1979
Miami, Florida
9:32 AM
Michelson cigarettes advertised themselves as having a smoother, sweeter taste than the competition. Supposedly they had the highest-quality filters in the country, and were a brand that got by on its prestigious lineage — 'From Suffragettes to Scientists, Michelson is the Cigarette of Revolutionaries'.
Agent Hubert Ruyter didn't understand the hype. A cigarette was a cigarette, but Michelsons had a flavor that burned his nose, and he had felt like sneezing since he'd walked into the villa. Built in the 1910s, it had a porch wider than his driveway was long, three floors with an honest-to-god tower built on the western half of the house, a view of the beach, and in the living room a cheap rug that was nailed down to cover up a large bloodstain. The rug was the only thing on the property not for sale.
The whole family had died in a single night, leaving no heirs, so an estate sale was being held. He'd hoped for it to have been an auction, but instead he was forced to mill about in a tobacco-scented house, inspecting the price tags stuck onto everything. There were several vases and plates on the floor, as people had bought up the majority of the tables in the house. Only a few chairs remained, and half of them had 'Sold!' signs stuck on with Scotch tape.
What he was looking for, whatever had caused this, wasn't going to be a chair or a table. Anomalies causing this kind of mass death were often no bigger than a sewing machine. He'd found a bloodthirsty Hoover on one occasion, and a refrigerator which… according to his own notes, he'd been given amnestics to forget exactly what it did. But most of them were small.
He walked through the house, picking up several objects, earning glares from the rather unattractive man running the sale. Not that Ruyter was much better-looking; at twenty-seven, he looked five years older than he should have through a combination of stress, a diet pill dependency acquired at twenty-two, and a chunk missing out of his left ear from a car accident. His horn-rimmed glasses didn't help, either.
It was as he put his ear against the fifth clock in the house that he heard a rather contemptuous cough. "Can I help you?" the man snarled.
"Er, yes." Ruyter took out a business card. "Hubert Ruyter, Society for Curious Phenomena. I've been hired to look into potential… abnormal causes behind the death of the Ripley family."
"Oh lord, you're one of those hotline psychics, aren't you?"
Ruyter chewed his lip. The second part of that wasn't inaccurate, but he took objection to the term; it made him sound fraudulent. "Did you know the family well? I don't suppose you know if they made any unusual purchases in the last six months? Or perhaps they had an inheritance recently?"
"I'm their lawyer."
That was a 'no', then.
"Look, Mr. Writer, you can either buy something in the next five minutes, or you can leave with the police. Your choice."
"Five minutes is all I'll need," Ruyter lied.
When investigating the presence of an anomalous object, the go-to rule used to be 'look for something old and out of place'. A grandfather clock in a suburban home, an antique letter opener in a modern office, or a fountain pen in an IBM Laboratory — all of these had been the culprits of anomalous events prior to this. But there was a new paradigm; thanks to a cult of drug-addled warlocks developing 'interactive electronic entertainment', what was or wasn't anomalous was up in the air.
The deaths had been in the living room. Ruyter ran his hands along every surface in there, carefully avoiding the carpet. From most of it, he got the same feeling: a dull energy, the residual remains of a dull family. Abruptly, as his hands ran across the fireplace — purely decorative, it never got cold enough in Florida to actually use — he sneezed hard enough that his glasses fell off.
"Bless you," the lawyer called.
"It's the damn smell," he sniffed. "I take it the Ripleys smoked a fair bit?"
The lawyer took a sniff of the air. "No, actually. I never saw any of them with a cigarette." He scratched his nose. "Definitely Michelson. My ex-wife smoked a pack a day."
"This smells more like a carton a day." Ruyter rubbed his own nose. "What about chewing tobacco? Snuff? Pipes?"
The lawyer paused. "Mr. Ripley came to see me about a car accident he was in the other week. Showed off a pipe he bought from somewhere in town."
"Is it for sale?"
"Yes. Nobody's wanted it, on account of it being used. It's with their…" He paused. "Personal effects. Clothing and such. I'll grab it."
