"Well, spoke too soon," Moser grumbles from the doorway, 
unpacking her lunch bag and purse once again. "System's not letting 
me leave. It's reading three points too high in here and it's locked 
down." 


Rivera groans. He expects himself to be more worried, but his heart 
doesn't thump in his chest nearly as hard as it typically does when 
he moves after standing still. "Alright. Let's see what we've got going 
on out there." 


It's the walk out of the entrance foyer that gets him. It's a subtle shift 


from blue-tinted fluorescent tubes to an ambient warm glow that 
covers the ceiling. He soon finds that he can't make out individual 
ceiling tiles anymore, because the glow of the lights is distorting 
them. Has the ceiling always been like that? 


"Doctor?" 


"Sorry, just- Has the ceiling always been like that?" he repeats 
aloud. It sounds just like he thought it would in his head. 


"The ceiling is fine. Look here, please." 


Rivera tilts his head downward, trying to gain his bearings. Moser is 
pointing her short-clipped fingernail toward an error message on the 
security system console's display. The ceiling is now an 
indeterminate height above him, and his desk is ten paces further 
toward the back of the lab than usual. "Something is wrong," he 
announces, but he can't hear himself speak beyond a dreamlike 
mumble coming from somewhere in the room. "I've got it," he pants. 
The look in Moser's eyes makes him confident that she can still 
understand him. 


"I'm tired and I'm asleep," his mouth explains for him as he stumbles 
toward the opposite side of the lab and down the back hallway. "Just 
give me a minute to fix this." If his notes from yesterday are 
accurate, there should be two or three D-classes still just sitting 
around in the security office. Drinking from his coffee machine and 
eating his lunches, no doubt. He rounds the corner and stands in the 
doorway. "You. You two. No, sorry, you one. Just one of you for 
now. Follow me please." 


God, can anyone hear him? "My ears are stopped up. Apologies,” 
he explains. The guy must not be having trouble understanding him 
anyway, though, because he's following closely. Rivera does his 
best job of silently gesturing him into the entryway. It crosses his 
mind that something isn't right about the test — he thought all the D- 
classes are supposed to be in the same type of jumpsuit — but he 
proceeds anyway. The D-class complies, but with a concerned 
expression. Rivera thinks he might hear him say something about 
this being a ‘workplace prank’ before there's a loud crack and the 
lighting in the room intensifies further. 


When he's done pushing aside the man's broken body for whenever 
the cleaning crew finally shows back up, he frowns. The ringing 
stopped, and the silence is painful. He looks down at his watch. It's 
flashing 00:00. That can't be right. 


He opens his clipboard and starts scribbling. 


They've been restless. The D-Class (I call them D-Class, 
| could swear one of them used to be Dr. Watkins) need 
something to keep them occupied, but nothing makes 
sense to them anymore. 


He looks up and around. At his feet, chunks of blood and viscera are 
starting to stick to his shoes, and it's messy. He makes a mental 
note to clean that up. To his right, Dr. Moser is staring into the 
security terminal, unblinking. Well, at least she's acting normal. To 
his left, his desk is warping slightly in the light; he can barely make 
out the wheels of his chair in the thick fog. He knows better than to 
look behind him. 


His thoughts are interrupted by the lab intercom blaring to life. It 
plays a distorted version of the previous tests' tapes at too high a 
volume. He rushes over to the security office and tries to turn it off, 
but he gives up when the thick fog is too dense at the door. Instead, 
he reaches in and grabs a bag of the most recent records before 
stumbling back over to the entrance foyer and starting to lay them 
out. "I'm laying them out for good viewing and understanding," he 
assumes he says aloud. It doesn't take him very long to get the 
different items arranged in a semicircle around the central 
chamber's airlock. "I've stopped the noise," he announces to the 
blinding light, squinting into the main room. Moser isn't standing by 
the computer anymore. He sighs and fumbles for his clipboard. 


Everything except the Betamax melted into the floor. | 
checked the tapes... | checked the tapes and they're 
madness. Everyone keeps changing. But it should be 
enough to hold them at bay. Maybe now they'll stop 
playing that damned record on the intercom speakers. 


He re-reads it, weighed down by the nagging feeling that his words 
on paper aren't conveying a crucial element of his situation. Where 


is the D-class' body? Hell, where are any of their bodies? Did a 
cleaning crew come and go all while he was gathering tapes? What 
was he doing before he was gathering tapes? 


Nothing. Not anything important. He lays himself down on the 
concrete floor and listens for test results, writing them down 
sideways as he listens. 


