Those were the words screaming in scarlet letters from posters hung on every crosswalk and telephone pole near my house.

It’s 8 AM on the only cold morning in January, Mountain View, California. At this time of the day on Sunday, the streets are quiet, the park is quiet, and the thoughts in my head are louder than ever. It’s a calming time for a walk down the tree-lined path through the park, past the brown and beige playgrounds covered in CAUTION tape, the freezing public pool, the trees with seeds that look like coat buttons and the WEAR YOUR MASK, MOUNTAIN VIEW! signs covered with laminated posters glinting in the shy morning sun. The posters that are all shouting about the same dog.

This poster design is Big-O Original. There’s a huge black labrador, ears cropped, tail cut off, its surroundings expertly clipped away, standing in a white void, gazing up at the word OBSERVE. Below DOG, there’s a piece of clip art from get-your-generic-icons-here-dot-com of hands holding a smartphone, subtitled TAKE A PHOTO OF THIS POSTER. And there’s a phone number, 650-555-0282. In the same glaring red as the header is CALL IF YOU THINK THIS DOG MIGHT BE IN YOUR AREA. REWARD!

This poster had more time and money sunk into it than the park’s tourism signs. They’re really, really nice. They’re laminated. In full color. Photoshopping the dog must have taken hours. And there are dozens just in the park. I’ve seen them taped onto playsets, stapled onto trees (seriously?), zip-tied to the tennis courts gates, each one shouting at you in black and red. I’ve seen so many, and spent so long staring, that that dog is fixed in my mind. The way it stares, the spot where its tail should be, its cruel sharp ears, the giant red nonsensical warning floating over it. DO NOT OBSERVE? It’s too late for that, right?

I snapped a photo to show to my friends later, tossed the sheets I’d pulled off the oaks into the trash, and crossed the park to go back to my apartment. I’m surprised the asphalt path isn’t lined with posters too. What is it? Some kind of viral marketing campaign? DO NOT OBSERVE THIS DOG, really? When the rest of the world wakes up, is the whole neighborhood going to be infected with these things?

Ahh, whatever.

Logs from the USTCP Security Competition chat network, #onkin team channel. Not too long after the competition started.

bossman: The comp this time is fkn crazy.
bossman: you all doing ok with setup?
Altiel: System monitoring is almost done. I got the simple stuff (temperature, overall
        health, etc.) graphed
Altiel: ...and I'm tuning the global event analyzer. Should be able to get regular reports
        pretty soon with big stuff isolated.
CAKE: Wow, they started us out with a lot of the basics already done this time. Almost
      everything has been working for a while.
CAKE: So I don't need to construct the system foundations this time :)
ttr: already found a few small presents from red team
ttr: put a list of the ones i found in here: <attachment>
ttr: and fixed some of them
CAKE: Anyone need help with anything? :)
bossman: CAKE, you work with me on fine-tuning the system for us to make tweaks without
         causing too many snowball effects.
CAKE: Actually I set up some local agents already with the time I already had, we have
      something available in most areas
ttr: will start scanning althiel's logs now
ttr: holy shit
ttr: look at the board
ttr: three teams just flatlined
CAKE: Uh, what?? O_o
bossman: wtf? what happened?
Altiel: Oh my god
Altiel: Look at these charts: <attachment>
Altiel: The whole system is suffering necrosis
bossman: FCK
bossman: cake, what do the agent statuses say
CAKE: Looks like virus :\
Altiel: There's a HUGE virus that's spreading EVERYWHERE and killing resources
Altiel: It's kind of like one we planned for but worse, the AIs aren't optimizing for
        containing it
bossman: CAKE, you and I need to start influencing ASAP. Altiel, you keep monitoring and
         tell us where is worst.
bossman: ttr, handle everything else
ttr: uh
ttr: ok
ttr: i'll keep looking for small things that could become a problem then

Have you ever heard about cryptids? What about youkai? Or that stuff from the SCP Foundation? I feel like I’m stuck in one of those stories.

Cryptids are creatures like Bigfoot or Nessie whose existence can’t be disproven. Youkai are similar: mysterious spirits and local gods, like the polite but murderous Japanese kappa, who can be can be both charming and cruel. The SCP catalogues creepy stories about evil artifacts from the modern era. There’s one about a toaster that always burns the name of someone who is going to die. This poster feels the most like one of those. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Ever since the day I really saw the dog that was on the poster.

I went on another walk in the park a few days after I saw the posters. Monday was a holiday and I spent it inside, ignoring the gentle white glow from the skylight while I skimmed Twitter. Miserable. I went on a walk instead, enticed by the trees with their thick clumps of leaves like feather dusters glowing green and yellow in the soft afternoon sunlight. I pushed open the black iron gate to the park, and there it was. A dog. The black dog. The DO NOT OBSERVE THIS dog.

