Herman Fuller Collaboration Page - SCP Sandbox Wiki II

October 17th, 1974

“And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sounds of silence.”

Virtuoso bowed his head as he finished Veronica’s request, pausing graciously for her enthusiastic applause. Normally, Virtuoso would only perform songs from actual operas or musicals (on Fuller’s insistence), but for now, it was just the two of them in his sideshow tent. She snuck him sheet music, when she could, of songs that Fuller would never approve of, and he would sing them for her when there was no one else around.

“Your covers are always better than the originals. How do you do that man?” Veronica asked as she took a puff of her reefer. Virtuoso softly hummed All Along the Watch Tower, so she wouldn’t have to speak over him. “Oh, so me and the Clowns came up with a new act for the Big Top. I use my magic to make a life-sized house of cards, which is pretty rad on its own, and then the Clowns start pouring out the front door, sticking their heads out the second story window, popping out the chimney and all that jazz. They’re generally causing chaos, and I act like I’m spazzing out because they’re going to knock the house down, but it stays up until I finally get them all under control. Then Pius sneezes like a kitten, blowing the whole thing over. I chase them around the ring a few times for good measure and then we run off stage. The crowd loves it. I bet you’d love it too.

“You know, if you really wanted, we could probably sneak you in some time. We could put you in some clothes and in a wheelchair, sit you where Herman couldn’t get a good look at you. I’m sure he wouldn’t even -”

They both went silent at the sound of squeaking tires rolling into the tent.

Before them was a tricycle made partially from a blond ragdoll, ridden by an oversized, bedraggled rat. The rodent itself was blind, but the doll head had a mismatched pair of button eyes so shiny they were practically mirrors.

Of course, some mirrors were actually windows, with their reflections hiding whoever might be looking through them.

The rat rider squeaked and pointed at Veronica, gesturing for her to follow it.

“Yes Mr. Fuller,” she nodded obediently, just in case Fuller happened to be looking through the Freewheeler's polished button eyes. “Talk to you later V.”

Virtuoso nodded in farewell, but did not resume singing until both she and the Freewheeler were out of sight.

Veronica followed the grotesque little minion to the Ringmaster’s Tent. There she found Fuller nervously pacing behind his desk, with a bemused looking Manny sitting on the opposite side.

“You sent for me Mr. Fuller?” Veronica asked. Fuller nodded, but was too caught up in his own thoughts to answer. “Am I in trouble?”

“We’re all in trouble Veronica. Real hot water, from a fine kettle of fish! Up to our ears in boiling, smelly fish water, that’s what we’re in!” he replied as he fretfully wrung his hands.

“… What?”

“He’s worried about this,” The Man with the Upside-Down Face replied as he slid her a newspaper, The Weekly Wanderer, a subscription available to anyone with a Library card. The headline read The Factory To Open Industrial Themed Amusement Park Next Friday.

"The organization known only as The Factory, best known for its mass production of anomalous goods as well as holding a monopoly on the anomalous market in certain realities, has announced that the grand opening of its own amusement park, The Factory Funtime Facility, will be held on October 25th. The Factory released the following statement to Library Docents earlier this week:

" 'Since our inception, The Factory has strived to be the purest embodiment of capitalism possible, like Coca-Cola. In the past, this meant maximizing production without any regard to social or environmental consequences. Those days are gone. Today, capitalism is about buying happiness. We want to sell you happiness, like Coca-Cola. Abstract concepts, like happiness, and Coca-Cola, have much lower overhead and higher profit margins than physical goods. Market research has shown that despite not having any clear definition, happiness is the most desirable abstract concept. To tap into this market, The Factory has constructed a special facility: The Factory Funtime Facility, where The Factory will facilitate fun times.

" 'Formerly a disposal site for our industrial waste, we’ve repurposed our obsolete and malfunctioning machinery into a multitude of rides and attractions that our Foremen are certain will induce fight or flight responses in our patron’s sympathetic nervous systems (the closest empirically observable phenomenon that we can equate with ‘fun’). Like Coca-Cola.

" 'In today’s busy world, people can no longer afford to participate in enough fun activities, like Coca-Cola, to reach their desired level of happiness. Luckily, The Factory prizes efficiency above all else, and with 140 years/all eternity of experience, we’ve become extremely efficient at efficiency. We guarantee that The Factory Funtime Facility will be the most efficiently fun experience anyone’s ever had.

" 'So, come on down to The Factory Funtime Facility, located throughout the Multiverse in the Crossroads Nexus (please consult local Wayfinders for your nearest emanation). Admission is one copper shilling or equivalent in human desperation. It’s like Coca-Cola!'

"The Library was unable to obtain any further information from The Factory itself, however, multiple Wanderers have confirmed the presence of an industrial-style amusement park in the Crossroads Nexus. Numerous members of the Serpent’s Hand are organizing boycotts and possibly even a protest of the Funtime Facility, due to The Factory’s history of horrific -”

“Oh, those hippies aren’t going be able to stop The Factory,” Fuller said, snatching the newspaper out of Veronica’s hands. “I can’t believe it. I’ve kept this Circus going for a hundred years. Through wars! Recessions! Persecutions! Social upheavals! The worst bugbears the anomalous world can throw at us! And this is how it ends? Being run out of business by the Factory?”

“Ah, sir, with all due respect, the Funtime Facility doesn’t exactly sound like it would provide an experience anywhere near what we offer,” Veronica countered. “And even if it did, it’s an amusement park. We’re a traveling circus, so there’s no direct competition.”

“None of that matters when we’re talking about The Factory!” Fuller objected. “The Library doesn’t call them the Robber Barons for nothing! They ruthlessly create and maintain a monopoly in whatever market they decide to enter, and now they’re offering anomalous entertainment! They won’t tolerate competition. Best case scenario they drive us out of business, but more likely than not they’ll buy us out.”

“Buy us out?”

“That’s what it will say on the internal report, but I don’t expect any of us will ever see a cent from the deal. They’ll just seize everything and indenture all of us!”

“Most of us are already indentured,” Veronica reminded him. Fuller glared at her coldly, and his Freewheeler squeaked a little closer to her.

“Veronica, do you think I’m cruel?” he asked. The blood drained from her face at the not quite rhetorical question. “Oh, I may be a bit quick to crack out the whip when need be, and I may have killed a score or two of rebellious underlings in pre-emptive self-defence, but that’s all for the good of the Circus Veronica! Surely you see that? This Circus, and the people in it, are everything to me. I’m a philanthropist if anything; feeding, clothing and - most importantly - sheltering Freaks from a world that wants them either detained or decapitated. All I ask in return is for you to put on a decent show to earn your keep. Does that make me such a bad guy?”

“No sir, you’re very generous,” she replied promptly.

“It’s a privilege, if anything. Traveling the worlds, performing for adoring audiences. I know you love performing.”

“I do sir, I love it. I’m very lucky to be here.”

“We all are Veronica, but it seems our luck’s run out. Reggie Wondertainment told me about the Factory once. He used to work there you know, before he escaped. All the unskilled work there is done by humans. They’ll hire outsiders when they’re short on staff, but for the most part, their human workers are born and bred inside The Factory walls. They’re wretched, starving things with ghastly white skin covered in coal black soot, chained to the machines for 16 hours a day, every day.

