Hey guys, TheDoctor1998 here with another chapter. This time we're gonna do the Factory, which is a tad different from the last few files.
Now, on with the show!
XXXXXXXX
Doctor Nori appeared on the screen. "Good afternoon everyone, my name is Doctor Nori, and today we're going to be studying one of the SCP-001 proposals. Specifically, Dr. Bright's proposal, AKA the Factory."
Sir Pentious looked up in interest. After all, back when he was alive, he was heavily involved with the automation that his country was pushing. Even when it came at the cost of the health of the people, which had become his greatest regret ever since he met Charlie.
The screen glitched out, Doctor Nori vanishing and being replaced by the faceless voice of a man.
SCP-001 is an O5's tale
Good evening, Doctor.
"Wait, what?" Emily said, tilting her head in confusion.
No, no, don't stand up. And, yes, I am who you think I am. Let's not make any more of this than it is. You know my number, and I know enough about you to make a duplicate that even your mother wouldn't be able to tell apart from the real you. No, that's not a threat, just a fact.
"Yeah, that's not threatening at all." Husk muttered, taking a sip of the drink in his hand. He was well aware of how it was to have a boss who could whip you out in an instant.
Now, as to my business here, it seems you have stumbled upon something above your clearance. Well, no, stumbled is not the right word. Dug up? Perhaps. And you are getting to the point where further digging would end in some fairly lethal gunshot wounds. This would be a sad state of affairs, as you are otherwise quite a good researcher. Therefore, you are getting something very few people in the Foundation ever get… an explanation.
Yes, we were alerted when you first started digging into SCP-001. Every researcher who's been around for a while looks into it. Most are satisfied when they uncover the angel with the flaming sword, it's buried under enough levels. But then you started looking into The Factory, and that is when I knew you wouldn't stop. So, here it is, plain and simple.
The Factory is SCP-001.
"Fucking hell, all these 001's are really messin with my head." Angel Dust said, rubbing his temples.
But it will never be written up. It was a choice I made early on in the creation of the Foundation, and a choice I still stand by. You researchers are far too curious. I'm not sure which scares me worse. That we'll never understand the Factory… or that we one day will. Ah well, I'm sure you're eager to learn more.
"Heh, sure we are." Adam said, sarcasm dripping from his mouth.
The Factory was built in 1835. Back then it was known as The Anderson Factory, named after James Anderson, a rather well-to-do industrialist. It was built in, well, we'll just say America, and was the largest factory yet designed, a good mile across at its widest, three stories tall throughout, with a special seven story tower by the front gate that Anderson lived in. It was designed to be the ultimate factory, capable of taking care of everything, including the housing of workers. People could be born, work, live, and die, without ever leaving the confines of the Factory. And work they did, on everything from cattle raising and slaughtering, to textiles, to everything else under the sun.
"That, that's incredible." Pentious said, eyes wide.
"What?" Sera glared at the former Sinner, not liking his implications.
"I mean how it could make whatever you want, that's all!" The serpent clarified. "I was alive just a few decades after this factory was built, and I know from first hand experience that one on this scale would've been unheard of!" Quietly though, he had to admit that the name Anderson did ring a bell somewhere, like a half forgotten dream.
Now, no one knows whether James Anderson was actually a Satan worshiper. It's just as likely that he followed some kind of Pagan gods. What is known is that he was VERY exact in the building of his factory, and in the placement of his machinery within it. Survivors claim the floor was engraved with arcane symbols, that were only visible when blood flowed across them… But then the survivors claimed a lot of things. What is known is that Anderson made his money on the blood and sweat, and sometimes body parts of the lower class. His journals indicate he thought of them as less than human, being put on this Earth only to serve his will.
The High Seraphim glared at the Devil in the room. "Something you wish to tell us, Lucifer?"
"Hey, don't look at me!" The fallen Seraph protested. "Could've easily been a Goetia or something. Hell, there's a lot of hidden knowledge about Demonkind on Earth that he could've found."
Of course, at that time, no one knew about his predilections, and so people flocked to the Factory. A place to both work and live at the same time? Well, of course people wanted in! Never mind the harsh hours, working conditions, sadistic security force, and all the rest. Factory workers were forced to work 16 hour days, work only shutting down on Sundays, between sunrise and sunset. Workers were not given individual rooms, instead sharing rooms with eight other people, sleeping in shifts of three. Medical attention was unheard of. If you were injured in the course of your duties, which most people were, you were expected to just keep working. Anyone too injured to work was dragged off by the security, never to be heard from again.
