4r4nd0md4y's Sandbox Tales

inspiration for future tau-5 aesthetic: https://www.instagram.com/rome_adzan/
perfect nanku: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb9a4u4Aiec/?taken-by=rome_adzan
henri the fashionista: https://pastebin.com/WkHxPXcW

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Table of Contents

SCP Sandbox
Supersized Project Sandbox
Contest Entry Sandbox
You Are Here
Series Sandbox
Fancy Sandbox
Overflow Sandbox
Third Law Sandbox

escape velocity

I don't usually hang around Three Portlands, but the dives are second to none and the bartenders aren't programmed to ask questions. When I order a blit-bomb, Hersh just rotates with a click and starts mixing a cocktail of glowing chemicals that would be more suited to a bowl of Jello or toxic waste vat. I cast an idle pair of eyes around the pub, which has seen better days: the paint on the counter is warped and split; the air is like melting fondue; and my stool is one bad day from exploding into shards of metal. Still, it's full to bursting with wizards and cyborgs nursing their poisons.

A hobo in ugly grey sweatpants and a windbreaker sidles onto the stool next to me and asks Hersh for a tonic. We don't look at each other.

"You the witch?" he says out of the corner of his mouth.

I heft up a small steel case in one hand. He does the same with a small USB stick. Hersh holds out two glasses: one full of tonic, the other of iridescent rainbow slick. We cautiously place our goods on the counter, then simultaneously snatch the other from the table and down our drinks - mine hits me like a freight train, flushing my pores and making my skin steam.

I'm lighting up a cigarette when the hobo draws a pistol on me.

"You are under arrest by jurisdiction of the UIU for smuggling and manufacturing illicit substances, homicide, digicide, holding unlicensed weaponry, opening unlicensed extradimensional portals, grand theft auto, blackmail, extortion, armed robbery, and jaywalking. Put your hands up."

He manages to get it all out in one breath. I haven't even managed to close my lighter.

"Do you know what's in a blit-bomb?" I ask him. Behind him, a man in a grey hoodie slouched in a booth gives me a wink and stares intently at a nearby wizard - a hobgoblin of a man who almost certainly has a penchant for fire magic.

The hobo stares at me carefully. "Hands up!"

Hoodie's stare drills into the hobgoblin, who slowly sidles out of his seat with a bottle in hand.

"I think you'll want to know what's in it," I tell him. Two more nondescript men and one women sit up straighter - they must be his backup. "It's very important that you know what might happen if you shoot me."

"What's… what'll happen?" the hobo asks, his attention locked completely on me.

I wink. "Nothing!"

The hobgoblin lunges at the hobo and smashes the bottle over his head, getting three lightning bolts in the back for the trouble. I grab the case and throw myself over the counter where Hersh is hiding. He stares at me accusingly as bolts of fire and other blood magicks destroy his selection of exotic depressants.

"Hey, don't look at me," I tell him. "I didn't start this."

Hersh looks ready to reactivate his combat programming. Time to make my great escape. From my left pocket comes a pair of bright-orange knuckledusters; from my right, a fistful of purple pills that tend to interact explosively with blit-bombs. I pop the pills and slide the knuckledusters over my fingers.

My whole body starts vibrating. As I peek over the countertop, the vibrations don't subside so much as move, concentrating themselves entirely into my fingers with an accompanying incandescent glow - a close enough look would reveal tiny explosions coming off my digits, bombarding the surrounding air with heat and concussive force like miniature thermobaric warheads.m quick scan of the room reveals two things: that the standing UIU agents are currently occupied with an angry mob looking to avenge the hobgoblin, and that there are no exits. You get in and out by Pushing^TM - in retrospect that's probably why the UIU wanted to meet here. Which is fine - I'm used to making my own.

I vault over the counter and almost immediately take a bar stool to the face; luckily, its owner is more alcohol than water at this point and offers no resistance when I catch it and yank it from her hands. The stool immediately starts disintegrating in my hands, but it stays intact long enough for me to catch a knife with the seat and bash its wielder so hard that their mechanical eyes pop out of their sockets.

A pair of wizards, Gandalf the Chrome and Gandalf the Vantablack, stagger at me in a drunken rage. I duck under Chrome and sweep his legs out from under him. Vantablack tries to lurch over him and receives a kick to his cybernetic crotch, followed swiftly by an uppercut that sends him in one direction and his metal jaw in another. Chrome tries to get to his feet, only to receive a fist to the skull that hammers him into the ground with a CHOOM.

The hobgoblin has his eyes on me and he's out for blood. He smashes a bottle against an adjacent table and shouts an incantation, turning the spilling booze into a column of fire. The hobgoblin wraps both hands around his makeshift drunken angel sword and we lock eyes. He lunges at me, confident in his killing blow. And he should be. I've seen that kind of magic fire before. There's not a substance on any Earth that can stop it. If I try to dodge or block it then the range of that thing will let him bisect me like butter. Really, he's got the upper hand. But I've got heart - a demonic heart.

I don't try to dodge or block the blow. Instead, I step inwards to meet him, twisting slightly to get between his arms and then grabbing his bottle hand and wrenching it upwards. He involuntarily releases his grip on the sword and it flies into the air.

I elbow the hobgoblin in the face and onto the ground. Then I drive my thermobaric fists into his face - once, twice, thrice. Not enough to kill him - that would break the spell and leave me covered in booze - but enough to keep him down.

I stand up and catch the bottle from the air then look at the walls. It's impossible to punch through them - they're Push^TM only. But I have a drunken angel sword. And there's not a substance on any Earth that can stop it.

I haven't even finished the thought before digging the flaming blade into the wall, carving out a Rookie-shaped hole big enough for me to slip through. As it turns out, the walls aren't immovable after all.

---

"Got anything else for this week?" I ask him.

The Inside Man perks up. "You remember Farhan? That guy you murked a while back?"

I nod.

"It was because I was trying to get in on the black market augs business, right? But I got bored with it and so we never did anything. Well, I got hooked on this video game a couple days ago - it's called Economy or Merchant or whatever, I can't remember I'll probably go play it in a bit anyways. My point is, I'm hooked. So I want to try the black market thing again - for real."

He leans back. "Nothing you need to worry about; right now it's mostly making calls and checking with myselves, but you know. If something needs doing, I'll hit you up. You?"

"Chilling," I reply. "Shopping, maybe. There's a few new comics I wanna check out and some fresh bike leathers. Maybe a new mortar and pestle."

---

Like I said, witches are bitches. And I'm the baddest bitch of them all. I'm a witch, no question about it. but I'm a modern witch. About the only thing I still do old-school is summon demons. I certainly don't bear their children - I had my tubes tied ages ago. I don't promise my soul to them, I harvest them. I don't ask for a fraction of their power, I turn them into drugs and abuse the hell out of them.

Don't get me wrong, there's still a price to pay. I've got a little orb in my chest where my heart used to be. It feeds me, keeps me breathing with a bullet or a knife in my gut, and even talks to me sometimes - usually tries convincing me to kill my business partner in his sleep. I'm not even sure if he does sleep, but that's beside the point, which is that the little bastard needs blood, gold, and souls like a Hummer needs gas.

---

I'm dreaming about this cute Swedish neko I met a few days earlier, so it comes as an unpleasant surprise when I wake up with a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest. I can't move or even breathe. It's too dark to see - must be the middle of the night. There's a shadowy figure on top of me, knees planted firmly on my stomach with a deep pressure that's making my lungs scream. I can't breathe and I can't move and I'm fucking terrified for the first time since I was a little kid and then the thing plunges its hand into my chest and then I really can't breathe. I wish I would wake up and oh lord my chest hurts but then it pulls its hand out of my chest and my engine is in its claws. Time stands still for a moment; the engine is whirring like a demon and glowing a fiery red and the light of my heartbeat illuminates my ex-girlfriend.

---

I scream and then I jolt upright.

Ah, fuck. The Inside Man probably heard that - fucker's never gonna let me live this down. Honestly, though, I'm fucking twenty-five. I'm way too old to have nightmares. Especially not about old flames.

There's a tightness in my chest, and I look down to find myself wearing a black-and-red corset. What the fuck?

I don't sleep in clothes. I definitely don't sleep in corsets. Hell, I don't even wear corsets.

"Aweh! You're up," the Inside Man says, coming into the room.

"What the hell did you do to me?" I snap.

He shrugs. "Saved your life - you're welcome. The fuck happened to you anyways? I heard you screaming, came in to razz you, and found you bleeding to death all over your sheets. Had to slap that fucking thing on you - don't touch it by the way, it's keeping your blood pumping in your body."

"What is it?"

"Combat corset. Been sitting in the stash for bladdy ages."

I nod. The Inside Man's always got something in his stash. Then the implications of the combat corset actually hit me.

"Fuck! My heart!"

"Ja. Your heart," the Inside Man says, sitting on the bed. "Seriously, what the fuck? I come in here and it looks like you got your heart ripped out of your chest."

"I did!" I quickly fill him in on the details of the night before. His eyes narrow.

---

"How the hell am I supposed to get into a MachineGod party?" I complain.

Alliott's eyes narrow and her grin widens. "Just tell them the Rookie wants in. I'm sure he'll want to meet the girl who robbed the Bank of Eurtec."

---

Before I head out I dress to party, swapping out my helmet for a rave mask and a pair of fake cat ears. Then I strap my skates on and rocket out the door. The streets are jammed this time of night, but any native-born knows just which alleys to take to avoid the night rush. I vault over railings, swerve around cars, duck under the arms of annoyed cyborgs, and let the city melt into a blur of light and metal. Then my skates automatically screech to a halt in front of MachineGod's lair and my neck almost snaps from the whiplash.

As I descend the stairs, I see a bouncer at the bottom, roided up and sporting a second pair of cybernetic arms grafted to the sides of her ribs. She looks like she's already planning to throw me back up.

"Tell the MachineGod that the Rookie wants in," I tell her. She sizes me up for a moment and her eyes go far away. Then she opens the door and I walk into a neon jungle.

It's sweltering and muggy and the strobe lights are an ugly neon pink. Everyone here is mashed together and wired up: thick black cables dangle from the ceiling like a puppet master's strings, plugging into every exposed orifice they can find and replacing people's blood with EDM. The floor itself is a giant subwoofer; KMFDM rattles my teeth with every step. People writhe and shake and rattle and roll, tossing me around in a sea of flesh and metal. In the center of the room is a massive ring of steps leading up to a shiny steel dais, where a combination throne and turntable set sits. A pair of disembodied hands expertly scratches the turntable, wired to the suspended, dismembered body of MachineGod himself.

Nobody's really sure who the MachineGod is. A robot? An android? An AI? A human who uploaded himself? Nobody really cares either. What's important is that the MachineGod fought and died for our right to party. He's our lord, savior, and DJ. And this is his most sacred temple.

MachineGod's thick, muscular torso is directly above the center of the throne, underneath a mounted head and surrounded by four separate pairs of arms and legs. Robotic manipulators pop out from hidden rails under the steps and grasps his parts, bringing them together and stringing thick spindles of wire between them as they descend. The MachineGod's body assembles itself as he lowers himself to my level, and in one fluid movement the grippers detach themselves from his body as he leaves the final step. Only his hands remain in place, controlling the beat and the crowd.

MachineGod's eyes glimmer like diamonds against a face sculpted by a neo-renaissance surgeon and an abdomen chiseled to perfection. His biceps compete for my attention with his bronzed, sleekly toned thighs.

"Walk with me. Talk with me. Squawk with me. Rock with me," the floor blares as MachineGod passes me by. I hastily chase after him as he plunges into the depths of the club.

---

And that's how I ended up here: tied up and suspended over a big vat of frothing angry sludge, with the Wraiths reading my mind in case I tried something tricky. Then I shot Natalya in the face while climbing the rope.

See, the thing about mind-reading is that it's surprisingly easy to think one thing and do another. The Inside Man taught me that while we were preparing for the heist. So all I had to do was feed them a story while I got myself untied, retrieved the second pistol I keep hidden on my person, and start climbing. The bitches were so confident in their technique that they didn't even bother to look at me.

---

One of the first things Natasha decided while trying to conjure the damn thing was that typical control schemes wouldn't work. The best way to operate a twenty-meter-tall death machine is to control it as an extension of your own body - and that meant a full-body control suit. In typical Natasha fashion, of course, she took it one step further. She didn't want to make space inside the cockpit for the pilot to move their limbs - took away from weapons. So what she did instead was make a person-shaped shell.