"They live in constant terror of being mutilated by the machines or punished by the Foremen, but any will to escape or rebel has long been beaten out of them. Sometimes the Factory will modify them with mechatronics or spare parts to make them more efficient at their jobs if they decide it’s cost-effective, but even then they don’t last long.

"And of course, The Factory doesn’t share our libertine, bohemian outlook, oh no. They’d never tolerate a voluptuous little thing like you squandering her childbearing potential by canoodling with other girls. No no no, breeding pits are more their style. Fifteen feet deep, chained to the bottom for good measure. There are two pipes, one for water and one for gruel, both in meagrely allotments, plus a drain in the middle. They inseminate you with seed from the most cowardly obedient workers -"

"Fuller, stop," Manny objected.

" - and have you popping out litters of preemies every eight months like clockwork."

"She gets the idea."

"The pit fills up with them until they’re able to work, unless the mother has the gumption to put them out of their misery first. Course, if she does that, the Foremen will -”

“Goddammit Fuller, that’s enough!” Manny ordered. Fuller finally yielded and leaned back in his chair.

“I’ve made my point,” he said smugly.

“You have sir,” Veronica said softly. “I don’t want our Circus -”

“My Circus.”

“ - to be taken over by the Factory. What should we do?”

“What can we do? Last time The Factory was driven out of a market it took the combined might of the Essie P and a Fey army. We’re doomed. Done for. Kaput!”

Herman jumped from his chair and took a punched at a floor lamp in frustration. It dodged the blow, and successfully knocked him back into his chair.

“It’s not as bad as all that. Wondertainment has been competition for The Factory for generations, and they’re still around,” Manny reminded him. “Listen: incarnation of capitalism or not, The Factory is still a business. Diversification is always risky, and this article makes it pretty damn clear The Factory has no idea how to run an amusement park. We go to their grand opening, incognito of course – don’t go blabbing your name to the first person who asks like you did in Sloth’s Pit – and we do a little Industrial Espionage. If there’s anything we can do to make it more of a nightmare than it’s already going to be, we will. We use the information we gather there to decide what we do next, but whatever we do we make sure everyone knows how awful The Factory Funtime Facility is. After one quarter of hemorrhaging money, they’ll write the whole enterprise off and go back to mass producing monkey paws.”

“Jiminy Christmas Manny, you’re talking about corporate sabotage against The Factory,” Fuller said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. Manny laughed and shook his head.

“I remember back in the old days, you weren’t scared of anything. Whatever happened to the man who stumbled into a Dali painting of a world and convinced the monsters he found there to work for him as Clowns? To the man who stood before the Ambassador of Alagadda and insisted all our meals and accommodations be comped? To the man who once escaped a Geo Sea strike team by shouting ‘Look, a distraction!’?”

“I like Manny’s idea,” Veronica said. “And it’s not like we’re sneaking into The Factory itself. It’s a public amusement park. If we’re smart, no one will even notice us. Even if they do, we’re all magic to varying extents. We can handle ourselves.”

“Argghhh! It’s one thing for the big guy to be on board with this, but I will not have it said that a twenty-something female stage magician dared to go where Herman Fuller dared not,” Fuller said. “Very well then! Let us steel our courage and gather our wits! Let us muster what might we have and march upon those rusty gates! Let us risk imprisonment and torture and death and employment at the Unseelie Tentacles of the Foremen! May the Broken God have mercy on our souls, for Herman Fuller and Co are going to The Factory Funtime Facility!”

…

“It doesn’t open until next Friday,” Veronica reminded him.

“Yes, then, is when we march, is what I meant. So, go find something to do until then.”

| Hub | Act II - Coming October 11th! »

Firstly, credit for the concept of Fuller getting into it with The Factory over an amusement park goes to

Baronjoe, who originally proposed it on the Ideas and Brainstorming forum. They're both aware of and approve of this series.

This is going to be a four part Dread & Circuses mini-series, so look out for more entries this month right up until Halloween.

Thanks to all my beta readers for their input, with special thanks to Baron Joe and Peppersghost.

Part II - Industrial Espionage

– hide block

It was just a little after midday, not that anyone would know it. The smoke from The Factory Funtime Facility was already so thick it obscured the sun. Though the jagged smokestacks were monstrously high, enough of the fumes still wafted low enough to make breathing uncomfortable. Both Fuller and Veronica held neckerchiefs to their mouths, though Manny refrained from doing so as to avoid drawing attention to the fact that his mouth was on the wrong end of his face.

“I can’t believe this used to be the Crossroads Nexus,” Veronica lamented as she gazed upon the sprawling grid of rusted iron before her.

“Yes, The Factory is extremely efficient at converting things we don’t need, like trees and open spaces, into things we do, like cubicles and phone books,” the ticket booth attendee said, her mouth frozen in a smile that she was too terrified to drop.

“Any discounts for senior citizens, even ones that don’t look it and can’t actually prove it because they burned all their legitimate ID when they went off the grid?” Fuller asked, only for Manny to elbow him in the ribs immediately after.

“Admission is one copper shilling per guest, no exceptions,” the woman replied.

“A shilling is one 66th of a troy pound, correct?” Manny asked as he set three copper coins on the counter. The attendant swept them behind the counter where they landed with a clink, suggesting there was already quite a pile of coins.

“Thank you. You may now enjoy The Factory Funtime Facility,” she said as she handed them three ‘admit one’ tickets printed on heavily yellowed cardstock. “Please be sure to follow the directions of The Factory Funtime Facility’s Funtime Facilitators to ensure your experience is optimally fun.” She gestured to the poster next to her, depicting a humanoid wearing a rusty happy face mask and a leather duster coat with a hood and mantle. The being had a belt which held a number of crude and oddly orthodontic looking metal tools, and carried a stick with a winged hour-glass topper in its three-clawed hand. “Next please!”

“Copper’s not even worth a dollar fifty a pound,” Herman remarked as the trio moved towards the tarnished gate. “They’re barely charging two cents a head.”

“Well, they’re spread out across the multiverse. Maybe they sell it somewhere it’s really rare,” Veronica suggested.

“Or admission fees aren’t actually how this place plans on making a profit,” Manny said. “Don’t let your guards down.”

With the sun blocked out so completely, the only real sources of light were naked gas flames burning out of 10-foot tall street polls. Through the dim haze, only the largest of the Funtime Facility’s attractions were immediately apparent. There was, of course, a roller coaster; a rickety, rusted thing that sagged and groaned as the carts rolled along it. What Veronica had mistaken for a Ferris Wheel on the outside turned out to be an enormous penal treadwheel, with patrons hanging by their arms from bars as they endlessly pushed the steps downwards. It appeared to be the only attraction with electrical lights, and judging by how they flickered it seemed that they were powered by the patrons themselves.

Just next to the Sisyphean Wheel was Mount Tetanus, an enormous pile of sharp, rusty machine parts that patrons were invited to climb.

“Okay, that thing’s clearly just the garbage that was here before they turned this into a theme park,” Veronica remarked. She took out her camera and discreetly took a few photos of each of the dangerously dilapated attractions. “The Factory trying to change their image from Dickens to Disney is more disquieting than anything we’ve got back home.”