It looked out from the shadows of the twisting vines climbing the beige walls of the tennis courts. The dog was staring straight past me, through the rungs of the gate, past the trees with their rustling feather duster leaves, at the beige condominium complex behind me; staring through the walls at the people all hiding from the pandemic and from life. I couldn’t look away, not from this thing that was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It had a strange black aura, not really a shadow, but the inverted glow of a paper cutout hovering above the pages of a pop-up book. Like it was an alien image pasted atop my vision.

This dog was wrong in another way too. It was different from the posters, and had a long tail and floppy ears. But I knew it had to be the dog that the I wasn’t supposed to see. Nothing else could be so surreal, standing silently in the shadows and susurrus, staring through me and at those living beyond.

As soon as I took it all in, the dog disappeared. It kind of faded away, not instantly, but it was gone from my vision. Now it’s in my head. You know earworms, right? Songs with the power to swirl around inside your head, looping and looping forever like a broken jukebox. This dog is like that for me. I’ve been staring at this buggy piece of code for hours, and I can’t think of anything other than the image of that stupid dog.

Logs from the USTCP Security Competition chat network, #onkin team channel. Some time later.

Altiel: Bossman, Cake, the virus isn't slowing down. Actually it just got worse.
Altiel: I tweaked the event monitor and isolated the virus for special tracking.
Altiel: ...and the monitor just warned me that it's modified itself to be able to infect
        more things, faster.
bossman: FKC
bossman: FCK
CAKE: :<
Altiel: Why can't you just delete it? You could, right?
bossman: can't. the way this whole thing works, we can't do something like that without
         corrupting the whole system in some way
bossman: for example we could delete it but then the rest of the system wouldn't expect
         it, because it's kind of self-aware
bossman: and that could make ANYTHING happen
bossman: so we have to influence it without being super direct
bossman: and we can't delete anything about how it works foundationally because it uses
         the same low-level systems as the rest of the AI system does
Altiel: Why can't you delete something about the system features that it uses to func--
Altiel: Oh.
CAKE: It would be like deleting negative numbers to balance your budget. Can't do it
      without breaking math :\
bossman: but the influencing is not going well, this particular system is really resilient
         to change
bossman: have to figure something out, or just take it really slow
bossman: I guess those other teams tried something like what you suggested and blew up
Altiel: Oh. Right.
CAKE: ttr, how's it going?
ttr: fine, i found a couple of really local things that red team snuck in
ttr: i think i handled them ok, did a simple thing that should block it, but i'll have to
     check on it again later
ttr: pretty busy with all of you working on the pandemic
Altiel: Where are these small things happening? I'll see if I can filter updates for you
        from events in those regions.
ttr: one of them is in california
ttr: i mean, 0x0486a2e899aecdb02233
Altiel: Ok, done. <attachment>
ttr: ty, looking
ttr: oh shit

Work has been stupid lately, so I’ve been ignoring it. What a waste of time. I’ve been out fixing those posters instead. How could they have been so wrong? The dog has a big tail that looks like a sausage, and nice floppy ears, not cropped ones.

I’ve gone through three rolls of white-out and as many sharpies, drawing tails and ears on the posters. When I went to the store to pick up more, I saw more of the posters tacked up on food trucks, plastered on stop signs, stapled to bus stops, spreading around everywhere. Some other people were fixing those ones or putting up new, accurate posters. It’s so easy and obvious to draw the dog correctly. Every time I fix one, I close my eyes, and the image is there, in my head, perfectly as clear as it was on the day I saw it in the park.

Well.

It took a few days, but all the posters near me are right now, and I can finally relax. I feel good. The image of the dog in my head is kind of fading away. I think I’m gonna go out tonight. I’m young, I probably won’t get too sick even if I catch the virus.

I’m gonna make this a good year.

Logs from the USTCP Security Competition chat network, #onkin team channel. Not too long after the last exchange.

ttr: oh SHIT
ttr: i need to do something about this RIGHT NOW

TRAGEDY STRIKES IN STRUGGLING CALIFORNIA BAY AREA AS OUT-OF-SEASON FIRES RAGE

MOUNTAIN VIEW - An unforseen tragedy is unfolding in California, as the South Bay area was struck by incredibly powerful wildfires, utterly unexpected for this season. Casualties in affected areas are unbelievably immense.

On Friday, wildfires broke out all around the south Bay Area, in the Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, quickly causing billions of dollars in damage and killing hundreds of thousands of people. Many of the destroyed areas were thought to be safe after the fires from last season were successfully held back at the borders of residential areas. Some say that logistical failures stemming from resource tie-ups connected to the COVID-19 crisis are to blame, and many have been clamoring for acknowledgement from the local government.

