This metropolis, which | now know to be called the City of Angelic 
Glory, is easily larger than any city in all the world - | imagine the 
entire population of England could dwell within and find themselves 
wanting for neighbours. There is a great bustle everywhere | go in 
the city, and yet, there is a desperation and fear that underlies it all; 
nobody meets anyone's gaze, and every man seems constantly to 
fear and suspect every other. With the bank-notes Mr. O'Kazzem 
had given me, | breakfasted in a bustling cafe where | enjoyed a 
meal barely dissimilar from the full breakfast one can find at any 
reputable establishment in London, and | have found board in a 
grand hotel named the St. George. Imagine my surprise when | was 
told my room would be on the seventy-eighth floor! An electric lift 
that would make Mr. Otis green with envy whisked me to the 
impossible height in seconds, and | found myself staring out a 
window at the gargantuan city. Towers like the one in which | stood 
jutted out in all directions, many of them extending hundreds of feet 
even above my own vantage point. Highways not unlike the one that 
took me to the city cris-crossed the metropolis and formed a ring 
around its perimeter, and | beheld a massive network of smaller 
roads and railways. The hotel concierge has given me directions to 
the civic library - tomorrow | shall seek it out, but for now | must 
close the curtains on this impossible scene and rest, for | find myself 
overwhelmed and weary. 


January 11th, 1876: 


My findings at this city's great library have shed much light into the 
nature of the world | now find myself in. The library itself stood 
twelve levels high - not as tall as many of the other buildings in the 
City of Angelic Glory, but easily taller than any institution of learning 
in London. A librarian guided me to the eighth level where | would 
find books of history and geography, and | spent the day immersed 
in study. Though the books are written in strange letters that do not 
resemble any | have ever seen, | have found somehow that | am 
able to understand them as if it were common English writing. 


A comparison of a world map to the one in my own atlas confirmed 
that | was in the land of California, in about the same area as a town 
that in our world is known as Los Angeles. Many great cities in this 


world stood in the same place as cities in our own, though none 
shared the same name - London was here called the City of 
Winston's Stand, and Edo the City of David's Triumph. | saw no 
national boundaries on the map, though there were many names 
indicating different regions - the United Lands of the Son, Huffasia, 
the Land Bountiful. The only divisions indicated were between the 
"Blessed Lands", colored green, and the "Unfertile Lands", colored 
red. There were Unfertile Lands spread across the globe, though | 
found the distribution most uneven - in North America | saw but 
seven, and in Europe four, while Africa had dozens, and almost the 
entirety of China was covered by them. 


| found that the Bible exists in this world, but it is a Bible very unlike 
our own. It is about a thousand pages longer and is divided into 
three sections, named the First, Second, and Third Testaments. The 
First and Second Testaments are similar to the Old and New 
Testaments of our Bible, but have been extensively rewritten - all 
references to "God", "the LORD", or "the Father" have been 
replaced with a simple reference to "Him", and there is a greater 
emphasis on sin, uncleanliness, and purification than | recall ever 
learning in school. 


The Third Testament appears to have been written in the 
seventeenth century; and as | had not the time or inclination to read 
it in full, | referred to a history book about what is referred to in this 
world as the Second Coming. Prior to the year 1621 or so, | found, 
the history of this world had been much like our own aside from 
certain linguistic and cultural details, and an indication that the wide- 
spread colonization of the Americas had begun several hundred 
years earlier. In that year, the being called Him made itself known to 
the people of the world, and nations worldwide proclaimed it to be 
their God. He provided them with great advances in technology and 
medicine, which were the impetus of the advanced civilization | now 
beheld; but war broke out across the world over the question of 
which nations were most worthy of His love. When He beheld the 
devastation that His children had wrought, He wept - and where His 
tears fell, those who tasted of them were purified of sin and lost their 
inclination to fight. But those who refused to cease in strife, those 
who were consumed by sin and evil, their wickedness was 
magnified in His absence and took form until it became the Unclean, 


the giant abominations that to this day lurk in the Unfertile Lands. All 
life that the Unclean encounter is destroyed utterly - men and 
women, animals, even plants, are all consumed by the creatures 
and vanish into thin air, leaving behind only the ichor of sin it 
discharges when it feeds. Agents of the church known as the 
Blessed Militia guard these lands, and do constant battle to keep the 
Unclean imprisoned within. 


