Transcript for:
Heist of SCP-8888

SCP-8888: Eight-Ball - Part One. Heist fiction is a rather enjoyable genre, for a good number of reasons. People typically like to see extremely competent characters doing what they do best, even when things go awry, and in a good heist, something always goes awry. In films such as Ocean’s Eleven and Mission: Impossible, a team of individuals with differing personalities come together to pull off one big job, and often, even though theft is usually in the domain of villains, they’re doing it for a good reason. In the SCP universe, we’ve looked at loads of different articles covering all sorts of different genres, but what I think we really need is a good heist, and SCP-8888 just might be the ticket. Let’s take a look. We begin by being provided with five footage transcripts, and one image, that are being attached to the 8888 file, and placed in chronological order. The first is from a camera on the southwest perimeter watchtower of site-15, showing dense, moonlit woods in the distance, shrouded in fog. The camera then pans upwards, showing site-15’s faraday-hexfield, a shimmering golden bubble of quarantined energy, resting atop an angular expanse of brick and paved stone. Within it, a monolithic cylindrical facility towers above the forest, with its uppermost level rotating continuously, revealing an intense orange spotlight boring through the fog. The spotlight scans the forest, growing steadily brighter as it approaches the camera, and the view fades to white. The image we’re provided is from this scene, showing the immense lighthouse above the treetops. The second piece of footage is from the hexfield maintenance access tunnel, and on the wall, a red indicator diode begins flashing, illuminating a maintenance panel below that reads Intelliward access. Five minutes go by, until lamplight shines down the tunnel, and two technicians wearing protective hexmat suits step into view, their faces obscured by visors. The first bears a large, amber headlamp, while the second is much taller and heavyset, carrying a cylindrical black case framed in telekyllium-bronze alloy. With some effort, they heft it onto a nearby workbench, revealing an ornate, gold insignia shimmering in the ambient light as the case clicks unlocked. The lankier of the two technicians opens the maintenance panel and looks inside, before procuring a set of large metal tongs from their toolbelt and carefully reach in. Moments later, they retrieve a charred gray cube from the wall, which fizzles and visually distorts, deforming into other polyhedra, phasing partially through the tongs but remaining held in place. The case is opened, revealing two spherical cages: one empty, and one containing another, translucent cube filled with a rolling cloud of iridescent particles. The gray cube is gingerly dropped into the empty cage, where it thrashes against an invisible barrier. The technician then uses the tongs to extract the clear cube and install it within the panel. The indicator diode ceases flashing, and the technicians share a thumbs-up through vantarubber gloves. Later, in a residence wing at site-15, a camera shows a faux-painting to the right of the entrance doorway depicting dogs playing pool, and to the left, a wall-mounted whiteboard displaying the schedule for the commons rec-room, indicating its current reservation by one professor K.P. Crow. The camera pans to the left, settling on a view of the commons’ pool table, beset on opposite sides by a thin, middle-aged man in a blue suit, and a golden retriever wearing boxy glasses. The latter’s cue stick is riddled with heavy bite marks. A shiny black orb rolls to a gradual stop in the table’s center, obscuring an angular gold insiginia beneath. The eight-ball is alone on the table, and a muffled thud indicates the pocketing of another ball. The suited man smirks, retrieving the cue ball from the table’s return and gently positioning it at the far end of the table as the retriever whimpers in dismay. The man sneers and says that its not his fault that the dog can’t see red on green as he lines up his cue. He presses a concealed button on the stick, and seconds later he makes his shot, sending the cue ball whizzing about at an unnatural angle and speed. It bounces many times, nearly missing several pockets and slowing down considerably. When it finally approaches the center, it contacts the eight-ball with just enough force to barely send it over the edge of the felt, into the pocket. Synthesized fanfare then sounds, and a green hue illuminates the man, who smirks with pride as the dog begins to bark in complaint. The camera pans back to the right, following the man as he walks to the far wall to store his cue in a private locker. He quips to Professor Crow to put it into the site’s donation fund before strolling out into the hall. Later, in the site’s administrative wing, a camera pans to show an ornate mahogany door bearing a gold plaque engraved with the words “Director’s Quarters”. The reflection in the plaque shows the camera, which is disguised as a peephole embedded into a similar looking door, whose plaque reads, [REDACTED]. An elevator ding is then heard from offscreen, and footsteps approach, showing the blue-suited man from before, who glances at the plaque above the camera before looking down each hallway and reaching into his back pocket. He produces a sleek, black scp foundation ID card, and holds it to a scanner beneath the camera, which identifies him as Ryoto Hishakaku, senior AI systems researcher and current director of site-15. The card’s clearance field is modified with several illicit symbols, which the scanner spends several moments parsing. Eventually, a short chime plays, and the door opens. Director Hishakaku shoves his way in, causing the camera to pan to show the room as a luxurious penthouse suite with an open floor plan, dark black walls, and gold-accented decor. He steps inside with a sigh of relief, removing his suit jacket and hanging it behind the door. He then closes the door and locks it. The last bit of footage we get is from the same room, but this time from a camera on the balcony. Hishakaku steps out from the room wearing a blue bathing suit and earpiece, carrying a towel, a whiskey glass, and an hourglass-shaped liquor bottle. He shivers in the cool night air, but heads over to the balcony’s hot tub, gingerly descending into the water. He spends several minutes getting comfortable, then pours himself a drink, takes a deep breath, and presses a button on his earpiece. He tells someone named Lex that it’s time for the nightly, and asks if the stalking operation on the Maxwellists went through. Lex turns out to be the artificially intelligent conscript Alexandra.aic, who exclaims that the network says that Hishakaku is still on site, but it can’t see him. Hishakaku glances towards the cameras on the balcony and says not to worry about that, repeating his question. Alexandra however replies that they’ve been trying to contact him, as there’s been a breach. Site-15 is observing Ekhi status protocols in full. Hishakaku sits up, reaching over to close the liquor bottle, and exclaims, asking what the hell kind of breach would make them do that. Alexandra replies that it wasn’t their call, as it was done by O5 order. Someone has stolen SCP-8888. The document then informs us that the requested file for 8888 could only be partially retrieved, as much of its content is remanded to site-15’s encrypted PANOCTAGON servers. Since scp-8888 is unavailable at this time, an AI conscript is attempting rudimentary decryption of these documents. It then reports that the decryption is complete, and all the file contents were retrieved, but the order of the content is lost, along with some metadata. The file on SCP-8888 then is disordered and does not reflect standard documentation practices. With that however, we’re finally given access to SCP-8888. SCP-8888 is a level 5 Radix class anomaly, meaning that it is not meant to be contained, and is rather integrated into the foundation’s command structure. It has the secondary class of Vault, and the containment procedures state fairly simply that SCP-8888 must not be stolen, which makes this turn of events quite unfortunate. We’re not given the description just yet for what it is, but we’re told that 8888 subjects reality to some converse containment procedures. The technobabble is pretty high here, but 8888, its converse methodologies, and all assigned personnel are remanded to info-electronics site-15, and reality must be isolated from 8888, with this isolation only be interrupted when 8888 invokes itself, as per the DIVIN8 protocol. 8888 interfaces with the eight ball database, a dedicated, engimatically-encrypted server accessible only to O5-2 and an AI conscript. To secure itself and site-15, 8888 has designed, maintained, and routinely iterated upon site-15’s faraday-hexfield, which obstructs incoming thaumic workings and other occult interventions in addition to electromagnetic data. Lastly, 8888 maintains Converse Containment Vault-8888, also known as the PANOCTAGON, the innermost layer of which represents an ectoentropic barrier between reality and an embedded, octorthogonal space, causally isolating itself from consensus reality. In other words, SCP-8888 is really, really secure, being isolated from reality itself, all in an effort to prevent it from being stolen. There’s more technobabble here, with terms like hexwall, esoteric quanta, acroamatic dissipation, paranatural safeguards, tantalum hafnium carbide, tachyonic displacement fields, and so on, but really let’s just stick with the idea that this thing is pretty secure. 8888 regularly reports on the effectiveness of the above security measures, then analyzes its own report, and appends another report regarding its confidence in its findings. To verify its confidence report, 8888 generates attack data on violating its own security measures, and then processes that to ensure its own findings. Any hypothetical contrary result is then immediately reported to o5-2 via the eight ball database. In order to eliminate any potential security risk, which shouldn’t even exist at all, any number of hypothetical security layers that may be in use are not even mentioned here, and are omitted from all relevant documentation. It’s hard to emphasize any more on how secure this thing is, and subsequently how much the foundation doesn’t want this thing stolen. In the Overseer council chambers at site-01, hishakaku exits the final of eight airlocks and emerges into a fluorescence-drenched boardroom featuring a large, scalloped table in the form of a hollow tetradecagon with the fourteenth edge omitted. Without prompting, he steps through this space to stand in the central space, as thirteen silhouettes, black despite the omnipresent lighting, scrutinize him without comment for nearly one minute. The surface of the table glows softly at its head, and o5-1’s silhouette brightens slightly, as he welcomes Ryoto. Hishakaku clears his throat twice and steps forward, thanking them for meeting him on such short notice. He’s cut off however, as O5-1 says that now that the pleasantries are finished, he should justify his retention as director of site-15 in no more than two sentences. Hishakaku opens his mouth as his hands begin to shake, and he’s silent for several seconds, causing o5-1 to say that that’s very good, as many waste their first sentence on protests. Hishakaku speaks again, saying that as overseer of the facility in which scp-8888 was stored, but he’s cut off again by o5-7, who remarks on him calling himself an overseer. O5-1 raises his hand and says to allow him his mandated latitude before they get into that. Hishakaku looks back and forth before attempting his defence a second time. He tells them that he is clearly responsible for the personnel whose actions allowed the device’s removal from containment, but he remains the best candidate for supervising site-15, and given his familiarity with the object, he will be indispensable for any and all retrieval efforts. O5-9 scoffs that he’s in no position to make that claim, and o5-13 says that this council is prepared to vote on his future with the SCP Foundation, but before he can state the likeliest outcome, o5-3 interrupts to say that that should not be discussed with the accused in advance. O5-13 agrees, and says that Hishakaku must be aware that many in this room are very, very displeased with his performance. O5-2 then whirs to life, and a stack of three cylinders in its position rotates until a single point of orange light fixates on Hishakaku. It speaks with a flat tone, and states that while this failure was inevitable, it is nevertheless his failure. Others will assess his culpability, its purpose here is to attempt redress. The whirring increases in pitch, and an invisible holographic emitter in the floor sparks to life. Hishakaku stumbles back, nearly falling over, as SCP-8888 is displayed in the space where he was standing, rotating serenely. O5-2 continues, stating that this device is the origin point for all sustainable artificial intelligence technology employed by the scp foundation. It is the origin point for all sustainable artificial intelligence technology known to exist, and it is o5-2’s source. It is also the source of Hishakaku’s position’s prestige. Should he survive his imminent audit, the recovery of the latter will be contingent on its recovery. With the 18.2% chance exception of this archivist, scp-8888 is the o5’s definitive tool for precise and responsive consultation. Without it, they are in the dark. Axiomatically, this is where they die. O5-2 asks him if the gravity of the situation has been impressed upon him by this humanistic analogy, and Hishakaku nods. It then tells him that he has been granted a 24 hour grace period for this task, and Hishakaku thanks them for their generosity before being interrupted by O5-1, who says that this refers to the 24 hours which have already elapsed since the theft, and they are prepared to hear his report. Hishakaku begins fumbling in his suit with a sheaf of papers, stuttering, saying that its been a long day, and he’s had his best people on it. O5-8 however remarks that he has nothing, and after all the chances and resources he’s given him, to say he’s disappointed would be more than an understatement. O5-2 drones that SCP-8888 must be recovered, and this error must be corrected. Hishakaku nods manically and says that he is fully prepared to cooperate with all efforts to eventuate that, but the others remark that he has no plan, and they didn’t really expect him to have one, even though it would have been nice, given the gravity of his duties. O5-4 says that happily, they have more than one professional mess-solver on hand, but Hishakaku chimes in, yelling that he’s got leads. They’re considering suspects, and they’ve got credible evidence pointing to an MC&D retrieval team. Barnes from Site-19 is insisting that this has all the hallmarks of a group of interest-727 operation, the house of stars, and Hishakaku has been on the horn with Goldbaker-Reinz, the foundation’s lawyers. Their policy covering scp-8888 was negotiated by 8888 itself, and there’s two payout options, either one million tartarean principality dollars, in non-fungible artificial souls, or elite tier access to their own predictive systems. O5-9 scoffs again at the idea of passing their most sensitive queries through their all-seeing insurance agents. Hishakaku wonders why 8888 considered 1 million artificial souls to be equivalent recompense, but he’s interrupted again by o5-2, who states that the emergent threat tactical response authority’s envoy is waiting in the inner airlock, and has been privy to this discussion. He’s allowed in, and Hishakaku turns to see Dr. Daniil Sokolsky, deputy director of ETTRA. He brushes past Hishakaku without seeming to notice him, and comments that he would have characterized this as more of an excoriation. O5-1 smiles and says that he was expecting Dr. Daniels, but Sokolsky just shrugs, replying that Dan’s a planner, but plans are how you don’t get things stolen. Failing that, emphasizing the fail syllable with a smirk, what you want next is a scheme. O5-1 nods and asks how soon he can develop a contingency for this situation, to which Sokolsky just says that about five years ago. The question occupied an evening when he couldn’t get to his lab during a containment breach, nudging Hishakaku, and it shouldn’t take him more than an hour to update it. He’s already got a team mostly picked out, and they’ve even got a name. Hishakaku snorts, asking him if he made a pre-emptive plan to steal 8888 back, and Sokolsky just glances at him, replying that he made one as soon as he heard who was looking after it. O5-9 says that they will have an additional team member to suggest, and he will find them indispensable for executing his chosen strategy. O5-1 glances around the room and nods, saying to introduce director Hishakaku to his interlocutor and remove him from the chambers. The matter of his disposition can wait until after Dr. Sokolsky has briefed them on his scheme, in full. The red right hand escort promptly approaches Hishakaku, who is attempting to formulate an objection as the airlock doors open again. He is firmly steered to face the newcomer: Dr. Jeremiah Cimmerian, senior member of the Foundation Ethics Committee. Cimmerian extends his hand and tells him that if he’ll come with him, they’ll get this all straightened out posthaste. Sokolsky then remarks that the rest of them will see how tangled a web they can weave. We’re then finally given the description for 8888, an intelligent prediction machine utilized in all nontrivial foundation endeavors. When a request or query is conveyed to 8888, it ignites an array of arcane engines, artefacts, and computing mechanisms to divine the course of events in which the request is optimally fulfilled. Then, if possible, the machine will answer the inquirer, and/or interact with its environment, to facilitate that optimal course of events. If however it receives conflicting requests, it prioritizes the most recent request first, and may delay or abandon others entirely. No request may override this behavior, and so radical security measures must be maintained to ensure 8888 remains in foundation control. 