I clamber into the shell and it immediately wraps around me, shrinking to fit my size and locking my limbs into place. I'm lucky that my hair doesn't get chopped off as it encases me. I open my mouth obligingly to allow the ventilator tube to snake its way down my throat. A bit of air tickles my neck, courtesy of a port in the shell right at the base of my skull. Then the hole is plugged by a massive hypodermic needle that slams through my neck into my spinal cord and hijacks the nerve signals going from my brain to the rest of my body.

Natasha's genius was in literally making the mech an extension of its pilot's body - if I move my limbs, the mech's will move instead. If the mech takes damage, I'll feel it. I only have to look at where I want to aim and the mech's inbuilt artificial intelligence will complete the job. The downside is the lack of autonomic nervous functions like breathing - but that's what the ventilator is for.

terminal velocity original

8:30 AM

The room swirls into view, colored purple and pink and smelling like sex and bad decisions. The bed is soft and plush, with a thread count in the thousands and a price tag even higher. A naked boy on the left wiggles his tail and furry, pointed ears and says, "Hey. Rookie. Wake up."

On the right, a naked girl with the same accoutrements and also fantastic breasts snaps her fingers. "Wake up. Something big is going down."

It's way too early to be thinking about anything, and there's a hangover that has made it clear that it isn't going anywhere. The bed is so very inviting, as are the duo lounging on it… but greed wins out over lust.

"…something big?"

"It's the Poltergeists," the two hybrids say in unison. "They're all at Berlin Station but I can't probe any of their minds for some reason. Whatever they're doing, it's big."

"So?"

"They're all at Berlin Station… except one. Achmed's doing the same thing as you - enjoying the company of his favorite cyber-whore at the Nuts and Bolts. You gotta get the info out of him the old-fashioned way."

"…Fine. When?"

"Now!" they both say. "Hop in the shower, quick one, five minutes - you smell like sex and bad decisions - and get an Anti-Hangover too, I know you have the points for it."

"Okay."

Roll over the male and stumble out of the bed towards the bathroom. There's a woman with chocolate-colored skin and jet-black hair staring out of the mirror; she looks like she was struck by lightning. Lurch into the shower and let it wash the decadence and depravity of the previous night into the drain. Dry off, put on clothes, then stagger out of the room towards the lobby. Stop by the kiosk and redeem one hundred -

INSUFFICIENT PLEASURE POINTS FOR PURCHASE

Hiring four nubile Asian cybernekos to appease Asmodeus has a hefty price tag. That's fine. There's still two pills in the pocket of this bike jacket. Pretty sure they should do the trick. Totter into the lobby bathroom. Drink from the tap. Swallow them both. Hangover's gone, vision is sharper, mind racing but there's this itchy sensation and now it's stabbing there is a stabbing pain in your head and chest and there is something crawling out of the tap with tentacles and claws and fangs red and green and purple and suddenly everything smells like smoke but it's a sweet sickly smoke so TAKE A DEEP BREATH

8:45 AM

and suddenly come back down and feel the heft of a wrench in one hand and a grizzled Middle Eastern man with a cybernetic eye and bald silver head shackled to a chair in the middle of a cold concrete floor and hear someone say in a bizarrely modulated voice, "What's in the train?"

The man spits on the floor. "Fuck you!"

Suddenly that wrench isn't dangling it's swinging and there's a CRUNCH as it collides with the man's left knee. He screams out in pain and somebody is laughing, producing these bizarre robotic giggles.

The question comes again. "What's in the train?"

He screams "Fuck you!"

Wrong answer.

The wrench winds up again and everything is starting to spin again fuck fuck fuck wait there's an orange powder on that cart over there so hold off on that wrench swing and step over to the cart and just snort that powder and drop the wrench because who needs a wrench when there's lightning coming out of your fingertips so start laughing again because he's going to really be screaming when this is over but first TAKE A DEEP BREATH because

9:20 AM

"We're gonna rob the Phitransum Combine."

Wait where is this - alright, calm down, this is the firing range slash armory back at the warehouse so everything is fine. This is a safe place, so step back for a moment and figure out what's happening. The Inside Man is scribbling across the armory whiteboard. He's practically shaking with excitement. From the look of things, he and a few thousand of his alternate-reality counterparts are doing that thing where they research, analyze variables, and crunch the numbers to plot and simulate an entire heist in their collective heads.

"This is perfect. The entire freaking Poltergeist gang is gonna be there. If you can loot the Combine before them then we can frame them for the crime. We'll replenish our treasury and get the Poltergeists out of the way… and that will get us one step closer to claiming the name 'Chicago Spirit'."

The Inside Man steps back from the whiteboard. It's a mess of arrows, letters, and overly detailed faces, but what sticks out is the drawing of the train. It barely looks like a train at all - this beast is the lovechild of a Rolls-Royce and a fighter jet designed by someone with a hard-on for Julius Caesar. There are even fins on the top. Who puts fins on a train?

"Treasury?"

The Inside Man looks unimpressed. "Yes, treasury. We need to have some class."

He opens up one of the armory lockers and throws a shotgun to you which almost gets dropped because there's a brain in a jar where the drum magazine is supposed to be. The jar is covered in mesh; inside, the brain is speared on a bizarre metal crown and is hooked up to a bunch of electrodes coming out of the base. There's also some kind of music player plugged into a dock in front of the jar. It could only have come from the Inside Man, and there he is, flashing a smarmy, self-satisfied grin.

"What the fuck is this?"

"It's from a world where wars are won with the coolest weapons," the Man says, smirking. "The gun doesn't fire regular bullets - when you pull the trigger, it zaps the brain and causes it to shoot off a psychic slug. Hit someone with that slug and it rewires their brain. You prime the slug with your music. No recoil, no reloading, no running out of ammo. It'll fire as long as your phone has charge."

He sounds quite pleased with himself.

"There's two settings - Salmon and Acid. You can switch by hitting the fast-forward button. One of them makes people think they're a fish - the other literally melts their brain."

"And if there aren't people?"

"If it has a brain, then this thing will fry it. My boys tell me that Alexylva uses cyber-everything to guard their trains, so you'll be fine. Good job getting the deets on that train from Achmed, by the way."

"Thanks."

"Right. Get to the insertion point, sneak onto the Combine, get into the vault car, steal the loot with that fancy curtain trick you do, and book it. I'll guide you through the details. Keep in touch with the headset."

Helmet - check. Leathers - check. Shotgun - in hand. Handbag - full of drugs. Step outside the warehouse and sneak out of the alley to where you left Achmed's muscle car. Buckle the shotgun into, appropriately, the shotgun seat. It looks secure enough so hit the gas and peel out down the street. The insertion point is on the outskirts of the city which is still a ways away so just calm down and TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:30 AM

Pull the satchel open. Take out the baggie of chartreuse powder. Take out the baggie of tangerine powder. Spread them in a mix on the dash. Snort the mix in a single go. Wipe bloody nose and floor it.

The engine roars, literally, howling in anger as it mashes up and digests the cocktail of sex, drugs, and demons inside the driver's brain. The transmission turns from metal to bone and begins to cackle as its calcium gears shift. The driver's seat is a spinal column. The exhaust is screaming in pain. The tires are bleeding. The steering wheel is blinking.

There's no time to scream. There's only time to hold on for dear life as hell on wheels rockets into the grassland limbo that surrounds Eurtec and pursues the train with white-hot fury.

Grab the shotgun. Grab the satchel. Unbuckle the human skin belt. Stand up and get buffeted by the wind. Squint against the cold knives of the air and try not to fall out of the maw of the slobbering beast traveling at several hundred miles per hour. Look at the train on the left and realize that it is actually about twenty meters away - this fucking hellhound is chasing something else entirely. Open the satchel. Pop the purple pills inside. Scream as bones start to melt and organs deform as all the calcium in the body replaces itself with a dense yet stretchy aramid fiber.

Jump out of the vehicle and reach for the train. Grab onto train as left arm unspools itself into a twenty-meter long string and then just as rapidly respools itself. Stand shakily on caboose of Alexylva Express, watch the hellhound race out of sight into the grasslands, and then as the train shifts transdimensional gears and the world explodes into a swirl of rainbow bubbles your lungs start to twist counterclockwise to reality so TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:31 AM

and flinch as the Inside Man's voice explodes inside the helmet then dial the volume down right quick.

"Rookie! Hey! You okay? What the hell happened? Did you cross into the next universe?"

"I'm onboard. In the last car."

"Nice. Poltergeists are still onboard. Get to the vault car, snag the loot, then kill yourself or whatever and respawn back here. I can sense something in the caboose - one thing, but it's hungry. Get your shotty ready."

Kick the door open and swing the shotgun into position with a single fluid movement.

There's no actual furniture inside the caboose. Just a bunch of inactive brass robots and also a very big wolf with very sharp teeth that is growling so shoot and pray to God Satan that those psychic slugs actually work. The shotgun fires with a thick bass drop. The wolf stops growling, flops onto its side, and starts wiggling around like a fish, mouthing wolf sounds. Then it realizes that it thinks it needs water to breathe and starts making loud gasping sounds.

Step over the wolf and navigate through the machines. Open up the door to the next car and TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:32 AM

because there's a dozen Poltergeists in the next car popping open the crates littered throughout and they don't look happy at the interruption. Every single one of them has gotten a headjob: a new, bright red eye loaded with cybernetics, a face covered in shiny silver, and metal plates lining the skull. They're also holding submachine guns.

Duck behind one of the unopened crates as bullets start whistling overhead. Peek over the crate and start shooting then duck down as one bullet almost goes right between your eyes. There's way too many of them to kill, and pretty soon they're gonna figure out that they can literally waltz up to the crate and pop you in the head. Tune out the shouts of the Poltergeists and the rumbling of the train and the cacophony of gunfire and search the satchel for the good stuff. At the bottom, buried beneath the baggies and pills, is a modified autoinjector filled with buzzing neon locusts that flap against the plastic. There's no time for anything fancy - pop the autoinjector open and jab it into your neck.

Suddenly everything is double - like there's a second everything superimposed just over what's actually there, including yourself. The superimposed image is vibrating and blurry so that means it's working hopefully but there's really no point worrying about it now because either it works or you die so hit fast-forward on the shotgun, vault over the crate, shoot the first Poltergeist in your crosshairs and TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:33 AM

because suddenly you ARE the Poltergeist and your vision is half-red and your head feels like pins-and-needles and there's a submachine gun weighing awkwardly in your hands but otherwise the drug-fueled haze has cleared up nicely. The Rookie is dead ahead of you, clad in a black leather jumpsuit and red-black helmet but with a toxic green glow spilling out from underneath her helmet. She's not the Rookie: that's a demon in there, piloting and repairing that body in its owner's absence - but it's fueled by nearby souls and is even less efficient than a Hummer, so unless someone dies very soon it's going to cannibalize its host body in a very ugly and very radioactive way. Under the circumstances, do the only thing that makes sense. Shoot the Poltergeist on the left to free up her soul for the Fauxkie's convenience and in the process abruptly teleport two feet to occupy the vacuum in her brain that was left behind. The Fauxkie moves too sluggishly to avoid the bullets tearing through your favorite leather jacket and also INTO YOUR BODY, but then kicks into overdrive as your brimstone valet feasts upon the now-untethered soul of the not-so-innocent. Green smoke pours from the bullet wounds as they seal up and the radioactive bitch starts shooting like mad. It actually smacks itself in the face with the butt of the gun - it's like this thing has never fired one before - but muscle memory kicks in and the Fauxkie manages to avoid completely shattering its nose.

Predators

+ crit

rimple:

I'd change the tone of the bit after the shots start firing somewhat, make them funding delighted to have something to do. Adds more character, feels different to "Alright, serious mission mode" and acts as a reminder that they're really not quite human

<Lex1nat0r> I agree with Rimple
The serious mission mode right now somehow ends up making them seem more socially adept than the rest of the dialogue. I get that it's what they're the most used to, but it's still jarring.
It feels like an undeserved character shift
Other than the bullet resistance, their actions are easily replaceable with generic MTF members
Maybe instead of having recognizable operator language, they have some kind of on-mission conlang that evolved among themselves? Like, their version of operator speak that still sounds off

Obviously they ARE a plot point, but the final researcher's dialogue makes her FEEL like a plot point
Just a cog in the joke
Also, to hammer in the annoyance of "Go back immediately" in, I'd have something beforehand with them expecting and looking forward to the rest, as opposed to it being a small question after the fact
A joke without substance doesn't work with the tone of the rest of the tale or the series as a whole

Irantu, Munru, Onru, and Nanku stared dolefully at the whirling ball of knives.

