie appears at the bottom of 3999's chamber, surrounded by the other Tallorans, who quickly fade back to their own realities. Now that Nines is gone, the anomalies he created fade away and no one even remembers they were ever there.

Actually, though other Tallorans are immune to Nines's influence, they can't kill him. Only Jessie can do that. But she can't overcome her self-hatred like they did, because she has become the monster. She and Nines are one. But by taking her powers away, locking her down in reality so that she has to face the truth of what she's become, the other Tallorans can convince her to do what they all had to - kill Nines by killing herself. They might try to kill her first themselves with the curved knives from LordStonefish's dream, but she stops them and asks to be able to do it herself.

Mister Adventures

A tale similar to Habil and Qabil, describing a Wondertainment-made cartoon TV series featuring the Little Misters as campy Saturday-morning superheroes.

• Chameleon - can turn invisible
• Laugh - has humorous clown powers
• Shapey - a shapeshifter
• Soap - can generate soap and make bubble-based attacks
• Hungry - matter-eater lad
• Brass - a transforming robot
• Hot - fire powers
• Sweetie - has candy-based attacks and rides a giant sugar unicorn
• Fish - the unfortunate joke character who is frequently kidnapped by the villains
• Redd (discontinued) - a villainous ex-mister bent on revenge; flies, shoots lightning from his hands, has laser vision
• Money - no combat powers, but he funds the Misters' adventures and the MisterCave with his ability to produce money from nowhere. Is also capable of launching gold bars at people at high velocity in emergencies.
• Mad - the Hulk

Their main archenemy, aside from Mr. Redd (discontinued), is a cartoonish version of the Factory that's appropriate for kids but still plenty scary. The Misters often use other Wondertainment products to battle the evil forces of the nefarious Factory (blatant product placement, of course). They receive dispatches from "The Doctor" a character resembling Dr. Wondertainment.

In desperate situations, multiple misters can merge together into a massive "Mister Collector" form that combines all their powers.

[The scene is the outside of a miserable factory. An ominous but bumpin' tune like Nuts & Bolts is playing. Huge plumes of black smoke emerge from towering smokestacks.]

[Inside the factory. Miserable children are being forced to work, supervised by faceless Factory drones.]

[A wall explodes. Children and drones turn to look.]

[The dust clears, revealing Laugh, Soap, Hungry, Brass, Hot, Sweetie, and Mad. Sweetie is riding a candy unicorn. The logo of the series appears above the Misters, and the theme song begins to play.]

[The Misters battle the Factory drones and rescue the kids while the song plays and pose below the logo at the end.]

[Mr. Redd's evil lair. Mr. Fish has been tied to a column. He struggles against the ropes.]

MR REDD: It's no use struggling, brother.

MR REDD emerges from the shadows opposite MR FISH. Red lightning crackles in his hair, standing upright.

MR REDD: Soon, our brothers will come bumbling in here to save you. Then I shall steal their powers and become Mr. Collector!

MR FISH: You'll never succeed! No evildoer can defeat the Little Misters (TM).

MR REDD: Silence, Fishface!

[Cut to the other misters, riding in the MisterMobile (TM).]

The Real O5 Council

It's pretty standard procedure, when a Type Green or other powerful humanoid comes into containment, for it to use its abilities to outwit the overconfident Foundation goons surrounding it and take over the whole organization.

Unfortunately, this rarely works on the last anomaly that tried it. Rather than risk exposing themselves, destabilizing the Foundation, or otherwise ruining their sweet deal, the 13 different anomalies that have somehow maneuvered themselves into a secret position of power have formed "the O5 Council" and now run the Foundation from behind the scenes. When necessary, they recruit new members from anomalies in containment, or have threats to their rule dealt with by agents such as Clef. They meet infrequently in a secret room at Site-17.

Current membership:

• 035 - used its persuasive abilities to assume control. It telecommutes from Site-19.
• 073 - promoted to the council by agreement of the others, since he remembers previous iterations and is indestructible
• 166 - developed reality-bending abilities as she aged. Communicates via mailed parchment letters from Site-19, unless she's got her nature powers under control now.
• 343 - he used his godlike powers to place himself secretly in charge immediately upon arrival
• 336 (pre-rewrite) - used her compelling voice to take over, then had her own document edited to be inaccurate
• 953 - used her illusion, shapeshifting, and mind-control powers to get here
• 1848 - successfully tricked the Foundation into putting him in charge of it
• 2284 - simply told everyone that he's a member of the O5 Council, so he was
• 2343 - Type Black entity capable of altering his own documents, of course he's in charge. Might telecommute from Site-88, or just straight-up teleport.
• 2855 - the O5 Council purchased him to take advantage of his godlike powers
• 4960 - she's a goddess, did you really think she didn't have reality-bending powers? Either that, or her close personal relationship with the Administrator did the trick.

The relationship between the council members is fractious at best. The evil members are always looking for ways to have the others taken out, while the good ones are constantly struggling to keep their rivals in check.

Drooling Path Future

Part 6

• Conrad is attacked by the Staff, accidentally uses the code phrase, is taken back to the Eleven-Day Empire.
• Nines explains the whole thing, probably presenting it in the form of a play or something equally unnerving and silly.

