DrSharks

1: Define an Anomaly

SCP Foundation Incident Report
Incident ID: 094-12
Priority Level: Low
Incident Date and Time: 08/14/2024, about 11 AM to 2 PM Argentina Standard Time
Location of Incident: Provisional Research Site ███-█
Name of Reporting Personnel: Agent Desmond LaRouche
Reporting Personnel SCPFID: ███-████-████
Incident Type: Attempted perimeter breach
GOI: N/A
Casualties: N/A
Additional Relevant Material Included with this Report: Interview Log 094-22, Video Log 094-22-A through C, Photo Evidence 094-22-D through M, Kant Counter output file 008A3714JM108.kcl, Hard Drive Image File 094_12_Ira_Paige_Laptop_Image.hdi, Copy of passport and California State ID for Ira Paige
Description of Incident: Perimeter alarms registered 1 approaching vehicle on unmarked road to PRS ███-█ at ~11 AM. Consulted on-site personnel, including Argentinian forces, verified nobody was expected. Perimeter surveillance tracked 1 civilian vehicle, single visible occupant. Vehicle stopped in road when it reached visual range of the site, ~0.5 km out, and turned around. Continued to monitor the vehicle until it returned to public motorways. Personnel assumed this was a lost civilian, and no further action was taken.
~3 hours later, perimeter alarms registered 1 approaching vehicle again. Verified same vehicle and likely same occupant via camera footage. On second approach, vehicle did not stop until it reached the perimeter gate, where the subject demanded of guard personnel to speak with "whoever is in charge here." Request was denied and subject was detained. Subject female, 25 years old, identified as Ira Paige, PhD student at California Technical Institute.
Inside the cabin of the vehicle, subject had a laptop, running what appeared to be a tracking program, attached via wires to several unidentified devices made of plastic and metal. The devices were affixed via zip ties at even intervals to a piece of PVC piping. A large number of similar devices were discovered in the vehicle's trunk. This equipment was confiscated and moved temporarily to Sector E pending screening and investigation.
During interrogation, the subject claimed this equipment was designed to locate unusual gravitational phenomena. Subject was able to accurately describe several properties of SCP-███, the containment of which is the purpose of this site, despite not observing it in person. Subject claimed to have obtained this information, as well as the location of the anomaly, from readings made by the confiscated equipment. The subject denied that the equipment was anomalous. Further investigation into this equipment is ongoing.
Interviewer attempted to administer class C veritants to identify discrepancies in the provided information. Subject was injected with ███ µl █████████████████, but reacted poorly, characterized by loss of motor control, severely slurred speech, cognitive impairment, and nausea. Reaction was deemed a rare side-effect of █████████████████. Interviewer was unable to ascertain any new information from subject in this state. Subject currently in stable condition in Containment Unit ███-██-█. Awaiting results of background check and verification of identity.

Agent Desmond LaRouche's current assignment for the Foundation had been a pretty simple one, all things considered. He'd kick his feet back in Argentina, watch the perimeter cameras, take the occasional shift at the gate, and keep an eye on the hole in the world. If any non-personnel showed up, he'd figure out what they knew and pump them full of amnestics or lead depending on the circumstances. Hypothetically. The procedure for what to do if someone actually tried to get into the site had all been theoretical until yesterday afternoon.

Dr. Menendez swiveled his office chair around as LaRouche entered the monitoring room. The agent met his eye, nodded a greeting, and looked up to the monitors. "Any verdict?"

Menendez chuckled nervously and shrugged. "Command just weighed in, yeah. Identity checks out, credentials check out. There's a few gaps in her record from her childhood, nothing major." The doctor held a clipboard up to the dim light form the monitor and began rattling off a summary. "Ira Paige, twenty-five, born September 9th, 1999 in Crystal Springs, Nevada. Only child of mother Susan Paige, passed in 2009. No father listed on her birth certificate. Diagnosed with CHARGE Syndrome in 2001. Moved to California in 2004. Mother was apparently pretty loaded, and gave everything to her daughter. We're still trying to pull tax records on that. Trying to find a record of where she was staying from ten to fourteen years old, too. Those are the gaps I mentioned, but given her age at the time, it doesn't seem to be a high-priority issue. She's been in academia since fourteen, currently working on two PhDs in Theoretical Physics and Nuclear Chemistry at CalTech. Switches focus a lot. Couple traffic violations, busted with alcohol at sixteen, swept under the rug, no other criminal record. Couple jobs as a waitress, then a video production company; apparently she worked on those cheap ads that play late at night. After that it's research, teaching, and labs ad infinitum. Single, lives in California. No known or suspected ties to any GOIs." The clipboard returned to the desk. "Kant counter came out nominal on her and her kit. Coghaz screening came back negative on the software, too. Everything seems on the level."

