On September 14th, 1945, after four months in a secluded ward of Oslo University Hospital under heavy observation, AOI medical staff were required to provide an up-to-date medical evaluation of PTE-001 for record keeping purposes as a prelude to beneficial asset assessment in order to resolve the Cult of the Nornir’s pending petition.

Patient Name: Unknown

Patient Identifier: ████████-████

Admittance Date: May 17th, 1945.

Height: 1.79 meters

Weight at Admittance: 36.3 kg

Current Weight: 72.5 kg

Oslo University Hospital Central Wing.

Condition Upon Admittance: Patient arrived in Oslo on the 15th of May, 1945 by air transport in critical condition. She was in and out of consciousness and relatively unresponsive to initial cognitive assessments on landing. Skin was pale and clammy. Patient had sustained lacerations to more than 45% of her body. These included deep surgical gashes which exposed bone and nervous tissue. Said wounds had been hastily stitched up with field-grade surgical sutures which were insufficient for long term healing. Multiple fractures and complete bone breaks were present in limbs and torso. Patient was regularly coughing up and excreting blood, indicating severe internal bleeding and trauma. She was severely underweight and suffering from acute malnutrition. Initial prognosis was poor and admitting nurses and physicians were extremely skeptical about short term survival. Patient was rushed to surgical wards for intervention.

Physical Description: Patient is an unusually tall female individual with strong Mediterranean features, including a prominent hooked nose and moderately tanned skin. There were initially some questions raised about sex identity due to the presence of certain anatomical features. Otherwise the patient is anatomically and mentally a woman in her thirties.¹¹ Was initially bald upon admission. With proper nutrition, hair has both grown at an abnormally fast rate, and has shifted to brown with natural red highlights. Patient’s eyes are hazel with strong sunburst affectations which are washed out. Patient was admitted with substantial scarring across large parts of the torso and limbs. Other identifying features include a natural halo around her skin, producing a glowing effect. This is most noticeable in dimly lit or dark environments. Patient has not altered their own appearance supernaturally during residence.

Medical History: Familial history is unknown. Claims that the subject was blind in both eyes were confirmed by ophthalmometer, ophthalmoscope, retinoscope, and tonometer. Complete lack of response in the pupils to light stimulation were noted despite some assertions that patient had "stared right at them." Hallmarks of congenital disease.

When pressed about familial history, she was non-responsive. Displays supernatural regenerative abilities; minor lacerations and bruises disappeared within minutes after beginning to receive proper nutrition. Surgical intervention had to be aborted due to rapid closure of major incisions nearly trapping one surgeon's hand inside. Major lacerations, broken bones, and torn ligaments healed within days. Several life-threatening wounds resolved in under two weeks with no additional medical intervention. These included severe internal trauma and bleeding. Within three months, all scar tissue was healed and no longer visible or detectable. She remains prone to occasional nose-bleeds, vomiting fits, and seizures.

Mental State: Patient is currently responsive and aware of mealtimes and day/night cycles. Initially, patient communicated through tapping simple pattern responses. Usually to indicate a need to use the restroom, when she was experiencing pain or when she was hungry. Displays frequent cravings for milk mixed with chocolate powder. Positive responses and emotional engagement with nurses and physicians under specific conditions. These involve gentleness during examinations as well as gifts of chocolate milk, sweets, or savory foods. She has demonstrated some capacity for speech. Will use simple words to get staff attention, but only when it's apparent tapping is not working. Strong fear response to guards in uniform. Mentally and socially presents as a woman.

During attempts by medical personnel to encourage social engagement, we encountered persistent non-responsiveness and silence even when provided aforementioned items. Some signs present that the patient actively ignores staff. She either refuses to engage with or doesn’t understand attempts to administer cognitive tests and intelligence quota measurements. May be suffering pronounced delusions about gender and sex according to American psychologists attending to patient. Exhibits a tendency to descend into dissociative episodes mid action, sudden onsets of aggressive behavior, emotional instability, rapid descent into screaming and even weeping. Highly likely that the patient is afflicted with a form of insanity or hysteria. Likely an invalid incapable of taking care of herself. Whether this state has come about because of her time in German captivity, or was present beforehand, is not clear.

Supporting Incidents: This list is nonexhaustive but exemplary of many individual incidents across PTE-001’s time in GOC medical care.

Incident 1: Nurse Oglethorpe attempted to engage patient in conversation by addressing her with her number identifier. Patient became visibly agitated and pressed her hands over her ears. Oglethorpe continued trying to get the patient’s attention using her number identifier. Patient descended into hysterics and had to be sedated.

Incident 2: Dr. Burnhart attempted to engage the patient in an intelligence quota examination. Patient was handed several tactile puzzles built specifically for the blind. Patient’s nose began to bleed less than a minute into the test; her hands visibly began to shake. After several minutes of verbal encouragement, patient began weeping. Patient then proceeded to throw pieces of the puzzle indiscriminately, seemingly without provocation. In the process, she struck a nurse and Dr. Burnhart. Patient had to be sedated.

Incident 3: Patient was given a glass of chocolate milk in the hopes that this gesture would make her more cooperative for cognitive testing. Dr. Gearing administered the exam, given previous positive responses by the subject. Initially subject was responsive to the opening test of fitting objects through shaped holes. The exam broke down when she abruptly dropped an irregularly shaped pyramidal object and clutched her head. She began rocking back and forth. Dr. Gearing attempted to deescalate what appeared to be the onset of an episode. The patient then began convulsing and screaming. She then devolved into projectile vomiting. Patient was only able to be sedated after several nurses and doctors managed to crawl to her bed, after repeatedly slipping and falling in pools of vomit. The room had to be cleaned and sterilized. Patient refused to engage with the test further after she awakened.

Incident 4: Nurse Hesteul, one of the subject’s favored staff, left her a large amount of chocolate after a particularly difficult series of attempted tests and engagements. At some point, in-between the nurse’s departure and the arrival of the attending physician, another nurse overheard two physicians and a nurse discussing the patient with little discretion for their proximity to her room. Dr. Lugen, the attending physician, arrived five minutes later. He found the patient curled into a ball in a melted puddle of chocolate and other unidentified fluids. The walls of the room were smeared with chocolate lettered text reading “I am not insane. I want to go home. I want my [Unintelligible]. STOP CALLING ME INSANE. I’M NOT A MAN. I’M NOT MAD.”

Despite the patient’s full physical recovery, we have retained her in the critical isolation wards. It is our opinion as physicians that the patient should be moved to an asylum. There she will be closely monitored and kept away from normal society for the good of her health.

AOI medical staff forwarded the evaluation report to the Threat Assessment Committee. The Committee, initially, did not review the report. They also failed to forward it to interested parties. This was largely due to ongoing post-war spikes in threat assessment volume. It was another two weeks before the Committee returned to the matter.

On September 28th, 1945, the report was finally reviewed and forwarded to all parties of interest.

Both the contents of the report and its delay prompted immediate outrage. The Cult of the Nornir submitted multiple rights violation reports and medical misconduct petitions. They pointed to a number of precedents and historical cases¹² as examples of PTE-001’s physiological responses and behavior being consistent with common manifestations of prescience, precognition and sight affliction. They asserted that the constant attempts to get the entity to engage socially, participate in cognition tests and measure its intelligence were demeaning, humiliating and degrading. The Cult argued that the liberal use of sedation employed by AOI medical staff exacerbated the entity’s state of elevated distress.

After reviewing both the cited cases and PTE-001’s medical documentation, the AOI Rights Oversight Body partially agreed with the Cult of the Nornir that the entity was exhibiting emotional and physiological hallmarks of prescience. The Body disagreed with the notion that the patient’s rights were being abused. They also disagreed that there was ongoing medical misconduct, given the available conduct reflected best practices of standard care at the time.

The Rights Oversight Body instructed both medical personnel and the Threat Assessment Committees that PTE-001 must be granted immediate relief. This should come in the form of a delegation from the Cult of the Nornir being allowed 24-hour access to it to ensure treatment was conducive to the best care for individuals with precognition. At the same time, the Cult of the Nornir was denied the ability to move PTE-001 to a facility under their care.

The Threat Assessment Committee acquiesced to these requirements but reasserted that proper assessment was still needed to evaluate the entity’s anomalous properties. They also asserted that medical case history and historical precedent alone was insufficient to meet the burden of proof required for determination of prescience.

Access provided by the Silicon Nornir archives.

Foreword: The following is archival footage pulled from the Cult of the Silicon Nornir’s library depicting SCP-001 within the Nornir Cult’s countryside sanctuary.

0830-0930: SCP-001 exits one of the communal buildings within the sanctuary. It is alone and in heavy winter gear with a mug of liquid. It makes its way across the compound through the view of several different cameras before it arrives in a snow covered open-air garden with a view of the Scandinavian Mountains to the east. It periodically hums to itself but otherwise maintains a neutral expression.

View of the Scandinavian Mountains from the Nornir Sanctuary.

1000-1020: At approximately 1000 hours SCP-001 looks up in the general direction of the sky. The buzz of a multi-propeller plane becomes audible. More upward facing cameras capture a C-47 appearing from the southeast. SCP-001 continues to look up for the next twenty minutes, its head tracking the plane until it disappears into the low clouds around the mountains.

1021-1051: Echoes of metal scraping faintly against rock are picked up by camera microphones, followed by a much fainter crack. SCP-001’s shoulders slowly slump, and it continues to drink from the mug for the next half hour. It returns to the building at 1051 hours with its head raised, but eyes closed.

Foreword: On the morning of March 1st, 1969, GOC personnel and Pentagram security staff at GOC headquarters discovered that a centralized, transfer data vault had been broken into by an unknown party. All video and audio records of the previous night were obfuscated through thaumaturgic tampering. Instead of footage of the various corridors, access ways, and the vault that the cameras normally showed, they instead displayed the following message:

The following GOC intranet memo exchanges occurred on the morning of March 1st.

To: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command
From: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair

Steve,

Are you at your desk? Answer your phone; we have a huge problem.

-Roger

To: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair
From: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command

Roger,

You blew up my internal comms with fifty messages. What’s going on?

-Steve

To: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command
From: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair

Steve,

The data vault has been compromised.

-Roger

To: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair
From: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command

Roger,

What? Intelligence security is going to have a field day. I’ll go ahead and let comms know all the encryptions need to be changed. How did they get in?

-Steve

To: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command
From: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair

Steve,

Internal access, someone had the keycode, but the cameras were all obfuscated by thaumaturgy and all we have is this message.

Steve, this is bad.

-Roger

To: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair
From: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command

Roger,

We’ll have to track down the source and everyone who has access. It’s bad, and someone is going to have hell to pay.

That said, there’s no reason to panic since we regularly move the highly sensitive materials up the ladder. We don’t keep anything critical in the extra planar vault anyways.

-Steve

To: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command
From: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair

No, you don’t understand. Everything was in there.

To: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair
From: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command

Roger,

Elaborate on ‘everything?’

-Steve

To: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command
From: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair

All the accounts documentation, the buried abuse complaints about BCE-001, the blue cheese,²⁶ the photographs, the microfilms, film strips, and tapes. Everything was in there.

To: Councilor Roger Stucchi, Rights Oversight Body Chair
From: General Steven Bowe, Operational Command Eurtec Initiative, GOC Strike Forces High Command, Pentagram High Command

Roger,

Get your ass to Eurtec, now.

-Steve

Interview Log IVA-001-01

Interviewer: Director Madeline Light

Date: June 15th, 1970.