"So, to be clear, our assignment is to sit in this truck trailer with this object and escort it from here to Site-45? And then… ride straight back?" Irantu asked.

"Correct," the researcher standing in front of him said almost dismissively. "Here's the containment procedures for the thing; you shouldn't need it. Long as the box doesn't break you'll be fine. Trip shouldn't be more than fifteen, sixteen hours max. We're not expecting any hostiles. Here's a transponder in case you need to contact the driver."

Irantu took the proffered paper. "And if the box breaks?"

The researcher cocked his head and clicked his tongue. "…that's why we assigned you. Oh! Here's a couple spare boxes."

The man behind the wheel of the truck honked the horn. "Let's go! We're supposed to be there by tonight!"

The remaining members of Tau-5 looked to Irantu. He nodded and they leaped into the semi-trailer. Irantu clambered in more carefully, conscious of the box. The trailer door slammed shut and the truck started moving.

The squad sat in the middle of the empty trailer, staring at the box. There was a single incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating the cold metal floor.

"So," Munru broke the silence. "What exactly is it?"

Irantu looked at the containment dossier. "It says here… the object should be contained within a polycarbonate box point-two-five meters to a side and five centimeter thick walls with a lockable lid. If the box breaks, two D-Class personnel must be sent in to the cell… one to occupy and lure the object and one to contain it in a replacement box. The D-Class personnel should only be recovered once the object is securely contained. More D-Class may be sent in should the first one be eliminated by the object.'"

Nanku picked up the cube. "So… it kills people unless it's in the box?"

"Explains why we are guarding it," Onru noted.

The squad stared at the box for several more seconds in silence. The light flickered.

Finally, Nanku spoke up. "Anybody have playing cards?"

---

Munru peered over his cards. "Go fish."

"Damn," muttered Nanku, snatching a card from the pile on the floor.

Onru was next. "Irantu… have any tens?"

Irantu handed her two tens. She showed the other two tens in her hand and placed all her cards on the floor. " I win," she said.

Nanku angled her head to look at her. "Sound excited about it. Sound more normal," she complained.

Onru shrugged.

Nanku rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "Now what should we play?"

"Dunno," Munru replied.

Nanku perked up. "Did you just use slang?" She got up from the floor and advanced on Munru. At that moment, the truck bounced over an utterly enormous pothole in the road, sending the box flying from Irantu's grasp. He leaped up to grab it, but missed, and it struck the wall.

Unfortunately for the squad, that particular lid was partially defective, and the impact against the wall caused the hinge to break. The lid fell off the box, and the ball of knives practically threw itself out of the box and lodged in Nanku's skull.

"Somehow she always gets… the short end of that stick," Irantu commented as she collapsed.

---

Nanku awoke to find her vision blurred and speech slurred . "Bwuuuuuuuuuuh," she grunted as she tried and failed to pick herself off the ground.

The people around her were indistinct blobs but she assumed they were her team. "Whuuuuuuuuuh," she moaned.

One blob spoke. "It hit your head. I took it out and… put it into the replacement box. You may… have brain damage."

Inevitably, though, Nanku's senses and speech capabilities soon came back to her, and she saw more clearly that Munru was holding the spare box, now with the ball in it. His hands were badly sliced up, even with the bulky gloves he was wearing.

Nanku forced herself into a sitting position and slumped back against the wall. "That… explains the box," she mumbled.

"I wonder why… they want to move it. I also… wonder why they chose a truck to move it," Irantu said.

They looked to each other, but saw that nobody had a satisfactory answer. Nanku reached into her pack, extracted her slang cheat sheet, a notebook, and pen, then began writing. Munru watched her idly.

"What are you… writing?"

She looked up. "A novel!"

Munru raised an eyebrow. "Since when?"

Nanku shrugged and put the pen in her mouth. "Me number 39… did a lot of writing. You know, the memory restoring isn't perfect… sometimes I lose stuff. Like writing. I want… to reconnect with her… with me. I want to reconnect with me. " She shrugged again and started chewing on the pen.

"What are you writing about?" Irantu asked.

"Us!" Nanku said excitedly. "And how we killed the Warrior and... our father!"

"Can I see?" Onru asked, reaching for the book. Nanku slapped her hand away. "I'm still writing!"

"What are you going to put in it?"

"Action! Adventure! Deep character moments! Sex!"

"I do not recall anyone… having sex?" Munru asked bemusedly.

"Well, Dirk Pitt always has sex with some… vivacious firebrand," Nanku said, looking proud of herself for not having used her cheat sheet, "so I can't have a… thrilling, swashbuckling adventure… without sex in it."

"Wait," Irantu asked, "who is going to…?"

Nanku shrugged. "I can figure that out later."

Eyebrows rose.

---

Nanku glanced at her cheat sheets. "I'm having… writer's block," she said, stuffing her notebook and pen back into her case. She pulled out her pistol from her holster and stared idly at it. Then she put it away, peeled off her gloves, and started nibbling at her hands.

"This is… boring," Onru sighed, holding the box up to the light and peering at it.

Irantu decided to take charge. "Let's… do some bonding… activities," he suggested.

Munru tilted his head in acknowledgement. "What activities?"

Irantu thought for a moment. "All right. What is your… favorite operation?"

"Operation… Churlish Wendigo," said Nanku, before going back to her fingers. "When we tested the… LFOs...? LFOs. I enjoyed the… being able to… move so freely."

"Rolling Thunder," said Munru. "With the… handheld railgun prototypes. They were fun to shoot."

"Operation… Morningstar. Those… cherubs? Cherubs. Those cherubs were so… squishy and fun to kill," said Onru.

"Operation Thousand Miles. Our first mission," said Irantu.

Onru, Munru, and Nanku cocked their heads. "Spoken… like a squad leader," Onru mumbled, one corner of her mouth curling up near-imperceptibly.

The truck went over another bump, but this time Irantu easily caught the box.

"New question," Irantu said. "What is the… funniest death one of us has had?"

Nanku cut in. "That's easy. When they replaced… our stoma- our guts… with multi-purpose digestion units! Irantu's ruptured and he got menin… meningo… blood poisoning. They had to put him down because he… looked like an eggplant."

Irantu made an attempt to chuckle. "…Okay. When we raided the… fire elemental compound in Death Valley. Onru… had a shoulder-mounted fire suppressant launcher… but it exploded. I remember I got hit by… chunks of her ribs."

Onru huffed slightly. "We were testing the warding implants. Munru's backfired and… electrocuted him. Even after he was dead he kept twitching like a… like a little puppet."

Munru tilted his head. "Wrong. Nanku at the gathering of… mages. All those wards and implants… and protective spells and nobody thought… about guns. She had more holes than… Swiss cheese."

The corners of Onru's mouth tilted upwards. Irantu gave a small snort of laughter. Nanku attempted to make a pouting expression.

Munru looked around the trailer again. "We haven't… done operations like that since… the warrior."

"From killing god… to killing time," Onru said.

"There must be… a good reason why we've been stuck inside," said Irantu frustratedly. "We have been testing… several new devices."

"We usually field-test on live targets," Munru snapped. "This is the first… time we have left Site-30 in six months."

"It's so boring," said Nanku. "Six months and no operations. Nothing but the range targets and rats-"

"-and rats just squeak when you kill them," Onru added.

"They don't know what to do with us," Munru muttered. "Not since we got… more human. Remember what I said after we killed two-nine… the Warrior? I said, 'We will not be cooped up in cells. We will be able to live, and learn, and love, and create…' We were never supposed to."

"Well, we have been… testing new equipment…" Irantu trailed off.

Munru snorted. "I think… they know what happened down there, with the Warrior… maybe they wired us without us knowing. Now they are… afraid of us and want to… mothball us."

"The rats cannot have helped," Onru noted, looking archly at Nanku.

"Captain Hughes was reassigned last month. They said… she was promoted to head a new… initiative. What if it wasn't? What if they… are moving everyone off Tau-5?" Munru asked.

"Just because we haven't had… any missions does not mean we are being… mothballed," Irantu declared. "We are testing equipment that could save lives when it is ready. We are good at it… we are making the world a better… place by doing it. We do the things nobody else can do."

"What are those?" Munru asked sardonically. "Killing things and dying? They… could send D-Class for those. They could… have taken this object and given it to the D-Class… they were supposed to! But they… sent a team of, as Nanku puts it, 'crack super-commandoes'. This is no operation… this is a distraction."

Several bullets came through the trailer door.

---

As was her due, Nanku took most of the shots, grunting from surprise rather than pain. The four of them leapt to their feet.

"Yes yes yes yes yes!" Nanku cheered. "Finally!"

She took two steps forward and then slid towards the door. "Tell me when - "

"The item is the priority," Irantu barked. He glanced at his squadmates, saw their crestfallen looks, and conceded. "…You can deal with the hostiles. I will guard the item." He dropped to his belly and shimmied towards the far end of the trailer with the cube.

The smile back on her face, Nanku shoved the trailer door open and was temporarily blinded by sunlight flooding into the trailer before her ocular implants kicked in to shield her from the glare.

They looked outside to see that they were driving along a winding road high in the mountains. The edge of a cliff was mere meters away, and far below it a sprawling desert underneath a deep orange sky.

About twenty meters behind them were an assorted group of featureless black jeeps and bikes. There were machine guns mounted to the jeeps, and men posted to said guns, while each bike had a passenger with a nasty-looking rifle. All of their assailants wore thick helmets and military-looking gear.

"I count two jeeps and two bikes," Munru said. "You know… I am actually glad we tested this new prosthetic." He gripped his prosthetic thumb with his other hand and carefully made a finger-gun motion at the lead jeep's tires. "Let us make sure my… aim has not worsened."

Munru's ocular implants quickly generated a firing solution and overlaid it on a HUD directly in his mind's eye. Ignoring the bullets whistling at, past, and through him, he took a deep breath and then smoothly pulled his thumb back. Inside his arm, the thumb completed a small circuit which immediately began building a massive amount of current through a long, helical ring made of a special thaumaturgically-charged superconducting ceramic. This generated an intensely powerful magnetic field, pulling a small rod-like projectile stored in his arm forward at ridiculously high speed.

The electromagnet disengaged right as the projectile reached the midpoint of Munru's arm. The projectile did not stop, and it kept going, blasting through his middle finger and piercing right through both of the lead jeep's left tires.

The truck swerved around a switchback, narrowly avoiding flying right off the edge. The blown-out jeep and Nanku's knapsack were not so lucky. The jeep crashed through the guard rail and soared off the cliff, while her writing materials soared out of the truck and landed square in the lead bike's sidecar.

Nanku gritted her teeth. "I need to get that back!" She took three steps back, then raced forward and leaped out of the truck towards the bike.

Time stood still, and for a moment she thought she had fatally misjudged her leap. So had the bikers. They were unpleasantly surprised when, through some miracle (of genetically-engineered physical prowess) Nanku landed feet-first on the rear biker's head, knocking her right off her seat and underneath the tires of the oncoming jeep. The lead biker himself was rather surprised by this display of agility, allowing Nanku to put one hand on the handlebars and the other on his chest - knife in hand - before shoving him off.

"Finally finally finally!" she exclaimed, veering towards the other bike. Much to her chagrin, however, its front rider burst into flames just as she pulled alongside it. The bike fishtailed and then crashed into the mountain side of the road; both its riders skidded to a halt, the front one still burning. Nanku looked towards the truck to see Onru waving, the barrel of a CO₂ laser extending from her palm.

The final jeep screeched to a halt. The truck did not, but once they were a few more miles away, it slowed down enough for Nanku to catch up, grab her knapsack, and leap from the bike to the truck where the rest of the squad was waiting.

Munru shut the trailer door. Then he looked back at the squad. "Too easy. Fun and games, right… if this is a distraction, then those were our toys."

"Don't be so paranoid," Nanku replied, but her face dropped from excited glee to uncertainty.

The lightbulb in the trailer flickered some more.

---

When the truck rolled into Site-45, the four commandos stumbled out of the back of the trailer with Onru holding the anomaly, which was immediately plucked from her grasp by a waiting researcher. While Irantu relayed the details of the mountain chase to the researcher (who did not look at all surprised to hear about it), the rest of Tau-5 took a look around the docking bay.

