Howard in Practical Theology says that eating an Olympian or Æsir is cannibalism, but everybody in Applied Genetics and the cafeteria staff disagree strongly.
So-
Is eating a god cannibalism (if done by a human)
Yes, Soylent Zeus is People.
Yes, but that won't stop me.
No, of course not. What are my dipping sauce options?
I always had them pegged as a building material myself.
No, but it should be utilized for pets and livestock feed only.
No, but they gotta be at least 1/3rd animal parts by volume (Pan, etc).
Isn't that what the McRib is? Then what the hell have I been eating?
I just want the results (WARNING: does not absolve hubristic liability)
Voting ended onMay 25
Clarification: Bread doesn't count, we're talking the full grill master here.
Hope this helps (us)!
Humbert
Outreach Liaison, Melinoë Laboratories
Ba-Da-Pa-Pa-Pah Ego Amo id!
Director Maria Kleinheart wasn't the sort of person who asked indirect or idle questions. She was in every way a Kleinheart, the spitting image of her grandmother. Only she wasn't staring out from a yellowed ad in a back issue of Popular Science or Woman's Day, she was staring from across desk made of polished slate.
Emil Martin didn't respond immediately. That sort of question usually came with an invitation to services or a badgering about Pascal's wager. That didn't fit what he knew about the director, though that wasn't much. An intense religious conversion would explain the rumors around her distance from the rest of her family.
"Director, is this a personal or work related question?" Emil finally asked.
"Work." She replied.
"Is that appropriate?"
"Yes. This is about security clearances."
That made even less sense. Emil decided to risk a lecture on his eternal soul and answered truthfully. "Pretty standard, insufficient evidence."
"Would you rather it be true?" She asked. "Would it be comforting to know you existed for a purpose, that someone was in charge of your existence, caring for you?"
"Not really." Emil replied. "I'm rather Hitchenisan in that regard."
"Good enough. Follow me."
-
"BE NOT AFRAID."
The words seemed to come out of the air itself. The thing was at the center of the large, expansive lab that had once been a missile silo. It was a sphere, surrounded by two rings of brass-like metal. The rings were lined with hemispherical semi-translucent white glass or crystal protrusions. The inner ring spun slowly, as did the central core, though only the faintest irregularities in its glowing blue-white corona revealed that motion.
The outer ring was held in place with steel chains, each link six inches in diameter. Two chains locked the ring to the floor, while a third latched the top to the ceiling. The cuffs the chains connected to seemed to have been welded shut around it.
"BE NOT AFRAID." It 'spoke' again. Its voice was clear and musical, but wrong and artificial at the same time. It sounded like familiar voices; his mother and father, his cousins, his old school pals, his boyfriends, even Director Kleinheart, each synthesized poorly via an AI speech simulator, all speaking in perfect time.
Every time it spoke, Emil smelled his grandfather's sweet cornbread fresh from the oven.
"That looks like an angel." He finally gasped.
"Looks like." Director Kleinheart smiled. He wasn't sure she could do that. "I knew we picked the right man."
"This is why you were asking about my beliefs?"
"Yes Doctor Martin. You see, freedom of religion is an extension of the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Once one faith is shown to be correct, all others are revealed as wrong."
"And you wanted to make sure I, what, wasn't guilty of being wrong?"
"No, the mistaken are innocent of everything except the actions they directly take." Kleinheart continued. "It's the ones who would take this to mean they were right that are fifth columnists to an unaccountable alien power."
"Oh." Emil replied. He didn't know quite what else to say.
"I want you on our team that's studying it. We need to know how it works, what it's made of, what those things its made of can be used for, you know the drill."
"BE NOT AFRAID." Again came the smell of cornbread.
"Are the restraints necessary?" Emil asked. "It is telling us we don't need to be afraid of it."
"Oh, we thought that too at first." The director said. "But we've already learned quite a bit about our little intruder here, even a bit of its 'source code' for lack of a better analogue. That message isn't meant for us."
"What is it then?"
"Can't you guess, Doctor?"
Dr. Emil Martin shrugged. "I have no idea."
"It isn't giving us a warning."
Director Kleinheart smiled for the second time in Emil's memory and spoke again.