A few minutes later, the lawyer returned. With him came an asphyxiating scent of tobacco, and a small wooden box. He opened it, and inside was a rather plain looking wooden tobacco pipe. It was solid enough, made entirely out of what looked to be cherry wood, but there were several teeth marks on the stem; evidently Mr. Ripley, or the previous owner, had had a nervous habit of chewing on his pipe.
Ruyter reached out and touched it with one finger. His mind was overwhelmed with the sensation of suffocation, his throat tasted of blood, and he felt his eyes water. He was choking on smoke, and with each breath he took, that same smoke filled the lungs of everyone he remotely gave a damn about. Blood flowed from their mouths, and it felt—
Ruyter snapped the box shut, hastily shoved a $50 bill into the estate agent's other hand, and practically jumped into his car from the porch.
Outpost-106
Department of Psychology and Parapsychology
11:31 PM
After blowing his nose several dozen times Ruyter had managed to get the scent of tobacco out of his sinuses, and he now sat at his cubicle with a headache completely unrelated to the item he had retrieved. His gloved hands fiddled with a pen as he looked at the report on the electronic typewriter before him. He sighed and stood up, looking over the brim of the cubicle. "Hey, Art?"
"Hmm?" Arthur Berger looked up at Ruyter, his eyes obfuscated by the glare on his glasses. The lights over the cubes did horrible things to one's face; if Ruyter looked like he was in his thirties, the thirty-year-old Berger looked like he was in his sixties.
"Should I describe the civilian who gave me the item as 'suspicious', 'uncooperative', or 'suspicious and uncooperative'?"
"You could say they were wearing a polka-dot bikini and had an elephant's trunk growing out of their ear. They'll glance at it, put it in a filing cabinet, and forget about it." Arthur stretched, flicking his wrist. As he did, the lights overhead swung slightly. He sighed and reached into his desk, taking out an orange bottle with a white cap. A pink pill entered his palm, and then his mouth. "You really should take yours, too."
Ruyter shook his head. "I had one this morning."
"Gotta take your suppressant if you want to function normally." Arthur shrugged. "Cindy nearly set the plants in the lobby on fire the other day."
Ruyter sat down at his desk and opened the drawer. Within it was an orange bottle, identical to what was in Arthur's desk. The name of a drug he couldn't pronounce was written on it, and when he held the pills in his hand, even through the glove, he could feel the texture of every emotion that had gone into its creation. The slime of prejudice, the cold roughness of fear, the subtle warmth of a good intention turned awry, and the feeling of slate under fingernails that corresponded to paranoia.
He put the bottle away and turned back to the typewriter, typing out 'suspicious and uncooperative', clarifying once again that his psychometry didn't work on living objects, adding in his usual addendum about needing to look into the increase of anomalous activity within Miami over the past month. Arthur was right, it wouldn't get read.
It had taken decades for the Foundation to accept thaumaturgy. It had taken the Foundation almost a century to realize that psionics was entirely different from that. Anyone could learn magic, but you had to be born with the curse.
"Do you think I could get on Mike Douglas? Or Carson?" Arthur asked from the next cubicle. "Joseph Heino supposedly makes twelve million a year off his act."
"Heino's a fake," Ruyter replied. "You'd be put in an incinerator before you finished dialing in Carson's number."
"I could make it work."
"That's what Agent Hopkins and Dr. Jameson said."
"Who?"
"Exactly."
He winced as his fingers touched the typewriter keys once again. One of the fingers on his glove had torn, and though the typewriter's psychometric history was unremarkable, the sheer unremarkability of it worsened his headache. He disposed of his gloves and put on a new pair before returning to his work.
12:00
Time was molasses within Outpost-106 on a good day. Ruyter wasn't even sure whether the clock in the breakroom said it was 12:00 AM or 12:00 PM. He was fairly sure it had broken a week ago, at any rate. The coffee in his hands was weak, and cold, but it was something for his mouth to do other than respond to his fellow agent.