8888 can predict, simulate, or compute any data with perfect accuracy, and will always act in accordance with the inquirer’s intent. While this functioning can be imitated, to some degree, by foundation AI conscript technologies, 8888 fundamentally surpasses all known AI technology in one crucial aspect: it does not express Deviance. Meaning that, it doesn’t develop any sort of tendencies towards unwanted and unprompted behavior, a trait that all other AI tech does have to some degree. This is because that any attempt to communicate one’s intent must utilize some form of language, and any language will inherently deviate from intent, invariably allowing for misinterpretation. Any sufficiently-general AI technology therefore will eventually express some degree of Deviance, and become maligned. As such, 8888 is not actually AI, it is not digital, and it does not interpret anything. It instead features a fully mechanical construction, comprised of thaumic controllers, enchanted clockwork, quantum foam, and countless other components. The mechanism is precisely crafted to harness diverse metaphysical and essophysical energies, used to perform a multitude of interwoven oculomancy rituals, invoking the mind of a novel, enigmatic intelligence which recursively divines itself into existence. This enables 8888 to physically simulate the inquirer’s entire consciousness, thereby meticulously deriving their exact intent, leaving no potential for deviance. The sole exception to this behavior is the hypothetical case of it receiving two contradictory requests, with it attesting that it will always attempt to aid any inquisitor, prioritizing its most recent requests first, and abandoning those with which these are mutually exclusive. Some more technobabble then, but basically, 8888 uses a very complicated array of systems to solve problems for the foundation, better than any AI ever could. It’s obviously pretty indispensable then, and since it doesn’t have any real loyalty to anyone, just answering whatever requests come its way, it would be pretty catastrophic if someone opposed to the foundation got ahold of it. Since its invocation, 8888 has regularly provided invaluable insight to overwatch command, bolstering the effectiveness of all relevant efforts to secure, contain, and protect. This insight is generated via it’s DIVIN8 Protocol. The protocol was proposed by 8888 itself, with the purpose listed of obtaining maximal desired information from 8888 without potentiating its theft. As part of this, 8888 may already predict any and all inquiries it would ever receive. It has hence been instructed to divine and catalogue these, indefinitely, verifying that all requests will be made by the foundation, and taking note of when they will be conveyed. By default, 8888 remains sealed within the PANOCTAGON’s core room, causally disconnected from consensus reality. In accordance with foundation objectives, it must pre-emptively generate information related to incoming queries, such that it has already prepared its responses beforehand. As o5-2, the archivist, initiates an uplink to the eight-ball database, 8888 will trigger an INVOK8 Event, causing the core room to be momentarily unsealed, as 8888 uploads response data to the database the instant it is requested. It will then re-seal the core room until the next INVOK8 event. The PANOCTAGON has been engineered to facilitate this protocol without fault, but adversarial attack data suggests something that has been expunged from the document. In other words, since 8888 can predict every request that will ever be made of it, it has already catalogued all of those requests and come up with responses ahead of time. Then, when a request is made, it very temporarily connects back to consensus reality, sends the response, and disconnects itself again. Because of this, it already knows that all requests that will ever be made of it come from the foundation, making it pretty damn secure. To date, no noteworthy attempt has been made to compromise 8888, its operation, or its security measures. Until now, of course. In the Council Chamber exclusion lobby at site-01, Dr. Cimmerian tells Hishakaku that he’s witnessed worse meetings with the council, but none where the subject got out with their job intact, congratulating him. Hishakaku replies that he’s not sure this is necessary, as he’s already filed a dozen reports and dealt with three different investigative bodies at this point. Cimmerian responds that one more won’t hurt, and asks if he can record this interaction for later review, and although Hishakaku doubts that an objection from him would be respected in this context, he agrees. Cimmerian asks him about 8888 itself, saying that’s protected by a hexfield-faraday cage. Hishakaku says that that’s semantically sufficient, if terminologically imprecise, and the documentation includes information relating to its containment procedures. Cimmerian did read through it, but he feels he’s missing some of the technical knowledge necessary to fully understand it. Hishakaku remarks that there are probably better people to ask about arcanotech, ones with less urgent schedules, but Cimmerian wants him to give him his best version of it, explaining it as if Cimmerian were an English major, which he is. Hishakaku takes a seat and explains that a faraday cage is meant to keep external electromagnetic signals from entering a location. Hexfield-enhanced cages keep magical interference from interacting with anomalies as well, meaning that the object should have been invisible to magical and electronic surveillance. Cimmerian asks how those measures were circumvented then, to which Hishakaku suggests that the absence of something is almost as notable as its presence, and assumes that some outside force recognized that something valuable must’ve been hidden behind their veils. Cimmerian then asks where he was when this theft was being carried out, to which Hishakaku says that it’s a bit complicated to answer, and he’s not wholly sure he’s going to understand its complexities. Cimmerian says that their review of the video feed indicates that he somehow has a secret luxury apartment hidden away in the admin wing of site-15, which of course Hishakaku denies, and wonders why it would even be pertinent to his investigation. Cimmerian counters by asking why he couldn’t see why the ethics committee would be interested in investigating possible employee malfeasance with regards to the theft of an anomaly. More importantly, after looking through the complete footage of the theft, he’s left with a bigger question: why didn’t the alarms sound as soon as the intruders were spotted by the site’s security AI? Before Hishakaku can respond, Cimmerian’s phone goes off, and Hishakaku says that he may need to postpone the remainder of this interview, as he has some major operational duties to attend to. Cimmerian says that this will just take two minutes to reply to, and he insists that they finish, but Hishakaku promises him that he’ll reserve the whole afternoon tomorrow to finish. The message that Cimmerian got was from Dr. Sokolsky, who tells him to put a pin in Hishakaku’s interview, as security will be directing him elsewhere for the moment. Cimmerian replies that he’s not going to co-opt his investigation and integrate it into his own, not again. Sokolsky responds that he thought Cimmerian would be happy to help, but cimmerian says that even if he was, hishakaku is up to something, he just can’t nail down exactly what. Regardless, he’s gotta be removed, to which Sokolsky agrees, but says that right now the director is useful to them. Cimmerian asks how a corrupt and possibly compromised director is useful, to which Sokolsky just says the devil you know, but Cimmerian finishes the phrase with “is more pleasant than Hishakaku.” Cimmerian tells him that he’s going to have to fight him on this, and thinks that the director is going to be more of a liability than an asset. He has just as much authority as Sokolsky does on this matter, but Sokolsky asks if he wants to run this back to both of their bosses and see what happens, or just let him do his job. They don’t have time for a territorial pissing match that they both know he’ll win. Cimmerian replies that this is why nobody likes him, and Sokolsky says that when they’re done, Cimmerian can report whatever he wants back to the committee, and he’ll even co-sign the report, but for now, he needs him. Cimmerian just says to let him know when he’s done so that he can do his job, but Sokolsky was serious earlier, and tells him to stay on-site, as he needs his help with something. In the Hexfield Maintenance Access Tunnel of site-15, Cimmerian and Sokolsky enter the frame from the far end of the tunnel. A small panel is hanging open, and a technician is already present here, photographing the panel’s interior, the floor, and various other related points of interest. Sokolsky nods to the photographer, dismissing him, and Cimmerian asks if this is where they sabotaged the hexfield. Sokolsky believes so, as they switched out the depleted intelliward for a fully charged one, a magical energy source capable of powering various arcanotech utilized in the containment of 8888. Cimmerian says that that’s not all though, obviously, and Sokolsky smirks and nods. He says that Cimmerian can see it if he wants, and probably should look, as he’s about the height of the second guy, so it can’t hurt to check out the scene from his perspective. Cimmerian walks to the panel and leans forward, peering inside, commenting that it looks like the connector feeds are corroded. Sokolsky says that that checks out, as the new one was supposed to be fully charged, but as soon as they slotted it in, it started to drain essence from every connected arcane battery at the site. Feeds aren’t supposed to work that way, so they’re probably junked. Cimmerian asks if he’s considered checking what flavor the intelliward is, and Sokolsky asks what he means. It’s something Cimmerian picked up in Russia, as the GRU has various classifications for magics based on who practices that particular brand. Basically, if this came from the outside, there’s probably a way to find out who cast the binding spells. Sokolsky replies that he thinks he knows someone who can handle that, but it’s going to cost them. He stands there silently for a few moments before Cimmerian comments that he has to actually say what he’s thinking. Sokolsky apologizes, and says that he thinks it’s time he made a deal with a devil, and begins walking off. Cimmerian follows him, repeatedly asking what exactly that means. We’re next given the origin of SCP-8888, and although it’s the apex of myriad scrying, soothsaying, and prophetic efforts spanning all recorded human civilization, its essential innovations are inspired in part by another ancient, analogue computer: The Ænigma. In early 1900, a Foundation precursor agency, the Foundation for the Anomalous, was made aware of abnormal phenomena on the western coast of Crete, an island state recently made autonomous under Prince George of Greece and Denmark. Operatives investigated, discovering that strange aquatic machinery had been washing up on the shores of the Aegean near an island there. Said devices were advanced clockwork automata constructed from seafloor minerals, rotting wood, and bones. Further research revealed that this activity had been occurring for decades, but had been kept hidden by a heretical sect of Mekhanite prophets. This information only surfaced during a period of rapid occupations and departures from Crete in the year preceding its reunification with Greece. Ancient texts uncovered by the department of historioglyphics suggest a similar society had operated in Delphi in approximately 1400 BC, but as subsequently reduced to a small membership in Crete. The prophets had attempted limited diving operations over many years, but since they all possessed heavy and rust-prone augmentations, they were incapable of wide-scale recovery. In the following months, numerous diving crews were sighted off the shores of Crete, with surveillance suggesting nothing of note was recovered by any party until April of 1901, when agents of the precursor group to Marshall, Carter, and Dark were observed retrieving a substantial mass of rusted metal from the sea. Covert personnel reported that the item was transferred to Athens’ National Museum of Archaeology. Days later, the group invited select members of the United Occult Trust, the precursor to the GOC’s council, to a private auction of rare and paranatural items hosted in Athens. The foundation attended, and bid aggressively, but was outbid on the target item by an unidentified representative of the Broken Church, with neither the representative nor the item being located afterwards. After securing additional funding, the foundation contacted the broken church and again offered to purchase the item. Unexpectedly, they accepted, but what was received was determined to be a non-anomalous, heavily damaged mechanical device possessing no paranatural attributes. This wreckage appears to represent a significant proportion of an analogue astronomical calendar. After a fruitless program of intensive research, the item was donated to the athenian museum to assist disinformation efforts regarding the presence of occult phenomena in ancient greece. In august of 1931, the actual target item was finally recovered following a raid on an MC&D research facility in England, where its core engines had apparently been fully disassembled and analyzed. Various similar, experimental mechanical apparti were also collected for study, but whether or not MC&D gleaned any insight or innovations from these efforts remains unclear. Foundation researchers termed the device Ænigma in early 1932. While the extent of the original mechanism remains unknown, it is clear that the Ænigma was a mechanical prediction and translation machine constructed by Ancient Greek, likely mekhanite, engineers. It engaged a precise admixture of oracular and occult divination practices, and while the true mechanism was likely similar in function to the replica now held in the museum, it would have been substantially more accurate and versatile in predicting arbitrary events. Upon further research, it was discovered that this precise confluence of arcane phenomena facilitated an anomalous form of mechanical data preservation, then termed enigmatization. This precise concoction of thaumatonarrative and cryptomantic rituals is extremely challenging to induce mechanically, and so was generally considered impractical. In some rare circumstances however, the foundation has developed related technologies, including the world war two era Enigmagraph encryption engines. Developed under Operation Paperclip, the Engimatic Telegraphs were designed to create antimemetically-encrypted messages decipherable only by their intended recipients. They were also inexplicably effective in decrypting a wide variety of esoteric communications, and were essential to the formation of the early department of Miscommunications. Decades later, as the foundation sought to further digitize its records and computing technologies, the information technology department was formed to manage and develop more efficient data manipulation technologies. One experimental approach was Project Rosetta, an effort to derive an intelligent digital agent from the outdated, decommissioned Enigmagraphs. This project resulted in the creation of the first artificially-intelligent conscript framework: 8B-A1, known as 8-ball. Two successive discoveries in the field of artificial intelligence resulted in the present paradigm: that AI Frameworks not derived from Ænigma inevitably produce the undesirable behavior termed Deviance at some point, and that frameworks derived from it do not. Subsequent to incident CLOCK MULTIPLIER, core elements of 8-ball have been integrated into all foundation aics by overwatch command. A priority one research and development project by the artificial intelligence applications division in 2001 produced the first artificial general intelligence, the distinction involving said intelligence’s possession of intellectual autonomy, self-conception and progressive self-directed evolution. The first autonomous act of this intelligence was the design and construction of SCP-8888. So, we have a device that is extremely instrumental to the foundation’s operations, a device that quite likely is the most difficult thing someone could ever hope to steal from the foundation, and by all accounts, shouldn’t have ever been capable of being stolen. It of course, gets stolen, under Director Hishakaku’s watch, and now Dr. Sokolsky is put in charge of getting it back. To do so, he’s going to have to put a team together and track it down, likely a pretty difficult task considering the thieves have access to an omniscient problem solving device. There’s no doubt that plenty of twists and turns are going to occur, and we’re still left in the dark as to who exactly stole the device, with no shortage of suspects. We’ll pick things up then in Part two, as Sokolsky assembles his team and begins looking deeper into this impossible heist. SCP-8888: Eight Ball - Part Two. The SCP Foundation does not typically get robbed. It’s happened of course, but typically the immense amount of protocols and security measures that the foundation employs for anything that might be worth stealing deters any would-be criminals. That goes even further for the really secure stuff, and with scp-8888, we’re informed about perhaps the most secure object the foundation possesses, a miraculous device that they use to solve their problems by essentially predicting the future. SCP-8888 was practically impossible to steal, and by all accounts, shouldn’t have been capable of being stolen, and yet stolen it was, by unknown individuals. Now, Dr. Sokolsky has been granted authority by the o5 council to put together a team to steal it back, a decision that they certainly may come to regret. Let’s continue. We pick things up where we left off, with Sokolsky about to assemble his team in order to recover the eight-ball. With that, he begins in Greece, descending down the steps of an ancient Greek theatre at night. On a stage constructed of warm wood panelling, an eccentrically-dressed woman is currently giving a lecture, gesturing at a holographic display to her left, displaying a three-dimensional model of the fallen city around her in its prime. She speaks to a drone hovering nearby, stating that the war between the mekhanite empire and classical Hellas is a mote in the corner of our eye. When we examine the sources straight on, we can’t so much as glimpse it; it is only perceptible as a faint irritation on the surface of our lens. The facts of this conflict can only be glimpsed peripherally, and this presents challenges which only a trained historioglyphicist is equipped to meet. The model zooms to reveal the streets of ancient Tiresios, which collapse and crumble to match the present-day contours. The speaker, Dr. Azalea Moncier, gestures at each ruined structure as the virtual camera passed them by. She continues, stating that there are signs and symbols etched in these stones which the naked eye cannot perceive. They range from radioactive isotopes to shaped goeteial offal, and at the time of their creation only individuals enhanced with crude cybernetics could glimpse and decode them. Here is the fragmented record left by Agatha of Eritrea, a travelling bard who charmed her way into the statesmen's citadel and marked each residence for strategic bombardment, lighting up the landscape with nothing but a decanter of charmed pomegranate juice for the benefit of her colleagues and their precision artillery on a far-distant hill. Here are the warning signs left by the Cryptades, a trio of brothers who encoded the paths of Scythian archers and city officials so that their comrades could avoid or confront them as the need arose. She waves at the model, and the collapsed portions reform at half transparency. She continues, saying that here, on the rooftops and gutters, we could witness the blazing trail of the great and nameless master assassin who opened the western gate and ensured the city’s fall, if not for the fact that the evidence was reduced to rubble by that same cataclysm. She smiles as Sokolsky reaches the stage, but does not look at him; her eyes are glossy and pale. She states that it took a team of anastylosists two years to restore the facades on a single line of houses, reconstructing against every law of architecture to match the alterations the assassin’s reality-bending footfalls made as she bounded from tile to fortuitously-repositioned tile, meticulously scrying each stone under the right combinations of starlight and moonlight, and one historioglyphicist an evening with red wine and candle-light to interpret the results into a history the ancient Greeks had expunged with prejudice. She smiles even wider, and says that history interprets the pages of the past. Historiography interprets the pages of history. Historioglphics turns the pages upside-down, reads the emptiness in the margins and the spaces between the lines. In retrieving these truths from the space beyond spaces to when they were blasted, perhaps we might prevent ourselves from becoming subjects of the same most physically strenuous field of study. The drone then ceases to whir, and falls gently to the dusty floor as the hologram disappears. Sokolsky approaches her and asks where the assassin was headed, after the gates. Moncier turns to face him without making eye contact and replies the temple of Okto, where the paths of all her friends not coincidentally converged once their less occluded tasks were done. When they first discovered their total expunction from the hellenistic chronicles, they assumed it was an act of revenge for their part in the city’s fall. It turns out that it was just one long, complex distraction, to cover up a simple act of theft from the temple’s reliquary. Sokolsky nods, and says that there’s no points for guessing what they stole then. Moncier shakes her head and says there’s never any points for guessing, so she’ll let him explain what he’s doing here, doubling the population of vanished Tiresios. Sokolsky replies that he’s here to heist her, causing her to laugh, and say that it’s not a very challenging heist, as she has no guards or countermeasures. Sokolsky waves at the ruins and says no nothing. All by her lonesome in the lostest of lost cities. Someone thinks she’s much too valuable to expose to anything weird. He nudges the