In time, the United Lands of the Son brought together the nations of 
the world under the rule of a theocracy, governed by a man called 
the Most Holy Father. There were ten ranks of the clergy, from the 
Most Holy Father himself to the Blessed Fathers at the bottom, 
whose hierarchy comprised not only the church, but the courts, the 
legislature, and the executive powers of government. The judicial 
system was not unlike English law, though it incorporated elements 
similar to the canon law of the Roman church, and the clergy were 
exempt from its direct judgment, for only the Most Holy himself could 
pass judgment on them. The death penalty was unknown - those 
who had committed great crimes were bathed in a compound called 
the Tears, supposedly refined from His own weepings, and if they 
survived the trial the urge to sin was cleansed from their mind. 


As luck would have it, one of the few Unfertile Lands in this country 
is located in the deserts a hundred miles east of this city. On the 
maps | spotted a railway line that draws dangerously close to this 
border. Interestingly enough | noticed that almost every city had a 
rail line leading directly into the Unfertile Lands as well; but those 
were marked as for militia use only and | deemed them inaccessible. 
Tomorrow | shall travel on the train that passes this border and find 
a way to depart as close to the edge as possible, and determine 
whether | can smuggle myself into this forbidden land. | know not 
how much of the history | have read is true and how much is 
hagiography concocted by the church, but soon | shall find out. 


January 14th, 1876: 


| am lucky to have escaped the events of the past few days with my 
life, but even now | may be doomed. 


My entry into the Unfertile Lands was uneventful. | was able to 
excuse myself stealthily from the train during a brief stop, and hiked 


but a few miles under the desert sun to the edge. The perimeter in 
this region was guarded only by a fence with prominent signage; 


WARNING 
UNFERTILE LANDS - UNCLEAN WITHIN 
BLESSED MILITIA ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT 


By order of the Regional High Father, City of St. Francis’ 
Triumph 


The Blessed Militia, | assumed, must have some means of tracking 
the Unclean and preventing them from crossing the borders of this 
country. I, on the other hand, would have to rely on luck and 
Providence. 


| could smell the Unclean for hours before | spotted it. Nothing grows 
in this land and there is no running water, nor so much as a buzzard 
in the sky, but the air hangs heavy with the undeniable stench of 
death, worse than the foulest Scottish abattoir or the banks of the 
putrid Ganges. | could have been sick, but | steeled myself and 
pressed onward in the direction from which the stench seemed to be 
its strongest. | assembled and readied the destabilizing musket | had 
carried in my pack, a special model Mr. Moth had prepared 
especially for this expedition, and bringing to bear considerably 
more potential for atomic disassembly than the standard models. 


| spotted it after climbing a ridge and almost turned around and 
retreated right away. | had expected a creature the size of a man or 
not much larger. The abomination | beheld was easily five hundred 
feet long and dozens of feet tall. It was almost the shape of a man, 
but it had no legs; two arms that seemed to grow and shrink as they 
moved dragged a massive trunk across the desert sands, while a 
head with no face seemed to lull and stare at nothing in particular. 
Its skin, the tone of a white man's, was smooth and hairless across 
its entire body, and it made no sound as it seemed to crawl about 
aimlessly, a brown ichor seeming to ooze from it before quickly 
evaporating. It was no wonder the people of this world thought these 
things to be devils made flesh. Even with my heavy destabilizer at 
the ready, | was obviously ill-equipped to hunt a creature of this size. 


| observed for several hours as it seemed to crawl aimlessly in the 
same general area, with no particular direction or agenda, taking 
notes and making sketches. It was late in the afternoon when | 
determined | would have to turn around - a train bound in the 
opposite direction would pass by shortly after night-fall, and | 
intended to board it and return to the city. But luck was not with me - 
as | stood from my hiding spot upon the ridge, the Unclean's head 
turned in my direction and it stopped its incessant crawling about. 
Though it had no eyes or ears, it somehow knew | was there; and 
though it had no mouth, the abomination let out a blood-curdling 
moan that echoed for miles. One of the creature's giant arms 
stretched out in my direction and it began to drag itself my way. | 
had no choice but to stand and fight. | raised my musket at the 
creature's featureless visage, took careful aim, and fired. 


