Item #: SCP-2473

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2473 is currently stored in Hangar 37 of Site-43. Efforts in restoration and reverse-engineering of the object are ongoing. Normal procedures for delicate artifacts such as those found within SCP-2473 are in effect. Exposure of SCP-2473's photovoltaic panel to sunlight is required for no less than four hours daily.

Testing with SCP-2473-1 instances is restricted to D-Class personnel, with a preference for neurologically healthy individuals. Individual test subjects must be given at least two weeks to recover between experiments. Normal procedures for testing surgical apparatus are in effect for SCP-2473-1 instances. At this time, testing with the objects is suspended. Restoration of SCP-2473-1 instances is the primary priority for restoration crews because of their fragility.

SCP-2473-2 is currently in cryogenic storage at Site-43. Removal for study by approved personnel must follow instructions outlined in general Foundation guidelines for mummified human corpses.

Description: SCP-2473 is an atmospheric re-entry vehicle of anomalous origins.1 It has the following approximate specifications: a 51-meter length, a 30-meter wingspan, a 65-meter height, and a total weight of approximately 110,000 kilograms.

SCP-2473 has no external marks, and possesses a form of ion propulsion. Hardware for docking onto another spacecraft is present. A living quarters/cockpit has been identified. Much of SCP-2473's interior is filled with computer hardware, apparatus for recycling air and human waste, and a retractable photovoltaic panel. All hardware within SCP-2473 appears to have suffered several centuries of oxidization. The apparatus for recycling human waste failed before recovery, while the oxygen-recycling system was still operational. All internal markings are in a language not currently extant on Earth; translation efforts are ongoing.

SCP-2473-1 refers to eleven identical chairs designed as brain-computer interfaces. The devices are equipped with polymer catheters designed to remove waste and provide nutrients, alongside several electrodes designed to directly interface with the nervous systems of occupants. SCP-2473-1 instances are arranged in a V formation within SCP-2473's primary chamber, the apparent living-quarters/cockpit, with the vertex of the V (SCP-2473-1-6) being closest to the nose of SCP-2473.

Only one SCP-2473-1 instance (SCP-2473-1-11) was occupied at recovery. The occupant, SCP-2473-2, was found in a desiccated, mummified state. Radiocarbon dating, genetic testing, and chemical analysis of bones and teeth have proven inconclusive on racial identity, lifestyle, and age of SCP-2473-2; the current working estimate is of 20,000 years (±5,000 years) between death and recovery. SCP-2473-2 was female and approximately 60 to 70 years old at time of death. SCP-2473-2 likely spent an extended period in microgravity prior to death, as indicated by signs of atrophy within most muscles and the skeletal system. The electrodes of SCP-2473-1-11 were embedded at various points within SCP-2473-2's body; bone and muscle growth around the objects indicates that they were connected for an extensive period. SCP-2473-2 was heavily bandaged and wearing a loose-fitting garment of unknown composition at time of death; cause of death is unknown at this time.

All computer hardware and sensor devices were functional at time of recovery; as such, maintaining charge on SCP-2473's power cells is considered a priority.

Recovery: On 13 October 2000, NASA and ESA facilities detected a brief emission of gamma radiation from a point unassociated with any celestial bodies; further observation detected no objects of interest observable at this point, prompting Foundation investigation of the anomaly. Later investigation via use of SCP-███2 detected the object now classified as SCP-2473.

Based on observations made via SCP-███, it was determined that SCP-2473 was maneuvering with ion-based propulsion systems and navigating towards near-Earth orbit. Monitoring via SCP-███ continued until observation through non-anomalous means could be established, on 15 April 2015. On 4 December 2019, it was determined that SCP-2473 was likely to attempt to land at sub-orbital velocities on the west coast of the North American continent. Negotiations with the US, Canadian, and Mexican armed forces were made to ensure that the Foundation would maintain full custody of the object regardless of landing site in exchange for Gen+ technology prototypes.

On 29 February 2020, SCP-2473 landed at a discreet military base in the Nevadan desert (following several months in near-Earth orbit), apparently having intentionally navigated there. SCP-2473 was successfully transported covertly to Site-43, with further investigation of the object resulting in its current containment status.

Show Addendum RE: SCP-2473-1 Experimentation

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Preface: On 13 June 2031, following a decade of restoration efforts, experimentation of SCP-2473-1-1 with a D-Class test subject was proposed. On 1 August 2031, the proposal was approved, with one D-Class test subject tentatively assigned for FY 2032.

Experimentation began on 13 October 2031 with D-2473-01 (a physically healthy 29-year-old female, hereafter referred to as 'subject'). Upon sitting in SCP-2473-1-1, the electrical probes automatically inserted themselves into the subject's body at points of large collections of nervous tissue. The subject was immediately rendered catatonic, with monitoring equipment indicating a state similar to REM sleep. Body-fluid loss due to puncturing of the skin was noted; the subject was administered an intravenous saline solution and bandages were applied at puncture points to minimize blood loss.

After approximately four hours, the subject regained consciousness and all electrodes disengaged from her body. The included interview log followed this experiment.