Part 7

• Conrad returns via 2432-Prime (Conrad has a little bit of the hotel in him now, so he doesn't have to go through IKEA this time) and threatens James's sister.
• Conrad calls James, who starts to recall 3999.
• James and Draven go to Penn State, as Conrad demanded. James then boots Nines out of Conrad's head by sheer force of will, and they determine what they'll need to do.
• Crisis on Infinite Tallorans, possibly with the help of SCP-970 (perhaps the origin of 058).

After narrowly avoiding the containment team sent to get him and fleeing into SCP-3008-1, Dr. Scott doesn't know what to do. He wanders around in IKEA for awhile, until he eventually stumbles across a telephone in one of the restaurants. The voice on the phone is 058's. Conrad spends a few hours there, trying to decode the phone message, before a group of survivors happens upon him. He returns to their community and explains his mission to them. For a very long time - maybe years - he walks to the restaurant every day and works on decoding the messages, but continues to make no progress. He's deep in the delusion now, though, and thinks that he's deciphering more than he really is. One day, in his mania, he stays too long at the restaurant and someone comes from the community to get him. Unfortunately, they don't make it back before the store closes. The Staff surround them and kill Conrad's friend. He tries to flee but the Staff catch up to him. As he hunches in a corner, waiting for death, some momentary flash of intuition causes him to start shouting 058's gibberish. To his surprise, the Staff respond.

---

"Drooling path!" he wailed. He thought those were going to be his last words.

But they weren't.

When no death came, Conrad dared to open his eyes. The Staff member was just standing there, "looking" at him. Expectantly?

Then, in the same pleasant voice it had used to ask him to leave the store, it spoke again.

"The emptiness."

Conrad stared blankly at its blank face.

"The emptiness," it repeated, more forcefully.

Conrad realized it was waiting for a response. Desperately, his brain scrambled to make some kind of connection, find whatever phrase it expected…aha!

"Th-the sadness," he stammered, quoting what first 1981 and then the hotel TV had said to him. There was a horrible, tense moment where the Staff didn't respond and Conrad thought he'd gave the wrong error, that he'd been torn limb from limb by basketball-sized hands at any moment. But then it replied.

"The blackness."

Conrad's heart began to pound. Was this it? Was he finally communicating with some part of the drooling path? "The darkness," he responded, completing the line. Immediately, the Staff relaxed. Its massive fists uncurled, and it returned to a less predatory, more upright posture. Then, just as calmly as it had asked him to leave the store, it spoke a single coherent sentence:

"The manager would like to speak with you."

---

Conrad then follows the Staff through the IKEA, or is carried when he gets tired or falls behind. They travel for further than he can easily gauge, venturing into increasingly divergent conceptions of IKEA. As he nears the exit, it becomes clear that the world near the exit is a very bad one. The furniture is freakish and surreal, prominently include a rug made of eyelids. Then, finally the Staff takes him to the exit into Jessie's and Nines's reality.

Project Crossover Ideas

Twin Pits
A transcript of a tape recording that UIU Agent Dale Cooper made on his way to investigate reports of a possessive ectoplasmic entity in Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin. He stopped at an Ambrose Restaurant along the way, where "They've got pie that'll kill ya! Literally, it tried to eat me."

Shingeki no Unclean
Someone accidentally damages SCP-093 or the mirror it's attached to and winds up in Attack on Titan instead of the land of the Unclean, or a weird hybrid of the two.

This one time, at band camp…
That scene from American Pie, but class of '76.

Drooling Path/ABCA-14 Timeline

SCP-082 has claimed to be Andre the Giant, so he was contained no earlier than 1971.

November 14th, 1981 - initial contact with SCP-939

March 11th, 1982 - SCP-939 is found to be averse to bright light

March 8th, 1983 - Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech

"Late 1980s" - SCP-165 contained

June 29th, 1987 - investigation into mass-production of SCP-939's AMN-C227

1990 - SCP-058 moved to ABCA-14.

October 3rd, 1990 - production of AMN-C227 at Bio-Research Area-12, and its use as a class C amnestic, begins
November 20th, 1990 - SCP-048-N neutralized by SCP-4205.

1991 - SCP-1981 contained
September 1991 - SCP-939-1 becomes pregnant.
September 20th, 1991 - SCP-939 demonstrates that normal hall lights are not sufficient to deter it, 9 specimens breach at Bio-Containment and Research Site-06, which is subsequently destroyed, perhaps by SCP-938
October 16th, 1991 - interaction with SCP-939 during its mating season is prohibited, something about a Class B amnestic

September 25th, 1992 - SCP-939-101 is born and transferred to [REDACTED]
February 20th, 1992 - use of AMN-C227 is halted

█/█/1996 - SCP-1981 mentions the drooling path. Conrad was already working on it at this time.

1999 - Iris contained at the age of 10. Draven is 7.

June 7th, 1999 - SCP-2432 appears at the Atherton Hotel

200█ - journal from SCP-3008 recovered
200█ - SCP-2068 recovered during the Iraq War (between 2003 and 2010) and taken to Site-15.
200█ - SCP-296 appeared, and SCP-███ was inadvertently released from it, before this date.