“This place isn’t disquieting, it’s just downright dismal!” Fuller remarked confidently. “You can’t just outright torture your workers and swindle your customers and expect to get away with it; you’ve got a put a bit of spit shine on it first! Where are the brightly coloured stalls? The lulling music? The saccharine sweets, the dazzling lights, the honey-voiced barkers more tempting than a whore on the Sabbath?”

“Look at that, they’re even serving gruel,” Manny said with a nod to a nearby stall. The sign above it advertised ‘Sweet, Nourishing Gruel – Funtime Formula (one teaspoon of raw sugar per pot)! The rotten teeth are worth the ephemeral moment of pleasure!'

The being manning the stall was a slender, faceless thing dressed in a bowtie, apron and paper hat, stirring the large pot with one hand.

“Isn’t that one of those things Emcee D uses as lawyers?” Veronica asked.

“Eidolonic Collectives, yeah,” Manny nodded. “The Factory uses one Collective for security, and another one for kitchen work.”

“Kitchen work?”

“You can’t trust humans around food, they’d sneak some,” Manny shrugged.

A costumed mascot, which appeared to be a cartoon hot dog painted black to more closely resemble a smokestack, wearily danced in front of them. It shuffled back and forth without any real enthusiasm, began to stumble, and then collapsed on the ground.

“Bleedin’ ’ell, not another one!” a Funtime Facilitator cursed as it ran to the mascot and undid the back zipper, pulling out a severely dehydrated man with a face covered in vomit. “These lazy sods think just because they’re off the assembly line it means they can slack off. If you can work sixteen hours in the boiler room, then you can work sixteen hours in a mascot costume! Number 416, you’re up!”

Another half-starved looking man ran up and crawled into the smokestack suit. As soon as he was zipped up, he started dancing for the crowds.

“Did you get a picture of that?” Manny whispered to Veronica, who nodded in the affirmative.

“I’m surprised at how many people there are here. Why would anyone stick around such a smog saturated death trap?” she asked.

“It’s a big Multiverse Veronica. Somewhere out there there’s a peaceful, pristine Arcadia of a world that consider pollution and industrial working hazards exotic and will pay to see them!” Fuller claimed. “Trust me, when you’re a Wanderer you can always find a demographic for whatever you’re selling.”

Squinting through the haze, Fuller spotted what looked like an administrative building on the far side of the park. Standing in an office window on the top floor was a silhouetted figure that Fuller couldn’t help but find eerily familiar.

“I think we should split up for a bit. You two keep looking around, I’m going to see if I can find someone I might be able to milk some info out of,” he said.

“Boss, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Manny asked. “Asking questions is likely to get us noticed by someone.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little upside-down head about it. If anything goes squirrely, I always got an ace up my sleeve,” Fuller replied as he marched confidently into the smog.

“Lead Balloons! Complimentary Lead Balloons! Air not included!” a Facilitator hollered as it threw limp bags of lead foil at Veronica and Manny. “Stop standing around! Standing isn’t fun! Go on a ride or something, I don’t know.”

“Um… which one would you recommend?” Veronica asked.

“Oh, bloody hell. How about you tag along with me as I do my rounds and I’ll point them out to you?” the Facilitator offered.

“That’s very kind of you,” Veronica curtseyed. “I’m Vanessa by the way, and this is Barnabus. What’s your name?”

“Dr. Hasselflax,” the Facilitator replied.

“You’re a doctor?”

“As long as you count the degrees The Factory gives out. This way.” It turned to walk down the midway, hurling balloons at passersby. “Lead Balloons! Sweet as sugar, so they’re great for kids! Use them in wine, cosmetics, plumbing, paint, gasoline; anything your kids are going to be licking!”

“You know, one of these days you just might accidentally guess my real name and unleash all kinds of hell,” the Man with the Upside-Down Face whispered to Veronica. “Also, Vanessa?”

“I’ve been mistakenly called Vanessa before, so I at least look like a Vanessa,” Veronica whispered back.

“Alright, here’s a ride for you; the Iron Labyrinth, only three-dimensional maze in, ah, I don’t actually know, but they’re not common!” Hasselflax said. They stood before what looked to be a vaguely MC Escher array of industrial staircases welded together at odd angles, with panicked patrons running along them with little regard to gravity.

“Please, let us out! It’s been hours, we can’t find the exit!” a patron on the inside pleaded.

“I can’t let you out, it’s a maze you idiot!” Hasselflax retorted, banging the stairs with one of the surgical implements from its belt. “It’s no fun if you don’t solve it yourself, so have fun! Fun, fun, fun!

“Okay, looks like I can’t let you in here, otherwise these cheaters might get out. You could try climbing the Corporate Ladder. That’s similar.”

The ride it pointed at was just a series of ladders, but the rungs all appeared to be booby-trapped. Some were red hot, others frozen. Some were covered in rusty razor wire while others were electrified. A few rungs appeared normal, and it was those ones that the climbers trusted the least.

“It has a glass ceiling,” Veronica remarked.

“That’s right, even if you break through you’ll be impaled by countless shards. It’s highly realistic,” Hasseflax replied. “If that’s a little too intense for you there’s also the Chimney Sweep. We take you up to the top of the smokestack and let you bungee jump down inside it. We don’t pull you back up though until you got the whole thing sparkling. You can also jump from the top of the smokestack into the Suicide Nets, which are just the nets we use to catch jumpers at The Factory. Standard practice really.”

“Okay, now you’re just getting cartoonishly villainous,” Manny remarked. “What do you got that keeps our feet on the ground?”

“There are paddle boats, out on Lake Refuse,” Hasselflax said, pointing to a pond of rust-red water with copious amounts of garbage floating about. Several steel swan boats were drifting upon the pond, but all their passengers appeared to have passed out from the fumes. “Then of course HR is a madhouse all on its own, you know what I’m talking about?”

Before Veronica or Manny could respond, Hasselflax’s walkie-talkie crackled to life.

“This is a memo to all Factory Funtime Facility Funtime Facilitators: The Factory Farm exhibit is closed until further notice. Several guests, apparently considering the livestock’s living conditions to be inhumane, attempted to free them. The loss of potential return customers is regrettable, however, the accountants have calculated that this is, in fact, a net gain, as the pigs will not require a feeding this week. That is all.”

“Well did the accountants calculate the net cost of using these damn walkies instead of earpieces?” Hasselflax muttered with a shake of its head. “Look folks, I’ll level with you. The safest ride is the Assembly Line. You just sit on a conveyor belt and watch the show.”

“Thank you,” Veronica curtseyed again, grabbing Manny by the hand and leading him towards the indicated ride. “Manny, can you see Inside these Facilitator guys? What are they?”

“I’m not sure. I can tell they’re not a hivemind, so they’re not Eidolonics. They’re definitely not human, but they’re not fey either. Honestly, the closest I’ve ever felt to them are the natives of Alagadda, but that’s all I can say for sure.”

The two of them were quickly admitted into the Assembly Line. It seemed ordinary enough at first: just a series of carts moved around by a conveyor belt. Once their harnesses were in place, they were rolled inside the derelict building.