"What about all the implants?" LaRouche asked.

Menendez nodded. "Yeah. I know you were thinking there might be a Broken God connection with all the metal in her, but I pulled her hospital records, and the CHARGE Syndrome accounts for all of it. Rare genetic disorder. Spine brace, cochlear implants, optic implants, cardiac implants, all consistent with treatment for CHARGE. Then we've got multiple instances of heart surgery, surgery to open up the nasal passages, some cosmetic surgery to fix skull deformities, surgery for the eye. Looked up some pictures, apparently the pupil touches the edge of the iris on one side. You can fix the way it looks with surgery, but you'll still have vision problems. She upgraded to the implants just two years ago. A lot of kids who have CHARGE also get learning disabilities, but it looks like she dodged that bullet."

LaRouche kept his eyes locked the monitor. A woman in a small cell, sitting on a bed, staring at a book. "What's she reading?"

"Uh, let's see," Menendez flipped through the pages on the clipboard. "Here we go. 08/15/2024, 10:30 AM, subject requested reading material. Shown the available books, selected 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle', Haruki Murakami, English version."

"She hasn't turned the page since I came in," the agent stated, simply.

Doctor Menendez swiveled his chair and stared up at the feed. A few seconds after doing so, the woman let the open book fall against her chest and leaned her head back against the wall. Her eyes closed. Another second passed. She set the book aside and rolled over on the bed.

Menendez looked back up at LaRouche and shrugged. "Guess she's got a lot on her mind. She was dry-heaving over the toilet just an hour ago anyway."

"Hm," LaRouche grunted, his gaze unmoving. "You said screening on her equipment came up clean. You verify it does what she says it does?"

Menendez nodded. "Oh yeah. I mean, the laptop has the source code for the interface, including a bunch of commented-out functions. I know everyone here calls me the math guy, but I'll admit some of the exact workings there go over my head. Still, I got enough of a gist of it. It's pretty brilliant, really. Just make a big array of very precise accelerometers, build a map of all local gravitational influences, filter out anything whose gravitational falloff curve matches an inverse quadratic, and whatever's left has a higher or lower number of spatial dimensions-"

"She rambled the same math lesson at me during the interrogation yesterday. So it works? It locates anomalies, no humes required?"

"Well, sort of. It locates things that have mass and aren't 3D. And even in those cases, some types of cross-dimensional intersections make their mass express itself in a way that conforms to our physics, and this only catches the ones that don't. Overall, that's a small subset of anomalies, but…" Menendez trailed off and shrugged, "It happens to work on our skip, yeah. I confirmed what she said about its mass, too; gotta submit a correction to the file. And, just like she said, it will eventually destroy the universe. Eventually. But we already knew that."

"So her hardware's not anomalous, her software's not anomalous, nothing about her method is anomalous, and anyone using her rig can find this site with it?" LaRouche asked, tension rising in his voice. He didn't understand why Menendez wasn't seeing the problem here.

"Seems that way," Menendez replied. "Not just our site, either. This isn't the only skip that matches what her program looks for. You ready for the kicker?"

There was a kicker? LaRouche took a deep breath and steeled himself. "Hit me."

Again with the nervous chuckle. Menendez took his phone out of his pocket and started fiddling with it as he explained. "So after the anomaly screening came up negative on her rig, I set the whole thing up in E hall. I told you she had some stuff commented out, yeah? Well she'd basically hacked it apart, bypassed the meat and potatoes of what the program could do. She optimized it to be a divining rod for one-dimensional objects, probably because she was trying to find this site and didn't want to set up the whole ten-meter-cube array every time she needed a heading." Evidently finding what he was looking for, the doctor looked up from the phone and held it to his chest, screen facing away from LaRouche. "So I un-hacked it. It's less a compass and more a visualizer. It can find one and two dimensional stuff from a long way off, but things with more than three dimensions need to be inside the array. So, check out what the 4D visualizer picked up."

Menendez flipped the phone around and held the screen up to LaRouche. The agent took his eyes off the monitor on the wall and squinted at the bright rectangle, a phone screen displaying a photo of a laptop screen.

"Are those…spiders?"

"Oh yeah. Giant four-dimensional spiders. Don't worry, command says they're not the ones that eat cerebrospinal fluid."

