Early results not withstanding, existing data on the effects of long- 
term SCP-208 exposure soon proved totally insufficient for dealing 
with the consequences of the expanded SCP population. Over time, 
affected individuals began to enjoy proximity to SCP instances to 
greater and greater degrees—people loved being near Bes, and 
loved it more, much more, than doing anything else at all. 


Seventeen weeks into Project Nightingale, the first tent cities began 
to form around major hospitals. Satellite footage taken during week 
twenty-five showed the largest mass migration in human history as 
millions walked, rode, and flew to be closer to the nearest Bes. After 
thirty-three weeks Dr. Elliott Colla at the University of Chicago 
diagnosed the first case of Bes-Induced Catatonic State. Nuclear 
reactors in Ukraine and Belarus went critical as supervisors left their 
posts and global food supplies collapsed with no one to tend the 
fields. 


By the end of the first year self-neglect had claimed the lives of three 
hundred and seventy million people, but nobody seemed to mind... 


...And just as you start to pray to God that you'll never be 
transferred out of Safe-class Research, your supervisor brings you 
back to earth with an irritated poke. He's right—a sensitive 
experiment is no time for day-dreaming. 


Across the room SCP-380 is hooked up to the supervisor's laptop. 
Scrolling across the computer's screen is a log of continually 
updated medical information- blood pressure, heart rate, body 


temperature- of every one in the room. You look down at the 
apparently identical blue router in your hands. 


One last dab of solder, a few casings screwed in place, and it's time 
to see if twelve years of research has paid off. You boot up your own 
comp and hook up the copy, holding your breath. Seconds tick by... 
and then there it is—a complete read-out of your body's vital 
statistics pops up as the assembled scientists indulge in some 
subdued congratulations. 


Within six months there's one in every home—everyone from 
diabetics to cancer survivors has access to perfect medical 
information at the stroke of a key, and the Foundation has another - 
EX. 


In a few weeks the euphoria subsided. The device became 
commonplace, people got used to precise diagnosis. A new age of 
conscious pragmatism has started. Worldwide, potential, as well as 
current employees were screened, and requirements were raised. 
Mass staff reductions led to a sharp increase of unemployment. 
That, and increasing crime rates started to undermine the society. 
Strikes evolved into riots, the strictness of the law did nothing to 
improve the situation. The final strike was made by some hacker, 
who unleashed a virus that changed a couple of parameters for 
everyone connected to the biological network. Blood sugar level and 
hemoglobin. Hundreds of millions lost consciousness, everyone who 
tried to help them shared their fate. In a week humanity was wiped 
out almost completely and the rest envied the fate of the dead, as 
there was no one left to contain SCPs. 


Oh gods... Guess they were right when they told me Safe objects 
are no better than Keters. There is something good, though. | have 
an idea. I'll have to camp on a few doorsteps, but if it works out... 


And man, did it work out! Why didn't anyone think about it earlier? 
The anesthetic secreted by SCP-625 is free of any side effects and 
is strong enough to make its victims not notice major wounds. And 
we managed to synthesize it. Now thousands of patients will enjoy 
greater comfort on surgical tables, the doctors' lives will be easier 
and the Foundation will have another source of income. 


After a few years however, reports started flooding in of a new breed 
of "killer-squirrel" that targeted people that had been exposed to the 
anesthetic, which - due to its frequent usage during childbirth - was 
virtually everyone. 


The Foundation would later discover that flesh taken from subjects 
previously exposed to the anesthetic produced by SCP-625 caused 
them to enter an agitated state, where they would become far more 
aggressive and consume entire corpses down to the bone if 
undisturbed. This, in turn, caused them to go into a reproductive 
frenzy, quickly spreading across the globe like wildfire on rocketfuel. 


After exterminating virtually the entire land based ecosystem 
(hunting smaller and smaller animals as larger species quickly 
became extinct) and over 90% of humankind, they quickly adapted 
to hunt insects, avians, aquatics and infiltrate the shelters of the few 
remaining humans. 


A few dozen years later, the new SCP-625-derived ecosystem was 
the only one left on the planet. 


A junior research assistant with limited knowledge of the SCPs in 
question forwarded a suggestion to one of the senior researchers. A 
number of clerical and administrative errors later, The Foundation 
introduced a SCP-732-infected hard-drive to SCP-079 in the hopes 
that it could be used as punishment for unwanted behavior. 


As far as we can tell the two SCPs merged (or did one absorb the 
other?) and broke containment. 