The interior looked like it had been a packaging warehouse of some kind in the past, and the mechatronic robots that once lined the conveyor belt had been crudely and cheaply modified into grotesque animatronics. They were elongated and mangled and randomly jolted to and fro, each movement causing a fiery display of sparks that cast monstrous shadows upon the walls. They flailed to the tune of a rhythmic beat that was almost music, while a pre-recorded monotone recited the same seven words over and over again:

“A Hard Worker Is A Happy Worker.”

“The happiest extradimensional place on all iterations of Earth,” Veronica smirked. “Hey, isn’t Disney on the Council of 108? How do you think they’re taking this?”

“It just, it doesn’t make any sense,” Manny said, half to Veronica and half to himself. “The Factory never lets anyone in to keep their trade secrets and working conditions under wraps. They’re like an evil version of Willy Wonka. Why would they open an amusement park to the public, especially one that’s so cheap it’s basically free? What are they getting out of this?”

“Yeah, it could be some evil eldritch plot, or it could just be a bad business venture on their part. They’re both equally common,” Veronica said nonchalantly, snapping a photo of one of the flailing robots. To her surprise, the flash was met by an inhuman but also very unrobotic screeching, and multiple pairs of shining amber eyes began pouring out of the shadows.

“Gremlins; they do the Factory’s mechatronics work,” Manny said.

"Okay, I'm really starting to wonder why you know so much about the Factory," Veronica replied. One of the impish creatures scuttled up to the cart and grabbed at her camera. “Let go of that you gross little Flibbertigibbet!” she shouted as she kicked it with her high heeled boot. The gremlin still wouldn’t let go, so Manny socked it in the face.

This did knock it off the cart, but had the unfortunate side effect of enraging all the other gremlins. Shrieking and howling, they stormed the cart all at once. Veronica pocketed her camera and pulled out her trick cards. The black-backed cards levitated in a purple aura, and she tossed them one at a time at each of their half-sized assailants, knocking them back with anomalous force. One of them quickly got around behind her and put her in a chokehold. Manny struggled to get close enough to help her, but several of them had swarmed him and were keeping him pinned down. He managed to get a fist free and began punching them mercilessly. In his fury, his hat was knocked off his head, and all the gremlins suddenly relented, gasping in shock.

“It’s him! It’s the Man with the Upside-Down Face! But that means…” the gremlin grabbed Veronica by her coat and pulled her towards him. “Where’s the Ringmaster? Where’s Fuller?”

The receptionist at the Funtime Facility’s administration offices looked up as a man in a red velvet frock coat, top hat, and diamond-topped mahogany cane sauntered into the waiting room.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes, I’d like to have a word with the man in charge around here.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“A man of my standing doesn’t require an appointment.”

“And you are?”

“Herman P. Fuller, of Herman Fuller’s Circus of the Disquieting, delighted to make your acquaintance!” Fuller said reflexively. “Shoot, I was supposed to be incognito.”

“Of course, Mr. Fuller, my apologies. You’re right, you don’t require an appointment. That elevator right there will take you straight to Management’s Office. Just press the top button.”

“Much obliged, mon cher,” Herman nodded. He waltzed into the waiting elevator and pushed the top button with his cane. As the elevator rose with an unexpected ease, Fuller’s eyes drifted towards the name beside the glowing button he had just pressed.

FACILITY MANAGER – ALOYSIUS FULLER

“Oh, crap on a corndog.”

« Part I | Hub | Part III - Coming October 21st! »

Part III - Industrial Sabotage

– hide block

The elevator came to a gentle stop, its doors sliding open with a pleasant chime. The room it opened to wasn’t so much an office as a control center. Banks of bronze, mechatronic computers lined each wall, with several Funtime Facilitators manning the controls. At the end of the room, in front of the gothic bay window, was a regal looking desk, and at that desk sat a regal looking man.

He was pale, in late middle-age, and had slicked back red hair under a crimson top hat that matched his eyes. He was dressed in an ornate, Victorian-era suit as timeless as The Factory itself. He sat back in his leather chair expectantly, a smugly satisfied smile creeping across his face.

“Squirmin’ Herman,” he chuckled as Fuller stepped into the office.

“Vicious Aloysius,” he replied as stoically as he could manage, idly looking around the room as one might at any other business meeting. “I was expecting one of the Factory’s Foremen to be in charge. Did they roll out some kind of human affirmative action programme to go with this whole Disneyfication process?”

“Still as irreverent as ever, I see,” Aloysius smiled. He reached for a decanter on the far side of his desk and began unscrewing the lid. “Care for some concentrated miasma? Darke sent it as a gift to one of the Foremen, which got him a bit out of sorts since his kind consider gifts a form of socialism. Fortunately, me buying it off him set everything right.”

“That sounds like Percy alright; you never know for sure if he likes you or if he’s just messing with you,” Fuller said as picked up and examined the crystal glass. “Kind of you to offer, but I can’t stomach that stuff.”

“Oh, of course not. No mere mortal can. What was I thinking?” Aloysius sneered as he sipped and sniffed the nebulous fluid. Fuller's eye twitched a bit at the insult, but he maintained his composure. “Oh, I’m being too hard on you again, aren’t I? You are still alive after all this time. How did a bastard, half-breed like yourself manage that?”

“Oh, this and that,” Herman said, dusting some lint off his shoulder. “I’d ask the same of you, but that’s hardly a wonder. You being a proper Sarkic and all.”

Aloysius slammed his glass onto his desk, shattering it.

“You dare, you dare utter that filthy clockwork slur? You’re a Black Blood Fuller!”

“No, I’m not. You always made that very clear to me.”

Aloysius sighed and swept the shattered glass onto the floor with a swift swipe of his arm.

“Regardless of your impure pedigree, Adytite blood does flow in your veins. Had you not been so easily distracted by the petty sorcery of heathens and dedicated yourself to our faith, you could have been a decent Flesh Carver.”

“You were going to turn me into a Kiraak. Even if I never did truly master the Flesh Carving, I’ve always understood the core tenants of Nälkä: the individual is to acquire power until they are a god, and must not allow any mortal notions of morality hold them back. I tossed my own kin into a wood chipper to save my own skin, and you would have done the same.”

“I would have betrayed my family, yes, but not by allying myself with clockwork fanatics. You see, the reason I’m not mad at you is that you didn’t actually kill us. You’re a weakling who found someone stronger that happened to have a reason to do your own dirty work. You got lucky."

Aloysius winced suddenly, as if an old wound had spotaneously acted up.

“You know, it takes a lot to kill a Black Blood. The Broken bastards used some kind of Greek fire that we just could not put out. It’s the same stuff they used to cull the Red Death, I think. The more we healed, the more fuel we gave it and the more it burned. I was burning to death for so long I thought I might actually be in Hell. When my strength was finally drained and body reduced to a blackened corpse, the tickers sliced the White Worm out of me with those accursed blades of theirs, and let the fire finish the job.”

“Yet here you are.”

“Yet here I am. Like I said, hard to kill. Or at least kill and stay dead.”

“And Ma? Lucretia? Did they ‘stay dead’?”

“And why do you care? You wouldn’t be feeling guilty for what you did, now would you?”

