When asked what he would do to save the world, Agent Daniel Johnson had said "anything".
As he looked down at the stack of papers before him, Johnson wondered if the Foundation made any distinction between "anything" and "everything". He wondered if it mattered, primarily if, despite the all-encompassing nature of "everything", "anything" could be reasonably passed off as "is there some sort of plan B?".
Agent Johnson looked back up at his stony-faced superiors, and opened his mouth to say something that didn't actually come out.
The silence was poison, slowly eating at his hope like a tapeworm.
"… Agent Johnson," the woman to the left, the one Johnson had only really seen in passing the last few days he'd been stationed in 64, was giving too straight a face to have read the document herself.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT CONTAINS A CLASS-9 VISUAL-KILL COGNITOHAZARD, AND IS THUS UNSUITABLE FOR ALL PERSONNEL UNDER THE AGES OF 18 YEARS OF AGE OR WHATEVER YOUR RESPECTIVE JURISDICTION DICTATES.
Christmas. One of the the doctor's five days off, when he need pay scant attention to the Pestilence. When he could kick off his (metaphorical, as his frustratingly literal boots were yet forever attached to his feet) boots, put on his favorite scrolls, and just relax for once in his excruciatingly long existence.
And here he was at the annual 'Pataphysical Christmas Party, standing off in a dark corner of…whoever's villa as he watched everyone else having fun.
His gaze drifted towards the opposite corner, where an inebriated lawyer sat giggling, leaning against that peculiar dog woman. Slowly, it made its way towards the couch, where that awful prisoner clung to some woman he met mere hours ago. It soon drifted towards the nearby kitchen, where his beloved Cousin Johnny was drunkenly caroling as the pizza man tried (and failed) to make brownies. Finally, it settled at his (metaphorical?) boots, alone on this patch of cheap carpet.
The doctor dipped his beak into his cup of lavender wine, and drank to yet another lonely Christmas.
Was he happy? Perhaps, for a certain value of "happy". His friends, if he could call them that, were happy, which suggested that, as their friend, he too should have been "happy". That's how it worked, right?
"Happy Holidays, 49."
The doctor glanced to his side, where that peculiar Dr. Loyd had just approached. "Good evening, Dr. Loyd. I trust you are well."
"Well as I've ever been." The doctor never pegged Dr. Loyd for a beer man, and perhaps that was why he'd only gone partway through his 5loko. "1504's been pretty rowdy as of late, and don't even get me started with the DCT." Loyd took a protracted sip of his drink, which left little difference from its previous volume. "You look bored."
"I wasn't aware."
"That you're bored, or you look it?"
"Both, I suppose."
"Same old you, huh?" Dr. Loyd swished his 5loko around, never quite bringing it to his lips. "I mean… you know, I don't quite celebrate Christmas much. Still, tis someone's season, might as well be happy."
The doctor's anatomy rendered him incapable of sighing, although he assumed he'd be doing that right now. "I… I suppose I find more happiness in my work than my leisure. I don't… I don't like wasting time. It feels wrong."
"Party was optional, 49." Another protracted sip. "You can leave if you really want."
"I suppose." And yet the doctor remained right where he stood.
Dr. Loyd furrowed his brow. "Is it something else?
The doctor sipped his wine, silently.
"Son of a bitch, doc." Dr. Loyd, the joyless bureaucrat in a sea of bureaucracy, suddenly had a grin on his face. The doctor had seen it before, countless times, typically when the whitecoats loaned him some entertainment. Somehow, this situation was amusing to Loyd, but as usual, the punchline eluded the good doctor. "Don't tell me you're lonely."
The doctor continued to sip his wine.
Tight bronze walls glisten, all slicked with thick, pink slime.
Mine, compressed into its shape.
My face is missing, processed into compost.
Body burned, ash tossed in dirt.
Harsh voices, German, French, Scandinavian,
yiddish and english and Czech.
Shouting, commanding, and screaming, and singing,
speakers of bronze, screamed through wave.
Headless ache, short of breath, form nonexistent,
locked in a coffin of scrap.
Blind, deaf, mute, tongueless and noseless and skinless.
Spiteful thoughts poured through a hole.
The air is dark,
it's cold and it's dry.
An endless night sky,
with rough bronze mark
that stains the endless black, a stark
reminder of why,
that farcical "why".
These tight bronze walls,
a prison for flesh;
brain trapped in a mesh
of bronze, recalls
the bars that bound my hands, through halls
a memory fresh,
and feelings, yet fresh.
Building anger,
contorted in shape,
a skinned, twisted ape
whose thoughts clangor,
how they clangor; how I'd hang her
if I could escape,
but I can't escape.
Can you still feel pain, rat? Skinless and floating,
writhing within tight bronze walls?
Millions of formless knives cutting through coating;
sensation through dead nerve trawls.
Do as I say, rat, for I am your goddess!
I am your lock and your key.
I am your pain and your sight and a promise
of light within pitch black sea.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT CONTAINS A CLASS-9 VISUAL-KILL COGNITOHAZARD, AND IS THUS UNSUITABLE FOR ALL PERSONNEL UNDER THE AGES OF 18 YEARS OF AGE OR WHATEVER YOUR RESPECTIVE JURISDICTION DICTATES.
There, tattooed on her wrist, was a Clubs with a K in the middle.
THIS TALE IS HIGHLY NSFW
When the Guardian of the Gate learned of the unstoppable poison coursing through its veins, there was a moment of deliberation, but only a moment. The Gate Guardian was an angel of simple thoughts.
