This morning, our vessel conducted a circuit of the Moon. Dr. 
Hightower explained to me that we shall use our closest neighbor's 
gravitational field to produce an effect not unlike a sling-shot, 
granting acceleration that shall enable us to reach Victoria months 
before we might reach it otherwise. To achieve our target, we must 
travel twice as far through the blackness of space as the distance 


that stands between our Earth and the Sun itself. Thus far, Dr. 
Hightower assures me, all has gone in accordance with plan, and 
we should reach Victoria by the first of July. 


We took advantage of our approach to the Moon to make as many 
observations as we could. We took several dagguerotypes from the 
on-board telescopes, and the artists have produced depictions of the 
dark side which Dr. Hightower informs me are the first ever made by 
man. | am told that the surface of the Moon is an inhospitable place, 
wanting entirely for air to breathe, that a vacuum-suit would be 
necessary to stand upon its surface, and that it will likely be a 
hundred years or more before such a deed is feasible. Still, | would 
very much like some day to attempt it. 


May 24th, 1856: 


Today is the Queen's birthday, and beside that, today marks the 
point where we are officially half-way to the world named for her. In 
her honour we held a party in the rocket's cafeteria. There has been 
little time for frivolity on this voyage thus far; all sixty-three of us 
have our appointed tasks to conduct every day, for our rocket is one 
of the most complex and intricate devices that man has ever 
engaged, and we are surrounded on all sides by millions of miles of 
emptiness from which no salvation will come if we are remiss in our 
duties. 


Dr. Hightower toasted the Queen as we sipped the precious rations 
of champagne he had stowed for specifically this occasion, and | 
offered a toast to science and to the progress of our Empire. | 
wonder, what would Her Majesty say on this occasion, if she knew 
that Englishmen were praising her name ninety million miles away? | 
spent a good deal of time contemplating this as | stared out a port- 
hole into the darkness, the stars holding steady in the distance as 
we hurtled through the cosmos at a greater velocity than man has 
ever imagined. One truly feels small in these expanses. How 
insignificant is a man, how great is the mind of God, that ina 
thousand lifetimes one could not hope to cross from one end of the 
Universe to another? 


June 30th, 1856: 


Today we entered into Victoria's orbit. The artists and photographers 
have been busy at the port-holes and telescopes, creating the first 
records of this unexplored Eden. | was barely able to manage a 
peek for a few moments before giving up my spot, and | found 
myself utterly rapt at the sights that laid before me. What Dr. 
Hightower had shown me in the telescope at Greenwich was no 
illusion; the surface of the asteroid, now scarcely a dozen miles 
beneath my feet, was indeed blanketed thick with foliage, and | even 
fancied briefly that | espied a bird fluttering amongst the canopy. 


Tomorrow, almost all of us shall board the landing craft and embark 
for the surface itself, the handful of pilots remaining aboard the 
rocket to maintain its orbit while we catalog Victoria's wonders for 
the next two months. Dr. Hightower has selected a landing zone at 
the edge of one of the cratered regions, where there is a break in 
the foliage large enough to attempt a landing without fear of being 
obstructed by the flora. | feel as Mr. Columbus must have felt when 
he espied the tawny, savage people of San Salvador through his 
spyglass. We are on the cusp of revelation of the sort that happens 
but once in a lifetime; for tomorrow |, Theodore Thomas Blackwood, 
explorer and gentleman, shall set my foot upon the virgin soil of a 
new world. 


July 1st, 1856: 
O glorious day! 


It was barely half past five, London time, when our landing craft 
separated from the main rocket and made its way towards the 
surface of Victoria. The pressure of re-entry was almost unbearable, 
and flames licked the windows of the craft as we descended. It was 
dark outside the craft when we finally impacted the edge of the 
crater; Victoria is of such small size, Dr. Hightower explained, and of 
such an irregular shape, that it takes little more than four hours for it 
to complete a single rotation. Day and night are brief affairs; one can 
almost watch the sun, from this vantage a dim and distant orb no 
larger than the Moon, race across the purplish sky from when it rises 
in the north until it sinks in the south. Because Victoria is so 
miniscule in relation to the Earth, Dr. Hightower had warned us that 
we would weigh but a tiny fraction of what we do there. Perhaps it 
was simply because | have become so used to weightlessness in 


the past two months, but | feel no lighter here than | ever have. 