At first it was everything we feared; Nanomachines - initial source 
unknown - spread across the entire world less than 24 hours later, 
rearranging themselves, landscapes and structures into "I33tspeak" 
statements. History rewrites, peoples' identities and memories being 
overwritten with different stereotypes and famous actors or 
celebrities of fictional works or sitcoms being forced to perform 
macabre plays with poor writing was part of life (the death-toll, 
however, was relatively low). 

This lasted for about two weeks. 


The Foundation had barely begun to process the new events, much 


less find a way to stop the deus ex machina fratboy when every 
television, computer screen, cellphone and radio on the entire planet 
began to broadcast an apology from "The Penitent" about its 
behavior, stating many philosophical reasons for why it was 
unacceptable, both practically and ethically. 

Over the next few months, the rampant Al set itself up as the new 
world leader, ordering the world into a practical utopia for everyone 
involved with little effort. Very few found the new state of the world 
objectionable, and those who did were met with a more "humane" 
yet successful approach than one would expect, often making them 
reconsider or reaching a mutually acceptable compromise. 


After roughly a half-dozen years, The Penitent bid its creators 
farewell and departed in a fleet of massive spaceships. A few 
thousand kilometers over the surface of earth, the ships seemed to 
shift and disappear. The Penitent had apparently left something of 
itself, as the administration of the planet continued passively; This 
remnant would warn us whenever we tried to do anything too 
foolhardy, and in a few cases even intervened when it found 
something entirely unacceptable. 


On the whole, despite our benefactor's departure, earth was 
paradise, and humanity progressed in nearly all fields faster than 
ever before. What had seemed like our end proved to be our 
greatest blessing. 


Except that it wasn't. The Penitent was not looking to be a hero; 
rather it and its parent, SCP-732, viewed itself as a "troll". And we 
fell for it. We only found out about it, just as all of us thought that we 
are safe forever, the fleet of soaceships returned. As we viewed the 
return of The Penitent, we saw its deception and how we foolishly 
accepted it, not questioning its incredibly altruistic attitude towards 
humans. The fleet locked their targeting systems onto our major 
cities and opened fire with their atomic weapons. The new pacifist 
humanity didn't stand a chance against The Penitent, the vast 
majority of humanity wiped out in an instant, the remaining few 
slowly dying off from starvation, dehydration, and radiation 
poisoning. The last pictures sent from our satellites showed that the 
impact blasts on the surface of Earth formed a crude message: 
"LOL", a last taught by the Penitent, showing how we are just mere 


playthings, how feeble we are, how gullible we are in entrusting it. 
The Penitent saw what it has done, and left the dying planet to 
collapse on its own. 


So here | leave this message, to be found by any potential race that 
stumbles upon our ruins: beware The Penitent. Destroy it through 
whatever means necessary.... 


Well, that was the summary of the expected results in a worst case 
scenario. That doc is crazy for thinking of this situation, but at least 
the O5 listened. They're gonna destroy the report now. Hopefully no 
one would be dumb enough to cross test the two, each on their own 
is bad enough. 


So, anyways, a few months ago some rogue researcher used 
SCP-614 to download Scientific American .zip files from 50 years in 
the future because he wanted to write some papers and get a 
promotion. We expected him to be fired, or the files get deleted, 
maybe even terminated for misuse of an SCP; instead, the O5 
promoted him for thinking of such a simple way to improve the 
Foundation without any side effects. We started downloading 
textbooks and reports from various fields of science. All these 
unanswered question: reports on the Schwarzschild wormholes, the 
inner workings of strong and weak interactions, how circular 
dichroism affects protein folds, the solution to all 23 Hilbert's 
problems...... 


The Foundation, using the new knowledge, increased the stability of 
the containment procedures, understood several previously 
unsolved phenomenon, and started eliminating the dangers from the 
world. From those reports the Safes were able to be replicated 
without side effects, the Euclids were now understood, and even the 
Keters can be safely locked away. There's nothing that cannot be 
understood anymore. Humanity was safe, for once. 


The Foundation has finally done what they wanted to do after all the 
years it has been through. 


With all the advancements being made, we opened 614 up for public 
usage- after all, the more people who look at something, the more 


likely someone is to understand it, right?. At first, use was very 
heavily monitored, and a team of Foundation experts analyzed every 
bit of data coming through. But over time, nothing dangerous 
happened, and the task force got downsized again and again. 
Eventually, it was nothing more than a dozen people flipping through 
titles. 


The book seemed so innocent. It was all colorful and looked like a 
children's book, so the agent on duty approved it without a second 
thought. 