"Cults are in vogue now." Cindy Schulle twirled an unlit Michelson in her hand, her blonde hair glistening in the ruddy lights of the room. "Ever since Jonestown, everyone is blaming any scrap of anomalous activity we find on a cult. Clocks stop in Berlin, has to be the Church of the Broken God. Someone sees a UFO over LA, must be that Star Trek cult. Cancer rates are down in Prague, must be the Sarks." She shook her head. "It ain't always cults, Hugh, is all I'm saying."
"Mmm." He sipped at his coffee. "Read one of those conspiracy mags that said that Jim Jones was some kind of space alien."
"Let me guess: The Watchmen?"
Hubert nodded.
"The back of a box of Corn Flakes has more reliable sources than that shitrag. Apparently, there's a Site in Chicago that monitors them for some reason." Cindy exhaled through her cigarette; the end glowed cherry red.
The bell in the breakroom rang three times. New marching orders had come in. Ruyter downed the rest of his coffee, while Cindy kept the cigarette between two fingers as they walked down the hall to the briefing room.
Within, they were greeted by their superior, Robert Dewitt, as well as a dozen other fellow agents. Dewitt wasn't fit for fieldwork anymore, but his experience was measured in the scars on his face — apparently his brother-in-law, a fellow agent, had mauled him sometime in the 1950s.
He threw a stack of files on the table, and started handing them out to agents. "Right. Possible anomalous activity in the eastern part of the city. Berger, apparently a woman mistook her hand for an orange and tried to juice it. Walker, someone beat themselves half to death with a tire iron. Schulle, we've got reports of an oven… 'working improperly'."
Cindy raised her eyebrow. "Send a Frigidaire repairman, not me."
"Police call said that a woman put a chicken in for dinner, and it came out alive."
"Why the hell didn't you lead with that?" She took the file and made her way out of the room.
"Ruyter, apparently there's a man running around Surfside Beach claiming his necktie is trying to kill him." He paused. "When you get back, I need to talk to you."
Ruyter suppressed a sigh and took the file. Dewitt was probably going to write him up for missing doses. He opened the file and made his way out to the elevator that led to the surface.
Outpost-106's entrance was designed to look like the fire exit of a hotel near South Beach. When he walked out of it and into the sunlight, his retinas screamed. Thankfully, the drive was short.
12:29 pm
The nearest open parking space to Surfside Beach was almost a mile away. By the time Ruyter had gotten past the dunes, the tide was starting to come back in. The beach, for a large stretch, was empty, barring a single man in a tattered green coat, yellow trousers, and snakeskin shoes. He was clutching at his neck.
Ruyter ran towards him, stopping in his tracks six feet away. The man's eyes were panicked and crying, and every time he put his hands anywhere near his tie he looked as if he was being electrocuted, limbs flaring outwards as he let out a cry of pain. He looked at Ruyter and simply gave a sob that conveyed all the meaning that was needed: Help me.
Ruyter approached, pulling off one of his gloves and reaching out for the object. He expected some sort of malicious texture, like slime, slate or iron. Instead he merely felt the apparent cloth of the necktie beneath his fingers. He looked up at the man, and then attempted the process of undoing it.
As he did, he watched the tie sink deeper into the man's neck — it was now that Ruyter realized that the collar of his shirt had been shredded, and was literally hanging on by threads. Rivulets of blood flowed from his neck.
The tie was alive. That was why Ruyter couldn't feel any emotional texture from it. "Where did you get it?" Ruyter asked.
"G-gift from work," the man sobbed. "P-Please, I think it's drinking… drinking my blood…"
Ruyter rested his hands on the necktie, and then began stroking it. As he did, he directed his own emotions into the tie: the venomous electricity of bitterness, the millstone grind of frustration, the rubbery taste of oppression, and the empty cold of just wanting to go to sleep and never wake up again.
"What are you—" the man asked.
"Shut." Ruyter said. He forced his emotions into the tie. He had only done this twice before, and never on an… animal? like this. It was going slack, but not completely still. He added in one final emotion — the choking sensation he had gotten from the pipe.