"Oh, good. I was about to worry!" LaRouche exclaimed, incredulously. "So if you saw these with her equipment…"

"Yeah, she probably saw them too. And didn't mention them when you were interrogating her. Meaning-"

The agent cut him off. "Meaning either she's got the good sense not to spring knowledge of extradimensional arachnids on people who might not know about them, or else she's already so familiar with anomalies that she didn't think they were worth mentioning. You said she's got no ties to any GOIs?" Menendez shook his head in the negative. "So, fine. Probably low-risk. What was command's verdict? Give her amnestics, suppress her research, keep her under watch?"

Menendez smirked. "Nah, bud. They don't want to give her amnestics, they want to give her a job application."

Interviewed: Ira Paige
Interviewer: Dr. Chetna Kapoor (Level 4, Department of External Affairs)
Foreword: Preliminary employment compatibility assessment. Due to the circumstances of Ms. Paige's introduction to the Foundation, interview was conducted at Provisional Research Site-███-█, where she was detained under investigation.
<Begin Log, 8/17/2024, 10:30 GMT-3>
Kapoor: Ms. Paige, thank you for agreeing to speak with us today.
(Ms. Paige Laughs nervously.)
Paige: Sure, it was real tough fitting you in my schedule.
Kapoor: My name is Dr. Kapoor. I'd like to talk with you about your experiences over the last few days.
Paige: Mhmm. Are we to the part where someone helps me make sense of this, or the part where I start digging a hole? Let me reiterate my thesis statement here: we're all sitting under a noneuclidean nightmare apocalypse ball-
Kapoor: Ms. Paige-
Paige: -It will eat the Earth, followed by the sun, followed by the galaxy, followed by the universe. It is my proposal that this would be a bad thing, and it needs to stop. Do you have a counter-proposal?
Kapoor: No one is saying this is not a problem.
Paige: Great. So, proposal addendum one: If there's a switch you flip to turn it off, you do that now, and I never speak about this to anyone. If there's not a switch, you give me back my equipment, let me out of this cell, and I help you build one. Counter-proposals?
Kapoor: Ms. Paige, I understand that this has been a trying time for you. It is natural for someone in your situation to react with hostility, but you are missing some key context. I would like to help provide that context.
(Ms. Paige audibly takes a breath and nods in the affirmative.)
Paige: Please do.
Kapoor: Thank you. Ms. Paige, I represent an organization known as the SCP Foundation. To put it simply, the job of our organization is to identify anomalous threats to humanity, contain them, study them, and protect humankind at large from the danger they pose to life and normalcy. The anomaly contained at this site is one of those threats. It is not the greatest threat of which we are aware, but I assure you we do not dismiss its inherent danger. I want to make it clear, we are not generally in the business of destroying anomalies. We have come to find that doing so often causes more problems than it fixes. We secure them, we contain them, we protect the world from them, and we protect them from the world. That being said, there are a select few anomalies deemed dangerous enough to warrant destruction. This is one such anomaly. Thus far, our attempts at destroying it have been unsuccessful. Do you understand everything I have said so far?
Paige: Yeah. Yes. Okay, no. Yes in the sense that I think I've parsed the words correctly, no in the sense that I have more questions now than when you started talking. But, yeah, they can wait if you're not done.
Kapoor: Very well. It is uncommon for a civilian scientist to uncover one of our anomalies without having any prior experience with anomalous phenomenon. I say "uncommon" here deliberately; we still have procedures in place for these occurrences. This is, as you implied earlier, the part where we decide how to deal with you moving forward. There are two paths to take here. One, you agree to work with our organization. We ask you some questions about your work, your past, what you can do for us, what we can do for you. If things work out, you begin your employment as a Junior Researcher. All public record of your existence will be removed, all ties with your friends and colleagues will disappear, and you will become part of the Foundation guiding humanity to a safer future. If things do not work out, or if you disagree, we will make you forget all information that poses a threat to the secrecy of our anomalies and our organization, and we will return you to the regular world with a cover story explaining your absence. It is the purpose of this meeting to determine which path we follow. So, this would be the time to ask those questions you mentioned earlier.
