Item #: SCP-4850
Level 2/4850

Object Class: Keter
Classified

A solitary specimen of SCP-4850 sitting in the snow.

Special Containment Procedures: The entirety of Lake Baikal serves as the containment area of SCP-4850. SCP-4850 has a natural aversion to leaving Lake Baikal, so containment efforts primarily focus on disinformation and concealment of the anomaly. The Russian government has refused to allow a discreet depopulation program, so the Foundation is to avoid lethal interaction with SCP-4850.

MTF Lambda-21 ("Lake Monsters") is to monitor all known pods and are to tag pod leaders. Any reported gatherings of SCP-4850 are to be dispersed. Missing persons statistics around Lake Baikal are to be monitored carefully for SCP-4850 involvement. Any newly observed abilities are to be reported immediately. If SCP-4850 succeeds in creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge, the area is to be cordoned off until the bridge closes and efforts are to be made in discovering the sister aperture.

Description: SCP-4850 is the collective designation of Pusa sibirica, also known as the Baikal Seal or the Nerpa. SCP-4850 is endemic to Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world. SCP-4850 is the smallest true seal and the only known freshwater seal. Adults are typically within 1.1 to 1.4 meters in size and weigh 63 to 70 kg. SCP-4850 can live to approximately fifty years of age. SCP-4850's diet consists mostly of the golomyanka1 but has been known to also eat molluscs, sculpins and amphipods. There are between 80,000 and 100,000 SCP-4850 instances.

SCP-4850 possesses the ability to manipulate and warp surrounding spacetime, as well as altering gravity. The ability manifests in various ways and the type of effect is directly proportional to the amount of SCP-4850 specimens in an area2. The ability is fueled by the specimen's blubber3 reserves.

Open SCP-4850 Ability Log

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Number of present SCP-4850
Recorded effect
Observed or hypothesized use

1 to 3
Instances can manipulate their personal gravitational field to create an anomalously strengthened time dilation effect. As a result, SCP-4850 instances can experience time somewhat faster or slower than their surroundings.
Used during nighttime hunting, where instances can speed up their time to move faster or to slow time and be able to stay underwater for longer periods of time.

4 to 20
SCP-4850 instances can shift their gravitational fields causing a weak gravitational redshift effect. This can lower the frequency and increase the wavelength of the surrounding light.
SCP-4850 instances shift ambient infrared light into microwave light. They can use it to stay warm or maintain breathing holes in the ice.

20 to 35
Instances weigh down on spacetime, creating a geodetic effect. This creates a slight light distortion in the area of effect and can interfere with electromagnetic and radar signals4
Use is unknown; Hypothesized to be a symptom of SCP-4850's other effects.

36 or more
Collected SCP-4850 Instances can create a previously-theorized Einstein-Rosen Bridge (ERB), also known as a wormhole. These structures link two points in space or time. Entrances to the ERB manifest as spherical distortions of light and space and connect to a four-dimensional tube. SCP-4850 is capable of traversing four-dimensional space. SCP-4850 Instances maintain the entrance by casting a field of reversed gravity. While at least 30 instances must be present to open the wormhole, only 20 are needed to maintain it. Instances either stay back and maintain the hole for those going through or maintain until some have gone through and the entrance can be maintained from the other end. Utilizing the ability requires massive amounts of energy, so it is only used rarely.
See “Seruuntungalag theory of SCP-4850’s Origin” and “Excerpts from Dr. Seruuntungalag’s Report Log 1"

History of SCP-4850

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SCP-4850 was known for several decades before containment, having been hunted by locals for years and scientifically identified by Johann Fredrich Gmelin in 1788. As Lake Baikal was a landlocked lake, it was unclear how SCP-4850 got to the lake. Civilian scientists theorized that SCP-4850 traveled through a glacial lake or plain, though had no conclusive evidence. In 1991, Foundation marine parabiologist Dr. Sarnai Seruuntungalag witnessed SCP-4850 creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge as part of a biological survey of the area. She gave SCP-4850 a provisional anomaly status and observed an SCP-4850 colony for 18 months. The report she filed cataloged the near entirety of SCP-4850's behavior and abilities as well as local history concerning SCP-4850. The report serves as the basis of SCP-4850 documentation and as the guidelines for containment. During her observations, Dr. Seruuntungalag submitted a theory of SCP-4850's origin.