The tie fell off of the man's neck. He rubbed at it, feeling the raw flesh beneath; there were no open wounds, just strange marks. Ruyter saw a ring of thorn-like protrusions retract into the cloth of the tie. The man sobbed, stepping back in disbelief. "Thank you so much, I thought I was—"
Ruyter hit him on both temples simultaneously, sending him to the ground, before removing a hypodermic needle and a small vial from the pocket of his jacket. The vial read 'CLASS-A AMNESTIC — HIGHLY TOXIC — DO NOT INGEST'. He rolled up the man's shirt and jacket sleeve, found the vein, and injected it. There was no wallet on him, so Ruyter took a photograph of his face, got his fingerprints, and went to a payphone near the exit to the beach.
2:47 PM
The necktie swam happily in its aquarium at Outpost-106. Ruyter raised his hand to tap on the glass, only to earn a dirty look from one of the lab technicians. He sighed, and watched it move through the water. Seeing it swim, it made sense that this thing was alive; he had been told it was some kind of sea slug.
"Ruyter!" Dewitt called. "Briefing room, now."
Ruyter followed Dewitt along, shoulders slumped. Saved a man's life, contained two anomalies within twenty-four hours, and he was going to get chewed out because he refused to take the medication that prevented him from actually doing those things. Justice isn't blind, he thought. She's stillborn.
The briefing room had been altered significantly since he had last gone in. A map of the Miami area had been laid on the table, with several numbered markers placed on it; some of them were red, some were green. The highest-numbered marker he could see read '37', but there were a couple he couldn't make out in the direction of Boca Raton. He frowned. "What is this?"
Dewitt placed a stack of paper on the table, and picked one off the top. "Ahem. 'I have noticed an increase in anomalous activity since the start of the month. I believe this matter is worth investigating further, should we have the available resources'." He picked up another sheet. "'This is the second major anomaly I have contained in as many weeks. Further investigation is necessary'." And then, "'This pipe (item number as yet undecided) represents the seventh anomalous object I have contained within three weeks. Further investigation is urgently needed'. Sound familiar?"
"You read my reports." Ruyter scoffed in disbelief. "I thought—"
"We didn't read it? We're assholes, but we're efficient assholes. Reports from field agents always get read." Dewitt waved at the map. "This shows all reported anomalies within Miami over the last three weeks. The red numbers are uncontained or unconfirmed, the green are contained."
Ruyter did a count of the colors. Only about a third of them were green. "Shit."
Dewitt added another marker, this one green, on Surfside Beach. This one had the number '71' written on it. "The average Outpost deals with between one to three anomalous objects in two months. We're averaging three in a day — we've had to call in agents from Georgia and Alabama to help contain them." He looked at Ruyter. "I'm thinking you could help. You can see the… history, behind an item?"
"Mainly it's the emotions. Things that happened to the item, or because of the item." He looked over the map. "But… cities have emotions, too. If I can find a common emotional thread between them, then maybe… I can figure out where they're coming from."
Dewitt nodded, pressing a button under the table. A doctor entered, her dark hair taking on a sickly sheen in the dim, almost green light. "Agent, this is Dr. Hyun-Ok Kim. Kim, Agent Ruyter."
Ruyter stood and shook her hand. The burns on its surface made him very thankful that he could not read the emotions of living beings. "Pleasure," he said awkwardly.
"I'm responsible for processing anomalous items that have been contained by field agents," she explained. "I've prepared everything that's been brought in in the last month for inspection. They're in containment."
Ruyter nodded. "I've… never actually been in containment."
"Not much to see. Concrete, a bunch of lockers, some lead-lined boxes. Better-lit than this." She removed her hand from his grasp, and walked out of the room.
Ruyter was dismissed with a nod from Dewitt, following after her. "One thing," he asked. "Is there a refrigerator in there?"
"Yes. Why?"
"…I'm not touching it."
"I read the report. I don't blame you."
