Cause Ineffective

Articles

Dr. Adileh Khayyam's Proposal: God On Our Side

In-Universe Date: c. 2011

The afterlife that the Foundation has consigned itself to, prior to the betrayal of the rest of the O5 Council by O5-3 and the so-called Redemptionist movement. A gigantic deep-sea anemone whose interior is considerably smaller than its exterior, containing the slurry of every single Foundation employee killed in the line of duty. And it talks.

Intrigue in the House of India

In-Universe Date: c. 2017

O5-3 pays a visit to his colleague and old flame, O5-4, in the heart of Australia. The two of them chat as they watch every possible future in which the Foundation exists, debating the ethics of the Foundation's continued existence and what their work is for if it means they all go to the hell depicted in the proposal. Ends with Three strangling Four to death, and tossing a Scranton Anchor into the World Between Worlds.

Things break.

Specifically, the Anchor constrains the possible Earths that can exist to a single possibility in which the Foundation 'does good', leading to a catastrophic collapse in consensus history and the possible Earths gradually winking out from existence. Technically the inciting event from a plot perspective.

Time Today

In-Universe Date: c. late 2017

Kusuma Dian receives a promotion to the security detail of an Overseer, and tries to tell her mother about it. This doesn't end well when she finds out that her memories are diverging from that of her mother's — and it might not just be because her mother's brain is slowly being assimilated by a centuries-old reality bender powerful enough to level a continent.

Characters

O5-3 ("Singer")

Outwardly confident and inhumanly charismatic, Three served as the Ethics Committee's representative on the O5 Council before reports surrounding 001-KHYM convinced him that the Foundation's moral imperative was to 'harrow hell' and neutralise the 001.

Years of being the Foundation's judge of 'the greater good' and witnessing atrocity after atrocity in the name of containment have effectively driven Three mad. He still honestly believes in the Foundation and making it 'good', but his morals won't get in the way of his drive to ensure the Foundation is redeemed.

O5-4 ("Castor")

The Foundation's 'Observer Zero', Four had a distant, measured personality honed over years of advising on how present decisions affect the Foundation's possible futures. His vision was always almost exclusively long-term, though, and he was less than blind to the admittedly rare threats he didn't already anticipate coming.

Presently very dead.

Aisyah Dian

An Experimental Containment Research Group trial, Aisyah Dian is an 81-year old, first-generation biological Scranton Reality Anchor; effectively, parts of a reality bender were grafted into her body and slaved to her conscious thought. Said bender is waking up, though, and as it begins to find out more and more of what she's done with its power, it's started taking its revenge — beginning with her brain down.

Stubborn, jaded, abrasive. Tolerance for wasting time has only decreased since she found out she had a year to live.

Kusuma Dian

A high-ranking Foundation agent specialising in the containment of morphogenetic/paracausal/reality-bending anomalies. Twitchy, impulsive, almost perenially anxious, not improved by her recent promotion. Keenly aware of the irony involved in having a SRA as her adoptive mother.