Another place, another time…

SCP-ALPHA-OCULUS-0000_01

Element: Alpha-Oculus
Element Class: Amphisbene
Secrecy Status: Re-evaluation of Status Pending
Priority: TOP_01 LUNAR DUSK
Threat Level: VERMILLION_07 NOAH
Description: Alpha-Oculus, henceforth denominated the object, designates an extraterrestrial body of spheroid shape and gestalt (estimative volume: 543.6 m³) steadily orbiting Earth in a distance of 256,906.45 km (semi-major axis).
[Comprehensive physical data regarding the observable properties of Alpha-Oculus' trajectory is contained in Document_SCP-ALPHA-OCULUS-0000_01-OTEARTHAXIS_23092004_.]
The object is presumed to have manifested via yet unknown and astrophysically unexplained means in its current unaltered orbit, between 9:30:12 am and 10:12:44 am (UTC) on the 4th August 2004.
The actual manifestation/apparition of the object in question was not witnessed.
The permanent and incessant observation of the object is the superior prime directive of the newly established multilateral/multinational UN principal organ UNOSCPAE, henceforth referred to as SCP Foundation.
Direct physical interaction between any human governmental/political entity outside the SCP Foundation and the object in question is to be prevented at all costs.
The entitative theory concordant with all organisational divisions subsumed by the SCP Foundation postulates that the object in question does not constitute a natural phenomenon, and is of artificial and technological nature.
The causative creator of the object in question is unknown, as well as its technical function and mode of operation.