7:22 PM
Dr. Kim turned on the tape recorder once again. "Item #20. Item is a pair of knitting needles, made out of steel. Item compels individuals to knit any fibrous or thread-like structures in their body, including hair and blood vessels, into clothing. Item was responsible for three deaths at a nursing home in Port St. Lucie. Agent Ruyter, if you could touch the item?"
Ruyter hadn't been wearing gloves the whole time he had been in the containment level. His hands were itching, but he picked up the needles all the same.
"Agent Rutyer, d—"
"Describe the item, yes, yes, I know." He concentrated on the sensation. "Wet, that's violence. A bit of… yes, some tickling. It thinks it's playing a joke. And…" Bile rose in his throat. "Oil, again. Malice. No doubt about it." He dropped the needles back into the box. "I need another break."
Dr. Kim turned off the recorder and regarded Ruyter, her head resting on her burnt hand. Her other one marked a series of tallies on a sheet. "I imagine you don't have a high opinion of the psychics on Carson."
"If they were legitimate, they wouldn't be on talk shows." Ruyter wiped off his hands on his pants. "And they don't know what it's like. They claim to have perfect control over their powers. There's no such fucking thing." He held up a finger. "How can I control something that I can't turn off?"
"There's medication—"
"I can't do my job with it." He rubbed his face. "Not even twenty years ago, they'd stick an icepick through my eye to 'cure' me."
"Why didn't that happen?" Kim paused. "I'm thankful that it didn't, but…"
"I've had… feelings since I was a kid. One time I picked up a dollar bill and realized I knew it had been stolen from the Winn-Dixie down the street. But they only started getting strong after…" He scoffed. "After I saw Armstrong on the moon."
"Interesting correlation." Kim mused. "Talking of… out of the twenty objects tested, fifteen you reported had the feeling of 'malice', seventeen 'mischief', and all but one have registered 'violence'."
The two of them looked uneasily at the box that contained Item #7, a broken China plate. The man who had smashed it had been broken in an identical manner.
"So, those are the emotions we need to look for?" he asked.
"It's a compelling sample size. And we only have five more items anyway; one is the refrigerator, the other is your pipe." She tapped on the paper. "How far away does your psychometry work?"
"I literally have to be touching the object." He paused. "But… if there's enough resonance between the item and the place where it came from, I might be able to suss out the general area."
Kim looked through the list of items. "The most harmless item we have is… #21, recovered from Fort Lauderdale by Agent Schulle. It's a baseball card that… compels people who are in its vicinity to 'frequently use expletives'."
"Who's on it?"
"Mark… Mark Fidrych. Detroit Tigers."
"That explains it."
"…does it?" She frowned. "I'm not familiar with the game."
Ruyter just smiled and dug out the card from the box labeled '21'. It was smaller than the other boxes. He reached out, hesitated briefly, and then picked it up.
Sensations hit his psyche like Ali hitting Foreman's jaw. He recoiled slightly. "Yeah, that's oil." Ruyter gagged. "Yeah. And… and a little goddamn wet, too. This will fuckin' work. This'll work just cockin' fine."
"We'll take my car. Highest cluster of anomalies occurred by North Miami Beach. Let's start there."
8:08 PM
"Shit." Ruyter slapped his hands against his legs as Kim drove them around. This was classier than South Beach; more hotels, condos, and legitimate businesses than night clubs, overpriced bars, and smut shops. It was more pleasant to drive through during sunset, at least, since you didn't have to squint at all the neon signs coming on. Still, Kim wasn't a fan of listening to Ruyter list out Carlin's Filthy Seven, and about two dozen other words, to the tune of The Liberty Bell March.
"Are you feeling anything?" Kim asked. "Other than musically inclined?"
"…bit of a shitting oily scent to the south," he admitted. "I think we're going too fast. We should get out and walk."
Kim found a parking space in one of the city lots. Ruyter continued to curse as he exited the car, scratching his head with the other hand as they wandered south.
"Forgive the question," Kim interjected after a couple of minutes of walking, "But… if you could give up your condition, would you?"
