Something went very wrong on July 26th, 2024.
The first person to notice it was Containment Specialist Lucy Anderson as she walked into the observation chamber for an anomaly she couldn't quite remember. From there, she could see several dead D-Class personnel littering the ground, the room coated with a thick layer of blood and feces. Despite knowing that she had been working with this object for years, she could not for the life of her recall what it was.
Must be a Monday, she thought.
She decided to check the terminal within the room. It powered it on, and the machine beeped to life. After a few moments of loading, it displayed an error screen. Lousy computer. Must be broken, she thought, opting instead to use her Foundation-issued tablet device. She unlocked it and attempted to access the SCP Database, only for it to return the same message:
404: DATABASE NOT FOUND.
"Huh." Lucy blinked in response. She immediately tried opening the RAISA troubleshooting livechat on her device, but found it was similarly down. "Okay. Weird." She then approached the file cabinet in the corner, opened a drawer, and rifled through it before realizing she didn't know what she was looking for.
Lucy took a few steps towards the window and glanced down at the containment chamber below. She saw a statue, but could not for the life of her place it or figure out what it did. But now she knew what she was looking for. A statue. Resuming her browsing, she quickly grew frustrated upon realizing that all the documents within were empty.
Then, it hit her.
She raced out of the observation chamber and towards the medical bay, only to find it full of other researchers, doctors, engineers, and just about every kind of position employed by the Foundation. Even the Site's director stood amongst the confused masses.
An emergency Foundation-wide video meeting was called by the O5 Council minutes after. Attendance was mandatory.
Foundation personnel worldwide all made their way to their computers. Some, to their site's auditorium. Some, in their pajamas. Some, fully awake. Regardless, they all attended and sat in silence as a bald-headed man spoke on video.
"Hello. To those who do not know me, my name is Dr. Daniil Sokolsky, head of ETTRA. We are aware that something has happened to all Foundation-known information on a global scale, though we do not know what exactly. Here is what we do know: what we are presently calling SCP-XXXX in keeping with what we assume is our old naming convention for these kinds of phenomena has effectively wiped all knowledge of what we used to keep jailed, or otherwise contai—"
"Sorry to cut in Dr. Sokolsky," a balding man with glasses and lousy facial hair interrupted the ETTRA Director. "Vincent Bohart, Site-333 Director. How do you know our naming convention, much less what we used to do?"
Sokolsky sighed and furrowed his brow at Bohart. "Well, Director Bohart, we don't know for sure. We took a guess based on what is written outside of the doors leading to the rooms of these objects we keep locked up. They all say 'SCP' followed by some numbers. So we are calling this SCP-XXXX. As for how we know we jailed these things, we all just kind of knew. Unless of course you aren't doing your job, Director?"
"No comment." Bohart gave up the video stage to Sokolsky again.
"Now where was I…" The bald man stroked his chin a moment. "Ah, yes. As I was saying, this… event has wiped clean our memory of everything we used to deal with. Based on the various sites we find ourselves in, it is safe to assume that we contained objects. However, due to not knowing whether or not these are dangerous, we have opted for keeping the doors to these things locked. No one is to go in or out of them under threat of death. Now, we have also hazarded a guess that some of what is in these rooms might be humans, so—"
Again, an interruption. "Pardon me; Jackson Conrad here, Site-91 Ethics Committee. If there might be humans in these jail cells, shouldn't we at least try our best to get them out of there so they may eat and have human interaction?"
"Under other circumstances, I would say yes, Mr. Conrad. However, we don't know if those possible humans we are jailing are dangerous." Sokolsky seemed increasingly annoyed.
"But why would they be dangerous? Why would we have anything that dangerous hidden away? We're basically just a fancy prison, correct?" Conrad asked.
"No. Based on information I received from the O5 Council prior to this meeting being called, we were an organization dedicated to keeping dangerous things in locked boxes. That includes people. A normal person is dangerous enough, we don't know it if we are keeping mustard gas or something worse within these shut doors."
"Well, we can't just let these potential people die!"
"We can and we will. We are a secret global organization, and very well-funded based on what I understand. We are likely keeping things that can endanger the life of the average civilian in he—"
Suddenly, another person was added to the video feed. They wore a purple and gold t-shirt with a W underneath their labcoat, the right sleeve of which was tied up in a knot as they were missing said arm.
"Okay, I don't mean to interrupt, but I just got off the phone with someone calling herself D.C. Al Fine, representing an organization called the… hold on I wrote it down. Uhh…. Ah, yes. 'Global Occult Coalition.' Whatever that is."
"Excuse me, I was asking a question." Conrad interjected.
Sokolsky groaned audibly.
"Oh hey, Daniil. And don't worry, uhhh… Conrad, I'm almost done. Anyway, I called the direct line installed in my office, which led me to her. She was confused about what was going on, but based on what I was able to glean from her, it sounded like she and her organization are an ally org of ours? Or maybe enemies?" Everwood spoke in a hurried voice, barely taking breaks to catch their breath. "But anyway, she said she didn't like the fact that we were being irresponsible? I tried getting her to tell me more, but she got angry with me, then said something about a uh… uh… one second…. 'KTE-Spiral-Kewpie-001.' No idea what that means. But if our old system, like Daniil was saying, is anything to go off of—"
"Thank you, Jay. That's enough." Sokolsky raised his voice, at which point Everwood shut up. "Now, if you don't mind, I will not be interrupted again. Let me just… Okay." He palmed his face momentarily after locking the video stage and removing both interrupting parties from it. "There we go. As I was. We have—"
A loud, flat beep interrupted Sokolsky.
"For fuck's sake, who is it now?" he roared.
"This is O5-7."
Sokolsky swallowed. "Sorry. Please go ahead."
"Right. We found out what the problem was. We had forgotten to renew our noospheric capacitor contract."
"What?" Sokolsky blurted out, stunned. "Noospheric capacitor contract? I don't understand."
"The Foundation takes up a lot of noospheric space with all our information. About as much as the rest of humanity combined. That's why we have to expand our noospheric sphere through Noosphere Inc. The representative we spoke to said that they meant to give us a courtesy call before cutting off our service, but some wires got crossed. We were very fortunate that 11 picked up the phone, otherwise we may have seriously been in trouble. Anyway, this meeting is dismissed. Back to work, everyone."
Just as quickly as he had connected, O5-7 disconnected. Thousands of Foundation employees left the call. Some, to resume work. Some, to go back to sleep. Regardless, they all left. All but one.
Only Sokolsky remained.
"Hmph. Well, good to know I'm still the best at my job. Crisis averted. Good job, me," Sokolsky grinned, metaphorically patting himself on the back before disconnecting from the call.