“Of course not. I just need to know who else I need to add to my enemies list.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re family, and family stays together,” Aloysius said, smiling widely to reveal the pair of wriggling syphons he had grown on the inside of his mouth. “I even tried to find you, after I recovered, but you had already left our native Plane through the Library, and I wasn’t about to track you down across all the worlds. I just assumed you were dead, long since devoured by one of the many horrors that abide across the cosmos. I can’t tell you how delighted I was when I first heard the words ‘Herman Fuller’s Circus of the Disquieting’. If you were a full Black Blood such a vulgar enterprise would be a disgrace, but considering your disadvantages I dare say you’ve done quite well for yourself.”

“And working as a facility manager isn’t a disgrace for a Black Blood? You’re a salaryman Aloysius, working the nine-to-five grind for a pension and dental. I’m just kidding, we both know The Factory doesn’t do benefits.”

“Don’t play dumb Squirmin’, no matter how well the part suits you. You know I’m not doing this for a paycheck.”

“What then?”

“Have you ever heard of an anomalous ailment called Iron Lung? It’s especially prevalent among mortals who work in The Factory. The iron in their blood is transmuted into alchemical rust, as all metal The Factory touches must corrode. In addition to causing anemia, the rust tends to accumulate in places and obstruct organ function, most prominently in the lungs. The infected then coughs up the rust, and if enough of that is inhaled by someone else then it can work as a seed metal for transmutation in their blood, infecting them and spreading the disease even further until the lungs are so heavily rusted the victim can’t breathe at all. It’s a truly pernicious disease too. Since it’s not a traditional pathogen, normal immune responses and medical treatments have little effect.

“I found all this quite fascinating when I was contracted by The Factory to find a way to mitigate the effects of the disease and improve the productivity of the workforce. But as a practitioner of Nälkä, I could not condone the idea of mitigating any disease. Disease is sacred, culling the weak from the herd and ensuring only the strongest survive. But the Iron Lung was even more remarkable, and that it spread the very essence of The Factory as plague, and the worlds had only been spared its miraculous powers due to The Factory's incidental quarantine of its own workforce.

“It was then that I proposed to them the idea of an attraction, where people would come from all over the worlds and unknowingly become infected with the Iron Lung from the smog-filled air. It would incubate for months, years even as thousands or even millions of Wanderers unknowingly spread the Iron Lung across all reality, growing exponentially until not a single Plane is untainted by the rust, with The Factory’s profits growing right along with it. They’re paying me handsomely, sure, but the real reason I’m doing this is for the chance to shepherd such an extraordinary disease and disseminate it across such a vast distance. To have such an iconoclastic impact over so many worlds, it’s truly godlike. I may be the most godlike Adytite since Ion himself.”

“I’m afraid there’s a small flaw in your evil scheme there Al; your park stinks.”

“Yes, well, The Factory refused to give me as much creative control over the project as I would have liked. They insisted on their own rather peculiar ideas of entertainment. Still, it’s a minor setback, and one I may now have the chance to mend. Herman, how would you like to come on board as a Funtime Consultant?”

“Surely you jest.”

“I’m completely serious. You’ve kept that Circus of yours afloat for a hundred years now. That’s the kind of experience the Factory will listen too. With your help, we can turn this park into a place that will consistently draw in the crowds and churn out the Typhoid Marys. Imagine what you can do with the resources of The Factory at your disposal.”

Fuller only laughed, shaking his head in disdain.

“Aloysius, neither The Factory - nor its resources - are at anyone’s disposal. The Factory exploits everyone and everything it comes into contact with. Did you bother to read the contract they made you sign when you joined this little enterprise?”

“Why would I? The laws of men have no -”

“We’re not talking about the laws of men, we’re talking about The Factory! When you signed your contract you gave them your name! Your name Aloysius! Do you know what The Factory can do to someone once they have their name! You’re a slave no matter how much they pay you because you can never leave. No one ever lives to the end of their contract, and you’re a damnable fool if you think your Sarkic blood magic is going to protect you.”

Aloysius sighed, and pressed a button on his desk.

“I gave you the chance to join willingly. You should have taken it. It would have been a lot easier on everyone. The Factory wants a Funtime Consultant, and they don’t take no for an answer.” The side door to the office opened, and half a dozen faceless Eidolons dressed in tactical garb filed into the room. “Take him to processing, put him through Executive Reorientation. Tell the rest of your team that The Man With The Upside-Down Face is likely on the premises, mind he doesn’t get inside your heads. Oh, and I’ve heard that there’s a girl who's been tagging along with them lately as well. If you find her, bring her directly to me.”

The six Eidolons circled around Fuller, one of them holding a pair of rusted manacles while the others held their cattle prods at the ready. Fuller twirled his cane indifferently at their approach.

“Isn’t it just like The Factory to hire an Eidolonic Collective?” he mused. “They seem like every industrialist’s dream workforce; they never talk, they never sleep, they never eat or go to the bathroom and are utterly devoid of any hint of individuality. They do, however, have one less than obvious flaw: they’re under an industrial amount of pressure!”

Fuller hurled his cane so quickly they were helpless to react, the sharped end piercing through the nearest one’s cheap armour and puncturing its body. Immediately, the pressurized content of its moulded form exploded violently, showering the office with malodorous, bubbling, yellow pus.

“Oh god, it’s warm too. I, I didn’t know it would be warm. God, that’s almost the worst of it, I mean -”

“Grab him!” Aloysius ordered. The remaining Eidolons attempted to close in on Fuller but ended up slipping on the splattered viscera of their slain fellow.

“No non-slip shoes I see? The Factory’s lack of commitment to worker safety shall be their downfall!” Fuller shouted as he snatched up his cane and then stabbed it into another one of the humanoid abominations. It too rapidly exploded, covering the room in a second coating of the living, pulsing goo. A third charged at Fuller, electricity arcing between the prongs of its cattle prod, but it slipped and went crashing into the others, knocking them down like a trio of bowling pins. Fuller seized this opportunity immediately, picking up the cattle prod of one of the exploded Eidolons and thrusting it into the pile of flailing, pus-covered limbs. They convulsed in unison, and one after the other they exploded until the immediate area was ankle deep in their remains.

Aloysius sat behind his desk still, and shook his head shamefully.

“Look at the mess you’ve made,” he lamented. “Not to mention their poor Overmind losing six of its nodes like that.”

Fuller wiped the jaundice coloured filth from his eyes and spat it out upon the floor.

“How am I supposed to explain this to my dry cleaner?” he mused aloud. He made a few playful parries with his cane and held it out defensively. “Well, any more goons for me to paint your office with?”

“No sense in wasting them, now is there? I’ll bring you in myself.”

Aloysius rose from his desk at last, and Fuller could see that he had no legs. Instead, he was supported by a skirt of thousands of segmented tendrils hanging out from his abdomen. They stretched so that he towered over the desk, and his lower jaw unhinged to allow the full extension of his feeding syphons. A second pair of seven-fingered, seven-jointed and seven-foot-long arms unfolded themselves from beneath his coat. His pupils shifted to an inverted Y shape, his corneas went black, and he removed his top hat to unveil a decorative set of antlers made from red coral.

“Wow. Talk about overkill. Honestly, who do you think you’re impressing with such conspicuous body modification?”