Ruyter didn't respond immediately. After a couple of used bookstores passed them by and they were waiting at a street corner, he shook his head. "I don't fuckin' know. Ain't known any cock-sucking reality other than this. And I think the only way to 'cure' it would be a goddamn lobotomy." He bounced on his feet slightly. "It's a thing with the brain itself, the way it's fuckin' made. Even with the motherfuckin' pills, the shit doesn't completely fade."
Kim nodded, before starting to cross the street. "Still. You manage."
"Gloves help block it out. They're neutral. Feel like my hands are covered in paper." He gritted his teeth, swearing under his breath several times. "Not really managing, I think. Functioning, more like."
As Kim began to cross the street Ruyter suddenly bore left, seemingly without realizing it. Kim ran back to walk with him. "Are you feeling something?"
"Oil. Lot of it." He swallowed. "Not one big thing. Like… like a lot of little fuckin' things in one place. We're close."
Ruyter was so transfixed on the sensations that he didn't notice Kim tugging on his arm until she did it five times. "What?" he snapped.
Kim pointed up to a shop they had just walked past. It looked to be an antique store, with a window out front displaying things including mirrors, a phonograph, a rocking chair, a set of China, and a few articles of clothing. The name of the shop was painted on the window: 'Curios'. Its hours were listed on the door; it had closed an hour ago.
"I don't suppose you can kick down the door?" Kim asked, before looking to see that it was made of steel and glass. "Hmm. Well, we could always—"
Before Kim could finish her sentence, Ruyter had taken out his pistol and smashed the butt of it against the glass. He broke away more with his elbow, then reached through to unlock the door.
He put the baseball card in a small sleeve that Kim had given him before stepping into the shop. It was dark, but the setting sun allowed them to make out maybe half of the interior. One wall was dedicated entirely to literature, from novels to comic books, while a rack of clothing sat towards the center of the store. A milk crate marked "Half-Price!" sat on a table, with some ratty-looking plush animals sitting in it. There were some articles of taxidermy above the bookshelves, but beyond that, there was darkness.
Kim noticed a cord hanging from a light overhead. Pulling it revealed the rest of the store; more clothing, more toys, and towards the back, more expensive articles. Kitchenware, ranging from drinking glasses to baking sheets, a statuette of a cat that looked like it was straight out of Ancient Egypt, and a case full of jewelry.
Ruyter walked over to the crate of stuffed toys. He touched one of them with a single finger… and fell down, gasping in pain. The sensations he felt — oil and wetness, yes, but also a burning sensation, one he hadn't felt so severely since he was inducted into the Foundation. Hatred. Pure, burning hatred.
In his haste to stand again he bumped into one of the tables, and fell back on the floor, shivering. Cold, wet, oily. He felt the frostbite of depression encroach upon his fingers.
Kim helped him up, concern on her face. She tried to pull him outside, but he shook his head. "F-find a phone," he gasped. "Call it in. This… this is the place."
"Phone behind the counter," Kim pointed behind the cash register. "Think it's safe?"
"I hope."
11:09 PM
Ruyter sat in Kim's car and watched Foundation personnel go in and out of the store. Each item or collection of items was being sorted carefully into boxes, which were then loaded up into vans. He'd lost count after the 122nd box had been carted out. They had commandeered police cars, so that nobody would be too suspicious of them unloading the merchandise.
Kim opened the door and sat in the car with him, her leg jiggling. "It's… incredible."
"What?" Ruyter asked.
"Assuming that every item in there is actually anomalous… we have enough material to potentially classify this as an SCP."
"How many?"
"…as of the top of the hour, agents removed the 3000th distinct item."
"Christ." Ruyter shook his head in disbelief.
"It opened at the start of the month. No sign of the shopkeeper; the address he was supposedly living at is an empty apartment."
"Why am I not surprised?" Ruyter stretched, putting on a fresh pair of gloves. "I'm going inside. I should be okay, as long as I don't touch anything."
Kim nodded, exiting the car with him. They waited for a pair of agents carrying out a cello to exit, before they entered themselves. Though a lot of the items had been removed, there was still clutter towards the back of the shop.