Location: Silicon Nornir Tower Three Penthouse

Foreword: Director Madeline Light pulled all documentation on SCP-001 from GOC archives and Foundation databases. She spent a month and a half researching the subject’s known history and capabilities before electing to interview it.

Director Light arrived at the Silicon Nornir on June 15th and was escorted to the penthouse accommodations in Tower Three by Ella Haugen, CEO of the Cult of the Nornir and current head of Omega-77. Director Light was left alone with SCP-001 to conduct her initial evaluations and interviews.

<Begin Log>

Director Light stands just outside of the elevator inside of the penthouse. She is holding a box and several opaque paper bags.

SCP-001 stands at the far end of the penthouse in front of the 4-meter-tall glass windows that look out onto the other towers of the Silicon Nornir, the skyline of Eurtec, and the waters of the Lethe. The main lights are off. It is leaning against its staff.

Director Light moves towards SCP-001 slowly, looking around the room. She looks as if she is about to speak, but SCP-001 speaks first at a low volume.

SCP-001: Director Light, I have seen this day across many nights and colored murals in the fabrics. You have come for many reasons with many questions, for your job and curiosity clawing in the depths of mind.

Director Light pauses five meters from the window. Her brow wrinkles. She opens her mouth, but SCP-001 speaks again.

SCP-001: Forgive me, I am terrible at introductions, one of many costs of seeing everything. Please, have a seat, there is tea on the table.

Director Light sets the boxes and bags down on the table and sits. She pours herself a cup of tea.

SCP-001: You could have had me escorted into a small and oppressive interrogation room for this. Yet you did not, and I am curious why?

Director Light: I think we both know that you’ve already seen why.

SCP-001: There are many paths ever branching and winding through the river of twisting threads, Director. I’d prefer to know which I live in. It’s so difficult to tell at times.

Director Light: I’ve done my homework. If you look at everything, it’s not hard to see the many mistakes of those who came before when it comes to you. If we’re going to work together productively, it’s best not to repeat them. Putting you in an interrogation room and referring to you by a number identifier only causes stress and doesn’t inure you to our presence. We’re taking a different approach.

SCP-001: Then you’re already far ahead of the rather abysmal curve established by Bowe.

Director Light: That’s the goal.

Several seconds of silence as Director Light sips her tea.

Director Light: Did you have the Cult build this penthouse for you?

SCP-001: No, they insisted on building it, but I never requested it or expressed a desire for it. Such luxuries are not something I crave.

Director Light: But you accepted it anyway?

SCP-001: I did. If I refused it, they would have thought something wrong with it that I would not speak of. They might think I saw some ripple in the strands of fate speaking of something foul. They act as a meteorologist would, reading the little trickling waves in a stormfront, no matter how irrelevant or meaningless.

Director Light: That has to get exhausting.

SCP-001: It can be.

Several seconds of silence. Director Light looks out the windows.

Director Light: Did you ask for the windows?

SCP-001: I did.

Director Light: Why?

SCP-001: I enjoy the warmth of the muggy underworld leeching through the glass and comforting my old bones. I do very much enjoy the sight.

Director Light: What? You enjoy staring at Eurtec’s ugly grey skies and the river’s fire?

SCP-001: Is that what you see? I see fields of flowers and great spiraling forests clawing at a star filled sky.

Director Light: How ar—Oh gods dammit.

SCP-001 laughs.

Director Light: They warned me about your sense of humor, and I walked straight into it.

SCP-001: Clearly, they didn’t warn you enough. But enough about my strange abode. You have questions and gifts?

Director Light: Good faith offerings for a productive future. Candy, sweets, chocolate milk powder, and a sundress since Omega-77 says you enjoy more casual attire.

SCP-001 turns and crosses the room slowly, taking a seat across from Director Light. It sets aside the cane and reaches out, touching the box and bags. It spends approximately a minute investigating them with its fingers.

SCP-001: Quite generous. Yet I sense such things are not given freely.

Director Light: Everything has a cost.

SCP-001: Indeed. Well, I am ready for your trials whenever you elect to begin—

SCP-001 stops mid-sentence, and its eyes visibly dilate. It pats the couch and then the table. It lifts the square remote interface tablet and presses its hand against the screen. After several seconds it breathes out deeply and shakily sets the pad down.

SCP-001: Apologies, you can begin whenever you are ready.

Director Light: How many times a day does that happen?

SCP-001: I stopped trying to count a long, long time ago.

Director Light nods once and pulls out a thick vanilla folder while SCP-001 pours some tea.

Director Light: Before I start, how would you prefer to be addressed?

SCP-001: Seeress is fine. Simple and to the point. Oracle if you need to shatter the monotony.

Director Light: Not The Last Norn or Destiny’s fingers?

SCP-001’s brows furrow but it smiles.

SCP-001: No. Not terms that I particularly identify with.

Director Light: Sensible. I have a document here that I want to discuss with you. Why don’t you feel it out, it’s in Braille so you should be able to read it.

SCP-001 reaches out and touches the paper. It spends approximately five minutes reading over its contents.

SCP-001: These are familiar.

Director Light: I expected they would be. They’re a list of predictions. I assume you were forced to make them in the predecessor to this monstrous creation we’re sitting on top of.

SCP-001: Barely perceptible to the microphone. Yes.

Director Light: In your own words, tell me what you noticed about them?

SCP-001: All of them are correct. Happened in this shard of thread. Pyrrhic victories with high costs for the Nazi war machine. Arranged to take targets they would never hold long-term in the east. Predicting a last desperate major success.

Director Light: You saw those outcomes?

SCP-001: Only that they would succeed in that path.

Director Light: Are you sure?

SCP-001 starts to respond, but stops, picking up the square pad again. This time it whispers and the microphones in the camera do not pick up the words. After several seconds it sets down the pad again.

SCP-001: …

Director Light: Here, do you remember these predictions?

Director Light slides another piece of paper over to SCP-001. After a few minutes of reading, it frowns.

SCP-001 Yes.

Director Light: Why don’t you describe these predictions for me?

SCP-001: They are strategic predictions, battle directions and war management. The predictions were wrong.

Director Light: Strange, in the last six months since the GOC collapsed, you have had a 100% accurate prediction rate, and yet here it was what, 50%? That kind of accuracy shift doesn’t happen overnight like that. In fact, between 1940-1945, or at least the remnants of what we could find from that period, your accuracy was somewhere in the 45% range and jumped up to 100% from 1945-1947. Let’s look at some examples.

SCP-001 shifts on the couch.

Operation Overlord, Normandy France, 1944. Note the para-weapon transports unloading far left.

Director Light: You predicted a landing in, quote, ‘places close to the straits and cliffs of great white’ on May 20th, 1944, just weeks before Operation Overlord. D-Day in Normandy. Close to, but not closest to the Dover Straits. Did you know that German High Command was obsessed with the idea that the landing would be at Calais, before they got your prediction?

SCP-001: Yes. I knew.

Director Light pulls out another document.

Director Light: Ok let’s contrast that with a slightly different prediction. During your Beneficial Entity Assessment hearing with the GOC on January 2nd, 1946, you made quite a few predictions. The very last one was the most interesting to me. Do you remember it?

SCP-001: I remember it.

Director Light: Were you aware of the effects?

SCP-001 shifts in place.

SCP-001: Yes.

Director Light: Were you also aware that it led to the death of four GOC medical personnel who had medically abused and neglected you for months?

SCP-001: Yes.

Director Light: Did you listen to the crash while at the Nornir compound, which conveniently, happened to be below the flight path?

SCP-001 shifts again, this time reaching to grab hold of its staff.

SCP-001: …yes.

Director Light: Right, let’s focus now on the era where we have really good records. 1949-1969. Your accuracy rate in this period, overall, was a stunning 98%! But stop me if this next part sounds familiar. Your accuracy for major world events and strategic inquiries by General Steven Bowe was somewhere around 33%. If we look at what the GOC thought your interpretations were indicating of course. Though those statistics can shift quite a bit if we look at a broader view of interpretation.

Director Light pauses.

Director Light: Sorry, a misinterpretation of prophecy isn’t really on you, is it? Not unless you deliberately constructed what you said to promote a specific outcome. Now how about this next one?

SCP-001’s hands are shaking and it rocks in place several times. Director Light pulls out another document.

Director Light: On 3rd October, 1950, Douglas MacArthur contacted GOC officials, through Pentagram, about the crossing of the 38th parallel in the Koreas. With Truman’s blessing of course. Your prediction was interpreted by the GOC as indicating a decisive victory for Allied forces and that China was bluffing. That was enough to convince the US military and the president to go all in.

SCP-001 bites its lower lip.

Director Light: US forces crossed the 38th parallel and pushed the North Koreans continuously back. They approached the Yalu River, the Chinese crossed it with soviet air support, and pushed Allied forces all the way back to the 38th. The GOC and Pentagram were ostracized for misleading Allied Command.

SCP-001: …

Director Light: A little curious that they didn’t think to blame you? Or maybe Bowe did, in private, later, away from the cameras?

SCP-001: …

Director Light: In 1956, you were forced to exert prescience to look into the stability of occultic relations in the Balkans and Near East. Your prediction led to the shipping of occultic artifacts from the region, convincing the GOC they would be safe aboard trains and that the localized resistance forces would never attack them. The 1957 Zurich incident with former American collaborators turned Hand Operatives, [REDACTED] and her partner [REDACTED], led to the loss of para-tech research facilities in Zurich. Several high ranking and irreplaceable researchers died in the process. The Serpent’s Hand captured hundreds of occultic artifacts. The bonus, of course, was the humiliation of the GOC and Pentagram, wasn’t it?

SCP-001 stares blankly off into space.

Director Light: Let’s see, the Bay of Pigs. Then there’s the Cuban Missile Crisis. Let’s not forget the redirection of JFK’s entourage, leading to the death of the President of the United States. All of this marred Pentagram’s and the GOC’s reputation in its biggest funder’s eyes. The list goes on of misinterpreted visions among perfectly fine and accurate predictions, and all of them point to one thing.

Director Light lays the documents on the table.

Director Light: And in case you need a reminder, it all culminates with 1969. Why don’t we replay the moment?

SCP-001 is silent for thirty seconds.

SCP-001: What do you want?

Director Light: I’d like you to, in your own words, tell me what all this is?

SCP-001 stares into space for several minutes.

SCP-001: Conspiracy. Manipulation. Guidance of humanity to a better path for what comes next.

Director Light: Wow.

Director Light looks at SCP-001 for several seconds.

Director Light: Wow, you don’t deny any of it? You did it. You manipulated fate? You lied, withheld information, worded what you saw in a way to sow misinterpretation. You don’t deny it?

SCP-001’s sits up straighter on the couch.

SCP-001: No. The things I predict are never lies. They’re truths, things that might occur; could occur, in the infinitely spiraling frameworks forming all around us. Just enough detail to encourage a certain perception. Just not necessarily truths to be fulfilled in our given reality. Conversations with other iterations across infinite folds.

Director Light: Multiversal tree… of course. I should have put that together.

SCP-001: Difficult to see if you are not truly immersed in it.

Director Light: When I looked through everything, all the documents spanning nearly thirty years, the pattern became unignorable. Were you counting on no one ever looking at everything combined? Scattered and fragmented across decades?

SCP-001: Perhaps. The GOC blindly believed everything after the beneficial asset assessment. It made it easier. Easier still with their conviction convincing the very people funding them that I was a source of truth. It made manipulating the sponsors into thinking it was Bowe’s interpretations, which were frequently wrong, easier.

Director Light: Wow.

Director Light sits back against the couch, looking at SCP-001.

Director Light: All of this, was it personal? A reaction to Bowe, to the Obskurakorps? Was it to better your conditions? What was the end goal here?