“Ah, Herman. I do hope you manage to retain your sass through your Reorientation,” Aloysius said as he reached for him, his voice enunciating perfectly from his larynx despite the fact that his lower jaw was immobilized. Fuller reached into his coat and pulled out a bulky, shiny ray-gun covered in pointless blinking lights and a spinning ‘W’ on the top. “What is that?”

“Doctor Wondertainment’s Hyper Fun Sun Gun, Tee Emm!” Fuller boasted. “One of only seven prototypes handmade by Reginald Philbert Lionel Archibald Westinghouse Wondertainment the third himself! Never entered production due do -”

“Playtime’s over, little brother!” Aloysius said as he grabbed for the gun. He knocked it out of his hand, but not before Fuller pulled the trigger. A pulsating beam of intense white light scorched Aloysius across the stomach. Aloysius recoiled in pain, but initially seemed to be unscathed. “You haven’t changed one bit, have you Squirmin’? Still turning to heathen magic to save your own skin. But you can’t cheat the natural order. Sooner or later, the Strong will cull the Weak and -”

He stopped abruptly when he saw that his shirt was still being soaked with blood.

“I… I can’t stop bleeding. This isn’t possible. Why can’t I heal a simple gunshot wound? I’m a Karcist!”

“No, you’re not,” Fuller said as he picked up the ray-gun. “You’ve been here too long. You’re as much as part of The Factory as anyone else here. That’s why I brought this with me. You see, the reason The Factory has never been able to destroy Wondertainment is that their very essences are mutually antagonistic. Think of it this way: The Factory is capitalism as defined by communists, whereas Wondertainment is capitalism as defined by capitalists. The Factory is all smog and rust and work, and Wondertainment is all sunshine and chrome and fun. Even when he was working here, you couldn’t stop him. He took your rusted metal and made a rustproof robot! If you were still a regular Sarkic abomination and this some common sci-fi laser weapon, you’d be perfectly fine right now. But you’re just a Factory tool, which is no match for a Wondertainment toy.”

Aloysius collapsed to the ground, coughing up blood.

“You, you really do love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” he laughed.

“Yes, and you’re interrupting. It didn’t have to be this way, you know? If you weren’t so dogmatically committed to your ridiculous old religion, you might have realized that a lot of heathen magic is pretty useful, especially the Wonder-Maker’s. Easier to manage than a White Worm, at least. Hey, while I have you here, is it true you can’t swallow an Akuloth? Because a few years ago this hick from Sloth’s Pit -”

“Just kill me already!”

Fuller smirked softly and pointed the gun at his head.

“Only if you promise to stay dead this time, brother.”

He pulled the trigger, and that was that.

He turned to face the Funtime Facilitators at the control center, all of whom were watching with rapt interest. Fuller pointed the gun straight at them.

“Any of you want to make this fun time even better?”

They immediately abandoned their posts and ran for the elevator, slamming the door shut behind them.

“Taking the elevator, in a life and death situation? The Factory really doesn’t bother with basic safety procedures, does it?”

Herman holstered his gun and pranced over to the controls, rubbing his hands together in delight.

“All right then. Time for a few Industrial Accidents.”

« Part II | Hub | Part IV - Coming Halloween! »

Finale - Industrial Accidents

– hide block

Veronica stared in wide-eyed terror at the gremlin mere inches in front of her, its reeking yellow fangs bared in a menacing display, ready to bite her face off in an instant if it was displeased.

“I, I don’t know where Fuller is,” she lied. “He sent us here alone, he could be anywhere in the Multiverse right now.”

Before the gremlin could accuse her of lying, the Funtime Facility’s PA system crackled to life.

“Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?” asked a voiced that both Veronica and Manny were disquietingly familiar with. “Greetings, patrons of The Factory Funtime Facility. I’m here on behalf of the United State’s Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Unusual Incidents Unit - health and safety division. In what should come as a surprise to no one, this theme park has failed its health and safety inspection. Most alarming is the high concentrations of alchemical rust in the air, a known risk factor in the development of Iron Lung. I recommend you all consult an alchemist about treatment options as soon as possible.

“I’m afraid this park is too much of a public safety hazard to remain open, so I’m going to have to insist you all evacuate in a calm and orderly manner whilst I blow this haphazardous heap of scrap iron to Kingdom Come.”

A cacophony of screeching gears, exploding boilers and terrified screams rang through the air, shaking the ground and buildings of the Funtime Facility like a small earthquake. The mechatronic arms of the Assembly Line ceased their odd dance and instead turned on each other, thrashing and bashing one another with unchecked ferocity, sending sparks and chunks flying in all directions.
The gremlins abandoned their two victims and fled off into the shadows, their arms raised over their heads in a desperate attempt to shield themselves from the flying debris. Veronica and Manny leapt off the cart, and with Manny placing himself between her and the malfunctioning mechatronics as protection, they ran out as quickly as they could.

The scene the greeted them outside was not one of safety, however. The roller coaster had been pushed beyond its limits so that its track gave way and the train of cars sent crashing to the ground. The Sisyphean Wheel had come off its axel and now rolled through the fairgrounds, sending patrons fleeing in panic and crushing everything in its path. Most troubling of all was the Smokestack, which now belched out fire instead of smog, and produced a deep rumbling that signalled imminent catastrophe.

“Everyone, please, remain calm!” Hasselflax shouted as it frantically tried to undo the pandemonium that had erupted. “It’s just all part of the fun!”

“Manny, the gates,” Veronica said, pointing towards the entrance. The gates had been closed, and numerous Eidolonic security guards were now at work beating back the mob. “They’re not letting anyone out.”

“Afraid of bad press, I imagine. There aren’t that many guards, you and I can force our way past them. Come on.”

They weren’t able to make it more than a few steps before Hasselfax ran ahead of them to hold them back.

“Whoa whoa whoa, where are you two going? You only just got here. Don’t you want to go on some more rides? Eat some gruel? Ah, did I give you a lead balloon yet?”

“Out of our way,” Manny ordered.

“No, you have to stay. This is just a minor technical hiccup,” Hasselflax insisted. Behind him a monstrously fat pig broke through the wall of The Factory Farm exhibit, its massive bulk supported on a pair of stubby legs that would have been cute if they didn’t look so agonizingly painful. Struggling to stand on cracked and bleeding hooves, the pig charged forward and scooped up a fleeing gremlin into its jaws, chomping down on it with enough force to squash it in one bite. “See, now the livestock is free range. We listen to your concerns, we’re very socially conscious.”

Hasselflax whipped out its walkie-talkie and raised it to its mouth.

“What the hell is Aloysius doing?” it asked. “Hello, anyone?”

Manny tried to push past Hasselflax again, but the Funtime Facilitator pushed back with surprising force and pulled out a cattle prod.

“I said you’re not going anywhere!” it screamed. “You don’t know what the Foremen’ll do to us if this fails! You have to stay! You have to have fun!”

Manny punched the Facilitator in the face, knocking off its mask.

What they saw beneath chilled them both to the bone.

Instead of a face, there was a hole cut into the front of the Facilitator’s saggy grey head. The word hole didn’t do it justice though, since the inside of the skull was nowhere to be seen. It was instead a void, of unknown but certainly impossible dimensions. Air could be seen flowing to the void’s edges and sinking inwards, as if cooled and condensed by the being’s frigid skin and then drawn down into the vacuous cavern by its sheer density. Without the mask to dampen it, the sound of faint, echoing wind could be heard within the cavity, and the hollow darkness of the void was deep enough that it stood out even in the dark and smog filled environs of the fairground. Though the void seemed empty, Manny and Veronica’s gazes remained transfixed upon it, as if they were staring at something.