Shortly after we made landfall, Dr. Hightower addressed us with a 
matter most grave. We know not, he said, whether the 
environmental conditions of Victoria are conducive to human life. It 
is entirely possible that the air of this world is unbreathable, or that 
its flora exude compounds poisonous to man, or that vicious beasts 
stood ready to tear a man apart, or that the air itself was lousy with 
bacteria that would kill a man slowly from the inside. It would be 
necessary, he said, for a single man to expose himself to Victoria 
before the rest of the expedition alighted, and by his fate 
demonstrate whether it was safe for man to even exist on this world. 
lt was entirely possible that that man might die, and that his death 
might be most slow and uncomfortable; but such a sacrifice, if it had 
to be made, might save fifty-six other lives. No man would be forced 
to make this sacrifice, Dr. Hightower said; he sought only a man who 
was willing to risk his life in the name of science. 


| immediately volunteered myself as a guinea-pig. Dr. Hightower at 
first objected; | was too critical to the mission, he said, to risk my life 
so frivolously. | put forth the proposition that as a peer of the realm 
and a gentleman, | have an obligation to, as it were, lead from the 
fore, and that | would never dream of putting any man under my 
authority into a position of hazard that | was not myself willing to 
occupy. If Victoria was too toxic for man to explore her wonders, | 
argued, then there could be no further expedition to begin with; and 
therefore, if | died in ascertaining its safety, there was nothing lost. 
The men were in solid agreement with this logic, and Dr. Hightower 
acquiesced; shortly before eleven in the morning London time, as 
the sun arose over the crater's edge, | stood alone, in my finest 
khakis, boots, and helmet, in the landing craft's air-lock. 


The hatch opened and | breathed my first breath of Victorian air. It 
was hot and thick, more severe even than the oppression of the 
Amazonian jungle, with a bitter scent not unlike cinnamon. | 
breathed deeply, and though it was a most labourious effort, | found 
it not as hostile as the choking air of Mars, nor as cruel and 
unyielding as the sparse atmosphere of the Himalayas. Though | 
stood bare and exposed on a world where man had never before 
dwelled, | lived. Cautiously, | made my way down the gantry and set 


my foot upon the earth, the treads in my boot impressing themselves 
in the virgin soil. How small a step for a man! How great a leap for 
the Empire! 


The earth before me was barren and plain. Less than a mile distant | 
beheld the forest that blanketed Victoria; like a brick wall, it seemed 
to stand impenetrable, jutting hundreds of feet above the surface. 
The purple sky was a sharp contrast to the greenery, a vision worthy 
of one of the great French Impressionists. | lack the words to truly 
describe the sight and the emotions that ran through me as | beheld 
that alien landscape, and | wondered if a poet ought to have 
descended in my stead. With as much solemnity as | could muster, | 
produced from my jacket a Union Flag, mounted to a small pole, and 
reverentially mounted it in the earth. As the men watched eagerly 
from the windows of the crowded vessel, | fell to my knees in the 
Victorian soil and made an address, heard but by God, that | had 
written and revised in my mind for hours since; 


|, Theodore Thomas Blackwood, CBE, 7th Viscount of Winchester, 
do hereby claim in perpetuity this land, the planet Victoria, in the 
name of Her Majesty the Queen Victoria and of her British Empire, 
on this, the first day of July, in the Year of Our Lord 1856, and do 
hereby pray to our Lord and Saviour that our expedition to this land 
shall be fruitful and pleasing unto Him. God save the Queen. 


| remained alone on the surface of the planet for several hours, an 
entire Victorian sunrise and sunset occurring in the meanwhile as | 
took samples of the soil and documented in my journal the 
conditions of that world. By the time the sun rose again at half past 
three and the rest of the crew could see that | was alive and well, 
they began to alight as well. We established our base camp at the 
edge of the forest, which seemed to terminate at a certain point as if 
a line had been drawn in the sand and no plant dared extend its 
roots further. Tomorrow we shall begin our journey into the forest 
proper, and endeavour to learn what we can of this planet. 


July 3rd, 1856 


| once thought, dear reader, that | had beheld all there was that a 
man could hope to see in Creation. | have wandered the jungles of 
South America, and blazed trails across the frontiers of the West. | 


have lived among the unknown cults of India and Bangla Desh. | 
have trekked across the great Outback, wandered the vast and 
empty forests of Siberia, and lead men and dogs across the vast 
plateaus of Antarctica. 


So | had thought, until this day. Were | to make a comparison, | 
would say that the Victorian forest is most like that of the rain-forests 
of Brazil; beneath the massive trees, little of the already sparse 
sunlight reaches, and were it not for our electric torches we would 
be altogether blind. The undergrowth is thick and impassable, and 
we have had to make liberal use of our machetes to cut a path into 
the forest. Dr. Hightower's thermometer attests that the temperature, 
day or night, is almost a constant one hundred and thirty degrees 
Fahrenheit, hotter than all but the most desolate of the Arabian 
wastelands. The flora here must derive their nutrition from the heat 
of the air, for no terrestrial plant could hope to blossom in an 
environment this dim. Already we have collected several hundred 
samples of organisms unlike none that have been seen on Earth; | 
imagine that Oxford itself will be set on its ear for decades in 
endeavouring to decrypt the nature of these organisms once we 
announce our findings. 