January 26th, 2001 - SCP-939-101 metamorphoses into her adult form and is transferred to Area-12

August 17th, 2003 - SCP-939-1 assaults Research Assistant Silberman.
September 26th, 2003 - Silberman has his date with the lady in red

May 22nd, 2004 - SCP-939-101 still alive

█/█/2005 - staff are advised not to attempt to communicate with SCP-1981-1. Conrad does so anyway, provoking some kind of hostile response, and gets transferred to ABCA-14 (possibly to replace somebody who was killed during Incident ABCA-14-939-3).
January 19th, 2005 - Incident ABCA-14-939-3
March 23rd, 2005 - SCP-939 specimens are used in a crosstest with SCP-914 or something, creating morphology beta, which led to a date-redacted Nu-7 action report

2009 - The Drooling Path series takes place. James is either older than Draven or was recruited right out of high school; I'm going with the former, so James already has a B.S. and is in his early twenties in this one. The Foundation probably paid for him to go back to school and get a Master's at some point, which would've taken two to four years.

20██ - SCP-326 contained
20██ - SCP-2068 causes a breach at Site-15 and is moved to ABCA-14.
September 13th, 20██ - SCP-1801 is already at ABCA-14; procedures are tightened after a revealing interview

July 1st, 2011 - 5 939 specimens are cross-tested with SCP-914.

October 13th, 2013 - catastrophic SCP-2068 breach at ABCA-14. Hundreds of casualties, five surviving D-class and 14 Foundation personnel placed in permanent quarantine.

2014 - Foundation aware of 2432

2015 - testing with 2432-1 (but not the whole anomaly) halted

Late 2015 or early 2016 - Draven and Talloran begin dating. James must have been moved to Site-17 by this point.

December 8th, 2017 - suicide of Benjamin Kondraki

2018 - events of "SCP-3999" and "The Trouble With Amnestics."

late 2018 - a D-class previously used in 2432 testing begins turning into a hotel room. Object upgraded to Euclid. Within the next thirty days, five more D-class and 1 researcher also started turning into hotel rooms and all testing was provisionally halted.

early 2019 - all testing with 2432 permanently halted, all exposed personnel quarantined until January 8th, 2020
mid-2019 - Atherton hotel purchased by Graduate Hotels, SCP front company

January 8th, 2020 - subjects quarantined after 2432 exposure are released

The Drooling Path takes place after staff were told to stop trying to communicate with 1981 but before 3008 was contained, so we're looking at some time between 2005 and 2010. Conrad's been on 058 for a while, so it's probably closer to 2010. This means that 1801 and 326 might not be here yet, though "20██" really could be any year in the 21st century. 2068 could likewise still be a Site-15, unless it was content to sit around for a while after being moved here. Either way, it hasn't done the big breach in 2013 that scores it a higher body count than 058. This means that, by the time of the story, 058 is still the deadliest anomaly on site unless the third incident with 939 killed more than 161 people, which seems unlikely. Incident 939-3 is the most recent big incident, unless the thing with 940 or the "morphology beta" issue with 914 and Nu-7 happened more recently. I need to go back to Part 2 and change the mention of 2068 to 939; they probably made James watch that because, even though it wasn't as deadly as 058's arrival breach, it's scarier, more recent, and more likely to happen again since 939 remains cantankerous and continually exceeds the Foundation's expectations.

Anomalies known to be at ABCA-14 but without a known arrival date are 058, 940, 048-N, and 1801. If Johnston's claim that this was just "Bio-Containment Area-14" prior to 058's arrival is true, then it was probably brought in before 939 or 048-N, since those are both very cantankerous Keters. It's possible that there were other, more innocuous entities here originally but they were moved to other facilities once it became Armed. Only Fernand remained, since the Foundation couldn't find a way to convince him why the King of France was being moved elsewhere. I could easily stock the joint with the other ones on the list that have no dedicated containment facility, to fill in any gaps that might exist.

If Conrad was sent here in 2005, the longest he could've been at ABCA-14 is 4, close to 5 years. Johnston, on the other hand, must've been here for close to 30, and it sounds like he's been top dude on 058 the whole time. If that's the case, he probably worked at ABCA-14 for a while before that. This means that he probably isn't younger than Dr. Scott, unless Conrad is in his seventies or eighties, and that's far too long a life for anybody employed by the Foundation. Johnston is already pushing it as it is.

It's possible that Johnston was kicked upstairs, promoted to head researcher on 058 so that any transfer out of ABCA-14 would be a demotion. However, from the tales it sounds like he was already at ABCA-14 when 058 got here, then reassigned to it. Perhaps he was promoted to project head after his idea about the cows. Or maybe he wasn't the head the whole time, but whoever was in charge was just as apathetic as Johnston is now and had his subordinate do the interviewing. This still doesn't explain how Johnston managed to get D-067 sent to his doom, but it's theoretically possible that he could've arranged it even without being project head. Or maybe he has been the head the whole time, because he was a big deal at Area-12, and even being the head of 058 is still a punishment detail because no research is really possible on 058 except the design of more effective containment strategies and the fruitless analysis of its speech.