SCP-001: It would be a lie to say it wasn’t personal. Early in my life, I was treated very poorly. Women were less than men, and a blind fortune teller near the bottom. I am a patient woman, shaped by the eons I have wandered this earth. I do not move rashly anymore… everything I have predicted, everything I have done is for myself, and for the world. So yes, it was personal. It was the most personal thing, the most personal anything I have ever done.

SCP-001’s voice rises as she looks up, staring straight at Director Light.

SCP-001: Yes, I helped bring the Third Reich to its knees. They were evil. Perfectly ordinary human evil that I have seen roll across the world and ages a hundred times. The medical personnel? Much the same. The GOC and General Steven Bowe? Those people who forced me to endure excruciating pain nearly every day for two decades for their predictions? They were no better than the Nazis when it came to the occult. It was all deliberate and careful maneuvers on a board none of them could see so that I could finally have a better life. So that I would be in the best position for the tide on the horizon. So that the world would be ready when the seals come crashing down and the sky burns with crimson fire and weeps lilac blood.

SCP-001 looks down and sags in the seat.

SCP-001: I deserve better. The millions of innocents who’ve burned at fascist hands deserve better.

Several minutes of silence.

Director Light: I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask the next question, so forgive me.

SCP-001: I rarely hold ill will for questions without malice.

Director Light: How much of it was an act? With the GOC, with the Obskurakorps, with the Cult.

SCP-001: An act?

Director Light: Pretending to be something you weren’t. The projection of a frail woman incapable of standing up for herself. I saw what you did to General Bowe with your staff. Couldn’t you have broken out of German captivity?

SCP-001: No. They caught me alone; in a place I could not act. Trapped me, sapped me of strength by denying me rest, food, water. Kept me in a cage that bled me constantly of living will. Beat me, screamed at me, cut out my flesh, kept me in the dark. They tortured me day after day until I was certain that no matter how many wrong predictions I gave, I would never escape. No matter what the other branches said, no matter what I saw. The hospital was…not much better. I was frail, terrified, disoriented and unsure if I would wake up in a bed or kneeling with my arms pinned in the air.

SCP-001 breaths heavily.

SCP-001: Did I see what the path was, far ahead? Did I see what would need to be done to reach the desired goals? Yes. Did that make any of it an act? Did that make it a certainty that it would come about in my mind? No. I was terrorized nearly every day for twenty-two years, by a power-hungry bully in uniform, and everything I did was to reach a better end.

Several minutes of silence.

SCP-001: The question now before you and I, is will the Foundation be better? Will you be better than what came before?

Director Light: What has your sight told you?

SCP-001: That you are not a foolish woman. That you and those who come after you plan and move in the longer term. You will either throw me in a cell and keep me there until the world burns all around you when it’s too late, and then I shall be left to flee. Flee to safety where I can prevent the next thread over from failing in the ways that this one did.

Several seconds of silence.

SCP-001: Or you will see the truth and know what must be done.

Several more seconds of silence. Director Light leans back against the couch and looks out the window for five minutes.

Director Light: Are you afraid of me, Seeress?

SCP-001: Only in the sense that a mother fears her child will choose the wrong path forward. Only in the sense that I fear ideology and repression will win out over common sense and enlightenment.

Director Light: What really scares you then?

SCP-001: That we won’t be ready. That despite everything I have done, it won’t be enough. That humanity is too divided, too self-conceited to work together and meet the needs of the coming days. That I was wrong, that she was wrong and that all the many I’s across infinitely branching paths were wrong. That there is no path ahead. Every waking moment my chest heaves with cascading loaves of potential failure and the all-consuming dread of facing what lays buried deep in the earth, ash, bone, and water. That we are doomed to play this cosmic game until all of time grinds to a halt.

Several seconds of silence.

SCP-001: So, we return to where we began. Which path shall you walk, Director?

Director Light: Hmmm?

SCP-001: You haven’t answered my question.

Director Light: Well. I won’t lie Seeress, I’ve not informed the O5 Council about what you’ve done. Any of it. Not yet, at least. I could keep it all to myself, cover it up. Oh, I’m sure someone else will come along and put it all together, but that will take time, and I can certainly make it harder by burying the materials deep. But I don’t think you want any of that. With how afraid you are of this cataclysm, I suspect you want the council to know.

Director Light leans forward, resting her chin on her clasped together fingers.

Director Light: This too has been a manipulation. You knew I was going to lay this all out before you. How many years ago did you see this moment?

SCP-001 is quiet for several minutes. It then smiles slowly.

SCP-001: We underestimate you every time.

SCP-001 is silent for several seconds while it turns to look in the direction of the windows.

SCP-001: Dozens of times over hundreds of years. Time is but an artificial construct flowing slowly in the dreams of eternity made prophecy. To quote a popular turn of phrase to be in another forty years, the game was rigged from the start. Though the travel was no less arduous for it.

Director Light whistles.

Director Light: This whole time, planning every move. Consulting in the dreams and day drifts with an infinitely scaling arrangement of other yous. You’ve wanted the upper echelons of the Foundation to see what happened before.

Director Light stares out the windows of the penthouse for several seconds. Her jaw clenches and unclenches repeatedly.

Director Light: You knew, once you rolled back this curtain that we’d see you’re more useful to us here in these towers. I mean, it was already a stipulation of our agreement with the Silicon Cult. But still. You knew that agreements forged in paper are easily burned or lost. You knew, that you continuing your endless work would be invaluable to all future efforts. You know it, I know it, the O5 Council will soon know it. Every tiny twist of phrase has been gently shepherding us here. It has been gently shepherding me to be your kingpin. You set the Foundation up to see what came before and know that a similar path would end just as poorly.

Director Light is quiet for several seconds.

Director Light: Well played.

SCP-001 smiles and closes its eyes.

SCP-001: Flattery goes far, Director. I much prefer to think of it as a dance, but yes, I wanted you, and then them to see what is at stake. What happens on the path most traveled. The path less traveled should be taken and the difference matters.

Director Light: Robert Frost fan I see… I can barely fathom how much you’ve endured. How much you must have questioned it all on the edge of breaking and still… still you kept going. Your will must be forged of steel.

SCP-001: Aesir Brass actually.

Director Light: Ha! I take it then; you’ve seen their toys? The devices and mechanisms to ensure your cooperation. I’m sure the safeguards are already in motion, and they would fail, just as the GOC and Nazis failed?

SCP-001: I hope it never comes to that, but the path taken may still fluctuate in the river of time.

Director Light: Well, as long as I’m director, I’ll strive to make sure that doesn’t happen. This, everything about you. Your resilience, your machinations, It’s… impressive. Everyone else is playing checkers and you’re playing multi-versal chess.

SCP-001: Chess at the cost of dozens of branches and billions of lives for every incorrect permutation. Though a game it may seem, it is not.

Director Light nods twice.

Director Light: Did you ever need this, the Nornir Foresight Matrix Array? Or was that too a ruse?

SCP-001: There was a great deal of trial and error in finding the right path to bringing it into existence. As unpleasant as it was for me, many more perished or met much worse fates in trying. Hence the uncertainty if this was the right thread. Those the Cult calls my sisters perished so I could walk. So yes, I need it. Exertion takes a terrible physical and emotional toll on me.

Director Light: I’ll make sure that’s emphasized in the file.

Silence for several minutes as Director Light writes upon a notepad.

Director Light: I suppose I just have three questions left before we officialize the Cult of the Nornir’s absorption under Foundation authority.

SCP-001 drinks from a cup of tea.

SCP-001: Ask what you wish to know.

Director Light: You’ve won, haven’t you?

SCP-001: It was never about winning. It was about guiding the world to a better fate.

Director Light: Right, but you helped topple the GOC and the Nazis. You have effectively secured yourself a comfortable existence. You have us wrapped around your finger. You control the strands of fate and the direction the Foundation moves. You’ve already persevered and crushed every obstacle beneath your feet. Surely this dreaded threat will be much the same?

SCP-001 looks in the general direction of the windows.

SCP-001: It will not be the same. It will be existential and the Foundation must be ready.

Director Light: Ready for what exactly? All these metaphor and abstract images, what is it?

SCP-001 speaks at a raised volume.

SCP-001: The coming of the end, when the stars fill the sky with hateful burning. When the oceans bleed prismatic lightning on the cusp of being vaporized. In those chaotic hours the seals shall shatter, and all shall perish lest the tide is stemmed by the mother’s beating heart and restoration of her children’s once all-consuming song.

SCP-001 sinks into the couch seconds later. Her hands are shaking.

SCP-001: The apocalypse. The end of everything.

Several seconds of silence.

Director Light: The return of the Daevae?

SCP-001: Worse. An end to all reality that has been clawing towards us since the end of the Singers nearly three millennia ago. It is coming and humanity must rise to meet it. I must stand against the storm. The Children of Her Song³⁰ must emerge from their hollows. The world must be prepared. The seals shall burst and everything fray apart at the seams. You must be ready and mend the bridges long burned.

Director Light writes on her notepad for the next five minutes. SCP-001 leans back against the couch. For five seconds, it appears far older than it does in the minutes before and after this section of the recording.

Director Light: I appreciate your candor, Seeress. I and those above me will want to talk about this more in our future sessions.

SCP-001: I will do far more than talk.

Director Light nods.

Director Light: I have one last thing I’d like to discuss. It’s important.

SCP-001: I grow weary of conversation, but I can entertain one more line of inquiry.

Director Light: Did Speaker Ella ever tell you that she figured it out before you told them?

SCP-001 tilts its head.

SCP-001: I’m not sure what you’re referring to?

Director Light: That you’re not a Norn. That you’ve never been a Norn.

SCP-001 stops moving.

SCP-001: I’ve never claimed to be one of the Sisters.

Director Light: But you let them believe so?

SCP-001: I never corrected them, protested or demanded their help. They did what all superstitious humans do, what even I have done, they saw something that fulfilled their beliefs and latched on. It was painful to shatter those abstractions.

Director Light: So, you used them for your own purposes?

SCP-001: In a way. Blind leading the blind.

Director Light laughs.

SCP-001: I don’t consider it using. It was a mutual exchange. I fulfilled their beliefs, gave them purpose. They lost their spiritual source to the Nazis, and I filled the gap left behind. In turn, they fought for my rights as a person. They planned and constructed the very thing I needed to help turn the tide and guide our path to a better tomorrow.

Director Light: Mutualism is a noble way to frame it. Lucky coincidence or plucked strings?

SCP-001: You already know the answer to that question.

Director Light: Let me ask what I really want to know then.

SCP-001: Answers may find you.

Director Light: Who are you really? What did you tell Ella and Edvard? Where did you actually come from? You’re not a Norn, that much is clear. You’re not stuck here in the Greek Underworld so you’re not a Moirai. At least, I don’t think you are. Maybe you’re Tiresias? Or did you go by something else? Just who is the name behind the woman in front of me?

SCP-001: Curious guesses… Trust is a fickle thing, Madeline. Names, true names have power, history, and curses. Some are more real than others. The Foundation and you have not yet earned that trust. In time, that might change.

Several seconds of silence.

SCP-001: Trust aside, if I told you my true name, you’d never believe me. Just as Bowe never did.

Director Light stands.

Director Light: Well then, I believe we have a long road ahead to forge that trust together, Seeress.

SCP-001: Only the sands of time will tell.

<End Log>

Interview Log IVA-001-51

Interviewer: Director Madeline Light.

Date: September 30th, 1980.

Location: Silicon Nornir Central Complex.