Interview:

Interviewed: D-2473-01

Interviewing: Researcher Trudy Begay, Dr. Samantha Moodley

Foreword: Interview was conducted by Researcher Trudy Begay, a member of the SCP-2473 Technology Research/Restoration Team, with Dr. Samantha Moodley, Head of the Team, overseeing. Interview was conducted shortly after D-2473-01 had been medically examined and administered necessary treatment for her injuries.

Transcript:

Researcher Begay: Can you tell us what you experienced after you sat in the chair?

D-2473-01: I felt the damn needles jab into me for a second, then everything went black. When I came to, I was in the same chair, but no needles, and everything else was gone. None of you, none of the monitoring equipment, none of the guards, none of the lights you had set up inside that thing, nothing. It was just me and the spaceship.

Begay: Did you see any other changes you think are important?

D-2473-01: I was wearing some sort of robe, not the scrubs I'd been given for the test. And it was bright in there. I could see everything, but it felt natural, not like the floodlights in there now. I could hear birds singing, and wind blowing.

Begay: What did you do?

D-2473-01: I stood up and followed the light. Just around the corner of the hallway, it looked like the ship had cracked itself open, letting all sorts of sunlight in. There was a ladder from the spaceship to the ground, and outside I could see a massive, rolling, green field. Outside the ship, it was just grassy hills and birds singing, and in the distance I could see big, blue mountains, surrounding the whole plain.

Begay: Do you think this place corresponds to a real location?

D-2473-01: I don't know if it's real anymore, but I think it used to be. (Subject pauses momentarily.) I think I was seeing a scene from someone's childhood.

Begay: Can you elaborate? What gave you the impression?

D-2473-01: I can't say for sure, but the entire place gave me that feeling. It just felt — nostalgic.

Begay: Was there anything else of significance? Can you tell us more about the location?

D-2473-01: I don't think the shadows got any longer the entire time I was there. I don't know how long I was there. Inside the sim, I mean. It could have been minutes or days, it wouldn't make a difference on how it felt. (Subject pauses briefly before continuing.) I think something or someone might have been watching me.

Begay: What precisely gave you that feeling?

D-2473-01: I don't know. It's like the childhood thing. The place just made me feel that way.

Begay: So, what did you do? What happened next?

D-2473-01: I just walked. It all seemed the same at first, but then I noticed that there were these clouds over the mountains. Big, dark clouds, the kind you see right before the thunderstorms. I thought it was — ominous, but kept walking. I just kept walking, watching the clouds and the sky and listening to the birds, feeling the grass between my toes, enjoying myself however I could. Eventually, I came up over a small rise and saw a little girl sitting on the next rise, facing away from me. (Subject pauses briefly.)

Begay: What did you do next? Can you describe the girl in more detail?

D-2473-01: Uh, she looked to be about 11 years old. Maybe a little older. I don't know where I'm getting that impression from, but it feels right. She had dark skin, but I don't want to say she was black. Her back was to me, so I didn't see her face, but she had long, dark, flowing hair. I just kinda — sat down next to her, watched the clouds with her.

Begay: Did you see her face when you sat? Any other physical details you can think of?

D-2473-01: No, I didn't see her face. Didn't care to look, really. We laid down and watched the sky for a few minutes, then she sat up and pointed at the mountains. I could see those clouds rolling, moving. After a few seconds, there was lightning and rolling thunder.

Begay: Do you know if the girl has any significance? If there was any meaning to her pointing to the clouds like that?

D-2473-01: (Subject hesistates momentarily.) If I had to take any significance from it, I'd say that she was telling me that there's always a warning before a flood. I don't think she can speak English, so she was resorting to metaphors and hoping it sticks, maybe.

Begay: So what happened next?

Dr. Moodley (addressing Researcher Begay): Let her take her time, there's no rush. We want her to remember as much as possible.

D-2473-01: It — It just got cold, fast. The wind picked up, and the clouds — the mountains surrounded this whole little plain, and there wasn't a mountain that didn't have a cloud rolling over it — the clouds rolled in from all sides. I stood up and looked around, and everything had changed, just like that. (Upon saying "that," D-2473-01 snapped her fingers.) Before, the grass was green and everything looked, uh, everything looked safe. Now, the grass looked brown and dead. And the wind was kicking up dust. I knew everything was in my head, but I was — I was scared.

Begay: So what did you do?

D-2473-01: I looked around and noticed that the kid was gone. I tried to shout for her, but I couldn't, and I wouldn't know what to shout anyway. I knew there was about to be a big storm, and I had to get her out of it. I had to get her to the ship. I started running, looking for her everywhere. It felt like I'd searched for a real long time when I felt a big raindrop land on my face. I knew it was time to give up and get back to the ship. When I turned around, she was right in front of me, facing back towards the ship.