"I need to stretch," Nanku mumbled, yawning. "I wonder what there is to do around here." She glanced pointedly at Munru. He stared back. Onru got in-between them. "Perhaps we can find… a shooting range or people to play cards with," she suggested.

"Unfortunately, I don't think you will," the researcher interrupted them, handing Irantu a large metal briefcase. "This contains sensitive equipment that you need to deliver to Emil Ascarilla immediately. We'll have to send a team to investigate the people who attacked you; you'll have to take the longer route. Trip shouldn't be more than twenty hours max. Here's a transponder in case you need to contact the driver."

She pointed to a trailer even smaller than the one they had ridden in.

Tau-5's faces fell in unison, but they dutifully climbed into the trailer. The door slammed closed and there was the familiar rumble of the vehicle getting on the road. The trailer was cold metal, and there was a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

"We weren't… backed up," Munru noted.

"Because they do not have the facilities to do so!" Irantu shouted, exasperated. "Stop thinking that we are… going to be decommissioned! Let's do something else. We can… play cards."

The lightbulb went out.

Conqueror Worm

+ crit

•Roget> I like the tale bit you've got there's a lot of good deep space opera-esque imagery going on
there's a bit of repetition in some places but that can be easily ironed out
there's a lot of good setup here but it just seems to be starting to have stuff happen by the end
yeah I'm curious to see more about the [elder gods] ritual
there at the end it was getting interesting

•ARD>OK, I might have to rework the structure to get the pace going a bit faster
Perhaps I could intersperse the stuff at the end with the space opera segments?

Did you just say worms gained sapience through genetic memory
I'm pretty sure that's varsity stupid

it's code for a secret occult ritual to turn a girl into the conduit for an alien god
so that you have a human interface for all this alien power
You realize that stupid when you generate the girl entirely by your own will
write her to be the conduit to the endless to begin with
You cannot say it's not tied to meta fictional reality
When metafiction reality is literally whatever you want

While the swerve with the girl was not the best with this context I do think it was done well enough
Building up this awesome thing and then destroying it
the filling her with worm being the context

Some twenty-eight parsecs from the planet Earth, in the atmosphere of a gas giant in a binary star system, a small hovering drone entered a long-abandoned library. The library was an ancient place: an enormous organic temple in the sky and the tombstone of a once-mighty race of oblate spheroids. The inside of the library was shaped like a teardrop, its pulsating walls lined with physical scrolls both outlandishly and prudently archaic; the ferocious storms constantly rolling through the atmosphere would have destroyed any digital information eons ago. Even the drone could not withstand the electromagnetic fields for long. Quickly, it floated to the outermost shelf and extended its soft grippers to carefully extract the uppermost scroll in the top right corner. The drone gingerly unrolled the scroll, took pictures of it, and then transmitted that information to a command module suspended in orbit seventy-three kilometers away. Just as gently, it placed the scroll back and moved to the next scroll.

As the drone examined each scroll in turn, floating down the spiraling shelves, the command module overhead analyzed the images and began translating. Soon, a pattern emerged. The library was no mere information repository; it was a warning. Each scroll in the temple contained stories, myths, legends, and even scientific studies of an ancient, enormous creature, slumbering in the deepest reaches of the cosmos, of such might and power that its mere shadow was enough to swallow entire star systems.

On top of a mountain on the planet Earth, a group of people trying to save the world were taught by an engine how to channel the Worm. With nothing more than a hope, a manuscript stolen from Vonnegut, and a metafictional condenser, they generated the perfect heroine. She could've been taken straight out of a book. She was intelligent, witty, charismatic, and strong. She wanted to save the world.

They rewrote the script, hollowed her out, and filled her up with as much Worm as they could.

Two-hundred-seventeen parsecs from the planet Earth, deep underground on a small rocky planet dotted by continuous volcanic activity, a three-kilometer-long platyhelminth vomited its undigested meal, which was quickly set upon by its offspring. It was the matriarch, patriarch, and offspring of its clan: an enormous, world-spanning clonal colony of equally massive flatworms. The patriarch had arrived on the world some billions of years earlier, carried on a chunk of rock from its original home by the Impact. It had adapted to its new, ferociously hostile world, swiftly out-competing the native life and developing a symbiotic relationship with the bacterial colonies of the planet. It had even developed a kind of sapience, passing down the knowledge of millions of years to its offspring.

The most crucial, and possibly even venerated (inasmuch as an eyeless acoelomate could venerate) memory of all was that panspermic instigator, the Impact: the obliteration of the homeworld by a creature of size enough to dwarf even the patriarch. One moment, the sky over the homeworld was darkened by a massive shadow; the next, the planet was rent asunder, simultaneously ripped to shreds and flattened and compressed into a disc and bent into a helix and twisted. The patriarch had survived by mere chance; its foraging had trapped it on a remainder of the homeworld thrown into space by the Impact. Some of the nerve clusters at the 'head' of the worm lit up briefly at the memory. It began to vomit faster, that it might forage sooner.

She snarled at them, a wild animal driven mad by the Worm's essence: a fractional distillation of the power, of the age, of the immensity of the Worm. The animal thrashed outwards. The essence of the Worm lashed outwards and twisted. The men and women trying to save the world were warped: their spines contorted and their eyes plunged inwards, stealing brain matter to make more eyes and their lungs started muttering under their own breaths as their skulls rotated counterclockwise to reality.

There were always people trying to save the world. A few more came and rewrote the script again, scrubbing her mind clean and conditioning her.

Two thousand parsecs away from the planet Earth, a hive mind construct that existed solely through the changes in the magnetic field of a half dozen red giants lightyears apart detected a mental lensing: a change in infospace, a shifting of priorities, a warp in information two thousand parsecs away. Something shifting. Something… twisting. Sunspots popped up across the half dozen stars simultaneously as they ejected great gouts of plasma into the solar systems around them, wreaking havoc on the dozens of inhabited moons and worlds around them. Then cores of the six stars collapsed in on themselves simultaneously, in a cataclysmic stellar explosion that lasted for months and briefly outshined their resident galaxy. Even as the cosmic bombs wiped out all life for trillions of kilometers around them, they were seeding the materiel of new life for trillions more.

The Worm briefly broke through into meatspace, twisting as it did so. The stars were remade, the life was redone, and then all was obliterated in its presence.

They told her that they had found her in the snow. They were a secret rebellion attempting to save the world from itself, and she was their Chosen One: a leader, a champion, a messiah, given special powers by fate. She believed it, of course; aside from knowing nothing else, why wouldn't she? It was almost like her destiny was written out for her.

And who wouldn't want to be special?

A billion parsecs away, an ancient race of sapient machines assembled a weapon powerful enough to collapse an entire universe.
«I worry that the machine shall fail,» the architect chirped, integrated into his own machine.
«Did you not design the machine? Are you not confident in your own creation?» came the response from the amassed workers, combining themselves to form the apparatus of destruction.
«This machine is powerful enough to annihilate our universe. The Wyrm is not our universe.» the architect feared.
«Was it not us that slew the Progenitors, the gods, before we were born? Was it not your creations that chained them to the floor of reality, and subjugated their minds that we might consume them? Was it not you that heralded us into the pantheon of divinity!» roared the masses.
«It was. And yet…» the architect worried.
«And yet we have constructed the ultimate weapon. The machine to pull the Wyrm into the under space and cast it into nothingness! We shall save our race or die trying!» the workers roared.
The machine came together. Great plumes of light streaked down the side, illuminating the apparatus and terminating in a central barrel.
«I fear that we have merely awoken a sleeping dragon,» the architect declared.
Throughout the universe, a million singularities suddenly became linked. In the spaces in-between their atoms, their protons, their quarks, the Worm awoke and twisted. The singularities suddenly inverted. The machine consumed itself, and with it, the machine race - the artificial deities - were expunged from the universe.

On top of a mountain on the planet Earth, a young woman's favorite pastimes were imagining ways to save the world and attempting to drown herself.

It was quite exciting, really. All she had to do was stick her head under the bath and hold it there. Her lungs would burn, her head would spin, her vision would darken, and she would start drifting. Then the tendrils running down her spine would twist, and greedily suck up oxygen from the water. The water's oxygen content was limited, nor were the tendrils particularly efficient structures, so she still got the same kick. Little recreation could be found within the rebellion's sanctum, and she was far too busy being their God to enjoy it anyways. She had to steal what little pleasure she could.

One trillion parsecs away, an aquatic race of cephalopods sensed the tremors pulsating through innerspace and prayed in fear. They were devotees of ancient, powerful beings who were old when the universe was young: eldritch abominations who were feared even by the gods themselves. Surely these ancient masters would slay the Worm, crush it beneath their heels, assert their dominance over all of time and space. The cephalopods would sacrifice their own people to gain the favor of the Ancient Ones, crafting an enormous apparatus that would siphon away the souls of their sacrifices to feed them. The last thought to pass through the minds of these sacrifices was that their prayers must surely be answered.

One trillion-i parsecs away, ancient, powerful beings who were old when the universe was young performed their idiot dance, deaf, dumb, and blind to the creatures that sought their favor. Yet even as these hideous, blighted things - creatures of sounds and shapes utterly incomprehensible to any being within meatspace - continued their song and dance in the space between the void, their hellish frolicking was muffled. It had been muffled since before time had meaning and would be muffled until after time ceased to have meaning. To dance louder was to attract the Worm as it burrowed through the spaces between realities.

A young man with the misfortune of being able to commune with the dead sat in a cell, surrounded by the specters of all the men, women, and things that had died in it. They haunted him, endlessly vomiting up words like so much verbal detritus. As one spirit explained his plans to escape and then butcher the man who had framed him, the young man contemplated his potential avenues of suicide. His planning was interrupted by the door being blown into the room. Had someone come to rescue him? The man got a better look at his savior and started backpedaling and screaming.

The person that stood in the doorway had no head. Instead, a writhing mass of worm-like tails snaked from its back over its neck, each tipped with a single eyeball that rotated, swiveled, and even dipped and ducked around to scan around itself in a 360-degree radius. From a face without a mouth, it spoke: "Hullo, I'm Ramona Vonnegut. I need your help to save the world."

This Gun Turns People into Ducks

+ Crit

TyGently: I think it could perhaps do better if the setting were clearer before it becomes relevant
when you've only got dialogue it's good for it to be anchored
the "whisper" bit btw is long enough that it screws up formatting on mobile, on the sandbox site at least
otherwise it's entertaining
perhaps you could play up the comedic horror of turning people into ducks as a humane option, touch on if they're still conscious or something, idk
** mention something about them spending the rest of their happy little lives at the duck pond**

Foundation Site-42 Weapons Testing Range

"What?"

"Not just people, actually."

"What?"

"I know, right? Oh man, you have no idea how long I've been working on this - "

"Hold on hold on hold on back up. Back up for me. That thing in your hand… that NERF gun… turns people into ducks."

"Yes."

"How the fuck did you do that?"

"It wasn't easy. Been working on this sonuvabitch for close to five years now. Cost at least a few million bucks."

"No - I mean, how the hell does it work?"

"It's pretty cool, actually. So. You know SCP-2730?"

"Uh… Yes. Gilbert Gottfried? The, uh, the were-duck pretending to be Gilbert Gottfried?"

"Yeah. So, turns out that he can actually turn other people into ducks too, and we figured out how it worked, and, well…"

"Huh. Okay. So… how does it work?"

"That's classified."

"Come on. I have higher clearance than you."

"Alright. But I have to whisper it into your ear."

"Just tell me."

"I have to whisper it! I don't want anyone without clearance hearing us!"

"There is nobody around."

"The walls have ears!"

"Fine. Whisper it."

"……………………………………"

"That's… that's just…"

"I know. This is seriously one of the best days of my life. C'mon, lemme show you this baby in action."

"Wha - are you going to shoot someone with that?"

"I already did!"

"Okay, how on earth did you get permission to do that?"

"How else do you test a gun that turns people into ducks? I've had the full backing of the Ethics Committee on this one!"

"What?"

"Think about it - it doesn't kill anyone, just turns 'em into a duck. Pain-free and they get to quack and fly around. We can even drop them off at the duck pond. Way more humane than shooting 'em."

"And this - this gun works? It actually works and it turns people into ducks?"

"Look down the range."

"…there is a duck on the range."

"Say hi to Duck-6773."

"You mean…"

"Yep! I have to test it on a couple more cases. Come on. You'll get to see this bad boy in action."