Pentious sighed. "Unfortunately, that sort of treatment for the working class wasn't uncommon back when I was alive."
"It wasn't?" Charlie asked, eyes wide.
"Well, it is a lot more extreme in Anderson's factory, granted, but it has the same underlying mentality." The serpentine angel elaborated.
For forty years, the Anderson Factory cranked out all sorts of things for people. Meat, clothes, weapons. Never mind that the beef might be mixed with human. Don't care that the weapons were forged in blood. No attention need be paid that the clothes were dyed with…well, you get the idea. Rumors leaked out, but the products were so good, why bother? Until someone got out.
"Hmm, seems I missed out on some delicious food by not being born then, it seems." The Radio Demon mused, much to the disgust of the other audience members.
"For fuck's sake, can't you even try to act normal for once?" Lucifer said, rubbing his eyes in annoyance.
"It's perfectly normal, my miniature liege. Or have you forgotten the existence of Cannibal Town?" The deer teased.
Adam and Lute simply shivered at the mention of the demons that had eaten their army.
I never met the brave soul who managed to escape, but she managed to meet with President Grant, and, in 1875, he enlisted my aid. At the time I was… well, it doesn't matter. We'll say I was military, kind of, and that my people were the same. A hundred and fifty good men and some few women, who were often given jobs that weren't supposed to be common knowledge. We'd been cleaning out some Confederate holdouts, and some of the worse things we found down South. So, we did some research, didn't like what we saw, and went in, loaded for bear.
"Wait, what the hell?! How the fuck did that O5 guy live so long?!" Adam exclaimed, amazed that his descendants of this day and age managed to stay alive for as long as that.
"Didn't you, like, live a thousand years?" Vaggie asked, a deadpan look being thrown at her former boss.
"Yeah, but I was the most magically powerful human on the planet!" The First Man answered. "All my descendants have less magic than me, Lilibitch and Eve had."
"Don't talk about my wife that way." Lucifer said, a dangerous look in his eye.
"I'll talk about that cheating bitch however I want, you wife stealing cuck!" Adam growled back.
"Will both of you please stop it." Charlie groaned. "We're gonna be stuck here for a while, so we might as well try to get along." She couldn't help but give Adam a side eye. "And please don't talk about my mom that way."
Adam simply sat back in his seat, crossing his arms and muttering something about blonde bitches.
I don't actually remember much about the night it all went down. Most of it blends together in my head. I get flashes, sometimes, of the people chained to the line, living next to dead, and damned hard to tell which was which. Children working underneath machines, the majority of the flesh scoured from their bones by the great wheels and cogs. And the other things…
Charlie and Emily started tearing up. While they were the kinds of people who could see the good in everyone, even they were thinking that redemption might not be possible for these people.
"Despicable cretins." Alastor muttered, disgusted at their treatment of those who were incapable of fighting back.
No, I'm all right. I haven't thought about that night for a very long time. The security force wasn't much of a problem. But then Anderson's creations showed up. He'd been taking the injured workers and, well, experimenting on them. Men, if you could call them men, with multiple arms, sewn together, some of them combined with animals, horrible monstrosities out of mankind's worst nightmares. They kept coming, wave after wave of not quite living creatures. I lost a lot of good people that night. And then we found Anderson's breeding pits, girls as young as eight, chained to the walls, forced to be nothing more than-
Angel Dust shuddered, he knew all too well how horrible breeding pits could be, even if Sinners were universally sterile. He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, prompting him to look over to see a singular concerned eye.
"You okay Angie?" Cherri whispered, knowing way too much about the abuse her friend has suffered at the hands of his boss.
Before Angel could respond, he felt another hand over one of his, and saw Husk trying to give him some comfort. "Yeah. I think I'll be okay." The spider said, smiling at his friends.
I'm sorry. Even today, more than a century later, the memory makes me see red. When we finally found Anderson cowering in his office, we hung him from his tower window, with his own entrails. As he died, he laughed, saying it didn't matter, we could kill him, but his factory, The Factory, would go on. He was still laughing 24 hours later when we finally cut him down, had him drawn and quartered, and then burned the remains. The entire time he uttered blasphemies that I don't like to think about.
Most of the audience started turning green, with Emily even going as far as to puke up her breakfast.
"Aww, gross, angel puke!" Adam groaned, being unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone.