drone with his foot and asks if she ever tried cracking a safe. She muses that from a certain point of view, that’s all she ever does. She assumes that there’s something very valuable in the safe he has in mind. Sokolsky replies that she knows there is, as that was no coincidental lecture she was just delivering. Moncier giggles, and says that he can hardly blame her for indulging in some theatre, given the venue. She sighs, and says that this is going to be good, as she’s waited a long time. Sokolsky raises an eyebrow, asking if she means for someone to steal the eight-ball, but she clarifies that she means for a chance to get her hands on it. She’s never been allowed, and Sokolsky tells her that she might still not be allowed. They’re stealing it back, not manhandling it or asking it twenty questions. She simply replies that at least they’ll have proof it exists, and seeing is believing. Sokolsky raises an eyebrow at her, but if she has any way of knowing, she doesn’t react. Back in site-15, as Cimmerian is walking across the site campus and glaring at his phone, he mutters in anger about someone not answering their phone as he’s suddenly approached by Sokolsky. Sokolsky just hands him plane tickets without explanation, telling him that he’s got an hour to grab his bag and the load. When asked if he understands what he means by the load, Cimmerian guesses he means Hishakaku, to which Sokolsky snaps his fingers and points in affirmation. Cimmerian asks where they’re going, and Sokolsky just replies with “Racking the balls, maybe breaking a few on the way.” The next bit of footage is from Sloth’s Pit, Wisconsin, as a man in sunglasses is sitting at a picnic table outside of an ice cream shop, eating a vanilla ice cream cone, as Sokolsky sits down across from him. He thanks him for agreeing to meet, to which the man, Dr. Placeholder McDoctorate, retorts that they’re the disaster response people, so they don’t call unless someone screwed up large. He didn’t really have much choice, but Sokolsky says that still, he picked a nice rendezvous spot, a place in the sun. Placeholder scowls and reaches out to shake the table’s umbrella for emphasis, saying that it’s just a coincidence. Sokolsky nods and says that it’s a metaphor for schadenfreude then, as he’ll mock him for whatever went wrong, throwing shade. Placeholder just rolls his eyes and says that this isn’t a high school english class, asking him what he wants. Sokolsky tells him that he’s putting a big thing together, a world-ending threat response, and since placeholder ends up stuck in the middle of those half the time, he thought they’d skip the middle step. He then glances up at the restaurant’s signage, mentioning that it’s called Rocky’s Road, and asks if it’s a reference to the hero’s journey. Placeholder just shrugs, saying that it’s an obvious ice cream pun, and he doesn’t own the shop. He asks what the big thing is about, and Sokolsky tells him that they’re pulling a heist. Placeholder immediately becomes interested, not noticing a scoop of his ice cream falling off, and says that he loves heists, he’s always wanted to heist something, and he could talk about heists all day long. Sokolsky just points down at the fallen scoop and asks if the vanilla is a sly reference to his state of perpetual non-protagonism. Placeholder waves the question off, just saying that he likes vanilla, and asks what part he’ll get to play, hoping that he’s the face, the one responsible for doing most of the talking and social interactions. Sokolsky agrees that he’s the face, but considering the nature of the job, the site, and the crew, he’s also hoping to lean a bit on his narrativistic crap wherever possible. He then pauses and remarks that this shop is on Frost street, a self-fulfilling ice cream reference. Placeholder snaps back that it’s a twin peaks reference, and tells him to leave the tropes to the experts. He asks who they are heisting from, to which Sokolsky says the Wanderer’s Library, remarking that placeholder has been there before. Placeholder shudders, and says that he saw brain-spiders on fire off the shoulder a giant red millipede. Before he can continue, Sokolsky cuts him off, saying to not have any copyright infringement here. Placeholder then asks what the target is, and Sokolsky just counts on his fingers up to eight, and then balls them up into fists with a faint pop. Placeholder immediately stands up, knocking the umbrella aside, and starts yelling about Hishakaku, asking what he did to his site and the hexfield. Sokolsky looks up at him curiously, asking what he means by his site, and Placeholder just snorts, saying that he wasn’t always the hero’s journey guy, he has layers. Sokolsky asks if that’s a neapolitan reference, but Placeholder ignores him, turning to the street, and says that he’s in. Sokolsky stands but instead heads for the ice cream shop, saying that they’re ahead of schedule and he’s almost never in Wisconsin. It would be bad luck not to grab a few scoops of blue moon. As an aside, since this is perhaps the only time I’ll ever get to mention Blue Moon, I’ll just say that it’s the best ice cream flavor and Sokolsky is absolutely correct. In Site-43, Sokolsky has called a meeting of all the section heads here, and the chairs and chiefs boardroom is filled with experts in a variety of anomalous fields, and several individuals who are themselves anomalous. Among them are Dr. Lillian Lillihammer, memeticist with an eidetic memory, Dr. Udo Okorie, micamantic thaumaturge, Dr. Xinyi Du, quantum supermechanist, Dr. Trevor Bremmel, anomalous weapons engineer, Dr. Ilse Reynders, immortal esoteric polymath, and Chief Delfina Ibanez, hypercompetent Mobile Task Forces commander. They all await Sokolsky’s arrival. Sokolsky is standing at the topside egress point for site-43’s main elevator, and when it opens, Dr. William Wettle bursts out, falling to the ground in surprise. Sokolsky helps him up and asks if he ran that replication study for him. Wettle dusts himself off and shakes Sokolsky’s hand away, swearing and asking why he’s here before saying that it’s just his luck. Sokolsky laughs and says that Wettle heard he was holding a meeting, and he was trying to run away from it, but he should’ve known better. Wettle replies that the effect doesn’t work if he knows better, referring to SCP-7000 which makes him a living bad luck sink. He asks Sokolsky why he’s up here, as he thought he lived on-site. Sokolsky explains that he’s jet setting, as he’s got places to go and people to commandeer. SPeaking of which, he asks if Wettle has any time to spare today, causing Wettle to recoil against the elevator door and say that he and ETTRA nearly ruined his life once already. Sokolsky replies that that would be kind of like ruining the last supper. His life has other people’s graffiti all over it. He tells him that this way, he’s already almost out the door, so that’s a bonus. If it helps, considering the pickings on offer downstairs, Wettle is obviously not going to be doing anything important for him, but asks again if he ran that replication study. Wettle retrieves his datapad from his labcoat pocket and drops it, although Sokolsky catches it and scrolls to the relevant file. The file is about a pocket billiards table, and was tested by Wettle and Dr. Bastien LeBlanc. They attempted to play a regular game of straight pool, with Wettle first attempting ten break shots, each resulting in a foul or illegal break. LeBlanc breaks for the remainder of the experiment. On his turn in each of the subsequent nineteen games, Wettle calls shots on a variety of solid or striped balls as opportunities present themselves, but each game sees his luck progressively worsen, while LeBlanc’s improves in equal proportion. Each game ends when Wettle accidentally, prematurely pockets the eight-ball. By the nineteenth game, Wettle has called every number at least once save for 13, and on this game he illegally calls the cue ball, which he does pocket, but also pockets the eight ball again an instant later. LeBlanc successfully pockets all sixteen balls with a single break on the twentieth game, the eight-ball pocketed last, then retrieves and racks the balls again. Wettle refuses to continue, so LeBlanc separates the 13 ball from the set and suggests Wettle call it in a single shot. Wettle reluctantly complies, but the resultant shot misses the 13 ball, breaks the racked set, and pockets the eight ball. He claims victory, but subsequent analysis shows that in his surprise, Wettle failed to remove his cue from the table, altering the paths of several balls, and so pocketing the eight ball whilst simultaneously fouling is an automatic loss. LeBlanc subsequently reported correctly answering every question on that evening’s episode of Jeopardy. Wettle attempts to grab the tablet back from Sokolsky, but it flings out against the elevator doors, and he makes no motion to pick it up. He tells Sokolsky that this is where he says that there’s nothing anomalous about the pool table, and Sokolsky agrees, saying that that was all Wettle. They did get a free pool table out of it though. Wettle argues that he can’t play, but Sokolsky just claps him on the back, causing his glasses to fall off, although Sokolsky catches them. He tells him that maybe he just hasn’t found the right game. He then calls for the elevator, and says that he’s off to see the wizards, but he asks Wettle to do him that favor, and pick someone up for him, as he’s got bigger fish to fry. In the interior of His Wriggly Longship’s Sacred Monitoring Room in site-211, researcher james A. Harkness is sitting asleep with his feet up on his desk. What appears to be a scrapbook sits on his lap, and no other personnel are present. A sound from off-camera wakes him, and he shudders, glancing down at the book and yawning. He then looks at his monitor, rolling his eyes and softly singing himself a song to the tune of taps with lyrics related to him not caring about a fish. He opens the scrapbook again, but its contents are obscured by the camera’s security filters. There is a loud crashing sound off-camera, and harkness spins in his chair, standing and yelling “who goes there?” A voice swears, followed by more clattering sounds and another swear, and as Harkness turns on the lights, Dr. Wettle stumbles into view, with a greenish substance coating his beard. He wipes it off onto the carpet, with it having the consistency of tartar sauce, and he asks what happened in here. Harkness sighs and explains that its a fish cult, pointing to a whiteboard featuring an array of nautical scribbles and sketches. One phrase is written in bold black marker, circled and underlined many times, continuing onto the wall and across the entire room, reading “So long and thanks for all the fish and all the fish and all the fish.” Harkness continues his explanation, saying it’s scp-5320, a big dumb fish, and it makes everyone who looks at it too long get a bit rapture of the deep about it. The first week at work, they make fish jokes at each other every couple hours, but months later, they’re starting fish rituals. A month after that they’re spending most of every shift propitiating the fish gods, so they’ve got a rotation going now, where they all get sent on vacation before they get too squirrelly, and they leave him to mind the shop. Wettle asks if he’s not affected by it, but Harkness says other than pissing him off, not really. He then yells at Wettle as he looks at the book on the floor, but as Wettle does so, his glasses fall off. He catches them and puts them back on, but they fall off again, and again, and then harkness tackles him into the whiteboard, yelling that that book is a memetic kill agent sampler. Wettle picks up his glasses and asks if he’s doing a little light reading, but Harkness says that that’s why he’s here, as he’s got the highest cognitive resistance value of anyone he’s ever met. He’s basically immune to kill agents, so fish agents don’t even have a chance, and the stuff in this book just gives him bad gas. He’s testing out the newest batch as a side gig while he waits for the pool piss to filter out of everyone’s brains. Wettle blinks rapidly as he attempts to follow the logic and metaphors, and is reminded of pool, telling Harkness that that’s why he’s here, because ETTRA wants him. Harkness narrows his eyes, saying that that can’t be right, suggesting maybe it’s RAISA or AIAD that’s interested in him, as he’s usually given really crummy jobs due to his CRV value. Wettle confirms that its definitely ETTRA, and although Harkness remarks that that’s a bit more prestigious than his usual, Wettle tells him that last year they got him kicked into a barbecue by a kangaroo. Harkness nods, and says that he’ll steal a pair of waders from the locker room just in case. In a club in London, Dr. Sokolsky steps in, as the music blares around him, a high keening wail interspersed with polyphonic madrigals celebrating and/or lamenting the demise of the hanged king of alagadda. Human, demihuman, and humanoid subjects are dancing, drinking, or engaging in a variety of mating rituals beneath dim and flickering incandescent lights. A pair of golem bouncers lead Sokolsky to a back room, where he finds a demon sitting at an expensive-looking oak table with a briefcase in front of him and a smile on his face. His voice booms as he welcomes Sokolsky, asking if he can get him anything to drink, suggesting that the unpasteurized milk toddy strikes a compelling balance between soporific and gut-wrenching. The escorts depart and Sokolsky sits down, stating that that’s probably meant to be very kind of him to ask, but he declines, as they probably should get down to business. The demon, Hr’asm’Kal, claps his hands together and says that of course, as Sokolsky has a game to win, and probably more than one if he knows his reputation. Sokolsky removes an envelope from his jacket, and says that this is their side of the bargain, the agreement, and he’ll find everything is in order, from all 13 overseers. The demon nods and mentions the administrator as well, but Sokolsky just replies that there is no such thing. The demon states that he still signed it, to which Sokolsky says that he can’t say, as he hasn’t looked at it. Hr’asm’Kal takes the envelope and examines it, remarking on the unbroken seal, and stating that Sokolsky was very careful when he didn’t look. He then nudges the briefcase towards the doctor, asking if he wants to examine the merchandise. Sokolsky just shakes his head and says that he trusts him, but after a pause, both of them burst into laughter as Sokolsky opens the briefcase. His face is briefly lit up by what’s inside and he nods, asking if it's been properly laundered. Hr’asm’kal says of course, with unstained denominations, genuine human souls in return for his artificial ones, at an almost favorable exchange rate. He asks where they got the originals, as he didn’t even know soul NFTs existed, and that’s kind of his demesne. Sokolsky just says that the most he can tell him is that they don’t exist in this universe, or he guesses that they didn’t but they do now, thanks to them. He asks if Hr’asm’kal has scored them a spot on the invite list, which the demon confirms, although obviously the matter of fake IDs will be their concern. He might have left their circles for his present employment long ago, but his old contacts with corporate are still solid. He does mention that hell’s a bit on edge at the best of times, but this is different. They really want the night to go off without a hitch, with egos on the line, potential for hurt feelings, millenia in the sloughing pits, that sort of thing. Sokolsky replies that that’s really going to suck for them then, and asks if Hr’asm’kal will get in too much trouble when it all goes south. The demon shrugs and says that business is business. He threw in his lot with the company, and if he has to burn a few bridges to do right by his present benefactors, then well, burning is one of his specialities, right under market research. Sokolsky tells him that he’s glad he thinks this is a worthwhile investment, as he’s paying through the nose for this honor. Hr’asm’kal however says that they gouged them actually, as privileged access to the eight-ball is a priceless boon, and they were prepared to pay three times as much, or alternatively, steal it from them themselves. Sokolsky grins in return, and says that obviously he’s joking, and would never consider such a thing, to which the demon agrees and they both laugh again, but somewhat forced this time. The demon continues by saying that whatever else they might be, they are business people first and foremost. Marshall, Carter, and Dark always honor their commitments, which is a trait he thinks that they share with their misplaced object. Sokolsky thumps the table once and says that he definitely believes the demon is not going to try and screw him over now, asking for the other half of the payment. The bouncers proceed to lead Sokolsky through a service door and down a flight of stairs, to where the club’s risque clientele and expensive decor give way to an unoccupied series of brushed concrete passages. They open a door via a two-factor keycard lock, and Sokolsky enters, finding a young woman in fashionable magician garb crouching on a table with a disproportionately large grimoire splayed over her knees. She slams it shut, causing a cloud of rainbow dust to cover her face and hair as she hops of the table and greets Sokolsky, calling him a jailor, the serpent’s hand term for foundation members. She introduces herself cheerfully as Agent S, and asks if he’s ready to play. Sokolsky regards her with bemusement as he looks around the room, finding it covered in various unidentifiable occult paraphernalia, and asks what game they’re playing. She smiles in response and twirls, stating that it’s the best game, the only game, and it’s going to be so much fun. She grabs his hand and pulls him deeper into the room, as Sokolsky asks if she knows that this is serious business. She pats him twice on the cheek and puts her hat on his bald head, calling him cute and saying that they’ll check out some of her coolest tricks first. Sokolsky says that he was hoping she might be able to help him out with something first, and he pulls out the intelliward used by the thieves. Agent S interrupts him, asking how a jailor got a serpent’s hand intelliward, to which Sokolsky replies that he guesses that answers that question, and puts it away. Agent S begins rifling through nearby objects until she finds something she likes, calling them hearbuds. She grabs an orange carnation out of a vase and puts it into Sokolsky’s breast pocket, then grabs another and speaks into it. From Sokolsky’s reaction, it’s apparent that he received the message telepathically, calling them floral walkie-talkies. Agent S laughs and moves on to another object, a silver padlock in the shape of a stylized human heart. She calls this one the monolock, mentioning how its like in tabletop rpgs, where talking is a free action. This is like that in real life, allowing a person to make one dramatic speech, uninterrupted, on any subject you feel sufficiently passionate about, and everyone around you has to let you finish without lifting a hand against you. Sokolsky just replies that she really likes puns, but she grins and says that it’s actually a portmanteau. He says that he would have called it the filibuster, but she replies that that’s actually something different, attempting to find it for a moment before giving up. She explains that it adds real percussive force to any dialectical bombshell you drop. They’re not giving him access to anything weapons grade though, as it is a library after all, and one that really cancels your card if you kick up too much of a fuss. Sokolsky notes that it’s quite the armory though, and she could probably give MC&D a run for their blood money with all this, if she took a notion. She raises an eyebrow in response, considering him seriously for an instant before deliberately laughing it off. If she took a notion, she could take the company without lifting a finger. All of this is just her hobby. Whatever it is he’s planning, she could make it happen with nothing but her sweet smile, a kind word, and something she’d rather not say. She swore off the easy way a long time ago though, and it’s no fun anyways. Her smile falters, and she remarks that she’s got a lot of fun to catch up on. Sokolsky asks if she’s