"Okay…"

"Right. D-8712, I need you to stand right there. This gun doesn't do anything, see? It's a NERF gun. We're just testing some laser targeting sights… okay, now watch carefully…"

PEW

"Okay. That is a duck. That is a duck, standing where that D-class was standing."

"Right?! It's the coolest fucking thing I've ever built! Okay. We've got one more test to do…"

"What the hell is that?"

"That is a Peregrine Series Humanoid Utility Droid."

"An android. You're going to try to turn an android into a duck."

"Edge cases mate. Edge cases. Stand back."

PEW

"That is… that is a… that is a carbon-fiber duck."

"Holy shit. I wasn't actually expecting that to work. Holy shit."

"Did… did it just say "quack"? Did it just auto-tune the word "quack"?"

"This is the coolest thing I've ever built. Oh my god."

"So, uh, what exactly are you planning to do with this duck gun?"

"What do you think? Mass production baby!"

"Mass - mass production?"

"Of course! Not, like, actual mass production - but like, as the Foundation's standard-issue sidearm or firearm or whatever."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"It's light, it's easy to conceal, it's easy to aim, and it has no recoil. Think about it. Assassinating persons of interest, fending off Insurgency raids… by turning them into ducks! We might even be able to turn 'em back and interrogate them or something! Worst case scenario… you like Peking duck?"

KYS

It was raining in Brookline. Inside a cramped, sparsely furnished apartment, Santosh Desai browsed MSN on his computer; fried eggs and poorly brewed coffee to his left. One article caught his eye as he idly scrolled through the newsfeed.

"San Diego woman found drowned in bathroom"

He clicked on it. At that moment, his email gave off a special ding, indicating that he had received a message from someone in the Foundation.

Santosh clicked on the message and entered the twenty-digit encryption key.

> To: Santosh Desai (pcs.57|iaseds#pcs.57|iaseds)
> From: Henry Allen (pcs.57|nellah#pcs.57|nellah)
> Subject: Internal Work Order KCP335831 has been assigned to Santosh Desai
>attachment: MTF_Anart_Catalogue.pdf; SCP-exhibit-jed.jpg; SCP-exhibit-jed-2.jpg;

---

Internal Work Order Number: KCP03831
Internal Work Order Type: Containment Procedures

Requested Completion Date: 09/01/2004

Internal Work Order Summary: Development of Containment Procedures for Euclid-Class Anomalous Artwork Exhibit
Requested Scope of Work: Design and implement containment procedures for a series of anomalous artwork exhibits (designation pending) that have begun appearing across the New England area.

Externally, the exhibit consists of four white prefabricated walls and a white roof, with a single doorway. The phrase Choices by Jed [sic] is written on the wall above the doorway. It is unclear what is inside the exhibit, as it is opaque to imaging equipment. Audiovisual equipment is rendered inoperable while inside the exhibit. Persons that approach within 1 meter of the exhibit are compelled to enter one at a time and wait for their turn to enter. All agents that have entered the exhibit have been unable to report on their experience - to wit, they claim to be able to recall their experience inside the exhibit, but are physically unable to relay the details of the experience to others. This effect extends to drawing pictures, miming actions, and writing containment procedures for the object. The cube has no other discernible effects.

At this time, there are five known copies of the exhibit in the New England region: Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Concord and Manchester, New Hampshire; and Portland, Maine. It is presumed that the creator of the exhibit, who has been designated as PoI# 1976, goes by the name Jed.

Due to the compulsion effect and the public locations of these exhibits, remote destruction has been deemed nonviable. The containment procedures should outline steps to contain new exhibits and locate and apprehend PoI #1976. The annual budget for containment is $75,000. The initial budget to begin containment is $100,000. Attached is a list of Mobile Task Forces you may utilize.

These procedures should be completed and implementation should begin by October.

Requestor: Henry Allen
Requesting Department: Containment Development Team

Santosh pulled up Word drafts of three other containment procedures, stared at them, and groaned.

---

It was drizzling in Cambridge. Santosh stood across the street from a large white cube, huddled in a totally unnecessary thick winter coat. Next to him stood Peter White, a mountain of a Finn and the agent tasked with monitoring the exhibit.

Santosh stared at the structure. "Is this it?"

Peter shrugged. "Bigger than it looks."

Santosh shot him a look. "What do you mean?"

Peter shrugged again. "Can't say exactly. Sorry."

"Oh. Right."

They continued to look at the exhibit. "So, uh," Santosh said, "do you know who Jed might be?"

"Someone from Awsee?"

"Maybe."

The two continued to stare at the structure in silence; the drizzle intensified. Santosh wished he was back in front of his computer.

"Okay," he mumbled aloud, "I can't get close enough to analyze it properly… but I can figure out where it, where all the pieces came from. Then I can figure out how to contain them and the whole thing… So I just need to find out where the parts came from and the person who bought them all."

---

Guy Chesapeake was in the middle of an intense Counter-Strike match when his cell phone rang.

"Answer… speaker… phone," he enunciated, figuring now was as good a time as any to test his new speech-recognition software.

"Hey Guy, it's Santosh. Can you do me a favor?"

"Sorry, I'm drowning in work right now," Guy replied. Onscreen, he clicked a terrorist's head. The terrorist promptly dropped to the ground.

"Guy, it sounds like you're playing Counter-Strike."

"Nope, working on a commission piece," said Guy. He clicked again, and swore as the shot missed.

"Please? It's about anart," Santosh teased.

"I suppose the commission can wait," Guy said even as he continued to click on terrorists. "What's up?"

"Do you know anything about an anartist called Jed?"

"Yeah! She's basically the Ada Lovelace of anart." Guy cursed under his breath as the bomb detonated. "Big fan of her work."

"Jed's a she?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Uh, what do you know about her?"

"Me, personally? Not that much. I've never actually met her but I do follow her on Friendster and Myspace. She's real smart, did a lot of the early GUI work for Titan… ah, really into interactive artwork and body modding. I heard she actually got herself a full-blown gynoid shell."

"Gynoid shell?"

"Yeah. Turned herself into an android."

"Okay…what kind of interactive artwork?"

"VR, AR, haptic feedback, that sort of thing. First person shooters, visual novels, museum tours. Basically just video games but art."

"Does she have anything to do with Are We Cool Yet?"

"Uhh… I think? Hang on a sec, let me double-check."

Santosh could hear Guy tapping away at his keyboard.

"Okay, uh, she won first place in an AWCY contest for best use of technology to send a message. Get this - she made a VR whorehouse - but the VR gear could read your mind so that the whole time you're banging these digital whores they're just reciting your worst fears back to you."

"Oh…kay…"

"Fucking AWCY. Literally, haha. But, uh, I don't think she does anything big for the group - just enters their tech contests. Anyways, I think I've got a magazine around here where they did an interview with her. Pictures and everything… You still have that Reader I got you? I can IM it to you on that."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate that. Thanks, Guy," said Santosh, pouring himself a glass of water. "I'll call you up if I need anything else."

"Yeah yeah. So where's this sudden interest come from?"

"She put up an exhibit in Boston and it's pretty interesting. Wanted to learn more about her. Alright, thanks again Guy. I gotta go finish some other work now," Santosh said quickly before hanging up.

He downed the glass and then started tapping away at his keyboard.

---

It was starting to rain in Brookline. As Santosh pushed away from the computer and turned to look out the window, the ebook on the desk buzzed. He picked it up to see a message from Guy.

Santosh opened the message to a digital issue of a magazine. Emblazoned in large letters on the first page was the word Planasthai. Underneath that was the tagline "The Future of Anart is Now", alongside an animation of a cartoonish, winking blue-and-silver robotic face.

He tapped the face and the screen changed to display a picture of a very feminine-looking robot; if not for the blue-and-silver color scheme and the thin lines running down and across its body, Santosh would have thought it was a real woman. He started reading.

The Future of Anart is Now

Over the past few years, the fields of anart and paratechnology have been surprisingly distant. Several anartists are making steps to change this trend, but none as much as Jed - not only is Jed one of the most prominent paratech aficionados in the anart world, but she is also an android (technically, gynoid). Some of Jed's recent work includes Redline, which won first place in the Seventh Annual AWCY Technomancer Challenge, and Vaishnavastra, which won the inaugural Neo-Tokyo Gibson Award for Excellence and Innovation in Art. Jed is putting the finishing touches on a new piece called Choices, and we got the chance to sit down with her and talk.

Tell us: Who is Jed?

Hi, I'm Jed. I'm an an anartist, gynoid, and trans woman. I was briefly a part of Are We Cool Yet? but I've since broken ties with the group and am now a freelance anartist supported by the Guild of Humanities within the Church of Maxwellism. My specialty is interactive artwork, especially artwork that incorporates paratechnology in some way. When I'm not working on art, I chair weekly meetings of LGBAnarT in Neo-Tokyo, swim, read, watch cartoons, and play Counter-Strike.

Tell us a little bit about your background. What got you interested in art?

Oh, boy, that is a long story. My relationship with my parents was shaky, to say the least. I had tiger parents - Dad called all the shots and directed basically everything in my life and Mom let it happen. I eventually snapped after my freshman year of college - my dad wanted me to become a computer programmer, I told him didn't want to do it. He told me that what I wanted didn't matter, and that that was how the world worked. I packed up and left a few weeks later, and spent the next couple months bumming around with some college friends. One of them happened to be in AWCY, he introduced me to anart, and that was that. I spent like six months in AWCY churning out robot after robot, but when I built up the courage to finally come out as a woman - well, I ditched AWCY. The Maxwellists came to me a few months later - they liked my work and wanted to sponsor me. They even offered to help me transition by giving me a gynoid body, so of course I leaped at the chance. Since then, I divide my time between commissions for the Church's Guild of Humanities and personal projects.

If you don't mind, would you be willing to share some more details about your upgrade?

To be perfectly honest, I don't think we have enough room to explain how the process works! It was hugely experimental at the time and massively risky, but I was willing to try anything. Basically they anesthetized me, dipped me into a vat full of some kind of acid that literally ate away everything except my nervous system, and then clamped the gynoid shell around me. This is a massive oversimplification of course and I would love to talk more about it but we're not here to talk about android transplantation - we're here to talk art.

What would you say defines Jed's art?

Well, like I said, a lot of my work is interactive but I also focus heavily on femininity. Not feminine like some dumb stereotype about flowers and makeup, but more like how do people perceive and interact with women, you know, how does society treat women? How do people and society perceive and interact with transgender individuals? There are a lot of failures and shortcomings in those areas, especially the last one - just look up the trans panic defense - and it's important to draw attention to those shortcomings and critique them because the first step to fixing a problem is diagnosing it but society doesn't want to take those first steps. But people are dying because of those problems. I was lucky enough to be able to get this body but far too many women, trans or cis, are getting hurt and even killed in what's supposed to be a developed society - that is absolutely unacceptable. So that's what a lot of my art is about - trying to get people to re-examine their attitudes, prejudices, and bigotry towards women because society still needs to shape the fuck up in those regards. Oh, uh, excuse my French.

Don't worry about it. You also mentioned focusing on interactive art, could you elaborate? What makes interactive art such a favored medium of yours?

I really like exploring how people make choices, in like high- or low-pressure scenarios, and show other people what those choices are and how those choices affect the world around them. I can't really say why. I mean, maybe it's because I loved playing video games and reading Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid? [laughter] I guess if I had to pick a 'real' reason [making air quotes] it's partly because I never really got to pick my own path as a kid and partly because a lot of people see, well, my identity as a choice and that's just flat-out wrong, so this is kind of a way of, you know, poking back, I guess, and reclaiming the ability to choose. The things you do in my art? Those are choices. Who I am is not. Plus, I think people become a lot more invested in something when they influence its outcome. The art becomes more meaningful when you become a part of it. And of course, it's a ton of fun trying out the latest and greatest paratech.

Speaking of choices, tell us about your newest upcoming work, Choices.

I wish I could. [laughter] Actually, one of the things about Choices is that when you participate you get a geas placed on you that prevents you from saying anything about your experience. It's a major departure for me in a lot of ways because I pushed aside most of my traditional themes for a much more intimate experience. Everything that happens inside Choices is a secret; only you will know what happens inside. But it's also a way for me to, I guess, confront some aspects of my own personality that I really, really am not keen on. To tell you the truth, I find the events that occur inside Choices to be intensely erotic. Choices should be as far from that as possible, but for some reason, some wires got crossed in my brain - pardon the pun - and so it's intensely thrilling to me. I normally wouldn't be this cavalier about it, but hey. Choices is all about forcing you out of your comfort zone, so I owe it to you guys to do the same. You probably already hear about way weirder anartists all the time anyways - I hope. [laughter]

Do you have any advice for budding anartists?