We could move the arming later, though. They thought normal hallway lights were sufficient to contain 939 until 1991, so it might not've even been Keter until then. Its procedures are pretty stringent, but they might not've always been and even in their current state they're mostly focused on preventing exposure to their amnestic breath, more like biohazard protocols. 165 is another Keter that arrived in the 80s, but it's still more of a biohazard than a violent hostile threat. 058 could've arrived in the late 80s, which lets Johnston be younger. I suspect that, prior to 058's arrival, the Area was focused primarily on the containment of biohazards. Then, once 058 was brought in and 939 demonstrated its true capabilities, Nu-7 was moved here and the place was fortified to keep these things at bay. These protections came in handy later when ███ and 2068, both anomalies that require heavy military response to subdue, were brought in.

I can always just straight-up pretend 048-N doesn't exist, since there's not much information about it, it doesn't make much sense, and it's buried in a badly proofread article I don't like.

Porcelain Masks, Ball Gowns, and No Faces

All natives of Alagadda, with the exception of the Ambassador and the Hanged King, are wearing masks and fancy dress. 035 is the exiled Black Lord's mask, implying that there's also a body running around somewhere. My headcanon is that this body is 096, surgically separated from the mask by 049 to somehow aid in the Black Lord's escape.

The Porcelain Gang Bang are Alagaddans, so they wear this same attire. They play Syncope instruments.

Masquerade, from the Faceless Live at Evanholly, wears a ball gown and porcelain mask. She takes people's faces and turns them into such masks. Her attire indicates that she is Alagaddan in origin, and the first few incidents with this anomaly happened before '76.

The Class of '76 is associated with facelessness in several cases. These include the yearbook photos, descriptions of your friends the people in 2316, people in that spooky videotape, and various hallucinations in the one that says "hello" and makes you shit yourself at 3 AM. The actual members of the Syncope Symphony GoI wear porcelain masks as well; at least in the case of their leader, the survivor from a previous iteration of history, this is because the effects of 2000 made their faces cognitohazardous or antimemetic or something. Tufto's Syncope skip also featured faceless people appearing in the auditorium as the leader of Syncope was killed by whatever force animates 2316.

Faceless people are depicted in 592, a book that is quite similar to Roget's Memories of '76 yearbook and also depicts faceless people.

The Foundation found an analogue with no faces at the far end of 970. Presumably, that's the same alternate reality depicted in 592.

The Red Actors Troupe acquired the means to make faceless monkeys and presumably people (039) from a defunct company trying to improve human intelligence, for which Wernher Gillespie (the apparent leader of the Troupe) used to work. The RAT also created 1513 and 1341, which were taken in a Foundation raid on them. They gave 1513 to some guys to sell at a pet store, but apparently used 1341 as a stage prop for their performances. Instances of 039 were found in the 1341-generated jungle. The RAT is also somehow responsible for 1328 or otherwise associated with it. Some homes in the affected area belonged to them and were demolished as part of containment; a single 039 instance was found in one of them.

In Remembrance, the Syncope guy who took over as principal of Kirk Lonwood was named Wernher.

Site Director Shirley Gillespie shares a last name with this Wernher guy.

As a bunch of mysterious, color-themed, anomalous thespians, the RAT obviously lends itself toward association with Alagadda and 701.

Faceless Dimension

The Face Taker takes people's faces, not in a forcible cyberman-type situation, but after they agree to forfeit them. His manifesto will probably be delivered in the form of an advertisement and/or monologue similar to what 2432's TV says, or what Masquerade says in the book. Basically, he recommends that people remove their faces because it makes life easier. All this constant decision-making is exhausting - deciding how you feel about politics, wrestling with all the complicated social consequences of your actions, dealing with relationship drama, and making all sorts of grown-up decisions like having to decide who to marry, what degree to get, what school to go to, what job to get, etc. Just give up your face, and live happily while someone else makes all those hard decisions for you. It's somewhere between taking drugs and committing suicide, which makes it quite popular among the people who do those two things. You're able to take a backseat in your life, still vaguely aware at some level of what's going on, but somebody else is driving. Since the people who volunteer for this are typically people who're screwing up their lives anyway, they're usually content to let the Face Taker do his thing because they're much more successful as faceless drones and far happier than they used to be.

The religious/idealogical conflict that arose in 1977 in the American South was over this facelessness business. People are revolted by it, and they feel threatened by all these faceless drones who are better at their jobs than them.

The idea of people willingly giving up their free will is terrifying, but we see it all the time. There are people in this country who would probably jump off a tall building if Donald Trump told them to do it. That's an exaggeration, of course, but it's based in the real psychological principle of people being cognitive misers. People hate it when you force them to think, so they snap at the opportunity to let someone else do the decision-making. This is just a more extreme form of believing what Fox News tells you instead of examining the facts yourself. You are literally letting somebody else determine what you believe and make your decisions for you, and you love it. After all, aren't all the hard parts of your life because of bad decisions you've made and bad things you believe?

Also, remember the benefits of not having to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, or breathe So much time and money saved! Depending on how this facelessness works, they might not need light to see, either.