Foreword: On September 15th, 1980, the city of Eurtec experienced a large-scale ontological disruption which temporarily disabled all active security measures and most monitoring equipment within the city. SCP-001 was within the NFMA’s Central Focal Interface Chamber at the time of this incident. Bulkhead security doors closed, and it could not be reached by Omega-77 personnel.

When the doors were eventually opened, SCP-001 was found seated in the center of the focal chamber. It was unusually agitated and had to be escorted back to its personal chambers in tower three’s penthouse.

Initially, Omega-77 and Eurtec security personnel believed the cameras within the NFMA focal chamber were affected. However, on September 29th, 1980, Nornir engineers discovered the cameras were still active and pulled the footage for Director Madeline Light to review. Director Light then arranged her normal biweekly interview with SCP-001.

<Begin Log>

Director Light enters the Central Interface Chamber of the NFMA. SCP-001 is standing in the circular area of sunken flooring with stairs in front and behind it. Her hands are slotted into the digital interface, and the screens on the walls of the chamber are lit up with the image of Director Light entering the chamber. The screens abruptly go dark as SCP-001 withdraws its hands.

Director Light: Seeress, how are we today?

SCP-001 turns to the general direction of Director Light.

SCP-001: Madeline, you are early. Most unexpected.

Director Light: Are you seriously telling me you didn’t see me coming? With chocolate milk and candy no less?

SCP-001 waves a hand in the general area of its face.

SCP-001: Nope, nothing.

Director Light laughs.

Director Light: Surely you heard the doors, you can’t be deaf too? Did your hearing get scrambled? Oh, maybe you drank from a tainted pool and got shot through the neck? Am I going to read about sudden changes in your medical chart induced by divine intervention?

SCP-001: The audio quality of the recent dreams has been a bit spotty. I think I need a new aux cord.

Director Light: I’ll see what our doctors can do with such a dated input port.

SCP-001: Are you calling me old?

Director Light approaches and descends the stairs into the pit. She places the pitcher and candy on a table, off to one side with chairs. SCP-001 joins her.

Director Light: Good gods, you really are deaf!

SCP-001: How dare you. I am positively ancient.

Both laugh.

Director Light: Well, you seem in good spirits.

SCP-001: The path continues to wind in favorable ways; there is much to be positive about.

Director Light: Good. That’s what I like to hear. The Councils and Ethics Committee are happy with your work, even if all of them may not agree that we’re using the resources appropriately.

SCP-001: There is still a great deal of work to come. So much to do and so little time.

Director Light: Now you’re making me anxious.

SCP-001: Perhaps soon the dread will sink into your bones, as it does mine.

Director Light: It’s growing every day I look at the reports from the field. It’s still very abstract.

SCP-001: It would be reassuring if I could feel the states of the sites myself.

Director Light: You know exactly why I can’t do that.

SCP-001 grunts.

SCP-001: I expect this will be a short meeting then? Other than the folder in your right hand. I presume that is the most recent list of things the Council wishes to foresee?

Director Light: Well…

Several seconds of silence. SCP-001 tilts its head after drinking from the pitcher of chocolate milk.

SCP-001: I feel tension from you, Madeline. What is it?

Director Light: You’ve lied to us, Seeress.

SCP-001 frowns. Her brow wrinkles.

SCP-001: Madeline, I have not lied to anyone. I never lie about the fate unwinding before us all, only provide what information is most fit and relevant.

Director Light: But you did lie to us very recently.

SCP-001: I’m confused and unsure of what you’re referring to.

Director Light: Let me play a refresher, it might jog your memory.

Several minutes of silence.

Director Light: So…

SCP-001: …

Director Light: You lied to us.

SCP-001: …

Director Light: You told me two weeks ago, nothing happened while you were in here.

SCP-001: …

Director Light: And yet here I am, having been handed evidence to the contrary. Not only was it not nothing, but you met with the source of the ontological disruption and seemed to know them.

SCP-001: …

SCP-001’s hands tremble.

Director Light: You and I are the only ones who have seen or heard this recording. You remember what you have been saying all along? Every time I have tried to ask about your personal details? Well, trust is a two-way street.

SCP-001: …

Director Light: I have trusted you pretty implicitly until this point, Seeress. For the good of normalcy and all humankind. But this is a pretty major trust breaker. So, I’m going to ask you questions about what we just listened to. I expect honest answers if you want to keep building trust with me. Otherwise, we’re going to have to make some changes.

SCP-001: Okay.

Director Light: Right, so, first of all who was that?

SCP-001 hesitates for several seconds.

SCP-001: That’s not a question I can answer, in full.

Director Light: Why not?

SCP-001: There is ontological and conceptual interference that spans infinitely many branches. The true name has been scraped, drowned and buried.

Director Light: Right…?

SCP-001: For simplicity’s sake, they go by the alias Tilda Moose.

Director Light: I know that name.

SCP-001: I’m sure you do. They’re a member of the Serpent’s Hand.

Director Light: Yet they seemed to be quite intimate with you. How do you know them? Were they Edvard’s contact?

SCP-001 shifts.

SCP-001: I don’t know them and I don’t know.

Director Light: I sense it’s more complicated than that.

SCP-001: Other iterations do know them. Or her. Sometimes him or xe or xer or zer. They and them. Through them, I know her.

Director Light: Multi-versal tree gives me a headache.

SCP-001: It goes away with enough time.

Director Light: Chocolate milk seems to help you.

SCP-001: Imagine what it was like before it was invented.

Director Light: I’d rather not. Alright, why do other iterations of you know her? Are you with the Hand in those branches?

SCP-001: No. Those branches are few and far between.

Director Light: Okay, then how do you know her? Work with me here.

SCP-001: We came to know her at the very end, after the unravelling of reality had begun and all that was left was the Library trafficking refugees to other branches. She was searching for ways to avert the end, if not in those branches, then in others.

Director Light: Two of a kind then?

SCP-001: Of a sort. My counterparts appear to have overestimated her capacity for patient, long-term planning, to a certain point.

Director Light: You plan in centuries.

SCP-001: More or less.

Director Light: Humans rarely have the consistency to plan for five years, much less decades.

SCP-001 tilts its head and consider for several seconds.

SCP-001: …fair point.

Director Light: Right, back on track. She found you in the Library at the end of time, looking to stop this apocalypse. Why is it that she seems to know you in this reality when you claimed you’ve never met? Don’t tell me, she’s prescient too?

SCP-001 frowns and blows air out through its nostrils.

SCP-001: No, she’s a magician, a trickster, an academic thaumaturge. No capacity to see the unwinding strands other than perhaps the ability to divine some small parts of fate.

Director Light: Seeress, please stop trying to tap-dance around me. How does she know you so intimately?

SCP-001: I suppose you’ve come to know me long enough to see through the ruses.

SCP-001 hesitates for several more seconds.

SCP-001: I have only caught glimpses of it, but temporal displacement of the mind was involved.

Director Light stops writing.

Director Light: Did you say—

SCP-001: Yes.

Director Light: Not a joke—

SCP-001: Not a joke.

Director Light: How does that work?

SCP-001: You’re asking a blind hermit, worshipped as a goddess by a Cult who has no experience with temporal engineering, how my counterparts and a magician sent her consciousness and memories back in time?

Director Light rubs her temples.

Director Light: Fair point. Self-answering question, in hindsight.

SCP-001: They used a device, somehow managed to pull it out of the crumbling remains of reality from a place called Site-43.

Director Light stares at SCP-001 for several seconds in silence. She gestures.

Director Light: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times—

Director Light takes several deep breaths and gestures again.

Director Light: Alright, I’m going to have to look into all of that.

SCP-001: Please do. I would like to know too.

Director Light: You mean—okay.

SCP-001’s Artistic Impression.

Director Light takes several deeper breaths while pressing thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose.

Director Light: What a batshit crazy concept, who the hell would make a machine that sends someone’s consciousness back in time?

SCP-001: A man named Placeholder McDoctorate.

SCP-001 holds up a hastily drawn portrait of Placeholder McDoctorate.

Director Light: How did you— That was rhetorical.

SCP-001: My answer was not.

Director Light rubs her temples.

Director Light: Ok, back on topic before I burst a blood vessel.

SCP-001: Please do not have a stroke. I have come to enjoy seeing your pretty face.

Director Light: Don’t abuse your prescience too much to daydream over it. Now, please, back on topic.

SCP-001: I am always on topic.

Director Light: Sure you are. So, you sent this Tilda Moose back in time in a different branch reality where she, what, displaced her younger self?

SCP-001: Unlikely.

Director Light: Well, how then?

SCP-001: My understanding is it worked by depositing them in their younger self’s body like a dissociative personality, and they work together. It may explain… the rashness of this Moose if the older one is not driving the body.

Director Light: Right. This is all a hard pill to swallow, Seeress, but I believe you.

SCP-001: I would hope so, this reality is stranger than fiction.

Director Light: It certainly is. Why does she want you to join her? Or rather, why do you need her here?

SCP-001 looks at Director Light for several seconds.

Director Light: Wait, don’t tell me, the apocalypse?

SCP-001: It’s complicated, but yes. For the web to reach its fullest completion in preparation for the catastrophe that will eat reality, Moose must defect from the Serpent’s Hand. Only, she seems to have misinterpreted the construction of how this must come to be.

Director Light: She’s supposed to defect? Well, why not now? Why did you send them away and not bring them to me?

SCP-001: There is an order to the webbing, a precision needed to achieve the outcome that will better us all. Too soon, too late, the web will fall apart. Those pieces that they seek to bring with them would not agree to the defection now, and the necessary pieces and technology to ensure they follow the strands aren’t in place yet. To simplify: It’s too early and they are long lived and slow to trust.

Director Light: I should have thought of that. Temporal manipulation of fate. Madness.

Director Light rubs her temples.

Director Light: You seemed surprised to know there were informants in the GOC. Were you not aware they were feeding information about your predictions to the Hand?

SCP-001: An act in part. I long suspected that there were Hand infiltrators. Planned for it. Though I never confirmed it. I suspected it was Edvard, may his soul rest evenly in Elysium. His reactions and sympathies were always strong.

Director Light: You’re right about Edvard but…Elysium?

SCP-001: I have to keep you guessing about my personage.

Director Light laughs briefly.

Director Light: You are going to drive me insane.

SCP-001: I certainly hope not. I would never inflict such cruelty on another. I would also hate to see you locked in a padded room with rats.

Director Light: These discussions are getting dangerous; you derail me so easily. You didn’t know any of this was going to happen?

SCP-001: Some things elude the strands of fate in prescience. Moose and their pieces are frequent flyers of this domain.

Director Light: Can you elaborate on that?

SCP-001: It is difficult to see them at times, due to their integrity to reality and destiny’s outcome, which they frequently defy.

Director Light: So literal forces of agency. I guess that all makes sense and answers all my questions. If something like this happens again, don’t lie to me about it. My trust won’t afford another break like this.

SCP-001: I understand.

Director Light: Good. I’ll seal these records and bury them under classification; there’s no need for anyone to know about this.

SCP-001’s shoulders drop.

SCP-001: The stars and sands of fate greatly appreciate this, Director.

Director Light: Enough to tell me your name and where you came from?

SCP-001: A day far ahead and yet not so distant.

Director Light: A girl can hope for sooner.

SCP-001: Patience is a virtue, Madeline.

Director Light: Did I tell you that they are giving me a promotion?

SCP-001: No, you didn’t, but I already foresaw it.

Director Light: O5-07.

SCP-001: An impressive feat. Will you still have time for these meetings? I have grown quite fond of your presence.