"You potentially saved hundreds of lives." Kim swallowed. "The shopkeeper kept a ledger of everyone he sold to. We have agents going around knocking on doors. Official story is that the items all have lead in them."
"Should've gone with something radioactive, a lot of people still think it's harmless. Goddamn Ethyl Gas."
The two of them observed the store. The majority of the literature had been removed, exposing some unpleasant stains on the wall behind the bookshelves. The jewelry case, now empty, was covered in flame retardant from a fire extinguisher, and there was golden slag on the floor beneath it. Several agents were trying to figure out whether or not a small doll in the shape of a sailor was safe to touch.
Kim made her way behind the counter and opened the cash register; predictably, the drawer was empty.
"Don't get paid enough?" Ruyter joked.
"Just curious." She slid the empty drawer closed — but as she did, she heard something clink inside. Opening it again, she found a key with a piece of tape over it; evidently, it had been stuck to the underside of the register, above where the cash would be stored.
Kim inspected the key. It had a number engraved on one side, and on the other it read: 'Property of the Bank of the Sunshine State'. "Safety deposit box key," Kim frowned. "I think. We should look into it."
"Deeper down the rabbit hole," Ruyter sighed. "We'll see about it first thing tomorrow, assuming that our mystery shopkeeper didn't clean it out already."
9:17 AM
The Miami branch of the Bank of the Sunshine State was, as it turned out, fairly small. A sign out front helpfully informed would-be robbers that there was, at most, only $500,000 in the vault at any given time. The inside had yellow carpet, a low ceiling, and bored-looking tellers; the whole place smelled slightly of Michelsons.
In his office, the branch manager looked between the number of the key and his ledger with severe consternation on his face. "Doesn't make sense," he huffed, his jowls bouncing. "Not a lick of it."
"Is there a problem?" Ruyter asked, leaning forward.
"There's no record of this box being rented at any time since the branch opened a decade ago." He frowned. "We're honestly about to phase them out. Nobody even knows we have them."
"Well, if at all possible," Kim said, "We'd still like to see it."
"Of course." The branch manager stood. "The key is one of our own, and if there's a chance illicit material was stored within, we'd like to know."
He led them into the safety deposit 'vault', which amounted to a steel door guarding a reinforced room with drawers along one wall. The branch manager held up the key, comparing the numbers on it to the ones on the safes. He pulled it out of the wall, stuck the key in, and opened it.
What the pair of them saw within made their jaws drop and their hearts enter their throats.
9:23 PM
The team had set up in the briefing room several hours before, disorganized. Now, piles of paper surrounded them. Kim was holding up a deed to a property in New Mexico, while Ruyter inspected a ledger that, as far as he could tell, was written in Polish; he recognized the word 'Warsaw', at least. Across the table from them Cindy Schulle was looking over a map of the US, with stars in various locations.
"Do we have anything about Cleveland?" Cindy asked. "Big star in north Ohio."
"I saw something about it in this pile, hold on." Arthur flicked his finger, making the pile of papers separate and float in the air, before snatching and looking it over. "Here, Chagrin Falls. Suburb of Cleveland."
"Put it on the board with the rest," Kim instructed, picking up another deed. This property was in Los Angeles.
Arthur pinned the document to a map of the US that they had pinned to a corkboard on one side of the room. It was looking more like a pile of paper than a map, at this point.
Robert Dewitt entered the briefing room as Ruyter announced that there was a sale of over $10,000 made in Duluth a week ago, and that it was "Worth looking into."
Dewitt's jaw dropped. "What the fuck is all this?"
The agents assembled all stopped to look at him, unsure of what to say. After a moment of silence, Ruyter stood. "This is the contents of a safety deposit box. We found the key in the Curios shop we raided last night. It points to… several similar locations, across the country."
"How much is 'several'?" Dewitt frowned.
"…seven in Florida alone," Kim swallowed. "At least three-dozen more across the country."
"Jesus Christ." Dewitt sat at the table, rubbing his scarred face in sheer disbelief. "Jesus fucking Christ."