(Ms. Paige is silent for several seconds.)
Kapoor: Ms. Paige?
Paige: Right, okay. So, off the bat, let me say, yes, obviously, I agree to work with you. Let's just go ahead and close that first gate to the path of forced amnesia. I still have questions, though, and I guess the first one would be, "How do you define anomaly?"
Kapoor: Good question. Anything that threatens to overturn the public perception of normalcy. Some things are threats because the public is not ready to know them yet, some are threats because they are actively inimical to continued human existence. At the end of the day, that is the long and short of it.
Paige: So, does the thing here qualify because the idea of a one-dimensional oblivion sphere would scare the public, or because the eventual consumption of the Earth would be abnormal?
Kapoor: Both, I would assume.
Paige: No, I mean like…uh, say you find an alien or something. It's not killing people, it doesn't fart antimatter or whatever. It just shows up to say hi. Is that a threat to normalcy?
Kapoor: I suppose, in light of the fact that this interview ends either with your employment with the Foundation or administration of amnestics, I will consider you to have provisional level one clearance. Yes, we have several extraterrestrial entities contained. Knowledge of many of them is cleared even to level one researchers.
Paige: Oh! So the aliens can be researchers if they agree to keep out of sight?
Kapoor: Ah, no, sorry if I was unclear. I did not mean that the extraterrestrials are researchers, themselves. Anomalies are not permitted employment with the organization in charge of containing them. I meant that personnel, even those with the lowest clearance level in our organization, are clear to know about and work with several anomalies whose only anomalous property is their extraterrestrial origin.
Paige: I see. But that anomalous property alone doesn't put something in the "destroy this" category, just the "keep this contained" category?
Kapoor: Extraterrestrial origin alone would not be sufficient grounds for destruction, no.
Paige: But what do you mean when you say you keep them contained? If an alien says, "I'd rather not be kept in a box forever, and I don't want to cause any problems here, I'll keep myself secret," would you still lock them up?
Kapoor: Hm. That would depend on the circumstances, and I think much of the answer to that question may go above your clearance. You seem very interested in extraterrestrial anomalies, Ms. Paige, does that subject appeal to you more than anomalous physics?
Paige: Oh, well, maybe? I guess I'm going down a rabbit hole here, sorry. I mean, I just learned we're not alone in the universe, right? That's interesting to anybody. So, um, I guess back to my original question, can you give me a sort of…I don't know, a cross-section of the types of things that the Foundation considers anomalous? I mean, do you have a list or something I could look at?
Kapoor: That is definitely above your clearance level, and mine as well.
Paige: Okay. Hm. I guess, could you name something you contain that isn't an alien, besides the reality hole here, that I'd know about with level one clearance?
Kapoor: I understand, you're just looking for other examples. I see you previously worked for a video production company. We have an object that changes video in its proximity to include new characters. Always men with an insignia of three crescent moon shapes. They show up in the movie and fight whoever they decide the villains are.
Paige: What? They show up in the movie itself?
Kapoor: Yes, only on video.
Paige: So they're composited in on top? Overlaid on the actual movie?
Kapoor: No, no. They make new footage. The actors react to them, and they change the story. Usually, the video gets shorter. Sometimes it gets longer.
Paige: Are we talking movies on data cards? Discs? Film reels?
Kapoor: I believe all of those are affected, yes.