To our universal surprise and delight, we have discovered this day 
that there is not only foliage, but that animal life exists on Victoria as 
well. Four-winged creatures not unlike insects flit through the air, 
alighting from flower to flower in the vines that cris-cross the jungle. 
From mounds on the earth teem thousands upon thousands of 
creatures that for all the world are dead ringers for the common ants 
one may find anywhere on Earth. We collected many samples of the 
insect life. The ants, however, responded with great hostility when 
we attempted to examine them; Mr. Andrews, one of the junior 
biologists in the mission, was suddenly set upon by thousands of the 
creatures when he attempted to examine their nest, and found 
himself suffering a toxic condition as the result of their bite. As we 
have yet to encounter any megafauna, | am beginning to suspect 
that the ants are the dominant organism of this world. | have often 
felt a curious rhythm emanating from the earth whenever | approach 
their nests, and | suspect that some subterranean machinery may 
be to account. 


July 11th, 1856: 


Today our expedition reached the base of the giant tree at Victoria's 
pole. It has been less than ten miles from the landing site to the 
tree's base; the jungle, however, has proven so thick that cutting our 
way through the thick vines has proven a full-time occupation for 
many of the men. We have observed yet no larger animals than the 
dragon-flies of this world; as thick as the various and entangled 
vines of the flora are, | doubt that any larger animals could even 
evolve here. 


We have named this great tree the Major Oak, in reference to that 
ancient tree in Sherwood where Robin Hood and his band of 
outlaws held court. It is indeed, as | first considered it from 
telescope, very similar to the rare palms that grow along the tropical 
coast, but unlike those plants it is truly massive; it stands some four 
hundred feet tall, and seven of the men with their arms outstretched 
were barely able to encircle it. 


| have taken several core samples from the Major Oak, and would 
have willingly climbed her myself to acquire a sample of her fronds. 
But | am not the young man that | once was, and it was decided that 
Mr. Edelman, a junior biologist late of Cambridge, would perform 
that obligation. | watched in stunned silence with the men as he 
shimmied up that massive trunk which must have taken millennia to 
become what it is today, and saluted us with a single thumb cast 
skyward as he reached the top of the organism. 


As | sit here writing in my tent at the base of the Major Oak, | find it 
impossible to believe that we have made such incredible 
breakthroughs in so many days. What will they say, | wonder, when 
we return to Earth, and the proof of our exploration is published, 
plain for the world to see, in every periodical from San Francisco to 
Peking? Perhaps | shall finally earn the knighthood that | long have 
coveted; but no temporal honour is greater than the knowledge that 
the progress of science and reason, and of the glory of the British 
Empire, has been advanced by my efforts. 


July 27th, 1856: 


A most terrible calamity has befallen us this day. Half past six in the 


Addendum 901-1: In the light of Incident 901-1, personnel are 
forbidden from damaging or otherwise interfering with SCP-901 in 
any way except under controlled testing conditions. 


Incident 901-1 synopsis: Dr. suggested physically bracing 
SCP-901-1 to prevent it from closing whilst an individual entered the 
structure, allowing observation of said individual's behaviour. This 
was approved and appropriate personnel and apparatus were 
assembled. As Agents and __ began to install the apparatus 
they abruptly halted after three minutes and, judging from their 
dialogue, appeared to notice a large group of armed hostiles 
standing inside SCP-901. Agent protested that they had been 
ordered by the local district [DATA EXPUNGED] to carry out repairs 
on SCP-901, which he referred to as [DATA EXPUNGED]. It should 
be noted that no local [DATA EXPUNGED] had ever existed and it 
had not been deemed necessary to prepare a cover story for the 
operation. 


Agent appeared to argue with the group of hostiles (who 
remained inaudible and invisible to observers) until both agents 
became visibly distressed and subsequently began to disassemble 
the bracing apparatus. Agent was sent to retrieve his 
colleagues with force if necessary but upon approaching SCP-901-1 
dropped his sidearm and raised his hands in the air. Further 
personnel sent to interfere in the situation met with similar effects. 
Once all equipment had been cleared from SCP-901-1 all agents 
experiencing abnormal psychological effects entered SCP-901 and 
SCP-901-1 closed as normal. SCP-901-1 was sealed for a normal 
period of 23 days and none of the subjects re-emerged. 


Addendum 901-2: Dr. Major's communiqué to higher command [O5 
EYES ONLY];