Link to article: SCP-5423-5.
++ SCP-5423-5-K **Item #:** SCP-5423 **Object Class:** Keter **Special Containment Procedures:** Site 98 has been closed off. No personnel are to access the site without direct approval of the entire O5 Council. No personnel will approach SCP-5423 due to anomalies incompatible with life. **Description:** SCP-5423 is a spatial anomaly manifesting the remains of Site 98. When any discrete enclosed space is closed off, that room, its contents, and the space it occupies ceases to exist to all measurements currently available to the Foundation. Sonar and electromagnetic radiation act as though there is no space between the walls when the doors are closed. Due to the irregular shape of SCP-5423, this causes significant distortion. Areas that are not active still show a strong degradation of reality consistent with low Hume levels, with time passing at inconsistent rates, changes in temperature and pressure, and sudden changes in states of matter. Persons and objects inside the rooms experience no time between the door's closing and its opening again. However, the continuity of matter in the rooms is poorly consistent. Most dangerous examples include: * A ladder was knocked over as the door to a hallway was closed. When it was re-opened, the momentum was altered so that instead of falling over, it instead crashed into the far wall at 60 KPH. * Air inside a chamber of Site 98 was replaced by molten lead. * A janitor collapsed as soon as they were recovered from an affected room. Autopsy showed the absence of their circulatory system (though their blood still occupied the spaces left by the absent blood vessels). * Members who were in a section of SCP-5423 when it activated vanished and have not reappeared. * All objects in the room had undergone severe oxidation. This led to objects sustaining severe damage and reduced the structural integrity of the room. The room in which SCP-5423 originally manifested was a storage room on the second sub-level of Site 98. There were no anomalous objects inside when it was discovered and it is presently unknown how it manifested. A porthole window was installed in the wall surrounding SCP-5423 on 3/APR/30. When the door is closed, the window immediately changes view as though it were embedded in the far wall. Refraction shows that the glass as five centimeters shallower than when the door is closed, suggesting that part of the window is affected by the anomaly. A hole was drilled through the wall on 7/JUN/30 while the anomaly was active. When the drill reached the point where it should have reached the interior of the storage room, all communications with the testing team went silent. Site security immediately mobilized, and it was discovered that the hallway displayed the same anomalous properties as the room. On 10/AUG/30, Foundation agents inadvertently caused a 7.8 magnitude earthquake centered in New York City while neutralizing a Chaos Insurgency cell. Site 98 was not rated for this level of seismic activity, and it caused structural damage throughout the site. SCP-5423 was undergoing testing at the time, and this breached its previous boundaries, leading to much of Wing E of Site 98 being compromised. On 24/AUG/30, Doctor Henry Verne made unauthorized use of a Scranton Reality Anchor. He set it up inside a section of SCP-5423, activated the anchor, and then closed the door, engaging its effect. The anomaly spread to the rest of the site. Due to evacuation procedures, only 15 personnel were on site. Four were recovered unharmed. Five bodies were also extracted. No other personnel, including Dr. Verne, have been recovered due to the dangers inside SCP-5423. [[collapsible show="+ From Dr. Matson's Notes" hide="- Findings"]] > That idiot! I ordered him to report to Site 19. Instead, he made one last effort to destroy any hope of dealing with this situation. > > Well. To be fair, it was clearly an attempt to reverse the damage already done. And he had a lot to answer for. > > While I was waiting for a Foundation courier to arrive with an encrypted drive, I had Dr. Verne's home searched. We found the notes on Project Ararat. It's disturbing reading. > > The most disturbing part was reading the name at the top of the report: My own. I remember nothing of the project, but it is clearly my handwriting. More, I recognize the style of my work as I read through the experiment logs. > > It was supposed to have all been destroyed or sent on to Central Records, but apparently one copy was left here. I can only assume it was by me, though that seems incredibly reckless. > > As the precis had shown, it was meant to combat anomalies that affected local reality. Where Scranton Reality Anchors maintain normal Hume levels, this project did the opposite. > > It would drop local Humes to 0, and then raise them back up. In theory, this would undo any gross alterations of reality. However, the problems were twofold. First, we found it difficult to actually bring the Humes back up. When the door is open, the anomaly is still present in that space. When interaction with unaffected space is high enough, it's able to "leech" a semblance of reality from the surrounding system. The anomaly is metastable, and can stay in this state indefinitely. The second is that, as we have observed here, it doesn't scale up. > > Larger areas suffer degradation of local reality. So do smaller areas, actually, but the degree is negligible at that scale. A molecule gone astray here or there, a half degree change in temperature in the space of a cubic centimeter. However, the larger the area, the less reality is able to "snap back," and at a certain point it begins to cause degradation of surrounding reality. > > We hadn't solved these issues when Scranton finished his reality anchor. Honestly, it was a far better, more elegant solution. > > I have to wonder, though, why did I leave a copy of my work here? Was it carelessness? Or was it frustration at giving up the project? I can say now that scrapping it was the right decision, but did I see that right after I'd given a year of my life to the project, with nothing to show for it? Perhaps I hoped I might find it and return to the research. > > I fear I may bear as much responsibility for this disaster as Doctor Verne. > > I can only hope there will be a future left to hate me for it. > > Our only hope is that we can find a way contain and reverse this disaster. The site is lost. Hume levels vary wildly. Even with doors open, we observe degradation of local reality. I've ordered it closed. I've presented my findings to the council. > > We'll reach out to the best metaphysicists in the GOC, GRU, ORIA, even the Serpent's Hand, but I'm not optimistic. If we'd known what this was from the start, we could have fixed this easily. > > There must be some solution. We undid our work here the last time, so we know it must be possible. I can only hope we aren't too late. [[/collapsible]] [[<]] [https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/scp-5423/scp-5423-6-xk.html WARNING: THIS VERSION HAS BEEN SUPERCEDED BY SCP-5423-6-XK] [[/<]]