And then, somewhere deep within that abyss, something stared back at them.

Thinking them paralyzed, Hasselflax moved in for the kill. Before it could touch them Manny sprung back to life and in an instant seized both of Hasseflax’s wrists in a vice-like grip.

“Veronica, get to the gate now! I’ll catch up!” Manny shouted. Veronica, too terrified to argue, did as he said. With her safely out of the way, Manny smirked as he leaned in towards Hasselflax. “Now it’s your turn to see what’s behind my face.”

Veronica didn’t turn back, not even at the sound of Hasselflax’s blood-curdling screams. Ahead of her the Eidolonic security guards had successfully barricaded the main gate and were holding the crowd at bay. There was no way for her to get to the guards through the crowd, so she’d have to go over it. Taking out her deck of trick cards, she cast all the numbered cards to the ground in a six by six grid. The grid became enveloped in a shared blue aura that allowed her to levitate them as one, even with her standing upon it. She rose to about twelve feet off the ground, immediately attracting the attention of the guards. As they fumbled to switch their cattle prods for their guns, she sent a pair of Wild Jokers careening their way. The cards tumbled through the air at a rapid velocity, decapitating the guards and showering the crowd in their pressurized yellow innards.

A Facilitator threw a tin can of gruel at Veronica’s head, striking her with enough force to knock her off of her levitating platform. Laying on the soot-covered ground, clutching her head in pain, she looked up to see several rusted smiley faces all staring down at her.

“Bloody hell, do you think those things grow on trees?” one of them demanded, gesturing to the fallen Eidolonic guards. “Box her up so she can’t cause any more trouble, and we’ll deal with her once things have settled down.”

Two of the Facilitators grabbed her by the arms before she could summon her cards. She kicked and struggled as they lifted her up, only to drop her as they were struck down with blasts of white light, their coats and masks falling to the ground in smouldering heaps. She looked up in bewilderment, only to see Fuller standing there with his Wondertainment Hyper Fun Sun Gun^TM.

“Fuller. You, you saved – you’re covered in yellow shit,” she said.

“Looks like there’s a lot of that going around,” he said with a smirk, nodding to the remains of the guards Veronica had killed. “Nice work.”

A pair of strong hands grabbed Fuller from behind and spun him around so that he was face to upside-down face with Manny.

“What did you do?” The Man With The Upside-Down Face demanded.

“Well, from a purely technical perspective I’m not quite sure. I mostly just fiddled with buttons until all the warning dials moved into the red,” he replied.

Manny snarled at him, but kept his temper in check when he saw the mob still trying to push through the locked gates.

“Veronica, use your cards to cut through the lock chains,” he said. She nodded and engulfed one of her cards in a sharp red aura, pulling it backwards in anticipation of the throw.

“Be still,” ordered a silky yet guttural voice that reverberated through the fairgrounds. Veronica froze, her card still in her hand, as did Fuller and Manny and all the other patrons. “Behold.”

At the voice’s behest, they all turned to see the being it belonged to. There, shrouded in the thick smog, was a Factory Foreman.

It was hard to say how big it was, as its unfamiliar form and shrouded surroundings made it difficult to judge distance. Its torso was humanoid, albeit with a hunched back and a curved spine. Instead of legs, it had a long, serpentine tale it slithered along the ground on, and instead of arms, it had two long tentacles. Its head was mounted on a long, twisted neck and its small eyes were set back in two, deep, black sockets. Most unsettling of all, its form was covered in numerous small, dark, semi-humanoid creatures like parasites, their rust-red eyes glowing furiously in the darkness.

Herman raised his gun to fire at the creature, or host of creatures, but found himself unable to fire when it held up its tentacle in a clear gesture to stop.

“We apologize for the disruption,” the Foreman hissed, all its mouths moving in perfect unison while the singular voice seemed to come from none of them. “You shall be compensated with employment opportunities. Report to the administrative center for interviews, assessments, reorientation, and complementary septic buckets.”

They all stood still, simultaneously terrified of the consequences of obedience and disobedience. The Foreman roared at them to urge them to action, but its cry was drowned out by the eruption of the smokestack behind it. Molten slag began raining down on the fairground like lava from a volcano, with a glob of it striking the Foreman, the incandescently hot metal knocking it to the ground.

This was enough to break The Foreman’s hold over the crowd. Veronica spun around and threw her card, slicing through the chains that held the gates shut. The mob immediately pushed the gates open and stampeded out of the Funtime Facility as quickly as they were able.

“Don’t forget to get your hand stamped for re-entry,” the booth attendant said, weeping despite her indelible smile.

The injured Foreman slithered after the escaping horde, pulling itself out past the gate with the aid of its remaining tentacle. It was not the third of its body that it had lost to the burning metal rain that stopped it though, but the fresh air that lay beyond the bounds of its domain. It couldn’t risk it in its weakened state, so with a bitter snarl it reluctantly retreated back to the suffocating heat, darkness and smog that was The Factory Funtime Facility.

In the Ringmaster’s tent, Herman Fuller leaned back in his chair with his feet upon his desk, puffing on a cigar in smug satisfaction. Across from him, The Man With The Upside-Down Face sat with his arms folded across his chest, decidedly less pleased with how the course of events had played out.

“I’m back,” Veronica announced as she entered the tent, holding a copy of the Weekly Wanderer in one hand and a six pack of Doctor Wondertainment’s Causta Cola^TM in the other. “Are you sure this stuff is all we need to get that damn rust out of systems?”

“Positive,” Fuller said as he opened a bottle and, in an uncharacteristic display of gentlemanly behaviour, handed it to Veronica. “Reggie uses it himself to keep his own Iron Lung in check. This stuff would strip even ordinary rust from nails, and if you look closely you can see a little bit of the Wonderlight in each bubble. More than enough to get rid of a little Factory Rust.”

Veronica took a deep swig of the cola, then unfolded the newspaper to read the headline.

“ ‘Factory Funtime Facility Fails Fantastically’,” she read. “ ‘After only a few hours of operation, The Funtime Facility’s attractions suffered a series of disastrous malfunctions, necessitating the park’s immediate evacuation. The Facility is now completely abandoned and mostly buried under an enormous amount of iron slag which appears to have come from a foundry explosion. The Factory itself has since issued a statement claiming that the amusement park was an unlicensed knockoff out to profit off their good reputation and that they would never stoop to something as unproductive as entertainment. Witness reports suggest a UIU agent may have been involved in the Funtime Facility’s destruction, but this remains unconfirmed at this time’.

“Yadda yadda yadda, there’s no mention of us in here.”

“Marvellous,” Fuller smiled.

“Marvellous? Do you seriously believe The Factory doesn’t know it was you who blew up their theme park?” Manny demanded. “How many people knew who you were?”