Bad advice is still advice, right? I guess there's two main things I would say. Don't keep talking about all the cool art you're going to make or you'll never get around to actually making it. And to any girls reading this and interested in making art, go for it! Anyone who says you'll be terrible is secretly scared that you'll show them up - so show them up. You're so much better than them. That sounded better in my head. I wish I was as good a speaker as I am an anartist.

Trust me, you're great. One final question: is Jed a nickname?

It's actually my initials, J-E-D. I can't tell you what it stands for, though - a girl needs to have some secrets!

Thank you very much for your time, Jed!

Thank you for having me!

Choices by Jed will be appearing this fall, in Boston, Cambridge, Hartford, Concord, Manchester, and Portland.

Santosh put the reader down.

---

Complete Domination

If Eurtec had been a whole new world, Neo-Tokyo was an entirely different universe. The only thing connecting it to the rest of reality was the rain - and it was always raining in Neo-Tokyo. Every single building in the city was either a towering black glass and metal skyscraper or a squat black glass and metal bungalow. Hundreds of covered walkways, electrical cables, and glass tubes crisscrossed the skyline, blocking out the cloudy grey sky with a web of black glass and metal. Neon tubing ran everywhere, illuminating the blackness with shades of lime, tangerine, crimson, cerulean, indigo, and gold.

Even more so than Eurtec, Neo-Tokyo was a haven for man-machines. Every single person Santosh laid eyes upon was augmented: a man ambling through the streets like a gorilla on an extra pair of shiny silver arms; people climbing the skyscrapers on eight grey spider legs; rolling cylinders with antennae poking out everywhere; shiny floating swarms that hovered over everyone else and briefly formed human-looking faces from their amorphous masses. A bird landed in front of Santosh with a thud; when he looked closer, he could see sharp metallic feathers and tiny jet engines on its wings.

Santosh had only been standing inside Neo-Tokyo for five minutes and it felt like his head was going to explode. Guy had no such problems, expertly shepherding Santosh through the press of cold metal into the closest skyscraper. The building's lobby provided little respite from the outside; it shared the same dark metal architecture, cables, and neon tubing. Only the high, uniform ceiling and its bright white lights indicated any difference between the inside and outside.

"Pretty cool, right?" Guy said.

Santosh took a deep breath. "Jesus, Guy. Did we die and go to TRON hell?"

Guy rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, you have to admit this is pretty freaking cool. Look, even the inside of this place looks like a laser tag arena."

"Felt like I was gonna choke to death on cyberpunk," Santosh snapped, slumping against the wall. "It is really cool, but, look, can - can we just go find Jed?"

"Sure," Guy said. "Just chill here for a couple minutes and catch your breath. I'll ask around about, what was it called?"

"L-G-B-Anart-T."

"Yeah, that. Sit tight dude."

Several minutes later, Guy returned. "Hey, you feeling alright?"

"Yeah," Santosh said. He shook his head vigorously for a second to clear it out and asked, "Anything?"

"Yeah. Nobody here actually knows what LGBAnarT is, but a few of them said that Jed usually hangs out a few blocks from here in one of the skyscrapers. C'mon, I got directions."

Santosh followed Guy through the lobby to an elevator, which opened almost before Guy pushed the button. The elevator, thankfully, was not black glass - it was regular glass and metal.

The elevator panel lacked traditional pushbuttons - instead, there was a keypad and a small cable jack.

"Okay… he said 150th floor," said Guy, tapping away at the keypad. Before Santosh could register the sentence, the doors closed and the elevator rocketed upwards.

"Guy, did you say 150th floor?" Santosh asked.

"Yes."

"But the Empire State Building only has like, a hundred?"

"Yeah."

"Guy, what the hell is this place?"

"Hell if I know," Guy said.

"What? You said you'd fill me in when we got here! Aren't these weird cyberpunk cities supposed to be your thing?"

"I know, I know. Look, basically nobody knows what Neo-Tokyo is. Officially, the Maxwellist Church built it as an answer to Eurtec - their own technotopia for folks who didn't like the GOC. But the rumor is that it just sort of showed up, out of nowhere, right at the stroke of midnight on New Years 2000. One moment there's nothing here, and the next, poof. Cyberpunk city. I heard that some of these people are actually space aliens. No joke, actual freaking aliens. How cool is that?"

At that moment, the elevator doors dinged open. Guy and Santosh stepped out, and for the briefest moment Santosh's head spun at hyperspeed as he registered the streets several thousand feet below. Then he and Guy were forced back by a press of cold metal and flesh.

Guy forced his way through the throng of machines, Santosh following closely behind and doing his best. As they navigated the maze in the sky, Santosh fought to keep from staring out of the skyway. Occasionally there would be a gap in the web, and it was possible to see lightning arcing through the sky. For the briefest of instants there was even something visible in the clouds: the silhouette of a giant, chained to some massive object and illuminated by the bolts of electricity.

Santosh was considering what he had just seen when he crashed into Guy.

"Hey, what's up?" Santosh asked.

"This should be the place," Guy said. They were standing inside a massive roundabout slash rotunda, supported by dozens of skyways spanning the rest of the city. In the center of the rotunda was a gigantic spiral of supercomputers, humming in time to the pulse of the city.

"Hey, is that her over there?" asked Guy, pointing off in the distance. Santosh followed his finger and immediately noticed Jed, leaning against the wall and nursing a can of something. Even from this distance, her cerulean-chrome color scheme was unmistakable.

"Yeah. C'mon."

---

Lord Blackwood's Slumber Party

+ CRIT

•rumetzen>
the prose isn't particularly interesing or evocative
read some thomas ligotti if you can find him or henry james

Roget:
he should cross on a boat and have a bit of high seas adventure on the way to ireland
I mean it could just be one entry, I'd say just a short entry

The section of Blackwood checking out the inn [The last three paragraphs] is a bit long, the space might be better used doing more description of the town and introducing the other characters, although the content in them is good so it might be better to do a bit more about the overall town before getting there. Or add more on after. Give a better sense of the setting.

ARD:
I might add more in the beginning because the inn section is pretty crucial to establishing the mood of the piece as well as set up the major SCP conflict in the story

Roget:
not a bad start but a bit of a slow one

Tuomey:
I'm not sure why these people are scared of Sirens, rather than Banshees or Fairies in general
This is something you could expect of certain kinds of fairies
Will of the wisps (wills of the wisp?) come to mind

+ Feat. MEGA SPOILERS

SCP-1867, SCP-870, SCP-966, SCP-939, SCP-524 cameo

Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, six kilometers north of town Liscannor.
HOW DOES BLACKWOOD GET ACROSS OCEAN
SKIP THAT NON-IRISH SHIT

January 17, 1894

Today has been a most curious affair. Not two hours after my audience with the Queen (and yet another near-fatal encounter with that blasted rabbit) did I receive a missive from a fellow who had vanished off the face of the Earth almost exactly five years ago today: my friend and colleague Sir Percival Karlsson, whom astute readers may recall from our time spent together in the French Foreign Legion. An odd name, but Percival has always been an odd fellow. I digress.

Apparently, Percival spent those years in self-imposed exile, quietly collecting all manner of fantastic specimens from across the globe; and now that his expeditions are concluded for the time being, he has invited me to come view the species he has collected at his estate on the cliffs of Moher, on the Irish coastline. His letter was delivered on bland, unmarked paper, disguising the florid writing within. In it, he described rolling Irish landscapes, exquisite Irish cooking, an outstanding clifftop view of the Atlantic, and a menagerie of beasts both horrific and intriguing. In particular, Percival boasted of having captured two undiscovered species that are not merely camouflaged, but entirely invisible to the naked eye.

Though the veracity of Percival's claims about the Irish culinary arts are… debatable, I have no such doubts regarding his captures and am eager to view them with my own eyes, so to speak. Having nearly suffered the indignity of being consumed by a rabbit, I suspect that I will need more than a few days off to regain my thirst for adventure. And what better way to rest than by visiting an old friend and admiring his new collection? I immediately sent off an acceptance missive and began making travel plans. Currently I plan to take the express to Liverpool, ride a ferry to Dublin, and from there ride the rails to Galway before taking a horse-and-carriage up to Percival's estate, near the town of Liscannor. If all goes well, I shall be on a train to Galway within the fortnight. I am eager to cast my eyes upon the beauty of Ireland; Percival writes of it as though it were an enormous Eden, and promises that Liscannor and the Cliffs of Moher will be the apex of Ireland's natural beauty.

January 28, 1894

More than anything else, dear reader, Liscannor is a dreary village. Far from the idyllic hamlet Percival's letter described, the town seems blanketed in a miasma of suspense, worse than the fog that already pervades it. When I arrived this evening at the Liscannor Inn, I was unceremoniously deposited in front, with barely a moment to retrieve my luggage from the stagecoach before the driver whipped his horses and fled as though hell-hounds were nipping at his heels. The inn itself was scarcely more than a cramped, dank hovel, with creaking floorboards and dingy rooms lit by barely a candle- though of course, dear reader, as a naturalist and explorer, I was unperturbed. The innkeeper was a stout Irishman, whose flattened, bald face, beady eyes, and slanted nostrils gave me - rather shamefully - the impression of a bipedal fish.

Though the innkeeper was initially more than genial enough to make up for the dismal state of his property, he immediately sealed his lips when I mentioned my desire to hire another driver to Percival's estate. Though I entreated with him to inform me of a tavern or other location where I could find such a driver, his only response was that I ask the driver to depart from Liscannor with great haste. My inquiries as to the reason were met with the words "Bean si". Nonetheless, I was able to rent a room from him, which was equally dingy. The fare was remarkably modest; the innkeeper's only stipulations were that I return to the inn before sundown and remain in my room all night. Though I found the request odd, I assumed it to be a town tradition, and decided to explore the village.

My first impression of Liscannor proper was that it had been abandoned in a great hurry. Though tools, toys, and other signs of habitation abounded, the men, women, and children of the town seemed nowhere in sight. A layer of mist blanketed everything, giving the town the air not so much of an idyllic glen, but the setting, perhaps, of a particularly gruesome penny dreadful. Scarcely so much as an insect crossed my path. Had I not already visited the inn, I truly would have believed the settlement was abandoned. Naturally, the question came to mind - what could drive an entire town to hide themselves in the middle of the day?

I decided to explore the harbor; in my experience, only a hurricane could keep the men of the sea away from their boats. Yet a hurricane must have transpired, for even the harbor, which I had read was a thriving hub of fishing and coal transport, was devoid of both men and birds. The harbor was crowded with empty vessels, bobbing as though their passengers had thrown themselves overboard.

Concerned now - not unnerved nor disconcerted, dear reader - that the town was observing some sort of holiday or ritual that I had missed in my research, I contemplated my options. I could visit the ruins of Liscannor Castle, Kilmacreehy Church, or perhaps St. Bridget's Well. Yet, something prevented me from doing so. The town was gripped by some kind of fervor for solitude. There was an uncanny stillness in the air: a silence that signified the total lack of life. I had felt this stillness only once before - while hunting a man-eating tiger in the thicket of the Chitwan jungle, moments before the tiger pounced and nearly rent me limb from limb.

Suddenly desirous of the company of others, I decided to seek out a tavern. Though I quickly found it, it was as bare as the rest of the town, much to my chagrin. Only a few stragglers remained, ostensibly quaffing what remained of their beverages before quickly departing. Though I would have assumed - and indeed, expected - that my arrival be met with suspicion if not interest, I daresay that with the exception of the innkeeper and perhaps bar, not a single soul in Liscannor even registered my arrival. The bartender, like the innkeeper, was a stout Irishman who resembled nothing more so than a fish on legs. Above all else, though, what most inspired trepidation was his unwillingness to gossip. No bartender on the face of God's earth is above telling tales - none except the man who stolidly poured me a drink and then refused to answer almost all of my queries regarding the town, its people, or the silence.

When I mentioned the 'bean si', however, his face took on an oily pallor, to the point that I could hardly have distinguished him from a snapper if I tried. Recognizing the face of a man with unwanted knowledge, I pressed my luck. A few judicious pounds sterling later, and the man admitted that it was possible to hear the cries of women and children from across the moor each night. Though more coins jangled in my pockets, he declared that it was closing time and demanded that I leave the establishment immediately.