Director Light: That’s touching, Seeress. I’ve grown fond of yours as well. Worry not. Eurtec is still under my remittance in my new position. I’ll just come with a lot more guards and esoteric countermeasures.

SCP-001: I’d expect nothing less.

Director Light: This also means, when the time is approaching, we can discuss this “Moose’s” defection.

Several seconds of silence pass. Director Light’s expression changes gradually.

Director Light: Oh heaven’s sake. You set this whole thing up this way. So that you could make sure it all happens. Did you bait her? When did you set the bait up for me?

SCP-001 smiles.

SCP-001: I am becoming too transparent for you.

Director Light: Or I’m just getting old and easier to fool.

SCP-001: Perhaps. What about your daughter? Will it be challenging to raise her now that you will be an O5?

Director Light: Sophia is in college now, Seeress. But it won’t be long I feel before she joins the Foundation.

Director Light pauses and frowns briefly.

Director Light: Don’t change the subject, Seeress, you haven’t answered my question.

SCP-001: Time moves too quickly for my ancient bones. She will be a part of the generation who strives to restore our world.

Director Light: So you’ve said many times, Seeress. You’re not going to answer my question, are you?

SCP-001: You already know the answer to it.

Director Light shakes her head while smiling.

Director Light: Before I go, I have one more question.

SCP-001: Of course, Madeline.

Director Light: Who are these critical pieces that Moose went back in time for?

SCP-001: [REDACTED]

Director Light’s expression changes several times in rapid succession.

Director Light: Well, that’s a complication.

SCP-001: They always have been.

<End Log>

On May 16th, 2014, the following interaction occurred between Director Madeline Light and SCP-001 at the end of a regular bi-weekly meeting.

<Begin Log>

SCP-001 and O5-07 Madeline Light are in the Silicon Nornir tower three penthouse. There is an open bottle of red wine on one of the low tables. Their glasses clink against each other.

O5-07: The apex of my career, coordinating with the Andrews to make stopping an apocalypse a reality. To bring about the defection of Tilda Moose, mastermind behind the protracted Hand Campaign to bring down the GOC.

SCP-001: A celebration well deserved.

O5-07: A celebration that wouldn’t be possible without you, Seeress. The true mastermind all along.

SCP-001 smiles.

SCP-001: I simply illuminated the path. Nothing more or less.

O5-07: Nonsense, you were involved at every step. This was all your grand design from the beginning. This literally could not have happened without you. Take some credit, have some pride in your work.

SCP-001: Pride can come when the cataclysm is averted. For tonight, a brief respite. A moment of quiet in the calm before the bey of wolves that announces the imminent arrival of the skin stripping winds driven before that howling storm on the horizon.

O5-07: It never stops for you, does it?

SCP-001: It will someday. Sooner than before. But there will be much to do and see once the seals are soldered shut.

O5-07: Well, hopefully you’ll be able to rest then.

SCP-001: For a time.

Several minutes of silence. O5-07 looks out the windows of the penthouse. Her hair is grey and there are many wrinkles on her face.

O5-07: You know, they confirmed it right away?

SCP-001 looks up in the general direction of O5-07.

SCP-001: Confirmed what?

O5-07: Their ontological associations. Titles, names, [REDACTED]. I don’t know if you saw those exchanges between Moose and O5-01’s office.

SCP-001 does not respond.

O5-07: There’s just some things about Moose knowing and priming us to ask about those details that I don’t really understand. How did they know about [REDACTED]? The other stuff, true names and titles, that wouldn’t be hard to put together, but something so… personal seems, strange.

SCP-001: Guesswork. Something Moose is very well regarded for. They excel at piecing together a puzzle with many of the fragments missing.

O5-07: Certainly, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s reading people. Moose has a tell, fiddling with their hands. Even you, Seeress have a tell.

SCP-001 shifts in the seat before reaching out and curling her hand around the staff.

O5-07: And there it is. All these years between us, and you seemed… so very deeply invested in the fate of these, by your own words, “people who did not know you existed.” There’s a difference in you; between the cold logic of saving the world in your personal crusade and this sort of behavior. It’s the same with the Hlérsyngva.

SCP-001: What are you suggesting, Madeline?

O5-07: Come now, Seeress. We’ve known each other long enough, I know when you’ve hidden something. It is an old, familiar game.

SCP-001 shifts.

SCP-001: Yet we still must play, for if I tell you all to tell right away, then fate unwinds.

Director Light: If you insist.

SCP-001: I do.

Director Light: Do you know how many times the speakers logged text and artwork? Of you. You looking into the relative timeframe of the coming apocalypse.

SCP-001: I don’t keep track of such things.

O5-07: Four times a year, at the change of a season, for the past forty-four years. 176 times.

SCP-001: …

O5-07: Quite a lot, at first glance. Yet it still seems somewhat relaxed for all the dread burning inside of you about the great end barreling towards us. Do you know how many times the Speakers have logged interpretations that concern [REDACTED]? Or even how many for the Hlérsyngva?

SCP-001’s grip on the staff tightens.

O5-07: Two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight times in the past forty-four years. For each. Once a week at least. For people you don’t know? That seems like an awful lot. And then there’s Moose, knowing deep things about [REDACTED] despite having at best a lukewarm relationship with [REDACTED]. That’s not exactly the kind of thing you tell your handler in the Serpent’s Hand, no matter how close your wife is to them, is it? That’s the sort of deeply personal nature that would only come out if you’d been there, or if you were very close.

SCP-001’s hands shake. It rocks in place.

O5-07: And the Hlérsyngva? The people you are so adamant about not discussing with us? I can’t help but wonder what you’re hiding. And that’s not even mentioning how much you looked into 8710 and ████ before you even decided to tell us about them.

SCP-001 slowly rocks forwards and backwards in place.

O5-07: So, which is it Seeress, is this some sort of 3D chess for Moose, where she tells us to ask after these details as confirmation that [REDACTED] are onboard? Or did you tell Moose deeply personal details because they’re your very close friends, and this was the way you were going to track if they were truly onboard? Was this your final tell for if calamity was being averted or not? Did you tell her about the Hlérsyngva in detail as well?

SCP-001: …

O5-07: I can wait. I’ve waited forty-four years for you to feel ready to tell me who you are. I could have guessed, I found so many details about you in the translations, the records of lost civilizations, sparse and cryptic as they are. But this? This is the closest I’ve ever been to untying the gordian knot.

Several minutes of silence. SCP-001 turns to stare in the general direction of the windows.

SCP-001: Yes. I knew them.

O5-07: Then why all the secrecy, why not reach out yourself?

SCP-001 stands up abruptly and bangs the butt of her staff on the ground. O5-07 jumps. Several guards enter the penthouse but are stopped by O5-07’s raised hand.

SCP-001: Because that was more than five millennia ago. I did not lie or hide it from you. I do not know them, not as they are now, not as they will be in five minutes because there is a colossal rift of years between us.

O5-07: Oh.

SCP-001: I care because they were once my friends. Once we camped beneath the ever-burning stars under a drifting tide before a grand storm. We drunk and celebrated beneath a clear summer’s night after preventing the greatest end. We wept together when she who brought us all beneath that sky gave everything to secure our future! They saw the truth at the end of reality with us. They stood tall with the Witch of Storms, the Sunfired Twins, the Queen of Darkness, and so many more. We stared into the Abyss of Reality’s pillars and we trembled together. We sealed it beneath blood, skin, bone, metal, and dirt in the grand astral sea at the end of everything! But that was eons ago and I have been alone, isolated in my withdrawal from the world to enjoy a life I did not get as a mortal. I do not see them clearly. I have spent eternity, since I first saw the fate unfolding, worrying about whether they will reach that proper threshold that is needed if we are to prevent catastrophe! I have agonized if they care, if they see the depths the others do.

SCP-001 walks around the couch and towards the window, holding the glass of wine in one hand and the staff in another.

SCP-001: If I made myself known to them, I could not foresee how they would act. All the avatars of Creation’s Will are difficult to see, and it is a grand burden for her ultimate designs.

SCP-001 downs the glass and tosses it. It shatters several yards away.

SCP-001: I stand here on the precipice of the most secure and forward I have ever been in these many curses of prescience and loneliness I bear, and it is still not enough! The Hlérsyngva… I failed them. I was not there when it counted. None of us were. I am terrified it will happen again! I am terrified I will not be able to stop it!

SCP-001 hits the glass with a fist.

SCP-001: The 2nd most powerful oracle to ever walk the earth, and I am still infinitely many leagues behind [REDACTED]. Even she couldn’t see the end coming for them in full! Am I enough? Can I do this? Can I face down the flaying storm of true reality that comes for us all? By Helios’s blazing chariot, I do not know!

SCP-001 bangs her fist against the glass again, hard enough to split the skin and leave a small smear of blood.

SCP-001: If it were her here, if humans hadn’t—maybe we could see it clearer together. Maybe I wouldn’t be so blind, maybe the next twenty years wouldn’t be such a fragmented view of what could be. But she is bound in that paradise beyond time. Worse, her many-great granddaughter bears but a fraction of that specific capacity and hovers out of reach for another three years. And I, I am here alone after nearly thirty years of being handled like a tool. Like a machine, not a person. I have clawed for forty-four more, moving under my own power to save us all.

O5-07 looks down into her wine glass.

SCP-001: So yes, Madeline, I told Moose about [REDACTED]. I watched and stared into a blurred and muffled kaleidoscope for forty-four years hoping for more insight. I walked the earth, broke bread, and drank with them, all of them, in a distant past. I knew them. And this, this was my only way to be certain they were ready for what comes next. And they will not know, they will continue to not know for years yet to come, because what would I be to them? What could I possibly be but a stranger once known five thousand years ago? How could they possibly react in knowing I have been here the whole time? That I have helped pull on the threads of fate to alter their course.

SCP-001 bangs the glass again, smearing more blood.

SCP-001: How can I tell you about the Hlérsyngva? How can I tell you their story when I am to blame for their demise? I have not the right to speak of their suffering when I failed to stop it. It is not my place to speak to their tragedy.

Several seconds more of silence. SCP-001 turns and taps her staff on the floor, walking slowly back to the couch and table. She circles the table and reaches out with her free hand and traces O5-07’s cheek, before lifting her chin. O5-07 raises her hand to stop her Red Right Hand contingent who are raising weapons.

SCP-001: I do not tell you about the Hlérsyngva because it is my great shame. It is all of our great shame that we could not stop our own people from impaling themselves and the Hlérsyngva upon the blade of the Scarlet and the Tyrant. It is not my place to speak of them, and humanity has not earned the knowledge. It must fight to rebuild those bridges.

SCP-001 rubs O5-07’s cheek with its thumb.

SCP-001: If I don’t tell you something, I am not excluding it in the hopes that it will lead you down the GOC’s path. It is because what I know is thousands of years out of date, or so vague and hard to see as to be useless. I am terrified. There is hope, and there is seeping dread. It drives everything. I have a reason, everything I do is with purpose. Even lifting your chin here and now to stare into my sightless eyes. I anchor myself in your hope.

O5-07’s cheeks flush. She looks up into SCP-001’s face.

Director Light: T—that much is clear.

SCP-001 releases her after several seconds and returns to the couch. It shakes vigorously once seated.

SCP-001: Now enough of such things. This is a celebration.

Approximately ten minutes of silence. SCP-001 has produced another glass and poured wine for both of them as they drink.

O5-07: I didn’t mean to—

SCP-001: It’s fine, Madeline. The moment is past, and no ill will is held against you.

O5-07: Are you going to clean up the glass?

SCP-001: The Roomba will handle it.

A Roomba with cat ears taped on appears and begins sweeping the penthouse.