“Let’s see; there was the receptionist at the administration building, a few Facilitators in the control room, Aloysius, and the Overmind of the Eidolonics I killed,” Herman replied. “Aloysius is dead, the receptionist and facilitators are most likely either dead or took their chance to flee The Factory so aren’t talking either way, and Eidolonic collectives are notoriously bad communicators. I don’t think The Factory knows it was me, not for sure anyway, and even if they do they won’t care,”

“They won’t care?”

“You heard Veronica, they’re denying the Facility was theirs in the first place. They are no longer in the business of anomalous entertainment, which means we are no longer competitors, so they have no reason to come after us. Revenge is not in their M.O. There’s no profit in it.”

“What about sending a message to anyone else who might try to destroy their holdings. Is that profitable?”

“To do that they’d have to publically acknowledge I destroyed the Facility in the first place, and they clearly decided that’s a bad move. They’ve disowned themselves from the whole enterprise and are eager to move on. I applaud their media savviness.”

“You don’t even want to add them to your list of enemies?” Veronica asked.

“Not even tempted. All’s well with The Factory,” he nodded.

Manny shook his head in disdain, but clearly didn’t have any retort that he thought Herman would listen too.

“Well, I’ll give you this old man; you’ve got more nerve left than I had thought,” he said.

“And don’t you forget it,” Fuller said with a waggle of his finger. “Whilst we’re on the subject of forgetting, remind me to thank Wondertainment for the Hyper Fun Sun Gun tee em next time we see him. That thing really saved my caboose back there.”

“Ah-oh,” Veronica muttered as she read further along in the newspaper article.

“What?” Fuller asked.

“ ‘In an official statement by little Larry Little from Wondertainment’s Wonder World’s Wonder Tower, the news of The Factory Funtime Facility prompted Dr. Wondertainment to consider opening their own theme park’,” she read aloud. “ ‘The project, temporarily entitled as Wondertainment Land®, will most likely be located in the continental United States and hopes to carve a niche for itself as a premier destination in the anomalous tourism and entertainment industry,’.”

Fuller snatched the paper away from her and began reading it himself, his face growing redder and left eye twitching more fervently with each passing word.

…

“Ah, Fuller?”

“THAT SICK, SORRY, SON-OF-A-FUNLOVER IS MUSCLING IN ON MY MARKET!” he screeched, throwing the bottle of Wondertainment Causta Cola^TM towards the floor lamp, only for his luminary nemesis to swivel around with enough force to bat it back at him, striking him in the head and knocking him out cold.

Manny and Veronica stared nonchalantly at his limp body, leisurely sipping their own Colas as he lay unconscious on the ground.

“Why does he even keep that lamp here?” Veronica asked.

“Says he goes through regular lamps too quick, so made one that can put up a fight,” Manny replied.
“I’d think it’d be humiliating losing to a lamp so much, but that’s me.”

« ACT III | Hub |


The Indestructible Man
Not Fire Nor Poison Nor Sword Nor Lash Can Keep This Man In His Grave!		Watch As He Cheats The Grim Reaper Before Your Very Eyes!
Like the Wandering Jew and other vile wretches before him, The Indestructible Man has been barred from the Gates of Heaven for his unspeakable blasphemy, forced to forever walk this Fallen Earth. Watch in amazement as he endures torment after torment in a vain effort to finally shuffle off his mortal coil!
ONE DAY ONLY 7 PM this Friday in Gorky Park. One show, One chance! Come one, come all!

Mission Time Elapsed	Observations
01:01	The landscape of SCP-36xx-A is unusually colourful, but is otherwise observed to be in a constant state of flux. The terrain rises and falls at random, with features like flora and architecture changing at inconsistent rates. Gravity varies between 0.18 and 3.1 times Earth sea level. The 'ground' of SCP-36xx-A is not thought to be a planetoid, as it is not believed that any planetary body could form or remain intact within the wildly changing physical laws. The landscape is dotted at random intervals by dimensional rifts of various shapes and sizes.
An hour to climb, an hour to go around	The UAV re-experiences its initial one minute and one second within SCP-36xx-A an undetermined number of times before being able to progress. In the distance multiple instances of SCP-36xx can be observed. They appear to be caught in the time loop as well, although their behavior would indicated they are aware of it. Instances always appear at the same point during the 'reset' but are able to vary their behavior within the loop.
-04:29	After jumping backwards in time to several minutes prior to its initial entry point (at least according to external clocks) the UAV is able to observe the sky, which displayed a colourful moving pattern similar to that produced by a kaleidoscope. Spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere indicated it is comprised of 77% nitrous oxide¹, 21% oxygen, 1% helium and 1% trace gases. Though technically breathable, this air would be extremely psychoactive for human beings. Its effects on SCP-36xx instances is not clear. [[cell style="text-align: center; padding: .3em .7em; border: 1px solid black"]]
01:01/ 2 628 000 000:02	A colossal clown's head emerges from what appears to be a lake of lemonade. The head possesses multiple eyes, noses and mouths around its circumference. It floats over the landscape whilst screaming for somewhere between sixty one seconds and two thousand years. It eventually explodes like a pinata, at which point instances SCP-36xx emerge from buildings to collect the candy.
12:00 (flashing)	Attempts to group these instances into separate species has proven problematic due to their metamorphic abilities. Instances of SCP-36xx were observed to commonly take the form of large (3-4 meters in height), hulking humanoids with white skin and colourful markings, though non-humanoid forms were present as well. Several entities were seen to transition between different forms. Instances of SCP-36xx all possessed grotesquely disproportionate body parts. Nearly all instances were observed to have clawed digits, shark-like teeth and snake-like eyes.
99:99	Instances of SCP-36xx appear to be sapient and possess powerful essokinetic abilities, as they are observed to use their metamorphic abilities creatively for both constructive and recreational purposes, such as transforming their limbs or bodies into tools or producing items ex nihilo which then demanifest when unwanted. Instances are observed to fluctuate between euphoric states of laughter and psychotic episodes of unprompted panic or rage, possibly suggesting widespread mania. Although extreme (if cartoonish) violence is witnessed, no instances are killed or injured, suggesting invulnerability. In addition to SCP-36xx, various amorphous black creatures are observed to be active within the SCP-36xx-A. SCP-36xx frequently engage with these creatures, both playfully and violently, seemingly with the ultimate goal of [REDACTED].
A Mad Tea Party	Teapots being raining from the sky, scolding instances of SCP-36xx and causing widespread panic. The UAV and many instances of SCP-36xx are caught up in a teapot tornado for roughly 30 minutes. At this point time reverses and the camera feed displays everything in negative colour until they are returned to the start of the storm.
Peanut Butter Jelly Time	All instances of SCP-36xx engage in a feast of various types of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, including Fluffernutter and deep fried banana. During this feast the sky literally falls, revealing countless dimensional breaches to other realities. Many instances of SCP-36xx produce impossibly tall ladders and proceed to repair the sky with elmer's glue. A number of extra-terrestrial and extra-dimensional objects and creatures are observed to fall into SCP-36xx-A during this time period, none of which are able to maintain their reality inside of the low Hume field and quickly dissolve into pink mist.
ERROR	At this point, an instance of SCP-36xx with a pin head that inflates and deflates like a balloon notices the UAV isn't dissolving and alerts the others, resulting in [DATA EXPUNGED]. Contact with the UAV is lost, and the mission is considered terminated.

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