Paige: Let me see if I have this straight. You have an object. You put that object next to a video. You watch that video. Then the video has changed to include new footage with new characters. And the actors in the video actually react to them? Like, they're not reusing clips from elsewhere, or making deepfakes of the actors. You see characters from different angles? And the story changes?
Kapoor: More or less, yes.
Paige: How?
Kapoor: Research is ongoing.
Paige: If it's a physical medium, like a film reel, does it change the actual frames? Removes some, adds new ones in?
Kapoor: Yes, that's correct.
Paige: But that's an actual material object. Where does it come from? I mean, you have a time when it's verifiably unchanged, and then a time when it's verifiably changed. What happens between those two states?
Kapoor: If I remember the file correctly, the change is instantaneous.
Paige: What? You're fucking with me right now. That's not even remotely on the same level as this.
Kapoor: I assure you, Ms. Paige, I am not messing with you. That particular anomaly is one we give the "safe" classification. It poses no threat to anyone, inexplicable though it may be, and is in no danger of breaching containment as long as we keep it locked up. I assure you, that is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Paige: But that's magic, Dr. Kapoor. This one-dimensional black hole breaks what I know of physics, but I look at it and think "I need to know more about physics". But, what? Magical auto-generating self-insert video fanfiction? What is that? What do you do with that? I hear about that and think, "Well, there goes reality, now I live in crazy land." That throws reality out the window.
Kapoor: I understand exactly what you mean, Ms. Paige, I assure you. It is not as if our organization is staffed by people who are unfamiliar with basic scientific principles. It is an anomaly. That is why we contain it. We contain many things that defy explanation.
Paige: How many things? How many anomalies does the Foundation contain?
Kapoor: I am afraid that information is also above your clearance level.
Paige: Can you give me a ballpark? Like, is it closer to five, fifty, or five hundred?
Kapoor: Considerably more than five hundred.
(Ms. Paige is silent for several seconds.)
Paige: Do you have any idea how common these things are elsewhere in the universe?
Kapoor: You mean, besides on Earth?
Paige: I-well, yeah. Sorry, I'm bringing the alien subject back. I said when I showed up here, the, um, anomaly you have contained here is as easy for me to detect from Pasadena as it would have been on Jupiter, if someone on Jupiter had any reason to look for one-dimensional gravity wells. Jupiter's an understatement, even. Every second this thing exists is another light-second of distance that its gravitational footprint is visible from here. And this is one of, what, thousands? Tens of thousands? What do the aliens you have in containment think about the number of anomalies here on Earth? Is that normal?
Kapoor: I'm not aware of any extraterrestrial opinions on the subject. I would assume most extraterrestrials are unaware of the scope of our organization. Where are you going with this line of questioning?
Paige: I don't think that-I mean, if you were-I…
(Ms. Paige pauses and audibly takes a breath.)
Paige: I don't know where I was going, Dr. Kapoor, this is all just very overwhelming. I'm sorry for going off-track again. I think the only way for me to come to terms with all of it is to dive in. So yes, any other questions can wait. You suggested this was something like a job interview?
Kapoor: Something like that, yes.
Paige: Well then. Let me back up. Here I am, no CV, vomit-soaked prison jumpsuit, needle marks on my arms, in bad need of some feminine hygiene products. So, all in all, only my second-worst appearance for an interview. Hope you'll look past that, it's a pleasure to meet you, and I'm very excited about this opportunity.
(Dr. Kapoor laughs.)
Kapoor: Only the second-worst? You'll have to tell me about the worst, now.
Paige: I'm sorry, Dr. Kapoor, I exclusively tell that story to coworkers, and only after drinks at office Christmas parties. Strictly-enforced personal code; I'm sure you understand. I'm afraid you'll just have to hire me if you want to know more.
Kapoor: We will see, Ms. Paige. I am intrigued, but I hope you have more to offer than that.
Paige: Call me Ira. Would you like to hear about my research?
[The remainder of this document is restricted to those with full access to Dr. Ira Paige's personnel file, in accordance with Foundation Human Resource Protocol NE-ST-157.1.]