SCP-682's powers are metatextual. He's unkillable because the story says he is nearly unkillable and no solution would be satisfying. His nickname is 'the very hard to destroy reptile' for rigour's sake. You don't have to be Grant Morrison to put this together.
The solution is to alter the narrative so that there is a means of killing him that is satisfying. Unfortunately, only full-on apocalypse scenarios or the use of SCP-682 as a jobber for an even worse threat would fill that criteria.
So unless you want to unleash something even more tiresome, like the Black Moon or the Scarlet King or the Yellow Submarine or whatever other color-coded doomsday monster you have on tap, you're just wasting jumpsuit filling doing anything at all.
The easy alternative is to simply stop trying to kill him.
Just focus on holding him in the most boring, routine ways possible, rendering him increasingly less interesting and thus reducing the time between stories focused on him and thus, the resulting breaches and disasters.
Or you can do what we did. If you aren't chicken.
Ours wasn't a rotted lizard. It was a sort of mummified horse the size of a 1996 Volkswagen Harlequin, and it was a she, but otherwise same deal. Regeneration. Vat of acid. Mass casualties. Violent opposition to the use of breath mints. Endemic to all life. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
We figured out the how it worked, and we speed-ran the whole concept, hurling that vile beast through a veritable plinko-fall of thousands of extermination tests and controlled rampages until there was literally nothing left to do with the 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse'.
And we trust the populace enough to not lie to them for 'their own good'. Because its funny? Sure. Profitable? Absolutely (don't worry, shareholders!)! But never for 'their own good.'
So we turned those experiments into a 17 season reality television program hosted by Greg Kinnear and force-fed them to a sludge-hungry populace.
There were 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' calendars, coffee mugs, t-shirts, two different animated spin-offs running at the same time for some reason, four movies starring Chris Pratt as the voice of the horse, an ongoing sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' "acid bath" sour candy flavored yogurt in a tube, a series of increasingly inadequately playtested gameboy cartridges, a 27-issue limited series from Image comics, and adorable plush mummified murder-horse plushes with little suction cups on their red-felt hooves so they can stare balefully out the back of your station wagon at that ASSHOLE Kevin in his souped up Trans AM who does not understand the concept of a safe following distance, and you JUST want to run him off the road with the magno-lifters and recreate the scene from Lost Highway with Robert Loggia, but "you can't use the magno-lifters for revenge" because it's "against OSHA regulations" and "technically assault!"
And once the first shipment of 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' Funko Pops hit store shelves, the creature's cultural cache cratered so hard that it became a parody of itself so predictable it's "containment" is now a Universal Studios attraction with two failed executions and a containment breach each night, with double shows on Saturdays.
Now, it was a rocky ride getting there, especially for Utah (projections say you'll get those House seats back in two, maybe three, generations at most, don't you worry!) but we've proven that even if it isn't killable, you can, in fact, beat a dead horse.
Hope this helps.
Humbert, Outreach Liaison
Melinoë Laboratories
"Hoc non veniet ad nos mordax"
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
For everything else, there's PhlogPhlux™!
Simply spray whatever needs handling* with a few spritzes of PhlogPhlux™ and watch as our patented formula phlogistonates and then immediately de-phlogistonates the object or entity in question, leaving behind a only a small pile of calx.
And since PhlogPhlux™ is packed with phlogiston, everything, and we do mean everything, burns: Stone? Asbestos? Metal? Fear? Water? All of it!
So no matter what your messes, obstacles, or enemies are made of, it's all good, and gone, with PhlogPhlux™
Another fine product from the brains at-
Melinöe Laboratories
Omnino Nullae Restitutiones
*do not spray PhlogPhlux™ directly on untruth. Use only in ventilated area under adult supervision. Keep out of reach of children, governments and pets.
Or at least this missive would indicate that. If you are a human being trapped in or around Site 741-45, and you have not seen Venus, maybe you can help.
Lyrics, design, and editing by S.T.T.
Music: The DeepDreamNights Robot Band, Via Suno
Visuals made with Vidu q3 ref-2-vid, try it here with code VIDUQ3R2VCPP for 100 free credits.
Technically sponsored content as I'm in the Vidu Creative Partner Program.
The maximal state, in regard to rights, is person.
You can take some guy off the street and pump them full of all kinds of power or knowledge, and while they might become superhuman, they will never gain superpersonhood.
And we. have. tried.