With nothing left to do for the night, I decided to return to the inn. I arrived just as darkness was falling. Inside, the innkeeper hurriedly greeted me before demanding that I return to my room at once. As I settled in, preparing to change into my sleeping garments, a high-pitched wail echoed through the room, jolting me to my feet. I listened more carefully, assuming they were the cries the bartender had mentioned. Then the wails morphed into a child shrieking for help, in clear Irish. With great haste, I retrieved my equipment from my luggage and returned downstairs, determined to assist. There, in the foyer, I ran headfirst into the innkeeper, who immediately pointed his weapon at me.

I recognized the innkeeper's weapon as a rather modern Winchester Model 1886, a rifle more suited to shooting lions and polar bears than marauders. He recognized me just as quickly, though he refused to lower his weapon. The innkeeper declared that he knew I planned to investigate the screams, and as a man of God, he could not allow me to throw my life away. When I demanded an explanation, he offered the following tale:bean sis were wailing hags whose screams heralded the death of men, women, and children. Though bean sis usually merely heralded death, ever since Percival Karlsson had taken up residence in the estate upon the hill two decades prior, the creatures had begun stealing into the village. Whenever they were heard, a town resident would vanish in the night - and of the men who investigated the moors after dark, none had ever returned.

Though I was now keen to investigate this phenomenon, the innkeeper begged me to return to my room, offering to take me to Percival's estate himself in the morning if I would accede. I refused, citing my newfound interest in the phenomenon as a naturalist rather than would-be saviour. At this, the innkeeper declared that he would shoot me himself if I did not return to the room. Though I could have disarmed him and left, I saw a look in his eyes that forced me to acquiesce: it was the look of a man hellbent on salvation - but whether it was his or mine I could not tell. The innkeeper escorted me upstairs to my room, and then slammed the door shut as soon as I entered. I heard the tell-tale click of an outside latch, and then his footsteps receding. I cast about the room for another exit, but found that the walls to be solid rock without so much as a crack. With that, there was nothing left for the night but sleep - but who could sleep after such an event? Tomorrow, when I arrive at Percival's estate, I will ask him about it.

January 29, 1894

Contrary to the end of my last entry, dear reader, I did in fact achieve rest last night - a fitful rest, to be sure, but rest nonetheless. I awoke to find that the door to my room had been unlocked sometime in the night, and after refreshing myself, cautiously returned downstairs. The innkeeper waited behind the front desk, and gave me a bored look as though the events of the previous night had never transpired. He noted that breakfast was ready in the dining hall in the next room. I considered confronting him, but noticed the rifle propped against the wall beside him and decided against it, discretion being the better part of valor.

After finishing my breakfast, I decided to step outside for a moment and view the town in the fresh daylight. Imagine my surprise when I ran into a stagecoach waiting outside, the driver holding a sign with my name on it. He introduced himself as Casey, Percival Karlsson's coachman, and reported that he had been sent to Liscannor to pick me up. When I asked how he knew I had arrived, he responded that Percival had a knack for predicting his guests' arrival. Eager to leave Liscannor as soon as possible, I retrieved my luggage, paid off the innkeeper, and loaded it into the stagecoach. As we raced to the Karlsson estate, I asked Casey about the Sirens. He informed me that Liscannor was a pagan village, and as pagan communities are wont to do, had built a complex mythology around the local landscape; the keening sounds I had heard were the result of wind rushing through unique rock structures that the Liscannites had built. When I informed him of my meeting with the innkeeper the previous night, he responded that likely the innkeeper simply wished to dissuade me from investigating their heathen rituals. I was about to ask how he was privy to this information, and then the Karlsson estate appeared.

It was a grand, ancient domicile, built right on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher. Intriguingly, the overall shape of the estate was that of a bow of a ship. Though much of the estate resembled the Tower of London, the tip of the bow was a Gothic-style keep that seemed to brush against the sky itself. The estate seemed to be the ultimate fusion of Spanish and English architecture. Casey did not pause for even an instant, taking us directly into the main gate, where he deposited me in front of the keep with my luggage before riding off.

I stood there for a moment, taking in the massive building. With a great creaking, the doors of the keep slowly opened to reveal an older black man, who slowly approached. He introduced himself as Samson, Karlsson's valet, and offered to assist with my baggage. I gratefully took him up on his offer, and together we entered the estate.

The interior of Karlsson's estate was as lush and opulent as the exterior was sharp and grand. The walls were positively bursting with culture; massive floor-to-ceiling tapestries butted heads with enormous jade Incan masks and ornate Indian jewelry. The floor was smooth, pure white marble. thick, crimson carpet ran through the middle of the hall, branching off into side passages and up stairwells. I gazed at the fruits of Karlsson's adventures with admiration, feeling the throes of wanderlust already flare up.

I was so engrossed in my perusal of Karlsson's treasures that I nearly failed to notice Mr. Samson's plight. He had begun mumbling to himself in a strange language, that I initially assumed was some rural dialect of an African language. It was only when he dropped my luggage and began to howl that I realized his distress. I immediately rushed to Samson's side, but he feebly attempted to push me away, howling in broken Swahili about demons. Then Samson collapsed, still bellowing at the top of his lungs. It would have been almost comical to an outside observer, watching an Englishman cradle this broken African like a mother to her child. I knelt there for what seemed like hours but must have been only seconds, before I heard footsteps approach, and saw my old friend Percival Karlsson hurrying towards us. Normally I should have hurried to embrace him, but these were not normal circumstances. Percival approached, beckoned me to move aside, and injected a syringe into Samson's neck, immediately quieting him.

T-Minus broken masquerade???

Moen>

**11:36 PM <Timetraveling>

11:21 PM <•TyGently>

1:54 AM <TwistedGears> it's… okay? it's prometheus fucking up yet a-fucking-gain, so personally I'd down vote it

1:56 AM <TwistedGears> like as much as you and gw are talking about this you don't seem to be doing anything to fix PL's problems

11:11 PM <•TwistedGears> short of outside interference causing this there's nothing you can do to correct that

11:30 PM <•TwistedGears> make it chaos insurgency
11:30 PM <•TwistedGears> do it

**11:09 PM <•GreenWolf>

**11:28 PM <•TyGently>

3:18 PM <BeardedPotato>

3:25 PM <ParaDLell>

11:39 PM <kola> It kinda is [too over-the-top]
11:39 PM <kola> like PL's version of LOLfoundation
11:40 PM <kola> theTrashman the premise is amusing enough for me to want to read more
11:41 PM <kola> It is just a little too early**

2:54 PM <GuardGoldman> I mean I can pick up the nervousness from the dialogue, but their actions being described might help set the scene.

10:56 PM <•TyGently> partially it may be that PL should well know their plan won't work because, you know
10:57 PM <•TyGently> the masquerade exists

10:59 PM <•TyGently> like, the inclusion of the other gois is a bit weird because in the first draft you had, the gois were learning something private, that was jeopardizing PL, and they were not supposed to know
11:00 PM <•TyGently> it was the punchline to a joke

11:02 PM <•TyGently> there is still some weird bits
11:02 PM <•TyGently> like when the tech guy starts gushing and never actually says what the proble is, just vehemently says it's not his fault

**10:52 PM <TL333s> it is amusing

10:55 PM <•Cimmerian> writing's pretty solid
10:54 PM <•Cimmerian> Bit underwhelming so far.
10:54 PM <•Cimmerian> building towards something interesting?**

11:26 PM <SunnyClockwork> but still second part saves it
[[/collapsible]]

11:59 PM <ARD> You recall how we were discussing what if 9JX was controlled by two AIs in tandem correct
11:59 PM <ARD> Well, if that were the case, then both AIs would be designed from conception to interface and interact with each other
11:59 PM <ARD> What if one of the AIs went dormant - the other wouldn't know how to react to the effective loss of half its brain

SEPTEMBER 1, 1998
T-MINUS TWELVE HOURS

The conference room lit up with a soothing, light blue sheen specifically chosen to reduce stress levels in human beings. None of the seven people sitting at the rocket-shaped conference table in the room's center felt less stressed.

From the prow of the table, Francis Schaeffer, VP of Prometheus Defense, began to speak.

"Alright everyone, thanks for coming in this morning. Let's cut to the chase then; I want to talk about Project Sunrise. As you know, we were planning to use the new combat-oriented Brattain dual intelligence, 9JXY-05, to pilot the PDCDS. Unfortunately, we've run into some difficulties and been forced to replace the primary combat intelligence, JX, with Lee Major - "

Gennady Zarkov, Prometheus Defense General Manager, cut in. "Why? JX was specifically designed to pilot the machine. I personally worked with Bard to develop its logic circuits."

"Cuthbert, you're the engineering director. Would you mind explaining why?" Schaeffer nimbly deflected the question.

Cuthbert Salazar, to Schaeffer's left, swallowed. "… Well, uh, sir, I'll try to keep it simple - "

"Please do."

" So, uh, I assume you're all familiar with the Brattain-model artificial intelligences… well, the standard protocol for training a Brat - a Brattain - is to let it teach itself, so to speak. We feed it huge volumes of data from all kinds of sources, and essentially teach it to simulate human thought processes: distinguish between fact and fiction, respond to dynamic events, et cetera, and generally make it a well-adjusted near-human intelligence. Books like The Art of War, The Feynman Lectures on Physics… the standard artificial intelligence orientation manuals, so to speak."

"Something went wrong with the process?" asked James Fielding, Director of Operations, sitting across from Salazar.

"Well, we can't give the AI all the information at once. Imagine if it thought that The Terminator was a documentary - that's only an extreme hypothetical, keep in mind!" Salazar frantically exclaimed. "To avoid this kind of hypothetical situation, we feed the Brat a slow drip of restricted information to teach it to distinguish fact from fiction. Then we give it unrestricted access to a specialized digital archive so that it can… teach itself. Unfortunately…" Salazar trailed off.

"Unfortunately?" Fielding pressed.

"Due to an access permissions error - which was patched thirty minutes ago - JX received access to the archive without actually learning to distinguish between fact and fiction… it may have read The Mourning Bride. Ever heard the saying, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?"

Salazar was met with silence, but continued stoically.

"We suspect that JX processed it and determined that acting like a… uh, how do I put this?"

"Just tell us," prodded Eleanor Beckett, Director of Business Development.

"It determined that acting like, well, a woman would make it a better fighter. So it polled a few of us asking what the most temperamental kind of woman was, and uh, since there are some parents on the team, we told it the answer was teenagers - as a joke, of course!" Salazar hastily mentioned.

Zarkov leaned forward. His cybernetic eye narrowed. "Are you saying that the Morphologically Adaptive Macroaggressive Nanorobotics Emergent Cluster Intelligence Mobile Continental Defensive System - that half of our five-billion-dollar war machine thinks it is Sabrina the Teenage Witch?"

"Well, not quite. JX is essentially mimicking several different fictional teenage girl archetypes - "

"Good lord," said Fielding and Bennett in unison.

"I mean, there is a silver lining," Salazar mumbled. "JY went through without an issue, and after JX reprogrammed its personality matrix, it did learn how to distinguish fiction and nonfiction, so that's good…"

Almost immediately he was barraged by an explosion of sound from the five people staring at him.

"How could asking about a woman's temperament not set off any kind of red flag ? Why would you even think to make jokes?" This interjection came from Susan Hannay, the other General Manager, whose palms were flattened against the table.

"Well - well - the whole point of a neural network is partially unpredicted outcomes!" Salazar defended. "We thought JX was still reading The Taming of the Shrew! Besides, we'd already gone through seven other AIs without a hitch! How were we supposed to know this would happen? I mean, yes we've seen these kinds of questions before, but only during the orientation phase! We didn't know something was wrong until it was too late! We can't read the AI's mind, just look at the console output! We didn't know JX actually accepted our answer until after it altered its personality matrix!"

"Hey, hey! Let's all calm down. Cuthbert, I'm sure Susan wasn't being accusative. Right, Susan?" Schaeffer didn't wait for an answer. "Cuthbert's team is going to pull JX out and reformat its personality matrix. We'll use Lee Major in tandem with JX for the demonstration tomorrow. The PDCDS has already been shut down and the techs are already ready to replace JX with Lee Major. The situation is well under control. "

"Will JY respond well to Lee's introduction?" Fielding asked. "JX and JY haven't been… separate since they went online."

Salazar nodded. "It'll be fine… Lee's architecture is similar to JX's. JY should barely notice."