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"We should call it something else."
"Like what?"
"Something… I don't know, something nicer. Alpha-Oculus, that sounds… cold, does it not? Scientific and lifeless."
"Well, everyone else calls it The Eye, don't they?" Olkhov said, scratching his scarred nose and laying the latest, one of far too many, report of the Astronomy Department aside.
"I mean for us, for the Foundation. Alpha-Oculus, the object… I think I'm just stressed from the conference," Alexander confessed, finally sitting down and accepting the glass Professor Gjosha handed him.
"What is this?"
"Rakija," the Professor said, "Albanian Brandy. Savor its flavor, Alexander."
"Disgusting," Olkhov murmured and was interrupted by his own beeper.
"Sounds like your expertise is required yet again, Falk," Gjosha smirked as Olkhov was running out of the office, nearly tripped over his own feet and began screaming through the floors.
Gjosha shook his head and Alexander had a sip of the burning brandy. He wasn't a good drinker, Alexander, unlike the Professor, who could consume alcohol and such stimulants like mere water.
If you had survived the Porajmos, Stalin, Tito and Hoxha, simple distillate couldn't harm you anymore.
"There he goes, Olkhov. I do not envy the physicists, Alexander, sitting all day and night in front of their huge telescopes, keeping their eyes on our little friend up there," Gjosha said, emptying his own glass in a single gulp and refilling it to the brim.
"You spend your own days sitting in this office."
"Yes, but I don't have to be on that damn thing over there," Gjosha replied, talking about the new, very expensive and up-to-date personal computer he had so much trouble with.
How old was Gjosha? He must be far beyond eighty, at this point, even though he did not look younger than sixty. Hell, he even looked younger than my father, Alexander thought, but father had always looked old, he had been born an old, bitter, jealous and vitriolic man.
And without him, I wouldn't be here, Alexander remembered, the Foundation wouldn't even have considered me, if father hadn't needed another useful, manipulable chess-piece in the Biology Department.
Despite that, Alexander was no idiot. He had studied in Lancashire, Heidelberg, and the Pasteur Institute, was an expert in microbiology and lichenology and had discovered several new species of extremophile archaea in the geysers of Iceland. After that, his career had come to an abrupt halt though, just stopped and slackened, until the faithful day a battalion of Foundation agents had abducted and kidnapped him, had brought him to their subterranean security site and had told him all about the eye in the sky.
"And what shall I do here?" he had asked.
"You are an astrobiologist, aren't you? Make up some theories and write them down."
It was tedious, boring and stressful work Alexander had to fulfill for the Foundation. As an appointed astrobiologist he was assumed to be an expert on extraterrestrial life, on alien civilisations and all that nonsense, but where to start?
Create a list, O5 had told them, a framework to conceptualise and understand them.
Develop some tiers and levels, just do something and the taxpayers won't complain.
Countless hours had been wasted arguing and discussing with the other biochemists and evolutionary biologists, about selfish genes, carbon chauvinism, silicon life, the nature of intelligence and Von-Neumann probes, about aliens that were kinda human but not really human, aliens with no resemblance to anything remotely anthropomorphic and aliens that humans couldn't even recognize as sapient or alive anymore.
It was, Alexander had to be honest to himself, a whole lot of garbage, the list made no sense whatsoever and included far too many unknown variables and assumptions nobody could really work with.
There was only one sapient species known to humanity, and with a sample size of n=1, how could you be expected to deliver useful results?
And who knows what kind of intelligence was really behind the eye's creation? Swarms of nanites, sentient prokaryotes, Dyson-sphere-builders, an infinite parade of nescience and silly ideas. The Foundation was blind, they had only the eye, and nothing else.
It had been a disappointment, to learn and realize that nobody had known. No secret cults, no hidden mysterious organization awaiting their coming. The Eye had just appeared one day, gazing down on planet Earth, and nothing else had happened since then.
Well, the Foundation had been formed, and despite their best attempts a whole lot of outsiders had become aware of their alien neighbor in the sky above, which was fairly small, but still big enough to be detected with simple means.
Alexander had spent numerous meetings getting briefed about their newest enemies, "Serpent's Hand" and "Chaos Insurgency" and other idiotic clubs and organizations, founded by panic-fueled maniacs and conspirancy theorists in their misguided attempts to restore a world that was long gone, a world that had known no extraterrestrial signs of life. There were an unseen number of them, too many to remember and comprehend, and each day they became more and more.
At some point the Veil, as O5 called it, must break down inevitably, there was no other way. There were already enough rumors and leaks on the internet, out on the streets and alleyways, even extensive details surrounding the "top-secret" Project ICARUS, the manned space-flight to the eye.
Project ICARUS was something everyone in the Foundation was anxious about, it was to be the first direct physical interaction between a real living human being and an extraterrestrial artifact. More than a hundred adequate candidates were currently undergoing a hellish physical training somewhere in this giant facility, sweating blood and tears in the hope to be the first human in history to reach the eye, touch its magnificient, perfectly round and chatoyant metallish surface, to become a hero of ages.
And to gain some scientific knowledge, of course.
The Foundation didn't know much about the eye as of yet. They knew that it was, indeed, a satellite intended for observation, according to Doctor Gears its enormous lens was strong enough to differentiate between single grains of sands and weeds of grass. They further had discovered that the eye's hull was crafted from a formely unknown alloy of rare metals and exotic isotopes, and one of the astronomers had told Alexander that a single gram of this composition was worth more than all the gold and money in Fort Knox, my friend.
Apart from that - nothing.
Thousands of unanswered questions, may they be of philosophical or physical nature.
How did they do it? What transcendental cosmological force did ETTAI, the extraterrestrial technologically-advanced intelligence, utilized and applied to sent their satellite-eye to Earth, and what are they capable of beside this?
What are their bombs, their tanks, weapons and space-ships capable of, their armies and drones?
A popular theory regarding their means of faster-than-light transportation addressed a cannon-like apparatus, which literally shot objects like Alpha-Oculus through some unseen higher plane of space-time reality. But a machine like this must surely be of gigantic proportions, a humongous, titanic mechanism, dwarfing cities and mountains alike, consuming appalling quantities of energy.
His head started to spin, and he took another sip of the Professor's brandy.
"This just tastes horrible," Alexander proclaimed and Professor Gjosha rolled his eyes.
"Your dear father did take a liking, though."
Alexander frowned, looked at his half-full glass of Albanian brandy, and said: "My father fancies nothing, Shkëlqim, there is not enough in him to feel something like enjoyment or - or regalement."
"Hard words from his only beloved son."
"I am not his only son," Alexander retorted and finally emptied his glass, ignoring the awful, sickening taste of the foreign liquid Gjosha had gifted him with.
Alexander remembered a past conversation he had had with one of Gjosha's assistants.
About the Albanian law of blood and vengance, the Kanun, from which Gjosha had fled to a distant country, abandoning his name and provenance, to escape violence and atrocity. The "distant country" had been Russia, though, and Gjosha had had to bow to the Stalinist tyranny in order to survive, to be able to study and learn in Volgograd, becoming a well-renowned sociologist, a polymath, a genius among his kind.
Until the communists had decided to remove and eliminate him as well, for reasons unbeknown.
Gjosha had wasted half his life escaping death, famine, sickness and human abhorrences, and now he was here, old and still breathing, while his own enemies and persecutors had been reduced to dust, bones and ash, an alien eye was glaring in the heavens and the Arms Department had started the construction of the greatest nuclear weapon humanity would ever set eyes on.

UNOSCPAE Research Group 05 LINNE

Element: UNOSCPAE Division
Element Class: None
Secrecy Status: V-12
Location: Site-0001
Respective Department: Theoretical Astrobiology XS06
Research Assignment: Theoretical Conceptualization of Extraterrestrial Biological Societies.
Group Supervisor: Shkëlqim Gjergj Eqrem Gjosha ID:76485934651
Group Leader: Alexander Carter-Dark ID:76485938910

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»To be Continued«