Five more minutes of silence occur, broken only by the Roomba’s vacuum and clinking wineglasses.

O5-07: Seeress?

SCP-001: Hmm?

O5-07: Have you ever been in love with another person?

SCP-001: What provokes such questions?

O5-07: You, tilting up my chin.

SCP-001: Oh.

SCP-001 stares ahead in the general direction of the elevator.

SCP-001: Yes, I have.

O5-07: And they are—

SCP-001: They’re…

SCP-001 pauses and tries to speak several times.

SCP-001: They’re beyond my reach now.

O5-07 is silent.

O5-07: Man, woman, nonbinary or other? If it’s not an intrusion to ask.

SCP-001 is quiet for several minutes.

SCP-001: I can’t abide men.

O5-07: Oh?

SCP-001: Men have inflicted great pain, heartache and despair upon me.

SCP-001 shudders.

SCP-001: I have never felt anything for them, and they have given me reason after reason to believe that this was purposeful. On the grounds of their atrocious abuse and mistreatment of me across time. The thought of loving a man brings nothing but a cold, numb, disdain. The next man who tries to force themselves upon me shall live in a torment of possibilities that will never be. I will never be that vulnerable again.

SCP-001 spits on the table. Several minutes of silence.

O5-07: And women?

SCP-001’s eyelids droop.

SCP-001: A complicated relationship. Some have been cruel, vindictive, and torturous. Others have been gentle, kind, intelligent beyond reproach, and fiery in their passions. Nonbinary is much the same.

O5-07: And this ‘they?’ You mentioned.

SCP-001 looks in the general direction of the windows. She then speaks at a low volume.

SCP-001: The greatest love. The only love I ever truly needed. A compliment to my every flaw, a warm fire and invigorating drink to my every strength. Dancing to the beat of the ever-flowing constellations and shimmering stars across the annals of history. Her passions were unmatched, her enthusiasm for the yoke of progress infinite, and her despair at the loss of [REDACTED] inconsolable. A warm fire always ready, a bed of thick blankets beneath the cool mountain air. Her voice, though not the crystalline tone of her sisters, honeyed and rivaling the rich chords of mortal singers. We’d sit beneath the stars for hours upon hours and laugh and sing until the sun’s pink fingers crested the horizon.

O5-07: She sounds perfect for you.

SCP-001: She is and was.

O5-07: Is this who you have gone to Mount Helicon to see with the Cult, and now Omega-77?

Several tears roll down SCP-001’s face.

SCP-001: Yes.

O5-07: I am sorry, for whatever its worth.

SCP-001: Thank you, Madeline.

O5-07: Do you—I could assign a research team, an MTF to pursue this. Track it down.

SCP-001 shakes its head.

SCP-001: The offer means a great deal, Madeline, but it is not my fight. It is not your fight. It is an unforeseen sacrifice for our actions, and one I must live with. Chasing it myself won’t free her. Only one person can and I know not when she’ll stir. It is a tragedy in many parts.

O5-07: I’m sorry. You’re sure?

SCP-001: I’m sure. She knows already. She referenced it, but I didn’t see what she saw coming. There was nothing I could do by the time I realized the truth.

O5-07: I’m sorry.

Several seconds of silence.

SCP-001: One day she’ll return, then I will go back to her.

SCP-001’s voice breaks. It puts its face in its hands, and shudders for several minutes.

SCP-001: For now, my eyes are needed to see the greater scope of the end in sight, no matter how many tears fall.

O5-07 nods once. Several minutes of silence pass.

SCP-001: Thank you for understanding. The offering means a great deal.

Several more minutes of silence.

O5-07 looks down into the wine glass and swirls it. She speaks when SCP-001 has appeared to fully recover.

O5-07: Seeress, if things had worked out differently, would you have loved me?

SCP-001 brow wrinkles.

SCP-001: Madeline, have you—

O5-07: Would you?

SCP-001 looks directly at O5-07. She does not answer for several minutes.

SCP-001: No. Loving you would be loving a passing daydream. You would be here one moment and gone in the next blip of the twisting threads laid out before me. Maybe when I was younger, maybe before I was ruined by the world and those horrific monsters.

O5-07: Oh.

SCP-001: My sweet Madeline, I could never love you now like you deserve. I could not live with you in every moment you craved, cradle you in the warm morning sun in a grassy field, argue over the little things in the arrangement of paintings on the wall, the cleanliness of plates in the cupboard. I could not be the mother to your children; I could not be the mortal woman you seek in your heart.

O5-07: Why not?

SCP-001: Because I am strung to Destiny’s weave, to the Fates’ plucking fingers, and to Creation’s unending, writhing flesh. I live in the space of things that might be, could be, will be, and never were. A settled, happy existence I could never provide you. There would never be enough time.

O5-07: There never is, even now.

SCP-001: I know. I have always known. What you love is an endless river with depths deeper than can be possibly grasped. You would ever be a shadow, no matter how high you climbed, and a fleeting shadow gone in the snap of a finger. Nothing could have changed that.

O5-07: What about Ella, didn’t you and her—

SCP-001: No. Ella tried, and I told her much the same. But she never stopped trying, and in the end, her chase won her little and left her lonely in ways I could never provide or satisfy. Her daughter has been much wiser, but all the same you seek what I can’t give.

O5-07: I understand, though it hurts. So, you never felt that way?

SCP-001: Yes. I did, and perhaps still do. I will weep for you, as I wept for Ella, as I wept for my greatest love. Not for what might have been, but for what was lost in connection that will never be the same.

O5-07 frowns then nods. SCP-001 reaches beneath the neckline of its top and pulls out a key from within. It leans forward, pressing the key to the table. There are several metal taps before SCP-001 finds what it is looking for, and a small mechanical click is recorded. SCP-001 slides out a thick and weathered leather-bound book.

SCP-001: I once told you, that in time, I would speak with you of all the matters of person. Though not today, that time is fast approaching. When it comes, the absolute truth will become apparent. Though knowing you, much as I know Moose, your eyes will see the writing between the lines when I hand you this precious piece of my soul bound in frail pages.

SCP-001 offers the book across the table. O5-07 takes it.

SCP-001: In seven circles of our rock about the gleaming fire of Helios, I’ll reveal the final truth to you. But there you will be bound not to tell another soul.

O5-07 stares at the book, then looks up at SCP-001.

O5-07: Thank you, Seeress, for finally trusting me.

SCP-001: It was hard won.

O5-07: Did Ella and Edvard know at the end?

SCP-001: Yes. Though I do not believe Edvard ever believed it.

O5-07: I guess I have only two things left to ask today.

SCP-001: Ask and I shall answer the first of which I already know.

O5-07: Of course you do. This whole time, all these years, you have talked about the end approaching. This grand cascade failure of the seals, O5-01’s project, Operation High Tide. All these things he has segmented between us and buried details in the dark about. It’s your apocalypse, isn’t it?

SCP-001: Yes.

O5-07: How much more have you seen for him? What machinations now move in the dark with the Andrews?

SCP-001: You know I cannot answer in full.

O5-07: Just a scrape from the iceberg.

SCP-001 is quiet for approximately a minute.

SCP-001: His plans have been altered or discarded. A new path is being forged, as I knew it would be.

O5-07 leans back against the couch.

O5-07: Hmmm.

SCP-001: It is not a problem you need not concern yourself with. It will extend beyond your time.

O5-07 nods slowly, once.

O5-07: Right. So, your apocalypse. Time and again you’ve said it’s just an unwinding of reality. But the documentation… The threat is just a cascade HK-class Deific Subjugation Scenario. Yet you continue to talk about it like all of reality will be unmade. Why?

SCP-001: Because when the seals shatter, nine and one broken into three shall rise from their astral pits. They shall crush the earth and mankind beneath their heel and breach beneath the grand ramparts shielding Creation’s heart. They will destroy her in totality and when they do the grand pillar of Creation, the largest buttress of reality’s weave, shall crumble and all will begin to fray. Then they shall turn against one another and accelerate our universe’s unraveling as they tear each other to pieces.

O5-07: Oh.

Several seconds of silence.

O5-07: What are they? These twelve things that are bound? What is this thing you hold so high in your mind, that you speak in reverent tones almost like you want to sing of her?

ALL AT ONCE A GOLDEN SONG.

The lights flicker in the penthouse. Atmospheric distortion appears around SCP-001.

SCP-001’s face shifts, two eyes become four. All are closed. When SCP-001 speaks it is with substantial audio distortion emulating multiple voices of different pitches, tones, and timbre stacked atop each other. It begins floating.

Hallmarks of reality bending within a localized area around SCP-001 and O5-07 appear. These, at first, emulate fracturing glass panes before shattering and filling the field of view with clouds of swirling color. Shadows behave irregularly, warping behind SCP-001 where its body’s shadow appears to gain many shifting limbs that it does not actually have. O5-07 bolts up and attempts to take several steps backwards.

O5-07: Seeress?!

SCP-001 emits a noise approximate to a hmmmmm which becomes a series of melodic tones.

????: A title interesting in its application, not inaccurate though not bearing in totality the meaning implied. We are of time, its beginning but not its weave. That belongs to a defiler beyond the ends of all ages.

O5-07 takes several steps further back. Her expression indicates alarm.

O5-07: What have you done with the High Seeress!?

????: This child of prophecy is asleep in gentle waves. Your inquiries stir in them, as they would in all derived of the touch, a deep fear and unsettledness in that which lies beneath.

O5-07: I don’t understand.

????: You are not expected to. Such things would be as expecting an ant to comprehend a whale. It is beyond you.

O5-07: You’re—what do you want?

????: The totality of desires would fragment your mind and burst your skull. It is not desire that carries us here. It is questions that must be answered. Questions this servant of Creation’s Will cannot satisfy. You, whose titles embrace motherhood, leadership, friend, are but a ripple in the fabric of a tapestry that swallows everything. Madeline of the Light, we know of you, as we have known of many and will know of many more.

WARNING, ONTOKINETIC DISRUPTION DETECTED. PROPER DISPLAY OF TEXT IS AFFECTED.

---

O5-07 stares at ????. Her hands are trembling.

O5-07: What are you?

????: A more appropriate question. We are concepts, bursts of meaning caught in the rapturous dark. To hear my song is to know Creation’s Touch. For your ears only Madeline of the Light, I have steeped the masks of time in frozen infinity until such a day that my song reaches the mind and heart of blood in seaside opery far away.

O5-07: I don’t—

????: Many names, many applications and titles for such a truth. Ask the questions you seek of her.

O5-07 spends several seconds standing still while her hands shake.

O5-07: The seals. What are they actually containing?

????: Fabric, the threads of reality, of your thoughts, of your flesh and being. Unending and yet finite, feeling and intelligent, yet mindless and detached. My children referred to them as the Odr. A Hlérsyngva term meaning something approximate to true god. A flawed term, but the understanding they held certainly was not. They are everywhere and yet nowhere. Real and yet not real, manifest and yet abstract.

O5-07: So, all of reality is held together by twelve ancient seals holding the hostile fabric beneath the earth? Am I understanding that right?

The field of view changes as reality is warped. All twelve major locations are abruptly stitched together in a kaleidoscope that fills the recording.

????: Yes and no. The seals and some aspects bound within lay upon the material, but their manifestations burn brightly in the Plane of Astral Stars. Spread across creation’s web they are tethered to the connections forged here. They contain the wills, the conscious intent and minds.

O5-07: Where did they come from? How many are there?

Kaleidoscope fades into darkness, leaving only ???? and O5-07 visible and illuminated. When the ???? speaks, its words appear embedded in the recording before flowing into the penthouse space and reshaping reality.