Just a repeat of the first D-Class test that worked. | 
copied over everything, including the D-Class number. 
Better than making them up. It's a completely different 
person. Anyway, | needed to replace the first one 
because the new one told me she was dead. | asked him 
to deal with the body and he said “don't worry about the 
body”. I'm surprised, because she wasn't flung apart and 
| haven't seen anyone else around here in a long while. 
Who deals with the bodies? Is anyone cleaning the test 
chamber? 


That would have to do. He knows there's still something missing, but 
he can't let it worry him. He heads back over to his desk at a pace 
that he suspects is closest to drunken walking. He sits down in his 
chair, trusting that the surface really is indeed there and that he 
won't just fall down into the milky nothingness of the floor and 
ceiling. 


What to do. What to do. He's the lead researcher, and yet he doesn't 
know what to do. Something isn't right, and hasn't been right for at 
least several hours. He tries to think about timing; when was the last 
time someone left or entered this lab? What time is it now? His 
watch reads 5:55. There's no way it's been almost a full 24 hours 
since last time he looked. 


When thinking and planning hurts his brain too much, he writes 
instead. It takes him two blank pieces of paper to get his statement 
right, but when he's done, he's confident that whoever briefs him on 
all this madness tomorrow morning will applaud his analysis. 


| needed to do this. They're all smarter than | am. Not 
smarter, really. Higher up? I'm in charge, I'm the doctor, 
but how long is that going to last? | keep getting 


confused... and look what they've been doing with the 
staff. Turns out there's a good reason | haven't seen 
anyone around lately. | guess this is why they terminate 
all these guys after a month. Whatever's going on, | can't 
think about it right now. I've seen the light and I'm so 
confused. How did | know it was pink? 


He lets his pen clatter to the ground. It takes about 4 seconds for the 
sound to come back to his ears. The floor must have dropped in 
distance significantly since last time he checked. 


"Moser, I'm going to repair something," he announces, unsure of 
whether or not she can hear him. He has a splitting headache. He 
stumbles off to the tool closet, trying not to think about how the not- 
floor feels under his feet. 


December?, 2004? | 555555 PM 


Pink light. Pink glow. Pink sunset. Pink lightning against a purple 
sky. Pink lightning burning pink-to-white over the deep blue waves 
as sticky, opaque rain splatters into the surf and fades away. Rivera 
stands up — or, at least, feels his muscles attempt to move in such 
a way — and just as he begins to process that he can't look down to 
see his body and feet below him, he finds himself falling backward 
over and over again, heart dropping in his chest until he feels like his 
stomach is about to burst. He thinks about screaming in pain, but 
finds that he doesn't possess the vocal chords to produce the 

sound. His body fights against physics until his flesh feels like it's 
being squished between plates of metal, everywhere all at once, and 
his vision of endless ocean fades to a single bright pink point under 
the waves. He gazes into it, unable to move the body that he's 
unsure he still has, until he hears a human voice echoing through 
the clear water. 


"Doctor? Doctor. Rivera. Can you hear me?" 


His eyes snap open, pupils almost entirely covering his irises. He 
gasps, lungs rattling. "A light that died is shining in the water," he 
rasps between breaths. 


"Sir? Sir, what-" 


"| knew | needed the pink light, but | didn't want it like they had it." 
"You're bleeding. Holy God, Doctor, how are you still-" 


"Shh! It works on brains different from how bodies work. So | drilled 
a hole right through the chamber, right at forehead level- That's 
good, write that down. Oh fuck, it's so freezing cold-" 


He feels his eyes close as Moser leans into a trash can and retches. 
There's dark fluid dripping down the front of his face, and the ceiling 
is composed of entirely pink light. 


Somewhere in the pink blackness, his ears pick up on movement. 
Talking. Panic. People carrying things around, and Moser sobbing 
while gesturing frantically to one of the medical department 
personnel. And in the movement, a bright blue light, swirling around 
and out of a sturdy little metal structure. He recognizes the hue 
immediately. "Turn that thing off! We never approved that!" he yells, 
but he knows they can't hear. Behind him, a door he's never seen 
open is opened, and a flood of pink light burns him in the eyes and 
on the skin until he knows he is dry and empty. 


555%&55%?, 200///5? | 5&5&5&5&5 PM 


Rivera's hands are shaking, but it's standard for his age. He 
rearranges the bandages criss-crossing his forehead and clears his 
throat. Two of the wrongly-clothed D-classes are sitting behind him, 
awaiting instruction. At least, he thinks that's what they're doing; 
neither of them appears particularly conscious. He needs sleep too, 
he recalls, but he'll get it soon. 


He opens a new entry in the test log. 


Input: D-Class subjects (N/A) (N/A) (N/A) 
Distance: Containment chamber 
Time: Five (5) 


He takes a deep breath. One of the containment personnel's terrible 
blue things is sitting beside his desk, smashed nearly to bits, a 
lifeless blue flicker spinning around inside it. Rivera wishes he'd 
been able to take out its central core, but he didn't have any clean 


properties. 


