| have long wondered if there were other worlds in Creation where 
man, or beings like man, have existed and thrived; but owing to the 
great vastness of space, | have long assumed that none of them 
would be within our reach for some time. If Mr. Wallace's account 
was true, there might be a way to travel to one of those worlds right 
here in London! | entreated with Mr. Wallace for some time to 
divulge the name of his confederate; he refused out of respect for 
his friend's privacy, but told me that the strange intruder, who 
claimed the name "Izikaiah Belson", had been declared mad by the 
court and sentenced to Bedlam, and that | might find him there if | 
wished to. After New Year's, | intend to call upon this madman. 


January 3rd, 1876: 


The fact that an institution like Bedlam is allowed to exist in our great 
nation is an affront. Were a man not already mad upon entering 
these walls, the circumstances of his internment would make him so. 
| did my best to avert my eyes from the lunatics packed into dingy 
cells and overcrowded wards as a porter lead me to a padded cell 
where the man called Izikaiah Belson had been locked away alone. 
None of the doctors had been able to speak to him, she said; if | 
wished to try, | was more than welcome to do so. A gruff-looking 
gaoler with a large and ancient-looking key-ring unlocked the door, 
and | invited myself inside, where Mr. Belson sat alone in the corner. 
| introduced myself and said | had come to learn what | could of who 
he was and where he came from. He did not respond at first and 
turned his head away, mumbling under his breath. | listened 
carefully and found that the tongue he spoke almost resembled the 
English language, but it was far from any tongue that has ever been 
spoken in the Queen's court; twisted and altered as if by centuries of 
deviation, not dissimilar from how the many and various Romance 


languages evolved amidst the collapse of the Roman Empire. | 
stood and listened attentively as he repeated a series of sentences 
three times, that | present below; 


Hae who are bitwayn space, press‘d is yir voce. Yi are watchen n'! 
yir vyss'l, here n' here n' there. Awaye wit' me sin, Vaader, n' shed 
for me yir sanggre weppin', n' I'll but do the word of the Vaaders 
b'low ye. S'beit. 


The man's accent was strange, and it was part-way through his third 
recitation when it occurred to me that he was attempting to pray. | 
knew the prayer well, and when he finished his third recitation, | 
repeated it back to him in the Queen's English. He fell silent as he 
heard my rendition. His first reaction was more vitriolic than | 
expected - | believe he accused me of having "the speech of the old 
elders", and accused me of being a sinner or a witch. | assured him 
as best | could that | was neither; | am a naturalist. He seemed to 
calm himself somewhat when he heard that word; in any event, he 
no longer feared me, and over the course of an hour or two we 
worked out a pidgin of English and his dialect in which we could 
converse. In time, | came to the conclusion that he hails from a 
world which is surprisingly like, and yet completely alien to our own. 


Mr. Belson claimed to have come from a place called "The City 
Where Elijah Fell". He describes it as a metropolis that would put 
London to shame; tens of millions of souls call it home, living in 
towers thousands of feet high, commuting on great trains and horse- 
less carriages that moved hundreds of miles per hour through the 
packed streets. Every building was wired with electricity, and 
possessed devices for receiving of sights and sounds from the other 
end of the world, for delivering the contained knowledge of entire 
libraries, and other incredible wonders. | showed him a map of the 
world and asked where this city lay, and he pointed to America, on 
the western coast of the Floridian peninsula. He claimed he had 
been at work in one of the city's great towers, momentarily leaning 
against a wall during a prayer break, when the wall seemed to fall 
away behind him and he found himself in a strange old house with a 
strangely dressed woman screaming at him, confirming Mr. 
Wallace's account. 


| showed him a Bible | procured from one of the doctors and asked if 


SCP-901: The Building on the Square 


Item #: SCP-901 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: The location and nature of 
SCP-901 poses difficulties for containment. All doors, windows and 
any other features which may appear to an observer to be possible 
entrances to SCP-901 are to be sealed. SCP-901 is to be 
surrounded by a 4.5m chain-link fence topped with razor wire and 
wooden construction hoardings on the outer perimeter of the fence 
to give the appearance of a defunct facility. Two Foundation agents 
in local police uniform are to be positioned at the entrance to 
SCP-901 at all times, with four more agents in plain clothes 
discreetly patrolling the perimeter of SCP-901. Under no 
circumstances should personnel enter SCP-901 except during 
controlled testing conditions. 


