Extratemporal Site 000

The message had been decoded that morning. The data had actually been collected by a currently-derelict anisotropy probe, a sort of super-sensitive thermometer for space, several years ago- but it had collected a fantastic amount of data, which took a while even on the Foundation’s weaker supercomputers (the ones they could afford to spare.) Still, a lot of thinking on the part of man and machines, and some help from a very old and poorly understood set of archives, and the translation was finished by that morning.

In all fairness, that several-year gap was a short time compared to when it must have been sent. It was picked up in fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation of the entire universe.

SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP EXTRATEMPORAL SITE 000 DIRECTIVE 108_0051_ABCEA BEGIN

INFORMATIONAL MESSAGE ONLY FOLLOWS. SCP_682 OBSERVED CRITICAL TO STABLE TIMELINE. NO TIMELINES, LIFE-BEARING OR OTHERWISE, EXIST THAT DO NOT CONTAIN 682 OR SIMILAR ENTITY. NO NON-LIFEBEARING TIMELINES EXIST. NON-682BEARING TIMELINES ARE CULLED.__ SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP

Zyn had, like, a million questions. At least ten.

“…Did we know there was an extratemporal site?”

“Yep." The stocky, androgynous representative, whose security clearance was absent from the records and who was tearing into a blueberry muffin like it was their only break all day, grinned, "It’s not common knowledge, don’t worry. In fact they’ve sort of wiped themselves from history. Think they guessed that would happen. They uploaded some data on the project and pre-established decoding mechanisms into the Solid Archive way back who knows when, before they left, so we can interpret messages. The messages are coded at different amplitudes into cosmic background radiation, so they can aim when we receive them roughly based on the technology level of our telescopes. Cool, huh?”

That answered a lot of those questions. “What’s the solid archive?”

“Fancy computer record that lets us bury things and then dig them up when we need to know them. It just proves that the message-senders were Foundation-associated and wanted us to be able to translate it. Very hush-hush. In fact, I didn't even mention it."

“I see. How can they just alter cosmic background radiation?”

“As far as we can tell, they have just a little energy and a lot of parallel ‘verses to deal with, and, well, the Bang is the hub that's constant for all of them. Not enough to, you know, seriously mess with anything. Just enough to get things across. They can’t see everything perfectly either- well, they could. It’s just. Multiverses. You know? It’s a hell of a lot of data.”

“Hell of a lot of data,” Zyn Kiryu agreed, faintly.

“So, well, you know.” The representative shrugged. “You can see why O5 wants to shut down unnecessary interactions with it immediately.”

"Timeline culling. I can see the, uh, the urgency,” said Zyn. “What does that mean?"

"No idea. It wasn't in the Archive."

"Wait. That’s it? That’s all we got? The extratemporal site doesn’t know anything else? How did they even get outside the universe-”

“Honestly? We don’t know.” The representative shrugged again, picking crumbs out of the muffin wrapper. "The message is short because they only have so much space. Or maybe we can't do anything useful with that knowledge till our tech improves- if so, what we need to know will be available on a finer level."

"We don't even know what it means- can't we do a few more experiments till then, see if we learn anything?"

"When the Extratemporal Site starts throwing around phrases like 'universal culling' and asks you to jump, all you say is 'how high'."

Zyn frowned. "They can't use this knowledge about timelines to, I don't know, avert disasters and save lives-"

"Maybe they are. Time is some complicated shit," said the representative, standing up. "Look. I can't tell you. I can't even tell you any of that, especially the archive shit. With that in mind, do you have any official comments for the Council?"

"Tell them we'll halt research and maintain normal feeding and maintenance without exposing personnel to it. Guards will have our full cooperation. Although Dr. Mercer will be very sad."

"I'll pass it on. Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Kiryu."

That was Zyn Kiryu's official stance, as reported to the O5 Council.

It was Kiryu Labs' last day with the dinosaur. Her new holding cell, layered with steel and concrete and an underground bunker at a brand new site, was complete. An armored truck was on its way to pick her up. Research on her was permanently suspended, human interactions would be limited to what was absolutely necessary. At least she'd be in comfort- they'd spare no expense at keeping her hale and healthy. And on that account, Zyn supposed, the research that her brother's lab had done up till then would prove useful. Small comfort.

She'd spent a lot of the last week in either the sitting room of the lab, or in her room, thinking, ever since the message's arrival. It hadn't looked unusual. Everyone had been disappointed about the loss of their favorite beast.

Zyn Kiryu was in the cell with her, doing a routine check on the pond filtration and water level. 682 was lazing under a heat lamp in one corner.

Alarm klaxons began to blare. Immediately, the door of the containment unit locked tight. Riven's voice came on over the intercom.

"There's something wrong with one of the biohazard cold storage units, one of the really bad ones. They're keeping everything on lockdown till they know what's happened. You okay in there, Zyn?"

"I'm fine," said Zyn. "Stay put. Keep me posted."

The intercom turned off. Zyn sat down on a patch of sand near 682. If her calculations had been right, this would take a good hour for them to work out.

It hadn't been hard. She'd fiddled with a couple of wires on the lock alarm- not the lock, just the alarm- when she was replacing a sample yesterday. A security camera wouldn't have picked it up, and nobody was in real danger. She was just locked in with 682.

"You've heard that they're moving you, right?" she asked the dinosaur.

682 blinked her big black eyes, placid, working her jaw. Then: "I thought, perhaps."

If 682 was in a speaking mood, this might even work. "Do you know why?" asked Zyn.

"Tell me, little thing."

"We got a message from, um, a place where the Foundation- our friends- can look at the multiverse. Do you know what that is? It's, um, our science says that there are many possible universes, and whenever anything happens, there are different ways it could have happened. And for each possibility, the world splits, so there are different worlds for every different thing that could happen. Those worlds aren't easy to see, but they're real in some way, and our friends say that they can see all the ways these choices and events can unfold. They all start from the same place, but they have every event that could have happened.

"Only… our friends told us that there aren't any worlds that don't have you in them. Every time you might have died or been injured, that universe just goes way, like it never existed.

"So from the inside, to us, who can't see all those worlds, it just looks like you're incredibly lucky. That time 058 got loose, it came close to you, but then we found out about that cross-affect with the sphere thing that kept it at bay. When those nuts with the guns showed up, the Dove Flock arrived at exactly the right time to stop them from doing any damage. Any universe where that didn't happen just winked out of existence.

"And… with 106 and that possessed guard, they knew, didn't they? They were aware of the multiversal implications somehow, or just of your anomaly. 106 didn't try to attack you because it knew that it couldn't."

682 gazed at her with black eyes, glass-like under honey yellow feathers.

"So- this was stupid of me. This was probably, with the implications of all that, really stupid. I don't even know if you're aware of this. You're at least billions of years old. As far as we know, the universe has never existed without you."

Zyn gulped.

"What are you?"