We spent a week cleaning that place out, freeing the workers, putting down the things we found in the basements and many lightless rooms. We pulled out things that were useful, stocked them in a house near the gate, tried to make sense of everything. A hundred and fifty of us went into that hell pit that night, and only ninety-three came out. By the end of that week, we were down to seventy-one.
"I hope they made it to Heaven." Emily muttered, dabbing a tissue on her mouth to clean up what little vomit managed to get onto herself.
But the things we found in there, my god. Well, you've been with the Foundation a while, they wouldn't seem as amazing to you, but we found toy guns that shot real bullets. A yo-yo that would flay the skin from anyone it touched, hammers that only worked on human flesh. A breed of skeletal horse that ran faster than anything we'd ever seen. Cloaks that seemed woven from the night itself, and let men access a shadowy dimension that… I get away from myself. We found tools, both wondrous and horrible. And we were faced with a choice.
I gathered my highest ranking, well, we'll call them officers, to me, and we tried to figure out what we would do. They all had opinions. The Chaplain, he had gone a little crazed. Thought all these objects must be miracles sent from god, holy relics to be worshipped. Marshall and his little toady Dawkins thought there was a fortune to be made here, making and selling these things to the highest bidder. The Injun we all called Bass, due to his deep speaking voice, he called these things an abomination, and declared that we should hunt down and destroy everything we could find. And Smith thought we should take this stuff back to the president. The only one without an opinion was the old man, but he never said much of anything anyways. We argued for hours, days, trying to work it out. Me, I thought we were sitting on a gold mine, all right. But that we could use these things, these objects, to hunt down some of the scary things we'd run into down South, the other monsters this world had to offer, and use this factory for good, as a place to contain these things, find a way to make them work for our fellow man, or at least protect our fellow man from having to deal with them.
"So the Foundation is not alone." Sera muttered, noting to herself to talk to the Winners up in Heaven to learn about whatever secrets the Foundation and this anomalous underworld might have.
I'm sure you can figure out what happened. The Chaplain snuck away in the night with his devotees, taking a couple of small items with him. Marshall we kicked out when we found him… abusing his authority. He promised he'd get revenge, and that little Dawkins shit led the rest of their group off with some of the juicier items. Bass and his people tried to light the whole damn thing on fire, then just left when it didn't work. And Smith left, to report back to the president. I did manage to get him to promise me he'd tell Grant the Factory had been destroyed. I had big plans for that place.
"Great, it seems that the Vees have counterparts on Earth as well." Alastor said, irritated at the behaviour of Marshall.
A'course, it was kinda hard to follow through on big plans when you only have 12 other people to work with. But it was a start.
And it worked, for a while. We had these amazing toys, and finding people to work with us was easy. Back then, going off the grid was as simple as leaving town. We knew what we wanted, we knew what we could be.
Leventhal set out getting us backing. A simple invention here, some well invested money there, it all worked out. White and Jones set out getting us… other backing. In our previous work we'd found out some interesting things about people. Some secrets that powerful men didn't want getting out. And, with our new position helping keep secrets, we got more people asking us to deal with their secrets. Blackmail is a dirty word, but it works. Bright, Argent and Lumineux got to work cataloging the items. Light and Bright's wife, the nurse, they made sure we kept ourselves healthy. Heh. No, it's just, remembering Light. She had such unusual ideas about hygiene, for the time. Brilliant woman. Czov, Fleischer and Carnoff dealt with training the troops. Tesla and Tamlin were in charge of figuring out how to take advantage of the items, without making it obvious.
"They actually met Tesla?!" Pentious said, a huge smile on his face.
"Who's that?" Niffty asked, tilting her head.
"Only one of the most brilliant inventors of his time!" The angel elaborated. "Honestly, the only reason why he isn't as recognized as he should be is because that Edison fellow kept upstaging him by buying and selling all sorts of inventions."
We were amazing. The city we built around the Factory, which we took to calling Site Alpha, was self supporting. Agents, researchers, operatives of all sorts… not by those names, of course, but those positions. We expanded.
…
I'm sorry, I am an old man. I know I do not look it, but the body lies. The mind… doesn't always remember right. And sometimes I get lost in my memories. Things get confused. But, the long and simple of it is this: We used the Factory. It always seemed to have more empty rooms to store things in. Back then, that was the word for them, things. No Skips then, no. We thought we had the Factory tamed. That's one of the reasons I refuse to quit this job. If there's anything I can do here, it's remind people that we will NEVER tame these things. Contain them, yes, but as we saw with Able, tame them? Never.