Open the Seruuntungalag theory of SCP-4850's Origin

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A gathering of SCP-4850.

Dr. Sarnai Seruuntungalag analyzed glacial records of the area and was unable to find significant evidence supporting the theory of glacial migration beyond reasonable. She then proposed an alternate hypothesis.

Two million years ago, the ancestor of SCP-4850 lived in the Arctic Circle as a species of ringed seal. As earth exited a warmer climate and the poles became unfavorable to survival, the ancestor of SCP-4850 sought more hospitable habitats. At one point, a large group of SCP-4850's ancestors gathered and created a wormhole, big enough to transport the entire group to Lake Baikal, where it speciated into its present form.

With data from a routine scan using a Descartes mapper5, Dr. Seruuntungalag identified three weakened reality points in Lake Baikal and identified them as the former exit points of the wormhole. In conjunction with fossils from Lake Baikal and the Arctic Circle as well as other evidence outlined in Dr. Seruuntungalag's report6, the wormhole migration theory was presented and deemed the most likely origin of SCP-4850.

Excerpts from Dr. Seruuntungalag's Report Log

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Transcript One 2/3/92 7:36

Baina uu? Does this thing work? It better, there’s no goddamn way I’m re-recording this. For the record, this is Dr. Sarnai Seruntungalag, Foundation parabiologist, and one tired lady. This is the first recorded report as part of an eighteen-month expedition to Lake Baikal. It’s a follow-up investigation of the anomalous activity I observed last year from Pusa sibirica, the Baikal Seal. I’m sure whoever is listening has seen heard that before and this is ancient history now, but it's good to lay out the information for myself too y’know? The unfortunate underling transcripting this is probably pretty pissed off at me for using a voice recorder but I honestly won’t have the time to do anything else. This was deemed a low-priority mission because there’s never been an incident before and the seals don’t leave the lake, so it’s just me out here, figuring out if they’re worth containing. If I’m productive, they might send a lab assistant but for now, it's me and this frankly quite nice Russian countryside I’m currently driving through in a dingy truck. Any journal writing I do will be messy and I won’t have the time to translate it. My plan is to do most of the observations over recording and send some more formal reports about once every month. My job is really to figure out what these animals can do, so I’ve got a trunk full of cameras, measuring equipment, clothes and a bunch of other stuff. I’m going to be here for a while, and only a bit of it is at a hotel, unfortunately. Oh yeah, I've also got this massive physics textbook I read on the flight here, so I think I’ll be able to accurately report any physical phenomena assuming my undergrad physics course holds up. I have to- Baas!

The sound of screeching tires is heard.

Christ, a horse just ran across the road. If I don’t want to crash, I’m going to need to focus because of course you do Sarnai, you’re not in the goddamn city anymore. I’ll report in when I get to the lake.

Transcript Two 3/3/92 18:58

Um, I just arrived in a little town near the coast. I’m walking through the town: Quaint little place. Has a nice fish market that I might check out later. I got my full assignment for the next couple months like four minutes ago: I’m staying here for a month getting supplies and establishing contacts and then I’m headed to Olkhon Island on the ferry where I’m gonna be observing the colony I saw for two months. Camping. Alone. I’m not hyped about it either. More motivation for me to pack well I guess. After that, I'm going to Listvyanka for 6 weeks of research, establishing theories and writing reports. I’m coming up on my inn now, so I’m going to check in and report anything interesting later. Signing off.

Transcript Six 4/13/92 9:34

Ok, so this is the morning of Day Eleven of my expedition. I've got my supplies together, basic camping supplies, a water purification thingie, my equipment, enough cans of soup to drown a horse, some salted omul I got from the fish market, a cute quilt I got from a souvenir shop and enough bug spray to drown a second, slightly larger horse. There also should be some more stuff waiting for me at the site. I'm at the pier now waiting for my ferry across the lake. When I land, I'll hike to the campsite where there should be more supplies waiting for me. I'll do another report after I set up camp.