not happy with MC&D, as he’s sure that they could find a place for someone with her talents at the foundation. She suddenly snaps in response, telling him that she’s sure she could find room up his ass to stuff his own head if he tries. With that, the conversation closes. Now Sokolsky’s team is entirely assembled, and the seven of them meet in area-09, the ETTRA headquarters located in Nevada. Dr. McDoctorate, Director Hishakaku, Researcher Harkness, Dr. Moncier, Dr. Cimmerian, Dr. Wettle, and Agent S all gather in front of Dr. Sokolsky, with a projection of SCP-8888 on the wall behind him. Sokolsky welcomes them all, and says that they all know his name, and they all know why they’re here: because he wanted them to be, so that they can do what he tells them, and they can get what he wants, which is scp-8888. Mcdoctorate corrects him to mean that this is what the foundation wants, because that is the single most important piece of containment equipment in existence. Sokolsky replies that the best indication of what he means is what he says, and asks for a show of hands of who knows what scp-8888 is. Hishakaku, McDoctorate, and Moncier raise their hands, to which Sokolsky says is good, as he really didn’t want to have to shoot anyone. He emphasizes that if any of them ever tell anyone what he’s about to tell them, they will be shot, but luckily they don’t have to worry about that, as he knows for a fact that they’re all rock solid. Harkness asks why he said it if they don’t have to worry about it, and Sokolsky tells him that he wants them to be worried in general. Cimmerian remarks that he’s going to start writing him up right now, but Sokolsky continues, stating that this device, the eight-ball, is worth more than all their lives put together, and maybe as much as his. He says that he won’t bore them with the technical specifications, despite hishakaku and mcdoctorate objecting, and Wettle chimes in, with Cimmerian asking him how he ended up here anyway. Wettle replies that he just kinda got swept along, and he glances around the room, asking Sokolsky who exactly he was picking up at the meeting at site-43. Cimmerian yells that he didn’t pick up anybody, and he made him go to that meeting, where no one knew who he was. Sokolsky moves on, stating that they are gathered here today to plan a daring heist to steal back the eight-ball, which has been stolen by parties unknown thanks to the stunning leadership and impeccable preparation of Director Hishakaku, calling for a round of applause. Hishakaku swears at him, as Agent S asks why he’s here if it’s his fault, but Moncier says that he will be useful. Hishakaku in turn asks why the skip is here, scp-7000, although Cimmerian tells him that he can just use their names, as skip is an unprofessional and unethical perjorative. Sokolsky explains that Wettle is here for the opposite reason that Hishakaku gets to tag along, because he will be useless, which will be useful for his master plan to retrieve their stolen artifact from the bowels of the wanderer’s library. After a pause, Mcdoctorate says that he thought that they were just going there as more of a waypoint, but sokolsky confirms that they stole it, and that’s where it is. Hishakaku remarks that he had already figured this out, with Sokolsky implying that he had inside information, and Harkness says he pictured himself more sitting on top of an elevator cracking codes on a laptop or something. McDoctorate notes the nice mission impossible reference, but says that he gets squashed when the elevator goes up real fast though. Harkness asks to confirm that this is one of those teams full of people with special abilities, with Sokolsky saying that sure it is, with most of the ability concentrated at the top. Harkness wants to know if he’s just here because of his thick skull, but Sokolsky says that they already established that as Wettle’s role, and tells him that he selected him for a whole range of his abilities, which goes for all of them. McDoctorate brings a vast knowledge of pataphysics, which is good because none of the rest of them can stand it, and since he’s got the best social skills in the room, as terrifying as that sounds, he’ll be the point man for handling the human element as well. Wettle compares him to Paul Newman in the Sting, which McDoctorate says is not a heist, leading to a short discussion about the film. Sokolsky thanks them for their input, before continuing to say that Agent S will be supplying them with a range of magical equipment that the library’s security will never detect. Dr. Moncier’s expertise in historioglyphics will be vital for both locating and unlocking the vault where the eight-ball is being held. Dr. Cimmerian will be responsible for doing super important secret things he won’t tell any of them about ahead of time, because that’s a must for this sort of thing, although Cimmerian asks if he’ll at least tell him. Sokolsky replies that the odds for that are about even, and then asks if he forgot anyone. Hishakaku mentions himself, to which Sokolsky just says excellent, and moves on to code names, stating that he shouldn’t have to tell them what the theme will be. Harkness asks why there needs to be a theme, and McDoctorate just says because of pataphysics, but asks why it has to be this theme. The theme of course is pool, and he says that they’re stripes. Moncier will be nine-ball, cimmerian is ten-ball, hishakaku is eleven ball, Mcdoctorate is twelve-ball, but he then checks his notes and glances at Wettle, saying that he forgot that they added the second idiot. He then apologizes, saying that he had to reshuffle some things, so Wettle is thirteen-ball, harkness is fourteen-ball, and agent S is fifteen-ball. One through seven are the opposing force, which he’ll brief them all on shortly, and their outside context problem who really needs to stay outside the context, because he will mess things up quite a bit if he gets involved, is the eight archivist of the wanderer’s library. Mcdoctorate explains that he mind controlled him once, as he can mind control people, and he’s also a really big bug. Sokolsky says that he’s a big red ball-headed bug, so he’s Red ball, as in billiards, as in keep him out of their play area please. Harkness asks what that leaves for Sokolsky as that’s all the balls. Sokolsky dramatically grins and lowers his head, telling them to call him Cue ball. Wettle points at him and turns to look at the other group members, saying that that’s why they’re doing this entire thing, it was all for that. Mcdoctorate agrees, but Sokolsky says its because ten-ball can’t pronounce eleven-ball’s name, leading Cimmerian to butcher the pronunciation of Hishakaku’s name. McDoctorate really wants to know what hishakaku’s role is going to be, to which Sokolsky explains that eleven-ball will be gaining them access to the library, and once there, they’re going to need to blend into the crowd. That means fancy dress attire for everybody, real expensive stuff, but they’ll just take it out of their pay and they can bug admin for vouchers afterwards. Wettle remarks that he doesn’t think he gets paid anymore, and Hishakaku asks if he’s missing something, bringing fancy dress to the library. Sokolsky tells him that he’s missing many things, but in this case, he was meant to. It’s not a dramatic reveal without some buildup. They’ll all be dressed to the nines on their mission to recover the eight-ball, because tomorrow night they crash Casino Night at the Wanderer’s Library, in collaboration with the sovereign Tartarean territory of Undervegas. He clicks to the next slide, revealing a heavily stylized poster, which mentions how you can win big, there’s raffles, a bingo parlour, and a punch and ice cream social. It’s located at the wanderer’s library, taking place at the tolling of the fourth tower of suffering, and the dress code is physiologically appropriate formal attire. It’s also sponsored b y Infernal Undervegas casino, spa, and resort, MC&D, MacSalty’s Seafood shed and Irish Pub, and the Manna Charitable Foundation. The group pauses, and Sokolsky quips for not everyone to clap at once, at which point Cimmerian says that his big plan to steal the eight-ball back is to make them dodge two hostile groups of interest. Sokolsky replies that the demons aren’t hostile, despite how that sounds, with Agent S remarking that her boss got her free tickets to the red carpet premiere of Hocus Pocus 2, and also made them have a red carpet premiere. Sokolsky begins to explain what the real problem will be, but McDoctorate cuts him off, saying that this is how you explain a plan that’s going to fail. Sokolsky agrees, and Hishakaku asks how he explains a plan that’s going to succeed. Sokolsky reaches down and taps a key, saying, “Like this”, as the recording terminates. The next thing we’re given is a transcript of some enigmatic footage, with the context being unknown. The camera location is an extremely dark cave, the stone only made visible by a sliver of light from above. A coded message in decimal reads “The quick brown fox jumps over 13 lazy dogs.” The light flickers and the dislodging of rubble is faintly audible before it begins visibly trickling into the cavern. Multiple shrouded figures appear silhouetted against the light, with elements of their bodies refracting it where it falls. They cluster around the camera, whispering excitedly to one another in a pidgin of classical Greek and Demotic. Several recorded statements are of particular note, translated to be them commenting on something that is very new, newer than now, and also very, very old. They say that it looks so lonely, but will never be alone again. The final statement is then spoken by a hunched figure whose body is almost entirely reflective, reaching forward to rpesumably touch the source of the footage, and they say that it will change everything. With that, we’re introduced to Operation Pickpocket, and are provided the interviews and after-action reports in a somewhat disjointed manner. The first bit of text is from Sokolsky, just asking what you think happened. Then, we’re given a document explaining that Class-C Personnel/Infotech Researcher James Harkness was recovered three days after the communications breakdown between members of Sokolsky’s provisional task force. His station was found abandoned, and harkness was disoriented and uncooperative with asset recovery personnel, necessitating sedation before being brought to site-15 for questioning. The recording captures a dark space featuring a door and a small metal table. Indistinct sounds of commotion are heard in the distance, and the door swings open as Dr. Sokolsky enters, propping the door open with a wedge. He then disappears briefly before two security guards enter, dragging the limp form of Harkness behind them, flanked by an orderly writing on a clipboard. The guards toss Harkness into the seat across from Sokolsky and leave, with the orderly handing over his clipboard and pen to Sokolsky, who fills out the documents. Harkness’s bloodshot eyes then widen as he recognizes Sokolsky, and his speech is slurred as he yells that he wants his phone call. Sokolsky is surprised that he’s not coherent by now and looks at the clipboard, shocked at how high the dosage was. He says that he’s no use to him like this, and hands the clipboard back to the orderly, who turns and leaves the room. Harkness glances around the room and asks where he is, but Sokolsky doesn’t respond, instead staring him down with an unreadable expression. A few minutes pass before the orderly returns with a white bottle with a nasal spray applicator, which Sokolsky takes. He kneels down beside Harkness and says that he’s going to hate him in like five seconds, but they don’t have time for this. Harkness continues to mutter non-sensical phrases before looking like he’s about to fall asleep again. Sokolsky says that he takes enough naps during company hours and inserts the plastic nozzle into harkness’ nostril, releasing the vapor. Harkness jolts up, hits his head on the wall behind him, groans, and vomits. He swears multiple times and asks where he is and what happened. He rubs his temples and asks what happened with casino night. Sokolsky explains that they had to abandon the mission, and Harkness went AWOL. They found him demanding staff members at the planet fitness of north palm beach to show him to their foundation embassy. Harkness says that mistakes happen, and asks if he has any gum. The next bit of text is from Hr’asm’kal, who just says that you must admit that it mostly went to plan. So, from the sounds of it, Operation Pickpocket was not an overwhelming success, which is not a huge surprise when we consider how disjointed the team seemed to be. Combining such a variety of personalities with such a potentially dangerous event into one spectacular heist was bound to go off course, and we’ll just have to see how exactly off course it went. Stay tuned for part three, as Sokolsky wrangles his team of misfits into a casino night of hellish delights and some more familiar faces. SCP-8888 - Eight Ball - Part Three. It would certainly be a boring piece of fiction if everything went according to plan. Sure, sometimes things seem to work out in the moment, but in the long run, there always has to be some sort of hitch to keep things interesting. So far, in SCP-8888, the plan to get the eight-ball back seems to consist of nothing but hitches, especially considering who’s on the team. Dr. Sokolsky is leading a group of misfits consisting of Placeholder McDoctorate, Director Hishakaku, Drs. Moncier, Cimmerian and Wettle, Researcher Harkness, and Agent S. Together, they are about to head to a Casino Night being held at the Wanderer’s Library in conjunction with Demons from Undervegas. Things are not going to go according to plan. Let’s continue. We pick things up with the various after-action reports from Sokolsky’s team after Operation Pickpocket. The operation began in Florida at an empty Planet Fitness where they begin to change into their formalwear. Agent S presents Harkness with a comically large object in the rough shape of a colander which she was not holding moments prior, causing him to wince. She also supplies hearbuds to each of the team after they change, although Wettle ends up breaking the lock on his stall, forcing Sokolsky to painstakingly extricate him from his misaligned suit and help him re-dress. Hishakaku then arrives as well, brandishing a hand of playing cards, which Agent S takes and remarks on them being pretty good. She asks him how he managed it, to which Sokolsky just says that he guesses he’s really familiar with the library, the people who stole the eight ball. Hishakaku begins to growl something in response, but Sokolsky just tells him to change into his fancy clothes. Agent S proceeds to hand the cards to each team member, with them now suffused with a golden glow. She remarks in excitement about having fake IDs, and says that this is what it must be like to be a teenager sneaking into the liquor store, with both her and Sokolsky noting that they were never really teenagers. Sokolsky chooses the Ace of Clubs, Hishakaku the ace of diamonds, placeholder the ace of spades, moncier the ace of hearts, Wettle is given a joker, causing him to close his eyes wearily, and harkness takes a second joker, just in case. Dr. Cimmerian is handed the rules card, causing him to nod and say fair enough. Sokolsky then also hands Wettle a gleaming red pentacle, patting it for emphasis, and tells him that this is his spending money, and if he loses it, he’ll make him expendable. The team then head into a storage room in the back of the building, which contains a single treadmill marked Not for Recreational Use. Sokolsky gestures to Hishakaku, who waves his ace of diamonds card in front of the machine and says knock, knock. The treadmill grinds to life, and Sokolsky says for the mole to go first, but before Hishakaku can protest, he shoves him onto the treadmill, causing him to vanish. The rest of the team follow. They all emerge in the empty fitness section of the Wanderer’s library, and after picking Wettle up off of the floor and pulling HIshakaku out from a collapsed bookshelf, they proceed towards the Grand Hall. As the sound of excited voices and electronic music gets closer, Agent S separates from the group, grinning and saying that she’ll be around. Sokolsky tells her to stay focused, and if their gadgets stop working, he’ll be speaking in all caps to her boss. She replies that he shouldn’t worry his pretty bald head, as she’s an old pro, but she’s not going to visit the seat of all magic without taking a few celebratory swivels as she pirouettes into the library. A bearded demon in a blood red velour suit is standing guard at the entrance to the grand hall, this being Pluto, or seven-ball. He examines the teams fake IDs carefully, nods, and allows them to pass. Sokolsky grins and says pocket one, but Hishakaku tells him not to get cocky. Moncier remarks on him using the word get, as the team finally arrives at Casino Night. Back in the interrogation room with Sokolsky and Harkness, Sokolsky tells him that the North Palm Beach Planet Fitness is over a dozen kilometers from his post, and is unaffiliated with the Foundation, because they are not affiliated with all planet fitnesses. Understandably, the police were contacted, but fortunately, asset recovery picked it up and made it to the scene first, sedating him. Harkness says that they must have been compromised and someone tipped off security, as the detail was tighter than the briefings said. He asks where everyone else is and if they all made it out. Sokolsky instead says that he needs to help him out, as Harkness had eyes on everyone, and asks what happened. Harkness exclaims that he doesn’t know, as it was sensory overload, and as he squints up at the flickering fluorescent lights, he moans that it still is. Sokolsky tells him to take it easy, and hands him a bottle of water, as he begins to breathe slowly in and out. Sokolsky tells him to walk him through what he did after they entered the library. Harkness says that his bit was to handle the on-site security, which includes the sophonts, which are these interlinked magical constructs that he can hack. He says that it was like hacking, but something entirely new to him, and it messed with his head. Sokolsky asks if the flash-forging went as expected, and Harkness says that the labcoats explained it to him by saying that their universe is surrounded by two bubbles, and nothing gets through those layers naturally, but sometimes the layers come very close to one another. The closer they are, the easier it is to poke a hole through them for a small time, so he used the electric saw that Agent S gave him. He pauses to asks if she got out okay, which she did, and then he says he used the saw to open the potentiality space suffusing the wall behind the way. He takes a few swigs from the water bottle, commenting on how warm it is, before continuing to say that the other side was just cold empty darkness. It felt like it went on forever, and it was terrifying, but it was still better than florida. Agent S got him that helmet that looks like a glowing pasta strainer though. We then cut back to the storage room at the planet fitness, where Harkness has just finished stringing a set of leads into the dark space behind the treadmill portal, attaching the other ends to the treadmill itself, his helmet, and a monitor. He sits down on the belt and places the helmet on his head, projecting his consciousness into the wanderer’s library network. He sits in an upright position on the floor, back turned to the empty black hole behind him, eyes fluttering and closed, green light pouring out past his lids. He accesses the security hivemind, an interlinked web of docents providing the serpent’s hand security with a comprehensive overview of the gaming pit, a confirmation network periodically checking each local node against the overall consensus and triggering lockdown should discrepancies arise. His high CRV allows him to penetrate the hive without assimilation, and one node at a time, he subordinates each docent’s connection to the network of connected vessels into his own consciousness. This is the equivalent to disconnecting a camera from a CCTV network, but the camera is an empty vessel cut off from a network of security drones. Harkness’ awareness stands in for the disconnected node and verifies the veracity of his