"Agent Dewitt, with all due respect?" Ruyter shifted on his feet. "This is bigger than we can handle. Bigger than any currently-existing department can handle, I think." He chewed his lip. "And I don't think it's just this… 'chain' of stores that's responsible."
Dewitt blinked. "What do you mean?"
"You know about SCP-423? Agent walked into a bookstore and bought it at random. Then there's 025? Found in an estate sale, just like that pipe. Or… how many Factory products have been found, completely at random, in thrift stores? How much Wondertainment candy has appeared in 7-11s? I can think of half a dozen other cases besides." He walked around the table. "What we're dealing with is an epidemic of anomalous items being sold in regular stores. We have to stop it."
Dewitt shook his head. "I'm afraid that without any hard data—"
Kim stood and presented him with a binder. "The graphs here show a correlation between the proliferation of anomalous items, and the growing amount large-scale retailers such as Wal-Mart and Sears-Roebuck. It's not causative, but…"
Dewitt looked through it, over the course of several minutes, before looking back up at the team. "Okay. So… what do we do about it?"
Department Proposal
Department of Procurement and Liquidation
Dr. Hyun-Ok Kim
Agent Robert Dewitt
Agent Hubert Ruyter
Agent Cynthia Schulle
Agent Arthur Berger
Summary: Recent discoveries and data analysis show an alarming proliferation of anomalous items throughout the continental United States. These items have found their way into various retailers and catalogs, and are bought by individuals with little to no knowledge of the anomalous, often with results that risk Veil integrity. Due to the sheer amount of anomalous items sold in this way (estimated to be over 500,000 at time of writing), a mass containment effort using traditional Foundation methods is impractical, for two reasons.
Firstly: the Foundation has a finite number of personnel. Containment of these items after they have been purchased by civilians presents vast logistical issues; a single member of Foundation personnel would have to secure between thirty to fifty anomalous items for effective containment of this phenomenon. As such, a massive coordinated effort, such as that seen with the joint FBI-Foundation efforts to dismantle the Chicago Spirit, would be required.
Secondly: a mass containment effort, such as the one described above, poses a massive risk to Veil integrity. If a single anomalous item was removed from a home containing a family with two parents and two children, amnestics would have to be administered to them and at least seventy other individuals, per currently understood social models. Mass memory loss during and after the 1947 Roswell incident nearly led to Foundation exposure.
As such, the conclusion has been reached that the safest and most effective method to contain anomalous items that have entered the civilian populace is acquire them through legitimate means — i.e. monetary transactions.
Proposal: At any given time, the Foundation has an arbitrarily large stock of monetary resources, between revenue generated by front companies, funding from various world governments, and valuable items created using Thaumiel-class anomalies. These resources are largely dedicated to the costs of employment and containment facilities; however, enough is left over to establish the creation of several new departments.
As such, the above personnel are proposing the use of said monetary resources to aid the creation of a new Foundation department: the Department of Procurement and Liquidation (P&L). P&L would be responsible for using legitimate or quasi-legitimate channels to purchase anomalous items before they fall into the hands of civilians, including:
- Consumer electronics (e.g. televisions, radios, 'video game' consoles)
- Pharmaceuticals
- Vehicles
- Clothing
- Recreational items (e.g. toys)
- Appliances and household items (e.g. ovens, dinnerware, vacuum cleaners)
The formation of P&L would require the channeling of resources from pre-existing Foundation task forces and departments; particularly, task forces which monitor groups of interest which already sell anomalous items (e.g. Dr. Wondertainment, the Factory, Marshall, Carter & Dark Ltd.) have personnel who would be invaluable to the new department.
Furthermore, a large portion of P&L's personnel would be made up of Foundation psions, particularly individuals who are capable of psychometry. Psionic individuals have shown an affinity for determining whether or not a given item is anomalous, with a low risk of triggering any anomalous properties.
Executive Summary: The Department of Procurement and Liquidation would be responsible for containing anomalous items before they risk Veil integrity by entering the civilian population.