Description: SCP-901 is a four-story building constructed in the 
neoclassical style, situated at 10 Square, ; 

coordinates [REDACTED]. It is L-shaped and takes up a footprint of 
approximately 850m2. Information on SCP-901's history has been 
difficult to obtain; questioning of the local population suggests that it 
has existed since 1947 at the earliest, but no records of its builders 
or subsequent usage have been found. It is not possible to enter 
SCP-901 through any method other than through the main entrance, 
which consists of a large mahogany double door of dimensions 
5.2x4.5m, from hereon designated as SCP-901-1. SCP-901-1 opens 
onto a large main hall which appears to be empty when viewed from 
the outside. The windows, although covered with a thick coating of 
dirt, also show all the rooms of SCP-901 are empty. However, 
observers have on rare occasions reported movement, 'shadowy 
figures' and in one case [DATA EXPUNGED] through the windows. 
So far, none of these phenomena have been captured by recording 
devices. 


he was a Christian. He recoiled at the proposition as he had when | 
recited the Lord's Prayer, and informed me that, while the elders had 
been Christians in days gone by, all of that had changed with the 
Second Coming and the authoring of the Third Testament, and that 
to openly proclaim to be a Christian was a heresy and a most 
heinous crime. | gather that in the nation Mr. Belson hails from, 
which he claims to control the entire world, the church and the state 
have been brought together in a way that would make the 
Archbishop of Canterbury himself a proponent of 
disestablishmentarianism. | asked what becomes of heretics when 
they are caught and he informed me that they are "made pure in 
S'Tears"; for if heresy is allowed to spread unchecked, then "the 
Unclean" shall come and bring destruction to the pure and the 
wicked alike. 


Mr. Belson refused to elaborate further when | asked him what the 
Unclean were. He asserted that it was blasphemy to even speak of 
them, for to say their name might draw their attention. | assured him 
that nobody in London would harm him for speaking of this matter, 
and that, whatever an "Unclean" might be, there were none in any 
corner of this world that | have explored. Belson was visibly 
frightened as he told me, in halting whispers, that the Unclean were 
the Devil. But unlike the Devil of the heretics, who lived in the pits 
below, these Devils walked the Earth. They were giant creatures, 
behemoths of pure sin, all of man's unrighteous thoughts and deeds 
given flesh. They stalked the darkest corners of the world and their 
sin tainted the Earth itself so that no crop could grow and no man 
could live, and it took all the efforts of the holiest crusaders to keep 
them so imprisoned lest they break free and the world come to an 
end. 


Until such time as the doctor assured me | must leave for the night, | 
remained in Belson's cell and learned as much as | could of this 
strange world he came from - matters of language, culture, fashion, 
everything a man might need to know to travel amongst its gleaming 
cities anonymously. | managed to cajole a young nurse at the clerk's 
desk into letting me review Belson's file, and | learned that the affray 
that lead to his arrest occurred in Notting Hill at the residence of a 
Mr. Weathers. Tomorrow | shall call upon him and state my intent to 
purchase this disc that turns mirrors into gateways to another world; 


for | intend to conduct a survey of this civilization to rival Sir Burton's 
forbidden journey into Mecca, and, if | can, find one of these 
diabolical monsters Mr. Belson speaks of, and make it my prey. 


January 9th, 1876: 


Mr. Weathers was quite relieved to be rid of the disc when | 
purchased it from him. It glowed an eerie purple as he handed it to 
me; and yet once in my own hand, its aura seemed to fade, and 
become instead a greenish hue. | took it home and placed it ona 
mirror in my study, and immediately the glass seemed to become as 
water. | saw a pastoral scene not unlike that which one might behold 
in our own country-side; a farmhouse in the distance, tilled fields 
with tall crops between. There were children running and playing 
among the crops, and in the distance, over the horizon, | saw in 
silhouette titanic structures taller than any building man on this Earth 
has ever made. For several days | observed through the mirror; on a 
few occasions the farmer and his hands came close enough that | 
could hear their speech; the accent not as thick as Mr. Belson's had 
been, but foreign enough that | strained to decypher their 
conversations. The clothes they wore were not unlike those a farm- 
hand might wear in England; but Mr. Belson had warned me the 
fashions in the city were very different from what he had seen in 
London, and | would be most out of place in any of my usual clothes. 
A visit to the Metropolitan Police, and after a lengthy conversation 
with the precinct constable and the promise of a sizable donation | 
was able to acquire the clothes Mr. Belson had been wearing at the 
time he entered our world. It was not dissimilar to morning dress, but 
to my eye it seemed less formal; there was no waistcoat, the jacket 
was shorter and cut more conservatively with broad lapels, the 
cravat was thin and a solid shade of black. | had Deeds tailor it to fit 
me, and | stowed it away for when | reach the city. 