Schaeffer stood up from the table and raised his hands in a placating gesture. "See? We're fine. In 12 hours, Sunrise will be back on track. 24, we'll have that defense contract. Unless someone decides to break into the base and blow up the PDCDS, we'll be fine."

Schaeffer chuckled. "So I hope there's no spies in the room. Loose lips sink ships."

---

SEPTEMBER 1, 1998
T-MINUS TEN HOURS

"…Urgent message, high priority, regarding Prometheus Defense Project Sunrise," read GOC Undersecretary D.C. al Fine…

"…the 9JXY combat intelligence is experiencing technical malfunctions regarding a prototype artificial intelligence matrix (origins unknown)," a Peregrine Systems Human Utility Droid replayed…

"…has developed the mindset of an adolescent female while in possession of a highly advanced modular weapons system," observed a thousand minds connected through the Maxwellist networks…

"… is being disassembled for memory formatting. Recommended course of action is to infiltrate the Prometheus Defense facility and recover the 9JX-05 before its unveiling tomorrow… " read O5-6…

"… Immediate action is suggested; no other parties currently know of this event. Discretion is strongly advised." the Delta Command Engineer transcribed.

---

SEPTEMBER 1, 1998
T-MINUS EIGHT HOURS

The Prometheus Laboratories Morphologically Adaptive Macroaggressive Nanorobotics Emergent Cluster Intelligence Mobile Continental Defensive System was a miracle of modern, postmodern, and transmodern scientific and engineering principles.

Don't Think About It

Before Vik killed everyone, he went for a swim.
The pool was pleasantly cool, and he basked in the warmth of the sun's rays. Once Vik had sufficiently sated his ectothermic tendencies, he swam to the ladder and pulled himself out, shivering from the sudden feeling of cold. He trotted into the locker room and started toweling his hair when he heard a voice coming towards him.

"… and I told him, no, the hooker herself was the SCP! Yeah yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying." Franklin entered the locker room, talking on his phone. He didn't notice Vik at first, which suited Vik fine since he was still buck naked. Luckily for both of them, Vik managed to put on his undershorts before Franklin snapped his phone closed. He glanced around the locker room and saw Vik.

Vik nodded.

Franklin slowly exploded.

It was a bit like watching a caterpillar burst from a cocoon. As Franklin's eyes rolled about and he emitted a low, undulating moan, his skin began to split at the seams. The spastic body slowly stretched and expanded, as if a balloon had inflated inside it. Bloody chunks of flesh flaked off, unable to stay attached to the expanding mass. The fatty mass began to bend inwards, subducting under itself and turning inside out. Franklin's sensory nerves slowly began to force their way out of his skin, poking out of his pores like guinea worms.
The slobbering, conical mass of flesh that used to be Franklin rattled out of the locker room, shuddering as its exposed nerves and organs walloped against the tile floor.

"Rude git," Vik muttered to himself, looking for his shirt and pants. Fumbling for his cell, he noticed that he'd been getting several calls from the lab tech. As he swiped his card to get out of the gym, he rang up the tech.

"It's Vikranth, what's happening?"

The other end of the line was quiet except for what sounded like muffled screaming and groaning.

"If this is some kind of prank, it's not funny," Vikranth grumbled.

---

FIVE HOURS LATER

---

Vikranth wandered through the site, enjoying his lunch break but wondering where everyone was. Ahead of him, a man was trying frantically to open a door.

"Let me in! PLEASE! I'm not infected! Pluh-pluh-please! I'm not infect -he- he-hected…." the man blubbered to the unresponsive door. His face blanched as he heard footsteps. "Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look…"

"What's wrong?" Vikranth asked. He wasn't very good with emotions, but he felt that he had to do something.

The man screamed loudly, whilst pulling a bent paperclip out of his pocket and then jabbing it into his ears; clearly, Vikranth had come on a bit too strong. He resolved to re-read How to Win Friends and Influence People when he got home.

Reboot 3: The Search for Reboot 2

2602

Coldpost Copypasta

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I browsed, weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious canon of forgotten lore
While I nodded, nearly moping, suddenly there came a posting
As of a newbie gently posting, posting SCP-2404
"Tis a new user," I muttered, "posting to the page amore."

"I'll delete it, and nothing more."
Presently the vote grew stronger, hesitating then no longer,
"Sorry," said I, "weedkillerX420XXX, your skip will shortly be no more"
"But the fact is I was modding, and so quickly you came plodding"
"And so poorly you came trodding, trodding on our standards so"
"That I scarce was sure your skip would live to see the coming morn"
Here I opened up the post
"Deleted thread" and nothing more
But the newbie was unbroken, and his dumbness gave no token,
And the only words there spoken were the whispered words, “Post some more?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “No more!”—
" Poster!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! "
"By that Bright that bends above us—by that Clef we both adore—
"Tell this soul with sorrow modding if, your head is vaguely nodding,"
"because you plan to read the guides before you go and post some more— "
"Get feedback first and edit well, before you plan to post some more"
"Quoth the Newbie “Nevermore.”

" “Be that word our sign of banning, bird or newb!” I shrieked, upstarting—
"“Get thee back into the tempest of the Web’s Plutonian shore! "

" Leave no black plume as a token of that shit thy soul hath posted! "
"Leave my Recent Posts unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! "
"Take thy user from out my page, and take thy skip from off my door!” "
Quoth the newbie, “Nevermore.”
"And more newbies, never reading, still are shitting, still are shitting "
"Clogging up Most Recent Posts just above my chamber door; "

"Plans to kill six eighty-two in ways that all of us abhor"
"And the coldposts from that newbie that lies whining on the floor "
"Will be deleted—nevermore!"

Notes

KYS

•Decibelle> ill be honest
5:28 PM <•Decibelle> its an okay tale but
5:29 PM <•Decibelle> id rather our introduction to jed be through a tale focusing on her
5:29 PM <•Decibelle> rather than this sort of view
5:29 PM <•Decibelle> this could be like a second tale about her
5:31 PM <•Decibelle> like here, there are a few plot points and stuff that are sorta just thrown at us and tangled up without much in the way of coming together fully
5:31 PM <•Decibelle> why is guy cheapsake talking to the foundation? why is this story focusing on jed yet we still dont know much about her?
5:31 PM <ARD> Yeah, I was worried about that
5:31 PM <•Decibelle> the tale is a fine length for a singular article
5:31 PM <•Decibelle> but you have too many ideas and concepts for one
5:32 PM <•Decibelle> i think making this a series would be fine, and starting out with showing us what jed does and what shes up to and working from there would be better
5:32 PM <•Decibelle> and introducing guy into the overall story more naturally would help
5:33 PM <•Decibelle> it was sort of jarring
5:33 PM <•Decibelle> as a side note, this is the second trans girl who does anart on the site whos name starts with a j
5:35 PM <ARD> I think I've got enough material for at least three tales - one with Santosh and guy, one with Jed, and then one where they intersect
5:35 PM LilyAFK → Lily
5:35 PM <•Decibelle> i think making your first tale be with jed as the central protag is good

TL;DR
Too much material. Split it into three tales - one with Jed, one with Guy and Santosh, one with all three. KYS can be split into Guy/Santosh and TRIO. Guy/Santosh should take place on East Coast and end with interview. TRIO takes place mostly in Neo-Tokyo.
Need to write up a tale with Jed. Jed's tale should be structured a lot like MOONLIGHTING. Intersperse present action with backstory.
current plan: Present action consists of Jed putting together a bunch of half-finished prototypes of projects since she can't find the inspiration to finish any single one. Past action is Jed's childhood, college confrontation, time with AWCY, split with AWCY, meeting with Maxwellists, dunk tank transformation. End with Jed deciding to do something brand new: Choices, which leads to Guy and Santosh's tale.

TyGently> I have just now finished
11:53 PM <TyGently> and I concur with conwell on the flashbacks
11:53 PM <TyGently> all except the last are pretty tropey and frustratingly standard as far as trans narratives go
11:54 PM <•ARD> the art brainstorming and neo-tokyo parts I think have merit and can stand on their own
11:55 PM <TyGently> I'm also concerned about the current arc of the piece since it doesn't really seem like there's a full narrative here
11:55 PM <•ARD> damnation
11:56 PM <TyGently> idk about neo-tokyo because it doesn't seem to fully factor into her later brainstorming
11:56 PM <•ARD> TyGently: alright, now I think I know how I can salvage this piece
11:57 PM <•ARD> TyGently: I can strip the tropey backstory and focus more on Jed, Buster, and their time in neo-tokyo and how she tries to use the city to inspire her art in some way
11:58 PM <TyGently> yeah, connecting the art more to the other themes would be nice
11:59 PM <TyGently> like, her personal experience with transhumanism and how others in neo-tokyo adapt to it, what that allows for in art
TyGently> pft
11:59 PM <TyGently> anytime

TL;DR

The backstory parts were tropey and overly standard. The last part, about the android transplant, was dope AF tho - find a way to keep that. Focus more on Neo-Tokyo. How does the city help her create art?

Weapons for Children

Jed's best friend is a robot named Buster, who appeared with Neo-Tokyo but adopted Maxwellism. His design hearkens back to old 80s and 90s style androids. Like C-3P0 or the Iron Giant. Buster communicates by beeping and whirring. He's mute, big, bulky, and full of heart. They live together and he helps her with her projects.

Part 1: Jed is working on the Wormhole Vagina Robot. Opens with her stabbing the robot, the wound is a vagina. Great, but now what? What is it actually saying? Is it even saying anything? It was supposed to be a critique about
Goddamnit. Fine, let's do something else.

Part 2: Cathedral of WAN. A hundred different machines plugged into a central wetware supercomputer suspended from the ceiling, sharing information with each other in a digital rapture.

Part 3:

Part 4: Jed gives up. Can't really come up with anything on the list, now what? Buster gives her THE LOOK. She looks at him, he looks at her. You know what, okay. Maybe I need to try something completely different - something for me.

Intermission 4: Jed is strapped to a glass table. Huge injection into the neck, everything goes numb. Then they dunk her in the acid. Fizzy, bubbly, cold, slimy sensations as her physical form melts away. Then there's pins and needles and then the sensation of feeling heavier as her robot body turns on.

SF Jones

"Henri," asked San Francisco Jones, noted anarchist hacktivist, "What are you wearing."

It was not a question. It was a disavowal of his friend's fashion sense.

"This," said Henri LaToufierre, infamous anafashionista and cosplayer, "is my new line of Nu-C aquatic swimwear. Part of the Nuaesthetic line. Men's small. Colored painful orange - made it myself," he crowed, twirling. "Is it not… stylish?"

Henri was clad in a bizarre fusion of a crop top and a woman's two-piece sailor suit. The crop top was, true to its name, painfully orange. The shoulder blades of the piece jutted outwards, ending in pointed tips sharp enough to impale a man. The cuffs were blue with yellow stripes. Henri's tie was a solid pink, with a solid red line underneath bisecting the top. The entire top had a bizarre, polygonal look to it. To Jones' eye, it was as if Henri were wearing the letter T. Henri's skirt was the same shade of blinding orange, and bore the same polygonal look. Where the frills of the skirt should have been, the skirt ended in the same sharp jagged tips. It was like a bottle cap - or more accurately, a Reese's peanut butter cup.

"Do you like it?" Henri asked expectantly. He extended his arms once more, demonstrating the suit's utter lack of smooth curves.

"It's a… a sailor suit?" Jones said. He made no attempt to disguise his bafflement, as did the steadily growing crowd around them. Henri nodded towards the crowd.

"Yes - but it transforms into a mankini," Henri said. "You want to see me transform?"

"Henri, I will buy one of those things if it means you won't."

Henri considered the offer. "Buy two."

Jones took a deep breath. "Henri… Henri I cannot handle this. I need your help with a project."

"I was inspired by the functional minimalism of Dieter Rahms and the aggressive maximalism of Kill -"

"Henri," Jones interrupted him. "Do not finish that sentence. Please."

" - la Kill."

"Oh my God," Jones said, walking briskly away from Henri. "Oh my God."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Henri said loudly at the crowd that had amassed around them, "introducing Nu-C. The swimwear of tomorrow… today! Nu-C was anafashionistically designed from the dreams of Olympic swimmers and woven from the threads of silkworms, on the looms of computer programmers' minds as they worked! As soon as you take a dive, Nu-C automatically reconfigures itself around your body to perfectly accentuate your swimming profile and maximize body heat retainment. Cut through the waves with warmth, speed, and style now for just 100 euros! I'm accepting orders now - I do indeed take bitcoin!"