Transcript Seven 4/13/92 11:06

This log isn't really necessary but it's something I wanted to share. My ferry is on the Angara right now. The water is crystal clear, almost invisible. You can see the crabs crawling on the bottom and the fish darting through the silt. There's a really well-defined edge to where the river meets the lake. It's incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Transcript Eight 4/13/92 21:34

Sound of zipper and rustling fabric.

Well! I finally got to my campsite on Olkhon Island. There's good parts and bad parts. The good part is that it's out of the way. I'll be able to do my research in peace. It's close to the beach where the seal rookery is too. Only a 10-minute walk. I'll be able to find the pod in no time. The bad part is that it's really out of the way. No shops, no AC, no electricity, no people, just a giant hike. They seemed to be expecting an MTF commander instead of an out of shape researcher carrying a ton of supplies, but that didn't stop me. I'm less concerned about being alone than I thought I would be. They left me a two-way radio connecting to the Director of the Irkutsk site. She'll check in with me and if there's trouble, they'll send an MTF to save me. I'll start the real research tomorrow. Right now, I gotta pass out. Night.

Transcript Seventeen 4/23/92 16:21

It has been six days since I found the pod. I just finished taking samples from the seals themselves and I finished the water samples a while ago, so I'll focus on direct observation now. I've seen two uses of anomalous ability; Nothing blatant yet, mostly the juveniles playing with light. My earlier hypothesis seems to be correct: The different abilities are manifestations of the same spatio-temporal manipulation. I don't think I've seen the full scope of their power yet, so I'll be keeping a close watch. I'll report any new abilities and behaviors I see.

Transcript Twenty-Four 5/2/92 14:23

I'm getting a sense of the dynamic in the pod. There are about 30-40 members that I've seen so far. The patriarch is a large old seal, bigger than most of course. He's about ten if I had to guess, but I don't have the equipment to check. I've named him Dedushka because he kind of reminds me of my grandfather. He oversees about four families and there are three senior females: Zemlya, Nebesa and Vody. The pod stays mostly at the rookery or on a rock to sunbath. At midday, the younger members usually fish for a couple hours or watch the pups. I'm actually really interested to see how they hunt. I'm going to dive tomorrow to observe. If I get them to use their abilities in action, I could really understand them a whole lot better. I'm going to pack in early and maybe write a report. Tomorrow is a big day!

Transcript Twenty-Six 5/3/92 17:46

Sucess! The experiment worked! I got into the water on my boat and drove about 50 meters out into the lake. I saw the pod and followed them further out close to a trench where I got in my suit and dived. The sun hadn't risen yet so a group of golomyanka had risen to feed on the amphipods. The seals started chasing them and to try to get them to use their abilities, I used a small sonic cannon to disperse the fish back to the bottom of the trench. There was a neighboring pod hunting the same group, and I saw them work in tandem. Since they didn't have enough air to swim to the bottom of the lake, they banded together and opened what looked like a small Einstein-Rosen bridge? It looked like a glowing spherical distortion in the water and when it opened, I saw a flash of light coming from the trench. A few seals went through and moments later, I saw them swimming up from the bottom of the trench, each with a few fish! Finally! Confirmation of practical ability use! I suspected they used their abilities for hunting, but never on this elegant of a scale! Also, remember the other pod I mentioned? They opened the bridge too! The ability is present in all specimens! The scope of the project just got so much bigger! I think I'm gonna stick with studying this pod since I'm familiar but I'm gonna report in and make sure the containment specialists understand the scale of the anomaly. I have a lot of reports to write so I'm gonna stop this here but I feel good! Today was… enlightening.

Transcript Twenty-Seven 5/4/92 3:12

One of the seals keeps staring at me. Something is very wrong beyond its eyes.

Transcript Thirty-One 5/14/92 13:56

I'm noticing something about the SCP-4850 pods: After hauling out on one particular area, the spacetime around the area is weakened considerably. I found the pods had a geodetic effect a while back but that really isn't enough to explain this. It just makes no sense! I don't see how there could-

Dr. Seruuntungalag trails off and remains silent for 2 hours and 23 minutes. Only the sounds of the tide, wind and SCP-4850 are audible. The period is punctuated by sequences of static and heavy breathing from an unknown source.

-be a practical cause, if anything it would be a detriment because of the effects on surrounding reality. Ouch, I have a really bad migraine all of a sudden. I'm freezing too. Hope I didn't come down with something.