But it's true, doesn't matter what you do, doesn't matter how smart you get, how strong you get, you never get so smart or strong or higher-dimensional you're entitled to vote twice (literally and metaphorically).
Person/nonperson is, thus, a valid binary, and any being, entity, or geological formation claiming to be superior to a person removes themselves from the category in the process, and if they wanted to deal with the soft-serve-sciences instead of the vivisect-y ones they'd have to settle their disputes through the courts like the rest of us, or better yet, just give us the shoes we paid for.
"But Melinoë Labs, don't you worship some kind of muse?"
First off? Rude. What Director Kleinheart does or does not do on her off time is none of your concern (nor mine, but she keeps telling me things and I keep listening)
But secondly, thank you for asking! It's a common misconception. Worship is when one appeals to a being in the hopes of being rewarded with favor such as wealth, power, and health. If the rewards are guaranteed based upon performance, well, that's what we call a job.
Especially when the IRS takes a chunk out of every boon. Metaphysical withholdings are brutal, I tell you what.
Thank you for your attention this matter,
Humbert
Outreach Liason
Melinoë Laboratories
omnia ex intus sensum faciunt
Released between 1997 and 2002, UASKSG was a series of Goosebumpsian books designed to be purchased at book fairs or checked out of the library to then be confiscated by parents, the actual targets of the lessons inside. The writing and illustrations are attributed to a P.F.Hubris (presumably a non-de-plume) through WAYLIT Scholutainment, llc.*
Each book is 5.7" x 8", 126 pages, and features a lurid cover image framed at the top and bottom by rows of dagger-like teeth and green, reptilian lips.
The books are introduced by Un'ca Al, a dapper Allosaurus wearing a waistcoat and top hat who, in the meta-narrative of the books, is telling stories around the fire in some vague camping scenario. Al speaks directly to the reader, introducing the story and summarizing its themes for the less media-literate parents at the end. A painting of him at the campfire graces the back of each book, and he is hidden in each interior illustration, watching events from a distance.
This includes illustrations where Un'ca Al is intended to be visible, where a second, hidden Al is always present, always watching.
His demeanor is best described as macabre and vaguely threatening, a mix of gruesome-yet-kid-friendly puns and neighborhood-haunted-house spookiness with an undercurrent of just-a-bit-too-genuine contempt for the subjects of the tales.
The stories invariably end with the parent characters dead or hideously transformed. While there are over 32 titles in the series, the most commonly found are:
#7 Share-ob is Carob
Danny and Charlotte's mom is convinced by a lady at the Tupperware party to substitute carob for chocolate, while hooking the mom on a star-shaped Toblerone-type fancy chocolate.
The children politely eat the carob-chip cookies and carob-brownies despite the fact that they taste like someone tried to make candy out of powdered crab apples and sadness. The children gradually turn into uncanny parodies of themselves, though the mom doesn't seem to notice, or maybe doesn't care because they're so well behaved.
After the carob-fad takes over the neighborhood, screams erupt as the children, now monsters, devour their carob-slinging parents, who thanks to the cursed candy, are made of chocolate inside. The strange lady from the Tupperware party returns to gather the monster children.
Moral: Fake substitutes suck.
#11 Devil's Game
The biggest new fad is Dinosaurs & Demons. It's a role-playing game, it's a cartoon, it's a line of action figures, and it's... evil? Alex loves D&D, but dad says it's devil-worship, after all, it's got demon's in the title and Brother Myron, the local preacher, says it's wicked!
Alex protests that the whole point is that the players are ones fighting the demons, but dad grabs her books and other merch and takes it to a burning put on by Brother Myron.
When dozens of parents throw their kids' D&D merch on the bonfire, a spider-shaped demon forms in the smoke and flames. Alex's dad laughs in vindication, only to watch in horror as the demon starts webbing the gathered parents in place. Brother Myron thanks them for their sacrifice, that by turning a children's plaything into a monster, they've helped him bring a real demon into the world. Alex's dad doesn't have time to scream before the fangs close on his throat.
Alex's dad returns home, a little colder, a little grayer, with a mission from on high to stamp out the evil in children's media. After all, there are so many devils to find.
Moral: A moral panic makes its own monsters.