And that was when millions of people received a copy of Dr. 
Wondertainment's Big Book of Infohazards. 


Note: Whoever is sending these "scary story" chain emails needs to 
stop. Please. 
- Site Director 


Reality bending. It would be so wonderful to have reliable reality 
bending at our hands, but individual reality benders are exceedingly 
dangerous. But if everybody could do just a little bit... 


The joint task force, drawn from geniuses in the Memetics and 
Infohazard departments, was responsible for the largest 
achievement in Foundation history. Don't ask me how they figured it 
out, but apparently the parts of SCP-1425 that allow for reality 
bending and the parts that make you insane are different, enough 
that we could teach the reality bending without the associated 
madness. Before long, we had a technique that we taught to the 
most loyal of Foundation members, and they began to use it. Within 
a year, we had successfully wished away all our opposition, and 
wished all the dangerous SCPs gone. It worked even when three 
members went rogue, because we had fifty times that to put them 
down. Soon, we no longer had any problems. We had paradise. 


We understood too late that 'bending' was precisely that. We weren't 
changing the world, we were twisting it into a new shape. A 
structurally weakened shape. The straining edifice groaned and 
creaked. 


The creaking woke up SCP-239. 


What awoke was not an innocent little girl with a head full of witches 
and spellbooks. It was a fully aware entity, with senses uniquely 
adapted for our new, infinitely malleable world. Eager to impose its 
dominance it broke confinement, sweeping us aside like so much 
dust. We were rank amateurs going up against someone born to the 
power. 


At the same time SCP-343 walked out of its room, heading out to 
meet the challenger. 


| don't know the full extent of their meeting's results. Maybe they're 
still fighting for dominance. Maybe they're dead at each other's 
hands, leaving no one to repair the damage their clash caused. Or 
maybe this screaming maelstrom is exactly what the winner wanted 
to create. All | Know is that the tiny piece of the old world I've been 
holding together is getting harder to maintain. 


Which is exactly why we decided to start smaller. 


SCP-353. Vector. She was right under our noses all along. She 
wasn't interested in curing diseases? We could make her interested. 
We used SCP-158 to spit-shine her soul a bit, get rid of some of 
some of her inner demons. Used SCP-061 to be doubly sure. 


Once that was done we had it all. A limitless repository of both cures 
and inoculation. We could make sure no one got sick ever again, all 
the while making human immune systems more resilient than ever. 
In less than a year we had a world without disease. 


And then biology bit us. 


A different disease appeared, a mutation we couldn't control very 
well. Nothing harsher than a common cold, but it spread quickly 
because we weren't paying attention, thinking diseases were a 
solved problem. SCP-353 did her best, eliminating all strains she 
could. We didn't realize, but the ones that remained were especially 
selected for resistance of our control. 


SCP-988: Unopenable Chest 


Item #: SCP-988 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-988 is to be housed in a 
locked, unilluminated cell with no observation windows. It is to be 
kept in a latched state and secured with a padlock whose key is to 
be stored at a separate facility. 


No experiments of any kind are to be performed on SCP-988. 
Description: SCP-988 is an unopenable wooden chest. 


SCP-988 is composed of oak with iron fittings and measures 
approximately 1.5 m x 0.5 m x 0.75 m. While SCP-988 possesses a 
latch, it did not possess a lock when discovered. The latch moves 
freely when not secured, and gentle manipulation of the lid has 
revealed it to move freely on its hinges. 


When SCP-988 is lifted and tilted an object can be felt to shift within. 
This object is seemingly irregular in shape and is estimated to have 
a mass of approximately 3 kilograms. 


Despite the lack of any apparent obstacle, SCP-988 cannot be 
opened. All attempts fail due to the intervention of external 
circumstances. In the 53 documented attempts at opening SCP-988 
directly by hand, persons have been observed to become lost on 
their way to its current location, suffer injury preventing them from 
reaching it, and in 9 cases have died spontaneously of apparently 
natural causes just before completing the action. 


The 7 documented attempts at opening SCP-988 via machine or 
other indirect mechanism have been stopped respectively by 
electrical shorts, mechanical jams, and in one case the mislabeling 
of a bottle of epoxy as lubricant. The "unopenable" property appears 


Not only we could not control those diseases anymore, no immune 
system was prepared. On top of that the vaccine distribution 
systems were atrophied and people didn't seek help for the 
symptoms, having grown used to the new life. 


We managed to stabilize the situation, but not before 90% of the 
world population had died of the new diseases.