Katy knelt by the device. Unquestionably, it was the same one. The gear belts, the slit in the side, the sprays of yellow sparks.
“What? What is it?” Simon squatted next to her. She shook her head. When they had first found 1005- not that long ago, all things considered- it had been sealed in a stone box, under the ground, the box engraved all over with meaningless runes and English letters and numbers. They heard the engine running through three feet of soil before they found it.
At the time, Katy's department was already busy over 1001, the mysterious egg. Like the engine, it was unpredictable, and the effects were random. Every time the egg was touched, a different and absolutely random reaction was provoked- it would cause a tiny daisy to sprout in the floor of the containment chamber, then it would make it rain outside the building, then it would cause the head of the next subject to liquify. There was no rhyme to it, no reason, no evidence for the leanings of a controlling mad god.
Of course, Katy hadn't known it was going to kill her then, it was just the most interesting thing in her charge at that time. When the engine came in, she and a skeleton crew of research staff put in a few late nights in a row. On the first one, Otis had cut his finger slicing strips of paper to size. He had looked at the engine, then down at his bloody digit. “I hope it isn't contagious.”
Knight, tired already, had looked up. “The machine? Don't be stupid. It's not contagious.”
And Otis had asked, “How do we know?”
Katy had to admit he had a point.
Nonetheless, after weeks of work on the stunningly powerful, simple, and confounding egg, the engine and its quirks and soft constant buzz endeared it to the research staff, where it had become a favored assignment to feed data into the box and see what jumbled or cryptic pattern emerged. Its green patina over strong shades of copper made it look more then ancient, which, as far as they could tell, it was. Closing up the experimentation rooms at night, Katy would hear the grunt and hum of its gears, perpetually at work, perpetually turning.
“Katy, what is it?” Simon shook her shoulder.
“I don't know.” She shook her head, over and over. “I don't know.”
Outside his office, Otis pulled on his labcoat- if only for appearance- and followed Johanna to a white-walled, prim, light-duty experimentation chamber- one that didn't need to be fireproof or bulletproof or equipped with acid showers. The engine sat chugging away on a table to the side, and Otis, still, almost unconsciously, kept his distance.
“You're aware of the usual behavior of 1005.” The woman held out a portfolio of inputs and outputs he knew already, some of which he had helped to produce. Mathematical equations became other mathematical equations, some that were correct and some that weren't. A Chinese proverb written in several short, deft characters became a short phrase which translated approximately as “damn good strawberries.” An ordinary Garfield comic became an inked series of panels in which a man and three dogs sat in a field, under a blue sky and a haze of static-y black-white clouds which were apparently all that was left of the text bubbles.
“And the expected deviations.” Of course- a page of text reduced to a smudgy black square, a comic strip becoming rows of thin colored lines.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“However,” she continued, “We've been running text through it- seeing if we can get any coherency. What we got were these.” She handed Dr. Fleming three sheets of paper.
Hello? This is Katy, can
SEND IT BACK TO THEM RAISE THE SEED OF CHAOS
anybody see this?
“Do these have any… significance to you… sir?” Johanna tilted her head. Otis was silent, running a hand through his scrubby hair, and breathed in and out deeply.
“Dr. Garrison, stop whatever you're doing and run a search in both public and Foundation records for the phrase 'the auroch stampede'.”
While the engine had been found in a sealed crypt below a sunlit house by the sea, the Egg of God was sitting on a pedestal-like crown of soil, surrounded by a blue-green pond hidden in a courtyard- still warm, when the MTF found it, as though it had been waiting for them.
The first member of the MTF who found it and tried to pick it up had his flesh split into ribbons.
The second became a flock of bluebirds.
The third seemed to be unaffected- he was followed by a sunbeam for several hours afterwards, but didn't notice. It didn't matter. The Egg was in Foundation custody.
As was usual, that wasn't quite the end of the story.
First, there was the issue of the containment. One of the guards had a nervous fit upon claiming to see a human form standing by it one night- when the three guards he called for backup showed up, it had disappeared.
Security cameras were set up in the chamber the next day, but, of course, nothing happened after that.
Then there was the experimentation. Day in, day out, running tests with objects and animals and humans, attempting to coax some pattern out of the item. The problem was that it drove the staff mad. Not literally, and not directly- it had been scanned for memetics and a host of other issues before it arrived, and again once Katy became aware of the constant aura of frustration around the staff. There was nothing, of course, nor any sort of identifiable pull, but merely studying it drove those desperately trying to unravel the core of it into rages.
Everyone at Site 43 was very glad when the Engine came in, and they had a new project to work on.
Otis had begun working under Dr. Knight several months beforehand, when the main object of research was some highly disturbing mold samples scraped off of 682's hide (or, more accurately at the time, feathers). Once the offensive mold had been identified and reclassified as SCP-███, the lab moved on to something else.
He was lost, at first, but got the hang of it.
Site 43 was a medium site with a medium-sized research crew, and Otis was surprised to find himself running the same staff Katy had, and commanding a similar level of respect. Kitchen staff nodded their heads the same way, and lab technicians caught up to him in the halls with similar fleet-footed eagerness. At the end of the day, he was able to look around and breath a sigh of pride and respect for his colleagues- his employees, now- and then retreat into his office, as an automatic circuit dimmed the hall lights for the evening. It was ten o' clock.
Johanna knocked on his door. “Director Fleming? I have the results you wanted.”
Otis nodded to the guest chair. “Come in. Tell me.”
She sat down and spread an array of several sheets across the desk. “Nothing… relevant, for the auroch stampede. You know that aurochs were giant cattle ancestors that went extinct in the 1500's.”
“Right.” He nodded.
“However, sir, I looked up the rest of the message as well… There were some results on the Foundation records. The 'seed of chaos' was the name given to an object they had a lead on a very long time ago- decades- but never officially recovered. It was said to be placed in the care of a tribe of Siberian nomads who were said to be able to look through the gates of death.”
Fleming looked thoughtful.
“Though, uh, I'm a bit concerned, sir…” Otis tilted his head. Johanna took a deep breath.
“This Seed of Chaos- from the description, sir, and I'm not certain- but from the description, it sounds a lot like the Egg of God.”
Later that night, the office's lights were so dim as to be nearly off, but its owner still occupied it, looking up, as if nightgazing in his artificial starlight.
The engine. Knight. The egg. The seed, the egg, Knight. He decided that the abandoned case files on the Seed needed to be opened again. No matter how old. He would have to see about tracking down this tribe, as well.
Katy. The Egg. The auroch stampede.
Katy was contacting them. Somehow- even though she was dead, dead as the aurochs, body under a permanent deep-seal in a freezer behind the site. With all the others.
Katy had contacted them, but from the garbled other half of the message, someone was interfering.
Yes, someone- or something- was interfering. The auroch stampede was coming, they said.
Otis stared at the lamp and wondered what sort of plans you made for the attack of a dead species.