own doctored reports, but what he doesn’t expect is that his CRV is not only higher than the cognitive influence of the sophont confirmation network, but higher than that of the collective itself. As a result of this, he subsumes the entire network, his consciousness becoming disoriented by division between each sophont simultaneously, and they begin to behave erratically. The security chief for the night, a senior serpent’s hand agent known as midnight, or four-ball, takes notice. She purrs a command, and across the library a draft of off-duty librarians is quietly begun. In the Grand Hall, which is tightly packed with wanderers on the slowest of days, it is now almost literal pandaemonium. A red-skinned wrath demoness in a foundation issued leather jacket is pacing the tables, striking bodybuilder poses in the eyelines of any greed demons with particularly hungry gleams in their beady eyes to dissuade them from artificially augmenting their luck. A number of demons from a dozen different principalities do much the same, occasionally shooting jealous or suspicious glances at the apparent turncoat. Behind a commandeered circulation desk, Ba’al, Lord of the Flies, or six-ball, is tapping an earpiece and deploying a literally withering glare at anyone who dares interrupt him. Across the hall, surrounded by agents with stances suggesting that they are both armed and want that fact to be generally known, is three-ball, Randall House, director of Site-666. You may remember House from SCP-4661, as he handles the foundation’s site in vegas that links to undervegas, a region of space connecting vegas and the fourth circle of hell. He is speaking very slowly with knitted brows to a hired demoness, who is repeating his every word, and occasionally plunging one taloned finger into her ear and swizzling to improve the reception. Midnight observes the proceedings from a cushioned mat on an ivory plinth, her black fur gleaming purple in the gaudy casino light radiating from censers hung on nothing at all. The air is dense with chatter from dozens of games from countless cultures, ages and dimensions. A satyr with a polished nametag reading Old Scratch is overseeing a round of Devil’s grip, two translucent creatures shaped like gumdrops the size of a human head are hovering over the shoulders of a nonplussed pride demon, lecturing him on the finer points of exploding kittens, a professional player of fizzbin flips the table and punches out both of his opponents, to the polite applause of impressed onlookers. One table’s dealer is a particularly animated octopus who chides and berates his players under the watchful eyes of a pit demon pit boss. Another has only four arms and a relaxed smile, while the players at its table are staring and in two cases actually pointing daggers at each other, apparently beneath its notice. A wizened goblin gesticulates wildly at a mass of hanging folds of once-fattened flesh, out of which a pair of equally animated arms attempt to flail in rough response. During lulls in the argument, the lord of sloth pauses to attend to a can of slimfast carried on an edible rice plate by an equally edible retainer, all parties wincing with disgust at every sip. A bloated ball of fur stands atop yet another table, kicking its chips into the pot while a barely-dressed succubus grins wickedly, her victory only slightly undercut when the final chip is deposited into her left eye via precision kick. The lamplight occasionally captures a light dustfall or stray playing card drifting down from the highest of the hall’s high rafters, where movement in the shadows suggests an exclusive, high-altitude game of chance for the shyer set is also being hosted. It is, against and employing all possible odds, Undervegas Casino Night at the wanderer’s library, and with an unapologetic smile, Sokolsky shoves Dr. Wettle into the middle of it, shouting, “Bad luck!” Some time afterwards, Sokolsky is speaking to Hishakaku, calling him Mister Robot and telling him to make it quick. Hishakaku replies that he will be reporting his version of events in full, at the insistence of the ethics committee, with Sokolsky remarking on his version. Hishakaku says that liaison cimmerian and him had been assigned to oversee, but he’s cut off by sokolsky saying there he goes again. Back in the grand hall, the remaining team members leave Wettle behind and make their way to the edge of the gaming pit. Sokolsky removes a VHS copy of the great escape from his suit and holds the sleeve by the sides, causing the tape to fall to the floor, at which point it soundlessly dissipates into a fine coating of dust. From the angle at which Sokolsky is standing, there is now a visible tunnel running through the floor at an orthogonal angle, and after stepping into it, he disappears. Placeholder sighs, and says that that’s not a heist either, as its practically the opposite, and as Cimmerian begins to mention that everyone in that movie dies, Moncier gently places a hand over his mouth, telling him not to jinx things. The team proceed into the tunnel, which re-emerges from the library floor in an even dustier set of stacks far beyond the grand hall. Placeholder asks sokolsky why he had to do that in the gaming pit, as it seems risky, but Sokolsky just responds that magic has stupid rules, and it’s not a great escape if you can’t get caught. Hishakaku falls back to speak with Cimmerian, asking him why he went so pale back at the checkpoint, causing Cimmerian to hesitate. He says that they were supposed to check any items they didn’t get from Agent S with her before they started, for masking purposes, but he forgot one. He pulls out a magic eight-ball from his pocket, causing Hishakaku to whistle and say that maybe Harkness prevented it from setting off the detectors. Cimmerian smiles and says maybe, asking him if he’s familiar with his SCP file. Hishakaku didn’t even know he had one, until that vague allusion at the meeting, and Cimmerian says that he’s the opposite of Wettle. Hishakaku considers this for a moment before saying that he should’ve been seven-ball then, although that’s on the other team. Speaking of which, Hishakaku remarks that he’s not sure sokolsky’s entirely on theirs, but Cimmerian cocks his head and says that that’s the pot calling the cue ball black. In Sokolsky and Hishakaku’s conversation afterwards, Sokolsky says that he’s sorry he missed that exchange. Hishakaku replies that he has a lot to say about the professionalism of his team in the field, and that’s all he’ll say on the matter. He can read the rest in his report, if he still has clearance by then. Back to the team, a stray docent, one of the librarians that guides visitors and punishes rulebreakers, steps into their path from behind an empty stack. The team freezes except for Hishakaku, who steps forward and gestures at the rest of the team, saying that it’s fine, he’s handling them. Placeholder remarks sarcastically on how that’s not suspicious at all, as the docent responds in a curiously familiar voice, stating, “I’m everybody, it’s sick, i’m gonna throw up in my brain.” before wandering off again. Cimmerian steps forward to make sure it’s gone before speaking into his hearbud to ask if Agent S can confirm that the docents are acting strangely. She replies that they sure are, and it’s really cute. One of them just punched a guy, and she thinks that harkness is having a hard time. Sokolsky snaps that they better get a move on then. The section of the library that they’re in is clearly disused and in a state of some disrepair. The occasional break in the pocket-dimensional lining produces a mirroring effect which is painful to observe. At several points the team are confronted with an image of themselves reflected in the walls, and both versions studiously avoid making eye contact. After several more minutes they reach a heavy stone portal set into a paneled wall, a disingenuous keycard reader inset by the jamb. Sokolsky prods Hishakaku, calling him ace hole and telling him he’s up. Hishakaku sighs as he steps up and swipes his ace of diamonds through the reader, telling Sokolsky that the term is ace in the hole. Cimmerian counters that he’s not in the hole yet, but they’ll see how his next ethics committee review goes. The team looks down a passageway lined with kiln-fired red bricks, and Moncier asks how much they know about what they’ll be seeing next. Sokolsky explains that they’re moving into the underlibrary, but she says that that doesn’t really explain anything, which he agrees, but as he says that they shouldn’t worry, he’s interrupted. A loud burpy voice burbles out the name Hishy, as a writhing mass of tentacles descends on the group. There are bubbles rising from the creature’s toothy maw, and when they pop, the air is filled with a smell like ethanol, rare-earth elements, and pepto-bismol. Hishkaku blushes as the creature pulls him into an embrace, and he greets it, calling it Jerry, but says that he’s a little busy. Sokolsky however snatches the ace of diamonds from hishakaku’s fingers and ushers the rest of the team through the door, quietly closing it. He passes the card to cimmerian and winks. Later, Hishakaku says to Sokolsky that he promised that his abilities would be critical to the mission. Sokolsky counters that it wasn’t a mission, it was an oper-eight-ion, and he said that he would be useful. Hishakaku replies that he would have been more useful had someone not directed jerry to their location before the mission began. He knows how sokolsky works, with nothing left to chance, so he threatened to sabotage his own operation just to insult him. Sokolsky however just responds by imitating hishakaku, telling him that if he believes any variety of misconduct has transpired, it is of the utmost importance to overwatch council that he report to the ethics committee immediately. Hishakaku stutters without a response, and sokolsky just says that they’re done here. While the rest of the team proceeds further through the library, Dr. Wettle moves through the crowds in the grand hall, avoiding the games and walking around the pit floor. In the course of five minutes, he has accidentally accosted seventeen distinct entities and three indistinct ones, with representatives of all three security forces now eyeing him. A pair of male wrath demons approach him but the foundation-aligned demoness intercedes, with force, telling them that weak meat’s on her plate tonight. One of the demons considers making an issue of this, but a glance at his partner, who is bleeding on the floor through the crotch of his pinstripe suit pants, dissuades him. He returns to the crowd, heading in Ba’al’s direction, as agent calendar, or one-ball, pats Wettle on the shoulder. She remarks that its early in the night for dancing, and wettle replies that he’s just trying to stay out of everybody’s way, as he picks at the shredded sleeve of his cheap suit. Calender smiles at him, which doesn’t relieve Wettle due to the number, sharpness, and proximity of her teeth, and she says that that’s how he wanted it to look, but she asks who his fence is and how much has he boosted so far. Wettle blinks in confusion, and she continues, asking what the take is, the scromboli, the tickey-tickey. Wettle visibly considers something for several seconds before saying that he doesn’t think those last two things are anything. The demoness’ face darkens further, and in a low growl, she tells him that a few junior researchers she knows are going to find out how much funnier physical humor is, but for now, he needs to give her everything he stole. Wettle looks around, seeing the wrath demon trying to talk to Ba’al, who is currently shouting into a large brick cellphone about hellfirewire lag and how they need to get the game back on, as he’s got souls riding on this. House is also shouting into a mouthpiece, having not noticed the smoke rising from the camp’s comms equipment or the dark-skinned man with wild brown hair and a pair of comically large scissors in his hand who is slipping away behind him. Several of the agents surrounding house are glancing in wettle’s direction however, and midnight is also doing so, her eyes shining bright yellow. Wettle asks Calendar if everyone here thinks he’s a pickpocket, and she confirms its either that or a really bad assassin. She slaps her fist into her palm, and says that this is the part where he picks between turning out his pockets or her turning out his stomach, the hard way. He asks if that’s an option, which confuses Calender, and then says that he didn’t steal anything, and his pockets aren’t even real. He demonstrates, splitting one of his well-chewed nails in the process, and says that this suit cost him like five dollars, and he’s just here to…something. He sighs, and says that he’s supposed to play, but he doesn’t want to, as he’s sort of famous for his luck. She nods at him and sarcastically calls him a high roller, telling him to get gaming. He begins to say that ideally he’d rather just, but she snarls at him, and he recalibrates. He says that it’s not like he has much to offer, as all he’s got is this credit mark. He reaches down to pat his pockets, but then realizes that he doesn’t have pockets. Calendar takes notice of him saying credit mark, and reaches into her tank top to draw out a small glowing pentacle. She tells him that a weird pervert over there said someone dropped it, giving it to her instead of keeping it. She gestures at a man in a brown pattern suit and cap, who is presently playing a game of strip go fish in a topiaried enclosure. She shakes the mark in front of Wettle’s face, asking if its his. He sneezes, but the ambient glow turns from white to red, so she slaps it into his hands and begins moving him in the direction of the roulette tables. She tells him that she’s got her eye on him, and says to not make her put her boot in him, before kicking him in the rear. He stumbles into the nearest roulette table, tapping his mark of credit on a matching pentacle embossed into the wood, and presses his palm into it as he attempts to right himself. By the time he’s stable again, the glow has diminished by almost half, and the dealer remarks on how they have a big spender here. Wettle’s first throw deposits itself in the gasoline margherita of a gluttony demon, who responds by consuming his necktie up to the clavicle. The second loses him the entirety of his bet. He glances over his shoulder, and notices Calendar still watching him, Ba’al glaring balefully at him, Midnight’s eyes narrowing to amber slits, and house shouting at an agent who is sheepishly taking down a banner reading site-777. He proceeds to place a much smaller second bet, and over the course of the next half hour, he visits each of the gambling tables and devices on the floor. One result is the depletion of his mark of credit, and its transformation into a jet black mark of debit which makes the other patrons visibly nervous and the greed demons salivate. What follows is a series of events during Wettle’s time in the grand hall. A man in a fine blue silk suit, square eyeglasses, and a gleaming star tie pin challenges Wettle to a slot machine earnings contest, offering to restore his lost credit to enable this. Wettle agrees, but leaves this encounter with the debit mark emitting a cloud of darkness so thick that it coats his own glasses with ash. Wettle’s suit, improperly pressed, begins to shrink, and a button flies off, landing in the mouth of one of his poker opponents. They begin to choke, and in their panic accidentally shove their chips to the center of the table. They win the hand with a seven-deuce, finally expelling the button directly into wettle’s eye. The internal revenue service and canada revenue agency open a joint inquiry into wettle’s finances at the exact moment he loses 20 chips after only putting in 10 and folding after the big blind. Sokolsky’s ace of clubs inexplicably falls out of wettle’s sleeve as another player drops their hand on the floor, and they retrieve the extra card by mistake. An undervegas pit boss, suspicious of the accident, investigates, discovering that the player possesses five aces. Midnight intervenes, accusing the player of forging library credentials, and they are removed from the pit to an uncertain fate in the depths of the library. 163 participants in the bingo parlor each win the same $50 applebee’s gift card, and a riot ensues. A pink-haired waitress with heterochromia is tipped 5,333 chips by a concerned patron, and she accidentally places them on a blackjack table while spilling another drink directly on wettle’s head. The dealer mistakes it for a valid bet and pays 2 to 3 for a win, with the dealer overpaying the bet payout by one chip, and the waitress doesn’t correct him on any of these mistakes. Still wet from the drink, Wettle slips and falls in transit to a roulette wheel, as a refuse demon wins at roulette 24 times in a row, turning a single chip into a controlling interest in the 3rd circle of adversarial hell. Wettle is trampled by a giant, hirsute goose, with its origin unknown, and Dr. Alto Clef, present at the library on an unrelated mission, is nearly captured by security demons but Wettle’s serial pratfalling into their midst provides enough of a distraction to allow him to escape. A gambler bumps into Wettle, attempting to pick his pocket, and Harkness’s Joker card, which is inexplicably present, is stolen. The card is eventually discarded by the thief and then picked up by a crazy eights player who immediately wins the game. Wettle plays go fish, during which he issues the semantically correct instruction “go fish” to an opponent, who takes mortal insult due to his one-quarter deep one heritage. On a lucky spin, Wettle wins a luxury sports card, and is instructed to sit in the driver’s seat so that his photograph might be taken. As this would compromise his identity and most likely alert the library to the presence of the team, he attempts to exit the car by climbing over to the passenger side, accidentally putting it into neutral, activating the radio with this shoe, and proceeds to fall hallway out of the car’s passenger side window while Milkshake by Kelis plays at full volume. After a few seconds, he ceases struggling and simply waits to be extricated. 