In the beginning there was nothing and yet something. Thirteen flowerbuds in the endless _, waiting to bloom and bring something to the hollow empty.

Thirteen flower buds of differing color appear within the field of view.

The first to shed its prison was that which would forge the path of all that came after. She was Creation, encompassing the very beginning of everything, all acts of making, and the bliss of something.

The first flower blooms, its petals made of teal, red and cerulean burst within the __ creating a chasm of light that obscures the whole field.

O5-07: I can’t see! So bright.

From within her shapeless mass writhed into the newly born creation. Twisting fabrics of reality twirled about her as she shifted between defined mass and effervescent gas. It was she who cast the iron against the forge and became known as the Mother. She who sculpted the shape of a woman upon reality.

From the flower flows a formless shape which molds itself into the approximate confines of a woman, made of endless flowing limbs, appendages, claws, and eyes.

And her traversal through the newly budding universe wove the nature of stars, of planets, of the cosmology. She swirled and twisted herself to witness all that was being created. Overwhelmed with the moment, she grew sleepy, for the act of beginnings had finished in major forms. So, she returned to her flower and molded it into something new.
Her final act of universal creation, the partitioning of the realms into Astral and Material.

The embodiment of Creation returns to the flower, unweaves it and uses it to cast a mirror image of the new universe. Upon a grand bed of everything it lays.

And in her sleep filled absence, the others began to awaken.

The other flower buds begin to ripple and bloom.

First came the black and purple petals of nihilistic resentment.

The second bud tears open, revealing a dark rolling cloud of black and purple. Electrostatic discharges snakes across spacetime, obliterating a galaxy.

Destruction raged against the creation it had been unwillingly born into. When it found the source, it attempted to assail her slumbering form upon its bed.

The cloud flows through space-time into the Astral plane and attempts to assault the embodiment of Creation.

The first ripple of Destruction’s careless rage ripped a hole in Creation’s belly. She awoke instantly and knew of sin, of hate destroyed in creation against her. In thunderous furor her star dusted fingers seized his defiant thunderheads and burdened him with the concept of shape, and mass, and form.
She condemned him to shape from which he could no longer escape her reach. The Tyrant, master of unbridled hate, envious of mortal life, conjurer of unholy storms, was bound to mass.
She then cast him into the void to enact his role in reality.

Creation’s embodiment grabs the lashing thunderhead of Destruction with both hands and shapes it into the form of a humanoid man, covered in swirling black and purple and red markings. He is cast into the depths of the growing universe.

As the other flowers began to bloom, Creation sat up upon her bed and wove the concepts of their shapes into the dance of reality. Here she gave form to the true dragons and lesser concepts who too were born with the first essence of reality but were too small to be universal.
In those opening moments they wove into the fabric of Material and Astral, and set their acts upon the world.
Then, from a flower of gears and steam and metal came Machine. With heated forge and needle great, Creation crafted a grand clockwork essence for which the third would reside in physicality. Upon the mass of everything she implanted metal into stars, planets, gas and more.

O5-07: …Mekhane?

????: Yes.

From a flower made of meat and flesh came the fourth, Life. Mindless, thoughtless, but filled with an unending hunger. Creation shaped it in the heat of the stars into unending flesh about a grand draconic form. From world and time across time it spread its tendrils, seeding that which would bloom into the most wonderful of creations. Creation was delighted, until the dragon began an eternal deafening war with the third.
But by then her attention was elsewhere. There it cast in sparking metal and blood a love and hate so deep it would rend the stars for eons to come.

O5-07: Yaldabaoth.

????: Needlessly greedy hunger.

Of a flower of indiscernible matter came the Fifth, five, five, five, five, five unknowable and hostile. She molded its flesh and it stung her. She burned its name into hateful silence, pressing into the _ in between so it could not taint what was yet to be.

O5-07: The—

????: DO NOT SPEAK OF IT.

O5-07 flinches.

????: It will consume of you all which matters now that it is known should its name be spoken.

From a flower of sparks and embers came the Sixth, Primordial Flame. She dubbed them Pangloss, for they loved all things, no matter shape, and the flame dancing in its primordial flesh glossed the heavenly metals of Mekhane’s reign.

O5-07: Oh. Pangloss.

Of a flower of blood and scarlet thorns came the Seventh, Corruption’s Taint. A concept of charm, of illusion, and false promises. Power, change, both its love and hatred of, a scarlet snake in the grass. She gave them shape and the name of Scarlet Monarch, for she saw through their ambition and endless schemes.

O5-07: Of course.

????: A danger even now.

From a flower of bone and rotting leaves came the Eighth, Death. Three in kind, three in spirit and mind. For him he wished no shape, but those cast by association and she abided for a time.

O5-07: How did they become the brother’s death?

????: In time.

Of a flower of abyssal dark came the ninth. He who forged the dark and forged fear and other unpleasant things often misunderstood. He requested the shape of a cloak ever sweeping across an endless horizon and she obliged.
From a flower of blinding luminescence came the Tenth, Light. He who had lit the universe itself at time immemorial, who had waited for power and influence and lost it all. He requested no shape, but she gave of him an endless crawling thing with many legs and unnatural shape to inspire awe in those who would come to know him.

O5-07: He Who Made Dark and Light.

Of a flower of termini, of lines ending, of empty stars, and time absent came the eleventh, Endings. Of a great spindly winged serpent, she cast him, and he became an eater of stars, ender of matter and ideas. She dubbed him the Sun Eater for all of his nature and he took it.

O5-07: I don’t know this one.

????: You wouldn’t.

From a flower of books, of knowledge, of stars and matter and numbers came the Twelfth, Knowledge. And for many long eons she spoke with Creation in the ides of her workshop of grand ideas and things that could be and might be. Creation gave her the grand sweeping shape of an eel and a serpent mixed, endless in its length, in representation of the ever-sweeping expanse of knowledge.

O5-07: The Wanderers Library and Serpent’s Hand?

????: The shattered remnants of what came before.

The final flower bloomed on the eve of Creation’s growing exhaustion, the thirteenth, Gravity and Time. He was wary of her great conceptual essence, the marks of strings she would embed in his conceptual flesh with her shaping. So, he eschewed her shapes, forging his own in time and chains. He became known to the others as the Chain Maker.
Thirteen born, thirteen awake. While she worked to create concepts of forms for the eleven, the Scarlet Monarch grew envious of Creation’s power. They began to scheme, and to see Creation as the greatest threat to its rule of reality.
But with her task completed, Creation returned to the grand bed and lay to rest. There in the moments before slumber, it crafted safeguards. Contingencies for the worst.

Creation’s embodiment returns to the cosmic folds and once again becomes rock and stars and planets and dust.

O5-07: So, something happened, obviously?

????: Yes.

And while Creation slept, the Scarlet Monarch began to sew dissent. The rest discovered what Creation had wrought with Destruction. Of the twelve, six were convinced of treachery, of Creation’s intent to bind them to their shapes and strip them of their capacity to resist her influence.
Two did not care, embattled in their war of Flesh vs Machine. Two resisted, attacking the Light when he began to forget weapons of purifying hate. The Sun Eater was smashed into conceptual dust and scattered across the threads, fraying the Universe’s weave. He Who Made Dark was smashed into a thousand tiny cloaks and cast across many worlds.
Pangloss retreated and forged plans to wield mortality to aid Creation’s coming plight.
And while the others acted, the thirteenth forged great binding chains to snare the fabric of reality tight to the end of time and his domain. So great was his fear that he forged them from his body alone, snaring spacetime in the bounds of all gravity.
And when Creation was in the deepest sleep, they began. Seven approached the essence of Creation, swirling amongst her shimmering endless mass of stardust, dripping galaxyfalls, meteor dances, and planetary wrinkles. There in the midst of everything they attacked.
Death leapt first, attempting to imprint mortality onto the very concept of creation. Creation must be able to die.
She awoke in the midst of his attempts. Limbs in the shape of great hands filled with the burning ire of a thousand supernovas grasped him twixt neck and hips. She tore him in three. Three brothers, three deaths, lesser than their whole. And as they tore, she wove the damnation into their blackened flesh, creating a binding which cast him in this state forever more.
And though she did not realize it, she set in stone what was to come.
Knowledge saw all of this in initial hesitation and knew it had to betray her. One she had come to consider a new concept, friend, had stripped, in a single moment of fear, all that connection away.
She cried out for the bonds of lovers, for Pangloss who had taught her love.
But they could only watch.
In the bounds of Knowledge’s coils she was wrapped as they attempted to suck from her all essence and memory of mind, leaving her a thoughtless husk. Here Creation tore mind and concept into threads, separating implication from body and leaving behind the aspect of what was forgotten.
She cast what was left of the conscious concept into the _ in between all that was, __, and all that could be.
Whilst she tore apart the others she could reach, the thirteenth bound her in time’s immemorial chains. She thrashed against the coils, attempting to cast them off.
But there was no escape.
He cinched them closed through gravity’s will.
She was suspended, immobilized in an abyss of singularity’s horizons.
It seemed for a moment, even to her, that all was lost. Creation would be bound and the universe destroyed.
As the horizons shrunk about her, one final hope shined in the void. She remembered her contingency.
Deep into her endless chest she reached and cast off the heart of Creation. Across the stars and endless void, it rocketed.
Six gave chase for fear of what would come if even part of her escaped.
Two followed, still embattled.
And one gave haste to the fleeing heart knowing it was their only chance.
And the chainmaker pulled Creation’s heartless mind and body into the den of the end and sealed himself inside, for so much of a coward he was that he feared what end he might meet.

????: There on this tiny rock did Creation’s heart fall and snared eleven of thirteen along with it. Beneath the banner of an ancient alliance of Man, Fin, Plant, Flesh, and Machine did Creation pair with Mortals and Primordial Fire to seal the doom away. For a time, they succeeded.

O5-07 finishes watching the events play out through the reality bending.

O5-07: But then, the Hlérsyngva were driven into the sea, and the others collapsed or withered away. Humans are left, the Hlérsyngva hidden and the seals are rotting. What happens if the seals fail?

Reality shifts. Oceans are boiling as the sun burns brighter in the sky. Lush forests are rendered into burnt out deserts. Whole continents are drowned in blood. Others in flesh. Entire countries stripped of conscious thought and free will, enslaved as mindless laborers. Others swallowed by the hostility of the unknown. Reality begins to unwind, concepts bleeding into one another and being annihilated, earth and matter coming apart at the seams. And eventually, nothing.

????: Doom. Apocalypse. The end of reality.

Several minutes of silence.

????: That is what scares her so. It is what scares me so.

O5-07: I can see why, now.

Several more minutes of silence.

O5-07: There’s something I want to ask but I don’t know if I should.

????: I have but two answers left to give.

O5-07: Right. Are you…?

????: I am what’s left.

O5-07: What do you want with her?

????: Even now, you still don’t understand.

---

SCP-001 stirs.

O5-07: That was—

SCP-001: I wish she wouldn’t do that without asking first.

O5-07: Yes, well, I can imagine eldritch entities have different priorities.

SCP-001: You have very little real idea.

O5-07: I have enough of one.

Several seconds of silence.

O5-07: Do I even want to know?

SCP-001: What did she tell you?

O5-07: Enough to know that asking more is liable to render me a babbling idiot.

SCP-001: Then no. You don’t want to know.

Several minutes of silence.

SCP-001: Before all that, you said you had one more question?

O5-07: Right, yes. Apologies, I got lost in the… well, I think you know.

SCP-001: Understandable.

O5-07: I guess I wanted to ask, when will you tell the world who you are?

