[REDACTED]: What did you see between the two gallows?
SAUNDERS: There was a monster behind me. The one with a body the length of two Manhattans, and a mouth on each end. The one you see behind yourself when it breathes.
[Silence.]
SAUNDERS: It ate me. It didn't hurt. I fell through its throat and got lost in its stomach. And there was a worm in its belly. Long enough to speak, so it did.
[[REDACTED]chokes. A pump beeps.]
SAUNDERS: It told me about a labyrinth. One laid out under a mile of concrete and ruin.[REDACTED]: Gamma. Un– unseelie. Spectral. Calamities.
SAUNDERS: It was hidden in there, and it dreamed of fractals of numbers and flesh and of upside-down cathedrals and of bladders pumped full of chemicals, and a descending, descending, falling, falling, pit, where you chase yourself through a million mirrors and hallways, down, down, down until you wake up– someone else.
Из SCP-7794: Nightlight, автор: Cubeflix
СЕМИОТИКА
Или неизбежная гибель:
Зона 196 всегда в упадке
"So, we ended up with it, after all?"
SCP-7419 sits unceremoniously in its new storage locker, having just been re-assigned to Site-196's purview. The machine, once kept amongst the crowded ranks of Site-19, deals in language. So too does Site-196 deal in language. It's old now, some twenty years after its discovery- rusted, jittery, and decrepit- but even still, it spits out its queries with diligence: fodder for those with overactive minds and paranoid sensibilities.
"It would seem so. Funny how a little thing like this can cause such a fuss."
"I still don't quite understand why it belongs to us now."
"Well, it talks to us a lot. We've used it as a somewhat reliable source of information on loan, since its 'True or False's' seem to be particularly great with paratech shenanigans. But really, it's the way it talks. 'Marianne Simmons Will Buy A Bagel At Wynnsbury's'. Doesn't get more us than that."
"As if it actually means anything. It was the 80s. This thing's just a shitty gag."
"And yet you still wanted it here, Janette."
"Maybe I was wrong. Or I will be wrong. When you look for higher meaning everywhere like we do, everything seems like the end of the world, doesn't it?"
"Maybe it is."
One may like to think of reality as a large, uncaring, and constant force. A monolithic institution beyond our concepts of order. Humanity has studied our world for thousands of years to try and understand- what, exactly -makes up this web we find ourselves in?
For as long as humans have learned and taught, so too have they created words and ideas and meanings to understand the world around them. These meanings- powerful tokens of belief that spread and shape that which receives them, they are what we have decided our universe is and encompasses.
But reality,
the final Thinker,
disagrees:
SCP-5125
"Dr. Jules Lazaret, Fmr. Research Lead for Site-14 (1963-1968), Fmr. Research & Development Manager at Site-196 (1968-1987), Director, Site-196 (1987-1992). Under Ethics Committee Investigation in pertinence to historical research projects, unspecified…"
SCP-8995
"There's something behind me. It's always behind me. I can't ever see it, but to me it's a snake. It sunk its teeth into me so long ago, and didn't even have the good grace to poison me. If I stop I can feel it wrapped around me, my body, and it squeezes. I wish it would let me go, but if it did I might forget it's there."
SCP-7783
"Dr. River Cories: One Month- Total biological and physical abstraction. Emergence of immature PASC subversive and strengthened pareidolic influence, most prevalent in the immediate vicinity of the disassociated fruiting body."
SCP-8155
"Despite the occurrence of Incident-8155-A, Site-196 is still shown to be continually active and operational, and still operating under the Foundation's name. To prevent ignominy, a unanimous vote across all Foundation personnel was made in order to officially disown Site-196 and recognize it as Exclusionary Site-196."
SCP-8465
"Skin pulled tighter than mine. When he takes a drink, you can see his clammy grey throat slide up and down, agape. Sharp enough to form a shape, a shape someone can remember. He goes missing, his lovers and loveds can pick out a shape on a silhouette, they can identify it. I sag and seep, shapeless and unformed."
SCP-7794
"The doors and windows of the house were not found. The brick facade surrounding where the door once stood was found cleanly extended across the doorframe. The windows and air vents were found to be covered in a similar fashion. Carbon monoxide levels within the home were found to be dangerously high. At the time of discovery, the smoke alarms filled the house with the sound of incessant beeping. They have since been deactivated."
SCP-8031
"Editor's Note: A link to the Fifth Church was initially hypothesized, but remains relegated to popularity amongst the low-performing and poor of mind."
SCP-3169
"Goodman was shown a variety of paraphernalia depicting or related to SCP-3169, including photographs, drawings, fragments taken from the corpus, and sentence fragments produced by those who had seen the door. In addition, Goodman was allowed to view an SCP-3169 instance for two seconds. Goodman was again asked to imagine entering SCP-3169. The result remained the same. However, upon being asked to imagine entering the door, Goodman spontaneously melted and died."
SCP-7575
"We strongly encourage all staff to regularly ask themselves: 'Does it make sense for me to have achieved what’s been attributed to me?'
If the answer is no, you may be eligible for semiotic compensation."