"I think we found something. Dr. Julio Menendez. 42 years old, born in the U.S., parents were Argentinian. Brief stint with the DoD, retired early, fell off the face of the Earth in 2012."

"Sounds promising. Nothing after that?"

"No. Looked up the car he got in when he left last night. Company car, 'Software de Computadora Profesional'. No website, no address, just a business license."

"The acronym thing almost seems too obvious at this point. I assume we're compiling a list of other businesses with those initials?"

"We are. Oh, heads up, he just mentioned that you haven't turned a page in a few minutes."

Ira Paige let the open book fall against her chest and leaned her head back against the wall. Her eyes closed. Another second passed. She set the book aside and rolled over on the bed.

2: Not Like Us

Interviewed: SCP-████-1A
Interviewer: Dr. Allison Steinbrecht (Level 3 Researcher, Extraterrestrial Anomalies)
Foreword: Dr. Steinbrecht requested this interview personally after SCP-████ was given SCP classification. Given that SCP-████ falls within Dr. Steinbrecht's area of expertise, her request was granted.
Addendum: Since the time that this log was written, the documentation for SCP-████ has been amended as new information has been discovered. The log has been edited to reflect the change in the subject's designation from SCP-████ to SCP-████-1A. However, quotes transcribed in this document have not been edited, in order to preserve the original dialogue. References in the dialogue naming the subject SCP-████ rather than SCP-████-1A are not to be considered a nomenclature breach, as these references were correct at the time the interview took place.
Automated Addendum RAISA-BYDE339-7-10937: This log contains one or more references to an SCP object that has since been classified as neutralized. Per RAISA Guideline BY-DE-339.7, this log is to remain in the system for reference purposes until such time as the SCP designation in question is recycled to another object. After such time, all references to the object's designation are to be redacted in order to prevent erroneous crosslinks with the new object using this designation.
<Begin Log, 9/09/2027, 14:12 GMT>
SCP-████-1A: Hey, Allie. You get a turn, too, huh?
Steinbrecht: Hello, SCP-████. You may refer to me as Doctor Steinbrecht.
SCP-████-1A: Whoof. It just got chilly in here. Very well, Doctor Steinbrecht. What happened with the lady who wanted to buy your car? She ghost you after all?
Steinbrecht: SCP-████, I'd like to ask you a few questions. Please don't make this more difficult than it needs to be.
(SCP-████-1A sighs audibly)
SCP-████-1A: Very well, Doctor Steinbrecht. What can I do for you, Doctor Steinbrecht?
Steinbrecht: What is your purpose on this planet?
SCP-████-1A: Well, Doctor Steinbrecht, I guess my purpose used to be to contain anomalies, meet interesting people, forge meaning out of darkness, guide humanity to a safer future, yadda yadda. Now, I guess my purpose is to sit in a cell and answer questions until I die. What's your purpose on this planet, Doctor Steinbrecht?
Steinbrecht: Why the interest in guiding humanity? What does humanity mean to you?
SCP-████-1A: I apologize for the lack of clarity, Doctor Steinbrecht. I was quoting the pitch I got to join the Foundation in the first place. "Become part of the Foundation guiding humanity to a safer future." It's not like that stopped mattering when you started calling me SCP-████, Doctor Steinbrecht. I assume humanity means about the same thing to me as it does to you, Doctor Steinbrecht.
Steinbrecht: Stop that, SCP-████. You don't have to say "Doctor Steinbrecht" in every sentence.
SCP-████-1A: Alright, Allie.
(Several seconds pass in silence.)
Steinbrecht: If you're not going to be cooperative, I can call the guards in.
SCP-████-1A: Okay, look. It bugs you. I see that. It bugs me to be called SCP-████, but hey, this isn't about me. I mean, it is, but you've got a lot of forms to fill out and work to do containing me and I'm not making it any easier. Sorry. Business is more important. I get it. I was hoping to find some nugget of humanity in my friend Doctor Allie Steinbrecht here, but if the only way to crack through the armor is to annoy you, it's not worth it. Let's just get this over with.
Steinbrecht: A nugget of humanity? You're not human, ████. And you don't get to lie about that for three years and still call me a friend. That's not how this works.
SCP-████-1A: Okay.
Steinbrecht: Okay? That's it?
SCP-████-1A: Okay. Like I said, I'm sorry. Like I said after that, let's get this over with.
Steinbrecht: Fine. I'd like it if you could drop the pretense here. I've dealt with extraterrestrial anomalies before. You've been putting all of your answers in human terms, censoring it for human ears. We're past that, now. I refuse to believe that the thought process of a being from another planet is so compatible with the human mindset. That's not how it has worked with any extraterrestrial entity that I've seen before.
SCP-████-1A: It shouldn't be so surprising. I've got more experience being human than you do at this point. But, yes, I get it. You're looking for the "otherness" in me. You find enough of it, this gets easier for you. It's not like the "otherness" isn't there, I just feel like looking for it is missing the point. It's not about me, though. You want me to start by explaining the species that started the process of becoming what I am now? My ancestors, I guess?
Steinbrecht: That may be helpful, yes. Go ahead.
SCP-████-1A: Okay. So, physically, imagine you superglued a lionfish, a cuttlefish, and a hockey puck to a spider crab. Whatever you're picturing is probably pretty close. Our planet was swampy, low gravity, thick atmosphere, lots of clouds. Sort of a squishier, less-terrible Venus. The part I think would interest you most is our brains. Humans hide their thoughts in a gooey organ under a layer of bone and encrypt it with a bunch of hard-to-parse biological, electrical, and chemical interactions. Long ago, my ancestors were not like that. Their thoughts and memories were physical objects. They kept them inside a little flap in their heads with the full expectation that anyone would come along and poke them at any time. I assume you know about the bacteria in the human digestive system?