How, you may ask, did this Face-Shaver guy take over when the Foundation is around? Well, my friend, the answer is that the Foundation loves this idea. They can ensure complete, unflinching loyalty from all their personnel (including humanoid anomalies, to avoid an Omega-7 situation) and complete, 100% cooperation from everyone else in the world, without the need for any amnestics or anything. Hell, the Face-Shaver might even be the Administrator or one of the O5s or something. The only unShaven people left in the world would be the last rebellious holdouts of other Groups of Interest, and the few anomalies who are impossible to Shave for whatever reason. These include SCP-073, since he's indestructible, and SCP-231-7, since Montauk wouldn't work if she wasn't experiencing the full emotional distress. 073 would be a real asset, then, since he has all sorts of classified information, so the Foundation probably has him locked up in a box that's very difficult to get in or out of.

ABCA-14 notes

Base of operations for MTF Nu-7 ("Hammer Down"), the most badass MTF that gets called in when the shit has not only hit the fan but knocked it over, caught on fire, and exploded. Nu-7 is basically an entire army with tanks and everything.

Contained SCPs include:

• Nine instances of 939, including -1 ("The Lady in Red"), the horny one. The incident with the crazy doctor happened here, as did a third incident that apparently involved one or more instances impersonating personnel who were killed, including security officers who responded to the breach, possibly during a power failure. They've been keeping 939 here since 1981, so it's probably the first anomaly brought here, unless one of the other undated Series 1s was first.
• 1801, which is kept in the Bio-Research Medical Facility. It's its own separate building with stringent biohazard protocols and a 100-meter security perimeter. Been here at least since September 13th of 20██.
• 940. Class 4 biohazards like 1801. There's been at least one breakout of a stage 7 victim, which was so horrific that O5-12 ordered the image removed. It may have been D-940-04, who was infected with multiple larvae and skipped stages 5 and 6. At least one of the other infected Ds apparently also progressed to Stage 7. Some idiot once left a sample of larvae out while on lunch break, infecting 12 personnel and causing a whole wing to have to be decontaminated. Fortunately, all infected personnel were successfully treated.
• 2068. Moved here from Site-15 in 20██, after it killed dozens of people there in a breach. A catastrophic breach happened at some point, killing over a hundred personnel. On 13/10/2013, another breach killed 28 personnel and infected 19, who were declared un-persons and placed in permanent quarantine. A third catastrophe later in the 2010s killed over a hundred more people, mostly D-class, and nearly triggered the nuclear failsafe. Another class 4 biohazard.
• Kain Pathos Crow used to hang out here with 244-ARC, but not anymore.
• 082 was here for some reason, though he should really be a Site-17. He was in the same facility as Iris by the time of Resurrection, so he might've been moved there. First non-Keter on the list. He's claimed to be the Hulk, who first appeared in 1962, so that's the earliest Fernand could've been contained.
• 326, another Euclid. She arrived in 20██. There are panic rooms in areas where she frequents. Probably isn't allowed to roam much, lest she smash through something else's containment on her way to a panic room.
• 165. Fed a cow once every nine days. Contained in the 80's. It's "treated as a contagious, pathological organism", so it's probably also a level 4 biohazard.
• ███. Formerly kept at Armed Containment Site-3, escaped from 296 before being subdued and brought here. Causes an "exponential recombination" effect, killed 104 personnel at 296 before it was subdued. This happened before 200█.
• 058. Has killed 164 personnel at Area 14 (150 of them D-class). Killed tens of personnel at the place where it first appeared and pretty much leveled a nearby town. Killed more personnel when a transfer from its provisional containment area was bungled. Fed a cow every three days.
• 048-N, as described by SCP-4205. Neutralized by 4205 itself. Copied from 4205. so I don't have to wade through that terminal nonsense again:

SCP-048-N's containment procedures made it particularly susceptible to SCP-4205. SCP-048-N was a humanoid being that appeared as an malnourished young (approximately 8-10 years old) girl of Middle Eastern origin, though claimed to be thousands of years old. SCP-048-N claimed to be the Canaaite god Yam, despite Yam generally being depicted as a male figure. SCP-048-N had the compulsive ability to fill any space it occupies with water as well as the ability to pass through any solid, opaque surface. An important part of SCP-048-N's containment procedures was to keep her within a glass cube at all times as SCP-048-N was not capable of traversing transparent substances. On November 20, 1990, Area 14 had an emergency drill for which the researchers within SCP-048-N's observation room existed. Within two minutes, SCP-4205 appears on all six panes of SCP-048-N's containment cube. SCP-048-N is declared neutralized upon confirmation of death by Area 14 Director Dr. Lire. Dr. Lire seemed very relieved when he was informed that SCP-048-N's neutralization was not a result of negligence. SCP-048 was considered a useful asset due to its nature as a possible deity, one of which is known to have an enemy deity of Baal.