“Our entire government is tied up in bureaucracy and, on top of failing to deliver vaccinations, has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths through their neglect,” says one anonymous government official. Among the casualties are many thousands of employees, including director-level executives, from large tech companies like Google and Facebook whose headquarters are in the bay area. The fires spread so quickly that very few were able to evacuate, in a first for similar disasters in the region, but the flames are concentrated to a very limited area.

Governor Newsom’s office released an official statement yesterday afternoon, pleading for the assistance of the world’s logistics experts.

“I am not going to mince words. We have lost hundreds of thousands of lives to an unprecedented disaster. It is obvious that we are unequipped for dealing with this crisis on top of unprecedented levels of infection from the pandemic, on top of a public who are ignoring stay-at-home regulations and spreading the virus even further.

“I am personally going to speak with some of the originators of thoughtful, virally popular ideas on Twitter for handling this crisis and discuss how to make their ideas a reality. This is not a time to worry about looking foolish for ignoring pomp and ceremony. This is a time to save lives.”

Watch for a follow-up report as early as tomorrow afternoon. A recent update from the goveror’s office seems to reveal that events are moving very fast to handle both the blaze and the virus.

Logs from the USTCP Security Competition chat network, #onkin team channel. End of the competition.

Altiel: The charts look great, I think we can calm down now until the end! Great work guys.
bossman: ttr
bossman: please explain what the fck happened
bossman: when you decided to annihilate an entire region
Altiel: Please explain, yeah.
bossman: and that somehow led to us surviving the pandemic
CAKE: Seriously <_<
ttr: ok
ttr: so
ttr: you gotta admit it worked out, right
ttr: one of the first things I found was that red team injected into one region a small
     self replicating virus that infected the ais
ttr: the way it worked was, if one of the ais fully conceptualized a certain thing into
     their memory, it would actually stick in there and change their behavior
ttr: the first change would be that the ais would try and spread the virus more by
     replicating the imagery that could cause conceptualization
ttr: and then they would compound it by being much more sociable with other ais afterwards
ttr: like interacting more
ttr: which didn't seem like much of a problem at first which is why i ignored it
ttr: but it hit at the same time as the other virus, the big one that spread really well
     between ais, so the effect was multiplicative
ttr: and so the memory virus would make the other virus 10x worse at least in that area,
     and would spread a lot, and who knows what would happen
ttr: very clever imo
ttr: when i found it at first, a lot of the replication imagery was already in place, so i
     thought i could handle it by adjusting the memory image the ais would generate
ttr: so i modified most of the images to remove some of the characteristics, without
     causing any snowball effects by just deleting them
ttr: i made it also a little bit more weird so that they would think 'huh?' first and that
     thought would be strong enough to overwrite the virus one
ttr: that way, the conceptualized memory would be a bit different from the virus itself,
     and the virus wouldn't be able to replicate, it would be just like any memory
ttr: well, i guess that didn't work. red team must have had multiple instances of the
     virus ready to trigger, and it figured out how to undo the changes i made
ttr: bastards
ttr: i didn't notice that until Altiel shared the event stats with me, thank you
ttr: sooooo
ttr: it started spreading much worse than I thought
ttr: so i, uh
Altiel: Killed almost a million AI resources.
CAKE: Blew it up. :|
bossman: You set the whole fkn region on fire.
ttr: yeah, but it worked really well, right
ttr: since it actually made the rest of the system adjust priorities
ttr: it was kind of cool watching
ttr: and we were able to make sure it didnt spread too much outside the infected zone
ttr: and it didnt stand out too much because that's what the region kinda does normally,
     that part has a self-cleasing thing, but its usually not so bad
ttr: it was a big enough problem you guys were able to influence the governing ais
ttr: and they delegated literally everything to hyper tuned ais that could figure it all
     out but had no power yet
ttr: and the logistics system improved 100x to cover both the fires and the pandemic
ttr: and that influenced everything else cause the ais in charge of bigger regions noticed
     and took on the same guidance
ttr: thanks to you guys pushing them that way at that time
bossman: Okay... so it's a good thing we figured that out..
bossman: i'd be telling you to fck off into oblivion if this hadnt worked
CAKE: lol ^^;
bossman: but it did, SO...
bossman: good job.
ttr: phew
Altiel: Haha.
bossman: Alright, I just got the offical notification that it's all over.
bossman: Seems we got second overall.
bossman: First place wiped out the virus in just a few months of in-universe time, those fckrs
ttr: woo!
CAKE: Yes!! :)
Altiel: Great. Ahh, what a relief.
bossman: Shut down the universe and lets go get dinner.
ttr: how about barbecue?
bossman: fck the shut up
Altiel: Noooo
CAKE: xD