Note: The program input was an application similar to the 
app "Flappy Bird". 


That was interesting. I'll have to see about something a 
little more complex. -Dr. Hadian 


Name: Dr. Hadian 

Date: 2-17-2018 

Total Items: One (1) printed copy of a Javascript 
program (meant to be a "chat bot") 


Input: The aforementioned manuscript 

Setting: Very Fine 

Output: A small paper-mache head that spoke in a 
choppy, occasionally non-sequitur fashion. In spite of its 
ability to communicate, the head appears to lack true 
sentience, instead repeating back phrases taught to it 
and a few other basic English sentences. 


Note: About what | expected. | could be mistaken, but it 
would appear that even though SCP 914 is a mechanical 
device, machine code is still somehow understood by it. 
This would make sense, with the interpretation that it 
functions based on the "meaning" of objects, and given 
the explicit functionality of most programming languages, 
we might be able to achieve more stable results this way. 
-Dr. Hadian 


Name: Researcher Mikk 

Date: 2-21-2018 

Total Items: One (1) printed copy of a Javascript 
program (self-learning chat bot), 5 kilograms of tin with 
5% silver, 10 grams of copper, 500 grams of plastic 


Note: This is a continuation of the tests of Dr. Hadian. - 
Researcher Mikk 


power tools left after his self-excavation the other day. That spot 
throbs when he thinks about it, as if the thought itself is enough 
stimulation to make that particular patch of tissue ache and scream 
again. It'll be soothed soon, he reminds himself. Only twenty more 
steps. 


The others go in first. Rivera reminds them that they will enjoy it 
afterward, in order to calm their shaking bodies. He stands around 
the corner, shielding himself from the output in order to keep his 
opening clean and ready for exposure. It's throbbing, and cool air is 
blowing onto the delicate gray matter of his mind. It feels dead to 
him, but he knows it'll soon be pulsing with life and understanding. 


One. Two. Three. A few wet noises, and then nothing. 
Output: Viscera. 


It had to be done. Rivera gives one last glare to the speck of blue 

light as he writes his final test log; blue is wrong, and conflicts with 
pink. Those blue devices are aligning this world with itself, but the 
pink light desperately needs a new alignment. Good riddance, he 

assures himself, but he can't help but be bothered by the pain the 
blue light directs into his wound before it goes. 


They all went in. They still had me do it. Maybe they still 
respected that | was the doctor. Maybe they just wanted 
to leave me out. Even if I'm half there already. Even if | 
can't tell what is there and what isn't (can you?). But | 
have a special plan. | always covered up the hole | drilled 
so they didn't see it. | have another way in. | can find out 
what I've forgotten. There are no more test subjects and 
nobody else. There is only one way in. The booth needs 
to be operated, but | have a special plan. Don't worry 
about the body. | just need to know if my shaft of pink 
light will make me flung apart. 


Breach Report A-42: Complete Loss of Unit-42 and 
Surrounding Area on / / 


Date of Report: / / 


Report Filed By: 
Known SCP Object(s) Involved: SCP-3005 


Summary of Event(s): Unknown effects of SCP-3005 
led to unsafe research environment followed by use of 
improper containment protocol involving Mark IV 
Scranton Reality Anchors. Test results show likely 
psychological deterioration of all research and 
containment personnel within ~30 meters of SCP-3005 
beginning at approximately the same time as 
containment efforts began. Last edits to SCP-3005's logs 
on IntSCPFN! were made at : on // by primary 
author and lead researcher Mikhael Rivera. Dr. Rivera, 
and all other assigned SCP-3005 researchers, are 
presumed dead or missing due to the complete loss of 
Unit-42 following the breach event in question. 


Additional Note(s): Whereabouts of SCP-3005 
unknown following breach event. Containment 
responsibility for locating and collecting SCP-3005 
transferred to Site-17 as of / / 


Footnotes 
1. The International SCP Foundation Network 


Pitch Meeting 


Foundation Lunar Research Site 01, Secure Conference Room 
1-0. 
July 19th, 1973, 10:36 hours GMT. 


05-10 reached up to adjust his collar electrolarynx, then stopped as 
his hand refused to move. Removing the tumours had been a long, 
exhaustive process, and the cocktail of drugs they'd pumped him full 
of to keep him this alert had other, unfortunate side effects. 


"Would you mind-?" 


Gently, tenderly, the long mechanical arm rose from his bedside. 
Caliper-like fingers flashing in the half-light of the room, it resettled 
the small device on the ruins of his neck. A soft voice hissed from 
the small speaker on the headrest. 


"Better, sir?" 
"Significantly. Let's begin."