Other anomalies with no listed containment facility but would make sense if contained at ABCA-14 include:

• 016 - Ebola-like virus that mutates the host in a stressful situation. Also uses the nuclear failsafe.
• 017 - doesn't get much more "large-scale" than that, but it's not biological
• 019 - Pandora's jar
• 029 - humanoid, but a hostile living keter. Very hostile. Daughter of night.
• 149 - mosquito-borne virus that converts human cells into mosquito eggs. Add to the catastrophic breach list if present.
• 236 - hivemind of exploding mimic crabs
• 363 - fits perfectly, but it used to be at a Site and there's a specific MTF dedicated to it
• 469 - the sound-eating angel with all the wings
• 679 - eye-eating fungus
• 718 - 86 eyes that stare at you and let you see Roget's proposal somehow
• 770 - slime mold that eats fissile material and emits radiation and heat
• 775 - ticks that liquefy the host's entire body and use the empty skin as a nest
• 870 - freaky monsters that only schizophrenics can see. We only have one but there's more.
• 968 - "Tar Baby", has been compared to the creeping hungry sands
• 1013 - literally a fucking cockatrice

Depending on how stupid the Foundation is, they might keep all the level 4 biohazards (165, 2068, 940, and 1801) in the Bio-Research Medical Facility. 165 probably wouldn't be, since it's not a pathogen, but the other three are. Not sure that keeping 2068, 940, and 1801 in the same place would be a great idea, since any of them cross-pollinating with the others could be disastrous, but it might be a matter of convenience so they don't have to have the same biohazard protocols in three different places.

The fact that two of the resident anomalies are regularly fed cattle means that they must import large numbers of them. Rather than bring in one every three days (and two on every ninth day), they probably order them in bulk and have a large number on base. I doubt that they're allowed to graze, since the terrain and ecology of the Ruby Mountains probably couldn't support that anyway, so it's probably more of a factory farm situation. Damn, ABCA-14 sucks.

In all, ABCA-14 is home to no fewer than 7 Keters, three of which have Foundation body counts in the triple digits (two of which were accumulated at ABCA-14). Three breaches with triple-digit fatalities have occured, first 058 and then two of 2068, as well as a less severe 2068 incident, at least 3 939 breaches, and the breakout of a stage 7 940 patient. 939 hasn't killed as many people, but the incidents involving it were perhaps even more frightening. 2068 is by far the most feared and dangerous of the anomalies on site and has the highest body count, having breached on three different occasions. 058 is also feared, but it's easier to contain and much easier to put back in containment if it does get out, so the only time it breached was on the night of its arrival. The staff of ABCA-14, especially those who work in the Bio-Research Medical Facility, are probably constantly paranoid that something from over there has gotten loose and they just don't know it yet. After that idiot accidentally breached the 940 larvae, there are absolutely no mistakes permitted in the Medical Facility. If you screw up over there, you'll probably be terminated and incinerated.

Nu-7 is huge, so their barracks and such probably take up more space than the offices and containment facilities. ABCA-14 consequently feels more like a military base than a research facility. The sounds of Nu-7 drilling and testing their weapons are commonplace, so between the pathogen paranoia, the fear of lethal breaches, and the frequent explosions, people rarely sleep well here. It's often used as a punishment detail for researchers who screwed up elsewhere.

SCP-2068 rewrite

Problems with the current 2068:

• Containment Procedures
  • no given reason for electronics exclusion
  • seem over-the-top, but perhaps justifiably
• Description:
  • What's a reciprocal pump? Needs image.
  • "unique electronic signatures"?
  • make more versions of itself
  • explain its anatomy in more detail
  • maybe have an interview from one of the people who wanted to use it to restore the oil well
• Addendum 2:
  • it's not clear how 2068 modified these guys
• Addendum 10:
  • explain how this virus is able to turn people's bodies into chemical weapons. This should be after Addendum 11, for maximum punch, assuming that the events in addenda 9, 10, and 11 are the same event.
• Addendum 11:
  • explain why the Foundation hasn't interfered in Ecuador, or say that they are

General issues:

• At no point is it actually stated that 2068 is sentient, despite that clearly being the case. We obviously can't interview the pump itself, but we can talk to someone who's been infected and taken over. We need to know why it is doing this, aside from being a thing that kills people. More importantly, we need to know why it wasn't doing this in Iraq.
• The supposed ability to manipulate electronics is never addressed.
• The part that should be the big emotional punch, the fact that those exposed have been hushed up and locked away somewhere in Area-14's medical facility, is not emphasized at all. We need interviews with these people! The Foundation would want to talk to them, both to see how they're doing and to try and learn more about 2068.

Possible directions:

• The pump was created by the Chaos Insurgency as a long game against the Foundation. It gradually escalated its activity in order to reach ABCA-14, where it was then supposed to destroy Nu-7. This works for Game Day, and it means that the instance in Ecuador is another Chaos Insurgency thing.
• Paranoia. Why wasn't the pump causing these catastrophes in Iraq? Why did it only cause a minor breach at Site-15 instead of destroying the whole Site? If the pump has complete control over the virus and its victims, it could've kept them from exploding until it was positioned to take over the world. Why didn't it wait until the whole planet was infected with 2068-1 before springing its attack? The idea here being that 2068 is sadistic. It enjoys watching the Foundation squirm, because they know that they could all be infected. The pump could be controlling them right now and they might not know it. At any time, it could destroy the world. Maybe that's why they don't neutralize it - it gives them an ultimatum, promising to kill billions of people and irrevocably devastate Earth's biosphere in its final moments, and the Foundation can't afford to call its bluff.

I Used To Love Her

Frank "Ace" Cliff is the Southwest's most infamous gunslinger. No one really knows who he is. Some say he's the Devil himself, who stepped out of Hell to sample the horrors of the frontier. He's wanted in a dozen states, but no one can ever seem to draw a wanted poster. Not that they need to - everyone knows about the long nose, mismatched eyes, and wolfish smile that hide under Ace Cliff's black wide-brimmed hat, even if all those who've seen these features up close are dead. He's gunned down more sheriffs and marshals than he can remember; the only lawman to ever walk away from a showdown with Ace Cliff alive was Conrad Drake, because the Devil doesn't kill his own kind. When smart folks see a man with a big hat on his head and a shotgun and guitar across his back, they know to steer clear.