Adam went quiet again at the name of his son. He knew perfectly well what happened to Able, and he could easily guess what his once favourite child did to those people at the Foundation.
After a decade or so, we were pretty organized. The 13 original of us were being called by numbers, not names. We knew how to make things work. And, if a thing or two vanished inside of the Factory, still? And the occasional D-class? What? Yes, we had D-class back then. Disposables. That's where the D comes from. Had to have someone to test things on, Tesla and Tamlin were both very firm about that. But, yes, sometimes we lost people who didn't matter. Adam… sorry, Dr. Bright, was fond of saying it was the Factory taking its toll. You can't get something for nothing.
Horns started growing out of Charlie's skull as an eye appeared in Emily's halo, both simply hating the fact that these humans were treating other humans as nothing but things to be disposed of.
1911 was when it all went wrong. Things… we called them faeries. An entire race of things, living beside us. They could look the same as you or I. The only obvious difference was an allergy to Iron. Yes, that's why we called them faeries. No, you haven't heard of them. Why? Because it's the one time the Foundation wiped out an entire race of things. Root and branch. And I'm the one who did it.
Adam started pondering, he was sure he heard about their existence when he was alive, but for the life of him he couldn't remember how or when.
We'd been hunting them for some time. We'd run into them a time or two before, come out on top. So, when a certain royal asked us for help, of course we were eager to get them in our debt. We've always loved having people in our debt. We sent a team to help out, take care of what we thought was a hunting party. The next time we saw them, their heads were on poles, attached to the saddles of the creatures the Faeries rode, when they attacked the Factory.
"So these Sinners committed a genocide." Lute growled.
"Pot, meet kettle." Vaggie muttered.
"What was that?!" Lute asked hotly.
"I said you're a fucking hypocrite." Vaggie answered. "Or don't you call the systematic eradication of Hell's population a genocide, then?"
Lute didn't really have an answer for that, so she wisely shut up.
It was horrible.
Three words, but they convey so much. I have never… I'm sorry, please, give me a moment. I've never told this part to anyone. You should consider yourself lucky. And, if you ever tell anyone any of what I am about to impart on you, I will not just kill you, but everyone who shares your DNA, in the worst ways possible. You'll think Procedure 110-Montauk is a walk in the park compared to what I do to you.
"Ohh, he's a bad boy." Niffty grinned, a psychotic gleam in her eye.
"No Niffty, simply someone who wants to keep a secret." Alastor said, gently trying to make sure Niffty doesn't cross this O5 person.
We lost. The things came, and they destroyed us. Rode over our emplacements, slaughtered our people, shrugged off our weapons like they were nothing. I watched my thirteen go down, left and right, just trying to hold the Factory. And I? I, their leader, their friend, their father figure? Godfather to the Bright's four young children. Confidant, sometimes lover, always the confessor? I ran. I ran like a scared little school boy, deep into the dark guts of the Factory. I was chased by the things, always just one step ahead. I could hear them behind me, feel their breath upon my neck, and …
I came to a door I'd never seen before. A bronze door, covered in Arabic script of some sort. I've never been one for languages, especially not the curvy bullshit the musselmen use. But I didn't care. They were coming for me, and I threw the door open and dived through it. Everything inside… was different. There was a feeling of peace, that nothing could hurt me here. The light was this dark red, but still felt right. My ears were filled with the steady thrumming of a gigantic heartbeat. And, in front of me, were the remains of Anderson. It spoke to me then, but I'll be damned if I could tell you exactly what it said. What it told me was more meaning, than exact. It offered me hope. It told me… it told me that each of the things we had used from the Factory, no matter what we did with them, fed it. Helped it grow. But, if the Faeries took the Factory, they would destroy it, and we couldn't have that. It offered me… a deal. It could remove this event. Make it have never happened. All I needed to give it was… us.
"Hmm, so the Factory itself is trying to make a deal." Alastor muttered, already sensing the power that this machine wields. As well as the dangerous mind at the heart of it.
I didn't want to. I knew it was a bad idea. But then, I saw them again, my family, my friends, dead. Dead by the hands of those bastards… I agreed. It smiled. And I found myself once more upon the ramparts, watching the horde of Faeries crest the hill. My Foundation alive once more. In my hands was a weapon. I won't bore you with the details, but we slaughtered them. And, with these new weapons, continued to slaughter them, everywhere they lived, everywhere they bred. My fellow O5s questioned my decision, thinking we should save some, in case we might ever need them… I overruled them.
