 It was over. No one in the foundation from the lowliest security guard to the O5 council could quite explain exactly what was over. If there were a hazard to guess, the unlikely answer would have been everything. It was generally agreed that the first one to notice this was Dr. Victor Balakarev. Dr. Balakarev, though, a veteran of many a dangerous experiment and not one to be easily surprised, couldn't believe his eyes, or rather his high-powered telescope. What he couldn't quite believe was that a routine scan of the crab nebula revealed nothing but empty space where a rather conspicuous and rather hateful star was supposed to be. When the alarm was raised, a dozen more telescopes were commandeered from various facilities and agencies and there was no small amount of shouting and running around. The star, however, stubbornly refused to reappear despite the doctor's insistent claims that a star is an ability to remote control and you don't just lose it. The next one to experience a strange lack of all things strange was D682-1356, though he couldn't quite appreciate the magnitude of the occasion. He didn't know he was supposed to be the bait in what most assumed would be just another futile attempt and an endless series of failures. He also didn't quite know what to feel when he entered the armored vault to discover nothing more than a badly mangled skeleton when the acid bath was stopped. So what do you guys want me to do with that? Do you have a bone to pick with me or something? The joke was lost on the assembled researchers who had now more important things to worry about than a D-class's really bad sense of humor and so began the end. When SCP-294 was prompted to produce a cup of Joe, it made a serviceable cup of cappuccino which utterly failed to contain any D-class flavorings. In SCP-1981, Ron Reagan spoke only of evil empires and managed to keep a perfect complexion throughout the speech. SCP-902 was opened and discovered to be empty and no one could quite remember why they feared it so much in the first place. An SCP-076 was found to be similarly empty but no one forgot what scared them about it. When SCP-1867 was asked if it realized it was a slug, it didn't think for a second to object, since it very clearly was. Besides, it didn't quite understand the question. SCP-085 was gone from its canvas and its inky plains and fields felt bare and empty without the young woman who once inhabited them. They found the clothes which once belonged to 1440 near the top of Mount Everest. Next to them a single word was written in the snow, free. Around the world the echoes of the end became seismic shocks and no one was spared from their influence. The Church of the Broken God was wiped off the face of the earth. It isn't easy to maintain a working religious organization while your artifacts crumble to dust and it's even more difficult to do so when half of those artifacts are inside your head. Marshal Carter and Dark Limited, having lost most of their stock and shortly after most of their members soon faded into obscurity. Their once busy clubhouse, a hub for all things mysterious and expensive, became a place for elderly gentlemen to read the Sunday paper and piece and doze and comfortable leather chairs. The Global Occult Coalition, after it became clear that the threats it was created to thwart were gone, soon disbanded. The budget once dedicated to fighting the forces of the unknown were allocated to some of humanity's more mundane needs, such as the prevention of global warming and the development of more advanced nuclear weapons. No word was heard from Dr. Wondertainment for a long time. A year after the end, a new line of Dr. Wondertainment toys was released. While Dr. Wondertainment's shooty man's vengeance was a perfectly decent game, it was clear his or her heart was no longer in it. When Foundation agents arrived at the supposed current location of the factory, they found nothing more than an ordinary canned vegetable factory. The capital F was clearly no longer needed. The serpent's hand lost a considerable number of its members and with no cause to rally behind was destroyed by the chaos insurgency. The insurgency itself soon tore itself asunder like a mad dog biting at its own innards. Very few were left to be caught and executed by the Foundation. The members of Are We Cool Yet never quite became cool. Nobody was never heard from again. The unusual incident unit continued chasing flying saucers and reports of Bigfoot, this time entirely unrelated to SCP-1000. And its agents, well, they didn't really notice. The Foundation, as resilient as ever, was the last one left standing. As years passed, however, the reasons for its continued existence grew fewer and fewer. With all things anomalous gone, the Foundation had lost its purpose. Site after site was closed down. Personnel were let go. Soon, only one part of the organization remained. It was the last meeting of the O5 Council. There were no heartfelt speeches or commemorative plaques because, even at its end, the O5 Council was a serious body of men and women who didn't muck about with nonsense. Instead, there were a few handshakes, a few quiet words, and mostly a whole lot of silence.