---

An Aces & Eights tale where infamous gunslinger Frank "Ace" Cliff, is forced to face his own daughter. Her mother was a Native American desert goddess or something, who he was forced to kill. He then entrusted his daughter to a nearby Spanish mission, hoping that she'd be safe. But now she has come into her powers and begun reducing frontier towns to sand. He explores the ruins of the mission first to steel himself for what's to come, then tracks her down in the desert. They speak for a while, father to daughter. The final confrontation happens on the main street of a town she's trying to destroy, in which he is forced to kill her before riding off into the sunset.

A Starry Night, A Campfire Light

On a long cattle drive, some cowboys sit beside a campfire and tell ghost stories.

---

Sometimes if you listen close at night it sounds like the wind is calling your name. But you better never answer, because that ain't the wind. That's the red coyotes, the color of blood and the size of horses. They ain't got no eyes but they's scared of the light, so they only come out at night. They keep away from campfires, but they like to huddle just past the edge of the light and call out to ya in the voice of your sweetheart, or your folks, or whoever else they think might talk a lonesome cowboy into steppin' outta the light. But there ain't no sweetheart out there in the dark - just claws and fangs and empty bellies.

---

A tall, thin, masked, pale stranger on a quest for vengeance. He's some kind of ghost or revenant, walking relentlessly through the desert in search of the man who killed him, the only man who ever saw his face.

---

Corporal Lawrence, an insane Civil War vet with ill-defined anomalous qualities who preys on young children. Or, if he needs to be an Old Man, he could be a veteran of some earlier conflict like the Mexican-American War, Texas Revolution, or even the American Revolution (which would make him over a hundred years old). He also could've fought in the Indian Wars and committed various atrocities. Or even all of the above - perhaps he is a truly ancient creature who inserts himself into every war.

The guy telling the story probably served with him in one of these wars.

---

One of these cowboys rode into a new town once, having heard there was a job opening up at the local ranch. But when he got there, everyone was dead. The cows were in pieces, and the ranch house was in flames. One cow looked like it had exploded from the inside. Worse, there was smoke rising from the town. He rode out there to see what was happening, but the place was already in ruins. Buildings burned and destroyed, bodies everywhere. Even the church, the only stone building in town, had collapsed. He rode over there, and that's when he heard it - a slow, deep, rhythmic pounding, like the beating of a massive heart. Then, when he came to the rubble, he heard the voice. Then he hopped on his horse and didn't stop riding until dawn.

---

There's a cave near a ranch where I once worked that they say is the gate to Hell. They say the first fella who went in there couldn't get out, that he screamed for a year. I ain't a doctor, but there's no man on God's Earth who can scream for a year, even if he don't starve or die of thirst. But that's what they say. And it wasn't just screaming, neither. He said things, crazy things, things people were scared to write down. But I didn't believe it, not till that Talloran fella went in.

Talloran worked in town, a clerk at the bank, I think. I knew him cuz he was good friends - real good friends, you know - with one of the other cowhands, some fella named Darren Drake. Never talked to Talloran much, but Drake was alright. It's a damn shame what happened to him. When I go, I wanna go shootin', fightin' rustlers or Injuns, not on a bull's horns. But what can you do.

I guess Drake was about the only friend Talloran had in that town. People didn't like his type, you know. They left him be cuz they was scared o' Drake - and rightly so, he shot like a sunuvabitch - but with him in the ground they wasn't about to let the likes of Talloran handle their money. He was run outta the bank, run outta his house, run outta town eventually. Somethin' tells me his folks weren't too keen on him neither, cuz instead of catchin' the next train back to Pennsylvania he just walked off into the desert. I don't know if he meant to end up at that cave, but he'd sure heard enough o' the stories to know where he was when he got there. I don't know why he went in there. Maybe he was hopin' to die, even though there's quicker and better ways to do it.

But he didn't die. We heard him screamin' the next mornin' out on the ranch, rode out to see what the ruckus was. Shouldn't o' been able to hear it that far away, but somethin' about the shape o' the cave made it echo louder 'n' normal or somethin'. I never heard anybody scream like that, not even durin' the war. I still remember how it sounded, and to this day it gives me goosebumps. Look!

We talked about it for a while, tryin' ta decide what ta do. None of us were real close Talloran, like I said, but Drake was a good man. For his sake, a couple o' guys went in there to try and get him, or at least shut up that screamin' - it was spookin' the animals, it was so bad. But they never got to him, I don't think. Still not sure exactly what they saw - came out blind and crazy, talkin' nonsense and cryin'. Ate their guns, both of 'em.

That was the last any of us had to do with it. We moved the cows to the other side of the ranch, where you could only hear the screamin' when the wind blowed just right. You could hear it in town sometimes too, but people pretended like they couldn't. Didn't want to think about what they'd done, I reckon. Maybe that's why Talloran did it, to let those bastards know what they'd put him through.