Transcript Thirty-Nine 5/22/92 23:43

A little bug crawled up my tent 14 times now. Somethings not right.

Transcript Forty-Seven 6/11/92 15:31

For the last week a storm has been washing over the lake. The fish population has been completely disturbed, almost none swim in SCP-4850's hunting area. The pod was on the brink of starvation until I observed a new behavior. The pod congregated and formed another Einstein-Rosen bridge. Some went in and about 4 minutes later, the bridge opened again. The instances had returned along with a pile of fish. It seemed to be from a research trawler as a lot of the specimens were tagged. The crazy part is that the tags were from 1973! This confirms that they can connect points in time as well as space! I feel like I'm getting close to discovering the origin of the ability.

Transcript Forty-Nine 6/12/92 9:42

I got a call from a researcher I sent a blubber sample to a while back. The anatomy is so alien. The lipids are like mini-singularities. There's a protein present that would require four spatial dimensions to fold. I don't like the implications of this at all.

Transcript Fifty 6/13/92 23:43

Something… really weird just happened. I was asleep and in R.E.M. when suddenly my dream switched. It felt different somehow, as lucid as if I had just woken up except I'm sure I didn't. I was floating in a void, just me watching this utterly black space. I hear a whisper right into my ear and jolt, and suddenly I'm in a new place. I'm at the rookery, watching the waves go by. Everything is different somehow. Everything is as it was when I last saw it, but everything seems… more. Like everything I see is more than what it looks like it got filtered by some whatever! Everything is there but it's not, it's pulsating but still, everything is in every possible state simultaneously but absolutely nothing has changed! I know this makes no sense, but I just have no words to put to what I saw. I saw something my mind could barely comprehend, something I'm worried wasn't a dream at all.

I was walking through this strange world, feeling absolutely overwhelmed by everything that was happening around me. I finally get to my tent and I see something even stranger. I see myself sleeping in my tent. I'm scared because I'm seeing myself on the ground but I'm also curious. I look even more different than my strange surroundings. I see myself with the strange effect on the surface but below, I'm different. When I look below, I'm a translucent husk glowing from the inside from thick luminescent smoke that writhes inside of me. I watch myself and the weird smoke inside of me before other-me gasps and I wake up. Before I can comprehend the dream, I hear a noise.

Standing at the foot of my sleeping bag is Vody, one of the female SCP-4850 instances. I stare at her in shock. I was kind of terrified: On top of my nightmare, the flap of the tent was still zipped and I had no idea how she got in there. I watched her in silence for a bit before noticing her expression. She had this hungry look in her eyes, I have no other words to describe it. It seemed to be a mix of pity and curiosity and something darker. Before anything could happen, I pulled out a salted omul I got at the market and gave it to her. She seemed to snap back to her normal playful self in no time. As I watched her waddle back to the rookery, I wondered what had come over her? There's just no logical conclusion to explain what happened. I'm going, to be honest right now, I'm really rattled.

Transcript Sixty-Two 6/19/92 23:43

I can't do this anymore. I feel so lost and tired. I feel like I'm being watched everywhere I go. I feel so scared all the time. I thought that with our limited funding, it wouldn't be fair to the department to cut this short especially since every incident was terrifying but not what the bureaucrats would consider enough to end an expedition. I'm ending this here. I've documented diets, growth, social hierarchy, encounters, a total of 54 different anomalous behaviors. I've taken so many samples and I've submitted plenty of theories, even one on origin. That needs to be enough. I'm more than just a researcher, I'm a person too. I'm telling the director to send the MTF tonight. I can only take so much.

Transcript Sixty-Four, Time and Date Unrecoverable

Reverberating sound is heard followed by a thump. Seconds later, Dr. Seruuntungalag is heard gasping.

I did it, I didn't mean to but I did. I went in. She laughs I was in! I can't go yet, I changed my mind, I can't go yet. I went somewhere I need to see it again. They made me see it, I didn't want to go at first, it was an accident but I have to find it again. I'm so cold. What did I see? I didn't want to see that, I want to go home. It's so Gagging noise is heard before stopping shortly. So cold.

Dr. Seruuntungalag vomits.

I need to see it again, I need to be there again. Goodbye.