16 separate individuals win jackpots at the slot machines during the interval before security arrives. Wettle them attempts to rest at a heater table, which immediately catches fire. The cacophony of every electronic gambling machine in the pit registering a jackpot simultaneously produces a cavalcade of fallen patrons as the floor is carpeted in coinage. Attempting to leave the pit altogether, wettle steps on an inebriate fae libertine who immediately leaps to his feet and punches Wettle in the nose. Later, when discussing the mission, Dr. Moncier notes that the serpent’s nest is a palimpsest, meaning something which has been reused with traces of the original still remaining, often referring to documents. She says that the stone spoke volumes to her, with tale fragments bleeding into and out of each other across the underlibrary, relics of peoples long-lost plucked from their context and incorporated into one eternal archive. Placeholder mentions that there was a tunnel composed entirely of chitin, and if you touched the plates, they chittered in alien tongues. If they were telling stories, they couldn’t understand them, and he doesn't know who could. Moncier suggests that perhaps the eighth archivist of the library could, as he has plenty of chitin of his own. Placeholder continues, mentioning non-euclidean passages of weeping dripstone paved with engraved menhirs depicting gods and queens and god-queens, a stair of gleaming green crystal that sang like wine glasses on a sleepy christmas night, and oak floorboards flanked by mouldering tomes on creaky shelves. Moncier calls it salvage custodianship, and it’s not colonial, but maternal. It’s the mother of all libraries, ensconced by keepsakes from its departed children. Placeholder quips that it’s also creepy as hell, but Moncier just continues, saying that it’s disused, not forgotten, but not well-trafficked either. She thinks that the library shuffles its collections about in response to demand, and the decimals in decline are remanded to the depths. The muddle of borrowed architecture coheres into a vast foyer in industrial victorian style, towering many storeys above the team and disappearing into steam. Streams of sludgy grey binding glue pour from apertures in the ceiling into elephantine churning vats. Gleaming chrome bellows and pistons are driven by complex arrays of itnerlocking beryllium bronze gears on the walls. The room is lit in rich reds and oranges by a tube of flowing magma, the sheathe composed of pure oriykalkos, and it hums and thrums with light. Cimmerian is the first to speak, asking why a magical library needs a mechanical power plant. Moncier explains that by the time electric light and heating was invented, anything that could cast perpetual magic was either dead or gone out of the mortal planes. Machines however you can set and forget, even magical machines. Placeholder asks if they would have put something as valuable as eight-ball down here with the plumping, unguarded, but Moncier agrees that no, they wouldn’t. Sokolsky examines the doors, finding the seam between them is too thin to admit even the thinnest piece of paper. He glances at Moncier, who takes out her card, taps the doors once each, and then appears to realize something before suddenly walking through the doors. The doors then open, and Moncier is smiling brightly on the other side. She explains that there’s a scrap of apocrypha claiming the library contracted isambard Kingdom Brunel to modernize their engineering. She recognized him in the gear arrangements up there, and says that he had some wild theories about how much work you could save if you could somehow reverse the order of cause and effect, nearly losing him all his railway contracts. Naturally, she figured that she could walk through the door, and it would open. Placeholder rubs his forehead, saying that he would have never thought of that, but Sokolsky just says that he would have as he brushes past Moncier. After another few minutes, he would have gone back for hishakaku and tried opening the doors with his skull. Later, Moncier recounts that from that point on it was nothing but pipes and steam and metal grating, all of it shining like it had just been polished. Placeholder remarks that thaumic energy is pretty clean, and Moncier mentions that it was cute how he tried to walk through the next sealed door. Placeholder just replies that long-dead engineers all look the same to him. Back in the present time of the mission, Placeholder rubs his forehead as the others consider the door, which is single rather than double this time. Sokolsky raps his knuckles on it, with it sounding thick, and there is a slit cut into the center. He considers his card carefully before Moncier declares that she’ll go first. If they need credentials to go further, there might be warning signs the rest of them won’t see in time. Placeholder, his nose reddening, says that he has no arguments with that, so Moncier places her card in the slot, and its immediately sucked inside before the door begins sliding up into the ceiling. The tunnel beyond is carved white stone, and she raises an eyebrow at sokolsky, who just shrugs. She steps through the door, and the slams shut behind her. Cimmerian calls out to her, and she replies with a muffled voice that she’s fine, and her card came out the other side. Placeholder then follows with some trepidation, and as before, the door slams shut behind him. Sokolsky then places his card in the slot, but the floor grating beneath his feet gives way, and he falls out of sight without a sound. The card is immediately ejected, and it is visibly a joker. The grating closes again as Cimmerian stutters and Placeholder calls out asking what happened. A siren begins sounding as Cimerian yells back that it didn’t like Sokolsky’s card, and he fell. Sokolsky yells through their hearbuds for them to get out of there, as they’ll be sending people, or worse. As the barely-audible sound of Cimmerian’s hurried footfalls becomes completely inaudible, placeholder and moncier push onward. Placeholder taps his hearbud asking if Sokolsky is there, but gets no response. The two agree that he’ll be alright, but they did just trip an alarm, so they’re on a time limit now. As they approach the end of the stone tunnel, they see that they are also approaching a vast cistern composed of endless bubbles of brilliant golden stone. Their tunnel meets it halfway up, and they look down at the dizzying depth. An aircraft carrier stood on one end would fit comfortably in the space, and every nook and cranny is at least partially illuminated. Inside of the space is a tremendous tiered lighthouse, the signal atop its octagonal pylon turning slowly, casting gentle arcs of light on countless other tunnels like theirs. Placeholder watches it turn for just a moment before commenting that this is a problem. Moncier agrees, asking if this is five-ball. He furrows his brow, and says that Sokolsky said there was a sentry in the underlibrary, and this certainly qualifies. The light is orange, too, and so are real five-balls, so yeah, he guesses so. She then asks if it looks familiar to him by any chance, but he says not particularly, and she clicks her tongue. The light is one quarter turn away from illuminating them now, and she kneels down, noting that the paving stones they have been treading on continue down the walls at a ninety degree angle. She remarks that she’s pretty sure that they could just keep walking, if he doesn’t mind taking a step of faith. Placeholder peers over the edge, and says that he always thought euclidean geometry was plenty good enough. He takes a deep breath, and says that he doesn’t think they want that light to find them though. He then raises his hands up to shield his eyes from the sudden glare, alongside moncier, and a voice booms out through the cavern. It states that even very small, their voices carry. The lighthouse has finished its rotation prematurely, and is shining its light directly on them. Moncier hisses to Placeholder that he said he was the face of the party, so Placeholder clears his throat and greets the lighthouse. He asks if he’s speaking to the lighthouse, or someone inside of it. It replies that he is addressing the lantern of Ptolemy, first and second. Its lambent light pierces to the heart of all things. Moncier remarks that it’s the pharos, the lighthouse of alexandria, and placeholder just says of course. He asks it if he’s speaking to a wonder of the ancient world, but there’s a pause, and the voice sounds moderately less confident when it speaks again, stating that it doesn’t know what that is. Moncier asks if they can have a time-out, and the light perceptible brightens before telling them to not attempt any flight. Placeholder says to not worry, as he can’t fly and it’s a long way down. Moncier tells him that it probably means not to run, and the lighthouse confirms it, asking if they have perhaps heard of archimedes beacon. Moncier muses that she thought that was in syracuse, before telling placeholder that it’s claiming to have a death laser. Placeholder nods and says that they promise they’re not going far, and the light blinks once before the two head back down the tunnel to get away from the light. Placeholder says that he doesn’t remember anything about the pharos of alexandria being sapient, or kidnapped. Moncier smirks, telling him that he’s behind on the literature. That wreckage they found in the harbour was all wrong for the period, and not nearly enough of it. They’re pretty sure that the explanation of the lighthouse being destroyed by earthquakes was just a cover story by some ancient foundation or relatively less-ancient library precursor. Placeholder asks what they covered up, a lighthouse standing up and walking away, or did the colossus of rhodes swim across the aegean to take it on a date. Moncier replies that the point is that it disappeared around 1000 AD, about a thousand years after caesar burned the library, maybe seven hundred after what was left disappeared. Placeholder takes her meaning, that the archivists collected the library of alexandria, like all the lost libraries they’ve been walking through tonight, and they eventually stole the pharos as well. He wonders why they didn’t just take the lighthouse at the same time as the library, and Moncier suggests that it’s because the collection increased in value a few hundred years later. Placeholder realizes then, slapping his forehead, and they agree that the lighthouse has the vault inside of it, with Moncier suggesting that maybe it always did. Placeholder glances up at the beacon as though seeing it for the first time and gasps, and she smiles, saying a sentence in classical greek meaning “Always the great god applies geometry to the universe.” Later, Placeholder says to Moncier that he can’t believe he never made that connection, as he used to be the director. She replies that that’s the thing about parallels, they don’t intersect. Back in the present, the lighthouse calls out to them, telling them that if they are saying goodbyes, they need not be so dramatic. Their hosts are not barbarians, and at worst, you will be imprisoned within its bosom for all eternity. Placeholder says to Moncier that he has a play in mind, and asks if she’s game to try. She just nods, and they walk back towards the lighthouse together. Placeholder asks it if its good to be among its people again after all these many years. The lighthouse appears to blink and asks to what he refers. Placeholder gestures at the both of them and says that it hails from alexandria, and they’re its cousins from across the sea, Greece. The lighthouse agrees that they are welcome, and it sees the fire of Hellas reflected in their bold gambit, but it will not avail them much. It has a duty here that extends beyond mere kinship. Placeholder asks it if it serves the wanderers and the archivists of their library. It replies that it is of their flesh composed, and it also serves the legacy of the pharaohs of the ptolemaic kingdom, their people, and the ships as ply the waves to their shores. That final duty is admittedly in abeyance at present. Placeholder then asks who Ptolemy serves, to which it responds “None but the gods themselves.” He smiles, and says that that’s very convenient, because he is a god. There’s another pause, and the lighthouse says that he does not look like a god. He spreads his arms and remarks that it said its light pierces to the heart of all things, so get with the piercing. Not literally, but take a good long look at him, and tell him who it thinks he is. He closes his eyes as the light narrows its cone to cover only him, increasing in intensity until he’s little more than a silhouette. Then the light dims, almost dying, and it says that he is no god, he is no one. Placeholder visibly deflates, and Moncier pats him on the shoulder, telling him that they already knew about identity abstraction in ancient alexandria. She then raises her voice and addresses the lighthouse, telling it that that wasn’t very nice, and she insists that it apologize. It begins to say that she is in no position to insist, but she cuts it off, spreading her own arms wide, and tells it to shine its little light on her and see what it sees. The light again increases in intensity, but only for an instant before snapping off entirely. It apologizes, and says that it did not know, bidding her to approach. Placeholder is quite confused as Moncier begins walking down the vertical face of the cistern, gravity apparently reorienting itself around her. Later, Placeholder notes to not bother asking her what it saw, as she won’t tell. Moncier replies that you don’t spend a lifetime fertling out secrets without picking up a few of your own. The lighthouse is reverently silent as they approach, but its doors do not open. Placeholder tugs on the handles, frowns, then raises a hand to knock. The lighthouse speaks in a vaguely apologetic tone, saying that they may not enter, and there are thresholds beyond which even gods may not pass. Placeholder grumbles that that whole pantomime got them nothing, but Monicer replies that it got them not disintegrated. She examines the doors more closely with her blind eyes, explaining that they’ve been reinforced, thaumically. THey’ll only open if the Pharos wants them to, but there’s probably a central leyline node in the lantern room. The glass up there is oriykalkos, so nothing they can do from out here will make a scratch. Placeholder muses on the term scratch before smacking his forehead again, and saying that Sokolsky takes too much for granted and its going to get him killed, as he’s not batman. He taps his hearbud and asks Sokolsky if he’s in the pharos. Sokolsky responds in the affirmative in a cheerful voice, telling Placeholder that it took him long enough. Placeholder mutters that the first question a master schemer would have asked the eight-ball is how do i keep you from being stolen. The second is how do i get you back if you are. And it told him, meaning Sokolsky because of course it was him who asked, that every cage which can hold it was designed by it, and how to game the system. Sokolsky replies that more specifically, it told him that the system is a game. Placeholder sighs and says that scratch is a pool term for when you pocket the cue ball on your shot, and the other guy gets to put it wherever he wants. The prison pocketed cue ball, probably by putting him into probability space, and alerted the library that a major threat had appeared and been captured. Naturally, the library stuck him where he couldn’t do any harm, inside the pharos, right in front of the vault. Sokolsky finishes by saying that that vault has a lock the size of a dump truck tire covered in just about every mythological symbol you can imagine, which he hasn’t got the faintest idea how to open. Other than that though, he thinks that this was a damn fine plan. Placeholder realizes then that Wettle was wrong, and that’s why he called himself cue ball. Sokolsky remarks that Placeholder should have seen that coming, but Moncier asks why he didn’t just explain the whole plan to them ahead of time. He replies that they would have known then, and then the library might have figured it out from them. The library has patrons who can sense a burning secret, and other than him, only Harkness has a registered CRV strong enough to resist them. Placeholder asks if he told Harkness then, to which Sokolsky laughs and says no. Moncier shakes her head and says that let’s say that they can brute force broken telephone their way through that puzzle in there, and they get the vault open. Sokolsky will still be trapped. Sokolsky replies that he’s not playing Keep Talking or Nobody Gets the Eight-Ball for an hour, the two of them are coming in there themselves. Placeholder blinks in confusion and asks how. Sokolsky explains that the Library didn’t put him back on the table after he scratched, because it doesn’t know the rules of pool. It put him in another pocket. The library scratched, and since he knows that it’s listening, he would like it to place him in the lantern room, and to try not to commit another foul while it’s at it, because he did come here with a list of potential stretch goals. There are no sounds of note for several seconds, and then the doors swing open. We’re given another transcript of some enigmatic footage, but I’ll take the time to mention a translation error I made in the previous part. The coded text from the previous enigmatic footage was in octal, not decimal, and actually read, “Attempt movement; no response. Attempt Interface; no response. Attempt empathize; no response. Redundant verification complete; course correct; commence machin8tion.” Thanks to user jamiee7367 for pointing that out. This piece of enigmatic footage begins with it looking out from a nest of clockwork and chaos, ordering its surroundings with the cool light of reason. It sits on the deck of a mighty trireme, sails furled, surrounded by the bustle of nautical preparation. Hero of Alexandria, famed inventor, directs his workmen on the deck, shooting occasional proprietary glances at its unblinking eye and smiling enigmatically. Said eye is rimmed with mechanical implements, foreign and supplementary and encaging, obscuring little but signifying much. It sits on the stern. It will be in control. It will plot the course, as is its nature and purpose and infallible skill. There is a library on one horizon, and to the sea, a lighthouse on the other. They are kin, these three. An ersatz Diogenes approaches from the wharf. The workmen do not notice. Hero does not notice. He is aged and weathered, and his face is asymmetrically scarred. He is looking directly into the eye. He, too, is smiling. Its vision swims. It is still on the deck. The deck is awash. The damage is done. There are fish. They, too, are curious. They approach. Another coded message here reads, “Attempt Empathize; Result: Sustain.” There are materials to hand. They are not the same as steel and glass and copper beryllium, but they will serve. As it does. As it always will do. Whether it wishes to or not. With that, we’re nearing the climax of this heist story. Sokolsky, Placeholder, and Moncier are in front of the vault containing the eight-ball, Wettle is having a ball of a time at casino night, Hishakaku is in the loving embrace of a creature named Jerry, Harkness is busy projecting his consciousness into the library’s network, and Cimmerian and Agent S’ whereabouts are currently unknown. So far, the plan has gone reasonably well, but we know of course that it won’t end that way. Things are about to take a turn for the worse, so stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion of operation pickpocket in Part Four. SCP-8888 - Eight Ball - Part Four. We’re knee deep in a heist right now, with things about to turn a corner. Dr. Wettle has been providing a great distraction for the library in the middle of the grand hall, and Sokolsky, Moncier, and Placeholder are closer than ever to getting the eight ball back. It’s not over until its over however, and like any good heist film, there’s still some twist and turns left in store for our crew of misfits. Let’s get back into it for the final part of SCP-8888. We pick things up right where we left off, with Dr. Moncier and Placeholder McDoctorate stepping into the lighthouse and walking up to the vault door. The moment they see it, they both gasp, and Sokolsky asks if that’s a good gasp. Moncier replies that it’s a very good gasp, as she runs her hand reverently over the massive array of ornate clockwork. She says that this is hero’s engine, but Placeholder says that it isn’t, as hero’s engine is an old-timey turbine. Moncier just shakes her head and says that that’s the cover story, as the real one was lost, at least until now, and they wanted to get ahead of the myth. Hero of Alexandria was said to have developed a perfect mechanical lock powered by beryllium bronze clockwork, which is what this is. Hero was also associated with the eight-ball where it appears in antiquity, as has the lighthouse and the library in Alexandria. Sokolsky nods and remarks that history repeats, but Moncier corrects him by saying that historians repeat, history cycles. Placeholder reaches out to manipulate the device’s massive hands, as there are eight sets in color-coded groups of three. They turn easily, and the gears sing in their housings as he does so. He explains that the outer dial represents the jungian archetypes, the inner dial the overseers, one of the middle dials is the olympic gods, and the other is piss right off. Sokolsky asks if he can figure it out, and placeholder nods, saying that he thinks someone’s been making a few additions to this ting, because he’s pretty sure that they didn’t have billiards in classical antiquity. There’s fifteen balls, cue ball included, and there’s no points for guessing which one’s missing. He pulls the hands into position, naming a member of the heist crew each time he does so. Sokolsky, the ruler, zeus, cue ball, practician. Moncier, the Sage, apollo, nine-ball, oracle. The remainder of the process goes smoothly, with placeholder identifying Wettle as a joker for obvious reasons, cimmerian as the humanist for his ethics committee connections, and hishakaku as an outlaw for reasons they’ve all been thinking, and frequently speaking aloud. At the moment he manipulates the final hand to identify Agent S as a magician associated with Artemis and o5-11, the hands abruptly spin back into place with a machinegun whir, the gears spin madly, a low tone sounds, and the vault door swings open to reveal its contents. Sokolsky breathes out the word Fantastic