D-2473-01 (Speaking rapidly): I was about to kneel down and start talking to her, face-to-face, but then I got it in my head there wasn't any time, I just had to pick her up and run back to the ship. So I did that. I, uh, I picked her up, started running for the ship as fast as I could. The ship was sitting on a small rise, so every hill I was looking for it. As I was getting closer, the rain started coming down hard. The grass, the dirt was all mud, which was all right because it stopped the damn dust. Water was puddling and flowing at the low point before the ship — I jumped over that and put the girl down so she could go up the ladder. She climbed up before me, then sat in the chair closest to the hole in the ship.3 I wanted to drag her to the back, with me, but it seemed like it was a bad idea. I ran to my seat, but as I got there, the whole ship felt like it'd been picked up and tossed and it all went black.

Begay: Is that when you came to?

D-2473-01: No, actually, not quite.

Begay: All right, then. What happened next? Do you know if there's any sort of meaning to any of this?

D-2473-01: I think the little girl is the pilot. I think she was trying to tell me about what the ship was built for, what she was running from. You gotta [sic] tell me, was there something sitting in the chair where the girl sat in the simulation? Every chair besides the one you sat me in looks like it's falling apart, and the other folks on the team don't seem to like going back there.

Begay: I'm afraid we're not allowed to disclose that, sorry.

Moodley: D-2473-01, you said there was more? Can you please continue?

D-2473-01: Uh, yeah. Everything went black when I felt the ship get thrown. After that, it wasn't so much a simulation, a VR, as it was a — I don't know how to describe it. It just turned into images, flashes, snippets. I remember flashes of someone playing games in a house on the plain from earlier. I remember seeing the girl go to school, and come home, and do normal little kid stuff. The house didn't look like anything I'd ever seen — different architecture, I think — and none of the people there were speaking English. I recognized some of the writing that I saw in the ship — it looked similar. I remember seeing adults having conversations, they seemed scared and angry.

D-2473-01: At one point, the little girl and a man — I think it was her father — got into a vehicle like nothing I've ever seen — big, knobby tires, and a cab that looked airtight — and went on a trip. We went through the mountains, through storms just like the one from earlier. The trip felt like it lasted weeks for them. They drove through some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen, but no cities. No roads. When they stopped, they got into a spaceship — a rocket, not that thing — after spending the night someplace strange. It felt like a hotel, almost. The rocket launched, and connected to a space station. It looked a lot like those old NASA videos, the ones with the astronauts going to the ISS or the Apollo astronauts? Like that.

Moodley: Do you think you'd be able to read the writing inside the spacecraft, if we gave you the chance?

D-2473-01: No. I only caught snippets, not enough to learn anything.

Begay: What about the girl's face? This entire time, you've made a point of not looking at her face.

D-2473-01: I have? That doesn't seem right. And for this part, I was seeing it through her eyes, I couldn't have seen her face.

Moodley: All right, let's leave it. Please, tell us what happened next?

D-2473-01: The space station was big — as big as a small city, I think. It was spinning, had simulated gravity. We were there for a few days, when I noticed it was docked to another spaceship — dozens of ships, actually, just like the one we did the tests in. Everyone on the station seemed busy. I remember, the girl was worried about her mother, her mother was still back on the planet we'd left. Not too long after I noticed the other ships, the shuttles, I was shoved into one in a big hurry. The girl's dad, he kissed us — her, I mean. He kissed her — and left the ship to go get more supplies. Then the door closed, the ship turned on, and it flew away from the station.

Moodley: Did anything happen after that? Can you tell us anything else?

D-2473-01: The ship was connected to something else, some sort of cylindrical — thing on the outside, the top. I don't know what it was. After the ship took off, I remember feeling scared — terrified, alone, helpless. I didn't know what to do. So I eventually sat myself in one of the chairs, and I felt the needles again.

Moodley: What happened after that?

D-2473-01: I'm not sure. It felt like something was talking to me, telling me to turn around, go back. But I didn't know how. And it felt like the people on the space station were calling for me to come back, too. But I didn't know how to speak, I didn't know how to turn around, and eventually, they quit calling for me. I could still hear them talking for a while, it seemed like, but that went quiet, too. And after a while, it didn't feel like I was sitting in the ship anymore, it felt like the ship was rocking me to sleep.

Dr. Moodely: Is there anything else you can tell us?

D-2473-01: If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the last thing I heard before everything went quiet sounded like screaming. After that, it felt like everything was quiet for a long, long time, but eventually, I realized where I needed to be, where I was supposed to go. So I started running. But it wasn't like running, it almost felt like — swimming in a big, deep, dark ocean, but I knew where I was going. And then I woke up in the chair.

Moodley: Thank you very much, D-2473-01. This has been insightful.

End Transcript

Closing Statement: Full significance of D-2473-01's experience during this experiment is unknown. Dr. Moodley has filed a request for further tests at this time.

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Footnotes

1. Yes, on an institutional level, we like to maintain some skepticism regarding anomalies. But we've spent the last decade taking it apart and noting every single millimeter. We know what it does and how it works. Anyone who disagrees with the assertions in this document can take it up with my team personally. — Dr. S. Moodley, SCP-2473 Technology Research/Restoration Team Chief

2. See SCP-1795 and attached documents for information regarding SCP-███'s utility as an observational tool for astronomical anomalies.

3. This seat is believed to correspond to SCP-2473-1-11, where SCP-2473-2 was located.