| have packed lightly, for | shall be travelling alone and | shall have 
none of the native currency, for Mr. Belson had carried no bill-fold 
when he entered our world. | have my clothes and rations for a few 
days, and | shall enter dressed in a farmer's garb and remain so 
dressed until | reach the metropolis. Gold and silver | have brought 
in the hopes of trading for currency (Mr. Belson having informed me 
that the principal form of trade is paper), and within my pack | have 


hidden my pistol and several of Mr. Moth's weapons. | have my 
compass, my sextant, my electric torch, a comprehensive atlas of 
the world, and my journal, and a few good luck talismans besides 
those. The cycle of day and night in this other world is some eight 
hours behind our own; from this | deduce that the scene | behold is 
somewhere along the western coast of America. | shall cross 
through the looking-glass under cover of night this evening, for fear 
of alarming the farmers of my presence, and make my way towards 
the city; where, hopefully, | can discover a library or an institute of 
learning and document the history and culture of this world - and 
where the so-called Unfertile Zones are located, so that | might 
observe these Unclean for myself. 


January 10th, 1876: 
What a world this is indeed. 


This is indeed one of the more temperate parts of the world, for 
though it was past midnight local time when | entered this world, the 
air was perfectly warm. Based on my reading of the stars, | judge 
myself to be somewhere near the thirty-fourth parallel, in the region 
that must in this world correspond to the land of California. Here in 
the fields it is dark; but in the southeast | behold a stunning 
panorama of light shining into the darkness, the aura of the great 
metropolis bathed in electric light so bright that it shrouds the stars 
themselves above it. In the distance | heard sounds like great 
engines. The terrain was easily passed, even in the darkness, save 
for a fence at the edge of the farm | had alighted into, which | was 
forced to climb. 


The sight | beheld when | reached the source of the noise was 
unbelievable. A great paved road lay stretched across the 
grassland, solid barriers at either side. It was wider than any road | 
have ever beheld, and stripes painted on the road indicated sixteen 
lanes for traffic - eight going in one direction, and eight in the other. 
The entire road was lit by giant lamps brighter than the gas-lamps of 
London or New York, and one could have read a newspaper 
comfortably by their light. Even at this late hour, | watched in 
surprise and wonder (and no small amount of terror, | must admit) 
as motor-carriages far more advanced than Mr. Bollee's steam-cars 
hurtled along the road at speeds faster than the finest locomotive or 


the fastest race-horse. They must have been travelling a hundred 
miles per hour or more - some of them small enough to carry a 
handful of people, others massive like train cars and looking to haul 
cargo by the ton. Some never touched the roadway at all, seemingly 
gliding on a cushion of air. | had to sit by the roadside, obscured in 
shadow, for some time while | took this in. Many times in my life | 
have encountered savage tribes that never before have seen the 
wonders of civilization. At this moment, | felt the savage myself, 
beholding wonders he has no hope of contemplating. 


| dared not cross the road, and as it seemed like a straight-away 
enough path to the city,| walked for several hours along its shoulder. 
It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but it looked to be about thirty 
miles to the out-skirts of the city, and | judged it would take well past 
mid-day to reach the inhabited areas. | feared that any of the 
carriages hurtling by might at any moment careen out of control and 
catastrophe would ensue, and | wondered how any man could bear 
such speeds. The eastern sky was beginning to show the tint of 
dawn when one of the carriages slowed to a stop on the edge of the 
road, next to me, a door opened, and a voice from within asked if | 
desired a ride into the city. | have never been one to rely on the 
charity of strangers, but | was curious to examine one of the 
carriages from the inside and accepted. 


It was scarsely a quarter hour before we were among the crystalline 
towers of the metropolis. | did my best to disguise my terror as the 
driver, who identified himself as Ben O'Kazzem, inquired of my 
business. | told him my name was Teodor Swarzrod (that, Mr. 
Belson had told me, being how my name would be presented in his 
language), that | was a farm-hand in the nearby country-side, and 
that | had never before been to the city but that | intended to 
research my family's history at one of the major libraries therein. We 
struggled to understand each other as | had yet to fully master the 
dialect, but his assumption that | merely had a "country accent" 
saved me any uncomfortable questions. | disembarked in the 
financial center of the city and offered to pay him for the ride with 
one of my gold slugs. He refused saying it was far too much for a 
simple ride, and | offered him a silver slug instead - which he 
accepted, and offered me a considerable sum of paper currency in 
the balance, while commenting that he never imagined the country- 


folk had such wealth at their disposal.