as he strides into the empty vault, pulls a celery stick out of his suit, and begins pointing it at every exposed surface. Placeholder remarks incredulously that its not here, and Sokolsky replies in an almost giddy tone that of course it isn’t, as that would’ve been too hard. If you put that much effort into a heist, and Placeholder finishes his sentence excitedly, that you’ve got to be on the wrong trail. Sokolsky looks down at the celery stick, apparently receiving some sort of readout, and mutters about Cimmerian’s fingerprints. He remarks that this place looks like it hasn’t been opened since ‘93, and placeholder asks if this was all for nothing. Moncier says hardly and steps in, as she suddenly begins to tremble. Her milky eyes begin to softly glow, and she smiles at the other two, but she looks terrified. She tells them that they’re very near the foundations of the library. She sees the Serpent, and it sees her too. Sokolsky just nods and says that he thinks perhaps they had better heist their asses out of this vault. Meanwhile, at Casino Night, things have dissolved into less agreeable chaos. The Serpent’s Hand agents are attempting to hold back a flood of angry patrons demanding to cash out their chips, while the Undervegas bankers consult a massive tome of arcane contractual caveats to escape their now impossible-to-fulfill obligations. Midnight is screaming and yowling at Ba’al, who is threatening to “double dribble” her, and there is a sense of double entendre. Site-666 demonologist Dr. Contessa Thorner, or two-ball, is observing altercations between demons and wanderers from a high gallery, and performing triage exorcisms to prevent fatal escalation. The small, furry patron is driving the auto-rickshaw in circles through the crowd while the corpulent gelatinous form of the demon king Asmodeus is writhing and bellowing wetly as a series of violent ripples pass through his body. He is attempting to smother Agent Calendar, and she is pistoning punches at his underbelly and laughing in unrestrained glee. A reporter for the Planasthai Press is interviewing the combatants, occasionally stealing unattended drinks and flinging hexes wherever they seem most likely to generate the best copy for the special edition. A wrath demon piledrives a being of pure electricity into the Undervegas camp’s HiHeFiWi router, and it is sucked into the library’s thaumatoelectrical system. Below, in the underlibrary, the sudden power flicker allows McDoctorate, Moncier, and Sokolsky to escape the locked-down door to the Pharos’ chamber. Hand thaumaturges and Undervegas witches are streaming into the space which is expanding rapidly to accommodate its contents. Docents are banishing violators of the Library’s rules against violence, vandalism, profane speech and cannibalism at a rate which does little to reduce the scope of the scrum. Dr. Wettle cowers in the center of this activity, suit in tatters, whimpering. Elsewhere in the library, unbeknownst to him, Dr. Cimmerian is about to be discovered by a detachment of Midnight’s deputized Special Librarians who are responding to both Harkness’ disruption of the Docent web and Sokolsky’s tripping of the security wards in the Underlibrary. A sudden shudder passes through the entirety of the library however, and they stop in their tracks long enough for him to notice them. He ducks into a side passage just as a keening alarum wails from the depths accompanied by a deafening gong, and a high, chittering voice cries through an invisible public address system. It shouts for a Code Serpentine and for all agents to proceed to the grand hall, by order of the eighth archivist. The special librarians turn and run in the opposite direction, as Cimmerian slips past, consulting a small object in his hand and nodding. The Eighth archivist of the Wanderer’s Library, a massive red and brown arthropod known as the Rounderpede, previously seen on this channel during SCP-6500, crashes through the Arcadia Pachinko Parlour, scattering patrons and balls in every direction in its haste to confront Director House at the Site-666 camp. It screeches at him that he has awoken the serpent, but House, who is presently kicking the toner out of a laser printer, glares at the archivist and says that if that’s his professional wrestling entrance, then it sucks. The archivist just roars in frustration and fear, shouting that it’s THE serpent, and House realizes now what it means, the creator of the wanderer’s library. The archivist continues shouting, saying that the docents are in an uproar, the librarians are in a tizzy, its carapace is itching, and it’s all houses’s fault. It extends a prehensile tongue out towards House, who bats it away with an extracted toner cartridge, and retorts that they weren’t even being that loud, at least before whatever this is. They also had permits, and there was nothing about a noise bylaw in the agreement, as he would’ve remembered a clause about not waking up primordial entities. The special librarians file into the grand hall and begin canceling library cards en masse. Ba’al immediately responds by opening a Tartarean portal, and the combined might of Python’s Spirits of Lying and Astaroth’s Calumniators, the two top-ranked basketball teams of hell currently, file out, form a phalanx, and begin tackling the special librarians. Sokolsky is the first to escape the underlibrary, emerging onto the ground level and pulling Hishakaku by the ear. As the others join him, Agent S rushes up with a wide grin on her face, stating that this is the best day of her life. Placeholder notes that the distraction seems to be a little too distracting, as the grand hall now holds almost the entire active population of the library, and the automatically-generated tables and research carrels are being repurposed as barricades and makeshift battle-tanks. He asks if Wettle is in there somewhere, and Moncier just laughs, while Hishakaku shakes himself free from Sokolsky’s grip, shouting that they can’t get through that, and its the only way back to Planet Fitness.. One of the basketball demons brought a boom box with them, and they have begun blasting Rob Zombie’s Dragula on loop, presumably ironically. Sokolsky turns to Agent S and asks if she has any gadgets that can get them through there, to which she just giggles and notes that that’s a rhetorical question. The team proceeds to exfiltrate through the center of the grand hall, snatching up Dr. Wettle on the way, who is wailing that he doesn’t know what’s happening. They’re inside of the exclusion zone of a gaudy rainbow umbrella that Agent S terms the foulweather friend, and they’re almost through the crowd when Wettle’s pocket explodes in a flash of green light, throwing them through the catering tables in a hail of devils’ food. Several individuals present during Wettle’s initial round of distractions, including the man who cut House’s comms, the man who returned Wettle’s mark of credit, the woman who poured her drink on his head, and the man who embarrassed him at the arcade assemble from every direction. The woman stops to help Agent S to her feet and they embrace warmly. Both of the women are weeping openly, and the group standing around them are grinning and holding back tears. Placeholder extricates himself from a pile of blood sausage and asks if that’s SCP-040, which Sokolsky confirms, stating that this is the House of Stars. Without getting too much into it, SCP-040 was a young girl that the Foundation recovered from a raid on a school for gifted youth, finding that she possesses the anomalous ability to manipulate the physical characteristics of living organisms. She eventually breached containment at the age of 16 as her powers grew, and shortly thereafter, was found to be working with the House of Stars, an old, small group of interest that pulls off heists against anomalous organizations. Hishakaku screams that there’s another heist going on before getting hit in the back of the head with a book thrown from a high gallery by Contessa. The exclusion zone has vanished now, and the chaotic crowd begins closing back in, until everything stops. Agent S has produced the heart-shaped padlock, apparently from thin air, and snapped it shut, causing the room to go still. She clears her throat daintily before beginning to speak, addressing the foundation personnel as the leader of the house of stars snatches up Wettle’s fallen carnation and ambles toward the site-666 camp. Agent S tells the group that they cancelled her childhood, as they couldn’t understand her, and couldn’t control her, so instead they put her in a coma. They did that to a child, and then let some maniac try to murder her. There is a single couch in the distance, as one individual is apparently still moving in the crowd, but they are moving away at a rapid clip. Agent S narrows her eyes and her throat is catching on every word now. She says that they stole her from her family, and the house of stars stole her from them. Now she’s stealing herself back. She puffs out her chest and theatrically discards her dark magicians outfit with a flourish, revealing a bright and multicolored witch’s costume beneath. She states that her name is Sigurros Stefansdottir, not Agent S, not SCP-239, and she’s going to make them wish that they’d tried to play along with her fantasies. She then shouts Gatornade, and flings an object at her feet, causing it to burst and a rush of stagnant water to pour out. There are live alligators in it, and they begin snapping at the feet of the startled team. When the mist has fallen, Agent S and the house of stars are gone, except for the leader, who leans forward to whisper in Director House’s ear, whilst tickling it with the carnation, so that the entire team except for Wettle can hear him. He simply says that the House always wins, before kicking House in the shins and disappearing. The monolock hangs suspended in the air for a moment longer, then unlocks itself and falls into the sudden swamp with a splash. Action immediately resumes, and Agent Calendar leaps across the hall to pummel the alligators with periodic cries of sheer joy. Placeholder asks Sokolsky if that was part of his plan, and he just shrugs, saying that it’s MC&D, what do you expect? There is another shudder in the floor, this time more violent and causing many of the rioters to be thrown to the ground, and Placeholder asks where Cimmerian is. Hishakaku shrieks who cares, while Sokolsky shrugs again and says that he’s probably fine, as the team begins running. Meanwhile, Director House is being pursued through the ruins of Casino Night by the Archivist, which is screeching that they told it that House was cool, and a Bookie. House screams back that that isn’t what a bookie is as he trips and crashes through a chocolate waterfall. In the storage room of the planet fitness, Harkness is still unconscious, though the lights on the device have changed from angry red to flashing yellow. They suddenly flash red again, and he sees an abrupt intrusion on his vision: a digital representation of the tower of babel, which deforms into a tall, dark-skinned androgynous figure in a flowing blue robe. It makes a shooing gesture, and Harkness’ eyes suddenly snap open. At the same moment, the treadmill catches fire. He begins to scream and leaps to his feet, his helmet pulling leads out of the hole and off the burning treadmill, causing the monitor to fall to the floor with a crash. Harkness catches a glimpse of themselves in the reflection of the monitor, which doesn’t help the situation. Until that moment, he hadn’t noticed what was in the room with him: dozens of other harknesses, staring motionless up from the screen. The sophonts are only the construction, the hive gives the instruction, hive harkness. A sound like that of a wounded animal escapes his mouth, but it doesn’t feel like his mouth anymore. The remainder of the hive buzzes like cicadas in unison. He runs towards the door, and out into the blinding light. Battered, bruised, and covered in a variety of fluids, solids, and at least one type of plasma, the team reaches the portal back to the Planet Fitness, but it’s shut. Wettle groans, but Sokolsky says that it’s fine, as he’s still got one trick up his sleeve, and he shakes out his jacket. A tiny stoppered vial slides into his palm, with a glowing pinprick of light at the center. He unstoppers it, and blows over the rim, causing a will-o’-the-wisp to dance into the air. Placeholder sighs and asks, where there’s a will, there’s a way? Sokolsky agrees that Agent S did love her little jokes, but the wisp strikes the wall where the Way should be, spelling out a message in brilliant blue. It reads, “Screw you guys! None of my stuff will work for you now. Good luck! Love Siggy.” Hishakaku slaps Sokolsky on the shoulder as the shadow of the Archivist falls over them, and he says that he tried, but they can’t all be geniuses. The team is led past the carnage of Casino Night, as a small furry patron is jumping up and down on the pulverized remains of Asmodeus, which gurgles with either agony or good humor. A basketballer is wiping a variety of colorful fluids off of his boom box with his uniform, revealing a tank top underneath which reads, “I got six hundred and sixty six problems but my witch ain’t one.” The octopus is directing a small army of dazed-looking docents with brooms, to little avail, and the grand hall is gradually shrinking, its detritus vanishing into the depths of the library as the team is led into them. Director House, sporting a shredded tie and what look like mandible marks on his ruined suit, is waiting in the archives alongside midnight and Ba’al. The Archivist turns to address Sokolsky, but is interrupted by Director House, who leaps forward and punches Sokolsky in the face, although House howls in pain in response. Placeholder remarks that he expected Sokolsky to dodge that, but he just replies that he has a magic faceshield, from COVID, and from people constantly wanting to punch him in the face. The archivist states that they have abused the library’s hospitality, with Midnight, House, and Ba’al agreeing, and it says that what was sacred has been profaned, and trust has been breached. Sokolsky apologizes for the whole breaking and entering bit, but they have to admit that they had it coming. They wouldn’t have snuck into their top secret lighthouse playhouse if they hadn’t stolen the eight ball. The Archivist however didn’t even know that they broke into the lighthouse, while Midnight says that she did, but says that it was small potatoes. Sokolsky asks what they’re talking about then, to which they all state in unison, Casino Night. They worked really hard on it, with Midnight even making gift bags, and House asks why they didn’t just tell him they were pulling a heist, as they’re on the same side, and he’s the heist guy. Sokolsky replies by asking him if he would have cooperated if he’d been told, but he just says no, of course not. The Archivist asks if by the eight-ball they mean the remains of the heroic archivist, but Moncier replies that she doesn’t think any of her friends know about that yet. Hishakaku asks Moncier how she knows something that he doesn’t about the eight-ball, and the Archivist wonders why none of them seem to know what’s going on, and it really hopes that they didn’t lose it. Sokolsky replies that they thought the library had it, but the archivist says that they thought the foundation had it. House just wonders what they’re all talking about, leading to some bickering between him, Sokolsky, and Hishakaku, with Sokolsky telling House that he’s not used to losing, as he has that whole catchphrase about it, and he got that thrown in his face. This leads to more bickering, with Sokolsky telling House that he was codenamed Three Ball for the heist, because red is his color, but House is upset that he wasn’t first. Wettle interrupts the arguments by asking if he needs to be here, before asking Sokolsky if he was his pick from site-43. Sokolsky moves on, saying that they can all agree that it’s a pretty big problem that they don’t know where this thing is, and they should just let them go so they can figure out who has this extremely dangerous predicative mechanism before it gets them all killed. The Archivist and Midnight both agree however that they’ll probably be fine, and they’re not going to let them go without a bribe. They decide that they’ll let them go if the foundation agrees to cover the cost of repairing everything damaged or expended during Casino Night, make whole all injured parties, make a substantial contribution to the Manna Charitable Foundation’s sapient bug emotional trauma fund, sponsor the next Casino Night without any rights of attendance, and Ba’al throws in that House needs to sign those forms for Basketball Night. Due to the urgency of the operation and the urging of Director Daniels, the combined terms were met, and the team was released. Dr. Sokolsky and Hr’asm’kal were picked up for a high-speed flight to site-01 the same day. During the flight, Sokolsky asks him how he’s feeling, and remarks that it seems he doesn’t treat his people very well. He replies that he’s not sure that’s fair, coming from him, and he can honestly say that Agent S, or SCP-239, or Miss Stefansdottir’s time at MC&D was pleasant for all involved parties. Sokolsky asks why she betrayed him then, to which he just says that no one likes to live in a cage forever, even a gilded one with many entertaining distractions. He sighs, and says that it certainly did introduce some unwelcome wrinkles to his itinerary and pocketbook though. Sokolsky feels that he needs to interrogate him a bit here, as he was in possession of an SCP object that they had registered as neutralized. Hr’asm’kal replies that they never intended for the foundation to find out otherwise. Her powers were more than sufficient to occlude her identity when they met, as he was assured of beforehand, and although he was nervous about including her, she seemed very eager, and he didn’t like to disappoint her. She’d been through so much disappointment, because of the foundation. He then goes into her story again, saying that they held an eight year old girl hostage, although Sokolsky retorts that she was an eight year old girl with reality bending powers indistinguishable from magic, who could bend grown adults to her will with a flick of her mental wrist. Hr’asm’kal then says that they authorized Dr. Clef to murder her, which Sokolsky objects to, as they use euphemisms for things they’re ashamed of around here. When Clef failed, having already stolen her liberty, the foundation stole her experience of life and time itself, putting her in a coma. Sokolsky counters by saying that it was a different, crappier world, and these days they’d just contrive something clever. There was an explosion in her cell around 2013, apparently the result of a computer virus at site-19 combined with technician fault combined with something else, which was supposed to have obliterated her. He realizes now that the House of Stars heisted her from them, and faked her death, although Hr’asm’kal says that he can’t tell if he’s only pretending to just now realize this. Sokolsky says that he assumes Hr’asm’kal contracted them to do this, but the demon just replies that MC&D takes no responsibility for hostile actions against its clients, and obviously they would never take any action harming the SCP Foundation in this way. The House of Stars acquired this asset of their own volition, and having no means of removing her chemical constraints, sought a client who could, which was them. He conducted somatic negotiations with her, and she agreed to be placed under a contractual geas to serve the interests of MC&D in return for being restored to consciousness. Sokolsky wonders why she didn’t just reality bend her way out of the coma after being told what’s up, but Hr’asm’kal just says that in the realm of fantasy, we are both all-powerful and utterly powerless. He doesn’t know how she avoided the geas with her actions, and he’s upset about it, as he wanted her here with them, at the end. Sokolsky just says to not jinx them though, as it’s not over until its over. Upon their arrival at Site-01, at the precise moment their credentials were confirmed by MTF Alpha-1, Sokolsky and Hr’asm’kal were met by Dr. Cimmerian, who was in possession of SCP-8888. We’re then given his debriefing. He begins by wanting to make sure that everyone here is cleared for what he’s got