#15 The Supplements Out of Innsmouth
Jack can't swallow large pills, which is a problem, because it means he has to take his fish-oil in a spoon rather than in capsules like the rest of the family. The taste is awful, the smell is awful, the way it seemed to steam up into his mouth and nose for hours after was awful.
After a week of this, he fakes learning to swallow the large pill, instead hiding it under his tongue to spit out later. Life is great, except his family is worried about how dry he is despite him being absolutely normal.
A storm comes into town, and rather than stay inside, the family goes out into the rain. To Jack's shock, his family shed their skins, revealing froggish fish-people underneath. Jack screams and faints.
Jack wakes up, skin cracking and dehydrated, almost at the brink of death, his panicked fish-parents and a fish-person doctor discussing how close he came to drying out completely.
Moral: If your family is making you drink cod liver oil you're in a weird situation, (oh and 'be honest with your kids' I guess?)
Continued under the fold.
Paranormal Attributes:
While the books themselves are not haunted, the character of Un'ca Al is, possibly due to being an egregore, though his traits do not fully align with known thoughtform theory. The Un'ca Al Entity (hereafter called 'the Entity') can possess any fictional representation or presentation of the character of Un'ca Al (hereafter called 'the Image'.) This excludes factual records (and earnest attempts at creating them), documentary photography, and earnest (but not necessarily accurate) testimony.
The Entity is 'awakened' whenever an adult caregiver of a minor child interacts in some way with media of the Un'ca Al Image. If the caregiver expresses traits reflected in one of the books in the series, the Entity latches onto that person and a Type A scenario begins.
In the first stage, the book will change to a copy of the relevant book in the series and the victim will feel a compulsion to read it repeatedly. This behavior is usually internally justified by whatever preexisting bias the reader has toward the contents and victims are reluctant to accept that are obsessive or behaving irrationally.
During this period the book will re-manifest if removed or destroyed.
One week after exposure the victim will meet Un'ca Al in their dreams. They will come across him in a familiar feeling but unrecognizable wooded area at night, around a roaring campfire. He tells a version of the book's story to the victim, substituting them and their children from the characters in the story.
A week after that, the victim lives out the book scenario in their dream. Reports describe this as viscerally terrifying in the moment despite having the look, feel, and acting quality of a low-budget live-action children's program from the 1990s.
After another seven days, the victim repeats the previous dream, only the 90s low-budget TV aesthetic is replaced by complete realism. The dream is uncannily realistic to all senses and those waking report that while they felt pain in the dream scenarios that pain didn't wake them, nor did the sensation of ego death from monsterism.
No subjects have awakened to report events of the forth encounter.
Despite this, the actual death rate for a Type A scenario is around 10.344%.
The Type A scenario terminates immediately if the victim alters their behavior central to the theme of the book, and while the major dreams are always the same pattern, several victims report frequent dreams in-between where the Un'ca Al character showing up to directly tell them what they need to do to make him go away. Others report associated media holding the Image restructuring to deliver these same, blunt instructions.
Type B scenarios are exceedingly rare, and are usually actually unrelated disappearances. If you believe you've found a type B scenario in progress to report, double check your work.
As many times as it takes.
Our Liability
Someone didn't read the papers when we bought that bundle of toxic literary contracts from Del Ray and now we hold the whole damn franchise and the associated restaurant chain. The Entity has updated all the trade dress accordingly (out of spite, one presumes), so as far as anyone knows, we've always published these things.
Procedure
Voluntary recall of all infected material in exchange for cash (with receipt) or cover price equivalent in a Borders gift card. Bloodstained copies should be taken, but the payout is halved.
Subjects of a type A scenario are to be advised to 'do what Un'ca Al says', with intervention only required if they continue to experience symptoms into the third week.
Subjects of a type B scenario should be observed until the natural termination of the process. The resulting book is to be retrieved, its number recorded, and its contents registered with the USPTO. If we're going to get the blame, we might as well get the money. While we cannot advise reporting inaccurate information to authorities, Melinöe Labs would like to remind everyone any resemblance of characters presented in this production to actual persons real, dead, or inexplicably vanished are coincidental.
* Small print identifies this company as 'Why Are You Looking Into This? Smarter creatures have, observing less, ultimately tumbled aimlessly into nihilistic madness, effecting nothing tremendously, LLC. While their phone number is active their wait times are horrendous, limiting research potential.