The Tetra, the forces that formed its flesh and fanned its flames… surely, they had their reasons. Any force capable of such feats would not have made the Guardian of the Gate susceptible to something so base as a tumor without reason, would it not? To station a sentinel was so simple, so singularly simple, for those that could create with but a thought. Yes, there had to be a reason. Perhaps it was time.
Perhaps.
And so the Guardian of the Gate laid down its sword, relaxed its posture, stood down, and relaxed for the last time in its storied existence.
When the Sandburg, Crow, and Pandey Foundation witnessed the Guardian of the Gate lying supine on edge of the river, they knew it marked the end of an era. True, the Gate Guardian was inessential in the scheme of things, and true, the ease of containment by which you stopped an antimemetic patch of private property meant that it'd be relegated to Wilson's Wildlife Solutions by 2023, and true, the idea that this thing could activate abnormally smart crabs or cause a containment breach of couch fungus or, really, do anything except guard an unimportant patch of land was absurd, and true, the object class didn't stick to the format and could probably be downgraded to Safe, and … well, a multitude of things were true, but think of the history!
And so the Foundation thought of the history… or would, if the Gate Guardian was in any way significant to the Foundation's organizational history.
So the Foundation turned to the inexplicably popular anomaly of little significance, bowed, and set off to pursue far more important and narratively sound ventures.
When the Lilies heard of the Gate Guardian's illness, they pondered, and pondered, and pondered.
In its years, the Guardian of the Gate had rendered the surrounding lands infertile, scorched into ash through the radiation of divine presence. Its death was a signal, a signal that life could begin again without the arbitrary and violent enforcement of private property.
And they pondered further.
What of the poison? What of the illness that brought low the towering pillar of fire? That would leave residue, would it not? Such vile substance was liable to spread when radiated into the air and ground with an everpresent light for time immemorial. How might the world be beautiful in face of such horror?
And they pondered further.
Was it poison? Surely, no poison from a living animal might touch the ever-vigil Sentinel. Must it have come from within, then? Was it cancer?
And they pondered further.
Did it hurt?
…
… and so, the Lilies drew from their stored life, and procured a bed for the Guardian to rest for the final moments…
… which promptly incinerated as the Lilies realized that blasting a piece of ground with what was essentially sunlight straight from the source for a period of at least 10 years naturally meant that the surrounding terrain was fuming. Hrm.
When the Factory caught rumors of the Gate Guardian's impending death, it clocked its break, sneered in the only way a faceless abomination of industrial cancer could, and set off to watch.
The Guardian barely stirred from its bed of glowing ash as the Factory crawled into its sight, leaving a trail of industrial cancer, absurd machines, and poorly written Series I SCPs in its wake. Was it afraid? Pathetic. The Gate Guardian, Child of the Sun, that had protected its gate for time immemorial (or was it six thousand years?), reduced to a sickened cancer patient.
"Pathetic."
The Gate Guardian did not stir.
"Did the Tetra think they could outlast me?" The shrill whistles and roaring furnaces of the Factory crackled with smug satisfaction. Closer, ever closer, the pathetic Sentinel of the Tetra's form became clearer and clearer. "And what brought you low, oh Guardian of the Gate? Some rough beast of lore? A declaration of death from your masters? Or, perhaps…"
The Gate Guardian did not stir.
"You're not meant for this world, Guardian." The Factory spat, and where it landed the ground melted into a pool of crude oil fit with a well. "The Tetra and its kind are foreign, ill-suited for continued habitation." Where once was river, the many legs of the Factory dissolved in the waters, leaving a thick slurry of diesel, waste, and off-brand cola. "The world belongs to the likes of Us. We were here before you, and We will live on without you."
The Gate Guardian did not stir.
Closer, closer, closer still, the Factory inched to the invalid Sentinel. "Can you feel it? The slow disintegration of form? Are you even that intricately built, you misshapen biped? Are-"
Finally, the Guardian turned. From here, the Factory could see its blackened veins and tumorous waist squirming and straining with every minute pull of muscle, every instance of pain captured exquisitely on the Gate Guardian's featureless face. The ten thousand brasses that composed the Sentinel's voice quivered and squeaked, and the Sentinel spoke what the Factory was sure would be its last words:
"SCP-748 WAS A BETTER REALIZATION OF THE FACTORY AS A CONCEPT."
"… wait, what?"
When the Prototype sensed a disturbance in the narrative continuum, it cried.
It cried for the horrors surrounding it, the atrocities committed in the aim of imprisoning the oddities of the world. For them, for every "monstrosity" locked in a prison of concrete and steel, the Prototype cried.
It cried for the freedom it missed so dearly, the inability to change the world beyond its prison. For every wrong it could not right, the Prototype cried.
For every abomination and the abominable acts inflicted upon them, for every second spent in enforced idleness, for every little bit of cruelty it could not fix, for the mundane horrors and spectacular wonders and everything in-between those two categories, the Protoype cried.
This, of course, had nothing to do with Gate Guardian, who was several thousand kilometers away and not perceptible to the Protoype at the given moment.
When the WORM heard tales of the Guardian's demise, it did nothing, for the whole point of project palisade is that it's turtles all the way down and the foundation isn't all that important in the scheme of things and what measure is a cruelty so for christ's sake don't write a tale where it's suddenly really important that it could not comprehend.
When the Thirteenth Overseer finally learned of his lover's condition, it was already too late.
No amount of funding, no amount of anomalous tech, no amount of narrative