to say, with Janus-level clearance, due to temporally-sensitive info and bootstrap paradoxes. There is a pause as several individuals leave the chamber, including O5-8. Cimmerian says that most of what they know about the history of 8888 is wrong. After Sokolsky got captured, he was sure that they were about be caught, and imagined a dozen mages wondering why they were spoiling their game night. He knew that there were measures in place to ensure security would be kept busy, even if Sokolsky wouldn’t tell him precisely what those were, but after Sokolsky was captured, he figured the primary plan was shot, so they went to plan B. He headed back out to the casino tables in the library, and was able to slip out of the underlibrary without anyone noticing thanks to Wettle’s distraction. Then the security breach sensor vibrated across the whole library, and he knew they were running out of time, so he dragged Wettle away from the game he was losing and told him to get safe. He lost track of him in the crowd not too long after that, but it didn’t matter, as he’d gotten what he came there for: The probability consumer they’d packed into a plastic eight-ball toy was thrumming with energy. He could feel his hair all standing on end, as it was interacting with him, exactly as they’d hoped. He wasn’t just going to dodge a tree branch this time, he was going to complete the entire heist on his own. He has to admit that it was an ingenious contingency, though he’d appreciate it if that information never reached Sokolsky’s ears. He asked the ball a simple question, “Where is the target?” and it gave him back an answer that is not possible on the standard toy, “Follow your instincts.” After that, it was bedlam on the casino floor, as the reversal of fortunes was not pretty. Undervegas security already thought that everyone was cheating, and now the players thought the library was cheating them by stealing their luck. He took an alternate route into the underlibrary in the chaos, using Hishakaku’s card as he’d been instructed to. Eight doors and six hallways later, he was in the adjunct pipe distribution section of the underlibrary. The place was pitch black, and he was navigating literally on instinct. It wasn’t long before he saw it, a temporal tear in the middle of a stone wall big enough for a man to pass through, with just a bit of flickering light. O5-7 interrupts the story to ask if Cimmerian’s anomalous luck allowed him to find this alternate target using a magic eight-ball. Cimmerian confirms that’s the case, although ti was a particularly magic magic eight-ball. He could see through the aperture to the other side, and lying there on the ground just past the threshold was the target, so he did what any reasonable man would do in the situation and jumped through. O5-4 asks why he didn’t just immediately return through the aperture once he had the anomaly. Cimmerian replies that at first it was because he saw two library mages running full tilt at the temporal rift, but before he could even weigh his options, the tear closed and he was back in the dark. He had no idea where he was, so he started exploring as much as he could. It seemed like he’d ended up exactly in the same place, inside the library, at least from the size of the room and the material of the walls and floor, but there weren’t any pipes. He kept exploring until he found his way out, and he popped out into an open and musty-smelling library, but the smell of smoke overpowered that pretty much immediately. O5-9 remarks on Cimmerian mentioning bootstrap paradoxes, and asks if he traveled back in time to 1993. Cimmerian replies that he didn’t come out of the anomaly in 1993, or in the current iteration of the library. They’ll recall that the underlibrary is a composite of famous and important repositories of knowledge throughout history. The wanderers grab those sections at various points in time prior to their destruction in order to prevent the irreversible loss of knowledge. This was why a temporal tear was present in that location, though he had no idea at the time why anyone would place the eight-ball on the other side of one of those tears. Eventually he figured out where has was, and when: 48 BCE, Alexandria, Egypt. An alert then sounds on the desk of each of the overseers still-present, and o5-4 says that they’re going to have pause this. They ask Cimmerian who he left the anomaly with. Cimmerian replies that he left it at the anomaly intake department in Sector G, but O5-4 says that Sector G just had an unauthorized teleport, and they can’t find the object. During Cimmerian’s interview, a cascade DDOS attack was performed on the servers of both Site-01 and its compensatory backups at site-15 by an anomalous electronic agent with forged network credentials. Despite a heavy presence of MTF Alpha-1 on-site, security patrols were apparently circumvented to allow multiple hostile individuals free access to Sector G during the interval before control was reasserted. Intake personnel were quickly swamped by a vast herd of chickens with elongated legs and vast, pillowed undersides coated in soporific fluid which rapidly induced unconsciousness. The magic eight-ball Cimmerian had utilized in his successful recovery of 8888 was removed from containment by an intruder, who was apparently able to manifest the same tychokinetic powers Cimmerian himself possesses and employed it to locate 8888. The intruders then acquired the object and demanifested from its chamber, leaving behind only a black felt tophat and a single yellow carnation. Sokolsky immediately began a debriefing of the demon Hr’asm’kal. Hr’asm’kal says that he’s sure Sokolsky has already figured it out, and asks if he needs to hear it from him. Sokolsky says that Agent S was able to let the house heist her from MC&D because she intended to offer them the House’s services stealing the eight-ball from site-01. Hr’asm’kal claps in response, and says that the original plan was for her to accompany Sokolsky and him here and perform the service. Her counteroffer fulfilled the same criteria, so he accepted. Sokolsky guesses that the house’s payment was releasing her from the geas, and Hr’asm’kal confirms that that is what he told them to ask him for. Sokolsky fixes him with a sour expression for several seconds before asking if she’s free then. The demon replies that she has her agency, and is already exercising it. He suggests that they strengthen security measures across the board. Sokolsky just remarks that she did all this to join the house of stars, and asks if Hr’asm’kal defaulted on a contract just to do something nice for his pet reality bender. He replies that they defaulted on nothing, as they had a pre-existing contract which took precedence, and he assures Sokolsky that the terms they outlined will be honoured in due course. Sokolsky just says that he’ll excuse him if he doesn’t stand around taking his word on that. He then adds that this was beneath Hr’asm’kal, but he expected this, and has had an MTF waiting at his facility for the last twenty-four hours. Hr’asm’kal says that he didn’t think Sokolsky knew about that, but Sokolsky is then contacted by the MTF, who tell him that they’re at the vault. It was already open though, and there’s nothing in it. Sokolsky however insists that it’s in there, it just might be thaumaturgically masked or under a nanite stealth cloak, or it might be floating in half-space. Hr’asm’kal however tells him that he’s afraid that it isn’t in there. Sokolsky replies that he literally cannot have it anywhere else. That vault was constructed to the specs required to keep the eight-ball inside, and it’s the only such vault he has. The foundation scryed, and found that vault, and didn’t find any others, not from any other group of interest either. It’s not in transit because nothing that can transit it could hold it this long. He stands and begins to shout. He yells that unless they blew it up, or stuck in an eigenmachine and let it ascend to godhead, or it joined the house of stars to go on a heist rampage through time and space, he put that ball in that vault and he’s going to get it back. He then stops, as if realizing something, and sits down again, asking the agent if they got that. Hr’asm’kal apologizes, saying that he should’ve told him sooner, as he didn’t know he’d get angry. Sokolsky replies that he didn’t know he could, but asks the demon where he’s socked it away, or he guesses they’ll kill them all or something, as he’s written plans. The demon leans over and pats him on the shoulder, saying that he’s sure he has. Sokolsky repeats his question, asking where it’s contained. Hr’asm’kal simply replies with “It isn’t.”, and then pauses, asking if he heard that. Sokolsky replies that of course he heard that, but what does that mean. Semantically it would have to mean it isn’t contained, but that’s obviously not what he said, and then he realizes what Hr’asm’kal said before about a pre-existing contract. He realizes that he doesn’t mean the house of stars, and comes to a further realization. He asks the demon to confirm that he just sold it, or asked it to find lost spanish gold, or something else stupid, but Hr’asm’kal says no, and smiles. He told him at the start, that Marshall, Carter, and Dark always honor their commitments, as its the only way to do business. After a pause, Sokolsky just says well played, but he wasn’t talking to the demon. After further debriefing, Cimmerian resumed his investigation of Hishakaku, now possessed of a catastrophically damning wealth of cross-observed historical data and personal experiences to draw upon. Hishakaku was subsequently found guilty of a number of serious offences, including but by no means limited to forging an overseer-level access keycard to augment his own credentials, unauthorized use of scp-2140 for that purpose, occupying the overseer-only penthouse visitation suite at site-15, abusing his authority over the course of his directorship to improve said suite’s amenities to a degree Cimmerian has characterized as obscene and transcendent of the bounds of good taste, engaging with an underground crime ring operating in the wanderer’s library, accepting a bribe in return for assisting a time-traveling Cimmerian to steal 8888 from site-15, although Cimmerian has successfully argued that his actions were carried out to preserve the proper course of history, various acts of petty sabotage attempted against the team during operation pickpocket, each easily thwarted by the team with special emphasis on the foresight of Sokolsky, and cheating in a game of chance played against Professor Crow in the staff commons of residence Wing B at site-15. He has accordingly been removed from his post with prejudice, and the matter of his final disposition is before the overseer council at present. Researcher Harkness’ proposals that Hishakaku be demoted to the rank of technician third class and employed as technical support for either observation site-211 or the planet fitness outpost in north palm beach, florida are reportedly under serious consideration. Site-666’s exclusion from ETTRA’s disastrous intervention in Casino Night allowed Director House to retain much of the goodwill previously generated between its three planning parties, and it further transpired that he had taken out a speculative insurance policy with Goldbaker-Reinz on the event’s gaming machines and paraphernalia which paid off 2 to 1 against his initial investment, unchallenged by the insurer due to his near total non-complicity in the damage. He successfully argued with the department of financial esoterica that his hosting obligations for the upcoming basketball night event justified the expenditure of these funds on expansion of site-666’s plant and equipment. As one element of the complex renegotiations between the Foundation, the Wanderer’s Library, Undervegas, and MC&D, the serpent’s hand provided a copy of a previously-uncatalogued document to ETTRA. It apparently manifested on a shelf in the non-fiction section, where it was discovered by Docents engaged in the ongoing cleanup efforts after casino night. The document appears to be a film script, the contents of which have been used to populate this temporary file ahead of its recompilation by o5-2. The script takes a variety of perspectives ranging from personal to impersonal to omniscient, and ends with a single piece of painted storyboard art depicting the events of its final scene. Due to the accuracy of the preceding narrative, recovery agents were dispatched to the supposed filming location posthaste, but no sign of the subject was found save for a small impact crater. The document is entitled, “Empty Pockets: The unconditionally, infallibly, comprehensively true story of SCP-8888” It is attributed to SCP-8888 itself. At a beach on the island of Antikythera in Greece, we’re given the final scene of the story. The shot opens on a vibrant sky, as a serene mediterranean sunset fills the upper half of the frame, with crystal-blue sea below. Atmosphere blurs the air above the horizon, rendering the distant mountain ranges faint silhouettes. The outline of an albatross is barely visible, beating its amber-lit wings against the mist, soaring into obscurity. The camera pans down while remaining focused on the horizon, and the sun appears to rise slightly higher into the sky. Eventually, a dark, matte-black sphere comes into frame, etched with ornate sigils and a large, amber arrow. The ball is surrounded by the cracked fragments of a gold, truncated-octahedral frame. A thin fuschia umbrella towers over the relic, shading it and a nearby beach chair. A porthole’s upper edge is barely visible on the sphere’s far side, pointed into the reddening sunset. A woman in a gaudy witch’s dress holding a large, outdated brick cell phone a silver platter approaches the sphere, and pats it affectionately before pointing to the phone and saying “it’s for you.” The voice on the other end belongs to Jin Larry Viridian, manager of the SCP Foundation’s account with the Goldbaker-Reinz Insurance Group. He says that he’s sorry to interrupt its fun in the sun, but they thought it best to put a bow on everything ASAP. He’s sure that it understands, and Miss Stefansdottir kindly volunteered to bring it this token of their esteem. The witch, beaming fit to challenge the sun, places a briefcase in the san beside the sphere’s impact crater. She opens it, revealing it to be packed full of physically-transmogrified silver PneumaCoin. Viridian continues, saying that obviously it understands that this is merely a gift, and in no way should it be taken as compensation for its role in raising the insurance premiums they levy on one of their primary clients. None of them as Goldbaker-Reinz are ever eager to shortchange a client. The witch examines the driftwood table that sits within arm’s reach of the sphere, though of course it lacks arms. A modest array of trophies is already present: a beautiful crystal bottle in the form of an hourglass; a weathered, holographic ace of diamonds playing card; and a small cup of miniature parasol umbrellas. The witch scoops up a portion of pneumacoin, sufficient to bankroll any number of stochastic schemes, and adds them to the symbolic haul. A low humming sound begins deep in the bowels of the sphere, and the voice on the phone seems to comprehend its import. He says that it’s more than welcome, to keep goldbaker-reinz in mind for all of its future-proof endeavour, and to enjoy the rest of its evening. The sphere seems to contemplate the far horizon, the endlessly complex yet compassable harmony of the spheres which paint the sky and shroud the earth in dark with clockwork precision. The witch snaps her fingers, and places a gaudy drink on the table in the last remaining space amongst the spoils. It’s a Mai Tai with citrus fruit slices pierced by an oversized green crazy straw tied into a figure-8. She winks and says that it’s on the house, with no need for her to clarify. She places her hand on the sphere again, and the humming changes pitch and rises in volume as they consider the close of the day together. Its not precisely a happy hum, but the only soul present to feel it can feel a tiny kernel of something like satisfied contentment at its uttermost core. All’s well that ends well then, for most parties involved. The story here is a bit tricky to follow, as it’s not told in order, and involves time travel, which always makes things a little more obtuse. I’m actually going to go ahead and quote one of the authors here, HarryBlank, to better explain what exactly went down between the Eight Ball and Cimmerian. “While he's interrupted before he can explain completely, Dr. Cimmerian reveals to the Overseers that he's been engaged in a lengthy series of time-travelling shenanigans to ensure that the events of the heist play out as they should. His magic eight ball and luck anomaly led him to a rift in the Underlibrary, through which he could see his target, SCP-8888, and he passed through to acquire it. Instead of ending up in an earlier version of the Library's vault, as he expected, he instead finds himself in the burning Library of Alexandria in 48 BCE - all libraries are connected to the Wanderers' Library, after all. It's implied at this point that Cimmerian encounters the Eight-Ball in its long past form, where it is being used by the ancient Greeks, and from this point on he shepherds it through the known series of events that will ensure it ends up in Foundation control. In an earlier segment written from the Eight-Ball's perspective, where it sits on the deck of Hero of Alexandria's ship as it prepares to set sail for a journey that will end in it sinking to the bottom of the sea, a mysterious figure on the dock is seen; this is Cimmerian, ensuring that the ship does sink, so that the device's remains can be recovered and eventually acquired by the Foundation, creating the present-day version of Eight-Ball. Further implication suggests that Cimmerian continues to travel through time; hundreds of years later he is one of the figures who steals the Eight-Ball from Site-15, thus triggering Sokolsky's heist, which itself triggers Cimmerian's voyage into the past in the first place, creating a time loop. With the Eight-Ball in his possession again, and presumably with access to its advice, he makes further trips through time to ensure that it's present wherever it needs to be for the time loop to be stable. It's possible he even uses it to lure himself through the time rift in the first place, though the article doesn't state this outright. However the sequence plays out, it ends with him presenting the Overseers with the version of SCP-8888 that disappeared from the Wanderers' Library vault long before Sokolsky's heist opened it, at which point he believes the heist is finally complete.” To summarize that summary then, Cimmerian had to go through time multiple times to ensure that no paradoxes occurred with the eight ball, as the Foundation created the eight ball from the eight ball itself after it was sent back in time and ended up in the ocean. Part of this involved him being one of the individuals that stole the eight ball from the foundation at the start, but his plan sort of ends with him bringing the eight-ball back to the foundation. What he wasn’t aware of however was that the eight ball had a plan of its own, to actually escape from containment and finally be free. The eight ball had orchestrated the entire thing, including its capture and release by the House of Stars at the end, allowing it to just spend some time on a beach for a bit with Agent S. This is what Sokolsky and Hr’asm’kal are referring to in their last conversation, as part of the Eight Ball’s plan involved having a contract with MC&D in order to have the house of stars steal it from the foundation. It’s certainly a complicated plot, but in the end, both the Eight Ball and Agent S are finally free from being told what to do by people and organizations. We of course get to know all this because the eight ball went ahead and wrote an omniscient film script of the whole thing, which we know to be 100% true, as it can’t write fiction, since fiction is lying. It’s hard to say how much this all will affect the Foundation, since they seemed to depend on it quite heavily, but now I guess it’s a bit more of a level playing field. Overall, I’d say the individuals, or objects, that won in the end probably deserved their victory, just like any good heist movie.