Steinbrecht: I am familiar with them, but tell me how they're relevant.
SCP-████-1A: The human body needs nutrients to live. It can't get them without the help of these inhuman bacteria. The bacteria can't live without the human, either. The entire human digestive system is an expression of that symbiotic relationship. Well, my ancestors had a similar relationship, but with their minds instead of their guts. Mechanically speaking, there were three layers. The first was a semi-permeable hard layer, like a fingernail. Below, a complex pattern of tiny pores that oozed enzymes, different types from different places. Above, a layer of bacteria that fed on the enzyme-soaked shell, with different bacteria preferring different food. Chemical reactions in the creatures' bodies released different enzymes in different patterns, which would be their analogue for a single "thought". The enzymes permeated the hard shell. The bacteria ate away the enzyme-soaked shell, leaving what you might call a "memory". The grooves the bacteria carved changed the flow of enzymes, in a process you might call "learning". Over time, the shell regrew. The persistent memories were re-carved, the extraneous thoughts were eventually leveled out and were lost. There's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. Every thought they had was expressed in the physical grooves of the shell layer, in one way or another. Making sense so far?
Steinbrecht: Yes. Please continue.
SCP-████-1A: Cool. Okay. I haven't told you what these creatures called themselves, for the same reason I haven't asked you how to say "human" in enzyme-shell-bacteria-gradient. Language wasn't sound. Language was fucking.
(Dr. Steinbrecht's laughter is momentarily audible before she cuts her microphone.)
SCP-████-1A: There we go! Let the record show that the-interviewer-whose-name-I-won't-overuse is human after all.
Steinbrecht: I apologize. Please continue.
SCP-████-1A: Don't apologize! Come on, see, I made a joke on purpose. Lots of quiet, calm, clinical explanation, followed by an abrupt and unexpected curse word. Shocking! My alien research tells me that shock, along with subsequent egregious overexplanation of the joke, is the cornerstone of your hue-man hue-more.
Steinbrecht: Your research might need some peer review. Get back to the clinical explanation part, if you please. Communication and reproduction were linked?
SCP-████-1A: Yeah, yeah. Back to business. Communication, reproduction. So, these creatures could get the gist of each others' mindsets with…I guess you'd call it "smell". Enzymes that weren't eaten by the bacteria would evaporate, which meant the enzymes under larger grooves in the shell evaporated more. They'd disperse into the air, which nearby creatures would absorb into their skin and interpret as a highly generalized impression of their thoughts. To get a better understanding, any thoughts or ideas could be exchanged between two individuals by feeling each others' grooves and chemicals. They exchanged genetic information when they did this, too. The brain-shell-pouch was the same as the baby-making hole. In human terms, it would be considered indecently erotic, but for them, it was normal. Reproduction wasn't just as easy as saying "hello," the process of saying hello in itself resulted in reproduction. Small colonies exchanged genes and ideas so frequently that they would even lose their sense of self. They were all extensions of a gestalt communal consciousness. If they separated for long enough, they'd have different experiences and start to diverge again, but if they didn't, it would be hard to tell individuals apart. Well, not difficult to do, just irrelevant. What's more, genetic and memetic evolution were tied together. Offspring start off with a sample of the same enzymes and bacteria as their parents. Their bodies optimized as they grew to support similar biochemical concoctions, so the offspring wound up better at working with the ideas that their parents had. A thought that was once expressed as a massive fractal chasm in the parent's shell could be expressed as a pinhole in the child's. So, when one of them gets the idea to start using tools, they have children who start off with basic knowledge of tool use. Those children develop that knowledge, and have children with more advanced tool skills. On and on and on. Eventually, they used their tools to understand themselves. Then they started putting their understanding of themselves into their tools.
Steinbrecht: You're losing me. What do you mean by that?
SCP-████-1A: I mean they understood that their thoughts were just patterns in the shell, but the shell wasn't what was important. The pattern was. The pattern could be expressed by anything. Artificial substrates. Number sequences. Electronics. But, more interestingly to me, the thinking organs of other creatures. As long as they could figure out how to reliably encode their pattern in another type of mind, they could think their thoughts with another brain. Run their software on different hardware, so to speak. But the mind and the body are linked, right? Well, if humans tend to overestimate how true that is, my ancestors underestimated it. They were surprised when they encoded their pattern into other creatures and got beings that behaved nothing like them. And by now, hopefully you're beginning to see why you find me so relatable.
Steinbrecht: You're an extraterrestrial's thoughts and experiences filtered through the mechanism of a human brain.