Lucifer shook his head in disappointment. An entire species, just gone. He didn't know who's creation those faeries were, maybe they were his own, but to eradicate an entire species just like that? It sickened him to his stomach.
We moved away from the Factory. Shut it down. Moved our things out of there. We changed the name from things to Special Containment Protocols, focusing on containing them, not… anything else. The others were curious, but understood I had my reasons. I boarded up the Factory. Locked it shut. Buried it under a ton of rubble, saying it was too dangerous. I thought… thought I'd gotten away with it. Until I found a thing on my desk. One of the old toy guns that shot real bullets. And it had the Factory label on it.
"A deal is a deal, my good sir." Alastor said, creeping most people out. Except for Husk, who was more than used to the eccentricities of his boss.
… I've sent people in, from time to time, to see what it might be doing. Last time I sent people in to look, there was nothing there. We keep finding Factory items out there. I can't help but think of how many more we don't find. The people who use them, and keep it hidden. I think back to the body telling me how each item used gave energy to the Factory. I never asked it 'energy for what?' I don't think I want to know.
"Nothing good I bet." Sera concluded. If the Factory truly gained energy from whatever it made, it should be insanely powerful at the moment. Maybe even powerful enough to threaten Heaven itself. "I have to look into this." The Seraphim vowed to herself.
What do we give it? D-class, mostly. Where DID you think all those bodies went? There's a place. Bodies are left, and they vanish. Everyone thinks I'm a genius for figuring it out. Sometimes… sometimes I have to feed it other things. Researchers. Agents. They never know it's coming. It just reaches out and takes them.
"Yeah, you made a deal with the devil, what did you expect dipshit?" Adam growled at the stupidity of his descendant.
But, in the end, we're doing more good by being here. Whatever the Factory wants, whatever it IS… We're doing good here. I have to believe that.
"I honestly doubt that." Sera said.
"Oh, and you are an expert on what's good and bad Miss "I allowed a yearly cull of human souls?"" Emily snarked, paining Sera's heart.
And now you know. Are you happy? I didn't think so. Why tell you? I'm getting old, Everett. Should I die, someone will have to keep feeding it. Maybe you'll be different. Maybe you'll figure out how to stand up to it.
… But I doubt it.
"That's not ominous at all." Husk said, taking another sip of his drink.
"It isn't? I thought it was." Niffty asked, confused at the words of her friend.
"I was being sarcastic, Niff." Husk explained.
"Ooohhh. I get it now!" Niffty exclaimed, a mad grin on her face.
The screen glitched out again, causing Doctor Nori to appear again. "Sorry about this lecture being so short, but the O5's have made sure that most of the information about SCP-001 has been classified to the highest level. No, I don't know why, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it."
"Everyone's entitled to keep their secrets, I suppose." Charlie said uneasily, not liking the nature of dealmaking herself.
Doctor Nori was shown next to a man with a lab coat and an ornate medallion. "So, Bright. Any idea why the Factory was labeled as 001?"
"Nor, it is a factory that mass produces anomalies, remember?" Bright said with a mischievous smile.
"I know that." Nori said with a roll of her eyes, both the biological one and the LED image. "But that thing's far from the only one that does that. Hell, the Foundation's made anomalies, including the two of us."
"Nori." Bright said, serious. "You don't want to dig too deep, otherwise Khan might end up a single father. And believe me, I don't want Uzi to be one step closer to being an orphan."
Nori's eyes widened. "That bad?"
Bright only nodded.
"Good lord, not even the factories in Hell are anywhere as bad as that." Pentious said, his face paler than before.
"Let me guess, all the sweatshops down there are just fine and dandy?" Lute asked with clear sarcasm.
"Absolutely not!" The serpentine angel hissed. "I oversaw many of those factories within Miss Carmine's territory myself! And though the work is hard, the workers are more than fairly compensated!"
"You worked for Carmilla?" Vaggie asked.
Pentious made a so-so motion. "It was more of a freelance thing. I often went down there to fix or improve several of the mechanisms in exchange for a hefty discount on her products."
Before the angels and demons could continue this conversation, the next file started to play.
XXXXXXXX
And that's a wrap. Went a little different this time due to how the proposal was written, but I think I did alright. Next up is the last 001 before we get to the rest of the files. TheDoctor1998 here, signing out!