The Unclean was wholly unaffected as the bolt from my musket 
passed harmlessly through it and dissipated in the atmosphere. In 
seconds it was before me and | was sure | was about to die. The 
creature loomed above me, resting itself on its giant hands, as the 
face bore down upon me. Before it could presumably devour me 
whole, | heard a massive report, and a giant shell struck the Unclean 
in the face and exploded. | was showered with foul-smelling brown 
ichor as the beast's face was torn open, and though the wound 
seemed to seal itself quickly, more and more shells struck it in the 
face, the trunk, the arms. It stumbled and | ran to avoid it falling on 
me, as men in dark-colored uniforms, decorated with symbols like 
those | had found on the disc in London, pounded it with artillery. It 
lurched at them, and one of the soldiers was devoured whole by the 
creature, its clothes and weapons falling to the ground as the man 
vanished. Soon it could take no more as the barrage continued, and 
it turned around and fled back into the desert. 


| retreated in the direction from which | had come to find a convoy of 
armored motor-carriages armed with heavy cannons. | attempted to 
run, but in seconds the soldiers surrounded me and apprehended 
me in the name of the Blessed Militia. | was told | was lucky to be 
alive after attempting such a foolish pursuit and that | would be put 
to the question by the Court of Blessed Voices. My situation was 
compounded when one of the soldiers searched my pack and found 
one of my good-luck charms - a small gold cross that had been 


given to me by the Patriarch of Alexandria during my exploits there 
in 1855. The soldiers immediately declared me a heretic, and some 
were of the opinion | should be shot then and there, or taken back 
for the Unclean to devour. In either event, | was bound with steel 
cuffs and escorted to a prison cell where | now await trial. They do 
not know | still have this journal, though if | am convicted of heresy 
and put to the Tears it may not long matter. 


January 16th, 1876: 


| was brought before the Court of Blessed Voices yesterday. The 
scene | found myself in looked like a scene out of the Spanish 
Inquisition; three men in arcane robes beheld me from atop the 
judge's bench, while | stood in the dock guarded by the Blessed 
Militia. The senior judge advised me | had been accused of heresy 
and trespassing in the Unfertile Lands and that | faced the Tears, 
and demanded my plea. No lawyer had been provided of me, and | 
expected nothing resembling a fair trial if | contested the charges; 
yet if | plead guilty | would surely be put to the Tears and my mind 
torn apart by that mysterious concoction. Recalling that the laws of 
this land were similar to those of medieval England, and that no 
member of the priesthood might be tried by them, | took a gamble 
and insisted that | was a man of the cloth, and thereby was entitled 
to benefit of clergy - the ancient right of a holy man to avoid 
prosecution by proving his ability to read from the Bible. 


The judges were most skeptical of this proposition; even in this 
nation, the benefit of clergy was an outdated rite, for many more 
people could read in these days than simply the priesthood. A 
reference to their legal texts, however, found that the rite had never 
been disestablished. | was told | could attempt to exercise that 
benefit if | wished, but that it would then be up to the Most Holy 
Father himself to judge my fate, and he would be less forgiving than 
this court. | hoped for nothing less than to play for time, and | 
agreed. 


It was decided that | would be expected to read three verses. One of 
the strange Bibles of this world was placed before me and opened to 
the Third Testament, and | was asked to read a passage called 
Edward 7:22. As before, the strange lettering of this world's 
language made itself clear to me, and | read; 


When an individual enters SCP-901, SCP-901-1 will close and be 
unable to be opened from the outside by currently tested means for 
a period of time ranging from thirty minutes to several months. 
Approximately 60% of those who enter SCP-901 will not emerge 
and are considered for the purposes of Foundation status and 
record-keeping to be neutralised. In these cases SCP-901-1 will 
simply be able to be opened once more without any visible changes; 
regular testing of SCP-901-1 is therefore necessary to determine 
when its time of ‘locking’ has passed. When SCP-901-1 is sealed 
electronic recording or transmission devices within SCP-901 
malfunction. 


The remainder of the individuals who enter SCP-901 eventually exit 
the structure, again through SCP-901-1, and the main effects of 
SCP-901 have been determined through verbal reports from these 
subjects. When a subject enters SCP-901, it takes on the 
appearance of a fully staffed institution rather than an empty 
building. The nature of the institution varies between subjects but is 
usually a security or law enforcement facility with the features of a 
parent authority of particular anathema to the subject, although 
subjects are unable or unwilling to describe definite identifying 
marks. 


Notable resemblances include the SS Geheime Staatspolizei, the 
Soviet Committee for State Security, the police force of the subject's 
home nation or [DATA EXPUNGED]. In one notable case, D-1955 
(formerly Foundation researcher Dr. _ , who had been demoted to 
D-class due to breaches of protocol involving assignment to 
SCP-231) entered SCP-901 and [DATA REDACTED BY ORDER 
OF O5- ]. The internal architecture of SCP-901 seems to be 
unchanged. It is unknown whether the effects of SCP-901 manifest 
in reality or are the product of hallucinations caused by 
psychological effects of the SCP.