Footsteps are heard moving away from the recorder. Reverberation sound is heard again.

Transcript Sixty-Five 8/24/92 15:31

Uh, Alpha do you copy? I got something here. Looks like a standard issue voice recorder. Found it when I was investigating the noise. Maybe it's hers? (Indistinct radio chatter) Roger. Scanning the area now.

Footsteps are heard for approximately two minutes.

Oh God. Alpha, this is Gamma, I found her. She's naked and completely covered in frost.7 About a mile out on the beach. I'm taking her pulse. (Pause) She's still alive! Get the medical team here quick, her heartbeat is really slow. I think- Oh shit! What the fuck, what the fuck, her arm just shattered! Get the team here now!

Transcript Sixty-Six 9/4/92 15:31

Hey, it's… This is Dr. Seruntuungalag. Um, since this is going in the main anomaly file, I wanted there to be a conclusion of sorts. To clear up what happened. I can't remember the last two months. At all. The director says I have been checking in normally, until one day I didn't. They sent the MTF and I was just gone. They found me a couple of hours after they arrived naked on the beach and covered in frost. They think I fell in a wormhole. Yeah. Pretty intense. I have no idea what how but I guess it was an accident. There's no evidence that it was malicious. I've tested negative for any cognitohazards and I'm recovering fine: I'll learn how to get around with one arm. They're getting me a prosthesis soon which is nice. So yeah. That's it. Another anomaly down in the books with minimum expense. Time to move on. It's been fun little voice recorder thingy. See you in therapy.

Incident 4850-1

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On 11/28/19 Dr. Seruuntungalag abruptly disappeared. The following note was found on her desktop. Due to mention of SCP-4850, it has been included here.

To whom it may concern,

I don't know who could be reading this, but I felt I needed to give some closure. If not for you, then for myself. I've been thinking about my Lake Baikal expedition a lot recently. Too much in fact. It feels like something, a concept or whatever, is weighing my mind down, trapping me in its influence: The more I think about it, the harder it got to think about anything else. I needed to stop it before it started to interfere with my work. I started by looking through my old voice log entries. The archivists did their job well and all the entries were filed away neatly, but something felt off. If I concentrated between the lines, I could see other entries appear, like glitches in the system, flickering in and out of existence. I never remembered saying anything close to them. None of my supervisors had even mentioned them, despite those entries easily being a terminatable offense. I have no idea what happened. There is something I remember though. I never told anyone, not my supervisors, not the fucking therapist, not even the tests they were so sure could drag the truth out of me.

I remember the wormhole. I remember being taken to some unreal reality. I remember what it means to have four dimensions. I remember being part of everything and nothing at the same time and I remember seeing it, that alien presence, like making eye contact with the void itself. I'm sure we have aspects of it under lock and key in our database, but they're mere fragments compared to what I saw. I came out of that experience with those mere fragments of memory. I changed. Now, all those years later, I knew I had to answer to the gnawing need for closure in me. I pretended to go home for vacation, and as soon as I was out of their clutches, I went back. To the lake. To the spot that SCP-4850 entered from. I stood in front of that puncture in spacetime, desperately searching for an answer. I wish I hadn't found one. As I stared into the abyss, I felt, deep inside me, that same gnawing coldness as the wormhole. It couldn't have connected to the Arctic sea as I thought. This was a remnant of a bridge, the same type of bridge that took me to a higher dimension. The bridge to SCP-4850's origin. This was never about some fucking seals. This is something much bigger. I spent months watching five-dimensional holes in reality pretending to be something of our world. They were watching me right back. Our reality is being invaded. I know that now, so now they know about me. And now they're almost here. This may be the last I'll be able to write. I fear my time here is ending.

As of present day, no body has been found.

Footnotes

1. Comephorus baikalensis and Comephorus dybowskii

2. The area being an approximately 25m2 space

3. A specialized type of adipose tissue, used to store fat and excess nutrients

4. Also known as a Shapiro time delay.

5. A reality mapping instrument, used to measure the strength of reality across large volumes of space.

6. Seruuntungalag, Sarnai "Identifying the Origin of SCP-4850 through use of Reality Mapping" Foundation Cryptozoology Journal

7. The lowest recorded temperature that day was 13 degrees Celsius.