SCP-001 smiles slowly.

SCP-001: When [REDACTED] returns to life.

<End Log>

Interview Log IVA-001-562

Interviewer: O5-07 Madeline Light, Current Eurtec Interim Site Director Tilda Moose.

Date: May 15th, 2021.

Location: Silicon Nornir tower three penthouse.

Foreword: On April 15th, 2021, O5-07 Madeline Light announced her intention to retire on the 15th of May, 2021, after more than 60 years of employment by the Foundation. The following is a log excerpt of the final biweekly meeting between SCP-001 and O5-07 after the latter had already submitted the final retirement documentation and turned over title and transition of office documents to Tilda Moose who would be assuming her duties as the new O5-07.

<Begin Log>

The penthouse rooms of Silicon Nornir tower three are decorated with banners and gold lettering reading ‘Congratulations on Retirement’. Director Moose, SCP-001 and Madeline Light are seated in a circular arrangement on the couches. Champagne glasses are in their hands. Light appears particularly frail and hunched in her seat. Her hands shake while holding and sipping from the glass.

Light: I can’t believe the day is finally here.

Director Moose: It had to come eventually. It comes for us all.

SCP-001: Except for me.

Director Moose: You’re an outlier and shouldn’t have been counted.

Light: Well, it took its sweet time getting here.

SCP-001: What will you do, once you’re out? Write a memoir?

Director Moose winces.

Light: I might have if they’d let me remember anything, but no. Sixty years of my life to this jailhouse and they won’t even let me keep the memories.

SCP-001: I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

Light: Bullshit you didn’t know; now forgot I can believe.

The room is silent for several seconds.

Light: Crochet. Maybe a bit of painting, they are giving me one last drink from the fountain of eternity here in Eurtec before the amnestics kick in. It’ll be nice to not have the shakes for another decade.

Director Moose: I’d ask if you would miss it, all of this, but we’ve already trodden that road. So instead, is there anything left you’d like to do before you go?

Light: There is.

Light looks at SCP-001.

Light: It’s time, isn’t it?

SCP-001: It is. If it is still something you wish to know? It won’t affect the outcomes, either way.

Light: Of course it wouldn’t. Universe’s humor being what it is.

Director Moose: Time for what?

SCP-001: Shush, it’s not your moment.

Light: I’ve waited 51 years, Seeress. I’d sooner be dead than let the mystery of my whole life slip away forever. The stars above would not forgive me never having known. Very last thing on my bucket list before they render me an insensate old granny with a bit of spry left in her bones.

Director Moose: I’d hate to be your nurse in that home.

Light: If Sophia puts me in a home, I’ll come back from the dead to haunt her.

All three laugh.

SCP-001: You read it then?

Director Moose: Read what?

SCP-001 attempts to menace Director Moose with a rolled-up piece of paper, but points at a nearby empty seat instead.

SCP-001: I said hush, you.

Light: I did, Seeress. It was—I’m still not sure how you wrote it, but it was…

Light trails off and stares out the window for several seconds.

Light: I don’t have the words to describe how it made me feel to know all of that. Everything that happened.

SCP-001: It is a heavy weight to bear.

Light: I never even realized you were—

SCP-001: They wrote it down and blacked it out in the files. All of them.

Light: It tracks with how you were treated.

Director Moose: I am entirely lost.

SCP-001: I will fill you in once she’s gone, now hush, this is her moment.

SCP-001 speaks at a low and gravelly volume.

SCP-001: A magician with no sense of gravitas, who would have thought.

Several seconds of silence.

Light: Before you tell me, can I make a guess? I have a suspicion cause the very last thing in that journal’s chapter is unreadable.

SCP-001: All these years and you never made one after that first, why now?

Light: Part of the final moments of the chase. There’s something rewarding about having put all the pieces together myself at the end.

SCP-001: Then of course, Madeline.

Light: Well come over here, I ain’t going to say it out loud and these old bones don’t move as well as your ancient ones.

SCP-001 grasps its staff and stands. It moves over to kneel by Madeline Light. Madeline Light leans over, kisses SCP-001 on the mouth for several seconds, before whispering in its ears. SCP-001 briefly flushes but otherwise does not react. Director Moose looks away from the pair.

SCP-001: Close, it’s actually—

SCP-001 leans in but its lips are still visible. The recording is disrupted briefly by several bursts of ontokinetic interference; however, several frames are visible where the signed letters of C O T are distinguishable.

SCP-001 gently places one hand on Light’s cheek and kisses her for several seconds. When she is finished, she slowly stands and makes her way back to the couch. Silence continues.

SCP-001: That was to remember me by. In dream and vision if not in physical reality.

Light is staring into her glass.

Light: I should have known. It was obvious and in front of my face the whole time. You were far less subtle than I imagined, and yet you managed to fool me the whole way.

Light looks up at SCP-001.

Light: Well played, Seeress. A life well lived.

SCP-001: A life well woven.

Light: True.

Madeline Light rises from the couch.

Light: That was the final bond keeping these old bones to this bureaucratic monolith. Now? Well, I suppose there is nothing left to do but walk into the light of normalcy and become irrelevant.

Director Moose: For what it’s worth Madeline, though my time under your tutelage has been short, there wasn’t a day that went by where you didn’t teach me something new.

Light: Don’t get sappy on me. I don’t want to end up bawling here at the end when I already feel like a coward for not getting to see it all through.

Moose smiles.

Light: But, it was good to work with you, Moose. Even though we were adversaries for more than half my life.

Director Moose: Fate is a strange thing.

Light: Especially when she’s sitting across from you.

SCP-001 wiggles a finger in one ear.

SCP-001: Did someone say something?

Director Moose and Light laugh. Several seconds of silence follow as Light looks out the windows.

Light: I had better get going before my nerve fails. Y’all have a good rest of eternity and do me a favor. Win this fight ahead. Don’t make me kick your asses as a ghost for losing.

Director Moose: We’ll certainly do our best.

Light: You better.

Light crosses the penthouse towards the elevators at a slow pace. She presses the button and the doors open. SCP-001 speaks to her one last time as she steps in.

SCP-001: Madeline, one last thing.

Light turns around in the elevator and presses the button that holds the door open.

Light: I’m listening, C—Seeress.

SCP-001: You asked me seven years ago if things had been different, if I would have loved you.

Light: I remember. You said you wouldn’t and then gave me a long winded monologue that only an immortal goddess bound up in fate could produce. What about it?

SCP-001: I made a mistake once. I won’t make it again. I lied.

Several seconds of silence.

Director Moose: …

Light: …

????: …

SCP-001: …

Light laughs.

Light: Now you tell me.

Light laughs for several more seconds. She wipes her eyes with her free hand where tears are forming.

Light: I look forward to the next life, Seeress. I look forward to where you’ll make good on that promise under that spiral tower of endless metallic coral piercing the clouds above and holding the light of the world at its very tip. She told me where I was going not too long ago. I’m bringing Ella come hell or high water if she’s not already there. So, you better make good on that promise, not just to me, but Ella too.

SCP-001 sits completely still, staring directly at Light with eyes wide, and mouth slightly open.

Light: For once, I’ve stolen all the breath from your lips as I always dreamed. Please, look after Sophia for me. Fix what humanity broke, once and for all.

The elevator dings as Madeline Light releases the hold door button, and the doors close. Director Moose, now O5-07, is alone with SCP-001.

Several minutes of silence.

Director Moose: That was—

SCP-001: Shh. I’m not ready to talk yet.

SCP-001 wipes its eyes with its dress sleeve. After several more minutes of silence, Moose speaks again.

Director Moose: So, are you going to—

SCP-001: I told her my true name, and she learned that I was not born in the shape I now claim.

Director Moose sips from her glass.

Director Moose: Ah. That explains that.

SCP-001: That explains that.

Director Moose: Mhmm. That’s what I just said.

Several seconds of silence.

SCP-001: I marvel at your ability to remain nonchalant in such moments.

Director Moose: There’s always time for gravitas, and time for humor as well.

SCP-001: The greatest trick a magician has, timing.

Director Moose smiles. Several seconds of silence pass.

Director Moose: Well, here we are, finally alone again.

SCP-001: Here we are.

SCP-001 and Director Moose look out the windows at Eurtec.

Director Moose: Do you ever get fatigued, thinking about the momentum, the monumental cliff that we face?

SCP-001: Some days it’s harder to shake these ancient bones from the bed. But we get up. We go on because that is what it requires, that is the sacrifice necessary to save the grand tree.

Director Moose: Do you ever think you’ve sacrificed enough for one life? You, of all people, especially.

SCP-001: Read the files, have we?

Director Moose: But not that book. Knowing the name is enough, enough to know what you’ve been through—and yet…

SCP-001: And yet you only know pieces. And yet She still sings in the deep, waiting. The hour hand moves ever closer, the ticking ever louder.

Director Moose: Being around those two, I think I’ve started to hear it.

SCP-001: They don’t hear it yet. Neither do the others, The Twins, The Queen in her gardens of the dead, The Witch on her island in the depths, and so many others. I’ve never stopped hearing it, but it’s getting louder.

Director Moose: It’s getting closer then?

SCP-001: Four rings of the rock around Helios until the Sapphire and the return of the engineer. Three until the return of the blade. Fourteen until the grand palace rises anew into the sky, and the seals fail. She stirs in the deep. I can feel Her waking.

Director Moose: So, this is it then, this is the one.

SCP-001 exhales heavily.

SCP-001: This is the one.

Several seconds of silence.

Director Moose: Was the plan all along to have the Foundation fight them?

SCP-001: Yes.

Director Moose: Fighting reality itself. It sounds—

SCP-001: Absurd? Insane?

Director Moose: Yes.

SCP-001: If it was all of them at the same time? Yes.

Director Moose: Wait, what do you mean?

SCP-001: Come now Moose, you are more clever than that.

Director Moose: I’m serious this time.

SCP-001: Must I spell everything out?

Director Moose: Like I’m ten.

SCP-001 scowls.

SCP-001: Everything has been a delaying action.

Moose looks at SCP-001 opening her mouth slightly and holding it there for several seconds.

Director Moose: What?

SCP-001: A. Delaying. Action. Enough stabilization to space out the chain. It will be as it was then. One at a time.

Director Moose stares out the window for several seconds. Her jaw clenches and unclenches.

Director Moose: Holy fuck.

SCP-001: It is the only way we have a chance. Everything else has been manipulation to increase the odds. No more than a decade and a half away, then we go to war. Then, then we shall fight once again with the Old Gods of the world. A war in heaven.

Approximately one minute of silence.

Director Moose: How many times, how many times have you done this to find the perfect conditions?

SCP-001: Too many. Trillions dead. The cost was high in those threads. It will still be high now in this one. Maybe another iteration can improve the odds if we fail. Maybe even if we succeed.

Several minutes of silence.

SCP-001: Moose?

Director Moose: Yes, Seeress?

SCP-001: I am afraid.

Director Moose: I know. There are still many years left to go, and many more dice to roll. But I am also afraid of what lies at the end. Especially with what you’ve just told me.

Several seconds of silence. Director Moose looks out the window.

Director Moose: There is a lot of work to do, child of Ilion. A lot of work to return the Singers to the fold.

SCP-001: There always is.

SCP-001 and Director Moose stare out the window at Eurtec below.

SCP-001: The days ahead are greatly muddied by Her reawakening. Yet curiously, I do not know when the next avatar of primordial fire will appear.

Director Moose: The what? You what?

SCP-001: Idle musings of a deranged old lady, pay them no mind.

Director Moose: C—

SCP-001: Not while they are recording.

<End Log>