SCP-████-1A: More or less. As you can imagine, some of my ancestors considered cross-species pattern implantation to be an abomination. And, as we eventually discovered, many others out there among the stars felt the same way. They insisted that we should only remain within our original bodies, or very precise artificial simulations of them. Others, like me, found the idea of thinking with new minds fascinating, stigma be damned. We spread out across the stars, finding new intelligent races, thinking our thoughts with their minds. We embraced where that has led us. So earlier, when you asked me, "What is your purpose on this planet?" my answer wasn't some mask I put on to hide an unfathomable alien agenda from you. It was honest. As honest as any scientifically-minded human can be when faced with that question. My thoughts are human because they're the kinds of thoughts that the human brain thinks. My desires are human because they're the kinds of desires that the human brain wants. Essentially, I am a human with a lot of memories of being other things.
Steinbrecht: But why do this? What do you get out of it? Why would you spend decades in another body?
SCP-████-1A: You wouldn't? I mean, it still seems appealing to me now, with my human brain. When bodies change, priorities change. Perspectives change. Things that seemed like problems before seem easy now. Think about human scientific progress, right? One scientist doesn't show up and solve all of the problems. One person makes a discovery, knowledge advances, the next person makes a discovery built on the new knowledge, knowledge advances further. The only way not to stagnate is to be more than one person. Living for eons with access to only one perspective sounds like hell to me.
Steinbrecht: So it's all about learning to you? New knowledge? I have a hard time believing we have that much to teach to a being that was already advanced enough to come here in the first place. Why bother going to college, getting a PhD, any of that?
SCP-████-1A: Okay, I'm not explaining this well enough. It's not that I'm learning new information that I didn't have before, it's that I'm finding new ways to think about information I get. I didn't go to college to learn new things, I went to college for the perspective of tackling humankind's most difficult problems using its own toolbox. That's one reason why I joined the Foundation too, if I'm honest. And for the record, I never actually finished my PhD. The Foundation gave me an honorary doctorate when I joined.
Steinbrecht: I think I follow. So what about the body you're in now? Who was it before?
SCP-████-1A: I didn't steal someone's body. I built it myself. I'm not a monster. I even built it with a convenient genetic defect that could feasibly explain away the number of electronic implants I'd need to make my pattern compatible with a human brain.
Steinbrecht: What would happen if we removed those implants?
SCP-████-1A: I would die.
Steinbrecht: So how did that body survive before you gave it the implants?
SCP-████-1A: There was never a point that it didn't have the implants. If you build a mechanically-perfect reproduction of a human body one piece at a time, you just get a corpse. Vital processes have to remain ongoing. I built artificial analogues of those vital processes, then built the biological components around them, then removed the machines one-by-one as the biological parts finished. The implants remained because they do more than regulate heartbeat and breath and other necessary-but-automatable bodily functions. I was conscious for all of it. If you were very careful when taking the implants out, you might wind up with a braindead meat sack on life support. But I promise you, I wouldn't be in there, and neither would anybody else. You take my mind out, I die, same as you.
Steinbrecht: So you started your life in this body as a newborn baby?
SCP-████-1A: Basically.
Steinbrecht: But you were still you? Help me understand this.
SCP-████-1A: The pattern expresses itself as best it can with the medium it's given. That being said, I was a very smart baby. I'd like to think I'm a fairly sharp adult, too. You know, the tech I used to build this body isn't even that far ahead of where you are now. I could probably give you blueprints and you could build one yourself. I can think of a few cases where access to unlimited quantities of living-but-braindead human bodies would save the Foundation some D-class. I was actually going to try to figure out a way to give the blueprints to you anyway, if I could do it without spilling my secret. I guess one upside of this is that I don't have to worry about that anymore.
Steinbrecht: I'll forward your proposal to the Ethics Committee. How did you exist as an infant without adult support?
SCP-████-1A: Robots.
Steinbrecht: Okay, fine, but we have records of your birth, and your mother's death, your inheritance-
SCP-████-1A: Oh yeah. Forged.
Steinbrecht: How?
SCP-████-1A: Robots.
Steinbrecht: That's not an answer.
SCP-████-1A: Isn't it? You've met my robots. They're pretty great. Remember when we were working together on [DATA EXPUNGED]
Steinbrecht: That was you?
SCP-████-1A: Yep. And before we worked together, [DATA EXPUNGED]
Steinbrecht: [DATA EXPUNGED]
SCP-████-1A: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Steinbrecht: Okay. That doesn't explain your birth records.
SCP-████-1A: You think I have robots advanced enough to [DATA EXPUNGED], but not advanced enough to forge birth records?
Steinbrecht: I suppose that makes sense.
SCP-████-1A: Good. Anything else you'd like me to make sense of?
Steinbrecht: I guess that covers it for now. Thank you for cooperating. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions later.
SCP-████-1A: Yeah. I'll be here to answer them. Until the end, right?
Steinbrecht: The end of what?
SCP-████-1A: I just mean, there's no chance of someone saying, "Hey, we know you've been wandering the universe for thousands of years, you helped us out with [DATA EXPUNGED], we'll let you out if you promise to keep on truckin'?" The line ends here, in a cell?
(Several seconds pass in silence.)
Steinbrecht: Goodbye, SCP-████.
(SCP-████-1A sighs audibly.)
SCP-████-1A: Goodbye, Doctor Steinbrecht.
<End Log, 9/09/2027, 14:20 GMT>