Remember how they said the first fella who went in there screamed for a year? Well, they musta been right, cuz that's about how long that Talloran fella was in there. We never did quite get used to it, but we learned to ignore it. Pretend it was just the wind, or a trapped coyote. But everybody noticed right away when it stopped.

We talked about it some. Argued if we should go out there, see what had happened. But we didn't, cuz we were scared, just like anybody else with half a brain woulda been. Couldn't be anythin' worth seein' left after that. So we kept on workin'. We couldn't even be glad it was over, for fearin' it would start up again.

It was close to sundown when I saw him. Wasn't close enough to tell, of course, but I knew it was Talloran, cuz he'd come from over towards the cave and he looked about three-fourths dead. Some of the boys wanted to shoot him, said he'd have to be some kind of devil to come outta that cave alive, but before we could come to a decision on the matter he just dropped, fell on his face in the dirt. I drew the short straw and had to go check him out.

Well, I rode up to him to get a look. Poked him with my boot a couple times first, o' course, but he didn't budge. Then I rolled him over, and it all made sense. Kid was dead, eyes wide open. Makes me feel like shit to say it, but a part of me was glad. Afraid of what he might say he saw down there in that cave.

They wouldn't let us take him into town, so me and some of the boys dug him a grave out on the ranch. Put up a cross for 'im and everything. Not sure I believe that God hates them folk, but even if he does we figured he might make an exception for Talloran after whatever happened to 'im down there. If not, well, Hell couldn't o' been much worse, I don't think.

The weirdest thing about it was, we never could figure out what actually did him in. Wasn't a mark on him. Well, except for one. It was healed, though, like an old scar.

With a single finger, the cowboy traced Talloran's scar on his face: a long, bloody smile, from one ear to the other.

Other Aces & Eights Ideas

4820 is an ex-slave living in the desert. His story is a meeting with somebody who got lost in the desert. 4820 lives in the same cave that made him immortal and he’s gone crazy in the isolation. He gives a Veldt-like lecture about how nobody is really free so long as he’s got to work to eat. Since he doesn’t, he’s the freest man on Earth.

Corporal Lawrence could instead be a member of the 682nd cavalry.

A photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken during or before the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln is mutilated in the picture, but his injuries change when the picture is unobserved.

Lifted Veil MacCanon

SCP-2217, SCP-3882, Sfyri'kai Amoni, and The Battle of Baikal by Ihp
"Person of Interest File #2273/01," "The only way left to go is forward," and (broadly) Aftermath by Agent MacLeod
A Walk Along the Riverside by [[DRANNOYINGDOG]]
SCP-6000 by Kothardarastrix

Adult Fear

A standard bed/closet shadow monster that preys on children’s life force by stealing twenty or so years of their lives. This has the effect of aging the kid forward into their thirties, thus robbing them of their youth and their parents of time with their child. The article would explore this horror by having a sad interview with the whole family trying to recapture their dynamic.

Dinosaur Island

An island in the Pacific that occasionally phases out of time and experiences centuries while the outside world experiences years. This means that the birds on the island have had time to follow the common evolutionary path of island birds and become giant and flightless, but this has been going on so long they’ve gone full dinosaur. T-Rex kakapos, herds of giant chickens, packs of cassowaries with raptor claws, maybe even a civilized species descended from parrots or crows.

is STRESS making you FAT?

A YWTGTHFT version of this website: https://2030huntsville.com/

This website's bizarre mix of out-of-place comedy (dog emojis, comic sans), low-key abuse, and absurd solutions that are too good to be true is right up YWTGTHFT's alley. The difference is that, instead of hormones, YWTGTHFT offers ridiculous solutions like transmuting your whole body to squishy fat and chewing it in a giant robot mouth, melting you down and pouring you into a mold, turning all your fat into bugs that then crawl out of your body orifices, or similarly 2030-esque solutions.

Or, instead, they use LAUGH to cure your stress because LAUGH is the best medicine.

Would also work well for VKTM, but I like YWTGTHFT better.

SCP-001: Loud Days

Every non-anomalous human (including those with learned anomalous skills, like Type Blues) on Earth instantly vanished one day. Nobody knows what happened. The document was written by several humanoid SCPs (507, 105, 073) and anomalous personnel (Clef, Bright, King) who have half-heartedly assumed the role of the Foundation after the so-called "Rapture". Various addenda document the new Foundation's efforts to figure out what happened and protect themselves from the various hostile anomalies that are now on the loose.

This is, in fact, the equal and opposite reaction to Quiet Days. It will likely be 507 who eventually discovers this, and perhaps inadvertently brings the two worlds back together. That would really suck, since the Foundation has been disbanded in Quiet Days and wouldn't be prepared for everything to suddenly come back. Now the question is how they were separated.

Arc of the Covenant

The arc of the covenant. The Foundation opens it and the blinding light from within harms people as expected. Eventually, however, someone notes that the symptoms and readings are consistent with radiation, and that there’s a conspicuous lack of Akiva radiation. They send in someone with a hazmat suit and confirm that the arc contains only an anachronistic (perhaps from the Homo sapiens descensus) but wholly non-anomalous nuclear reactor.

Footnotes

1. The article refers to Zampano's manuscript as a real document, because anafabula.